Routledge Visual Culture and Public Policy: Towards a visual polity? (Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management)

Product Description Traditionally, images have played an important role in politics and policy making, mostly in relation to propaganda and public communication. However, contemporary society is inundated with visual material due to the increasing ubiquity of media and visual technologies that facilitate the production, distribution and consumption of images in new and innovative ways. As such, a visual culture has emerged, and a number of authors have written on visual culture and the technologies which underlie it. However, a clear link to policy making is still lacking. This books links the emergence of this visual culture to policy making and explores how visual culture (and the growing number of technologies used to create and distribute images) influence the course, content and outcome of public policy making. It examines how visual culture and policy making in contemporary society are intertwined, elaborating concepts such as power, framing and storytelling. It then links this to technology, and the way this can enhance power, transparency, registration, surveillance and communication. Dealing with the entire cycle of public policy making, from agenda-setting, to policy design, decision making to evaluation, the book contains diverse international case studies including water management, risk management, live-stock diseases, minority integration, racism, freedom of speech, healthcare, disaster evaluation and terrorism. Review '‘Performance’ has two sides of the same coin. It is ‘results’ and ‘putting something on stage’. This book brings these two sides together in a very smart way. Whether it is the policy cycle, or its governance and polity, the visual dimension becomes so dominant that reality risks to become the derivative. Convincing pictures show and prove the role of visual perception. In this book "What you see is really what you get".' - Geert Bouckaert, President of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium. 'In this powerful and important book, Viktor Bekkers and Rebecca Moody examine myriad influences of visualization on the content and course of public policy. As visual culture is more routinely and pervasively embedded in policy practices, the authors demonstrate persuasively through nine vivid, carefully selected cases, how visual culture is used by policy experts and stakeholders to frame--and shift the framing of--key policy problems and actions. As Bekkers and Moody argue cogently, scholars and practitioners in public administration and policy must update their understanding of the policy process as textuality gives way to visuality.' - Jane Fountain, Professor, University of Massachusetts, USA. About the Author Victor Bekkers is Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Rebecca Moody is Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.