"This book addresses one of the enduring questions of democratic government: why do governments choose some public policies but not others? Political executives focus on a range of policy issues, such as the economy, social policy, and foreign policy, but they shift their priorities over time....

Since the publication of Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein (2008) behavioural public policies and nudge units have been widely adopted right across the world, which has resulted in many improvements to the delivery of public policies, such as better tax collection, increased access of young people to...

Political scientists have renewed their interest in British politics, using advanced methods, leveraging new data sources, and publishing papers in the leading journals the field. Such studies take British political institutions as their starting point, performing new tests of relationships...

Publishing performance information about local public services, an increasing trend in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, matters politically because it has an effect on incumbent local governments' electoral support. Voters are able to use performance...

Do opportunities in Parliament to improve and demonstrate effectiveness as lawmakers help politicians take up new posts in their parties and in government? We examine this question by leveraging a natural experiment in the United Kingdom where randomly selected twenty MPs are given an...