Policy analysis,policy practice and political science

Bridgman and Davis have responded to criticism of their widely‐used model of the policy process as a cycle, ‘a series of interlocking steps’ by describing it as ‘pragmatic’, a ‘toolkit’, ‘not a theory’. This article asks what makes for ‘practical knowledge’ of the policy process. It identifies the theoretical basis for the ‘policy cycle’ model, and asks how this model relates to research on policy and to policy practitioners' own knowledge. It argues that we need to recognise the way that underlying theory about policy forms part of policy practice, and to give more attention to the relationship between research, experiential knowledge, and formal maps like the ‘policy cycle’.     

Nonprofit equity: a behavioral model and its policy implications.

This article assumes that nonprofit decisionmakers have an incentive to earn and accumulate surpluses, and it suggests six reasons for this being the case. Based on the assumption that both the program outputs and the equity of a nonprofit yield satisfaction to its decisionmakers, a behavioral model is developed. This is used to derive a demand function for equity, which is then applied to a national sample of 6168 charitable nonprofits drawn by the Internal Revenue Service for the 1985 taxable year. The results substantiate the hypothesis that nonprofit decisionmakers consciously plan to increase their organization's equity. Currently, evidence of continued equity buildup is not sufficient to call into question a nonprofit's exempt status, because federal tax laws assume that surplus accumulations will ultimately be used in support of program mission. However, equity accumulation can become excessive. We present several criteria to define excessive equity accumulation and discuss why large equity accumulations may not be in the best interest of society.     

监察官法制定的现实必要、争议及具体设想

今年我国或将提起审议监察官法。监察官法的出台是对现行法律难以有效管理监察官队伍的必要回应,有利于提升监察职业的威信。监察官应当走专业化发展道路,试行员额制改革,将法律职业资格作为监察机关执纪调查部门初任监察官的准入条件,采用专业技术序列设置监察官的等级。在制定监察官法的具体结构和内容上,参照新修订的《法官法》《检察官法》,我国监察试点经验以及域外监察法规,监察官的范围应当限于行使国家监察权力的专责监察人员;监察官的职权尤为需要注重保密义务与树立监察权威;经验、能力、品性、政治素养应当是遴选监察官的考量因素,对于初任监察官、转隶人员、原纪检监察部门过渡人员应当予以区别任用;应当强化对监察官的培训、任职回避与监督管理,构建系统的监察官考核、奖励和惩戒机制;在工资保险福利、职务、人身安全、职业伦理、辞职辞退与退休等方面对监察官要加以保障。     

Policy monitoring and policy analysis

In this article we introduce a policy analytic technique that we call “policy monitoring.” Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Hazardous Waste Division, we demonstrate how the technique can be employed in actual practice. The case study demonstrates that EPA enforcements were responsive to stimuli emanating from outside the agency. In particular, relevant congressional committees were able to influence and effect change in the EPA's policy. In addition to demonstrating how policy monitoring can be employed, we also discuss how it can be used in other policy analytic situations.     

SME law and policy analysis

Since the reform and opening-up, especially in the new century, China＇s SMEs are rapidly springing up; they have become an important force of pushing China＇s national economic and social development. The rapid development of SMEs is playing an increasingly important role in stimulating the economy, increasing the state tax revenue, promoting the employment, pushing technological innovation and improving the people＇s lives. It is full of meaning for Chinese Government to provide a sound law and policy environment for SMEs, including mediating and regulating the behavior of domestic SMEs, promoting and protecting the prosperity of SMEs, if we want to pursue the economic prosperity. This article will analyze the status of the development of China＇s SMEs, and research on the related policies and laws.     

Comparative policy analysis

Conclusion As editors, we would be remiss to submit that insufficient comparative policy analysis has been done without making explicit suggestions for further research. One critical problem is that the lack of comparable data remains a major hindrance to comparative work. This, in turn leads into the need for a larger inventory of careful cross-national case studies and primary data sources. Although significant advances have been made in data collection and analysis in recent years, these have occurred primarily in areas where quantification is relatively easy, such as economic and demographic statistics. Two related specific avenues for further research are suggested by reflections on the current limits of comparative analysis. First, more conceptual work based in solid methodology is needed if policy studies are to deal with complexities involved in comparative efforts. As part of this, theoretical constructs must be matched with carefully derived data and evidence, both quantitative and qualitative. As Lasswell has noted, the vitality of the comparative method will depend on whether the expansion of the stock of facts accepted as relevant is accompanied by methodological changes that render facts indispensable to the understanding and management of the policy process. Second, more work should be done to explain and expand upon cultural variables. As this task is addressed in more detail, we should be better able to appreciate the effects of cultural factors on the policy process.In conclusion, it seems especially appropriate to reassert the value of comparative analysis now, when the policy sciences appear to be at a critical juncture. From both domestic and international perspectives, the growing appreciation of crossnational policy research and policy impacts underlines the need for comparative analysis. It is clear that the interest in and importance of policy studies have grown in recent years, but the borders of the constituency remain vague. Efforts to delineate and refine the outlines of the field will almost surely increase. We think that this essay and the ones that follow argue strongly for the inclusion of the comparative dimension.We would like to express our appreciation to The Ford Foundation for its initial encouragement and later financial assistance towards producing this special issue, and particularly to the Foundation's Public Policy Committee and its Chairman, Harold Howe II. We would also like to thank The Rand Corporation for administering that grant. All the papers included here were written specially for this issue.

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Technology assessment and policy analysis

Technology assessment involves questions that are in principle beyond the capacity of science to answer. Because available data and models are ambiguous, ability to evaluate the strength and fit of evidence and the adequacy of arguments assumes paramount importance. In this sense, analysis becomes a sort of generalized jurisprudence. Moreover, the impact of a technology depends on the institutional framework within which it is used. Hence, the analyst must also pay attention to institutional constraints and to peoples' attempts to manipulate them.     

Postmodern policy analysis: Discourse and identity in welfare policy

Postmodern inquiry into the discursive construction of identity has the potential to make a distinctive, democratizing contribution to public policy analysis. More so than conventional approaches, a postmodern policy analysis offers the opportunity to interrogate assumptions about identity embedded in the analysis and making of public policy, thereby enabling us to rethink and resist questionable distinctions that privilege some identities at the expense of others. Public policy analysis can benefit from postmodernism's emphasis on how discourse constructs identity. A review of postmodernism and postmodern approaches to interrogating identity is followed by an exercise in postmodern policy analysis. Social welfare policy in contemporary postindustrial America is shown to participate in the construction and maintenance of identity in ways that affect not just the allocation of public benefits, but also economic opportunities outside of the state. Mired in old, invidious distinctions (e.g., independent/dependent, contract/charity, family/promiscuity), welfare policy discourse today helps to recreate the problems of yesterday, particularly as a critical factor in reproducing women's poverty.     

Support for behavioral nudges versus alternative policy instruments and their perceived fairness and efficacy

An extensive debate has emerged in recent years about the relative merits of behavioral policy instruments (nudges) aimed at changing individual behavior without coercion. In this article, we examine public support for non-deliberative nudges and deliberative nudges and compare them to attitudes toward top-down regulation and free choice/libertarian options. We also examine whether support for both types of nudges is associated with perceptions of fairness and efficacy. We test these expectations with a survey experiment with 1706 UK adult respondents (representative of the population on age, gender, and location) in two policy areas (retirement savings and carbon offsets for airline passengers). We find higher levels of public support for both nudge policy options compared to top-down regulation. Support for nudges is associated with the perceived fairness of nudges more than their efficacy.     

Events data and policy analysis:

In the 1960s and 1970s the creation and analysis of coded international events data became a major tool for the analysis of international relations and crises. Unlike other quantitative projects developed by the academic community, the events data approach was transformed to applied research and used by various national security bureaucracies in the U.S. government. The approach was eventually rejected due to an aversion by bureaucrats to quantitative analysis systems and procedures which did not incorporate their expertise, organizational objectives and need for user-friendly and timely presentation. The lessons learned from this case can be used to inform current efforts by academics to transfer basic research to the foreign policy making community.     

Policy roles: an analysis of policy formulators and policy implementors

This paper presents an empirical analysis of individuals in policy formulating and policy implementing roles. Data for the comparison are from interviews with a random sample of 119 New Zealand middle-level public administrators from 27 government departments.The individuals in the policy formulating roles were slightly younger; however, those in the formulating and implementing roles varied little from each other in terms of social background, educational attainment and career patterns. Few differences were evident in regard to job satisfaction, decisional authority, and hierarchical relations. Significant differences between policy formulators and policy implementors were discovered in terms of work load, career aspirations, and awareness of political influences in governmental policymaking.From the evidence of this study, the New Zealand administrative system does not allocate policy formulating roles to individuals different from those who implement policies. Differences between formulators and implementors in the New Zealand system appear to stem from the nature of the work of the two policy roles.     

Pedagogy for policy analysis and management

This essay presents two pedagogical models found in public policy programs, and attends (less exhaustively) to the managerial environment in which they coexist. The models are, of course, lecturing in all its various versions, and the cluster of teaching practices called case‐method teaching, student‐centered learning, active learning, experiential learning, discussion‐based teaching, and the like. The central question addressed is: How can it be that we still don't know which is better, or which is better for what, if know means anything like what it means in the larger policy analytic paradigm? Research comparing practices can improve our choices and outcomes.12 12

1 Thanks to myriad colleagues (especially) John Boehrer, J. Mark Schuster, Eugene Bardach, and David Kirp, plus my cohort of 2005–06 Presidential Chair Fellows and that program's very committed leader, Steve Tollefson, for discussions of pedagogy that have reminded me over the years that teaching could be an intellectually demanding, rigorous, and collaborative enterprise, and to Robert MacCoun for comments on drafts of this paper.

     

Problems,politics, and policy streams in policy implementation

We apply Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) to policy implementation to reflect a nested process separate from but interdependent with policymaking. Then, we generate a hypothesis concerning the conditional nature of problems, policies, and politics stream impacts on policy implementation. We test our hypotheses with state‐level implementation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, using a pooled data set of 10 years of toxic releases data. Findings suggest an important interaction occurs among problems, policies, and politics during the policy implementation process. More specifically, when any of the three is held at median levels, only marginal differences in outputs occur; however, when all three are increased to extreme levels, substantive differences emerge. Conclusions connect policy implementation to larger issues of MSF theoretical development and suggest implications for governance.     

Governance Reform in Thailand: Questionable Assumptions, Uncertain Outcomes

This article examines the nature of governance reform in Thailand. The argument is that Thai citizens are not especially benefiting from the public reform initiatives of Thai governments because government reformers made fourquestionable assumptions about reform which have in turn produced uncertain outcomes and provided the opportunity for government reformers to avoid responsibility for their reform choices. First, the reformers support the belief that a global reform paradigm with ready-made reform packages exists which can be easily transplanted in the Thai public sector. Second, the reformers prefer to define success largely as reform output rather than reform outcomes or long term reform consequences. Third, Thai government reformers have overemphasized the efficiency aspects of the new public management at the expense of other governance goals. Fourth, governance reform in Thailand has been portrayed as a managerial problem instead of a political one. The author supports his arguments by drawing on theoretical debates in the international literature on administrative reform, and relating these debates to the Thai case. Governance reform in Thailand is still at an early stage, but the role of unintended consequences is important to administrative reform. Furthermore, the Thai case may reflect governance reform in other countries as well.