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Policy Priorities (policy + priority)
Selected AbstractsFood Industrialisation and Food Power: Implications for Food GovernanceDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5-6 2003Tim Lang Food supply chains of developed countries industrialised in the second half of the twentieth century, with significant implications for developing countries over policy priorities, the ensuing external costs and the accompanying concentration of market power. Very powerful corporations dominate many sectors. Primary producers are locked into tight specifications and contracts. Consumers may benefit from cheaper food but there are quality implications and health externalities. As consumer confidence has been shaken, new quality agencies have been created. Tensions have emerged about the state's role as facilitator of industrial efficiencies. Food policy is thus torn between the pursuit of productivity and reduced prices and the demand for higher quality, with implications for both producers and consumers in the developing world. [source] Does a critical mass exist?EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2002A comparative analysis of women's legislative representation since 1950 It has often been argued theoretically that a ,critical mass,' ranging from 10 to 35 per cent women, is needed before major changes in legislative institutions, behaviour, policy priorities and policy voting occurs. This paper examines one of the less-explored dimensions of the critical mass concept: Is there a process by which women reaching a critical mass of the legislature accelerates the election of further women? Using data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union and International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, we analyze this question for 20 industrialized democracies over a period of half a century, longer than any other relevant research. Descriptive results indicate that gains in women's representation have been incremental rather than a critical mass accelerating the election of women to legislatures. In a multivariate analysis of the percentage of women in the lower house of the legislature, the critical mass is tested against established explanations of women's gains in seats: institutional rules, egalitarian political culture, political parties and economic development. Of two measures of the critical mass theory, one has no impact and the second results in only a small increase in women's gains. Far from being clearly demonstrated, critical mass theories need empirical testing. [source] The Difficulty of Justifying European Integration as a Consequence of Depoliticization: Evidence from the 2005 French ReferendumGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2009Andrew Glencross This article analyses the 2005 French referendum debate on the EU Constitutional Treaty as an instance of depoliticization. Particular emphasis is placed on the argumentative strategy of President Chirac as, despite the treaty's focus on institutional reform, he eventually chose to justify the document in terms of social policy: an ultimately unconvincing strategy because voters believed it was contradicted by current EU policy priorities. On this evidence, pace Glyn Morgan, prioritizing a justification of EU finality over that of institutions and policies does not seem appropriate. Rather, the priority for integration is to overcome elites' strategies of depoliticization during referendum campaigns. [source] Creating and sustaining disadvantage: the relevance of a social exclusion frameworkHEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY, Issue 2 2009Amanda M. Grenier PhD MSW BSW Abstract Over the last decade, public home-care services for elderly people have been subject to increased rationing and changes in resource allocation. We argue that a social exclusion framework can be used to explain the impacts of current policy priorities and organisational practices. In this paper, we use the framework of social exclusion to highlight the disadvantages experienced by elderly people, particularly those who cannot afford to supplement public care with private services. We illustrate our argument by drawing on examples from previous studies with persons giving and receiving care in the province of Québec. Our focus is on seven forms of exclusion: symbolic, identity, socio-political, institutional, economic, exclusion from meaningful relations, and territorial exclusion. These illustrations suggest that policy-makers, practitioners and researchers must address the various ways in which current policy priorities can create and sustain various types of exclusion of elderly people. They also highlight the need to reconsider the current decisions made regarding the allocation of services for elderly people. [source] Ethics and Foreign Policy: Structured Debates for the International Studies ClassroomINTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2004Jeffrey S. Lantis Debates about humanitarian intervention, foreign and defense policy priorities, and the ethics of the use of force have become highly politicized in the post-Cold War era. This article explores the value of structured classroom debates on ethical dimensions of international relations as active teaching and learning tools for introductory and advanced international studies courses. Specifically, this article presents design information for structured debates on the ethics of the use of military force, humanitarian interventions, and U.S. foreign policy toward international institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). Building on the literature on active teaching and learning, the article describes the development of these exercises and assesses their effectiveness through ten years of classroom application. [source] Qualitative Analysis of Medicare Claims in the Last 3 Years of Life: A Pilot StudyJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 1 2005Amber E. Barnato MD Objectives: To study end-of-life care of a representative sample of older people using qualitative interpretation of administrative claims by clinicians and to explore whether this method yields insights into patient care, including continuity, errors, and cause of death. Design: Random, stratified sampling of decedents and all their Medicare-covered healthcare claims in the 3 years before death from a 5% sample of elderly fee-for-service beneficiaries, condensation of all claims into a chronological clinical summary, and abstraction by two independent clinicians using a standardized form. Setting: United States. Participants: One hundred Medicare fee-for-service older people without disability or end-stage renal disease entitlement who died in 1996 to 1999 and had at least 36 months of continuous Part A and Part B enrollment before death. Measurements: Qualitative narrative of the patient's medical course; clinician assessment of care continuity and apparent medical errors; cause, trajectory, and place of death. Results: The qualitative narratives developed by the independent abstracters were highly concordant. Clinicians felt that 75% of cases lacked continuity of care that could have improved the quality of life and the way the person died, and 13% of cases had a medical error identified by both abstracters. Abstracters disagreed about assignment of a single cause of death in 28% of cases, and abstracters and the computer algorithm disagreed in 43% of cases. Conclusion: Qualitative claims analysis illuminated many problems in the care of chronically ill older people at the end of life and suggested that traditional vital statistics assignation of a single cause of death may distort policy priorities. This novel approach to claims review is feasible and deserves further study. [source] Green Energy or Organic Food?: A Life-Cycle Assessment Comparing Two Uses of Set-Aside LandJOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 3 2001Richard van den Broek Summary Bioenergy has a large worldwide potential in future climate change abatement, although its application may become limited by demands for land for other functions. The aim of this study was to make an environmental assessment of the use of energy crops in the Netherlands in a context that incorporates scarcity of land. A base case system was defined, consisting of conventional winter wheat production, set-aside land (1 hectare, together), and the production of coal-based electricity. Using life-cycle assessment, we compared this system with (1) a green energy system in which willow is cultivated on the set-aside land to replace the coal-based electricity and (2) an organic agriculture system in which the full hectare produces wheat under the Dutch EKO organic agriculture standard. In this way, the functional unit and the amount of land used is the same in each system. The final system comparison was based on normalized scores per environmental theme. The green energy system scored the best with respect to acidification, climate change, and energy carrier depletion. The organic food system scored best on terrestrial eco-toxicity and slightly better on the mutually related themes of seawater and seawater sediment eco-toxicity. The base case system performed slightly better with regard to eutrophication. Preferences, from an environmental point of view, for one of the systems should be determined by environmental policy priorities and the severity of local environmental problems. The case studied here shows that when climate change, energy carrier depletion, and acidification are the main drivers behind environmental policy, one should focus not on the extensification of agriculture, but rather dedicate more land to energy crops. Extensification of agriculture would be the preferred system when toxicity from pesticides is considered the main problem. [source] The NHS forensic mental health R&D programme: Developing new talent or maintaining a stage army?PERSONALITY AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 3 2008Keith Soothill This paper considers the successful recipients of the 79 project awards made during the 12-year ,life' (1996,2007) of the NHS Forensic Mental Health (FMH) R&D programme. The focus is on whether the 213 persons (principal investigators (PIs) and/or co-investigators (CIs)) represent new talent or existing academic entrepreneurs in the FMH field. Amongst PIs, awards were almost without exception given to researchers with an established research track record. Forensic psychiatrists continue to be the main players, but other research groupings are emerging as PIs. In contrast, CIs range more widely in terms of previous research experience and professional background. 38.5 percent had no apparent experience of previous funded research projects apart from grants funded by the FMH programme. Hence, CIs are the source of new talent amongst the programme's project awards. The authors warn of the dangers of losing the benefits of this investment as policy priorities shift. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Representation and Agenda SettingPOLICY STUDIES JOURNAL, Issue 1 2004Bryan D. Jones We develop a new approach to the study of representation based on agenda setting and attention allocation. We ask the fundamental question: do the policy priorities of the public and of the government correspond across time? To assess the policy priorities of the mass public, we have coded the Most Important Problem data from Gallup polls across the postwar period into the policy content categories developed by the Policy Agendas Project (Baumgartner & Jones, 2002). Congressional priorities were assessed by the proportion of total hearings in a given year focusing on those same policy categories, also from the Agendas Project. We then conducted similar analyses on public laws and most important laws, similarly coded. Finally we analyzed the spatial structure of public and congressional agendas using the Shepard-Kruskal non-metric multidimensional scaling algorithm. Findings may be summarized as follows: First, there is an impressive congruence between the priorities of the public and the priorities of Congress across time. Second, there is substantial evidence of congruence between the priorities of the public and lawmaking in the national government, but the correspondence is attenuated in comparison to agendas. Third, although the priorities of the public and Congress are structurally similar, the location of issues within the structure differs between Congress and the general public. The public "lumps" its evaluation of the nations most important problems into a small number of categories. Congress "splits" issues out, handling multiple issues simultaneously. Finally, the public tends to focus on a very constrained set of issues, but Congress juggles many more issues. The article has strong implications for the study of positional representation as well, because for traditional representation to occur, there must be correspondence between the issue-priorities of the public and the government. We find substantial evidence for such attention congruence here. [source] Governing by goals and numbers: A case study in the use of performance measurement to build state capacity in ChinaPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2009Jie Gao Abstract This article examines why performance measurement, a tool adopted by western countries chiefly to improve government services, has been designed and implemented as an instrument for building state capacity and for ensuring policy compliance in China. Under China's performance measurement system, the central government translates its macro reform goals into specific policy objectives, which it then assigns downwards through the administrative hierarchy. Local governments at the county level convert the policy objectives allocated to them into a variety of prioritised performance targets for local officials to achieve. Using the experience of an inland Chinese county as a case study, this article argues that performance measurement accrues significant political benefits to its users. It forces local Chinese officials to concentrate their efforts on realising the policy priorities set by the higher-level authorities. However, the way that performance measurement is conducted,governing by goals and numbers,does not address the substantial governance issues and fundamental social and political tensions that exist in Chinese society. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Vulnerability of Vietnamese Elderly to Poverty: Determinants and Policy Implications,ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 4 2009Long T. Giang I32 We identify determinants of elderly poverty in Vietnam using household survey data from 2004. The elderly living in urban and rural areas face significantly different conditions. Some factors impact poverty in both urban and rural areas (e.g. age, marital status, region and remittance receipts), some factors are insignificant in both areas (e.g. living arrangements and household head characteristics) and some factors have a differing impact in the two areas (e.g. gender, ethnicity, and household composition and size). With these findings, we formulate policy priorities, including reducing regional disparities, promoting the rural economy and reforming social security. [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] Do Private Patients have Shorter Waiting Times for Elective Surgery?ECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2010Evidence from New South Wales Public Hospitals I11; D63 The Productivity Commission (2008) identified waiting times for elective surgery as a measure of governments' success in providing accessible health care. At the 2007 COAG meeting, the Prime Minister identified reduction of elective surgery waiting times in public hospitals as a major policy priority. To date, the analysis of waiting time data has been limited to summary statistics by medical procedure, doctor specialty and state. In this paper, we look behind the summary statistics and analyse the extent to which private patients are prioritised over comparable public patients in public hospitals. Our empirical evidence is based on waiting list and admission data from public hospitals in NSW for 2004,2005. We find that private patients have substantially shorter waiting times, and tend to be admitted ahead of their listing rank, especially for procedures that have low urgency levels. We also explore the benefits and costs of this preferential treatment on waiting times. [source] Deliberate self-harm in older adults: a review of the literature from 1995 to 2004INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, Issue 8 2007Jenifer Chan Abstract Background The prevention of suicide is a national and international policy priority. Old age is an important predictor of completed suicide. Suicide rates in old age differ markedly from country to country but there is a general trend towards increasing rates with increasing age. In 1996 Draper reviewed critically the evidence on attempted suicide in old age in the 10 years between 1985 and 1994. The review highlighted a need for prospective controlled studies in older people with more representative samples as well as studies examining the interaction of risk factors, precipitants, motivations, psychopathology and response to treatment. The aim of this paper is to update this review and to summarise the advances in our understanding of DSH in later life. Method We have critically reviewed relevant studies published between 1995 and 2004 to summarise the advances in our understanding of factors associated with deliberate self-harm in later life. Results The main advances in understanding have been to clarify the effect of personality and cultural factors, service utilisation pre and post attempt, and the (lesser) impact of socio-economic status and physical illness. Methodological weaknesses continue to include inadequate sample sizes performed on highly selected populations, inconsistent age criteria and lack of informant data on studies relating to role of personality. Conclusions Future studies should include prospective, cross-cultural research with adequate sample sizes and which are population-based. Such approaches might confirm or refute the results generated to date and improve knowledge on factors such as the biological correlates of deliberate self-harm, service utilisation, costs and barriers to health care, and the interaction of these factors. Intervention studies to elucidate the impact of modifying these factors and of specific treatment packages are also needed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Supporting the Participation of Disabled Children and Young People in Decision-makingCHILDREN & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2009Anita Franklin Increasing children's and young people's participation in decisions, about their own care and about service development, is a policy priority. Although in general participation is increasing, disabled children are less likely to be involved than non-disabled children and it is unclear to what extent children with complex needs or communication impairments are being included in participation activities. This article presents research exploring factors to support good practice in participation and discusses policy and practice implications. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||