Streams and stages: Reconciling Kingdon and policy process theory

Use of metaphors is a staple feature of how we understand policy processes – none more so than the use of ‘policy stages’/'cycles’ and ‘multiple streams’. Yet even allowing for the necessary parsimony of metaphors, the former is often criticised for its lack of ‘real world’ engagement with agency, power, ideology, turbulence and complexity, while the latter focuses only on agenda‐setting but at times has been utilised, with limited results, to understand later stages of the policy process. This article seeks to explore and advance the opportunities for combining both and applying them to the policy‐formation and decision‐making stages of policy making. In doing so it examines possible three, four and five stream models. It argues that a five stream confluence model provides the highest analytical value because it retains the simplicity of metaphors (combining elements of two of the most prominent models in policy studies) while also helping capture some of the more complex and subtle aspects of policy processes, including policy styles and nested systems of governance.     

Deciding how to use scarce federal housing aid funds

Abstract

This paper assesses the major forms of federal housing assistance and compares the relative value of each in meeting the housing needs of the nation's low‐ and moderate‐income households. Programs are first identified and described. A ranking system, based on nine criteria of desirability, is then developed and used to compare the programs. The evaluation system presented in this paper represents one method of determining how to allocate scarce federal housing assistance funds. The subjective nature of the evaluation process dictates that other criteria and weighting systems may be legitimately applied. However, to provide a clear decision‐making framework, any such system should clearly explain its assumptions and rationales.     

FHA: Recent History and Future Prospects

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) deserves considerable credit for helping support the housing market during the recent financial crisis by increasing its own market share. However, as the recovery continues, the FHA can gradually return to its “traditional” role as an insurer of low-down-payment home mortgages for low-to-moderate-income and first-time homebuyers. A major concern going forward is susceptibility to increased adverse selection if it continues in nontraditional markets. Indeed, the modest market share of the FHA going into the housing collapse was important both in limiting its losses and in allowing it to maintain the market when other traditional secondary market makers failed.     

Of texts and practices: Empowerment and organisational cultures in world bank-funded rural development programmes

The World Bank's recent concern for ‘empowerment’ grows out of longer standing discussions of participation, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society. While commitments to empowerment enter World Bank texts with relative ease, their practice within Bank-funded projects is far more contingent, and the meanings they assume become much more diverse. This paper considers the relationship between such texts and the development practices which emerge, using an analysis of the ‘organisational cultures’ of the Bank and the many organisations on which it depends in the implementation of its rural development programmes. The paper presents a framework for analysing these organisational cultures in terms of (a) the broader contexts in which organisations and their staff are embedded; (b) the everyday practices within organisations; (c) the power relations within and among organisations; and (d) the meanings that come to dominate organisational practice. A case study of a development programme in Bangladesh is used to illustrate the ways in which cultural interactions between a variety of organisations – the World Bank, government agencies, NGOs, organisations of the poor, social enterprises – mediate the ways in which textual commitments to empowerment are translated into a range of diverse practices.     

Considerations on the use of transgenic crops for insect control

The adoption of agricultural technologies, whether developed through biotechnology or other methods, depends on social, political, regulatory and biological parameters. This article first presents an example of a low-input, non-biotechnological method of pest control that, while seemingly reasonable to researchers and extension agents, was not adopted by farmers. It then analyses a method for insect management developed through biotechnology that is becoming widely adopted: transgenic plants expressing insecticidal proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Globally increasing adoption of Bt plants, by small and large farmers in both low- and high- income countries requires explanation in terms of biological properties of cropping systems and insect populations, alternative control techniques and social policy considerations.     

Joel Gregory Prize/Prix Joël Gregory 1989

In Sudan the pastoral groups of nomad origin constitute an important component of that society. Nevertheless, these groups have been the object of a constant “invisibalisation” (symbolic and material) and of a “setting of otherness” contrasting them with other social categories in the country. This article offers a reflection on the contribution of a “pastoral perspective” as a critique of the reductionist trends of a complex of dichotomisation of the categories to consider the two Sudans and their populations. In expanding on the view of several timely ethnographies on the work of various researchers on Sudanese shepherds, as well as on the official “treatment” of these groups in national censuses or development plans, the article proposes avenues for reconsidering Sudanese studies beyond a persistent categorisation of “nomad pastoralism”, which contributes to an accentuation of the differences between the social components at the heart of each of the Sudans as well as between the current two Sudans.     

Climate Change and the Future of Caribbean Development

Climate change is rapidly becoming the defining feature of the Caribbean developmental landscape. Yet theoretical and practical responses to the issue have been somewhat limited, particularly in terms of the socio-economic and political dimensions. This article begins by tracing the dramatic impact that climate change presages for Caribbean development. It then moves on to an analysis of how the region is attempting to respond at the global, regional and national levels. We then question the significance of this for Pan-Caribbean development, before pointing the way to a nascent research agenda with the political economy of climate change at its heart.     

Governance Barriers to Renewable Energy in North Africa

Solar power in the North African region has the potential to provide electricity for local energy needs and export to Europe. Nevertheless, despite the technical feasibility of solar energy projects, stakeholders still perceive projects in the region as risky because of existing governance issues. Certain areas of solar projects, such as construction, operation and management, are the most prone to governance risks, including lack of transparency and accountability, perceived as barriers for deployment of the projects. It is likely that large-scale foreign direct investment into solar energy will not eliminate existing risks, but might even increase them. Furthermore, the recent political changes in the region have addressed some governance risks but not all of them, especially bureaucratic corruption. Stakeholders recommend a broad set of measures to facilitate development of solar projects in the region, ranging from auditing of individual projects to simplification and unification of bureaucratic procedures.