The changing dynamics of policy experiment in Singapore: does the 2011 general election make a difference?

The city-state of Singapore is proactive in harnessing policy experimentation to incubate innovations, transfer knowledge and facilitate collaborations across different public sectors. Given the country’s strong knack for pragmatism, international practices and lessons are usually first tested and adapted in policy experiments before scaling up to nationwide policies. Singapore’s practice of policy experimentation, however, has also demonstrated evolution over time. This article reviews the evolving role of experimentation in Singapore’s policy decision-making and implementation, and analyses pilot programmes in public housing to elicit the key attributes and commonalities of its policy experiments. It finds that policy experiments have been increasingly used after the 2011 general election, which witnessed a radical political rebalancing in Singapore’s governance history. Pilot projects have thus transformed from a utilitarian to citizen-centric, design-thinking approach after 2011. Pilot programmes are used for multiple purposes in policy innovations, among which civil service mentoring, knowledge transfer and cross-boundary collaboration are the values primarily pursued. The article discusses the contributions of the findings to the literature and policy implications for practitioners.     

人体实验的法律问题简

人体实验是将人运用于实验,目的是为了被实验者的治疗。人体实验一方面能够推进科学知识的进步,是全人类的福祉;但另一方面,人体实验又是一把双刃剑,用之不当,则必然会引起严重的后果。因此,从法律上对人体实验进行规制是非常有必要,也是非常迫切的。从治疗性研究、非治疗性研究、新生物技术的治疗性研究、对于特殊人群的研究这四类情况入手,对人体实验所涉及的法律问题以及道德问题逐一进行梳理,有助于对人体实验进行法律规制做理论上的铺垫。     

儿童精神分析学的主要方法及其应用

儿童精神分析的出现被视为是精神分析"新范式的开始".儿童精神分析学的方法主要来自并运用于临床实践与临床发现,迥异于学院心理学的方法,有其自身的特色与优势.其方法主要包括两个方面,一是研究方法,二是治疗方法.儿童精神分析学最主要的方法包括重构法、观察法、实验法、测验法以及游戏疗法.纵观儿童精神分析学的主要方法,我们会发现它们与发展心理学的研究方法有某些共同之处,但发展心理学则更多地是进行标准化研究和对发展过程的详细描绘,而儿童精神分析学者更多研究心理发展动力与潜意识的影响.二者在研究结果与研究内容方面出现了逐渐融合的趋势,越来越多的儿童精神分析学的研究主题,如母婴关系、自我功能、自我发展、分离与剥夺、受挫与攻击性等逐渐纳入发展心理学的视野.     

On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention

This article traces the development from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially using biometrics in a few pilot projects (in the early-to-mid-2000s) to the emergence of a policy in which biometric registration is considered a ‘strategic decision’. It then engages key insights from current debates about ‘materiality’ and agentic capacity in combination with current debates about new forms of intervention. Finally, these insights are combined into a framework through which the article engages critically with this development of humanitarian refugee biometrics by posing the following question: how does an approach to technology that takes seriously the idea of matter as capable of agentic capacity enhance an appreciation of the ways in which these humanitarian technologies may contribute to the emergence of new forms of intervention? Through an analysis of how the emergence of digitalized biometric refugee data has affected the relationship between the UNHCR, donor states, host states and refugees, the article shows how the UNHCR’s trialling of new biometric technologies – combined with actual and potential data-sharing practices – has advanced the technology’s performance and acceptability whilst at the same time also rendering new dimensions of refugee life intervenable, not only to humanitarian actors.     

The rise of the randomistas: on the experimental turn in international aid

Abstract

In recent years, the use of experimental methodologies has emerged as a central means of evaluating international aid interventions. Today, proponents of randomized control trials (so-called randomistas) are among the most influential of development experts. This paper examines the growth of this thought collective, analysing how uncertainty has become a central concern of development institutions. It demonstrates that transformations within the aid industry – including the influence of evidence-based policy, the economization of development and the retreat from macro-planning – created the conditions of possibility for experimentation. Within this field, the randomistas adeptly pursued a variety of rhetorical, affective, methodological and organizational strategies that emphasized the lack of credible knowledge within aid and the ability of experiments to rectify the situation. Importantly, they have insisted on the moral worth of experimentation; indeed, the experimental ethic has been proposed as the way to change the spirit of development. Through causal certitude, they propose to reduce human suffering. The rise of experimentation has not, however, eliminated accusations of uncertainty; rather, it has redistributed the means through which knowledge about development is considered credible.     

Policy Synthesis through Regional Experimentations: Comparative Study of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme in Three Chinese Provinces

ABSTRACT

Policymakers often face difficulties in determining appropriate national policy instruments based on the results of small-scale experimentations conducted by subordinate governments due to regional disparities and the inherent characteristics of such policies. This research explores policy synthesis via regional experimentations as a novel policy experimentation model. In policy synthesis, the upper government determines instruments for each element of a national policy by communicating with and learning from the experiences of local governments and then synthesizes the policy elements by conducting large-scale experiments. This study analyzes the experimentation of the Chinese New Cooperative Medical Scheme as a case to demonstrate the feasibility of applying policy synthesis. It also compares the experimentations conducted in three provinces and reviews the strategy adopted by the central government. It is found that the Chinese central government learns the pros and cons of diverse policy instruments from regional experimentations to produce a balanced synthesized policy.     

Between rock and a hard place: narrating nona hendryx's inscrutable career

Elaborating on the imperialist grasp of rockism, Kelefa Sanneh writes 'There's a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for doo-wop groups and folk singers and disco queens and even rappers—just so long as they, y'know, rock.' What's striking is how closely Nona Hendryx's career fits within these categories—doo-wop singer, disco queen, rocker—yet, she still hasn't received her due, even within that flawed, proverbial rockist Hall of Fame. Building on Mark Anthony Neal's rich analysis of the proto-disco trio LaBelle and their prophetic collaboration with singer/songwriter Laura Nyro in the early 1970s, this paper traces the lengthy and varied solo career of former-LaBelle, Nona Hendryx. My argument takes as a point of departure the challenge of telling a 'non-rockist' story about how Hendryx rocks, how she doesn't, and why issues of legibility and legacy rest on these questions. I investigate the consolidation of race, gender and genre in the formative period of the 1970s, when rock and disco were situated within popular media as warring sub-cultures. In particular, I track the ways that the purported artifice of disco and its associations with blackness, gayness and overtly performative, 'feminine' modes of display render Hendryx's later experimentation with other genres of music illegible, even to her most devoted fans.