Good Advice: Information and Policy Making in the White House. By Daniel E. Ponder. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000. 244p. $39.95.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 218-219
Author(s):  
Andrew Rudalevige
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Legislative Studies ◽  
White House ◽  
Good Advice ◽  
College Station ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Insight Into

That the amount and nature of the information reaching the president matters for the choices he makes is hardly disputed, but translating this insight into analysis has been slow work. This is true especially in comparison to other subfields (e.g., legislative studies), which in making use of the new institu- tionalism have stressed information by highlighting the roles institutions play in ameliorating the uncertainty rampant in political decision making. Daniel Ponder's new book, then, is particularly welcome. Good Advice asks some critical ques- tions: What did the president know, and how did he come to know it? Equally important, how did that matter?

Struggle for the Turf

1985 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-415
Author(s):  
Henry Trofimenko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The U.S

For anyone whose job is to study the United States, the memoirs of its statesmen provide more than merely entertaining reading. They not only give you a closer insight into the “kitchen” of statesmanship and political decision making; they also provide an opportunity to check the assumptions and paradigms that were constructed earlier to analyze the policy of any particular administration. The memoirs confirm that in spite of hundreds of books and thousands of articles in the U.S. press that discuss specific policies, as well as daily debates in Congress and its committees, press conferences, and official statements, the policy process is not as open as it might seem at first glance. Rather, American foreign policy is made within a very restricted circle of the “initiated”—official and unofficial presidential advisers, including selected members of the Cabinet.

Interoperability Requirements, Recommendations and Standards in e-Participation

2011 ◽  
pp. 95-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Scherer ◽  
Naoum Liotas ◽  
Maria A. Wimmer ◽  
Efthimios Tambouris ◽  
Konstantinos Tarabanis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Modern Information ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Exchange Data

E-participation is understood as the use of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in order to involve all parts of society in political decision-making. The field of e-participation is highly fragmented, mainly due to the large number of different participation areas, stakeholders, levels of engagement, and stages in policy-making involved. A key challenge for overcoming the complexity and current fragmentation of the field is to achieve interoperability between different e-participation systems, i.e. assembling e-participation toolsets dynamically according to respective participation processes and needs, and making use of content from different applications and tools. Unfortunately, e-participation toolboxes that ensure interoperability and make use of standards in order to exchange data with other systems are rare. Interoperation between e-participation systems needs to be investigated first, before it can be ultimately achieved. The chapter addresses these interoperability challenges by (a) contributing to a better understanding of interoperability in regard to e-participation systems, (b) studying the interoperability needs of e-participation, and (c) deriving a set of requirements and guidelines in order to guarantee interoperability among e-participation tools and processes. We present a methodological framework to differentiate interoperability requirements in e-participation solutions in terms of political context, organizational, legal, semantic and technical interoperability.

Testing Whether Adaptation to Use Increases Degrees of Instrumental Knowledge Utilization from Evaluation Reports

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-112
Author(s):  
Søren Bøllingtoft Knudsen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Direct Measurement ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Knowledge Utilization ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Conceptual Work

Instrumental knowledge utilization is the process whereby knowledge influences political decision making. Such processes are complex and, consequently, hard to measure. Nevertheless, knowing what determines degrees of knowledge utilization is a prerequisite for fostering more evidence-based policy making. Numerous factors that contribute to, and co-determine, knowledge utilization are beyond the reach of researchers, but among the factors that researchers can influence, one variable has been presented as being crucial: the degree to which researchers adapt their research to meet the demands of intended knowledge users. In other words, making their research comprehensible, operational, realistic in terms of interventions and implications, and appealing to users. Drawing on the conceptual work of Landry, Amara, and Lamari, this paper develops a new, and more direct, measurement of adaptation. This measurement is subsequently applied in an analysis employing the Degrees of Knowledge Utilization (DoKU) scale and, thus, extending Knudsen’s five-year meta-evaluation related to the Danish pesticide area. Surprisingly, the statistical tests show that degrees of adaptation have no significant influence on degrees of knowledge utilization.

Wegvoeringen en weggevoerden tijdens de meidagen van 1940

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-259
Author(s):  
Etienne Verhoeyen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Large Majority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Belgian Society ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Risky Business ◽  
Political Decision Making

Met dit boek levert Frank Seberechts een nagenoeg volledige studie af van een van de minder fraai kanten van de Belgische samenleving in 1940: de administratieve arrestatie en de wegvoering naar Frankrijk van enkele duizenden personen (de ‘verdachten’), Belgen of in België verblijvende vreemdelingen. De extreem-rechtse en pro-Duitse arrestanten hebben na hun vrijlating dit feit politiek in hun voordeel uitgebaat, waardoor volledig in de schaduw kwam te staan dat de overgrote meerderheid van de weggevoerden joodse mensen waren die in de jaren voor de oorlog naar België waren gevlucht. Dat het beeld van de wegvoeringen niet volledig is, is grotendeels te wijten aan het feit dat de meeste archieven die hierop betrekking hebben tijdens de meidagen van 1940 vernietigd werden. Met name de politieke besluitvorming over de wegvoeringen vertoont nog steeds schemerzones, zodat het vastleggen van verantwoordelijkheden ook vandaag nog een gewaagde onderneming is.________Deportations and the deported during the Maydays in 1940 By means of this book Frank Seberechts provides an almost complete study of one of the less admirable sides of Belgian society in 1940: the administrative arrest and the deportation to France of some thousands of people (‘the suspects’), Belgians or foreigners residing in Belgium. The extreme-right and pro-German detainees politically exploited this fact after they had been freed, but this completely overshadowed the point that the large majority of the deported people were Jews who had fled to Belgium during the years preceding the war. This incomplete portrayal of the deportations is mainly due to the fact that most of the archives relating to the events had been destroyed during the Maydays of 1940. The history of the political decision-making about the deportations in particular still shows many grey areas and it is therefore still a risky business even today to determine which people should be held accountable.

scholarly journals A survey of methods for evaluating mini-publics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeuchi Ayano
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Political Decision Making

AbstractPublic participation has become increasingly necessary to connect a wide range of knowledge and various values to agenda setting, decision-making and policymaking. In this context, deliberative democratic concepts, especially “mini-publics,” are gaining attention. Generally, mini-publics are conducted with randomly selected lay citizens who provide sufficient information to deliberate on issues and form final recommendations. Evaluations are conducted by practitioner researchers and independent researchers, but the results are not standardized. In this study, a systematic review of existing research regarding practices and outcomes of mini-publics was conducted. To analyze 29 papers, the evaluation methodologies were divided into 4 categories of a matrix between the evaluator and evaluated data. The evaluated cases mainly focused on the following two points: (1) how to maintain deliberation quality, and (2) the feasibility of mini-publics. To create a new path to the political decision-making process through mini-publics, it must be demonstrated that mini-publics can contribute to the decision-making process and good-quality deliberations are of concern to policy-makers and experts. Mini-publics are feasible if they can contribute to the political decision-making process and practitioners can evaluate and understand the advantages of mini-publics for each case. For future research, it is important to combine practical case studies and academic research, because few studies have been evaluated by independent researchers.

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