Public Policy, Governance and Polarization ─ Making Governance Work

Polarization is widely diagnosed as a major cause in the decline of evidence-based policy making and public engagement-based styles of policy making. It creates an environment where hardened partisan viewpoints on major policy questions are less amenable to negotiation, compromise or change.

This book seeks to provide a theoretical foundation for scholars and policy makers who need to understand the powerful and often disruptive forces that have arisen in Europe and North America over the past decade. Academics and practitioners need to better understand this growing trend as well as ways finding ways it may be managed so that policy solutions to these threats may be developed and implemented..

Polarization is not a temporary situation – it is the ‘new normal’. Researchers, and future policymakers in fields such as public administration, public management and public policy need to that understand how institutional design, corporatist interest group systems and different pedagogical approaches may help them understand, discuss and work beyond policy polarization. This book aims to begin that process.

David K. Jesuit is a Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Central Michigan University (CMU), in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Dr. Jesuit’s research primarily focuses on social policy and income inequality in the US and Western Europe. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses on the main campus in Mt. Pleasant and teaches and mentors students enrolled in CMU’s off-campus MPA programs in metro Detroit and Richmond, VA.

Dr. Russell Williams is an associate professor of political science at Memorial University. His research focuses on the intersection between international political economy and public policy in the areas of financial services regulation, the management of trade disputes, and climate change policy. He has numerous publications, including articles in the Journal of Public Policy, Review of Policy Research, the International Journal of Public Sector Management, Canadian Foreign Policy, Global Social Policy and the American Review of Canadian Studies.