Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: From theoretical inquiry to practical cases

This article examines the case for a participatory policy analysis. An idea advanced mainly by democratic and postpositivist theorists is increasingly becoming a practical concern. Criticizing conventional conceptions of science and expertise, theorists advocating participatory democracy argue that the conventional model of professionalism based on a practitioner-client hierarchy must give way to a more collaborative method of inquiry. While such arguments have largely remained in the domain of utopian speculation, recent experiences with a number of wicked policy problems have begun to suggest the viability, if not the necessity, of participatory research methods. Through two case illustrations of a wicked problem, the so-called Nimby Syndrome, the essay seek to demonstrate that collaborative citizen-expert inquiry may well hold the key to solving a specific category of contemporary policy problems. The article concludes with some observations on the possibilities of bringing participatory research more fully into mainstream policy science.     

From newspapers to social media? Changing dynamics in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

Switzerland is a laggard in terms of digital campaigning. Direct democratic votes, more particularly, are centered around issues and little personalized. Combined with the specificities of voters’ information behaviour in direct democratic campaigns, these features are likely to disincentivize political actors from extensively campaigning online. Instead, we expect political actors to continue relying on traditional media. These propositions are tested on a large data base of social media posts and newspaper advertisements published before direct democratic votes held in Switzerland from 1981 to 2020 and 2010 to 2020, respectively. Counterintuitively, this research note finds a strong discontinuity in campaign communication practices. Over the past decades, and between 2010 and 2020 in particular, newspaper ads have become less central to direct democratic campaign communication. At the same time, political actors are increasingly shifting their communication to the digital sphere.     

The Policy Cycle: Democratic Process or Rational Paradigm Revisited?

Discussion on policy-making and of effective policy-making mechanisms is once again emerging in the policy literature. Much of the debate in the past focused on whether the method applied in the physical sciences was appropriate for policy and policy-making. Current debate appears to be reverting to some form of rationalism in so far as good policy processes are seen to yield the most effective results. This article discusses what appears to be a revival of rationalism — the process-oriented policy cycle. The article argues that there is little doubt that effective policy-making requires good process but it is erroneous to suggest that the content of policy, particularly in the case of contentious decisions, is derived from the policy cycle itself. It is argued further that the policy cycle is not a substitute for the actual making of decisions but an administrative and bureaucratic mechanism for effectively setting in place a process once the difficult decisions have been made.     

Majoritarian values and women’s rights: police and judicial behavior in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan

This paper analyzes judicial and police behavior in dealing with cases of family violence and divorce in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. Police and judges deliberately violate existing legal provisions to prevent women from divorcing or filing charges against their husbands in cases of domestic violence. While the law does not recognize religious marriages in Tajikistan, judges often rule to protect women’s living space after the dissolution of such unions. Drawing on rich interview and archival data, this behavior is explained by showing that judicial and police behavior reflects their biases, which in turn are a reflection of majoritarian norms in these countries. Since current laws are derived from Soviet codes, which were never internalized by the population, police and judges bend them to fit their understanding of social justice.     

The coastal zone as an administrative entity for governing U.S. marine minerals development

The coastal zone is being promoted as a spatial unit to coordinate and administer offshore minerals development with other coastal uses. Rather than aiding the administration of minerals development , the coastal zone is being used as the reason to block such development. This paper explores the coastal zone concept as an entity for administration. It concludes that just because minerals may be found in a coastal zone does not mean that physical entity is the most appropriate vehicle for administering mineral development. Arbitrariness at to what is included or excluded from a coastal zone as well as many minerals impacts being found outside of the coastal zone militate against such an entity being the sole criterion for decisionmaking. While the coastal zone may be appropriate for some mineral decisions, the choice to implement it must be arrayed against alternative criteria to ensure a high degree of effectiveness and efficiency in those decisions.     

The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satisfaction around the world

This paper empirically analyzes whether government size is conducive or detrimental to life satisfaction in a cross-section of 74 countries. We thus provide a test of the longstanding dispute between standard neoclassical economic theory and public choice theory. According to the neoclassical view, governments play unambiguously positive roles for individuals' quality of life, while the theory of public choice has been developed to understand why governments often choose excessive involvement in – and regulation of – the economy, thereby harming their citizens' quality of life. Our results show that life satisfaction decreases with higher government consumption. For low, middle income, and male people, this result is stronger when the government is leftwing, while government consumption appears to be less harmful for women when the government is perceived to be effective. Government capital formation and social spending have no significant impact on life satisfaction.