Palgrave Studies in Science, Knowledge and Policy – serie

This book explores the complex relationship between public health research and policy, employing tobacco control and health inequalities in the UK as contrasting case studies. It argues that focusing on research-informed ideas usefully draws attention to the centrality of values, politics and advocacy for public health debates.

Drawing on a detailed case study of Scotland's National Health Service, this book argues that debates about citizen participation in health systems are disproportionately dominated by techniques of invited participation.

Knowing Governance sets out to understand governance through the design and making of its models and instruments. What kinds of knowledge do they require and reproduce? How are new understandings of governance produced in practice, by scientists and policy makers and by the publics with whom they engage?

This book interrogates the role played by evaluation in 21st century governing.

In this book Jo Maybin draws on rare access to the inner-workings of England's Department of Health to explore what kinds of knowledge civil servants use when developing policy, how they use it and why.

British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis connects sociological thinking on knowledge with research on policy change and the economic debate, through careful analysis of interviews, public accounts, and the ‘products’ of think tanks themselves.

British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis connects sociological thinking on knowledge with research on policy change and the economic debate, through careful analysis of interviews, public accounts, and the ‘products’ of think tanks themselves.

The topic of sex-work/prostitution has long generated contentious debate, particularly within the broad church of feminism.

The topic of sex-work/prostitution has long generated contentious debate, particularly within the broad church of feminism.

Much has been written about policy efforts to achieve ‘Health in All Policies’: an ambitious attempt to improve population health and reduce health inequalities by ensuring multiple policy areas are more attuned to their health impacts.

Much has been written about policy efforts to achieve ‘Health in All Policies’: an ambitious attempt to improve population health and reduce health inequalities by ensuring multiple policy areas are more attuned to their health impacts.

This Open Access book offers a novel perspective on the role of quantification in the making of education utopias through an analysis of expert knowledge and its producers. Drawing on empirical findings from the European Research Council funded project ‘International Organisations and the Rise of a Global Metrological Field’ (METRO, 2017-2022), Education, Quantification and Utopia focuses on the ways that metrological realism has constructed a well-supported epistemic infrastructure, built on relationships and practices that go beyond the mere objectivity and reliability of numerical evidence. The book’s chapters outline how the production of new forms of education expertise have led to ideational and institutional interdependencies, and ultimately the making of an intricate, fragmented and opaque knowledge and governance web.

This Open Access book offers a novel perspective on the role of quantification in the making of education utopias through an analysis of expert knowledge and its producers. Drawing on empirical findings from the European Research Council funded project ‘International Organisations and the Rise of a Global Metrological Field’ (METRO, 2017-2022), Education, Quantification and Utopia focuses on the ways that metrological realism has constructed a well-supported epistemic infrastructure, built on relationships and practices that go beyond the mere objectivity and reliability of numerical evidence. The book’s chapters outline how the production of new forms of education expertise have led to ideational and institutional interdependencies, and ultimately the making of an intricate, fragmented and opaque knowledge and governance web.

The book examines the politics of knowledge in global social policy, investigating how international organisations (IOs) have contributed to the emergence and development of social security as a global policy field.

This book sheds light on metrics as a key element of power relations in the EU anti-poverty policy, not least because the calculative infrastructure underlying them actively shapes the distribution of power. These metric-based power dynamics are linked to the fundamental lines of division in the EU, namely the tension between the vested interests of Member States and of supranational bodies, as well as between economic and social policy objectives. The analysis also points to the blurring of the boundaries between the technical and political (interest-based) aspects of the policy-making process. Actors are surprisingly often not only aware of, but openly talk about, the normative choices and negotiations involved in creating indicators and the trade-off between cognitive value and alignment of interests. Many also believe that it is better to use “imperfect” but “commonly agreed” indicators than none at all. By unpacking these hidden infrastructures and everyday practices, this book brings a new perspective to the study of EU policy-making. Drawing on extensive empirical research, it provides a robust empirical account of how Europe governs through numbers.