The SAGE Handbook of Political Science presents a major retrospective and prospective overview of the discipline. Comprising three volumes of contributions from expert authors from around the world, the handbook aims to frame, assess and synthesize research in the field, helping to define and identify its current and future developments. It does so from a truly global and cross-area perspective Chapters cover a broad range of aspects, from providing a general introduction to exploring important subfields within the discipline. Each chapter is designed to provide a state-of-the-art and comprehensive overview of the topic by incorporating cross-cutting global, interdisciplinary, and, where this applies, gender perspectives. The Handbook is arranged over seven core thematic sections: Part 1: Political Theory Part 2: Methods Part 3: Political Sociology Part 4: Comparative Politics Part 5: Public Policies and Administration Part 6: International Relations Part 7: Major Challenges for Politics and Political Science in the 21st Century

The study of political institutions is among the founding pillars of political science. With the rise of the 'new institutionalism', the study of institutions has returned to its place in the sun. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions draws together a galaxy of distinguished contributors drawn from leading universities across the world. Authoritative reviews of the literature and assessments of future research directions will help to set the research agenda for the next decade.

Offering full coverage of major subthemes and subfields within political science this reference handbook includes entries on topics from theory and methodology to international relations and institutions.

′The new handbook by Peters and Pierre provides an invaluable addition to the literature. It offers new scholars and practitioners a means to navigate many of the complex theoretical and practical issues in contemporary policy analysis′ - Mark Considine, University of Melbourne The public policies of governments affect the lives and livelihoods of citizens every day in every country around the world. This handbook provides a comprehensive review and guide to the study, theory and practice of public policy today. Section One, Making Policy, introduces the policy making process - the means by which public policies are formulated, adopted and implemented - and serves to review the many competing conceptualizations within the field. Section Two, Substantive Policy Areas, focuses on a number of substantive policy areas to consider both diversity and commonalties across different sectoral policy areas. Section Three, Evaluating Public Policy, addresses issues of policy analysis more directly and assesses successes and failures in public policy in an attempt to answer the question ′what is good policy?′. The concluding chapter considers the different disciplinary contributions to the research and study of public policy both retrospectively and prospectively. Drawing contributions from leading academics and policy analysts from around the world, the handbook illustrates the changing role of governments vis-à-vis the public and private sector and the different policy actors (national and international, governmental and non-governmental) involved in the policy making process. It will be an essential companion for all advanced undergraduates, graduates, academics and practitioners across public policy and public administration, public management, government and political science.

The interaction of politics and the visual in the activities of nongovernmental activists. Political acts are encoded in medial forms--punch holes on a card, images on a live stream, tweets about events unfolding in real time--that have force, shaping people as subjects and forming the contours of what is sensible, legible, and visible. In doing so they define the terms of political possibility and create terrain for political acts. Sensible Politics considers the constitutive role played by aesthetic and performative techniques in the staging of claims by nongovernmental activists. Attending to political aesthetics means focusing not on a disembodied image that travels under the concept of art or visual culture, nor on a preformed domain of the political that seeks subsequent expression in media form. Instead it requires bringing the two realms together into the same analytic frame. A diverse group of contributors, from art historians, anthropologists, and political theorists to artists, filmmakers, and architects, considers the interaction of politics and the visual in such topics as the political consequences of a photograph taken by an Israeli soldier in a Palestinian house in Ramallah; AIDS activism; images of social suffering in Iran; the "forensic architecture" of claims to truth; and the "Make Poverty History" campaign. Transcending disciplines, they trace a broader image complex whereby politics is brought to visibility through the mediation of specific cultural forms that mix the legal and the visual, the hermeneutic and the technical, the political and the aesthetic. Their contributions offer critical insight into the practices of mediation whereby the political becomes manifest.