Moving Policy Theory Forward: Connecting Multiple Stream and Advocacy Coalition Frameworks to Policy Cycle Models of Analysis

The stages/policy cycle, multiple streams, and Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) approaches to understanding policy processes, all have analytical value although also attracting substantive criticism. An obvious direction for research is to determine whether the multiple streams framework and the ACF can be refined and applied to other dimensions of policy‐making set out in the policy cycle model. This article argues that extending and modifying Kingdon's framework beyond the agenda‐setting stage is best suited to this endeavour. Doing so makes it possible to bring these three approaches into alignment and enhances our understanding, although retaining the core insights of each.     

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.     

The Era of State Energy Policy Innovation: A Review of Policy Instruments

U.S. energy and climate policy has evolved from the bottom‐up, led by state governments, and internationally recognized for the use of unconventional and innovative policy instruments. This study focuses on policy instruments adopted throughout the era of state energy policy innovation that aim to diversify, decentralize, and decarbonize the electricity sector. Specific attention is devoted to the renewable portfolio standard, net metering, interconnection standards, tax incentives, public benefit funds, and energy efficiency resource standards. This analysis synthesizes the findings from the energy policy literature and provides a summary of the current state of understanding about the effects of various state energy policy instruments, and concludes with a discussion of broader trends that have emerged from the use of policy instruments in the state energy policy innovation era.     

论中国公共政策创新能力的提升策略

现代化进程中公共政策创新能力的提升必然是一项涉及各个构成要素的系统工程 ,但重点有四个方面 :塑造政策创新的能动主体 ,营造促进创新的社会环境 ,构建激励创新的制度结构 ,突破政策变迁中无效率的路径依赖问题。     

Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers

Many government policies attempt to change the behavior of individuals and businesses. This article argues that policy makers and administrators should (1) think comprehensively about the barriers that may keep target populations from complying with government policies, (2) match policy instruments to the most important barriers that inhibit compliance, and (3) take into account heterogeneity within the target population. Relatively nonintrusive strategies such as social marketing, providing resources to targets to help them comply, and manipulating options and defaults (choice architecture) are politically attractive but unlikely to secure compliance when incentives for noncompliance are high. Based on the three basic principles outlined in the article, the author recommends strategies to increase compliance, including the use of leverage points and secondary targets, adjusting for unanticipated behavioral responses, and employing long‐term, multiphase strategic management of behavior change initiatives.     

中国低碳发展:市场失灵与产业政策创新

技术创新和产业结构调整是中国实现低碳发展的关键,而市场的信息失灵和协调失灵也恰恰在这两个方面阻碍着低碳经济的发展.传统的产业政策在克服市场失灵、激励企业自主适应低碳经济发展能力方面存在一定缺陷.因此,发展低碳经济需要产业政策在理念、内容和操作方式等方面的创新.     

政策工具视角下高校创新创业教育政策研究

严峻的就业形势要求实施创新驱动发展战略,发展和完善高校创新创业教育政策。本文以政策工具理论思想为前提,以框架设计、编码分类、统计描述、因素分析为研究方式,从政策工具和高校创新创业教育改革战略两个维度对《国务院办公厅关于深化高等学校创新创业教育改革的实施意见》进行剖析,深入挖掘高校创新创业教育政策工具的缺失和冲突,通过建立政策工具相互关系模型提出高校创新创业教育政策发展的可行性建议。     

Policy Innovation of Local Officials in China: the Administrative Choice

Local policy innovation is considered one of the major drives for China’s rapid economic development, especially during the first 35 years of reform in China. Given the new central policies and constant anti-corruption campaigns under the Xi administration, this article examines a timely question of why and how local officials continue to develop new innovative policies and projects. Based on previous theoretical building, the article analyzes such key institutional factors as new rules of game and their impact on local officials’ competition for survival and career advancement. Selecting cases across all the districts from a typical city in China, this article compares and identifies the changing patterns in local policy innovation. Policy innovations are administrative choices made by local officials in response to new and changing institutional opportunities and constraints. The discussion in this article makes significant contributions both theoretically and empirically to the China studies.

     

Dilemmas of Policy Innovation in the Public Sector: A Case Study of the National Innovation Summit

Policy innovation is a significant challenge for the public sector. This article illustrates its magnitude through a case study of the National Innovation Summit. The article concludes that the Summit represented an elaborate process of search and engagement that sanctioned an outcome that was, in most respects, largely pre‐determined. Its outreach and deliberations served the political purpose of mobilising industry and media attention and communicating the government's commitment. But there is no evidence that it exercised any substantive influence on policy development. The obstacles confounding any other outcome are considerable. Strategic thinking is inhibited by various organisational factors including lock‐in to a present successful strategy, the constraints on policy choices associated with multiple veto points and the need to maintain medium term fiscal and policy discipline across a wide range of agencies and claimants. The article explores ways these inhibitions might be overcome.     

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.     

论我国地方政府政策创新能力的提升

不断提高政府的决策创新能力,促进政府政策创新的展开对我国政策过程、政府体系乃至整个社会经济发展具有重要意义。但受政策主体、政策资源、政策体制和地方政府政策自身特点等多方面的影响,我国地方政府行政政策创新受到极大的限制。提升我国地方政府再创新的对策有:造就高素质的政策主体,完善地方政府的政策体制,开发并整合地方政府现有的政策资源,形成并发展促进政策创新的激励机制,营造促进政策创新的社会和组织环境。     

Innovation in Welfare Policy: Evaluating State Efforts to Encourage Work among Low‐Income Families1

This article examines what states are doing to help Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients move into the workforce and become self‐supporting. We first present documentation regarding many different state TANF policies aimed at encouraging work, including benefit structures, time limits, work requirements, sanctions, and work supports. We then discuss how effective these policies are at helping welfare recipients get jobs and increase their income, by reviewing research on each of these elements. We conclude that the TANF program has been effective in increasing employment and decreasing welfare caseloads and expenses, but that this has not resulted in overall income gains for welfare recipients in the long run. We also conclude that the most promising state programs have a strong employment focus combined with focused training and educational opportunities. In addition, we also find that sanctions appear to be harming those most in need of assistance, and therefore that such policies should be reevaluated and refocused.     

我国现代服务产业发展现状及政策创新

新世纪是一个由新兴产业构成的时代,随着科技的迅猛发展,信息化成为时代的主流。知识产业、信息产业、现代服务产业相继得到大的发展,其实质也与传统产业有了很大差异。新形势下,中国产业发展机遇与挑战并存,政府应如何把握住第三产业发展的机会？首先,从观念上要纠正对服务行业的忽视与歧视;其次,尽快完善服务业发展市场,改革垄断行业;再次,要为服务业发展提供充足的人力资源。     

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.     

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.     

The Spreading of Innovation: State Adoptions of Energy and Climate Change Policy

The American states are engaged in a variety of policy efforts to mitigate climate change and alter energy usage. While a number of studies have considered the reasons for adoption of renewable energy and climate change policies, they typically consider only one policy in isolation. This study examines policy adoption of 14 energy and climate change programs in a pooled event history analysis. Our primary research questions consider average effects of horizontal policy diffusion, while also identifying factors that vary across policy type. We offer a method of testing whether predictors vary across policies and use this test to incorporate interactions by policy in the statistical analysis. Our results indicate that many of the primary drivers of adoption are political in nature, including state ideology, environmental interest group membership, and diffusion via ideologically similar neighbors. In addition, we find that given policy heterogeneity, a number of determinants vary by policy type, though differences are in magnitude rather than direction.     

Achieving Sustainable Development: Scientific Uncertainty and Policy Innovation in Tasmanian Regional Development

Following the UNCED Conference of 1992, most nations have committed themselves to sustainable development. But what does this phrase mean in practice and how is it being implemented in federal countries such as Australia? In particular, what are the implications for peripheral regional economies such as Tasmania? This article examines the establishment and initial operations of the Sustainable Development Advisory Council (SDAC) in Tasmania and actions taken with respect to two major projects: development and ratification of a State Coastal Policy and redevelopment of the Mt Lyell copper mine in western Tasmania, designated a Project of State Significance (POSS). Both involve a perplexing conjunction of scientific uncertainty, economic significance and innovative policy-making. Do they indicate a need to reinvent policy process? What are the broader implications for public policy?