Making a difference: On the constraints of consensus building and the relevance of deliberation in stakeholder dialogues

This article illuminates the contribution of stakeholder dialogues to environmental policy making. It makes a distinction between stakeholder dialogues as consensus building and stakeholder dialogues as deliberation. Although consensus building seems to be the dominant approach in participatory environmental policy making, this article questions the merits of consensus building and it uses the experience of the Dutch stakeholder dialogue project Climate OptiOns for the Long term (COOL) to explore, in a deliberative design, the shortcomings of a consensus-building approach and how they are possibly dealt with. The article presents the results of two deliberative methods that have been used in the COOL project – the repertory grid analysis and the dialectical approach – to demonstrate how a deliberative design can help policy makers to critically assess arguments in favor of and against a broad range of policy options, and deal with stakeholder conflict in an early phase of the policy process.     

There is no “point” in decision-making: a model of transactive rationality for public policy and administration

The hope that policy-making is a rational process lies at the heart of policy science and democratic practice. However, what constitutes rationality is not clear. In policy deliberations, scientific, democratic, moral, and ecological concerns are often at odds. Harold Lasswell, in instituting the contemporary policy sciences, found that John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy provided an integrative foundation that took into account all these considerations. As the policy sciences developed with a predominantly empirical focus on discrete aspects of policy-making, this holistic perspective was lost for a while. Contemporary theorists are reclaiming pragmatist philosophy as a framework for public policy and administration. In this article, key postulates of pragmatist philosophy are transposed to policy science by developing a new theoretical model of transactive rationality. This model is developed in light of current policy analyses, and against the backdrop of three classical policy science theories of rationality: linear and bounded rationalism; incrementalism; and mixed-scanning. Transactive rationality is a “fourth approach” that, by integrating scientific, democratic, moral, and ecological considerations, serves as a more holistic, explanatory, and normative guide for public policy and democratic practice.     

Evidence for Tackling the Complexities of Water Governance

Water policy and management decisions are increasingly challenged by uncertainties associated with climate change, changing demographics, and social values. This article discusses how research by water governance scholars supports and complements Rob M. Skinner's arguments about the complexities of water planning and policy making and the importance of stakeholder engagement. Specifically, it focuses on how this decision‐making context shapes the ways in which evidence is used and understood in water governance. To conclude, this article draws lessons for practitioners about the limitations of using evidence in water governance.     

The Howard Government: The Extent to which Public Attitudes Influenced Australia's Federal Policy Mix

This article focuses on the interaction between government policy and public attitudes in order to explain why the Howard government was reasonably pragmatic given that it maintained enough popular support to win four successive federal elections from 1996, and why such a relationship is crucial to evaluating policy trends in Australia's liberal democracy in terms of understanding both policy possibilities and limitations no matter how flawed or divisive certain policies may appear to be.     

Campaign‐Style Enforcement and Regulatory Compliance

This article examines the recoupling mechanism of campaign‐style enforcement and its effects on environmental regulatory compliance. Drawing on the policy implementation literature and institutional theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of campaign‐style enforcement in which both resource mobilization and power redistribution are theorized to address decoupling problems in regulatory compliance. The two‐pathway recoupling mechanism is evidenced by an empirical investigation of the implementation of China's energy conservation and emission reduction policy as part of that country's 11th Five‐Year Plan. Findings suggest that campaign‐style enforcement can effectively improve regulatory compliance when it addresses the efficiency/legitimacy conflict by providing policy incentives and reorganizing a clear hierarchy of political authority. The article concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of campaign‐style enforcement.     

‘Opening up’ policy to reflexive appraisal: a role for Q Methodology? A case study of fire management in Cape York,Australia

Recent decades have witnessed increasing attention in theory and practice to participatory approaches to policy appraisal, in part due to the potential of such approaches to facilitate reflexive policy appraisal. It has been observed, however, that in practice these approaches are often as prone as traditional, non-participatory appraisal techniques to being limited in the extent to which that can achieve reflexivity e.g. due to the influence of interests and power and problems of representation. This article explores the extent to which Q Methodology, or ‘Q’, can play a role in ‘opening up’ (Stirling Science, Technology & Human Values, 33, 262–294, 2008) policy to reflexive appraisal. A Q study of fire management discourses in Cape York, northern Australia is presented which exposes the existence of four key discourses in the region: discourse A—rational fire management; discourse B—fire-free conservation; discourse C—pragmatic, locally controlled burning; and discourse D—indigenous controlled land management. At present only discourses A and C are reflected in policy. Appraising existing policy on the basis of the different constructions articulated by discourses B and D of the purpose of and practices involved in fire management, is successful in opening up existing policy to reflexive appraisal. In the face of considerable scientific uncertainty as to the ecological impacts of different burning regimes in northern Australia, this process of opening up has important potential for appraising the social desirability of existing policy and practice in the region. This analysis provides a practical demonstration of the wider potential of Q Methodology in opening up other important contemporary policy issues to reflexive appraisal. It also provides the basis for recommending the expansion of participatory processes for facilitating stakeholder engagement in fire management policy and practice in Cape York.

Participatory storylines and their influence on deliberative forums

For all the recent discussion on the virtues and vices of public deliberation, surprisingly little attention has been given to how deliberative procedures actually operate in different policy contexts. This article takes up this task with a specific focus on how deliberative designs such as citizens' juries and consensus conferences interface with their participatory context. The concept of the participatory storyline is developed to describe the competing narratives associated with a policy issue on who constitutes the public” and how “they” should be represented and involved in the policy process. An analysis of two Australian cases reveals how existing participatory storylines can productively or destructively influence deliberative forums. The empirical research suggests that a more productive deliberative procedure is one that supports or “speaks to” existing narratives on what constitutes public participation. Under these conditions key policy actors are more likely to engage in the deliberative process and endorse its outcomes. Some suggestions are provided for how practitioners can better anticipate the way a deliberative forum might interface with its participatory context.     

What Use is a Policy Cycle? Plenty,if the Aim is Clear

What use is a policy cycle? Plenty, if the aim is to help public servants make sense of the policy task. Setting out a sequence of steps to turn ideas into Cabinet recommendations can provide structure in the otherwise dizzying world of policy‐making. It would be a mistake, though, to see a policy cycle as other than a first step, a guide amid complexity. To read the policy cycle as rationalism revived is to misjudge both form and intent. Debate is a wonderful thing, and we are pleased the policy cycle described in The Australian Policy Handbook (Bridgman and Davis 2000) has stimulated a response. Although we believe a critique in the June issue of the Australian Journal of Public Administration (Everett 2003) is misguided, it invites reflection on the purpose ‐ and limitations ‐ of a policy cycle approach.     

When Education Research Matters

The tangled relationship between education research and policy has received little serious scrutiny, even as paeans to “scientifically based research” and “evidence-based practice” have become a staple of education policymaking in recent years. For all the attention devoted to the 5-year-old Institute of Education Sciences, to No Child Left Behind’s call for “scientifically based research,” to professional interest in data-driven decision-making, and to the refinement of sophisticated analytic tools, little effort has gone into understanding how, when, or why research affects education policy. Instead, most discussion has focused on how to identify “best practices” or “scientifically based” methods and how to encourage classroom educators to use research findings. In this article, based on the new volume, When Research Matters: How Scholarship Influences Education Policy, Frederick M. Hess examines these questions.

China’s Harmonious World: Beyond Cultural Interpretations

A culture “specter” is haunting the ongoing discourse regarding China’s declared policy of “peaceful rise” for a “harmonious world.” While some Western scholars “cherry-pick” “evidence” of China’s aggressiveness from Confucius legacies, the same cultural heritage is heavily tapped by many Chinese scholars to interpret the current policy of striving for internal and external harmony. Both seem to ignore, though to different degrees, the historically specific political environment, within which the cultural elements function and interact with other socio-political variables. China’s current pursuit of harmony is possible and desirable only at a time when China is able to achieve sustained sociopolitical stability (30 years) in the past 160 years and after its protracted encounter and experiment with Western liberalism, Marxism and capitalism. Although it has not explicitly rejected any of these Western ideologies, China has tested the limits of all of them—hence China’s search for its own identity and policy alternatives at the onset of the new millennium. It is toward a more historical and holistic explanation that this paper constructs the political space and historical trajectory of China’s search for modernity and for itself in the past two centuries and into the future. Yu Bin is Professor of Political Science and Director of East Asian Studies at Wittenberg University, Ohio, USA; Senior Fellow at Shanghai Institute of American Studies; analyst on Russian-China relations for Pacific Forum (CSIS) in Honolulu, Hawaii; and former president of Association of Chinese Political Studies (1992-94). Yu is the author and co-author of several books including the most recent ones: The Government of China (Stockton, NJ.: OTTN Publishing, 2006); Power of the moment: America and the world after 9-11 [Shunjian de Liliang: 9-11 Hou de Meiguo Yu Shijie] (Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 2002); and Mao’s Generals Remember Korean (The University Press of Kansas, 2001). He has published more than 60 articles in journals including World Politics, Strategic Review, Asian Survey, International Politics Quarterly (Beijing), The China and Eurasian Forum Quarterly, International Journal of Korean Studies, Harvard International Review, Comparative Connections, etc.     

Enigma of all enigmas: Capitalist takeover? Assessment of the post-mao economic transformation

Post-Mao’s economic reforms have led many China analysts to observe that post-Mao China has been moving toward capitalism or “capitalist takeover” has occurred in post-Mao China. This observation has a significant implication both for the US foreign economic policy and in the study of regime change in post-Mao China. The purpose of this article is to revisit and reassess the economic transformation in post-Mao China to obtain a holistic understanding of the central reality in post-Mao China on the one side, while on the other to rebut the assertion of “capitalist takeover” in post-Mao China. Through a systematic survey of party documents, policy statements, leaders’ speeches, official newspapers and magazines, general academic studies on the post-Mao reform in English and in Chinese, this article examines the post-Mao economic transformation along the three key empirical dimensions in terms of systemic change: the existence of capitalist elements, the ownership structure, and the role of the market in the Chinese economy. The findings based on fresh empirical evidence suggest that China has not made any significant change from communism toward capitalism in any of those fields despite the considerable change made in the past 20 years. Sujian Guo was a former policy analyst at the Party Central Committee during 1987–1991. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, writing a dissertation entitled “The Totalitarian Model Revisited: Assessing the Post-Mao Regime Change.” His areas of specialization are Comparative Politics, International Relations and Political Methodology. His research interests have focused on comparative communist and post-communist studies, democratic transition/democratization, regime change in post-Mao China, China/Asian politics. His publications include numerous articles in some of the above areas. His most recent articles appeared inCommunist and Post-Communist Studies, Issues & Studies, andJournal of Northeast Asian Studies.     

Citizens’ Perceptions of Governance in Rural and Urban China

This article presents three main findings from a purposive stratified survey of urban and rural residents. First, Chinese citizens “disaggregate” the state with high levels of satisfaction for Central government that fall dramatically as government gets closer to the people. Satisfaction levels are noticeably lower for those in rural China. Second, attitudes about the way policy is implemented by local governments raise concerns. Irrespective of place of residence, respondents feel that when implementing policy local officials and governments are mainly concerned with their own interests, are more receptive to the views of their superiors rather than those of ordinary people, favor those with money, and are formalistic in implementing policy rather than dealing with actual problems. Third, the areas of work that citizens would really like government to concentrate on are job creation and providing basic guarantees to protect against the shocks of the transition to a market economy. Tony Saich is the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Asia Center. His recent research focuses on the development of social policy in China, particularly on the provision of public goods by local governments. His publications include Governance and Politics of China by Palgrave and edited volumes on Financial Sector Reform in China (with Yasheng Huang and Edward Steinfeld) and AIDS and Social Policy in China (with Joan Kaufman and Arthur Kleinman both by Harvard University Asia Center. He would like to thank Edward Cunningham for his great help in preparing this article. He also wants to thank Victor Yuan (Horizon Market Research Company) for his tremendous help in designing the survey and implementing it. In addition, I would like to thank Anita Chan, Martin King Whyte and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

The Development of Competitive Industries: The Role of State Government Actors

Despite widespread adoption of Porter's Industrial Cluster Theory as a policy development framework by federal and state governments over the past decade, Australia remains significantly below the OECD average in terms of its industries' economic contributions to real wealth creation ( Brown 2000 ; OECD 1998 ). The major cause cited for this relatively poor performance has been inability of key government officials to implement effective industry policy that simultaneously avoids de facto protectionism and distortion of competition. This article provides an insight into the key policy decisions undertaken by the Tasmanian state government that coincided with development of an internationally successful shipbuilding industry in that state. As such, this article provides a reflection on policy initiatives that may be valuable for government officials elsewhere.     

A Liberal Marxism? Mutual Care,Global Humanity and Minimum Utopia

This article surveys The Norman Geras Reader: ‘What’s There is There’, a recent collection of the work of Norman Geras, edited by Eve Garrard and Ben Cohen. The article explores the relevance of Geras’s attempted reconciliation between liberalism and Marxism to some of the key issues confronting the contemporary left: foreign policy and the failures of humanitarian intervention and non-intervention; internationalism and the necessity for solidarity across borders in an age of nationalist populism; left approaches to totalitarianism and antisemitism; the possibilities and limitations of alternatives to and critiques of liberal capitalism; and the reinvigoration of utopian imaginaries and the futures they promise. It suggests that important lessons for the left can be unpicked from the contested legacy of the ‘decent leftism’ Geras represents, where reapplied in the wake of new political and diplomatic challenges.     

Variation in policy success: radical right populism and migration policy

How do radical right populist parties influence government policies in their core issue of immigration? This article provides a systematic analysis of the direct and indirect effects of radical right anti-immigration parties on migration policy reforms in 17 West European countries from 1990 to 2014. Insights from migration policy theory serve to explain variations in the migration policy success of the radical right. While previous studies mostly treat migration policy as uniform, it is argued that this approach neglects the distinct political logics of immigration and integration policy. This article reveals significant variations in policy success by policy area. While immigration policies have become more liberal despite the electoral success of the radical right, when the radical right is in government office it enacts more restrictions in integration policies. Accordingly, anti-immigrant mobilisation is more likely to influence immigrants’ rights than their actual numbers.     

From policy lessons to policy actions: motivation to take evaluation seriously

The purpose of this article is to analyse the institutional aspects of creating effective systems for monitoring and evaluations (M&E) in government‐led rural development efforts in developing countries. We argue that the ultimate challenge of creating effective M&E systems for public policy is not only related to the supply of information and the delivery of new knowledge to policy makers, but more importantly to their demand for lessons learnt about the effects of earlier policies. The challenge, then, is for governments to construct institutional arrangements that support the transformation of policy lessons into policy actions. This article shows that the likelihood of this transformation is closely related to the capacity of institutions to deliver mechanisms for downward accountability and processes for organisational learning. We add to earlier work in this area by considering the conditions under which such a transformation process is more or less likely, given the severe power and information asymmetries that characterise the institutional context of many developing countries' national governments. We use the tools of institutional analysis to examine the incentive structures of the actors involved in two concrete field settings, and assess to what extent these actors are likely to take evaluations seriously. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The 2001 “spy” plane incident revisited: the Chinese perspective

The 2001 “spy” plane incident was probably the most serious military incident in Sino-American relations since the 1970s, and it generated a crisis in the already brittle relationship since the new Bush administration came into office. This article attempts to revisit this incident from the Chinese perspective and provides some insight into the understanding of the Chinese foreign policy behavior and position on Sino-American relations. It presents the respective arguments concerning the responsibilities of the incident, explores the Chinese historical memory of US hegemonic behavior, and examines the Chinese perspective and attitude towards the incident and their causes through a study of the reactions of the Chinese government and the Chinese people to the incident.¹ He is the founding editor of theHong Kong Journal of Social Sciences and theJournal of Comparative Asian Development. He is also Guest Lecturer at the School of Government, Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China. The author wishes to thank anonymous reveiwers for their helpful comments made on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Flawed attacks on contemporary human rights: Laudan,Sunstein, and the cost-benefit state

After giving a brief account of human rights, the paper investigates five contemporary attacks on them. All of the attacks come from two contemporary proponents of the cost-benefit state, attorney Cass Sunstein and philosopher Larry Laudan. These attacks may be called, respectively, the rationality, objectivity, permission, voluntariness, and comparativism claims. Laudan's and Sunstein's rationality claim (RC) ist that only policy decisions passing cost-benefit tests are rational. Their objectivity presupposition (OP) is that only acute, deterministic threats to life are objective. Sunstein’s permission claim (PC) is that regulators are merely permitted, 3 not required, to take distributive and human rights concerns into account. Sunstein’s 3 voluntariness claim (VC) is that the consent of potential victims is not relevant to government regulations about risks and benefits. Laudan’s comparativism claim 3 (CC) is that there are no rules of thumb, no precomparative norms like human rights, for assessing theory choice in policy science. The paper analyzes each of these claims, shows how they undercut human rights, and argues that each of them errs.     

Conduit or contributor? The role of media in policy change theory

The policy change literature is contradictory about the role the media plays in policy change: a conduit for policy participants, with media accounts transmitting multiple policy beliefs of those involved in policy debates or a contributor in the policy process, with media accounts supplying consistent policy beliefs with congruent narrative framing strategies to construct a policy story. The purpose of this study is to empirically test whether the role of the media is that of a conduit or contributor in the policy change process. This study tests whether there are differences in policy beliefs and narrative framing strategies between local and national print media coverage of two contentious policy issues in the Greater Yellowstone Area between 1986 and 2006, that of snowmobile access and wolf reintroduction. In the Greater Yellowstone Area policy arena, local media accounts are believed to be aligned with the Old West Advocacy Coalition, whereas the national media accounts are thought to be part of the New West Advocacy Coalition. With a methodology informed by narrative policy analysis, one hundred seventy five local and national print newspaper accounts were content analyzed to determine whether these media accounts were policy narratives, with embedded policy beliefs and narrative framing strategies. The results indicate that there are statistical differences between local and national media coverage for five of the seven hypotheses. Media accounts are generally policy stories, suggesting that the media’s role is more of a contributor than a conduit in the policy change process.

Shadow peacebuilders and diplomatic counterinsurgencies: informal networks,knowledge production and the art of policy-shaping

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of informal networks in producing strategic knowledge and influencing policy responses to the 2011 post-election crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analytical focus is on networks of shadow peacebuilders, defined as actors who are often not visible to the public and who promote a mix of altruistic and personal interests of their broader network by generating strategic narratives and influencing peacebuilding policy. As this article shows, shadow peacebuilders engage in diplomatic counterinsurgencies waged by means of diplomacy, politics, public relations and legal means. Strategic narratives are instrumental in legitimizing diplomatic counterinsurgency, inducing internal cohesion within the network and delegitimizing alternative narratives and policy solutions. Yet the production of strategic knowledge by shadow peacebuilders has its limitations. When the gap between strategic narrative and actions becomes too big, the network risks fragmentation and defeat by other networks that promote alternative strategic narratives and paths of action in the battle over control of peacebuilding policy.