Building institutional capacity for policy analysis: An alternative approach to sustainability

The project approach to development assistance has been criticized for failing to build lasting capacity. The problem lies not in the project approach itself, but in a failure to understand the constraints to capacity development and a consequent misdirection of effort. Policy analysis capacity is developed as an example. Policy analysis requires skills and abilities that public sector institutions in developing countries cannot sustain, owing to a combination of structural and organizational factors, among which personnel constraints are key. These factors inhibit the effectiveness of the standard approach, which seeks to establish analytic capacity within a specialized government unit (‘internal’ capacity). An alternative approach is to build ‘process’ capacity—the ability to get analysis done by other institutions, rather than the ability to do analysis internally. The author concludes that project strategies should be redirected toward a greater emphasis on building process capacity as a useful adjunct to internal capacity.     

An alternative approach to explaining political popularity

Previous empirical work on the relationship between political popularity and economic events has either not attempted to model the alternative policies of the different parties, or has modelled them in a rather simplistic manner. It has also typically assumed that voters are backward-looking in contrast to recent work on expectations theory. An approach is outlined which is based on a forward-looking comparison of the parties and incorporates the effect of news. An alternative derivation relying on the evaluation of the stock of goodwill built up for each party is also suggested. Empirical evidence from the Gallup opinion poll provides some support for these hypotheses.     

Britain's poll tax policy: An Institutionalist approach

Previous interpretations of Britain's poll tax policy fail to offer sufficient explanations. This article argues that the poll tax can only be fully understood by taking an explicit lnstitutionalist approach, which argues for an examination of the interaction of ideas, interests and institutions. The following analysis shows that the genesis of the policy was the inability of the Conservatives to force local expenditure reductions through the previous local government finance system. This led to a search for new policy options which, interacting with Thatcherite ideas on local government, produced the poll tax policy.     

Quantifying distributive justice: An approach to environmental and risk-related public policy

The most fundamental philosophical objection to cost-benefit analysis is that it fails to account for the distinction between more-necessary and less-necessary benefits. For example, it provides no way to avoid trading off a few cancer deaths in exchange for a more cost-effective but also more hazardous technology which provides cheaper paper or plastic products for the many. Since unjust distribution of benefits and burdens results primarily from the failure to prefer more-necessary goods (such as health and safety) over less-necessary ones (such as cheaper plastic razors), we shall see that a correct calculation of the rate at which marginal utilities diminish in value (as they become less necessary to their users) can determine degrees of necessity and thus the most just possible distribution of benefits and burdens. One way to measure the rate of diminishing marginal utility is provided by the wealth effect in occupational risk studies. Wealthier workers will not assume the same risk in exchange for a given salary increment (which to them is not very necessary) as poorer workers would assume for that same salary increment (which to them is more necessary). It is therefore possible to construct a mathematical model for the effect of necessity/non-necessity on quantitative decision principles for environmental and risk-related public policy, thus making such decisions more distributively just than traditional cost-benefit analysis would allow.     

An alternative route of European integration: The community's railways policy

The process of European integration and policy‐making is sometimes rather puzzling. On the one hand, it is well documented that with respect to the implementation of European legislation member states tend to do less than they are supposed to do. On the other hand, it is striking that with respect to the implementation of the Council Directive 91/440 on the development of the Community's railways many member states went far beyond the minimum required by the European legislation. We argue that these differing evaluations of implementation success can be traced to different implementation approaches, which may be termed the ‘compliance approach’ and the ‘support‐building approach’. While the first is directed at prescribing domestic reforms from above’, the latter aims at triggering European integration within the existing political context at the national level. Here, successful implementation refers to the extent to which European legislation triggers domestic changes by stimulating and strengthening support for European reform ideas at the national level. In this respect, European legislation can influence the domestic arenas in basically three ways: by providing legitimisation for political leadership, concepts for the solution of national problems, and strategic constraints for domestic actors opposing domestic reforms.     

Party policy equilibrium for alternative spatial voting models: An application to the Norwegian storting

In recent years a lively debate has emerged concerning the empirical status of the traditional proximity spatial model versus a directional model of voter choice. The central reason for this scholarly interest concerns these models' contrasting implications for parties' policy positioning, with the directional model motivating parties to present extreme policies, but the proximity model promoting centrist positions. To this point, however, there exist no studies that compute parties' optimal strategies in historical elections, for these competing models. This article addresses this issue, by examining party policy strategies in a multiparty electorate for three different vote models: (a) the proximity model, (b) a directional model (c) a mixed model which combines proximity and directional components. Each model incorporates past voting history and the random effects of unmeasured variables. Using parameter estimates derived from analyses of survey data from the 1989 Norwegian Election Study we compute — for each of these vote models — the configuration of party policy positions that maximize each party's vote share in relation to those of the other parties. We find that for each model, such a vote–maximizing configuration exists, but — for the proximity model — represents an unrealistic, tightly clustered array. A mixed proximity–directional model, however, provides by far the most convincing account of parties' actual policy strategies with regard to dispersion and vote share.     

Party policy equilibrium for alternative spatial voting models: An application to the Norwegian Storting

Abstract In recent years a lively debate has emerged concerning the empirical status of the traditional proximity spatial model versus a directional model of voter choice. The central reason for this scholarly interest concerns these models' contrasting implications for parties' policy positioning, with the directional model motivating parties to present extreme policies, but the proximity model promoting centrist positions. To this point, however, there exist no studies that compute parties' optimal strategies in historical elections, for these competing models. This article addresses this issue, by examining party policy strategies in a multiparty electorate for three different vote models: (a) the proximity model, (b) a directional model (c) a mixed model which combines proximity and directional components. Each model incorporates past voting history and the random effects of unmeasured variables. Using parameter estimates derived from analyses of survey data from the 1989 Norwegian Election Study we compute — for each of these vote models — the configuration of party policy positions that maximize each party's vote share in relation to those of the other parties. We find that for each model, such a vote–maximizing configuration exists, but — for the proximity model — represents an unrealistic, tightly clustered array. A mixed proximity–directional model, however, provides by far the most convincing account of parties' actual policy strategies with regard to dispersion and vote share.     

Dealing with cross-sectoral policy problems: An advocacy coalition approach to climate and water policy integration in Northeast Brazil

Policy Sciences - The governance of several cross-cutting challenges, such as food security, climate change, and sustainable development, calls for integrative policy approaches. However, efforts...     

A transaction-based approach to policy intervention

A transaction-based approach to policy intervention is presented. The approach overcomes a number of weaknesses in current approaches to policy intervention. The approach involves three main conceptual elements: transactions, transaction governance mechanisms, and governance principles. The transaction is taken to be the basic unit of analysis. Profiles of transactions vary along a number of transaction dimensions. Transaction governance mechanisms - such as, for example, government service, regulation, contracts, vouchers, markets, taxes, and self-service - are each suitable for governing transactions having particular profiles. A mechanism will fail when used to govern transactions not fitting the profile. Governance principles are criteria or expectations - for example, efficiency, justice and liberty - used to judge how well a mechanism fulfills or achieves important societal goals. Specific choices of governance mechanisms (from the set that are technically feasible) therefore should be made according to how well they satisfy these governance principles. Public high school education is used as an example to illustrate the approach. A number of conclusions are offered.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Public Administration Portland, Oregon, April, 1988.     

Estimating policy positions using political texts: An evaluation of the Wordscores approach

This paper evaluates a recently developed method for extracting policy positions from political texts, known as Wordscores. This computerized content analysis technique is a potentially powerful tool for scholars interested in the study of political elites, since it promises an easy and efficient way of inferring policy position from texts and speeches. In this article, we provide a systematic evaluation of this promising method. Using Danish manifestos and government speeches from 1945 to 2005, we compare the policy positions extracted using Wordscores with measures of positions from the well-known Comparative Manifesto Project and cross-validate these with party expert surveys. Our analysis shows that the word scoring technique arrives at largely similar estimates to independently derived position measures and produces time series of government positions with high face validity.     

Environmental policy and equity: The case of superfund

This article analyzes the equity implications of the EPA's Superfund program by examining the geographic distribution of sites, who pays for cleanup, and cleanup pace. Although the “polluter pays” principle is used to justify Superfund policy, it is a goal that is not—and indeed usually cannot—be attained for past contamination. Further, the geographic distribution of Superfund sites suggests that the likely beneficiaries of program expenditures live in counties that are on average both wealthier and more highly educated than the rest, and also have lower rates of poverty. The pace of the EPA's cleanups, however, depends mostly on the sites' potential hazard, and is not apparently motivated by the localities' socioeconomic characteristics or political representation. The program is found in several respects to be both inefficient and inequitable, yet Superfund enjoys considerable support for reasons beyond these traditional public policy goals, including its political and symbolic appeal.     

Toward a stakeholder-based policy process: An application of the social marketing perspective to environmental policy development

This article suggests that the application of social marketing principles to the public policy process can facilitate the efforts of governmental policy-makers and non-governmental stakeholders to articulate their policy desires and to encourage the adoption and acceptance of particular environmental policies. A conceptual framework is presented, emphasizing both the influence of stakeholders on environmental policy development and the education of stakeholders as to the potential effects of the policy. The purpose of such a conceptualization is to show how social marketing principles can be applied to the public policy process in order to enhance the likelihood of successful policy development and implementation.     

Political culture, alternative politics and foreign policy: The case of Israel

This article analyzes how sociopolitical dynamics within a state can help explaining foreign policy. We show that under certain conditions, the public can be involved in ways that extend beyond expressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers, and also takes active initiatives that eventually shape foreign policies. The article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli society, which transformed the nature of citizen–politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation, gradually led to shifts in foreign policy regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli public has adopted an approach to solving social problems by unilateral initiatives, as part of its attempts to shape foreign policy from the bottom up, due to continuous government failure to provide public services, combined with blocked influence channels. As long as Israeli politicians ignored these changes, they failed to mobilize support for policies imposed from the top down and lost their positions of power.