Making Policies with Data: The Legacy of the PoliVisu Project

AbstractThe PoliVisu project has the goal to investigate the potential of data use and visualisation in urban policy making. The project has explored how data supported policy making is adopted by public administrations and what we can learn from their experience. This is done by enrolling pilot cases with different and specific policy problems. From the experience of the PoliVisu pilots the influence and added value of data in the policy making process is assessed. Considering the recent “shake” in data production and use, PoliVisu has adopted four driving questions, as follow: what are the new roles data can play in the policy making process?, What is the added value of data for policy making? How can innovative visualisations contribute to improve the use of data in policy making processes? To what extent can an increased adoption of data affect the policy making process? How is the data shake affecting the involvement of non-institutional actors in the policy making process? This paper explores these questions, by presenting the experiences and the lessons learnt, also focussing on specific pilots’ initiatives and results.

Download Full-text

Show Me the Numbers: Bureaucratic Use of Data in the Policy Making Process

Administration & Society ◽

10.1177/00953997211069924 ◽

2022 ◽

pp. 009539972110699

Author(s):

Tracey Bark

Keyword(s):

Policy Making ◽

Use Of Data ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

Legislative Agendas ◽

The Impact

Bureaucracies often provide information to legislatures in an effort to influence the agenda. This paper assesses whether data affects this influence, arguing quantitative support can increase the likelihood of legislative discussion and passage of bills related to a given topic. I also assess the impact of centralization on an agency’s ability to provide information and shape legislative agendas. I find including data in bureaucratic reports can significantly increase an agency’s influence on the legislature, but this effect is only present in a centralized setting. These results suggest centralized agencies are better equipped to marshal quantitative support for arguments to legislatures.

Download Full-text

Public consultation and participation in Belgium: directly engaging citizens beyond the ballot box?

Policy Analysis in Belgium ◽

10.1332/policypress/9781447317258.003.0011 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jan Van Damme ◽

Vincent Jacquet ◽

Nathalie Schiffino ◽

Min Reuchamps

Keyword(s):

Policy Analysis ◽

Deliberative Democracy ◽

Policy Making ◽

Policy Support ◽

Public Consultation ◽

Specific Policy ◽

Policy Problems ◽

Different Levels

In Belgium, as in many other countries, there is a growth of diverse types of public inquiries and public consultation arrangements in policy-making. The rationales behind these consultation processes differ as to perspectives on democracy. Some inquiries and consultations are conceived from an instrumental perspective from which it is believed that engaging citizens in policy analysis has something tangible to contribute, by for instance enriching knowledge of specific policy problems, or by fostering policy support necessary for implementing solutions. From a more substantive view on democracy, citizens’ inquiries are rooted in participative and deliberative democracy, and are expected to contribute to legitimacy. In this chapter, the authors analyze the variety of public inquiries and consultation arrangements in Belgium at different levels of government, with a view to clarifying the public’s role in policy making and policy analysis beyond the ballot box.

Download Full-text

Who is in charge here? Legislators, bureaucrats and the policy making process

Party Politics ◽

10.1177/1354068815597896 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 342-363

Author(s):

Viktoryia Schnose

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Comparative Politics ◽

Policy Making ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Theoretical Argument ◽

Specific Policy ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

Institutional Contexts ◽

Cross National ◽

Policy Stability

Scholars in comparative politics often assume that political parties are the primary instruments for translating citizens’ preferences into specific policy outcomes. However, the crucial but often forgotten link between preferences, parties, and outcomes is the bureaucracy. Are bureaucrats able to affect policy outside of parties’ control? And, if so, how does this bureaucratic policy drift differ across institutional contexts? I argue that institutions that regulate the nomination process by which parties in government select bureaucrats (meritocratic versus partisan recruitment) determine the levels of bureaucratic influence on the policy making process, specifically in terms of policy change. I test my theoretical argument using two large cross-national datasets on budget allocations and policy stability. I find that bureaucratic professionalism partially explains changes in allocation to the “ideological” budgetary categories and is positively correlated with policy stability around the world.

Download Full-text

What about Black Women?

10.18574/nyu/9781479807277.003.0010 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 245-269

Author(s):

Julia S. Jordan-Zachery

Keyword(s):

Black Women ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Policy Making ◽

Urban Policy ◽

Black Politics ◽

President Obama ◽

Obama Administration ◽

Black Womanhood ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

The Relationship

Using the Urban and Economic Mobility initiative undertaken by President Obama, I explore how and if race-gender is recognized in the framing of urban policy during the Obama administration. There is a distinctive race-gender dimension to urban policy. In urban areas, data suggests that poverty is both raced and gendered. The purpose of this chapter is to engage in an analysis of the relationship between race-gender and space in relation to urban policy-making. This analysis specifically looks at how Black women are treated in the urban policy-making process of the Obama administration. However, it also serves as an analysis into how Black women are understood in Black politics more specifically as it grapples with the larger question of how ideologies of gender, which often engage a rather masculinist approach, influence the quest for freedom and equality. An analysis of the Obama administration is somewhat of a proxy for an analysis of how gender, particularly Black womanhood, is treated in Black politics. As I argue, the ideologies of gender that influence urban policy, resulting in the invisibility of Black womanhood, are also prevalent in Black politics. What should Black politics look like beyond Obama?

Download Full-text

Joan Higgins, Nicholas Deakin, John Edwards and Malcolm Wicks, Government and Urban Policy: Inside the Policy Making Process, Blackwell, Oxford, 1983. vii + 215 pp. £15.00, paper £5.95.

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279400023047 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 126-127

Author(s):

Michael Hill

Keyword(s):

Policy Making ◽

Urban Policy ◽

Policy Making Process

Download Full-text

The role of institutional actors and their interactions in the land use policy making process in Ethiopia

Journal of Environmental Management ◽

10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.02.059 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 237 ◽

pp. 235-246 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Adenew Taffa Ariti ◽

Jasper van Vliet ◽

Peter H. Verburg

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Policy Making ◽

Land Use Policy ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

Institutional Actors

Download Full-text

Participação cidadã e reconfigurações nas políticas urbanas nos anos 90

Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais ◽

10.22296/2317-1529.2004v6n2p35 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 35 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Flávia De Paula Duque Brasil

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Local Governments ◽

Policy Making ◽

Urban Policy ◽

Local Level ◽

Urban Policies ◽

Municipal Council ◽

Collective Actors ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

Urban Planning And Management

O artigo aborda as instâncias de participação nas políticas urbanas que se multiplicam no cenário contemporâneo, a partir do trânsito de projetos societários endereçados à democratização do planejamento e da gestão das cidades. Sustenta-se que, a despeito da heterogeneidade das experiências, dos seus limites, dificuldades e contradições (inerentes ao processo de reconstrução das relações entre Estado e sociedade no Brasil), os canais de participação têm configurado trilhas alternativas e novas linhagens de políticas locais. No primeiro momento discutem-se os conceitos de público e participação cidadã, mapeando possibilidades de influência dos atores societários na formação da agenda e produção das políticas urbanas. No momento seguinte, as instâncias de participação são objeto de exame, privilegiando-se os Conselhos Municipais de Política Urbana, suas características, papéis, potenciais e alcances. Finalmente, detém-se ilustrativamente no Conselho Municipal de Política Urbana e na Conferência Municipal de Política Urbana de Belo Horizonte.Palavras-chave: participação cidadã; política urbana; conselhos municipais. Abstract: This article addresses citizens participation in urban policies, focusing on participatory arrangements implemented by local governments since the late eighties in Brazilian context. These experiences could be regarded as expressions of collective actors democratizing projects referred to urban planning and management. This paper argues that, despite the experiences diversity, their limits, difficulties and contradictions, participation have produced alternative policies models. First, the text approaches public space and citizens participation concepts and stresses civil society possibilities to influence agenda-setting and policy-making process. Next, local-level participatory arrangements are examined, emphasizing urban policy municipal councils. Their character, roles, potentials and limits are pointed out. Last, Belo Horizonte’s Urban Policy Municipal Council and the Urban Policy Municipal Conference are analyzed as an illustrative case.Keywords: citizens participation; urban policies; municipal councils.

Download Full-text

Positive Reintegration as a Way of Small and Medium-Sized Business Development

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2012-6-83-88 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 83-88

Author(s):

A. Zolotov ◽

M. Mukhanov

Keyword(s):

Policy Implementation ◽

Policy Making ◽

Economic Reforms ◽

Alternative Possibility ◽

New Approach ◽

Compensation Mechanisms ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

Monitoring And Enforcement ◽

The Subject ◽

Modernization Process

А new approach to policy-making in the field of economic reforms in modernizing countries (on the sample of SME promotion) is the subject of this article. Based on summarizing the ten-year experience of de-bureaucratization policy implementation to reduce the administrative pressure on SME, the conclusion of its insufficient efficiency and sustainability is made. The alternative possibility is the positive reintegration approach, which provides multiparty policy-making process, special compensation mechanisms for the losing sides, monitoring and enforcement operations. In conclusion matching between positive reintegration principles and socio-cultural factors inherent in modernization process is provided.

Download Full-text