Sarah Ayres is Reader in Public Policy and Governance at the University of Bristol. She is a political scientist with expertise in public administration and theories of policy making. Her research is concerned with devolution and decentralisation in an international context, with a particular emphasis on analysing inter-governmental relations between central and local actors. This work has explored the role of partnership working and network management in the governance of territory.

• Introduction;Forty years of public management reform in UK central government: promises, promises ~ Christopher Pollitt;Political anthropology and civil service reform: prospects and limits ~ RAW Rhodes;Just do it differently? Everyday making, Marxism and the struggle against neoliberalism ~ Jonathan Stephen Davies;Performing new worlds? Policy, politics and creative labour in hard times ~ Janet Newman;Weathering the perfect storm? Austerity and institutional resilience in local government ~ Vivien Lowndes;Complex causality in improving underperforming schools: a complex adaptive systems approach ~ Martijn van der Steen, Mark van Twist, Menno Fenger and Sara Le Cointre;Toward policy coordination: alternatives to hierarchy ~ B. Guy Peters;Governing local partnerships: does external steering help local agencies address wicked problems? ~ Steve Martin and Valeria Guarneros-Meza;All tools are informational now: how information and persuasion define the tools of government ~ Peter John;The politics of engaged scholarship: impact, relevance and imagination ~ Matthew Flinders;Reflections on contemporary debates in policy studies ~ Sarah Ayres and Alex Marsh.

"This volume attests to the benefits of constantly rethinking policy: Policy making is in a constant cycle of re-invention and innovation and this international constellation of authors bring their reflexive insights to bear on practical policy experience." Diane Stone, Professor of Governance, Sir Walter Murdoch School of Governance and International Affairs, Australia. "These articles display the breadth, as well as the controversies, of current political analysis. The issues coming out of these articles are likely to shape the political discourse for the next several years." Jon Pierre, University of Gothenburg and University of Melbourne