In Parts One and Two, I set out why culture and values are important to policy makers, firstly because of the direct impact they have and secondly because of how they affect the political context. At the end of the last chapter I set out some ideas for how we could change approaches to accountability in a way that takes culture and values as seriously to the extent I believe is necessary. Part Three continues this work of suggesting different approaches and solutions that policy makers can employ in response to the issues raised in the first two parts.

Adapting policy-making practice to the importance of culture and values is not easy. It requires different mindsets and some new approaches. As I will set out, most of those new approaches have roots in experiments or practices that are already underway or being tried somewhere. However in most cases they are not sufficiently mainstream that there is a strong body of evidence in place to demonstrate their effectiveness. Therefore Part Three of this book is more speculative and is rooted strongly in examples from my own experience and from other individual cases, and less in an established body of academic literature. My hope is that the ideas here inspire other practitioners to try things out and share what happens, and inspire researchers to look into whether any of what I suggest really addresses the challenges raised by putting culture and value at the centre of our understanding of public policy. Each of the four chapters in this part looks at one strategy for addressing culture and values: taking symbols seriously, doing more locally, building organisations and being smart about evidence.