Failing to Learn

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Stark
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Public Inquiry ◽  
Central Argument

This chapter provides the reader with an introduction to the book’s fundamentals. It begins with a challenge to the conventional view that public inquiries are ineffective, which stresses that inquiry scholarship has simply not been rigorous enough to justify that position. The book’s response to that lack of rigour, in the form of its research design and theoretical framework, is then set out and justified. Thereafter three outputs are summarized as the book’s main contributions. First, an updated conceptual account of what the public inquiry is in relation to contemporary public policy and governance. Second, a central argument that inquiries produce certain types of policy learning that reduce our vulnerability to future crises. Finally, the identification of a series of factors that influence inquiry success and failure.

Public Inquiries, Policy Learning, and the Threat of Future Crises

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Stark
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Public Inquiry

This book is animated by a simple but very important question. Can post-crisis inquiries deliver effective lesson-learning which will reduce our vulnerability to future threats? Conventional wisdom suggests that the answer to this question should be an emphatic no. Inquiries are regularly vilified as costly wastes of time that illuminate very little and change even less. This book, however, draws upon evidence from an international comparison of post-crisis inquiries in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the post-crisis inquiry is an effective means of learning from disaster and that they consistently encourage policy reforms that enhance our resilience to future threats. This evidence is accompanied by a re-booted conceptualization of the public inquiry, which better recognizes the complexity of the modern state, the challenges of policy learning within it, and contemporary forms of public policy scholarship.

scholarly journals Policy learning and the public inquiry

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Stark
Keyword(s):  
Policy Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Inquiry

Reconsidering policy – our agenda revisited

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-196
Author(s):  
Kate Crowley ◽  
Jenny Stewart ◽  
Adrian Kay ◽  
Brian W. Head
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Policy Perspective ◽  
The Public ◽  
Complex Problems

In this chapter, we review our findings, relating each chapter’s conclusions to the over-arching re-consideration agenda. Policy learning and evaluation, and the continuing importance to policy analysis of policy change, are emphasised. We conclude that, appropriately refreshed, the public policy perspective remains critical to understanding and resolving complex problems in governing.

Reconsidering Policy Design: Policies and Publics

1991 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. May
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Implementation Challenges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Modes Of Thought

ABSTRACTOne of the emerging areas in the public policy literature concerns new modes of thought about the construction and analysis of public policy. This article extends notions about politics within the ‘policy design’ literature by considering the implications of different political environments for policy design and implementation. Two different political environments – policies with and without publics – that form ends of a continuum of policy publics are discussed. A contrast is drawn between these two polar political environments with respect to differing policy design and implementation challenges, as well as with respect to differing opportunities for policy learning.

Beyond Necessity-Driven Versus Opportunity-Driven Entrepreneurship

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
The Public ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Clear Shift

To evaluate critically the conventional view that entrepreneurs are either necessity-driven or opportunity-driven, empirical data are reported from England, Ukraine and Russia on the motives of a specific group of entrepreneurs – those operating wholly or partially in the informal economy. The paper finds that, for the vast majority, both necessity and opportunity drivers are involved in their decision to start up enterprises, along with a clear shift from necessity-oriented to opportunity-oriented motivations as their ventures become more established. The paper concludes with a discussion of the public policy implications of these findings.

Framework for Country-Level Sustainable Transportation Policy Learning using Public Support as a Measure of Cultural Distance

2020 ◽  
pp. 036119812097052
Author(s):  
Xuenan Ni ◽  
Joanna Moody ◽  
Jinhua Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Transportation Policy ◽  
Sustainable Transportation ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Transportation Policies

As the world shapes a global agenda to mitigate climate change, national governments are looking to define sustainable development strategies for the transportation sector. In this international landscape, countries will look to learn from one another, but identifying peer countries for this learning can prove a challenge. In this study, we measure public support for transportation policies and use this as a measure of cultural distance to identify peer countries. We modeled public support for 11 transportation policies in an international sample of 41,932 individuals in 51 countries or regions. Using a model that controls for individual effects, we measure pure country-level differences in public policy support. Measuring public support for different transportation policies can help policymakers understand how the public evaluates and envisions the role of government in shaping the current as well as future transportation system, and to anticipate difficulties of implementing certain types of policy because of public resistance. In general, we find the highest public support for a given policy appears in countries that have not yet seen significant investment in the target infrastructure or service. We show that considering public support for transportation policies gives a different perspective than traditional indicators of economic development or level of motorization, helping policymakers understand what the public wants and how they might build support for new transportation policies. Finally, we present a clustering framework that goes beyond development status and geographical adjacency to help identify peer countries for policy learning using public policy support as a measure of cultural distance.

Lesson-Learning and Resilience to Future Crises

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Stark
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Learning ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Double Loop Learning ◽  
Public Inquiry ◽  
Case Study Data

This chapter begins the work of reporting the book’s main findings. It analyses key themes from the case study data that relate to the types of policy learning that each inquiry produced. The main argument of the book—that these inquiries produced lessons that enhanced resilience to future threats—emerges from this data. However, underneath this broad argument, two types of policy learning are emphasized as important in terms of the value of the public inquiry. The first is ‘instrumental learning’, which produces policy tools, and the second is ‘cognitive organizational learning’, which enhances policy coordination. These positive outcomes are contrasted against the types of learning that these inquiries struggled to produce, which included social and double loop learning. The chapter concludes with reflections on the extent to which the data allows these arguments to be generalized.

Priming the Analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Stark
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Inquiry ◽  
Key Features

This chapter provides a primer that introduces the reader to the key features of each of the book’s four case studies. Each case is outlined in terms of: the nature of the crisis that created a lesson-learning episode in the first instance; the format and focus of the public inquiry; the inquiry’s most important recommendations; and the nature of the reform agenda that followed. The chapter concludes with a brief reiteration of the book’s theoretical framework and how it will be applied in the analysis that follows in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Types of Policy Learning and the Inquiry Process

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Stark
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Inquiry Learning ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inquiry Process ◽  
Public Inquiry ◽  
Complex Sequences

This chapter begins the theoretical work of the book through an exploration of the types of policy learning that we might see emerging from a public inquiry and the nature of the inquiry learning process. The purpose of this discussion is to reconceptualize the public inquiry in ways which better reflect its modern character and, in doing so, to build an organizing framework for the subsequent analysis of the book’s case studies. The chapter first presents a typology of policy learning that is used to show that inquiries have the potential to produce a range of learning outcomes that have not been properly considered before. It then discusses the learning process, making the case that we need to think about multiple, complex sequences of learning if we are to properly understand and evaluate inquiries.

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