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Polarization is widely diagnosed as a major cause of 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. Polarization is not a temporary situation - it is the "new normal."
Public Policy, Governance and Polarization 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 and to find ways in which it may be managed so that policy solutions to these threats may be developed and implemented.
Researchers and future policymakers in fields such as public administration, public management and public policy need to recognise how institutional design, corporatist interest group systems and different pedagogical approaches may help them understand, discuss and work beyond policy polarization. Edited by two leading political science scholars, this book aims to begin that process.
List of contents
Table of Contents
Introduction and Overview: Polarization Explained and Applied
Jeremy Castle, David K. Jesuit and Russell Alan Williams
Section 1: Polarized Mass Publics and Electoral Politics
1. Concerted Action in Complex Environments: A Comparison of Industrial Restructuring in Mid-Sized City-Regions in Canada and the United States
Charles Conteh
2. Lines in the Sand: How Americans’ Polarization Results in Unwillingness to Accept Compromise Policy Outcomes
J. Cherie Strachan, Daniel M. Shea and Michael Wolf
3. Can Unequal Distributions of Wealth Influence Vote Choice? A Comparative Study of Germany, Sweden and the United States
Lindsay Flynn and Piotr R. Paradowski
Section 2: An Example of Polarization: The Climate Change Debate
4. Consensual Environmental Policy in the Anthropocene: Governing What Humanity Hath Wrought
Robert Bartlett and Walter F. Baber
5. Polarized Climate Debate? Institutions and Structure in Subnational Policymaking
Russell Williams and Susan Morrissey Wyse
6. Polarised business interests: EU climate policy-making during the "Great Recession"
Raffael Hanschmann
Section 3: Potential Remedies to Polarized Policymaking
7. Comparative National Energy Policies and Climate Change Actions in Countries with Divided and Unified Governments: Reflections, Projections and Opportunities for Improved Pedagogy
Thomas Rohrer and Pamela S. Gates
8. Exploring the Mediating Effects of Institutions on Polarization and Political Conflict: Evidence from Michigan Cities
Nathan Grasse, Thomas Greitens, Lawrence Sych, and David Jesuit
9. Political Polarization, Fiscal
About the author
David K. Jesuit is a Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Central Michigan University (CMU), USA.
Russell Alan Williams is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Memorial University, Canada.
Summary
Polarization is widely diagnosed as a major cause in the decline of evidence-based policy making and public engagement-based styles of policy making. Public Policy, Governance and Polarization seeks to provide a theoretical foundation for scholars and policy makers who need to understand the powerful and often disruptive forces
