TOWARD AN ANALYTICAL CRIMINOLOGY: THE MICRO-MACRO PROBLEM, CAUSAL MECHANISMS, AND PUBLIC POLICY

AbstractThis article argues that Simeon's insistence on the value of explicit comparison within individual studies of public policy needs to remain central even in historical institutionalist approaches which “take time seriously” and focus on causal mechanisms—a methodological injunction sometimes seen to augur in favour of single-case and single-outcome studies. However, if Simeon's suggested approach is to reflect the major advances that have occurred since he wrote, it will require more fully and more explicitly combining the power of the comparative method with the powerful insights generated by a logic of intertemporal causal mechanisms unfolding over time.

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Introduction

Immiserizing Growth ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198832317.003.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 3-20

Author(s):

Paul Shaffer ◽

Ravi Kanbur ◽

Richard Sandbrook

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Political Economy ◽

Time Frame ◽

Poverty Dynamics ◽

Chronic Poverty ◽

Causal Mechanisms ◽

Policy Measures ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship ◽

Level Of Analysis

This chapter provides context for the volume chapters. It addresses definitional and conceptual matters concerning growth, poverty, and the time frame and level of analysis. The distinction between ‘failed inclusion’ and ‘active exclusion’ is then presented to distinguish some of the underlying causal mechanisms. Next, the centrality of political economy and politics to the analysis of immiserizing growth (IG) is explained on the grounds that many of the causal mechanisms leading to IG are public policy measures or stand to be affected by them. The relationship of IG to poverty dynamics is then explored to determine if immiserizing growth is characterized by distinct types of transitory or chronic poverty.

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Advancing Evaluation Practice With Serious Games

American Journal of Evaluation ◽

10.1177/1098214020905897 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 339-366 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Karol Olejniczak ◽

Kathryn E. Newcomer ◽

Sebastiaan A. Meijer

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Serious Games ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Evaluation Practice ◽

Causal Mechanisms ◽

Crash Testing

Evaluation professionals need to be nimble and innovative in their approaches in order to be relevant and provide useful evidence to decision-makers, stakeholders, and society in the crowded public policy landscape. In this article, we offer serious games as a method that can be employed by evaluators to address three persisting challenges in current evaluation practice: inclusion of stakeholders, understanding of causal mechanisms, and utilization of evaluation findings. We provide a framework that distinguishes among games along two crucial aspects of evaluation inquiry - its function and the nature of the evaluand. We offer examples of successfully implemented games in each set of the four arenas we delineate: teaching knowables, testing retention, crash-testing mechanisms, and exploring systems. We explain how games can be employed to promote learning about and among stakeholders, and to collect valuable intelligence about the operations of programs and policies.

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NUDGE VERSUS BOOST: A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A NORMATIVE DIFFERENCE

Economics and Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0266267118000196 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 35 (02) ◽

pp. 195-222 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Andrew Sims ◽

Thomas Michael Müller

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Policy Intervention ◽

Causal Mechanisms ◽

Normative Issues ◽

The Right

Abstract:Behavioural public policy (BPP) has come under fire by critics who claim that it is illiberal. Some authors recently suggest that there is a type of BPP – boosting – that is not as vulnerable to this normative critique. Our paper challenges this claim: there's no non-circular way to draw the distinction between nudge and boost that would make the normative difference required to infer the permissibility of a policy intervention from its type-membership. We consider two strategies: paradigmatic examples and causal mechanisms. We conclude by sketching some suggestions about the right way to approach the normative issues.

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Nudge plus: incorporating reflection into behavioral public policy

Behavioural Public Policy ◽

10.1017/bpp.2021.6 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Sanchayan Banerjee ◽

Peter John

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Recent Work ◽

Dual Processes ◽

Dual Systems ◽

Seminal Work ◽

Causal Mechanisms ◽

Classic Literature

Abstract Nudge plus is a modification of the toolkit of behavioral public policy. It incorporates an element of reflection – the plus – into the delivery of a nudge, either blended in or made proximate. Nudge plus builds on recent work combining heuristics and deliberation. It may be used to design prosocial interventions that help preserve the autonomy of the agent. The argument turns on seminal work on dual systems, which presents a subtler relationship between fast and slow thinking than commonly assumed in the classic literature in behavioral public policy. We review classic and recent work on dual processes to show that a hybrid is more plausible than the default-interventionist or parallel-competitive framework. We define nudge plus, set out what reflection could entail, provide examples, outline causal mechanisms, and draw testable implications.

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