Example public administration dissertation topic 6:

Re-engaging citizens in community welfare: Lessons to be learnt from PACT meetings?

Police and Communities Together (PACT) meetings have, in the time that they have been established, seen new relationships forged between crime prevention officials and ordinary residents. Working together to highlight issues of concern and set local priorities they are, as this dissertation notes, seen by their proponents to have rejuvenated community relationships between people and their local police officers. Using the success of PACT meetings in Lancashire, this dissertation questions whether there are lessons to be learnt from the schemes that could be applied to issues of community welfare, and in particular the setting of local health priorities with reference to individual GP surgeries in Wigan and the communities they serve.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Boutilier, M., Cleverly, S. and Labonte, R. (2000). Community as a setting for health promotion. In, Poland, B.D, Green, L.W. and Rootman, I. (eds), Settings for health promotion: Linking theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 250-279.
• Cochrane, A. (2004). Modernisation, managerialism and the culture wars: Reshaping the local welfare state in England. Local Government Studies, 30(4), pp. 481-496.
• Innes, M., Abbott, L., Lowe, T. and Roberts, C. (2009). Seeing like a citizen: field experiments in ‘community intelligence-led policing’. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, 10(2), pp. 99-114.