1,721,223 research outputs found
The Knowns and Unknowns of Policy Instrument Analysis: Policy Tools and the Current Research Agenda on Policy Mixes
Full text linkPolicies are made and pursue their goals through policy instruments. Furthermore, policy instruments have become a relevant topic in many policy fields due to their theoretical and empirical relevance. The study of this field dates back to Lowi and others who developed many typologies and theories in classic works by authors such as Hood, Salamon, Linder and Peters, Peters and van Nispen, Schneider and Ingram, Lascomes and Le Galès, among others. This is important work that is linked closely to current research on policy design but, despite much effort, many fundamental issues remain unknown or understudied with respect to the topic. It is time to take inventory of the knowns and unknowns about policy tools. The current article examines four clusters of basic issues in the field which require further research
How tools work. Policy Instruments as Activators and Mechanisms.
No full textThe mechanistic approach to policy tool research tries to unpack the processes through which
instruments reach (or do not reach) their expected goals by shedding light on the set of behavioural
mechanisms and how the deployment of specific kinds of policy tools activates some compliance
responses and not others in policy targets or ‘policy takers’. The mechanistic perspective
assumes that instruments are not simply independent variables or co-variables; rather, they are
real drivers of specific outcomes of interest. As a result, policy instruments are considered to be
‘activators’ of specific mechanistic chains through which the behaviours of individuals, groups
and subsystems are altered in order to achieve specific outcomes. This means that instruments
should not be considered as having a direct impact on the expected outcome, but rather serve as
‘triggers’ capable of activating a sequence of individual and aggregate behaviours that is expected
to achieve a specific result. In general, each category of tool involves the use of a specific governing
resource, but this resource use is expected to trigger or lever a specific characteristic
or receptor in targets, inducing a certain behavioural response. Thus, the effectiveness of the
deployment of such tools is linked not just to resource availability – a precondition of their use –
but also to the existence of different ‘receptors’ on the part of policy targets which make them
respond in a predictable way to the use of this resource when deployed. The policy mixes or
bundles of policy instruments which arise in such cases typically involve not only a number of
tools but also a range of motivations across a range of targets. This makes the assessment of the
motivational structure of a policy realm more complex and difficult. It also suggests that rather
than think about compliance in the context of single target-single instrument dynamics, policy
design should centre on multiple target-multiple instrument ones
The politics of constitutional change in a federal system: Negotiating Section 92A of the Canadian Constitution Act 1982. by Michael Howlett
No full texttag=1 data=The politics of constitutional change in a federal system: Negotiating Section 92A of the Canadian Constitution Act 1982. by Michael Howlett
tag=2 data=Howlett, Michael
tag=3 data=Publius: The Journal of Federalism,
tag=4 data=21
tag=5 data=1
tag=6 data=Winter 1991
tag=7 data=121-142.
tag=8 data=CONSTITUTION
tag=10 data=This article examines the process of constitutional change surrounding the enactment of the natural resource amendment to the Canadian Constitution Act 1982.
tag=11 data=1991/3/8
tag=12 data=91/0712
tag=13 data=CABThis article examines the process of constitutional change surrounding the enactment of the natural resource amendment to the Canadian Constitution Act 1982
Perspectives on Policy Analysis: A Framework for Understanding and Design
No full textGreen Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Policy Analysi
Calibration and specification in policy practice: Micro-dimensions of policy design
Full text linkThree aspects of policy success - programme implementation, policy solution feasibility and political legitimacy and support - need to be at the front of mind when policies are formulated. Many uncertainties endemic to policy-making surround these issues and present considerable public management challenges. Many of these problems, however, are linked to the poor conceptualization and understanding of policy content on the part of policy-makers, something for which policy scholars must share some blame. This is especially true with respect to the existing literature on the micro-level aspects of policies; the level at which goals and policy instruments are concretely implemented in the form of specific policy targets and tool calibrations. While these latter subjects have been examined in the past by luminaries such as Eleanor Ostrom, Guy Peters, Peter Hall and Lester Salamon, their insights into this level of policy-making have been glossed over in the mainstream policy sciences and the significance of their work for real-world policy analysis insufficiently appreciated. This article sets out a framework of policy calibrations and specifications that reconciles and incorporates these insights in order to enhance the chances of policy success through improved policy design
Participatory vs expert evaluation styles
Full text linkThis chapter focuses on policy evaluation, defined as the assessment of a public policy to determine whether it has achieved its objectives. We discuss two types of policy evaluation: expert evaluation and participatory evaluation. While expert styles insist on the technicality of policy evaluations and on scientific sophistication, participatory styles focus on the integration of policy stakeholders and laypersons during the evaluative process. Because expert evaluation styles are marked by their scientific character and independence, they enjoy a high internal reliability and a result-based legitimacy. In contrast, core features of participatory evaluations styles are their representativeness and transparency, which is associated with external reliability and a process-based legitimacy. The chapter outlines the historical development of these two evaluation styles, and discusses their respective strengths and weaknesses in the light of contemporary decision-making processes. Finally, we discuss the risks associated with technocratic policy evaluation styles on the one hand, and politicized participatory evaluations on the other hand, in the context of post-truth democracy
Tools to Promote Popular Mobilization and Social Advocacy: Social Identities, Policy Programs, Careers, and Education
No full textThere are different theoretical perspectives on why policy actors promote certain policy proposals, but they all have in common that a policy idea needs support – from the public, key actors in government and administration, or influential corporatist actors such as interest groups – to be successful. How do policy actors gain supporters for their ideas in the agenda-setting phase? Which tools do they use to promote their ideas at this stage? This contribution argues that policy actors can make use of the career motivations and social psychological drivers of actors’ behavior to achieve popular mobilization and social advocacy for their ideas. In detail, we set out the mechanisms that link a policy idea successfully entering the agenda-setting stage to the tools used by policy actors by drawing on the lens of the programmatic action framework (PAF). We thereby distinguish four types of tools through which actors seize the attention of decisive actors and promote their policy proposals: those that target the salience of social identities of policy actors that favor policy proposals (social identity-driven tools), those that target the normative implications of policy proposals (program-driven tools), those that achieve issue attention through the exertion of authority and motivate actors in promising top-level positions (career-driven tools), and those that build on the creation of knowledge and evidence in the policy process (education-driven tools). We also discuss the delineation and overlapping of these tools with regard to existing classifications of policy tools and provide practical advice to use these tools for ensuring long-term support of a policy program by a diversity of actors throughout the policy cycle
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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