Experimentation at the interface of science and policy: a multi-case analysis of how policy experiments influence political decision-makers

For decades now, scholars have grappled with questions about how knowledge producers can enhance the influence of their knowledge on users and improve policy making. However, little attention has been paid to how policy experiments, a flexible and ex ante method of policy appraisal, obtain influence over political decision-making. To address this gap, an exploratory framework has been developed that facilitates systematic analysis of multiple experiments, allowing hypotheses to be tested regarding how an experiment’s institutional design can influence the views of political decision-makers. Cash’s categories of effectiveness are used to describe an experiment’s conceptual influence; being how credible, salient, and legitimate decision-makers perceive an experiment to be. The hypotheses are tested using 14 experiment cases found relevant to climate adaptation in the Netherlands, with complete survey responses from over 70 respondents. The results show that although, in general, the experiments had medium to high influence on decision-makers, institutional design does have a noticeable impact. Organisers should make choices carefully when designing an experiment, particularly in order to maintain relevance during an experiment’s implementation and to build community acceptance. Suggestions for future research include a comparison of experiment effects with the effects of non-experimental forms of appraisal, such as piloting or ex ante impact assessment.     

遵循社会基本矛盾规律促进社会科学发展

社会基本矛盾规律是马克思主义历史观中重要的原理,它是我们制定各项方针、路线和政策的基本依据。准确把握社会基本矛盾规律,对于我们理解和把握科学发展观和社会主义建设具有十分重要的意义。     

Planning science and technology policy

Long-range policy planning for international scientific and technological affairs has been hindered by a variety of problems. One is the overall crisis-response nature of foreign policymaking and another is the difficulty of developing technical information needed for sound forecasts. Within the State Department the record of attempts to establish systematic planning amply demonstrates the problems. Nevertheless, a number of key conclusions can be drawn from the few successful experiments in policy planning: An effective planning staff should combine the skills of both foreign policy specialists and scientists; planners should be closely familiar with, but not involved in, operations; the planning role requires consistent support from senior officials; the power to influence budgets significantly strengthens the planning function.     

The policy sciences as science

The preceding evaluation of the policy sciences by Schneider, Stevens, and Tornatzky is based on a rather narrow conception of science that emphasizes quantitative and rigorous methods. It overlooks the limitations of such methods, as revealed by the results of applications, and certain adjustments to these limitations. The latter include the adoption of more modest but realizable aspirations and the synthesis of diverse methods-qualitative as well as quantitative, exploratory as well as confirmatory. It also overlooks differences and trends in epistemological preconceptions that underlie the conduct of research and the interpretation of research results. This article reviews the relevant literature in the hope that it might eventually contribute to more enlightened evaluations of the emerging discipline.     

Institutional development in the era of economic policy reform: Concerns,contradictions and illustrations from Malawi

The article argues that the essence of economic policy reform programmes—both their substance and their pace—runs counter to the central notions of sound institutional development. Attention is first given to some fundamental concerns about the relationship between the two processes, in particular focusing on questions of culture, speed of change and the political environment. The article then provides some illustrations from Malawi, looking in turn at collateral institutional damage, the new generation of semiautonomous organizations, confusing incentives systems in the areas of salaries, housing and training, and lack of serious concern for the sustainability of the reforms. The conclusion calls for returning ‘part-ownership’ of the reform programme to the local officials, and trying to reduce some of the institutional unreality, which seems to adhere to the implementation of the reforms.     

Transnational policy influence and the politics of legitimation

Many domains of transnational policy are now governed through dynamic, multilevel governance processes, encompassing transnational, national, and subnational scales. In such settings, both membership of policy communities and distributions of authority within them become more fluid and openly contested—increasing the importance of the politics of legitimation as a basis for distributing influence over policy processes and outcomes. Drawing on insights from theories of organizational and institutional legitimation, this article theorizes three distinctive strategies of policy influence exercised by transnational actors in multilevel governance settings, through which strategic efforts to legitimize transnational actors and forums are deployed as means of transnational policy influence. The three strategies involve: transnational field building, localized network building, and role adaptation. The effects of these influencing strategies on policy processes and outcomes are illustrated with reference to the case of Indonesian land governance, in which highly dynamic, contested, and multiscalar governance processes lend our theorized strategies particular salience.     

现代政策科学的知识渊源

本文主要考察现代政策科学产生的知识渊源.西方文明、美国的实用主义和工具主义、应用性社会科学对政策科学发展都有着巨大的影响.拉斯维尔搭起政策科学的基本框架.政策科学是知识应用于社会的产物.     

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’.     

The influence of federalism on fiscal policy making

Abstract. This article attempts to refine the statement that federal states face difficulties in fiscal policy making because of the territorial division of powers by comparing two federal countries, Canada and Germany. These two countries differ in terms of their type of federalism: Canada displaying a power-separation system and Germany corresponding to a power-sharing type. According to the authors, the territorial factor influences fiscal policy making through the distribution of taxing and spending powers as well as through patterns of intergovernmental relations. The use of fiscal policy instruments and the likely effects on conflict and cooperation in those two countries is discussed with empirical evidence. The authors come to the conclusion that federalism is indeed a constraint on fiscal policy making, but that the two types of power division face different obstacles and deal differently with fiscal problems. In the power-separation system of Canada, the federal government has encompassing competencies to use fiscal policy instruments unilaterally and without restraint, but faces a lack of concerted action with the provinces which reduces its scope of action in fiscal policy making. In the power-sharing system in Germany, concerted action facilitates macroeconomic stabilisation strategies but the compulsory negotiation system distorts the use of fiscal policy instruments by distributive bargaining.     

Resolving the contradictions of modernity and modernism

He is the author, among other books, of The End of Ideology; The Coming of Post-Industrial Society; The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism;and The Social Sciences Since World War Two.This is the first of a two-part essay on Modernity and Modernism. An enlarged version, with reference citations and text emendations in footnotes, will be published later this year by Transaction.     

文化因素对旅游英语复合型人才培养的影响

随着经济全球化的趋势不断加强,旅游业取得了强劲的发展势头,其国际性也日益显现出来.这无形中对中国旅游人才提出更新更高的要求.对具有扎实的英语语言基础、具有较强的语言交际能力、掌握旅游专业知识的高素质的复合型旅游人才的需求缺口较大,因此,结合就业市场的需求,从文化的角度来探讨旅游英语复合型人才的培养.     

American state governments as models for national science policy

In the 1980s state governments adopted an entrepreneurial stance and established an extensive array of programs targeted at encouraging university industry research collaboration, the commercial development of new technologies, the start-up of new firms, and the technological modernization of existing firms. Although these state programs are frequently presented as laboratories of democracy, their relevance to national science and technology policy is open to question. State R&D strategies reflect contrasting theories about the linkages among academic research, technological innovation, economic growth, and administrative practices. Evaluations of state technology programs have essentially remained fixed at dead center, as unproven undertakings. State experiences have not been couched in analytical frameworks conducive to assessments of national science and technology policies.     

The policy science movement (an outsider's view)

An assessment is made of the expanding policy sciences movement—the proliferation of policy science centers, the existence of a specialized journal, and the large number of programmatic books being published. This paper focuses on the role that policy scientists assign to themselves in the whole decision process, i.e., their strategy. Four characteristics of the policy scientist's self-image are discussed: his work should include reassessment of a problem's goals; he represents a new type of professional; he cannot be expected to contribute to the general knowledge of specific academic disciplines; he is concerned with making recommendations that are acceptable to his sponsor. The research style of the policy scientist is examined, and four basic characteristics of this style are identified: a tendency to bypass microsociological data; an interest in futurism; an emphasis on a so-called systems approach; and an identification with interdisciplinarity.