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Policy Paradigm (policy + paradigm)
Selected AbstractsThe Transformation of Higher Education in Israel since the 1990s: The Role of Ideas and Policy ParadigmsGOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2008GILA MENAHEMArticle first published online: 22 SEP 200 This article examines the transformation of Israel's higher education system since the 1990s. During that period, the system underwent expansion, diversification, privatization, and internationalization in a series of pathbreaking reforms. The main argument is that while external factors,such as demographic trends,exerted pressure for change, the trajectory and policy options preferred were shaped by ideational factors. Policy entrepreneurs played a crucial role in advancing pathbreaking institutional change when they reframed policies through linking cognitive ideas of "what has to be done" with the normative ideas that granted legitimacy to the proposals for reform. [source] Jumping off Arnstein's ladder: social learning as a new policy paradigm for climate change adaptationENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 6 2009Kevin Collins Abstract Participation of citizens, groups, organizations and businesses is now an essential element to tackle climate change effectively at international, European Union, national and local levels. However, beyond the general imperative to participate, major policy bodies offer little guidance on what this entails. We suggest that the dominance of Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation in policy discourses constrains the ways we think about, and critically the purposes we ascribe to, participation in a climate change context. We suggest an alternative framing of climate change, where no single group has clear access to understanding the issue and its resolution. Thus adaptation is fundamentally dependent on new forms of learning. Drawing on experiences of social learning approaches to natural resource managing, we explore how a commitment to social learning more accurately embodies the new kinds of role, relationship, practice and sense of purpose required to progress adaptive climate change agendas and practices. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] The second generation of human security: lessons from the UN and EU experienceINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2010MARY MARTIN The concept of human security, while much contested in both academic and policy debates, and highly fragmented across different meanings and forms of implementation, offers a potential locus around which global security discourse might converge, particularly in light of current shifts in US security thinking. However, key pioneers of human security, such as the United Nations and Canada, appear to be losing their enthusiasm for the concept, just at the moment when others such as the European Union, are advancing a human security agenda. This article examines the divergence of human security narratives between the UN and the EU. It argues that the UN's use of the concept ran aground owing to a triple problematic of lack of clarity, confusion between previously distinct policy streams on human rights and human development and conceptual overstretch. After assessing the EU experience with the concept to date, the article argues that future use of human security will require greater focus on how it deepens ideas of individual security, rather than treating it as an agenda for broadening security. As well as a need to project clarity on the conceptual definition of human security, there is also a need to associate human security with greater clarity of intent. If successful, this would contribute to establishing second generation human security as a new policy paradigm. [source] "New Governance" and Associative Pluralism: The Case of Drug Policy in Swiss CitiesPOLICY STUDIES JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Sonja Wälti Throughout the 1990s, hierarchical administrative governance structures have been replaced by self-governing networks for various motives, one of which is to improve the authenticity and democratic quality of public decisions. Thus, "new governance" has been praised for its propensity to provide a plurality of civil society organizations with access to the decision process. This article explores these claims based on the case of drug policy in Swiss cities. We show that self-governing networks indeed seem to have increased the involvement of civil society organizations in the policy process. However, we also find evidence that self-governing networks may in the longer run induce state control over civil society organizations, thus ultimately reducing associative pluralism. They do so either by imposing a policy paradigm or by excluding actors who do not comply with the dominant paradigm from the networks. We conclude by arguing that self-organizing networks should not be dismissed, given that former hierarchical bureaucratic approaches to drug-related problems have failed even worse. Rather, their long-term effects should be subject to further examination aimed at developing adequate responses to their shortcomings. [source] The Politics of Social Harmony: Ruling Strategy and Health Care Policy in Hu's ChinaASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2009Bin Yu This study seeks to explain the causes of social welfare policy change in a single-party authoritarian system. Using the evolution of Chinese health care policy as an example, it discerns why the Hu Jintao administration opted for a compensation-oriented welfare policy paradigm in the absence of adequate interest articulation and apparent electoral accountability, despite the virtual collapse of the Chinese social welfare system during the 1990s. I explore the hypothesis that a high level of political pressure, coupled with a high degree of economic openness, drove the Chinese Communist Party to alter its ruling strategy, a political paradigm that best ensures its monopoly on political power and consequently produces distinct implications for public policy outputs. This study suggests that authoritarian regimes can and do compensate the citizenry under certain circumstances. Further, it also reveals a self-adaptation process initiated by a single-party authoritarian system. [source] A Precautionary Approach to Foreign Policy?BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2006A Preliminary Analysis of Tony Blair's Speeches on Iraq This article examines the proposition put forward in a BBC documentary concerning ,war on terror' policies in recent decades that the British prime minister embraced the precautionary principle over his decision to go to war with Iraq. We argue that the conventional understandings of precaution that have been developed in the environmental arena do not translate well into the field of foreign policy. Our argument is buttressed by a content analysis of Tony Blair's speeches prior to the Iraq conflict of 2003. The analysis focuses on the ways the prime minister justified his decision to participate in the war in Iraq to the UK electorate. We conclude that, although understandings of precaution, particularly the ,strong' precautionary principle, do have problems when applied to this particular issue, and that the war was mainly based on a traditional ,sound science' foreign policy paradigm, the novel idea of using weaker forms of the precautionary principle in foreign policy is nevertheless intriguing, and warrants further research. [source] The National Research Council of Canada: Institutional change for an era of innovation policyCANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 3 2000G. Bruce Doern There are two main themes. The first is that the nrc has changed considerably in a way that reflects both the diverse and contested meanings of the innovation policy paradigm that gradually emerged under the Mulroney Conservative era and then under the Chrétien Liberal era. The second theme is that as these newer policy and strategic rubrics were imposed, partially accepted and adapted, the nrc inevitably had both to confront and change, and also defend and support, its own traditions as a complex government science agency that still values research for its own sake and as a public good. The nrc could not help but involve all of its organizational characteristics, namely, as an organization of scientists, as a politically controlled agency, as a national institution, and as a regionally dispersed institution of numerous and varied institutes. Sommaire: Cet article examine la transformation institutionnelle du Conseil de recherche du Canada (CRC) au cours de cette demière décennie, dans le contexte politico-économique des politiques d'innovation. L'article s'articule sur deux thèmes principaux: premièrement, le CRC a beaucoup changé et reflète les perspectives à la fois diverses et contestées du paradigme des politiques d'innovation qui a vu le jour progressivement sous les Conservateurs de Mulroney puis les Libéraux de Chrétien. Deuxièmement, tandis que ces nouvelles politiques et stratégiesétait imposées par-tiellement acceptées et adaptées, elles ont inévitablement forgé le CRC à confronter, modifier ainsi que défendre et appuyer ses propres traditions d'organisme scienti-fique gouvememental complexe, qui accorde toujours une grande valeur à la recherche en tant que telle et en tant que bien public. Le CRC ne pouvait éviter de faire jouer toutes ses caractéristiques organisationnelles, c'est-à-dire en tant qu'organisme de scientifiques, en tant qu'agence contrôlée politiquement, en tant qu'institution nationale, et en tant qu'institution régionalement dispersée comprenant de nom-breux instituts différents. [source] Civil Servants, Economic Ideas, and Economic Policies: Lessons from ItalyGOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2005LUCIA QUAGLIA Building on theoretically oriented and empirically grounded research on two key macroeconomic institutions in Italy, this article explains how and why civil servants can engineer major policy changes, making a difference in a country's trajectory. Italy provides a challenging testing ground for this kind of analysis, as it is generally portrayed as a highly politicized system in which political parties and politicians fully control public policies. Three general lessons can be learned, the first being that the role of civil servants in changing modes of economic governance depends on the resources that they master in the system in which they operate. "Intangible assets" are of primary importance in complex and perceived technical policies, such as monetary and exchange rate policy, which have high potential for "technocratic capture." Second, in these policies, certain intangible assets, such as specific bodies of economic knowledge or policy paradigms, have a considerable impact on policy making. Third, besides interactions in international fora, the professional training of civil servants is a mainstream way through which economic policy beliefs circulate and gain currency, laying the foundations for policy shifts. By highlighting the importance of the intangible assets of macroeconomic institutions, this research makes an unorthodox contribution to the primarily economic literature on central bank independence. [source] Navigating the Future: A Case Study of Growing Victoria TogetherAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 2 2003David Adams In an increasingly volatile, uncertain and complex world governments internationally are seeking new frameworks to think about future directions which can guide policy choices that can be turned into realities. This article presents an insiders' case study of the initial development of the Victorian Labor government's Growing Victoria Together, launched in November 2001; it expresses the vision, policy priorities and its key progress measures. It has been developed to guide medium-term policy choices, communicate directions to citizens and engage stakeholders to think collaboratively about the future. The article notes the emerging international interest in alternatives to public policy paradigms based on economic rationality, market decision-making and organisational managerialism and outlines the steps and actions involved in developing its public release and the first stages of implementation. It concludes by reflecting on lessons which can be learned from this experience for exploring new strategic policy frameworks. [source] | |||||||||||||