A fresh look at a policy sciences methodology: collaborative modeling for more effective policy

Collaborative modeling offers a novel methodology that integrates core ideals in the policy sciences. The principles behind collaborative modeling enable policy researchers and decision makers to address interdisciplinarity, complex systems, and public input in the policy process. This approach ideally utilizes system dynamics to enable a multidisciplinary group to explore the relationships in a complex system. We propose that there is a spectrum of possibilities for applying collaborative modeling in the policy arena, ranging from the purely academic through full collaboration among subject matter experts, the general public, and decision makers. Likewise, there is a spectrum of options for invoking collaboration within the policy process. Results from our experiences suggest that participants in a collaborative modeling project develop a deeper level of understanding about the complexity in the policy issue being addressed; increase their agreement about root problems; and gain an appreciation for the uncertainty inherent in data and methods in studying complex systems. We conclude that these attributes of collaborative modeling make it an attractive option for improving the decision-making process as well as on-the-ground decisions.     

What future for the policy sciences?

The term “policy sciences” refers both to a distinctive tradition within the policy movement and to the broader policy movement itself. While the generic use of this term is sure to persist, the community of policy scientists trained in the tradition founded by Harold Lasswell and Myres S. McDougal faces challenges to its sustainability as a distinctive tradition of the policy movement. To motivate open discussion and debate, this essay follows the logic of a problem-oriented analysis, and also includes personal reflections and anecdote, with the following objectives: It suggests that the policy sciences tradition faces challenges to its sustainability because of the simple arithmetic of generational turnover in university faculty. It explores six factors internal and external to the policy sciences community militating against sustainability. The essay then critiques three different roles the policy scientist might play in contemporary academia, and concludes with a discussion of alternatives that might enhance the sustainability of the policy sciences tradition, should sustainability indeed be a desired outcome.     

A milestone in the policy sciences

Conclusion What stands in the way of inquiry to help communities clarify and secure theircommon interests? The problem is not the theories and procedures available,as many scholars presume. The framework presented in Jurisprudence for aFree Society is quite adequate even if it is provisional. The problem is professionalism(Torgerson, 1985), or more precisely, the decline of professionalismas it was understood in the Law, Science, and Policy seminar over severaldecades. As McDougal recalls in the Preface:A profession, we insisted, is best regarded as a group with both a specialskill and a sense of responsibility for the consequences upon the communityof the exercise of that skill. The special skill of the lawyer is in the managementof authority and control in the making of decisions, and the genuineprofessional must seek to synthesize all relevant knowledge and pro-cedures toward decisions that serve common interests' (p. xxiii; emphasisadded).The decline of professionalism is all around us. It reflects and reinforces thesame specializing and fragmenting factors that call into question the sustainabilityof late modem or post-modern society. The question for this generationof policy scientists is whether the policy sciences, subject to the samepressures as other skill groups, can maintain the professional standards exemplifiedby Lasswell and McDougal and stay the course they have set in Jurisprudencefor a Free Society.     

The potential for industrial policy: Lessons from the very high speed integrated circuit program

A Pentagon program to advance semiconductor technology offers some important empirical evidence for the national debate over industrial policy. While not an explicit attempt at promoting international competitiveness, the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) program does contain a whole series of industrial policy-like features, including joint government-industry planning, widespread industry participation, and multifirm collaboration. These striking features cannot be attributed solely to VHSIC's affiliation with the military. Instead, the sources of the program's industrial policy characteristics are to be found in the nature of the technologies selected for development, the incorporation of private sector advice, the mitigation of threats to proprietary interests, avoidance of redistributional issues, and the utilization of industry competition and networks of communication-all factors directly relevant to industrial policymaking generally.     

Democracy and the policy sciences: A progress report

Editorial

Democracy and the policy sciences: A progress report     

A doctoral program in the policy sciences

The complex nature of policy problems requires innovative approaches to problem analysis and a new social science interdiscipline focused on policy processes. The Policy Science Program at SUNY Buffalo is designed to advance this field and to train hybrid Ph.D.'s as research-scientists/practitioners. These new policy science professionals will augment policymaking organizations as policy analysts, evaluation researchers, knowledge brokers, research feedback disseminators, process monitors, and consultants. Their training must include research methodology, analytic approaches, orienting conceptual schemes from systems theory, social sciences, and specific problem domains, and operating skills. The curriculum includes both academic and field-training aspects.Though the program is oriented toward the applied sciences, it is an attempt to mold a version of the new combination of revised social science paradigms and analytic approaches identified by Dror as the Policy Sciences.     

Water policy and environmental sustainability: the case of post‐colonial Namibia

In semi‐arid countries, particularly in Africa, governments have evolved water policies oriented toward ‘techno‐giantist,’ grand‐scale schemes that have generally accelerated the depletion of national water tables. In Namibia, such a techno‐giantist water management strategy was utilized to reinforce the privileges of white minority farmers prior to independence, and was subsequently expanded to provide modern water facilities to the black African majority in the post‐independence period. The government has pursued not only the construction of a massive new system of pipelines and boreholes, but also the development of giant dam‐building and river canal schemes that are likely to result in watershed depletion over the long term. This reflects state leaders' belief in the imagery of political potency projected by the government's ability to build macro‐scale water systems. However, a water supply approach focused on more micro‐level extraction techniques through which aquifer recharge is prioritized is more likely to assure both local‐level water access and water table sustainability. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.