Description
Book SynopsisThis book argues that democracies are increasingly unable to communicate, implement and evaluate the enormous amount of public policies they create. It is relevant to all political scientists as well as readers outside of academia who seek to understand the complexities of modern policy making.
Table of Contents1. Policy accumulation and the democratic responsiveness trap: 1.1 Accumulation and democratic overload; 1.2 Caught in a responsiveness trap; 1.3 Structure of the book; 2. Policy accumulation: concept and measurement: 2.1 Conceptual challenges; 2.2 Targets and instruments: policy elements as a universal unit of policy accumulation; 2.3 Data and measurement; 3. Policy accumulation: a uniform trend in democratic policy making: 3.1 Empirical patterns of policy accumulation; 3.2 Origins of policy accumulation; 3.3 The (false) promises of contemporary attempts to reverse this trend; 4. The threat to our ability to talk policy, not politics: 4.1 Public policies as complex systems; 4.2 How policy accumulation affects the demandingness of policy debate; 4.3 Towards a representative model of discourse quality; 4.4 The divergence of policy debates; 4.5 Old vs. young policy mixes; 4.6 Implications: addressing the populist challenge; 4.7 Meanwhile, our friend John Doe …; 4.8 Complex problems, simple conclusions?; 5. The threat to effective and even policy implementation: 5.1 The well-known challenges of policy implementation; 5.2 Policy accumulation and the increasing burdens of implementation; 5.3 The aggregate burdens of policy implementation; 5.4 Structural overload and increasing prevalence of implementation deficits?; 5.5 Meanwhile, our friend John Doe …; 5.6 Challenges for policy implementation in the twenty-first century; 6. The threat to evidence-based policy making: 6.1 Striving for evidence-based public policy; 6.2 Evaluating policy effectiveness within increasingly complex policy mixes; 6.3 Handling the aggravating independent variable problem; 6.4 So what's the problem?; 6.5 Meanwhile, our friend John Doe …; 6.6 Implications and conclusions; 7. Ways towards sustainable policy accumulation: 7.1 Why deregulation is not the answer; 7.2 Strengthening our democratic infrastructure; 7.3 How much should we worry?; 7.4 How can we tell? Implications for policy research; 7.5 Policy accumulation beyond politics: implications for organisational research?; 7.6 Final remarks; 8. Appendix; 9. Index; 10. References.
