The Structure of Policy Evolution:

Painting an Integrated Picture of Change in Policy and Institutional Systems (Routledge 2023)

This book advances novel tools for the study, analysis, and development of public policy, essential in a world of growing diversity, complexity, and accelerating change. Inspired by research in technology innovation, the book brings its forward applications into the studies of policy and institutional systems, answering, among others, the disciplinary need for a common model of change. Relating together the dynamics and the structure of policy evolution, the unified approach offers scholars important new insights into the logics and direction of policy development while advancing policy practitioners’ capacity for forecasting and optimizing designs. Analysing social and labour market policy development across two model jurisdictions, the United Kingdom and Denmark, it substantiates the new approach while demonstrating its significance to the study of welfare modernization and to policy scholarship more generally.

Trivialization and Public Opinion:

Slogans, Substance, and Styles of Thought in the Age of Complexity (Palgrave Macmillan 2019)

Centering on public discourse and its fundamental lapses, this book takes a unique look at key barriers to social and political advancement in the information age. Public discourse is replete with confident, easy to manage claims, intuitions, and other shortcuts; outstanding of these is trivialization, the trend to distill multifaceted dilemmas to binary choices, neglect the big picture, gloss over alternatives, or filter reality through a lens of convenience—leaving little room for nuance and hence debate. Far from superficial, such lapses are symptoms of deeper, intrinsically connected shortcomings inviting further attention. Focusing primarily on industrialized democracies, the authors take their readers on a transdisciplinary journey into the world of trivialization, engaging as they do so the intricate issues borne of a modern environment both enabled and constrained by technology. Ultimately, the authors elaborate upon the emerging counterweights to conventional worldviews and the paradigmatic alternatives that promise to help open new avenues for progress.

Navigating Policy:

The Policy Inference Framework and Beyond (Helios 2016)

Today, amidst the disruptive shifts spurred by growing global economic, political, and social interdependence, properly understood policy solutions are becoming ever more essential to success in both the post-industrial and developing nations. Yet negotiating the increasingly complex policy environments and their policies proves to be immensely challenging—especially with the outdated approaches at hand. Navigating Policy sets out to help rechart this course. Departing from the traditional thinking, the author masterfully brings together new ideas and tools and, through their application, makes the case that different, yet complementary perspectives are integral to disciplinary progress.