Producing Health Policy [electronic resource] : Knowledge and Knowing in Government Policy Work /
Maybin, Jo.author.
In this book Jo Maybin draws on rare access to the inner-workings of England's Department of Health to explore what kinds of knowledge civil servants use when developing policy, how they use it and why. Combining ethnographic data with insights from psychology, socio-linguistics, sociology and philosophy, she demonstrates how civil servants engage in a wide range of knowledge practices in the course of their daily work. These include sharing personal anecdotes, thrashing-out ideas in meetings and creating simplified representations of phenomena, as well as conducting cost-benefit analyses and commissioning academic research. Maybin analyzes the different functions that these various practices serve, from developing personal understandings of issues, to making complex social problems 'thinkable', and meeting the ever-present need to make policies 'happen'. In doing so, she develops an original theory of policy-making as the work of building connections between a policy in development and powerful ideas, people, and instruments, and reveals the 'policy know-how' required by civil servants to be effective in their jobs.
Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
Includes bibliographical references and index.
In this book Jo Maybin draws on rare access to the inner-workings of England's Department of Health to explore what kinds of knowledge civil servants use when developing policy, how they use it and why. Combining ethnographic data with insights from psychology, socio-linguistics, sociology and philosophy, she demonstrates how civil servants engage in a wide range of knowledge practices in the course of their daily work. These include sharing personal anecdotes, thrashing-out ideas in meetings and creating simplified representations of phenomena, as well as conducting cost-benefit analyses and commissioning academic research. Maybin analyzes the different functions that these various practices serve, from developing personal understandings of issues, to making complex social problems 'thinkable', and meeting the ever-present need to make policies 'happen'. In doing so, she develops an original theory of policy-making as the work of building connections between a policy in development and powerful ideas, people, and instruments, and reveals the 'policy know-how' required by civil servants to be effective in their jobs.
Knowledge and policy in the literature -- Knowledge sources -- Learning through interaction -- Analytical practices -- Articulating people, ideas, and instruments -- Forms of knowledge and knowing in policy work.
Social policy.
Welfare state.
Social medicine.
Public policy.
Great Britain-Politics and government.
Social Policy.
Politics of the Welfare State.
Medical Sociology.
Public Policy.
Social Policy.
British Politics.
Producing health policy : knowledge and knowing in government policy work.