Teaching Biology, Policy Analysis, and Politics in a Biotechnology Policy Course

1993 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-107
Author(s):  
David J. Webber

This Political Science course, titled “Policy Issues Surrounding Biotechnology,” set out to describe, explain, and evaluate public policies that regulate and support applications of biotechnology in agriculture and medicine. Only a few students had a basic familiarity with biotechnology and none had a strong science background. Most of the 25 political science and journalism students took the junior-senior level course not because of an interest in biotechnology but because they wanted to study a specific policy issue in some depth. The students jointly prepared a 56-page report and presented it to a panel of Missouri state legislators in a mock legislative hearing in April, 1991.

Author(s):  
Patrick Hassenteufel ◽  
Patrick Le Galès

This chapter provides an analysis of the different contributions of French Universities (and other academic institutions, especially the “Instituts d’Études Politiques”) to the teaching of policy analysis, to the training of policy analysis specialists, to research in policy analysis, and to policy advice. It focuses on two closely related academic disciplines in France: political science and sociology. The chapter starts by questioning the extent to which and in which ways policy analysis as a sub-discipline is integrated into the teaching of political science and sociology. The focus then turns to the development of a specialized policy analysis master in political science and sociology, which can be related to broader evolutions, including transformations in the access to top administrative positions, the development of local public policies in France, and the professionalization of French Universities. The aim here is to shed light on the kind of knowledge and skills taught and on the positions students find after leaving universities and Sciences Po. By studying the involvement of political scientists and sociologists in public commissions and specific policy expertise structures outside the academic world, it also explores the relationships between policy research and policy advice.


2016 ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Mogilat ◽  
Y. Achkasov ◽  
A. Egorov ◽  
A. Klimovets ◽  
S. Donets

The article discusses approaches and instruments used in the Bank of Russia public analytical materials for analysis and forecast of macroeconomic conditions and monetary indicators. The authors focus on indicators of business cycle and monetary conditions, as crucial for monetary policy analysis. The attention is paid to issues most frequently discussed in scientific and expert literature, specifically, to new indicators and models presented in the Bank of Russia Monetary Policy Reports in 2015.


Author(s):  
Johannes Lindvall

This chapter introduces the problem of “reform capacity” (the ability of political decision-makers to adopt and implement policy changes that benefit society as a whole, by adjusting public policies to changing economic, social, and political circumstances). The chapter also reviews the long-standing discussion in political science about the relationship between political institutions and effective government. Furthermore, the chapter explains why the possibility of compensation matters greatly for the politics of reform; provides a precise definition of the concept of reform capacity; describes the book's general approach to this problem; and discusses the ethics of compensating losers from reform; and presents the book's methodological approach.


1981 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
George J. Graham

The purpose of this course is to introduce a new framework linking the humanities to public policy analysis as pursued in the government and the academy. Current efforts to link the particular contributions from the humanities to problems of public policy choice are often narrow either in terms of their perspective on the humanities or in terms of their selection of the possible means of influencing policy choice. Sometimes a single text from one of the humanities disciplines is selected to apply to a particular issue. At other times, arguments about the ethical dimensions of a single policy issue often are pursued with a single — or sometimes, no — point of access to the policy process in mind.


1970 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 878
Author(s):  
Sami Hajjar ◽  
Ira Sharkansky

This volume constitutes the Irish element in the ever-expanding International Library of Policy Analysis series, edited by Michael Howlett and Iris Geva-May and published by Policy Press. It provides unique insights into the state of policy analysis in Ireland. It draws together contributions from some of the leading policy analysis experts, both academics and practitioners, to provide a multidimensional set of perspectives on how policy analysis has developed to its current state, a century after the country gained independence. The chapters examine the range of institutions and actors involved in policy analysis from across the government, the private sector and broader civil society. The intention is not to critique specific policy outcomes or policy developments, rather the chapters focus on the organizational processes, institutions and locations that contribute to the construction and supply of policy ideas as well as methods of policy analysis and evaluation. The chapters examine the policy capabilities of the institutions wherein policy development and evaluation are conducted. Our aim is to ensure that this volume constitutes a window into the research frontier of Irish policy analysis.


Author(s):  
John S. Lapinski

This chapter introduces a new measure of legislative accomplishment. To understand lawmaking requires that one move beyond studying political behavior in Congress alone and beyond a complete empirical reliance on roll call votes. Moreover, legislative behavior and legislative outputs must be studied in tandem to gain a proper understanding of the lawmaking process in the United States. Although the idea of studying important lawmaking across time is not controversial, constructing an appropriate measure is not a trivial exercise. The chapter constructs a comprehensive lawmaking data set that provides measures of legislative accomplishment at the aggregate level as well as by specific policy issue areas for a 118-year period. It also explains the construction of Congress-by-Congress measures of legislative accomplishment, including measures broken down by the policy-coding schema.


Author(s):  
John S. Lapinski

This chapter seeks to introduce a substance-oriented research program based on policy issues for studying Congress from multiple vantage points. In doing so, it makes serious progress on systematically understanding Theodore Lowi's provocative claim that “policy determines politics,” which, while important, has never been satisfactorily understood, either empirically or theoretically. In advancing a substance-oriented approach to studying policymaking and lawmaking in Congress, the chapter sheds light on several important new tools and ideas to use in determining how policy issue substance matters for lawmaking. These include new data, such as an immense data set on U.S. lawmaking between 1877 to 1994; new and massive measures of political preferences broken down by policy issue areas for U.S. lawmakers spanning the period 1877 to 2010; and fresh approaches to analyzing these new data sets.


This chapter introduces the complex history of the relationships among faith, politics and culture in state legislatures. Each of these concepts is explored by organizing them into three themes: separation, demography and polarization. The direction and content of public policies across the United State are influenced by these elements contributing to either the support or opposition to social change. State legislators are on the front line of these ideological divides. These variations by region contribute to the increase in single party control and have generated pronounced policy differences.


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