Who are behavioural public policy experts and how are they organised globally?

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Holger Straßheim
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Expert Networks ◽  
Behavioural Sciences

Behavioural public policy has spread internationally over recent years. Worldwide, expert units are translating insights from behavioural sciences into policy interventions. Yet, behavioural expert networks are a puzzling case. They seem to oscillate between two modes of collective action: as an epistemic community, they are based on the consensual belief that biases in behaviour pose a problem for policymaking. As an instrument constituency, they bring together a diversity of actors, unified not by consensual beliefs about problems but by practices of promoting behavioural instruments as solutions. Drawing on a review of literature, this article provides a systematic analysis of the relation between epistemic communities and instrument constituencies. It argues that there has been an ‘agency shift’ from one mode to the other. The implications are that experts should be aware of the fact that the instruments they are proposing might develop a political life of their own.

Admiration and Awe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Bell Tower ◽  
Negotiation Of Identity ◽  
Historical Controversy

This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Spain was left with a significant Islamic heritage: Córdoba Mosque had been turned into a cathedral, in Seville the Aljama Mosque’s minaret was transformed into a Christian bell tower, and Granada Alhambra had become a Renaissance palace. To date this process of Christian appropriation has frequently been discussed as a phenomenon of hybridisation. However, during that period the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. The aforementioned cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. The Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic past became a major concern and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On one hand, the monuments’ Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates shaping the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation and its ecclesiastical history.

Simulations: Urban Fiscal Crisis

1986 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 15-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus D. Pohlmann
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Educational Game ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Policy Problem ◽  
Other Hand

PurposeI wish to describe a role-playing simulation, as opposed to an educational game. A game normally has an elaborate set of rules and requires participants to function within the logic of its own reality. A role-playing simulation, on the other hand, allows the participants to maintain their own personalities and values as they interact within far more general roles and rules, creating a unique reality each time. The goal of this particular simulation is to overcome a public policy problem within a simulated political environment.

Lewis' Indexical Argument for World-Relative Actuality

Dialogue ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Gale
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The Other ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Possible World ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Critical Scrutiny

David Lewis has shocked the philosophical community with his original version of extreme modal realism according to which “every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is”. Logical Space is a plenitude of isolated physical worlds, each being the actualization of some way in which a world could be, that bear neither spatiotemporal nor causal relations to each other. Lewis has given independent, converging arguments for this. One is the argument from the indexicality of actuality, the other an elaborate cost-benefit argument of the inference-to-the-best explanation sort to the effect that a systematic analysis of a number of concepts, including modality, causality, propositions and properties, fares better under his theory than under any rival one that takes a possible world to be either a linguistic entity or an ersatz abstract entity such as a maximal compossible set of properties, propositions or states of affairs. Lewis' legion of critics have confined themselves mostly to attempts at a reductio ad absurdum of his theory or to objections to his various analyses. The indexical argument, on the other hand, has not been subject to careful critical scrutiny. It is the purpose of this paper to show that this argument cannot withstand such scrutiny. Its demise, however, leaves untouched his argument from the explanatory superiority for his extreme modal realism.

scholarly journals The Military Coups in Shadow of Democratization (A Comparative Study of Turkey and Mauritania)

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
EkramBadr El-din ◽  
Mohamed Dit Dah Ould Cheikh
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
The Military

The current study tries to examine the military coups that have occurred in Turkey and Mauritania. These coups differ from the other coups that occurred in the surrounding countries in the phase of democratization as these coups served as a hindrance to the process of democratization in Turkey and Mauritania. The problem of the study revolves around the analysis of the coups that happened in Turkey and Mauritania in the phase of democratic transition. The research is designed to answer the following question: what are the reasons that prompted the military establishment to intervene in political life in the shadow of the process of democratization in Turkey and Mauritania? The study aims at understanding reasons that pushed the military establishment to intervene in the political life. To discuss this phenomenon and achieve the required results, the analytical descriptive approach is adopted for concluding key results that may contribute to understand reasons that pushed the military establishment to intervene in the political life in Turkey and Mauritania in the aftermath democratization occurred in the two countries. The study concluded that the military establishment in both countries engaged in the political action and became ready to militarily intervene in the case of harming its interests and acquisitions. 

The avant-garde’s visual arts in the context of Santayana’s idea of vital liberty

Human Affairs ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Skowroński
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Universe

AbstractIn the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot.

scholarly journals A Taxonomy for the Social Agents of Scientific Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 55-62
Author(s):  
Nicholas Overgaard
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

Although we accept that a scientific mosaic is a set of theories and methods accepted and employed by a scientific community, scientific community currently lacks a proper definition in scientonomy. In this paper, I will outline a basic taxonomy for the bearers of a mosaic, i.e. the social agents of scientific change. I begin by differentiating between accidental group and community through the respective absence and presence of a collective intentionality. I then identify two subtypes of community: the epistemic community that has a collective intentionality to know the world, and the non-epistemic community that does not have such a collective intentionality. I note that both epistemic and non-epistemic communities might bear mosaics, but that epistemic communities are the intended social agents of scientific change because their main collective intentionality is to know the world and, in effect, to change their mosaics. I conclude my paper by arguing we are not currently in a position to properly define scientific community per se because of the risk of confusing pseudoscientific communities with scientific communities. However, I propose that we can for now rely on the definition of epistemic community as the proper social agent of scientific change.Suggested Modifications[Sciento-2017-0012]: Accept the following taxonomy of group, accidental group, and community:Group ≡ two or more people who share any characteristic.Accidental group ≡ a group that does not have a collective intentionality.Community ≡ a group that has a collective intentionality. [Sciento-2017-0013]: Provided that the preceding modification [Sciento-2017-0012] is accepted, accept that communities can consist of other communities.[Sciento-2017-0014]: Provided that modification [Sciento-2017-0012] is accepted, accept the following definitions of epistemic community and non-epistemic community as subtypes of community:Epistemic community ≡ a community that has a collective intentionality to know the world.Non-epistemic community ≡ a community that does not have a collective intentionality to know the world.[Sciento-2017-0015]: Provideed that modification [Sciento-2017-0013] and [Sciento-2017-0014] are accepted, accept that a non-epistemic community can consist of epistemic communities.

scholarly journals Clinical and public policy interventions to address food insecurity among children

2021 ◽  
Vol Publish Ahead of Print ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelise Brochier ◽  
Arvin Garg ◽  
Alon Peltz
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Policy Interventions

scholarly journals Predictors of Perceived Salt Intake and Actual Salt Intake in Romania. Implications for public policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (10) ◽  
pp. 3622-3626
Author(s):  
Corina Ilinca ◽  
Marian Preda ◽  
Stefania Matei ◽  
Stephen J. Cutler ◽  
Oana Tautu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Salt Intake ◽  
Active Lifestyle ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Obesity And Diabetes ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
Major Discrepancy ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Gender

Salt intake is one of the important predictors of hypertension, a widespread chronic disease among adults. Much remains to be known about its causes, especially in the Romanian context, where there is a scarcity of analyses on this particular topic. Its predictors are relevant for public policy in order to evaluate what strategy should be adopted given actual levels of salt intake and the way people think about their levels of salt intake. Our analyses focus on actual and perceived salt intake. Data for this analysis come from the SEPHAR project, gathered in 2016 (wave 3), a nationally representative sample of Romanians. After noting a major discrepancy between perceived and actual levels of salt intake, we used two regressions with actual and perceived salt intake as dependent variables and three types of factors as independent variables: socio-demographic (age, gender, region, type of locality, education), lifestyle (fat diet, alcohol consumption, active lifestyle, and smoking) and related diseases (obesity and diabetes). Results show Romanians have similar levels of salt intake perceptions independently of the characteristics considered, except fat diet and diabetes, and similar levels of actual salt intake except age and gender, even though previous research shows that there are differences between individuals across these characteristics when it comes to considering hypertension as a dependent variable. We conclude by noting policy interventions regarding salt intake based on the results of this research, especially the need to update the current Romanian TV campaign to reduce salt intake or similar campaigns from other countries.

scholarly journals Images of Europeans in the Chinese Woodblock Book Huangqing zhigongtu

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1259-1271
Author(s):  
Nikolay A. Samoylov ◽  
◽  
Dmitriy I. Mayatskiy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
The Other ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Cultural Stereotypes ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
General Picture ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
Shed Light

This article explores the Chinese historical and ethnographic work of the second half of the 18th century “Illustrated tributaries of the Qing Empire” (“Huangqing zhigongtu”). This book provides rich material for a systematic analysis of the views of the Chinese about European countries during the reign of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). Twenty eight images and descriptions of a number of European nations — Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Swedes, the English, the Dutch, etc. — which were found in the book, have been identified, classified, and analyzed. A range of issues and problems related to the content of the descriptions has been established and compared with the illustrations from the book. The article pays particular attention to identifying and explaining the anthropological and socio-cultural stereotypes that shaped the image of Europeans in China. The authors of this paper have found out that due to Catholic missionaries the Chinese compilers of “Huangqing zhigongtu” must have had enough information about Europe in the first part of the Qing period. Nevertheless, they made a large number of mistakes when describing the geographical location of several nations and relations between some of them. They also misunderstood some habits, traditions or anthropological features of their inhabitants. On the other hand, the compilers were more accurate and precise with regard to political and trade activities of the Europeans in China or near its frontier. Studying the “Huangqing zhigongtu” can shed light not only on important factors that formed the general picture of the Chinese worldview, but also contribute to a better understanding of motives that determined the foreign policy of the Qing Empire.

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