1,720,964 research outputs found
Dutch politicians’ use of cost–benefit analysis
No full text28 Dutch politicians and 10 top-level civil servants were interviewed about the way Dutch politicians use cost–benefit analysis (CBA). Various types of use were identified. Politicians use CBA: (1) When forming their opinion about the desirability of transport projects; (2) As political ammunition (opportunistic use); (3) To make themselves and their decisions look more rational (symbolic use). None of the politicians stated that they solely base their judgment on CBAs. Politicians mention seven barriers that hamper the use of CBA when forming their opinion: (1) The process of forming an opinion is trivial; (2) Politicians prefer to form their opinion based on conversations rather than on reading reports; (3) Politicians don’t trust CBA’s impartiality; (4) Politicians disagree with normative choices made in CBA. An example of such a normative choice is that CBA attaches an equally large weight to everybody’s utility changes. (5) Politicians think that CBA’s explanatory power is limited; (6) Politicians receive CBAs too late; (7) When there is plenty of money, politicians care less about a project’s social profitability. Members of Parliament identified barriers 3 and 6 as the most important barriers. They regard publishing CBAs one or two months before a debate as the most auspicious solution for rectifying these barriers. An interesting observation is that no barriers for the opportunistic and symbolic use of CBA by politicians were identified. Hence, it can be concluded that it is highly likely that when politicians receive CBAs for transport projects, they will use the CBA in an opportunistic and symbolic way, but politicians will not necessarily use CBA when forming their opinion.</p
The Politics of Cost-Benefit Analysis
No full textCost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a widely used economic appraisal method that aims to support politicians in making decisions about projects and policies. Several researchers have tried to uncover the extent to which CBA actually impacts decision-making by investigating the statistical relation between the results of CBA studies and political decisions. Although these studies show that there is no significant statistical relation between the outcomes of CBA studies and political decisions, there is clear evidence that the institutionalization of CBA affects the planning and decision-making process within the bureaucracy. Civil servants, for instance, use CBAs to government projects in the early phases of the planning process. The literature identifies various barriers that hamper politicians’ use of CBA when forming their opinion. First, politicians often receive results of CBA studies too late in the process. When politicians receive a CBA after they already made up their mind and communicated their viewpoint, the chance is low that the results of the CBA will (substantially) influence their decision. A second important barrier that limits the use of CBA by politicians is that they do not have enough trust in CBA’s impartiality. A third barrier is that politicians contest value judgments implicit in CBA.The literature distinguishes six ideological value judgments that inevitably need to be made when conducting a CBA: (a) Which individuals have standing in a CBA? (b) Which preferences have standing in a CBA? (c) Which procedure is used to value impacts? (d) On which dimensions are standard numbers differentiated? (e) Which weight is assigned to preferences of individuals in the social welfare function? (f) Which approach is adopted to select the social discount rate? The implication of the fact that CBA analysts cannot escape from making value judgments when conducing the study is that CBA is currently a problematic tool for democratic decision-making because, when applied in practice, the analysis is based on a specific set of politically loaded premises that fosters (damages) the interests of politicians (not) endorsing these premises. It is possible to overcome this problem through informing politicians about the extent to which switching value judgements leads to different CBA outcomes. The introduction of so-called normative sensitivity analyses safeguards that politicians with different belief systems are equally equipped to use the results of a CBA to arrive at a well-founded evaluation of a government project.Transport and Logistic
When Digital Mass Participation Meets Citizen Deliberation: Combining Mini- and Maxi-Publics in Climate Policy-Making
No full textThe upcoming vogue of climate assemblies and other forms of mini-publics are to give citizens a central role in climate policy-making and to break the political impasse. Yet climate mini-publics face challenges in political environments too, such as co-option, favoring expert opinions, and losing touch with the broader public. To remedy such pitfalls, recent papers have argued to combine synchronous deliberations of small groups of citizens with online participation procedures for the larger public. In this article, we report the results of a three-step combination model, where first a mini-public in the region of Súdwest-Fryslân (NL) was given a “carte blanche” to draft the content and the parameters of several related policy alternatives. Second, their proposals were fed into a digital participation tool to consult the wider public. Third, a citizens forum translated the outcomes of the maxi-public into policy recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the municipal council. In this paper, we report our findings of combining mini- and maxi-publics and how the actors involved evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the combination of these two participatory approaches.Organisation & GovernanceTransport and Logistic
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
EVALUATION OF REFERENCE CASES IN CBA 'The case of the Netherlands'
No full textABSTRACT In most western countries CBA is the method used for 'ex ante' evaluations of transport infrastructure projects. For the construction of a good CBA a good quality reference case is important. However, the international literature on do's and don'ts is limited. First, this paper fills this gap by proposing guidelines for the construction of good quality reference cases. Moreover, three reference cases are evaluated 'ex post' against the constructed guidelines. By comparing the three reference cases constructed in the past with the guidelines, we aimed to learn of the mistakes and the good practices of the past
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