Beyond Blunders: British Political Studies and Successful Public Policy

British political studies has traditionally focused on the analysis of policy failures. This is reflected in a vast literature on catastrophes and crises which has uncovered a range of specific and systemic factors to explain failure. The central argument of this article is that this intense disciplinary negativity-bias risks creating an intellectual form of path dependency in which examples of successful public policy are rarely acknowledged, let alone studied. This matters because the existence of an implicit but highly normative analytical lens may produce a skewed account of democratic performance in the United Kingdom; this may at some level feed into public debates in ways which reinforce public disillusionment and contribute to populist pressures; and the notion of looking ‘beyond blunders’ creates methodological questions which require the development of a new analytical toolkit and may pose new questions and opportunities for the social and political sciences. This article tests this ‘beyond blunders’ thesis by for the first time utilising the arguments and insights of the emergent field of ‘positive public policy’ in the context of British politics. Based on the available evidence and data, a cautious and carefully framed case for the study of successful public policy is made.