The role of the councillor and the work of meeting
This paper picks up a theme from the recent literature on the councillor, that of time spent in meeting, and suggests that if we are to understand the role of the councillor we must understand the work the meeting does. The discussion is based in a series of...What do policy makers really do?
The question is important because making policy engages a great number of people one way or another, and what they do they might do well or badly. Our standard answers are rather hazy, not least because policy making entails such great numbers of people doing a great...Meeting, talk and text: policy and politics in practice
Our prevailing accounts of the policy process are challenged by studies of practice as well as by practitioners themselves. This paper sets out an alternative, grounded in politics and sociology and informed by recent work in related disciplines. Drawing on the...Doing Politics: research, teaching and practice
For a meeting of the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, 19 November 2018… The aim of this presentation is simply to set out a framework for studying ‘doing politics’, and to discuss ways of using it in teaching as well as...Policy and politics in practice: the work of meeting, talk and text
Public lecture, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, University of Vienna, 13 December 2018… What are policy and politics, in practice? When we do politics and make policy, what are we doing? In this lecture, I want to set out a framework for...Gastprofessur in Vienna
Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Vienna, 2018-2019, teaching courses in Making Policy, Doing Comparison and Doing Politics and Making Policy at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels respectively… BAK 13: Making policy,...Good Vibrations
Nice citations, at least, if not ex-citations. Like lots of us, I guess, most of what I’ve written appears again (if it appears at all) as a name and number, person and date inserted in someone else’s argument, to be read as simple ciphers for the complex...Europe in translation: governance, integration and the project form
Policy makers and commentators refer readily to ‘the European project’, as though Europe itself were a project. But what would it mean to take this term seriously, to develop the account of European governance it seems to suggest? This chapter begins on the ground, in the everyday understanding of the project as an organizational form…
Teaching politics after the practice turn
The ‘practice turn’ and its associated ontology, epistemology and methodology are now well established in political research. In this article, we identify and explore a corollary pedagogy. After outlining the principal components of practice theory, we compare case-...Working for Equality: policies, politics, people
Equality is a hugely important topic for most Scots and many of us want to see a more equal society. But what kind of equality do we want, and how, in practice, might we achieve it? This book brings together a group of experienced practitioners from across the country...Care, policy, knowledge: translating between worlds
served as postscript to Vicky Singleton, Claire Waterton and Natalie Gill’s new Sociological Review Monograph on Care and Policy Practices…