Science Education Policy: A Symposium

This article introduces Science Education Policy: A Symposium. The symposium examines trends and issues from the vantage points of individuals from a variety of backgrounds who are concerned with science education in the US. Although optimistic, most of the contributors to this symposium agree that considerable research and evaluation is still needed before we can make informed policy decisions that would have a lasting impact on science education. The expected outcome of the symposium is to stimulate discussions among educators and policymakers.     

Policy analysis through microsimulation: the STATS model

This article gives a nontechnical introduction to a microsimulation model developed by the Social Security Administration to consider the effects of tax and benefit proposals on the economic status of population groups. This model, the Simulated Tax and Transfer System (STATS) model, uses information from a nationally representative survey of households to calculate taxes or benefits for thousands of persons or families, case by case. Then the model aggregates across individual cases to produce estimates for economic and demographic groups of interest to policymakers. Groups are defined by such characteristics as family income, age, sex, and marital status. The article explains the model's microsimulation approach and its emphasis on the economic status of population groups. It describes the procedures for simulating taxes and benefits and then illustrates the use of the model by considering a proposal to change the way Social Security benefits are taxed. The article also discusses the primary data source and the extent to which it limits the types of estimates that the model can produce.     

The absent Dutch: Dutch intellectuals and the congress for cultural freedom

During the 1950s and 1960s the Congress for Cultural Freedom was one of the main stages for anti-communist American and European writers and intellectuals to discuss the communist threat to the freedom of intellectual and cultural life. Most Western European countries were represented at CCF conferences and had their own national CCF branches, but the Netherlands was an exception. Dutch intellectuals participated very rarely in the conferences, and all efforts to establish a Dutch branch of the CCF failed. Possible explanations (the socially isolated position of some intellectuals, no strong tradition of political engagement among Dutch writers or artists, no lively climate of public debate, and an ambivalent perception of American culture and society) for this absence of Dutch intellectuals show clearly how national traditions can play a decisive role in determining the development of international networks.     

Contexts and epiphanies: Policy analysis and the humanities

As policy analysts have discovered the limitations of quantitative tools and economic analysis in confronting complex social and political issues, members of the profession have turned increasingly to the ideas and perspectives of the humanities. For the analyst who faces ethical questions, whether they involve personal conduct or broad social judgment, insights from history, philosophy, literature, and political theory may offer breadth and understanding. Attention to the humanities—whose concerns are the uncertain realms of thought and character and action—may be especially valuable in sensitizing students of policy analysis to the difficulties they will confront.     

Policy analysis: A conceptual base for a theory of improvement

The purpose of reason or rationality in the analysis of resource allocation decisions is to provide decision makers with guidance on policy decisions which result in improvement, i.e. a net increment in social welfare. The difficulty with what might be called the microrationality of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis as conventionally practised is that unless the context of such rationality is established in the larger framework of what might in turn be called the macrorationality which reflects an awareness of the properties of the whole system, the policy analyst cannot know whether his recommendation will upgrade (constitute an improvement in) or degrade (constitute a deterioration in) the system as a whole. The paper attempts to suggest a first conceptual approach, and an implied research agenda, addressed to developing a more effective general context for policy analysis. The suggested approach has four major components; first, the establishment of the basis for policy analysis in the explicit specification of a general weighted objective function for national policy and a corresponding set of functions for particular programs and projects; second, the development and incorporation in cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis of a set of analytical parameters which establish the basis for policy analyses which are in the first instance comparable, and in the second instance consistent with the national objective function; third, the development of a general analytical framework for cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis which recognizes the essential interdependency of policy decisions, including the financing implications of expenditure policies; and, finally, the explicit recognition of the need for a criterion of overall system improvement in the development of an analytical framework for the measurement of the trades-off or opportunity costs between alternative policy mixes.     

Policy without polity? Policy analysis and the institutional void

How should policy analysis respond to the changing context of policy making? This article examines three aspects of policy analysis in this changing context: polity, knowledge and intervention. It argues that policy making now often takes place in an ‘institutional void’ where there are no generally accepted rules and norms according to which politics is to be conducted and policy measures are to be agreed upon. More than before, solutions for pressing problems transgress the sovereignty of specific polities. Furthermore, the role of knowledge changes as the relationship between science and society has changed: scientific expertise is now negotiated rather than simply accepted. And, with the weakening of the state, it is far less obvious that the government is the sole actor to intervene in policy making. This article calls for a reconsideration of the analysis of policy making in the light of this changing context. Based on a contextual perspective it calls for a revitalization of the commitments of Harold Lasswell toward a policy science of democracy by proposing a new ‘deliberative’ policy analysis.

     

Federalism and U.S. Water Policy: Lessons for the Twenty-First Century

This article traces five historical streams of water policyin the United States, revealing the strain and stresses of intergovernmentalrelations pertaining to water resource management. It findsthat water policy is increasingly characterized by pragmaticfederalism emphasizing collaborative partnerships, adaptablemanagement strategies, and problem and process orientation.The evolving nature of federal-state relations, characterizedby expanding federal authorities and increased state capacity,coupled with a rise of local watershed groups and greater ecologicalconcern, calls for improved coordination. Yet challenges resultingfrom policy fragmentation and ecosystem complexity remain. Continuedcalls for greater integration will likely be heard as federal-staterelations continue to evolve.     

Policy analysis: some observations on the West German scene

The article provides an overview on the development and the state of policy analysis as applied public policy research in West Germany. The developmental sketch shows that, similar to the upsurge of policy research in the United States since the mid-1960s, policy research in the Federal Republic of Germany is an offspring of the reformist period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, carried by a virtual reformers' coalition among politicians, bureaucrats, and researchers. Due to extradisciplinary demands and also intradisciplinary shifts in research foci, public policy research became almost a growth industry in the course of the 1970s.The article goes on to explore which repercussions the economic crisis, the new conservative moods and majorities and the end to reforms has had on the state and the orientation of policy analysis. The argument is presented that, no matter which majorities have the day, policy research remains socially and politically indispensible to detect and test corridors and niches for public action under ever narrower financial restraints and to identify the costs and benefits of such policies in a changing world.     

Policy advice as policy work: a conceptual framework for multi-level analysis

This article argues that policy advice can be understood as a special kind of “policy work” that depends upon a diverse set of factors operating at different levels. The basic aim of the article is to disentangle this multi-level and multifaceted phenomenon into a conceptual framework that can be used for empirical analysis and theory building. In that framework, policy advice is conceptualized as a never-ending interaction among various actors in a specific institutional context, through which routines and norms are both reproduced and abolished. First, it is explained why policy advice is most fruitfully understood as a special kind of policy work, and then how it relates to other policy work activities. Second, problems with single-level approaches are discussed and the need for a multi-level approach is explained. Third, a multi-level conceptual framework is formulated and described. Fourth, some possible applications of the framework are illustrated with examples from current empirical research. The article concludes with implications for research and theory building.     

How Information Scarcity Influences the Policy Agenda: Evidence from U.K. Immigration Policy

This article explores how patterns of information supply on policy problems influence political attention. It advances two central claims. First, different policy areas are associated with distinct practices in monitoring policy problems: Some produce abundant, ongoing, and reliable information, while others yield scarce, sporadic, and/or unreliable data. Second, these variations in information supply are likely to influence political attention, with information‐rich areas associated with a more proportionate distribution of attention, and information‐poor areas yielding punctuated attention. The article tests these claims through comparing U.K. political attention to asylum and illegal immigration. Asylum is observed on an ongoing basis through bureaucratic data, court hearings, and lay observations, producing more constant and proportiate political attention. Illegal immigration is observed sporadically through focusing events, usually police operations, eliciting more punctuated attention. These insights about political attention may also help explain why policy responses may be punctuated or incremental.     

Policy science: A conceptual and methodological analysis

In the first section policy science is differentiated from policy analysis, the notion of policy is defined, and an analysis of the concept of policy science is offered which gives emphasis to what is unique in this intellectual endeavor when it is conceived as a general method of problem solving. Section II provides a discussion of the criteria of rationality for the conduct of policy science. Attention is focused upon the methodological differences between science and policy science and upon certain methodological difficulties which are peculiar to policy science. The third section gives consideration to one important relationship between facts and values in the policy science process. While it is generally well recognized that values enter into policy science in a way they do not enter into science, it is also widely held that they do not operate in such a way as to frustrate the central objective of the policy scientist (i.e., the solution or alleviation of a policy problem). It is argued that the relation between values and facts in policy science is frequently such as to have this undesired frustrative effect.     

Innovating Science Policy: Restructuring S&T Policy for the Twenty-first Century1

Over the next twenty years, accelerating scientific and technical developments will spawn immense changes to society that can be both crucially beneficial and tragically destructive. This trend, principally occurring outside of government control, is both helping the United States to improve defense and economic security and producing threats to national security. To deal with these increasingly technical issues, the nation's leadership needs to be armed with considerable scientific and technological acumen. Hence, the United States should explore the creation of a national security science and technology (S&T) strategy that improves: (1) scientific analysis available to decision makers; (2) understanding of the S&T needed to maintain national security; (3) coordination and collaboration among S&T providers; (4) control of dangerous technologies; (5) technology prioritization and acquisition processes; and (6) the dialog on enhancing the application of the products of private sector and foreign research for American national security purposes. Policies that address these issues will have to achieve the difficult balance between government and scientists’ influence over research and development (R&D). This article explores how to better deliver technical advice to high-level decision makers, as a means to better deal with emerging threats that are enabled by the rapid innovation and proliferation of scientific knowledge throughout the world.     

Cultural Penetration and Punctuated Policy Change: Explaining the Evolution of U.S. Energy Policy

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) suggests that the policy process is characterized by long periods of incremental change and short periods of punctuated change. The impetus for the latter is usually a focusing event that breaks open policy monopolies, allowing for major changes in legislative decision making. While a burgeoning body of literature, a shortcoming in the PET literature is that it has yet to explain why focusing events and subsequent breakdowns in policy monopolies sometimes fail to result in punctuated policy. We integrate theories on cultural change with punctuated equilibrium to explain why focusing events do not always result in the dramatic policy changes that we might expect. Specifically, we use the context of national energy policy and the lexical database, Google Ngram Viewer, to trace punctuating energy‐related events and the occurrence or lack thereof subsequent policy change from 1952 to 2000.