Complexity, Institutions and Public Policy: Agile Decision-Making in a Turbulent World - Softcover

Room, Graham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857932659 ISBN 13: 9780857932655

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

Graham Room argues that conventional approaches to the conceptualisation and measurement of social and economic change are unsatisfactory. As a result, researchers are ill-equipped to offer policy advice. This book offers a new analytical approach, combining complexity science and institutionalism. Part 1 is concerned with the conceptualisation of socio-economic change. It integrates complexity science and institutionalism into a coherent ontology of social and policy dynamics. Part 2 is concerned with models and measurement. It combines some of the principal approaches developed in complexity analysis with models and methods drawn from mainstream social and political science. Part 3 offers empirical applications to public policy: the dynamics of social exclusion; the social dimension of knowledge economies; the current financial and economic crisis. These are supplemented by a toolkit for the practice of 'agile policy making'. This is a stimulating, provocative and highly original book. It will appeal to academics and students in social and policy studies and to a wide range of scholars in other disciplines where complexity science is already well-developed. It will also be of major interest for decision makers coping with complex and turbulent policy terrains.

About this title

Review:

'Theoretical work on complex phenomena is beginning to have a major impact on several disciplines. Graham Room gives a clear summary of many of these insights and shows how this work can help guide public policy.' --Geoffrey M. Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire, UK '

About the Author:

Graham Room, Professor of European Social Policy, University of Bath, UK

About this edition

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0857932659
• ISBN 13: 9780857932655
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392