The Theory and Practice of “Nudging”: Changing Health Behaviors

Many of the most significant challenges in health care—such as smoking, overeating, and poor adherence to evidence‐based guidelines—will only be resolved if we can influence behavior. The traditional policy tools used when thinking about influencing behavior include legislation, regulation, and information provision. Recently, policy analysts have shown interest in policies that “nudge” people in particular directions, drawing on advances in understanding that behavior is strongly influenced in largely automatic ways by the context within which it is placed. This article considers the theoretical basis for why nudges might work and reviews the evidence in health behavior change. The evidence is structured according to the Mindspace framework for behavior change. The conclusion is that insights from behavioral economics offer powerful policy tools for influencing behavior in health care. This article provides public administration practitioners with an accessible summary of this literature, putting these insights into practical use.     

“Capacity‐building” in global Internet governance: The long‐term outcomes of “multistakeholderism”

“Capacity building” is a catch phrase from the UN development discourse. In recent years, it has entered the global Internet governance (IG) arena. At World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS 2003), “capacity building” was identified as a key public policy issue. It is proposed in this study that ‘capacity building’ be defined in a different manner – as the principal outcome of the experimental multistakeholder (MSH) process in global IG. The open and inclusive process of stakeholder deliberation leads to accumulation of intellectual capital, development of relational infrastructure for the domain (epistemic community), and emergence of common global consciousness. When cast as a capacity‐building process, MSH collaboration at global Internet governance arenas exhibits long‐term and large‐scale intangible outcomes. This study contributes to the understanding of the capacity‐building potential of MSH collaboration in IG. By employing concepts from International Relations and Organizational Learning, the author develops a model of tangible and intangible outcomes of MSH collaboration. This unique model can be used for studying the effects in other stakeholder venues of governing global resources and processes.     

The “baby steps” in mainstreaming sustainable public procurement in Ghana: A “double‐agency” perspective

The emerging literature on public procurement policy suggests that public procurement may be leveraged to advance several public policy agenda. Hence, many countries have reformed their public procurement process towards social and environmental outcomes termed sustainable public procurement. These reforms have often been launched in response to international initiatives such as the global 10‐year framework for action on sustainable consumption and production by the Johannesburg implementation plan in 2002 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, empirical evidence on the drivers and benefits of SPP in developing countries is still scarce. This gap is addressed with a qualitative case study of six public sector institutions in Ghana. On the basis of elite interviews, this paper highlights barriers to mainstreaming SPP in Ghana's public sector. We further advance the scanty principal–agency literature by establishing a double‐agency relationship in the context of SPP, which depicts limited agency cases where principals lack the capacity to defend their own interests.     

How Do “Organizational Designs” Influence Welfare Politics? A Study of the Nordic Pension Systems

The interplay between organizational structure and political behaviour is one of the focal points of political science. How and to what extent do existing organizational structures constrain and channel future political decision-making? One specific hypothesis from the welfare literature provides the starting-point for this article: Korpi's argument that “institutional” welfare arrangements grant the poor better welfare provisions than “marginal” welfare arrangements. By confronting Korpi with his critics, I argue that the interplay between welfare designs and political decision-making is more complex than Korpi's thesis suggests. Implications for the broader welfare debate are discussed.     

“The Information Gap?”

While the “achievement gap” generally and appropriately focuses upon gaps in test scores and other outcome measures, there may also be an “information gap” between higher and lower income parents that creates a disadvantage for lower income families in choosing good schools. In this article, we examine the extent to which there is such a gap, with a focus on data from a new survey of low‐ and moderate‐income parents who have made school choices. We find that, at least in relatively mature school choice environments like Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC, most low‐ and moderate‐income parents report being quite well informed and they engage in a variety of different activities to become informed. Thus, the information gap between lower and higher income parents may not be as large as scholars and policymakers had assumed. We do find that parents at the very lowest end of the income spectrum, especially those earning less than $10,000 per year, do feel less well‐informed and gather less information, but even here the differences are not enormous, relative to higher income parents.     

Grappling with the “real politics” of systemic corruption: Theoretical debates versus “real‐world” functions

A growing body of research argues that anticorruption efforts fail because of a flawed theoretical foundation, where collective action theory is said to be a better lens for understanding corruption than the dominant principal–agent theory. We unpack this critique and advance several new arguments. First, the application of collective action theory to the issue of corruption has been, thus far, incomplete. Second, a collective action theory‐based approach to corruption is in fact complementary to a principal–agent approach, rather than contradictory as is claimed. Third, applications of both theories have failed to recognize that corruption persists because it functions to provide solutions to problems. We conclude by arguing that anticorruption effectiveness is difficult to achieve because it requires insights from all three perspectives—principal–agent theory, collective action theory, and corruption as serving functions—which allows us to better understand how to harness the political will needed to fight corruption.     

The Effect of Media on Charitable Giving and Volunteering: Evidence from the “Give Five” Campaign

Fundraising campaigns advertised via mass media are common. To what extent such campaigns affect charitable behavior is mostly unknown, however. Using giving and volunteering surveys conducted biennially from 1988 to 1996, I investigate the effect of a national fundraising campaign, “Give Five,” on charitable giving and volunteering patterns. The widely advertised Give Five campaign was aimed to encourage people to give 5 percent of their income and volunteer 5 hours a week. After controlling for selection into being informed about the Give Five, I find that people who were informed about the campaign increased their weekly volunteering activity on average by almost half an hour, but their giving behavior was not significantly affected. I discuss the policy implications associated with this result and argue that although the Give Five campaign did not achieve its goal, its impact on volunteering was considerable. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Politics of “Fracking”: Regulating Natural Gas Drilling Practices in Colorado and Texas

This article focuses on the politics of regulating natural gas fracking operations in Colorado and Texas. Between‐state differences in the economic importance of natural gas production, political traditions, environmental impacts of drilling activities, and local governmental responses to risk reduction, and entrepreneurial activities are discussed in relation to policy‐making initiatives. In the concluding section, I suggest that Colorado's regulatory approach offers a greater degree of environmental protection than Texas. Key reforms adopted in 2007–8 can be largely attributed to electoral victories that ensured unified party control over state government and the determined efforts of the proenvironmental governor to make changes in both the regulatory commission and in the substance of natural gas drilling policies.     

The Essence of the “Market Army”

Western armies have undergone substantial organizational‐cultural transformations since the end of the Cold War. Two main themes have been suggested to describe these transformations: postmodernity and post‐Fordism. This article analyzes these profound shifts. The author portrays the new Western army as a “market army,” distancing itself from the “citizen army,” and envisions a continuum between these extreme types. The market army emulates market practices in order to adapt to modern strategic, economic, political, and cultural constraints. What typifies the market army is the subjection of military doctrine to the market, a post‐Fordist structure, a network‐centric hierarchy, market values borrowed by the military profession, the convergence of military and civilian occupations, the commodification of military service, and new contractual forms of bargaining between soldiers and the military. Israel serves as a critical case with which to develop the theory of the market army.     

“The Big Society,” Public Expenditure,and Volunteering

The debate on volunteering has paid insufficient attention to the relationship between public spending and volunteering. The importance of this relationship is highlighted by the British government's “Big Society” plan, which asserts that an increase in volunteering will compensate for the withdrawal of public agencies and spending. This idea is based on the widely held belief that a high degree of government intervention decreases voluntary activities. This article uses a multidisciplinary approach to improve understanding of how public spending affects the decision to volunteer. A theoretical model conceptualizes this relationship in terms of time donation by employed individuals. The model is tested empirically through an econometric analysis of two survey data sets and interpretative analysis of narratives of local volunteers and public professionals. The results suggest that volunteering is likely to decline when government intervention decreases and that a collaborative approach to sustaining volunteering is needed.     

“Embedded regulation:” The migration of objects,scripts, and governance

This paper asks why an officially unregulated market in pharmaceuticals in a least developed country, Djibouti, behaves as if it were strictly regulated, with limited access to a small number of high‐cost drugs. We use Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to show that the explanation is more complex than critics of the international pharmaceutical industry have supposed. Regulation and property rights generated in developed countries have become embedded in the drugs and “black boxed” to the point of invisibility. This has allowed them to travel to Djibouti with the drugs, while maintaining their effects in action. This case study develops our understanding of the way in which materials that are not designated as regulatory agents may still have regulatory impacts through their ability to enrol complex networks of actors, rules, values, and practices. Finally, it argues against the notion of law as a fixed and distinctive space for action, as opposed to the ANT vision of a fluid and contingent order, where law is part of a socio‐technico‐legal alliance that happens to achieve certain effects.