New Perspectives on Public Services

I have lost count of the number of books and articles about public management that begin with a shopping list of (usually exaggerated) socio-economic, technological, and other changes that are supposedly driving change. Yet there is usually then a complete void, a chasm, between these lists and the analysis of public policy and organizational change that follows. Christopher Pollitt continues, in this book, a journey to fill the gap to analyse precisely how social and technological changes shape, and are shaped by, government actions. Through analysis of concrete cases, and focussing here on the relationship between place and technology, Pollitt teases out the actual links in the chains of recursive causality that literally shape government-context interactions. Highly recommended to those who prefer to see the goods and not just the shopping list! * Professor Colin R. Talbot, Professor of Public Policy and Management, Manchester Business School *
Pollitt demonstrates brilliantly that once one brings space back in, our understanding of government alters in significant ways. In highlighting government's role as a "placemaker" and the technologies available to it New Perspectives on Public Services shows the close relationship between a range of phenomena and processes usually considered in isolation. With this book and his earlier volume Time, Policy, Management Pollitt pioneers a truly multidimensional approach to the study of government and public management. * Ed Page, Sidney and Beatrice Webb Professor of Public Policy at the London School of Economics *
Unusual approaches and novel analyses are by definition scarce in the social sciences. Christopher Pollitt's new book is a gladly-seen exception * Professor Michiel de Vries, Radboud University Nijmegen *