公民政策参与的功能分析

公民政策参与是指公民参与和影响公共政策过程的行为和活动。公民政策参与对于实现民主价值、保障公民权利,维护和增强政府合法性,保证政策的科学制定和顺利执行,保证政策的公共价值和提高公共服务的品质和效能等方面都有重要的积极意义。但公民政策参与并不必然对所有方面的政策问题解决都带来积极的效果,它也可能会使政策的质量、成本、利益取向以及政府效率和权威方面产生问题。重要的是要把握好“度”,尽可能地因势利导,使其扬长避短。     

ABA ratings: what do they really measure?

Several recent spatial modeling studies incorporate valence issues—e.g., voters’ evaluations of the candidates’ competence, integrity, and charisma—that may give one of the candidates an electoral advantage that is independent of his policy positions. However to date all such models assume that while voters value positive valence characteristics, the candidates themselves do not. We develop a spatial model where the candidates are valence-seeking, i.e.—like the voters—the candidates prefer that the winning candidate possess qualities, such as integrity, diligence, and competence, that will enhance his job performance. We analyze a spatial model where the candidates value both the valence qualities and the policies of the winning candidate, and we show that the candidates’ optimal policy choices typically diverge as the valence differential between them increases, and in particular that the valence-disadvantaged candidate normally has incentives to become more extreme as the valence advantage of her opponent increases.     

Considering Knowledge Uptake within a Cycle of Transforming Data,Information, and Knowledge

Knowledge uptake, having decision makers assimilate the ideas of experts, is recognized as an important stimulus to bringing about policy change. This is particularly true in the realm of environmental policymaking, which is characterized by knowledge intensity, complexity, and multifaceted concerns. Using examples from an innovative watershed management organization, this article presents a heuristic for understanding how knowledge uptake occurs within a cycle of organizational reasoning. This cycle is driven by activities that transform data, information, and knowledge and that link specialists with decision makers. The heuristic can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify breaks in the transformation process that impede mandate fulfillment and impair capacity building. Lack of appreciation of the dynamic relationship between data, information and knowledge leads to mistimed and ineffective policy interventions that do not result in the hoped for progress in science intended to underpin policy advances.     

PROSPECT lost: when a pilot project does not look to learn

If a development project is destined to reach only a selection of its intended beneficiaries or to give them only momentary or uncertain benefits, there is a strong rationale for making it instead a project of trials from which lessons can be taken for obtaining the impact that it may not otherwise have. Because the fundamental problems and opportunities of development are very complex by their nature, interventions that seek to test practice knowledge and to learn above all else may have the greatest potential for benefit in the long term. A project that wishes to create experience from which others can learn will engage in research, so it must be conceived, led and conducted as such. This means it must be designed with knowledge of research. It must be led with an appreciation and understanding of research method. Specific research activities must be conducted that produce knowledge and promote its up‐take, so that learning is a principle project outcome. The large urban anti‐poverty project, PROSPECT, conducted in Lusaka, Zambia, illustrates this argument. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Governance for Sustainability

Environmental policies and responses are strongly influenced by a government's knowledge and understanding of environmental problems, its assessment of their severity, the expert opinions available to it on the size of the response needed, its understanding of the driving forces leading to environmental deterioration and the influence of prevailing theories and paradigms. Environmental policy cannot furthermore exist in a policy vacuum. Environmental goals may or may not be strongly weighted compared to other societal goals especially economic goals. All these influences have major bearing on the approach taken by governments to environmental policy.     

How a firm can induce legislators to adopt a bad policy

This paper shows why a majority of legislators may vote for a policy that benefits a firm but harms all legislators. The firm may induce legislators to support the policy by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district where voters or their representative support the policy. In equilibrium, no one vote may be decisive, so each legislator who seeks the firm’s investment votes for the policy, though all legislators would be better off if they all voted against the policy. And when votes reveal information about the district, the firm’s implicit promise or threat can be credible. Unlike influence mechanisms based on contributions or bribes, the behavior considered is time consistent and in line with the low campaign contributions by special interests.     

The temporal dimension of knowledge and the limits of policy appraisal: biofuels policy in the UK

What depth of learning can policy appraisal stimulate? How we can account for the survival policies that are known to pose significant countervailing risks? While heralded as a panacea to the inherent ambiguity of the political world, the proposition pursued is that policy appraisal processes intended to help decision-makers learn may actually be counterproductive. Rather than simulating policy-oriented learning, appraisals may reduce policy actors’ capacity to think clearly about the policy at hand. By encouraging a variety of epistemic inputs from a plurality of sources and shoehorning knowledge development into a specified timeframe, policy appraisal may leave decision-makers overloaded with conflicting information and evidence which dates rapidly. In such circumstances, they to fall back on institutionalised ways of thinking even when confronted with evidence of significant mismatches between policy objectives and the consequences of the planned course of action. Here learning is ‘single-loop’ rather than ‘double-loop’—focussed on adjustments in policy strategy rather than re-thinking the underlying policy goals. Using insights into new institutional economics, the paper explores how the results of policy appraisals in technically complex issues are mediated by institutionalised ‘rules of the game’ which feed back positively around initial policy frames and early interpretations of what constitutes policy success. Empirical evidence from UK biofuels policy appraisal confirms the usefulness of accounts that attend to the temporal tensions that exist between policy and knowledge development. Adopting an institutional approach that emphasises path dependence does not however preclude the possibility that the depth of decision-makers’ learning might change. Rather, the biofuels case suggests that moves towards deeper learning may be affected by reviews of appraisal evidence led by actors beyond immediate organizational context with Chief Scientific Advisers within government emerging as potentially powerful catalysts in this acquisition of learning capabilities.     

Issues and the presidential primary voter

Most agree that voting in presidential general elections is largely contingent on the evaluations of the candidates, issues, and parties. Yet inpresidential primary elections the determinants of voter choices are less clear. Partisanship is inconsequential, information about candidate personalities and policy positions is scarce, and a fourth factor, expectations, may influence voters. In this paper, we reconsider the influence ofpolitical issues in presidential primaries. We argue that past work has not adequately considered how issues matter in primary elections. Primaries are intraparty affairs, and the political issues that typically divide the parties are not very relevant in primaries. Instead, we focus on the policy issues each candidate chooses to emphasize in their quest for the nomination, which we call policy priorities. With data gathered about media coverage of the presidential contenders in the 1988 primaries, and using exit poll data from the 1988 Super Tuesday primaries, we show that issues, as policy priorities, do matter in presidential primary elections. This research also implies that primary campaigns matter, since information concerning the policy priorities of the candidates reaches the intended audience.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 1992.     

The Academic Discipline of Management and Homeland Security

The aim of this article is to examine the role the academic discipline of management can play in terms of homeland security (which has emerged as a very major policy area). Specifically, this article analyzes how the accumulated research knowledge in various areas of the management discipline (for example, organizational culture studies, organizational change studies, organizational relations studies, and leadership studies) can be used (together with research knowledge from numerous other academic disciplines) to help advance homeland security as a policy area and policy phenomenon and as a field of study. In its areas shown above and other areas, this article is of the view that the academic discipline of management can make unique and important contributions to the effectiveness and efficiency of homeland security.     

Why Is the Intelligence Community So Difficult to Redesign? Smart Practices,Conflicting Goals,and the Creation of Purpose‐Based Organizations

The adoption of “smart practices” requires that smart practices can actually be identified for the areas of public policy in which we are interested. For the problem of designing structures for public agencies, however, identifying smart practices is not easy. This article explores the reasons for the substantial conservativism, lasting over 50 years, regarding the structural design of the U.S. intelligence community. One central argument is simply that it was very difficult to discover a clearly superior structure; in fact, the long‐standing structure may have had some unrecognized virtues. But the other central argument is that one smart practice may have emerged since the 9/11 attacks: It involves the creation of problem‐focused interagency centers that are intended to enhance the sharing and integration of information within the intelligence community. These conclusions about redesigning the structure of the intelligence community are based on the arguments of Luther Gulick on methods of departmentalization and Martin Landau on redundancy and system reliability.     

The limits of `independence' and the policy of the ECB^*

It is argued that the European Central Bank's independence is not as secure as it seems and that as a result it has appreciable institutional incentives to protect and enhance its position. It follows that its behaviour should not be understood as being solely determined by the pursuit of price stability. One consequence is that certain points on which it has been criticised on the basis that its approach makes for ineffective monetary policy might be better understood as, often effective, attempts to protect its position. Another is that making a central bank (or any other institution) “completely independent'' may be much harder than it seems, and failed attempts, which come close, are not necessarily to be preferred, even by the advocates of independence, to less ambitious designs.     

The Common Fisheries Policy of the European Union – A Lesson in How Not to Make Policy

This article considers some salient theoretical contributions which bear upon our understanding of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) of the European Union (EU). It outlines the fundamental dilemma highlighted in game theory known as 'the tragedy of the commons' and goes on to examine whether the CFP can be construed as a 'policy fiasco'. The article considers how the fisheries of the EU could be more effectively managed and underlines the urgent need for international collective action. With the mismatch between the CFP and the scale of the problem it is intended to address firmly in sight, the article concludes with an evaluation and some policy suggestions.     

Informative and persuasive campaigning

In this paper we use a simple Downsian spatial model to analyze the properties of campaign contributions. We first consider campaign contributions that are intended to inform voters of candidate positions. We show that it is difficult to construct arguments in a Downsian spatial model for why some voters would choose to contribute to a candidateand the candidate would want to spend the money contributed to inform voters of his position. We then define persuasive campaign expenditures as those that are intended to convince an individual to vote for a candidate regardless of the candidate's position on issues. In the presence of persuasive campaign expenditures some voters have an incentive to contribute to one or both candidates, and the candidates have an incentive to spend the money. We show why the nature of persuasive campaign expenditures may explain both their growth in recent years and the increasing advantage of incumbency.     

Lessons to be learnt? The role of evaluations of active labour market programmes in evidence‐based policy making

The interest in results‐based policy formulation requires us to examine the impact of evaluations. This article focuses on the production and use of impact evaluations of UK active labour market programmes. It is intended to be useful for non‐evaluators and for those working in developing and transition countries. The UK provides a case study where there is good evaluation data, available expertise and high‐level political commitment to evaluation. However, obstacles remain in the generation and use of impact data. The article seeks to identify the opportunities and difficulties faced in the UK, and it considers the implications for other countries. It suggests that the measurement of impact concepts will prove difficult in countries that do not have sound administrative data, comprehensive labour market statistics and well‐established macroeconomic and tax‐benefit models. Furthermore, the use of evaluation data may be limited by a range of factors, most crucially those emanating from the legislative and policy‐making environment. The conclusion is that if knowledge‐based policy management is to be improved, changes in evaluation methodology will only be effective if supported by changes in the wider government environment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

POLICY RESEARCH AS SOCIAL SCIENCE: OUTFLANKING THE VALUE DILEMMA

Social scientists fear that policy research compromises their objectivity. As a result, policy science is becoming a separate discipline which is accorded lower status that other fields of social inquiry. However, the history, sociology and psychology of science show that the elaboration of robust social theory would be aided by a more intimate relation between policy research and academic social science than currently obtains. The traditional canons of value freedom, which have been invoked to justify the independence of social science from policy, misrepresent the relation between facts and values in science. Objective knowledge is consequent on dispute and triangulation by a many-valued community of fallible social scientists; but it does not eventuate from consensual value neutralism. Social knowledge interacts with social values to change phenomena our theories represent. This self-restructuring characteristic of social events warrants singular attention by social scientists. Policy researchers are in a particularly opportune position to provide that attention.     

Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through Its Instruments—From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation

Public policy instrumentation and its choice of tools and modes of operation are treated either as a kind of evidence (governing means making regulations, taxing, entering into contracts, communicating, etc.) or as if the questions it raises (the properties of instruments, justifications for choosing them, their applicability, etc.) are part of a rationality of methods without any autonomous meaning. This paper aims to explain the significance of a political sociology approach to public policy instruments in accounting for processes of public policy change: (1) public policy instrumentation is a major issue in public policy, since it reveals a (fairly explicit) theorization of the relationship between the governing and the governed: every instrument constitutes a condensed form of knowledge about social control and ways of exercising it; and (2) instruments at work are not neutral devices: they produce specific effects, independently of the objective pursued (the aims ascribed to them), which structure public policy according to their own logic.     

Transparency by Conformity: A Field Experiment Evaluating Openness in Local Governments

Sunshine laws establishing government transparency are ubiquitous in the United States; however, the intended degree of openness is often unclear or unrealized. Although researchers have identified characteristics of government organizations or officials that affect the fulfillment of public records requests, they have not considered the influence that government organizations have on one another. This picture of independently acting organizations does not accord with the literature on diffusion in public policy and administration. This article presents a field experiment testing whether a county government's fulfillment of a public records request is influenced by the knowledge that its peers have already complied. The authors propose that knowledge of peer compliance should induce competitive pressures to comply and resolve legal ambiguity in favor of compliance. Findings indicate peer conformity affects both in the time to initial response and in the rate of complete request fulfillment.     

Ideas and Policy Change

Peter Hall's 1993 article came at the same time as a parallel body of literature was developing, some building explicitly, some only implicitly, on similar ideas. I review some literature on policy communities, ideas, and the nature of policy change before exploring the statistical distribution of budget changes at three levels of aggregation. The similarity of these results suggests that a single process may be at work rather than different processes for first‐, second‐, and third‐order change, as Hall's original formulation has it. As Hall suggests, these processes typically generate only marginal adjustments but occasionally create fundamental change. The degree of discredit to the status quo may be an important unexplored variable in explaining the ability of policy reformers to enact marginal, substantial, or fundamental policy changes. In sum, this article shows the similarities and mutual value of Hall's approach with others that would appear to be starkly contrasting.     

Vom strategischen Nutzen des Wissens für die Politikberatung

In recent years, the field of political consulting and policy advice has gained growing attention and, thus, has been subject of important debates regarding its key concepts and theoretical foundations. This paper sets out to defend the authors' original thesis which has been challenged in the course of these debates. We argue that, along with classical oneway modes of consultation, a new way of interaction between political decision makers and consultants has emerged. The knowledge deriving from these cooperative discourses is not merely an external source for the preparation and legitimation of political decisions. It is integral part of the policy process and may unfold its potential as long as it meets the standards of epistemic and political robustness.