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Policy Learning (policy + learning)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Education	50%

Selected Abstracts

Policy Learning: can Government discover the treasure within?

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2007
GRAHAM LEICESTER
We live in powerful times and are experiencing a conceptual emergency. The imperative to learn is evident. Yet in spite of advances in knowledge about how we learn, our application of that knowledge in practice remains patchy at best. A key part of the challenge is to encourage government itself to participate in the learning process, and to overcome the psychological and structural constraints it faces that militate against learning. The article suggests a number of measures to facilitate learning within the policy process: including first tackling denial, making space for reflection, empowering the boundary spanners and , most important , practising innovation as learning. The Delors Commission for UNESCO on education for the 21st century called learning ,the treasure within'. It is no longer possible for government to ignore the turbulence and complexity of its operating environment: it needs to find its own treasure within. This is the case for policy learning. [source]

Policy Transfer and Policy Learning: A Study of the 1991 NewZealand Health Services Taskforce

GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2000
Kerry Jacobs
Research into policy transfer and lesson drawing has been criticized asfew authors have convincingly shown how cross-national policy learning actually influences policy formation in a particular jurisdiction. This article addresses this gap by presenting a study of the development of the 1991 health policy in New Zealand. By studying the process of policy development, rather than just a policy document, it was possible to disaggregate different aspects of the policy and to identify sources and influences. This article finds that the ,conspiracy' model of policy formation does not fit this case as it presents an overly simplistic view, which allows little space for policy learning. This case illustrates the subtle and multifaceted influence of different jurisdictions, different institutions, and different individuals on a given policy. [source]

National Qualification Frameworks: from policy borrowing to policy learning

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2010
BORHENE CHAKROUN
This article takes up the issue of the internationalisation of Vocational Education and Training (VET) reforms, expressed in the way policy instruments such as National Qualifications Frameworks (NQF) are introduced in the European Training Foundation's (ETF) partner countries. There is an international debate and different perspectives regarding NQFs. These perspectives have largely talked past each other. The article brings together these perspectives and highlights the issues at stake in this field. Through the analysis of ETF interventions in different regions, the article makes a case for new approaches of intervention, namely policy learning, that aim at enabling national stakeholders and that are conducive for home-grown VET policies. The discussion is broad in scope, not only because the article reviews developments in qualifications frameworks across-regions, but also because it highlights the complex interaction of the global and local development when introducing NQFs and the impact of such reforms on VET systems. [source]

Policy Learning: can Government discover the treasure within?

Policy Transfer and Policy Learning: A Study of the 1991 NewZealand Health Services Taskforce

Translating evaluation findings into "policy language"

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, Issue 86 2000
Kenneth Cabatoff
This chapter examines the use of program evaluation findings as a tool for policy learning. It argues that program evaluation findings must be "translated" into policy language in order to affect decision making within policy communities. This translation is illustrated by welfare policy innovation in Quebec. [source]

The Politics of Privatization in Russia: From Mass Privatization to the Yukos Affair

PACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 1 2006
Duckjoon Chang
Privatization constitutes one of the most successful achievements in Post-Soviet Russian reform. However, apparent great successes notwithstanding, the privatization program tainted with distortions of its original ideas, political compromises and collusions between political leaders and business elites produced tremendous criticisms and distrust as well. Given those negative aspects of privatization, some people raised the necessity of review of the privatization programs conducted during the 1990s. But despite such criticisms and negative evaluations of the privatization program, as was shown in the case of the Yukos affair, the Russian government never denied the principle of private ownership nor reexamined the privatization results. To explain such a trend in Russian privatization, this paper adopts the concept of policy learning, in which reconceptualization of policy agendas-adopting private property as an essential element of the market economy, for example-take place. [source]

The Politics of Economic Policy Making in Britain: A Re-assessment of the 1976 IMF Crisis

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 5 2009
CHRIS ROGERS
Many accounts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis argue that British policy was determined by the exercise of structural power by markets, either through the creation of currency instability and the application of loan conditionality, or by acting as a catalyst for policy learning. This article reassesses economic policy making in Britain during the 1976 IMF crisis to show that policy change did not occur as a result of disciplinary market pressure or a process of social learning. It argues that state managers have to manage the contradictions between the imperatives of accumulation and legitimation, and can do so through the politics of depoliticization. It shows, via archival sources, how elements of the core-executive had established preferences for deflationary policies, which were implemented in 1976 using market rhetoric and Fund conditionality to shape perceptions about the issues within the government's discretionary control. Muchas explicaciones sobre la crisis del FMI sostienen que la política británica fue determinada, o bien, por el ejercicio de poder estructural vía el mercado a través de la creación de la inestabilidad cambiaria y la aplicación de préstamos condicionados, o por el intento de demostrar que sólo las políticas monetarias mantendrían la confianza, un reconocimiento que se espera alcanzar a través de un proceso de aprendizaje político. Este artículo reevalúa el diseño de políticas económicas en Gran Bretaña durante la crisis del FMI de 1976 para demostrar que el cambio en la política no ocurrió como resultado de una presión constante del mercado o un proceso de aprendizaje social. Argumenta que los administradores del estado deben manejar las contradicciones entre los fundamentos de la acumulación y legitimación y pueden hacer eso a través de la depolitización. Señala, como, en base a fuentes provenientes de archivos, los elementos del poder ejecutivo habían establecido preferencias por las políticas deflacionarias, las cuales fueron implementadas en 1976 utilizando la retórica del mercado y la condicionalidad del FMI para ubicar dentro del control discrecional del gobierno las percepciones acerca de asuntos públicos importantes. [source]

Learning, governance and economic policy1

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2003
Hugh Pemberton
This article examines the relationship between economic policy networks and policy learning during the 1960s, using recently released files to flesh out the operation of both networks and learning. It finds that policy failure in the 1950s brought into being a new policy network which was able to secure a radical shift in the economic policy of the core executive in the early 1960s. However, it then proved impossible to craft, implement and sustain a coherent and enduring set of new policies within the new policy framework due to the ability of competing networks to resist central control. This leads to three conclusions. First, peripheral actors may obtain influence over policy-making in the core executive by means of a policy network. Second, policy learning does not necessarily generate policy change of a similar order because, whilst networks may facilitate learning, competing networks may block the translation of this learning into effective policies. Third, ,governance' is not solely a phenomenon of the years since 1979: in the 1960s the British core executive was already operating within a polity characterised by fragmentation, inter-dependency and self-organising policy networks. [source]