Research in public policy seeks to understand what government does. It may proceed by way of theoretical and conceptual analysis, or by historical and empirical analysis. It is, then, a broad and eclectic field and this characteristic is reflected in the diverse research interests of staff. Four staff members work within this area: Dr Catherine Needham, Professor Wayne Parsons, and Dr Adam Fagan. Their research ranges over the sub-fields of public management, environmental policy and urban planning, political economy and evidence-based policy.
Public Management
Catherine Needham and Wayne Parsons have completed substantial research projects in the area of public management with a particular focus on the theory and practice of new public management techniques. Professor Parsons is currently completing a major new work, Redesigning Public Policy, which explores the role of rival epistemological and normative frameworks in the evolution of different policy styles, while Dr Needham has conducted a comprehensive examination of the relative role of quasi-markets and consumer-centred models of decision-making compared to those based on notions of citizenship and inclusion. With the think tank Catalyst she published Citizen-Consumers: New Labour's Marketplace Democracy (2003) . Her book, The Reform of Public Services under New Labour: Narratives of Consumerism, was published by Palgrave in 2007. She is working on projects on innovation and accountability in secondary education (with NASUWT) and enhancing local performance management' (with the National Consumer Council and Unison).
Environmental Policy and Urban Planning
Mark Pennington has a specialist interest in environmental policy and urban planning with an emphasis on the potential role of market solutions to land use and environmental problems. To this end he has completed two books on the political economy of the British land use planning system, Planning and the Political Market: Public Choice and the Politics of Government Failure (Athlone Press, 2000), and Liberating the Land (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2002). Dr Pennington has further research interests in the field of green political theory and is a member of the PSA Environmental Politics Group. He has completed a number of papers which examine the philosophical underpinnings of market-based approaches to environmental policy compared to those based on notions of citizenship and deliberative democracy.
Adam Fagan's research interests include the development of environmental movements in post-communist Europe. He has written extensively on the Czech environmental movement (including his monograph,Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic (Elgar, 2004)) as well as on environmental policy development and capacity building in the context of EU accession. He has published articles in Environment and Planning and Environmental Politics. He is editor of Green Politics, the ECPR newsletter for the Green Politics Standing Group.
Political Economy
Wayne Parsons and Mark Pennington have published extensively in the field of political economy and are particularly interested in the epistemology of leading twentieth century economists such as Keynes and Hayek. Professor Parsons has a specialist interest in the philosophy and politics of John Maynard Keynes, reflected in his book Keynes and the Quest for a Moral Science (Edward Elgar, 1997), and more recently in a contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Twentieth Century Economic Thought. Dr Pennington has research interests in the field of comparative economic systems, with a particular focus on the contribution of public choice theory and the Austrian school of economics. He has written most recently on Hayek’s critique of socialism and currently has a grant from the Earhart Foundation, to study the relationship between social capital and market institutions. Dr Pennington is also working on the implications of ‘spontaneous order’ and Hayek’s economics for theories of deliberative democracy and the ‘politics of difference’ and has completed a number of papers in this regard.