Portable Innovation,Policy Wormholes,and Innovation Diffusion

This article explores the effects of city managers' career paths on the diffusion of climate policy innovation among municipal governments in the United States. Using the agent network diffusion (AND) model, the authors hypothesize that local climate policy innovations are portable and that cities may learn from distant jurisdictions to which they are connected through the career paths of managers, a phenomenon termed the “policy wormhole” effect. Employing a dyadic panel data set of more than 400 Florida cities from 2005 to 2010, these hypotheses are tested using dyadic event history analysis. The results support both the portable innovation hypothesis and the policy wormhole hypothesis. Cities can facilitate the diffusion of policy innovations by paying special attention to the recruitment process of city managers.     

Explaining Australian Economic Success: Good Policy or Good Luck?

Australia and some European countries experienced economic “miracles” in the 1990s that reversed prior poor export, employment, and fiscal performance. The miracles might provide transferable lessons about economic governance if it were true that economic governance institutions are malleable, and that actors deliberately changed those institutions in ways that contributed to the miracles. This paper analyzes Australian policy responses to see whether remediation should be attributed to pluck (intentional, strategic remediation of dysfunctional institutions to make them conform with the external environment), luck (environmental change that makes formerly dysfunctional institutions suddenly functional), or just being stuck (endogenous or path‐dependent change that brings institutions into conformity with the environment). These distinctions help establish whether actors can consciously engineer institutional change that is “off‐path.” While pluck appears to explain more than either stuck or luck in the Australian case, the analysis suggests that both off‐path behavior and policy transfer are probably rare.     

Adopt or Not and Innovation Variation: A Dynamic Comparison Study of Policy Innovation and Diffusion Mechanisms

Abstract

Policy innovation and diffusion literature mainly focuses on the decision to adopt a new policy, while ignoring the differences among new policies. This study divides the decision-making process of policy innovation diffusion into two phases: in the “innovate or not” phase, governments make the decision to adopt or reject the new policy, while “how to innovate” is the process by which governments formulate specific content for the new policy. A dynamic comparative analysis finds that effects of internal determinants and diffusion mechanisms vary during these two phases and that internal determinants moderate the effects of diffusion mechanisms.     

The State-Local Nexus in Policy Innovation Diffusion: The Case of School Choice

Our knowledge of how policy innovations diffuse in federal systemscould be enhanced by paying greater attention to the behaviorof policy entrepreneurs. This study shows how policy entrepreneurshelped stimulate the diffusion of state school-choice plansby collecting and generating evidence of workability of thisinnovation. Importantly, these policy entrepreneurs have oftenused evidence from local experiments to promote state policychange. Thus, a state-local nexus exists in the diffusion schoolchoice. This analysis suggests that there is value in conceptualizingpolicy innovation diffusion a federal system as both a horizontal(that is, state to state) and a vertical (that is, state andlocal) phenomenon.     

Theory to Practice: Policy Recommendations for Fostering Economic Development through Social Capital

Proponents of social capital theory have long argued not only that it is in the best interest of civic life to build social capital but also that social capital is vital for the economic health of communities. This has been confirmed by recent research showing that social capital, especially in its bridging form, is positively associated with job creation at the metropolitan statistical area level. At the same time, social capital is often viewed as something either inherent or absent within a community. This article takes on that assumption by presenting a policy‐based approach to developing social capital. It provides two theoretical explanations for how social capital affects economic development and identifies four lessons for economic development practitioners to use to enhance social capital. These research‐based recommendations for economic development practitioners and policy makers seek to improve the social capital and, consequently, the economic development of their community.     

Policy Diffusion: Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners

The scholarship on policy diffusion in political science and public administration is extensive. This article provides an introduction to that literature for scholars, students, and practitioners. It offers seven lessons derived from that literature, built from numerous empirical studies and applied to contemporary policy debates. Based on these seven lessons, the authors offer guidance to policy makers and present opportunities for future research to students and scholars of policy diffusion.     

反思刑法“严打“方针维护社会长治久安

近20年来,全国范围内统一组织开展了3次"严打"运动,社会上对"严打"方式和效果都有不同看法.文章对此进行了全面的分析,认为国家根据社会治安情况,在一个时期对犯罪采取严厉的打击方针是有理论和实践根据的.但是,"严打"必须是一贯性的方针,而不能是临时性的措施;应当在法治范围内进行,而不应该冲破法律的限制;同时,对刑罚的功能也应当有个客观正确的评价,国家不能过分依赖刑罚治理社会.     

Success and Failure in Environment Policy: The Role of Policy Officials

This paper reports on interviews conducted between 2010 and 2013 with senior officials involved in Australian federal environmental policies over the past 30 years. It examines whether they have a prior sense of whether an environment policy is likely to succeed and their experience of the key factors driving environment policy success. Most interviewees claimed a strong prior sense of policy outcomes, but their expression of the key factors indicating success (consultation, clear objectives, a clear mandate, and a strong evidence base) varies from the usual emphases found in the public policy literature. The research illuminates the ways in which the policy officials at times exert a greater role than that suggested by the Westminster conventions or the policy theory literature. Not emphasised in the literature, yet pivotal for success in the vexed space of environmental policy, was the self‐directed yet at times skilful policy ‘agency’ exhibited by officials.     

Incomes Policy in Finland: Economic and Social Effects in a Comparative Perspective

This paper examines the performance of the Finnish economy during the so-called incomes policy period, 1969-80. For this purpose Finland is compared with the other OECD countries both before and during the incomes policy period. The results suggest that in terms of economic growth, inflation and unemployment, Finnish economy has improved its performance, particularly before the economic recession of the mid-seventies. Cross-national comparisons point out that the recession has been met in various ways: some countries have restrained inflation, some unemployment. Secondly, the paper examines the effects of incomes policy agreements on the growth of social expenditure, the result being that incomes policy cannot be regarded as responsible for the growth of social expenditure in Finland. Thirdly, effects on income distribution are analyzed. Here incomes policy has played a role: income inequalities diminished during the first five years of incomes policy. Since then, they have not changed. The paper ends by discussing the impact and nature of incomes policy.     

以政策贯彻政策:政策执行、创新与调适

政策执行本身是复杂而多样的过程,多数政策执行的真实情况,是要经过各级政策主体研究出台地方政策或实施意见,通过"以致策贯彻政策"逐级传导,最终化作具体项目和行动,使政策得以执行和落实."以政策贯彻政策",作为政策执行和创新的重要环节,过去并没有引起足够重视.加强对这个问题的研究,对于理解政策执行的理论与实践都具有重要意义.     

Policy Diffusion and Program Scope: Research Directions

A major omission in diffusion research is the scope of changein program adoptions. Diffusion studies focus almost exclusivelyon the rate of change, thus ignoring possible variance in thecontent of programs selected by leaders, followers, and laggards.States may adopt new programs in one area, such as state-mandatedstudent testing. While most states now have a testing policy,these policies vary in terms of the number of students subjectto examinations. Thus, the amount of program change dependson the content of each state's policy. An interstate diffusionstudy of the pattern of program adoptions ignores this variance.It is also possible that policy scope is influenced by certainaspects of the diffusion process. One possibility is that programinnovators generally select more extensive programs than followers.Similarities or differences in policy scope among adopters mayalso be related to innovation attributes (e.g., whether a newprogram is symbolic, redistributive, or administratively complex).Finally, the number of years required for interstate diffusionmay result in similarities or differences in policy content.     

Policy Design and Achieving Social Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise Policy

This article compares American, British, and Korean social enterprise policies to explore how government policy design shapes social enterprises and how “social benefit” and “public value” are defined. A social enterprise is defined as the legally structured organizational pursuit of blending social purpose and economic profit through business activities, and examples from each country are presented. Applying Bozeman's publicness theory, the authors demonstrate the wide range of roles that governments play in shaping social enterprises' ownership, funding, and control across the three countries using regulations, subsidies, and procurement policies. These roles may affect the impact of social enterprises in society. The case studies show that the U.S. approach to social enterprise policy is heavily market oriented, while the United Kingdom is in the middle of the market-to-publicness continuum, and South Korea is much closer to the publicness (government-dominated) end of the continuum.     

我国农村反贫困战略中的社会政策转型研究——发展型社会政策的视角

我国农村反贫困战略的基本框架是一种亲市场的经济政策与具有"剩余"特征的选择性社会救助,体现在生产性的开发式经济扶贫和处于"激活"程序中的农村五保与医疗救助政策.长期以来,旨在救助贫困者的社会政策成为经济政策的附属者角色,然而贫困者所面临的生计风险需要传统社会政策在扶贫框架中的转型.本文通过分析经济政策与社会政策在诸多方面的联系和差异比较,结合我国农村贫困的现实,以嵌入性要素来理解我国农村社会政策转型的方向.在这方面,发展型社会政策的视角在反贫困战略中提供了可让我们选择的嵌入性要素.它们是:减少风险管理成本的社会资本、反社会排斥的劳动力政策、农村生计的保护与发展、健康与医疗政策的整合以及资产为本的个人账户建设等五个方面.     

Social Policy and Social Citizenship: Britain's Welfare States

In Britain the imagery and rhetoric of the postwar welfare stateremain powerful—citizens should have equal access to publicservices based on need not place of residence. Devolution issometimes depicted as a threat to this tradition. This articleshows that the immediate risk of a social policy race to thebottom is small. Moreover, because of the peculiarities of Britishterritorial politics the traditional imagery was never borneout in practice; the article traces policy variation beforeand after devolution. Finally, locating British social policywithin the comparative framework of "nationalization" and "citizenship,"I argue that Britain lost its status as an exemplary welfarestate partly because it failed to provide an adequate territorialframework for the development of social policy.     

共建共治共享:社会公益参与产业精准扶贫的政策工具创新

推进精准扶贫精准脱贫,离不开精准研策和精准施策,需要借助有效的公共政策工具。在社会层面形成大扶贫格局是打赢脱贫攻坚战的重要制度安排,广泛动员社会力量参与扶贫事业是实现精准扶贫的政策工具选择。产业扶贫事关贫困地区造血机能,是精准扶贫的重要内容,社会公益参与其中并引导和帮助村民发展产业是实现贫困群众稳定可持续脱贫的根本路径,然而在实践中往往面临志愿性政策工具失灵的理论困境以及诸多现实难题。通过对"马兰实验"的个案研究,可发现一种以"共建共治共享"为特征的社会公益参与产业精准扶贫的独特机制:"共建"即多方主体共同兴办扶贫产业,"共治"即各方主体共同管理扶贫产业,"共享"即各方主体共享产业成果,借此形成一套由社会公益组织小农户融入现代产业发展的有机衔接机制。该机制能够有效地防治志愿性政策工具失灵,形成精准高效的扶贫共同体,进而实现社会资源的优化配置和精准脱贫的可靠推进。