摘要 :
Policy protagonists are keen to claim that policy is successful while opponents are more likely to frame policies as failures. The reality is that policy outcomes are often somewhere in between these extremes. An added difficulty ...
展开
Policy protagonists are keen to claim that policy is successful while opponents are more likely to frame policies as failures. The reality is that policy outcomes are often somewhere in between these extremes. An added difficulty is that policy has multiple dimensions, often succeeding in some respects but not in others, according to facts and their interpretation. This paper sets out a framework designed to capture the bundles of outcomes that indicate how successful or unsuccessful a policy has been. It reviews existing literature on policy evaluation and improvement, public value, good practice, political strategy and policy failure and success in order to identify what can be built on and gaps that need to be filled. It conceives policy as having three realms: processes, programs and politics. Policies may succeed and/or fail in each of these and along a spectrum of success, resilient success, conflicted success, precarious success and failure. It concludes by examining contradictions between different forms of success, including what is known colloquially as good politics but bad policy.
收起
摘要 :
Governments and international organizations increasingly pursue the development of integrated policy strategies to govern persistent societal problems that crosscut the boundaries of traditional jurisdictions. In spite of the risi...
展开
Governments and international organizations increasingly pursue the development of integrated policy strategies to govern persistent societal problems that crosscut the boundaries of traditional jurisdictions. In spite of the rising popularity of such integrated strategies, little is known about their effects. Although it is generally assumed that integrated strategies result in better outcomes, the evidence base to support this claim is sparse. This is not to say that no attempts to study the relationship between integrated strategies and policy outcomes have been undertaken at all; this paper presents a research synthesis of the fragmented evidence base. Eligible studies are interpreted and discussed by using a heuristic that distinguishes between programmatic and political success and failure. Apart from synthesizing the impacts that integrated strategies have had, the paper reflects on associated explanatory conditions and methodological approaches that have been used. The review almost exclusively finds reports of failure and constraining conditions. At the same time, methodological approaches are found to be largely unconvincing and considerable research gaps remain. The paper, therefore, ends with a nuanced answer to the question of whether integrated strategies are worth pursuing and sets out various avenues for further research.
收起
摘要 :
In the article, ‘Learning Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Powell (2022) rightly implies that there is a profusion of confusion in the ‘industry’ which has grown up around lesson-learning from the pandemic. His contributio...
展开
In the article, ‘Learning Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Powell (2022) rightly implies that there is a profusion of confusion in the ‘industry’ which has grown up around lesson-learning from the pandemic. His contribution sets out a helpful framework for classifying or making attempts at lesson-learning. He combines the tripartite classification of inadequate approaches to policy-learning and policy transfer developed 30 years ago by Dolowitz and Marsh (‘uninformed-incomplete-inappropriate’), which he inverts to produce a classification of approaches which are informed, complete and appropriate, with the framework of ‘outcome-mechanism-context’ from realistic evaluation. (I use the term realistic rather than realist, as the latter implies an epistemological stance as opposed to what was intended, which is that evaluation takes account of complexity in a realistic manner.) This produces a classification, and possibly an ‘ideal type’, of informed outcomes, complete mechanisms and appropriate context. Powell rightly implies that no overall conclusion is available from the literature reviewed. He does however imply that different approaches may work in different settings. This is true in one sense but misleading in another. This commentary argues that such ‘relativism’ is not only dangerous in practice but mistaken in theory.
收起
摘要 :
Effectiveness has been understood at three levels of analysis in the scholarly study of policy design. The first is at the systemic level indicating what entails effective formulation environments or spaces making them conducive t...
展开
Effectiveness has been understood at three levels of analysis in the scholarly study of policy design. The first is at the systemic level indicating what entails effective formulation environments or spaces making them conducive to successful design. The second reflects more program level concerns, surrounding how policy tool portfolios or mixes can be effectively constructed to address complex policy objectives. The third is a more specific instrument level, focusing on what accounts for and constitutes the effectiveness of particular types of policy tools. Undergirding these three levels of analysis are comparative research concerns that concentrate on the capacities of government and political actors to devise and implement effective designs. This paper presents a systematic review of a largely scattered yet quickly burgeoning body of knowledge in the policy sciences, which broadly asks what capacities engender effectiveness at the multiple levels of policy design? The findings bring to light lessons about design effectiveness at the level of formulation spaces, policy mixes and policy programs. Further, this review points to a future research agenda for design studies that is sensitive to the relative orders of policy capacity, temporality and complementarities between the various dimensions of policy capacity.
收起
摘要 :
Over the past three decades, the Australian Government has led the coordination and implementation of strategic policies that aim to manage natural resources sustainably. Strategic policies typically seek to manage the consumptive...
展开
Over the past three decades, the Australian Government has led the coordination and implementation of strategic policies that aim to manage natural resources sustainably. Strategic policies typically seek to manage the consumptive use of natural resources to improve a range of environmental variables. This article focuses on strategic policies which operate under national arrangements where the Australian Government has limited direct constitutional powers to regulate natural resource use, so resorts to indirect measures and financial incentives. While the extent to which such policies give effect to sustainable development principles is debatable, as is their appropriateness for achieving environmental gains, a number of strategic natural resource management policies have persisted in the national policy domain. These present opportunities for understanding good-practice policy-making for managing natural resources sustainably, and an evaluative framework is presented to this effect. Relevant inter-relationships and complexities for policy design and implementation are revealed with the intent of stimulating further enquiries and analyses of strategic NRM policies in the context of Australia's federal system.
收起
摘要 :
Assessing policy success and failure is a significant challenge. This article seeks to address this by utilizing two case studies of legislation from the United Kingdom Parliament, the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the Academ...
展开
Assessing policy success and failure is a significant challenge. This article seeks to address this by utilizing two case studies of legislation from the United Kingdom Parliament, the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the Academies Act 2010, so as to develop a nuanced understanding of how and in what ways policies have been successful, or otherwise. Drawing on these two case studies, and the work of a variety of authors, the article illustrates the complex nature of the challenge, but suggests that by identifying "targets", "aims" and "processes" it is possible to make reasonable judgements about the relative success of a policy. It concludes that this framework therefore has considerable potential utility.
收起
摘要 :
In Greece, Roma pupils often experience segregation through educational settings, high dropout rates, low performance outcomes, and higher levels of non-completion when compared to their Greek (non-Roma) peers. However, a small mi...
展开
In Greece, Roma pupils often experience segregation through educational settings, high dropout rates, low performance outcomes, and higher levels of non-completion when compared to their Greek (non-Roma) peers. However, a small minority do stay in school and proceed to higher education. This paper draws on a set of in-depth interviews with twenty Greek Roma who entered higher education ‘despite the odds’ and examines what these participants advocate, in order to support the educational progression of the Roma in Greece. The participants outline a series of interventions that they believe can challenge some of the economic, cultural, and associational injustices experienced by the Roma. They call for a need to improve educational provision for the Roma in Greece, in order to enhance their educational success.
收起
摘要 :
In policy analysis, studies on policy termination are rare. This article offers such a study. It presents the story of how, despite attempts by the government to terminate it, Dutch nature policy on ecological corridors continued ...
展开
In policy analysis, studies on policy termination are rare. This article offers such a study. It presents the story of how, despite attempts by the government to terminate it, Dutch nature policy on ecological corridors continued to be implemented by regional governments and in the field. A case analysis is presented that integrates theories and insights not only from the termination literature but also from the literature on implementation. The different factors identified in the literature that enable or constrain implementation and termination have served as a basis for developing possible explanations of the case study. They cannot, however, serve as generic theories with predictive power. Policy termination as well as policy implementation are highly contextual processes and the question which factors will enable or constrain policy termination and implementation can only be answered on a case by case basis.
收起
摘要 :
This article develops a heuristic framework to help analysts navigate an important but under-researched issue: 'policy success for whom?' It identifies different forms of policy success across the policy making, program, political...
展开
This article develops a heuristic framework to help analysts navigate an important but under-researched issue: 'policy success for whom?' It identifies different forms of policy success across the policy making, program, political and temporal realms, to assess how a specific policy can differentially benefit a variety of stakeholders, including governments, lobbyists, not-for-profits, community groups and individuals. The article identifies a three-step process to aid researchers in examining any policy initiative in order to understand the forms and extent of success experienced by any actor/stakeholder. Central to these steps is the examination of plausible assessments and counter assessments to help interrogate issues of 'success for whom.' The article demonstrates a practical application of the framework to a case study focused on the Fixing Houses for Better Health (FHBH) program in Australia-a time-limited Commonwealth government-funded program aimed at improving Indigenous health outcomes by fixing housing.
收起
摘要 :
Governments develop policies that set strategic directions on matters of national significance, referred to in this paper as strategic policies. Australia's Commonwealth Government develops and influences national environmental an...
展开
Governments develop policies that set strategic directions on matters of national significance, referred to in this paper as strategic policies. Australia's Commonwealth Government develops and influences national environmental and sustainability policies despite having limited constitutional powers in the management of natural resources. The Commonwealth Government has, over the past three decades, developed strategic policies aimed at sustainably managing forests, water, soils and agricultural lands. The design and implementation arrangements of environmental policies that have endured is not well studied, and this paper addresses this knowledge gap in the context of a federal system. The National Forest Policy Statement, the National Water Initiative and the Natural Heritage Trust have endured centre-left Labor and centre-right Coalition Governments, and serve as case studies. These policies have required structural adjustments to industries to varying degrees to limit impacts on the environment, leading to contestations about policy objectives. The policy cycle serves as the primary heuristic for analysis and the research finds that policy objectives are constrained by the Commonwealth Government's limited constitutional powers on environmental matters. Its participation in strategic policies is driven through notions of resolving a crisis and the policies endure in a phase of indifference to the original policy objectives.
收起
原文获取