Policy, Politics and Political Science

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael M. Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Politiques Publiques ◽  
Political Feasibility ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
Cognitive Deficiencies ◽  
Mesures Incitatives

Abstract.Political scientists are increasingly studying public policy in interdisciplinary environments where they are challenged by the political and normative agenda of other disciplines. Political science has unique perspectives to offer, including a stress on the political feasibility of policy in an environment of power differentials. Our contributions should be informed by the insights of cognitive psychology and we should focus on improving governance, in particular the competence and integrity of decision makers. The discipline's stress on legitimacy and acceptability provides a normative anchor, but we should not over invest in the idea that incentives will achieve normative goals. Creating decision situations that overcome cognitive deficiencies is ultimately the most important strategy.Résumé.Les politologues étudient les politiques publiques dans des contextes de plus en plus interdisciplinaires, où ils sont remis en question par les préoccupations politique et normatives d'autres disciplines. La science politique a des perspectives uniques à offrir, y compris un accent sur la faisabilité politique des politiques publiques dans un contexte de relations de pouvoir asymétriques. Nos contributions doivent être informées par les idées associées à la psychologie cognitive et nous devrions nous concentrer sur l'amélioration de la gouvernance, et notamment la compétence et l'intégrité des décideurs. L'accent de notre discipline sur la légitimité et l'acceptabilité fournit un point d'ancrage normatif, mais il ne faut pas trop investir dans l'idée que des mesures incitatives permettront nécessairement d'atteindre des objectifs normatifs. Créer des situations de décision qui surmontent les lacunes cognitives des acteurs est finalement la stratégie la plus importante à adopter.

Learning in Political Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thenia Vagionaki ◽  
Philipp Trein
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Learning Research ◽  
Political Realities

This article reviews how scholars use learning as an analytical concept across the political science and public policy literature. Three questions guide our discussion: (1) What do political actors in policy learn about (e.g. ideas or policy instruments)? (2) Who learns from whom and for what reason? And finally, (3) How does learning happen against the background of organizational and political realities? Our perspective offers an original contribution by synthesizing key concepts and empirical challenges of the learning research.

From Scientific Socialism to Political Science?

1994 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 63-66
Author(s):  
David Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Scientific Socialism

Ira Katznelson has proposed that we labor historians can recover our lost élan by engaging the agenda of liberalism. Although he acknowledges that today's writings on working-class history are variegated and richly rewarding, he regrets that they have become uncoupled from controversies over public policy and social change and run the risk of becoming little more than “sentimental reminders of times lost and aspirations disappointed.”To revitalize our sense of engagement he recommends that we call a halt to “the continuing flight within labor history from institutional-political analysis.” We should focus our attention on historical relationships between the state and civil society, and we should inform our analyses with the political theory that historically has assumed its shape around those relationships: liberalism.

The argumentative turn in public policy inquiry: deliberative policy analysis for usable advice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
Usable Knowledge ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Policy Inquiry ◽  
Policy Argumentation

The argumentation turn in policy analysis emerged in the late 1980s as a response to questions concerning social relevance and usable knowledge. Toward this end, it focused on an apparent gap between policy inquiry and real-world policymaking. Basic to the approach was a challenge to the ‘value free’ positivist orientation that has shaped the field of policy analysis, underscoring in particular the limits of the technocratic practices to which it gave rise. After tracing the political and academic debates that surrounded the uses of policy analysis, the chapter presents the alternative argumentative orientation and its post-positivist methodological perspective. The discussion emphasizes its language-based foundations and outlines the logic of a deliberative-analytic framework for the assessment of policy argumentation. It illustrates the ways that policy analysis needs to integrate empirical and normative inquiry. Policy findings and practical policy argumentation are interpreted by decision-makers and citizens in terms of their relations to the larger framework of norms and values that imbue them with social and political meanings. Moving beyond a narrow empirical assignment, the argumentative turn seeks to assist these actors by also drawing out these normative connections. It is, as such, an effort to make good on Harold Lasswell's call for a 'policy science' of democracy.

Policy Analysis: A Note of Disbelief

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Minns
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Public Authority ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Studies

In his review article on policy analysis [Hugh Heclo, ‘Policy Analysis’, this Journal, II (1972), 83–108], Heclo describes public policy as ‘necessarily at the heart of the political scientist’s concern’. But because public policy ‘is concerned with metachoices’ – ‘choices as to how others shall make choices in whatever sphere public authority is intervening’ – ‘the study of policy therefore necessarily straddles a number of previously distinct academic disciplines’.‘However, I wonder to what extent political scientists are willing to take part in a ‘coherent “interdiscipline” of policy studies’. Heclo quotes Vernon Van Dyke’s warning that the prospect of this for political scientists is ‘appalling’.2 If we examine firstly what political science has to offer in policy analysis and secondly what policy analysis itself has to offer, I feel that Van Dyke will suddenly find himself with massive support.

Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War

1987 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack S. Levy
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
Political Security ◽  
The Military

The preventive motivation for war arises from political leaders' perceptions that their states' military power and potential are declining relative to those of a rising adversary, and from their fear of the consequences of that decline. It is conceptualized as an intervening variable between changing power differentials and the outbreak of war, and is distinguished from preemption and other sources of better-now-than-later logic. The strength of the preventive motivation is hypothesized to be a function of a state's expectations regarding its rate of military decline, the margin of its inferiority in the future, the probability of a future war, and the probability of a victorious war now with acceptable costs. It is also affected by the risk orientation of decision makers; the influence of the military in the political process; and domestic political factors that undermine the political security of decision makers as well as the military power and potential of the state.

Public policy education in Turkey

2018 ◽  
pp. 271-288
Author(s):  
Mete Yıldız ◽  
Cenay Babaoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current State ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Education In Turkey ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines the development and current state of public policy education in Turkey, based on the teaching of the subject in political science and public administration departments. The chapter analyses and explains the conditions under which public policy classes - among other relevant developments - have emerged and evolved over time, and the motivations of the faculty to introduce, develop and maintain public policy courses. To this end, studies on the teaching of public policy in the political science and public administration departments in Turkish universities at undergraduate and graduate levels are reviewed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the current and future challenges facing public policy education in Turkey, and recommendations for addressing these challenges.

scholarly journals Political institutionalization of conflicts: the possibilities of authoritarian and hybrid models

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-377
Author(s):  
Akexey I. Kolba ◽  
Zalina T. Chadayeva
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Hybrid Model ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
The Stability

The article examines the problems of political institutionalization of conflicts based on the use of illiberal approaches (authoritarian and hybrid). The study is based on the concept of «illiberal peacebuilding», which is actively developed in political science and is currently used to analyze the processes of conflict resolution at the national and subnational levels. The study made it possible to determine the possibilities and limitations of these models, the specifics of the methods used and the achieved results of institutionalization. The author highlights the political and regime characteristics of the political institutionalization of conflicts, which directly depend on the prospects for using a particular model. In particular, it has been established that a set of rules and norms for the interaction of key policy actors is one of the foundations of a political regime. At the same time, conflicts are considered as one of the important factors in their change. The dependence of the direction of political institutionalization of conflicts (using their potential, limiting conflicts, etc.) on the perception of the conflicts themselves in the context of the stability of the political system has been substantiated. The liberal model assumes extensive use of the potential of institutions operating in the field of public policy. The authoritarian model is focused on suppressing open manifestations of conflict, while the hybrid model is focused on combining the norms and practices inherent in the liberal and authoritarian models.

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