Policy analysis in Canada: an introduction

Author(s):  
Laurent Dobuzinskis ◽  
Michael Howlett

The ILPA series of country studies displays some significant variation between jurisdictions in terms of the timing and purview of analysis and also shows how the movement towards the application of scientific precepts to policy questions continues to be moderated by adherence to older, more partisan political modes of decision-making and program planning. Despite a discernible trend toward the professionalization of policy advice in most countries, a variety of actors continue to contribute diverse ideas to policy debates, with policy advice systems, and their analytical components, taking diverse forms across nations, sectors and levels of government. In this volume, we present a more systematic and comparative up-to-date understanding of policy analysis practices in Canada than has hitherto been available. This introduction provides an overview of past research into the area and outlines a series of topics and research questions which are addressed in the other contributions to the book.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (30) ◽  
Author(s):  

A monetary and financial statistics (MFS) technical assistance (TA) mission visited Nairobi, Kenya, during December 3–14, 2018.1 The main objectives of the mission were to work with staff of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to (i) review the implementation of the recommendations made by the MFS mission in January 2017; (ii) review the expanded coverage of the standardized report form for other depository corporations (SRF 2SR) including savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs), microfinance banks (MFBs), and money market funds (MMFs); (iii) review the standardized report form for other financial corporations (SRF 4SR) comprising insurance companies and pension funds; (iv) review the adequacy of the available data for the remaining institutions in the other financial corporations (OFCs) subsector and adaptation of reporting forms to allow the expansion of the coverage of SRF 4SR; and (v) provide three-day training on the compilation of MFS for staff of the CBK and other financial sector regulatory authorities. In collaboration with staff of the CBK, the mission delivered these objectives and agreed with the authorities on an action plan to improve MFS in Kenya. The improvement of MFS contributes to enhancement of policy analysis and decision-making by the CBK.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-122
Author(s):  
Katarína Šipulová ◽  
Marína Urbániková ◽  
David Kosař

Establishment of the judicial council has been debated for decades in Czechia. However, we still miss a comprehensive understanding of the positions and arguments of key actors involved in judicial governance: judges, politicians and lawyers. This article fills this gap and maps the existing arguments in favour and against a judicial council. It poses three research questions: (1) Do elites support the establishment of a judicial council and how do they justify their position? (2) What form of judicial governance do they perceive as ideal? (3) What are their expectations from the judicial council? Judges, politicians and lawyers identify the same two core challenges of the current system: The ministry of justice lacks the vision and capacity to govern the courts, and thus it informally delegates majority of its competences on court presidents. Too strong court presidents in turn make the system fragmented and endanger internal independence of rank-and-file judges. Elites however disagree whether the establishment of a judicial council can solve these issues. Majority of judges support the judicial council and hope for the unification of judicial governance across the country. Some politicians are willing to accept a weak model of judicial council if the ministry of justice can still determine the contours of judicial governance. At the same time, politicians consider the current fragmented system of judicial governance as more resistant against the capture of the judiciary. Lawyers see judicial council as a risky model which might encapsulate the judiciary. The key solution of the current problems, according to lawyers, rests in the reform of legal education and enhancing the quality of the judicial decision-making. Unfortunately, the neither recent policy debates nor the pending bills on the Law on Courts and Judges have addressed the key challenges raised by our interviewees.


Author(s):  
Stefan Scherbaum ◽  
Simon Frisch ◽  
Maja Dshemuchadse

Abstract. Folk wisdom tells us that additional time to make a decision helps us to refrain from the first impulse to take the bird in the hand. However, the question why the time to decide plays an important role is still unanswered. Here we distinguish two explanations, one based on a bias in value accumulation that has to be overcome with time, the other based on cognitive control processes that need time to set in. In an intertemporal decision task, we use mouse tracking to study participants’ responses to options’ values and delays which were presented sequentially. We find that the information about options’ delays does indeed lead to an immediate bias that is controlled afterwards, matching the prediction of control processes needed to counter initial impulses. Hence, by using a dynamic measure, we provide insight into the processes underlying short-term oriented choices in intertemporal decision making.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Oettingen ◽  
Doris Mayer ◽  
Babette Brinkmann

Mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality leads to expectancy-dependent goal commitments, whereas focusing on the desired future only makes people commit to goals regardless of their high or low expectations for success. In the present brief intervention we randomly assigned middle-level managers (N = 52) to two conditions. Participants in one condition were taught to use mental contrasting regarding their everyday concerns, while participants in the other condition were taught to indulge. Two weeks later, participants in the mental-contrasting condition reported to have fared better in managing their time and decision making during everyday life than those in the indulging condition. By helping people to set expectancy-dependent goals, teaching the metacognitive strategy of mental contrasting can be a cost- and time-effective tool to help people manage the demands of their everyday life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 315
Author(s):  
Malte Schäfer ◽  
Manuel Löwer

With the intent of summing up the past research on ecodesign and making it more accessible, we gather findings from 106 existing review articles in this field. Five research questions on terminology, evolution, barriers and success factors, methods and tools, and synergies, guide the clustering of the resulting 608 statements extracted from the reference. The quantitative analysis reveals that the number of review articles has been increasing over time. Furthermore, most statements originate from Europe, are published in journals, and address barriers and success factors. For the qualitative analysis, the findings are grouped according to the research question they address. We find that several names for similar concepts exist, with ecodesign being the most popular one. It has evolved from “end-of-pipe” pollution prevention to a more systemic concept, and addresses the complete life cycle. Barriers and success factors extend beyond the product development team to management, customers, policymakers, and educators. The number of ecodesign methods and tools available to address them is large, and more reviewing, testing, validation, and categorization of the existing ones is necessary. Synergies between ecodesign and other research disciplines exist in theory, but require implementation and testing in practice.


1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erich H. Loewy

In this paper, I want to try to put what has been termed the “care ethics” into a different perspective. While I will discuss primarily the use of that ethic or that term as it applies to the healthcare setting in general and to the deliberation of consultants or the function of committees more specifically, what I have to say is meant to be applicable to the problem of using a notion like “caring” as a fundamental precept in ethical decision making. I will set out to examine the relationship between theoretical ethics, justice-based reasoning, and care-based reasoning and conclude by suggesting not only that all are part of a defensible solution when adjudicating individual cases, but that these three are linked and can, in fact, be mutually corrective. I will claim that using what has been called “the care ethic” alone is grossly insufficient for solving individual problems and that the term can (especially when used without a disciplined framework) be extremely dangerous. I will readily admit that while blindly using an approach based solely on theoretically derived principles is perhaps somewhat less dangerous, it is bound to be sterile, unsatisfying, and perhaps even cruel in individual situations. Care ethics, as I understand the concept, is basically a non- or truly an anti-intellectual kind of ethic in that it tries not only to value feeling over thought in deliberating problems of ethics, but indeed, would almost entirely substitute feeling for thought. Feeling when used to underwrite undisciplined and intuitive action without theory has no head and, therefore, no plan and no direction; theory eventuating in sterile rules and eventually resulting in action heedlessly based on such rules lacks humanity and heart. Neither one nor the other is complete in itself. There is no reason why we necessarily should be limited to choosing between these two extremes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Muers ◽  
Rhiannon Grant

Recent developments in contemporary theology and theological ethics have directed academic attention to the interrelationships of theological claims, on the one hand, and core community-forming practices, on the other. This article considers the value for theology of attending to practice at the boundaries, the margins, or, as we prefer to express it, the threshold of a community’s institutional or liturgical life. We argue that marginal or threshold practices can offer insights into processes of theological change – and into the mediation between, and reciprocal influence of, ‘church’ and ‘world’. Our discussion focuses on an example from contemporary British Quakerism. ‘Threshing meetings’ are occasions at which an issue can be ‘threshed out’ as part of a collective process of decision-making. Drawing on a 2015 small-scale study (using a survey and focus group) of British Quaker attitudes to and experiences of threshing meetings, set in the wider context of Quaker tradition, we interpret these meetings as a space for working through – in context and over time – tensions within Quaker theology, practice and self-understandings, particularly those that emerge within, and in relation to, core practices of Quaker decision-making.


2020 ◽  
pp. 089443932098012
Author(s):  
Teresa M. Harrison ◽  
Luis Felipe Luna-Reyes

While there is growing consensus that the analytical and cognitive tools of artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to transform government in positive ways, it is also clear that AI challenges traditional government decision-making processes and threatens the democratic values within which they are framed. These conditions argue for conservative approaches to AI that focus on cultivating and sustaining public trust. We use the extended Brunswik lens model as a framework to illustrate the distinctions between policy analysis and decision making as we have traditionally understood and practiced them and how they are evolving in the current AI context along with the challenges this poses for the use of trustworthy AI. We offer a set of recommendations for practices, processes, and governance structures in government to provide for trust in AI and suggest lines of research that support them.


PMLA ◽  
1901 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
W. H. Carruth

In Westermann's Monatshefte for January, 1891, and later in his ‘Life of Lessing,‘ Professor Erich Schmidt has outlined the chief features of the history and transformations of the story of the three rings in Europe. On examination it will be found that all the versions of the story belong to one or the other of two types, which are represented by the two earliest forms of the story preserved to us. The oldest version, that of the Spanish Jew Salomo ben Verga, tells of two rings or jewels only, which were in outward appearance exactly alike, and there is no question of one being genuine and the other false, but only of the relative value of the two. In the absence of the father it is found impossible to decide the question, and thus the decision between Christianity and Judaism is simply avoided. In Li Dis dou vrai aniel, a French poem of the end of the twelfth century, three rings appear, and to the original or genuine ring is attributed a marvelous healing power by which it may be recognized, and following which a decision is arrived at among the three religions, in this case in favor of Christianity, although ther were not wanting later narrators so bold as to hint that the true ring was possessed by Judaism. The version of Etienne de Bourbon, the versions of the Cento Novelle, the three versions of the Gesta Romanorum, all belong to one or the other of two types. We may refer to these two types as the Spanish type and the French type. Those of the first type, to which belongs also the version of Boccaccio, the one from which Lessing took his point of departure, avoid a decision, implying that all religions are equally authoritative, but without inherent or inner evidence of their quality. Those of the second type, to which in many of its features Lessing's final version of the story is allied, lead to a decision, making religion of divine origin indeed, but supplying a test, that of good works, whereby the true religion may be recognized.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 2150013
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abu-Arqoub ◽  
Wael Hadi ◽  
Abdelraouf Ishtaiwi

Associative Classification (AC) classifiers are of substantial interest due to their ability to be utilised for mining vast sets of rules. However, researchers over the decades have shown that a large number of these mined rules are trivial, irrelevant, redundant, and sometimes harmful, as they can cause decision-making bias. Accordingly, in our paper, we address these challenges and propose a new novel AC approach based on the RIPPER algorithm, which we refer to as ACRIPPER. Our new approach combines the strength of the RIPPER algorithm with the classical AC method, in order to achieve: (1) a reduction in the number of rules being mined, especially those rules that are largely insignificant; (2) a high level of integration among the confidence and support of the rules on one hand and the class imbalance level in the prediction phase on the other hand. Our experimental results, using 20 different well-known datasets, reveal that the proposed ACRIPPER significantly outperforms the well-known rule-based algorithms RIPPER and J48. Moreover, ACRIPPER significantly outperforms the current AC-based algorithms CBA, CMAR, ECBA, FACA, and ACPRISM. Finally, ACRIPPER is found to achieve the best average and ranking on the accuracy measure.


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