The risky shift in policy decision making: A comparative analysis

The article explores the policy decision making relevance of the fairly well documented phenomenon that individuals tend to move towards riskier decisions after group discussions (risky shift). Four hundred and thirty two policy decision makers and managers from various parts of the world participated in the research. Somewhat contrary to the risky shift-literature, the findings show consistent moves towards greater risk-avoidance if problems are important and if decision makers are initially less cautious. The findings suggest a contingency theoretical explanation of risk-proneness and risk-avoidance in groups rather than universalist assumptions of risk behavior in groups.     

Reapportionment: A study in comparative government

The periodic redrawing of electoral boundaries is a necessity in any equitable single-member representative system. It is approached in very different ways in the United States and in Britain. In America, against a background of continuous intervention by the courts, party politics and legislative fixing are endemic. Britain (and the other established democracies of the Commonwealth) have all turned increasingly to neutral commissions that are in theory (and, on the whole, in practice) blind to considerations of party advantage. This article explores how this contrast has developed. The reasons behind the profound differences in procedure offer unexpectedly rich insights into comparative government.     

Consulting critics: A new role for academic policy analysts

It is by now widely accepted that social science research has only an indirect and general impact on public policymaking. Academic social science research, it is often argued, is antithetical to policy research: the former is animated by traditional scientific canons while the latter is specific and problem-oriented. Moreover, modern bureaucracies are now understood as political environments within which pure research will be routinely ignored if it does not serve someone's interests. For these and other reasons, social scientists are being encouraged either to eschew policy research or not to expect much influence. This article provides an alternative model of social scientists in the policy process, as consulting critics reviewing, analyzing and commenting upon substantive policy research. This model holds benefits for both scholars and clients, turns the canons of scientific inquiry into assets instead of liabilities, and responds to some of the concerns recently raised in the literature concerning the role of social science in the policy process.     

A Feminist Utopia

Project Alternative Future is funded by the Norwegian parliament, and its aim is partly the construction of a model for an alternative society It is a Utopian project in the best meaning of the concept. Like Plato's ideal society, the project attempts to combine ambitious visions and concrete thinking. This paper is a discussion of feminist principles on which to base a model for a fundamentally different society. Feminism, as distinct from womanism, is seen as a political ideology criticizing the sexist, patriarchal social structures as well as general structures of domination, competition and violence. A feminist Utopia involves new principles for allocating values; a new ethics based on the principle of reproduction. Feminist theory is criticized for us dualist tradition, and the paper argues for the rationality of aesthetics in addition to the rationality of utility and the rationality of care. Several suggestions as to how to approach a feminist Utopia are made.     

Flying high: A case study of Japanese industrial policy

Japan's policies with respect to industry promotion consist of much more than picking winners and subsidizing them to ensure their success. The highly flexible and adaptive character of Japan's policies is illustrated by the country's efforts to enter the world aerospace industry, an industry in which Japan is handicapped by the absence of a substantial domestic market. To meet the challenge, Japan has concentrated its efforts on altering the very structure of the world market in which it hopes to compete. Japan has participated systematically in international consortia, hoping to use such consortia as a conduit for acquiring access for foreign technology and foreign markets.     

A new typology for R&D laboratories: Implications for policy analysts

Science policy analysts have traditionally classified R&D laboratories as government, private, or university. The authors argue that this view is outmoded and provides little help in understanding the rapidly changing environment of R&D laboratories. They provide and test an alternative scheme designed to cope with “sector blurring” and the intermingling of market and political influences on R&D laboratories. The authors also discuss implications of their scheme for a variety of contemporary science policy issues.     

A new environment for public policy: Japanese manufacturing in Europe

During the late 1950s and early 1960s the growth of foreign direct investment, mainly by American firms, emerged as a political issue in Europe, and policies were devised to maximise the benefits and minimise the disadvantages which resulted from this process. Later, Japanese companies, with a vested interest in retaining markets in Europe and consolidating productive advantages worldwide became increasingly influential as a source of inward investment in manufacturing. As a consequence of this later trend the European Commission and individual countries in Europe have become increasingly concerned with the range of multilateral and bilateral issues which emerge from this development, its influence upon the formulation of industrial policy, and the wider issue of competitiveness.     

Citizen participation and judgment in policy analysis: A case study of urban air quality policy

The emphasis currently placed on citizen participation in planning results in part from the recognition that planning requires judgments that have both value and technical components. This article describes a case study of a citizen participation process in which planners' judgments, rather than the judgments of the members of a citizens' task force, seemed to dictate the outcome. Although citizens were supposed to be influential in the policy analysis, they were, in effect, excluded from a meaningful role in the process. The analysis was actually guided by planners' supposedly technical judgments. Those judgments had important value implications, however, and those implications were not made clear to the citizens' task force. Examples are given of judgments made by planners at each stage of the analysis and the value components of those judgments are discussed. In each example, the judgments resulted in elimination of alternatives, selection of information, or integration of information. Two examples of methods of citizen participation which can increase the influence of citizens' judgments are also described.The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.     

Labor market policy: A comparative view on the costs and benefits of labor market flexibility

I review theories and evidence on wage‐setting institutions and labor market policies in an international comparative context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies (ALMPs). Since it is unlikely that an unregulated private sector would provide the income insurance these institutions do, these policies may enhance economic efficiency. However, to the extent that unemployment or resource misallocation results from such measures, these efficiency gains may be offset. Overall, Scandinavia and Central Europe follow distinctively more interventionist policies than the English‐speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Possible explanations for such differences include vulnerability to external market forces and ethnic homogeneity. I then review evidence on the impacts of these policies and institutions. While the interventionist model appears to cause lower levels of wage inequality and high levels of job security to incumbent workers, it also in some cases leads to the relegation of new entrants (disproportionately women, youth, and immigrants) as well as the less skilled to temporary jobs or unemployment. Making labor markets more flexible could bring these groups into the regular labor market to a greater extent, at the expense of higher levels of economic insecurity for incumbents and higher levels of wage inequality. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The importance of policy design fit for effectiveness: a qualitative comparative analysis of policy integration in regional transport planning

Policy Sciences - Policy design has returned as a central topic in public policy research. An important area of policy design study deals with effectively attaining desired policy outcomes by...     

Power in Editorial Positions: A Feminist Critique of Public Administration

Journal editors serve a vital, powerful role in academic fields. They set research priorities, serve as gatekeepers for research, play a critical role in advancing junior scholars as reviewers and eventually into editorial roles, build extensive networks, and gain valuable insight into the behavior and preferences of reviewers and scholars. This article analyzes data collected from leading public administration journals in 2017 to investigate the role of women as gatekeepers of public administration knowledge. The data illustrate a clear underrepresentation of women on editorial boards. Drawing from these data, research on journal editorships, and feminist theory, the authors present a critique of the current state of public administration research and a discussion of a way forward. They conclude with a proposal for how all public administration scholars (junior, senior, men, and women), journal leadership, and academic departments can move toward increasing women's representation in these important positions.     

Constructing and Deconstructing Liberty: A Feminist and Poststructuralist Analysis

Debates about liberty have been dominated by discussion about the relationship between its negative and positive conceptions. In accepting this framework, political theorists have left unquestioned certain foundational ideas that both concepts share but which actully constrain our thinking about freedom. This relates in particular to subjectivity and our assumptions about the free self. This critique uses feminist and poststructuralist approaches and explores the implications of the spatial metaphors which both concepts of liberty invoke.     

Value orientations, political conflicts and left-right identification: A comparative study

Abstract. Have the meanings of 'left' and 'right' changed during the last twenty years? In this article the ten-point left-right self-placement scale is correlated with three central value orientations (religious/secular, economic left-right and materialist/post-materialist values) to examine whether associations between these value orientations and the self-placement scale have changed from the early 1970s to 1990. Four theories about the changing meaning of the left-right language are presented. These theories about the irrelevance, persistence, transformation and pluralisation of the meaning of left and right are tested by using Eurobarometer data from eight West European countries and the second wave of the European Value Study from 1990. The data provide strong support for pluralisation theory. Left-right semantics have an impressive absorptive power, describing an over-arching spatial dimension capable of incorporating many types of conflict. Left-right semantics are significantly correlated with religious/secular values, remain highly correlated with the dominant industrial value orientations (economic left-right values), and are increasingly associated with materialist/post-materialist value orientations. The new meanings of left and right are added to the old meanings.     

Symposium comment: On the new politics of public policy

The process is not the problem, the problem is the problem. Rudolph Penner (1984). …We argue the superiority of the outcome from the process, not of the process from the outcome. The constancy of the economist's objection to this conclusion when applied to governmental rather than market decisions simply often reflects the fact that, while some economists are not disturbed that consumer preferences lead to allocation policies other than best respond to their own tastes, when political preferences lead to governmental policies not consistent with his informed and considered preferences, they are tempted to attribute irrationality to government.