Policy formulation redesigned: A new understanding of policy design and its implications for instruction

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-232
Author(s):  
Arnošt Veselý

Despite the fact that our knowledge on how policies are designed has substantially improved during the last two decades, prescriptive literature on policy formulation remains largely disconnected from these new findings. The article examines five major assumptions upon which policy formulation is still predominantly based: (a) there is one way policies are and should be formulated; (b) effective formulation of policies is more about the right application of methods than of the substance of a policy domain; (c) policy formulation is about choosing from mutually exclusive alternatives; (d) problem definition has priority over problem solution; (e) there is a clear distinction between policy formulation, adoption and implementation. This article shows why these assumptions are outdated and that they lead to many practical problems in the teaching of policy analysis. It is argued that policy formulation guidelines and training in policy formulation should be based on current policy design scholarship that stresses, for instance, the importance of local knowledge, deep understanding of actors’ perspectives and the need to formulate policy packages. The article concludes with preliminary recommendations on how to move forward, illustrated with concrete examples from practice.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6763
Author(s):  
Yasuhiko Hotta ◽  
Tomohiro Tasaki ◽  
Ryu Koide

Since 2015, the international policy community has started to agree on international agreements with ambitious middle-term and long-term goals, highly relevant to sustainable consumption and production (SCP) such as those seen in the Paris Agreement, SDGs, and the plastic-related agreements at the G7 and G20 processes. Along with this trend, there has been growing attention given to socio-technical system change or “transition”. Policy debate is putting more focus on the need to change consumption and production patterns and deal with various ecological consequences within planetary boundaries such as decarbonization, absolute reduction in material throughput, or creation of a plastic-free society. This paper examines the expansion of the policy domain of SCP in three phases; SCP focusing on pollution control and cleaner production (SCP 1.0), SCP from the perspective of product lifecycle (SCP 2.0), and SCP focusing on systematic changes in socio-technical systems driving consumption and production (SCP 3.0). The potential impact of a wider SCP policy domain can be comparable to the historical shift in discourse related to ecological modernization theory from pollution prevention to efficiency. This emerging trend corresponds to the need for a fresh approach to policy design which can facilitate transition to sustainability.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 785-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Anne Roumell ◽  
Florin D. Salajan ◽  
Corina Todoran

In the United States, adult and workforce education (AE) seems to be located, simultaneously, both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Ongoing shifts in national economic demands and changes in requirements for training and education have brought learning in the adult years into the federal public policy arena. Sometimes referred to as lifelong learning, AE has proven to be a somewhat vague concept as a basis for federal policy formulation, but its existence signals an important federal locus of responsibility for learning in adulthood. This historical examination of the AE policy domain offers a review of the formulation, and more specifically how AE policy has been framed, where AE policy originated, and its progression over time. Primary U.S. legislative documents, federal agency reports, and federal white papers spanning the years 1862 to 2014 were reviewed to present a survey of the AE policy area.


Author(s):  
Amra Šačić Beća

Medicinal sulfuric springs at present-day Ilidža helped to create Roman thermae that gave the Roman municipium the name Aquae. Systematic archaeological examinations conducted by Carl Patch and Esad Pašalić suggest that this Roman  settlement in Ilidža had existed without interruptions from the 1st  to the 4th  century. Based on the comparison of literary sources and the results of archaeologic research and epigraphic inscriptions, this paper will determine the genesis of administrative development of this Roman administrative unit whose administration included the upper course of the Bosna river and the Sarajevo area. This is an attempt at answering the following question: «Can we speak of Aquae in the context of Roman  citizens at all?” Another important question is what methodology should we use to  treat the expression res publica Aquae S(...?) that was carved on the base of Diocletian’s statue discovered in Ilidža. BiH scholarship has so far based its understanding  of this term on Mócsy’s definition of the noun phrase res publica in the context  of “pseudo-municipal” status. The results of analysis of inscriptions found on epigraphic monuments that will be presented in this paper suggest that one should  step away from understanding the phrase res publica as an administrative category. Finally, we should point out that the objective of this paper is to present the territorial and administrative development of Aquae, as it is an exact example of the  Roman municipalization model in the provincial interior. This interior was usually geographically very distant from the most important economic and urban centers  of the Roman Empire that has also left an impact on its cultural and historical development. Systematic archaeological research on the right bank of the Željeznica river  in 2016 and 2017 has revealed several stratigraphic layers which include, among others, the ancient period. These new findings have been discovered more to the  east compared to the previous findings, indicating that the urban complex of Aquae  had been expanding toward the Sarajevo area.


2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 98-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Martínez Franzoni ◽  
Diego Sánchez-Ancochea

AbstractThis article explores a missing link in the recent literature on the formation of social policies: that between democracy and universalism, one desirable yet elusive feature of these policies. We base our argument on a case study of Costa Rica, the most successful case of universalism in Latin America. We proceed by first depicting Costa Rica's peculiar policy architecture, based on the incremental expansion of benefits funded on payroll taxes. Then we reconstruct the policy process to stress the key role played by technopoliticians in a democratic context. Backed by political leadership and equipped with international ideas, technopoliticians drove social policy design from agenda setting to adoption and implementation. Third, we argue that key aspects of the policy architecture established in the early 1940s were fundamental building blocks for a distinctive and seldom explored road to universalism. We conclude considering contemporary implications.


2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Piyush Tiwari ◽  

Housing policy formulation should be informed by a careful understanding of the behaviour of the housing market, as reflected by housing demand. Such basic information is important, not only for improved project design but also for the development of better sector-wide policies. Housing is a complex outcome of cultural, economic and regulatory environment. Consistent estimates of price and income elasticity of housing demand are prerequisites for effective policy design. Results, from earlier studies on Japanese housing markets, are inconclusive and the estimates of price and income elasticity of housing demand vary over a wide range. It may be argued that measuring the volume of housing services as housing expenditure, as is done in previous research, essentially ignores the heterogeneity, and for large number of policy purposes like impact of tax on tenure choice, choice between owning and renting etc., the distribution of housing consumption into qualitatively different categories is of more interest than an aggregate qualitative measure of housing expenditure alone. This paper analyzes the demand for housing in Tokyo using a discrete choice model. Three dimensions of choice, tenure, dwelling size (as number of rooms) and structure type (as type of unit) determine demand for housing which are modeled simultaneously. The income elasticity of market share of ownership house is positive and ranges between 0.16 to 0.34. However, income elasticity for rental houses is negative ranging between -0.17 to -0.57. The own price elasticities vary over a large range from -0.03 to -5.1 with smaller in magnitude for ownership houses and larger for rental houses.


Author(s):  
Kawa Nazemi ◽  
Martin Steiger ◽  
Dirk Burkhardt ◽  
Jörn Kohlhammer

Policy design requires the investigation of various data in several design steps for making the right decisions, validating, or monitoring the political environment. The increasing amount of data is challenging for the stakeholders in this domain. One promising way to access the “big data” is by abstracted visual patterns and pictures, as proposed by information visualization. This chapter introduces the main idea of information visualization in policy modeling. First abstracted steps of policy design are introduced that enable the identification of information visualization in the entire policy life-cycle. Thereafter, the foundations of information visualization are introduced based on an established reference model. The authors aim to amplify the incorporation of information visualization in the entire policy design process. Therefore, the aspects of data and human interaction are introduced, too. The foundation leads to description of a conceptual design for social data visualization, and the aspect of semantics plays an important role.


Big Data ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 139-180
Author(s):  
Kawa Nazemi ◽  
Martin Steiger ◽  
Dirk Burkhardt ◽  
Jörn Kohlhammer

Policy design requires the investigation of various data in several design steps for making the right decisions, validating, or monitoring the political environment. The increasing amount of data is challenging for the stakeholders in this domain. One promising way to access the “big data” is by abstracted visual patterns and pictures, as proposed by information visualization. This chapter introduces the main idea of information visualization in policy modeling. First abstracted steps of policy design are introduced that enable the identification of information visualization in the entire policy life-cycle. Thereafter, the foundations of information visualization are introduced based on an established reference model. The authors aim to amplify the incorporation of information visualization in the entire policy design process. Therefore, the aspects of data and human interaction are introduced, too. The foundation leads to description of a conceptual design for social data visualization, and the aspect of semantics plays an important role.


Disruptive leaders possess a deep understanding of the nonobvious. Developing solutions with a heightened creativity, solving problems and addressing risks, finding the right tradeoffs, and recognizing the wicked opportunities in the wicked problems, disruptive leaders scan the environment, identify trends, and envision the future. Often, this is done by finding superior solutions, products, and services. However, this is done with a strategic process and plan. In our current business environment, right when we get comfortable, we find ourselves having to adjust to a major change that requires us to shift time, energy, and resources to solve a problem or stay ahead of the market, or change our market. Every change that we encounter creates winners and losers. If we are disruptive in our leadership, these changes can bring about fabulous innovation and create new technologies that benefit humankind. Building a disruptive organization is the best way to thrive. This chapter explores developing the disruptors.


2019 ◽  
Vol 266 ◽  
pp. 01016 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.F.F. Fasna ◽  
Sachie Gunatilake

Poor energy performance of existing buildings worldwide has led to a crucial need to retrofit existing buildings to minimise energy consumption. Among the existing buildings, hotels use as much as 50% of their total expenses on energy and offer significant opportunities for energy efficiency improvement. Yet, comparatively the level of implementation of energy retrofits found to be low, which has attributed to, inter alia, the absence of a clearly defined process for ensuring the delivery of energy retrofit projects and lack of proactive guidance for project teams to ensure that they make the right decisions at the right time to achieve the desired outcomes. Since many energy retrofit projects in existing hotels are carried out with the involvement of an external contractor, or an Energy Service Company (ESCO), this study focuses on investigating the decision-making process in implementing energy retrofits when the project is outsourced to an external party. An in-depth case study is used to obtain insights into the critical decisions to be taken and key activities to be performed throughout the decision-making process. The findings are used to propose a step-by-step decision-making process comprising of three key phases: i.e., pre-retrofit, retrofit implementation and post-retrofit. It is hoped that the decision-making process developed in this study will serve as a roadmap for the effective adoption and implementation of energy retrofits in existing hotel buildings when an external contractor is involved.


Author(s):  
Zhong-Zhong Jiang ◽  
Guangwen Kong ◽  
Yinghao Zhang

Problem definition: We have witnessed a rapid rise of on-demand platforms, such as Uber, in the past few years. Although these platforms allow workers to choose their own working hours, they have limited leverage in maintaining availability of workers within a region. As such, platforms often implement various policies, including offering financial incentives and/or communicating customer demand to workers in order to direct more workers to regions with shortage in supply. This research examines how behavioral biases such as regret aversion may influence workers’ relocation decisions and ultimately the system performance. Academic/practical relevance: Studies on on-demand platforms often assume that workers are rational agents who make optimal decisions. Our research investigates workers’ relocation decisions from a behavioral perspective. A deeper understanding of workers’ behavioral biases and their causes will help on-demand platforms design appropriate policies to increase their own profit, worker surplus, and the overall efficiency of matching supply with demand. Methodology: We use a combination of behavioral modeling and controlled laboratory experiments. We develop analytical models that incorporate regret aversion to produce theoretical predictions, which are then tested and verified via a series of controlled laboratory experiments. Results: We find that regret aversion plays an important role in workers’ relocation decisions. Regret-averse workers are more willing to relocate to the supply-shortage zone than rational workers. This increased relocation behavior, however, is not sufficient to translate to a better system performance. Platform interventions, such as demand information sharing and dynamic wage bonus, can help further improve the system. We find that workers’ regret-aversion behavior may lead to an increased profit for the platform, a higher surplus for the workers, and an improved demand-supply matching efficiency, thus benefiting the entire on-demand system. Managerial implications: Our research emphasizes the importance and necessity of incorporating workers’ behavioral biases such as regret aversion into the policy design of on-demand platforms. Policies without considering the behavioral aspect of workers’ decision may lead to lost profit for the platform and reduced welfare for workers and customers, which may ultimately hurt the on-demand business.


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