Three views of the expert's role in policymaking: Systems analysis,incrementalism, and the clinical approach

This paper compares three approaches to improving policymaking: systems analysis, disjointed incrementalism, and the clinical approach (elsewhere referred to as the planned change or human relations approach or organization development). It pays particular attention to the way in which these three approaches view organizations and the role of the expert in reform-mongering.It is suggested that systems analysis and incrementalism are quite compatible and that, in fact, systems analysis has, in large measure, accepted the incrementalists' view of the policymaking process. But this acceptance has served not so much to strengthen policy analysis as to increase awareness of its weaknesses.The clinical approach, on the other hand, holds out the promise of strengthening policy analysis, since it focuses on changing organizations, an area in which both systems analysis and incrementalism are weak and, as action-oriented approaches, hampered by their weaknesses. The potential contributions of the clinical approach are considered as well as the likelihood of an eventual synthesis.The first version of this paper was prepared for presentation to the Systems Analysis Group, Canadian Treasury Board.     

Constructing the sex trafficker: spectral figures and sexual violence in California’s Proposition 35

This article examines the development, framing, and implementation of Proposition 35, the ‘Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act.’ The 2012 ballot initiative, described variously as a measure against human slavery, human trafficking, and sex trafficking secured more votes than any other initiative or candidate in a single statewide election in California history. We argue that the measure exemplifies a disjuncture in the articulation of feminist politics against sexual violence, labor exploitation, and criticisms of the carceral state. The rise of the sex trafficker as a ‘spectral’ subject of contemporary political discourse shapes a broader ideological framework that permits a distinct set of political actors and interests to widen their institutional and political authority and to marginalize competing claims about the roots of sexual violence and labor exploitation. Proposition 35, which targets a ‘spectral’ figure abstracted from institutional context and relations of power, expands the carceral state in the name of protecting vulnerable women while also excluding long-standing feminist solutions to sex and gender-based violence.     

Do we need to categorize it? Reflections on constituencies and quotas as tools for negotiating difference in the global food sovereignty convergence space

ABSTRACT

Convergence – as an objective and as a process – designates the coming together of different social actors across strategic, political, ideological, sectoral and geographic divides. In this paper, we analyze the global food sovereignty movement (GFSM) as a convergence space, with a focus on constituencies and quotas as tools to maintain diversity while facilitating convergence. We show how the use of constituencies and quotas has supported two objectives of the GFSM: alliances building and effective direct representation in global policy-making spaces. We conclude by pointing to some convergence challenges the GFSM faces as it expands beyond its agrarian origins.     

‘Moving in place’: Drought and poverty dynamics in South Wollo,Ethiopia

This article discusses the impact of drought on poverty dynamics in the South Wollo area of northeastern Ethiopia. Using both survey and anthropological/qualitative data covering a six-year period, the paper assesses which households were able to hold on to assets and recover from the 1999–2000 drought and which were not. It suggests that while the incidence of poverty changed very little during 1997 to 2003 despite the occurrence of a major drought, the fortunes of the poorest improved, but not enough to keep them from poverty. The study concludes by asking how current policies affect patterns of poverty and inequality and what might be done to improve welfare in South Wollo.     

Willard Straight, The First World War, and "Internationalism of all Sorts": The Inconsistencies of An American Liberal Interventionist

Willard D. Straight was a banker-diplomat and one of the most prominent early twentieth-century advocates of a greater international role for the USA. From the beginning of the war he argued the Mahanist line that American security depended upon the British fleet and in its own interest the United States should therefore intervene. At the same time he perceived the war as offering a golden opportunity for American bankers and businessmen to make international commercial gains at the expense of Britain. In 1915 this outlook led him to leave the insistently pro-Allied banking firm of J. P. Morgan & Company for the National City-affiliated American International Corporation, which was consciously designed to expand American overseas investments. Throughout the war Straight, who died in late November 1918, consistently argued that an Anglo-American alliance must be the essential foundation of any postwar international order — a position also taken by Theodore Roosevelt — but Straight also demonstrated significant and growing suspicion of and hostility to Great Britain. The numerous inconsistencies in his thinking seem to have sprung from the fact that, rather than being a well thought-out position, his internationalism arose primarily from an indiscriminating psychological need to have his country play a great but poorly defined role on the world stage.     

“Illegalizing” Families: State,Status, and Deportability NPS Christian Bay Best Paper Award Winner,APSA 2018, Boston

There is a paradox within United States immigration policy. Immigration policy separates families while also promising family unity. We address this paradox by arguing that state actors use “family” as a state-granted status. The state perceives some households as families and grants them benefits, while forcing other households to live as legal strangers. Individuals may form familial relationships, but the privileges and status of family are controlled by state actors and institutions. When state actors separate low-wage immigrant worker families, the state's family-status-granting power keeps these workers and their families in a state of “deportability”-a legally ambiguous limbo-satiating business interests and securing a captive low-wage workforce. Lacking legal legitimacy, but financially and socially tied to their families and communities in the U.S., these immigrants have few options but to accept off-the-radar work and to raise their children while living as “outlaws.”