Methodological collectivism: social science and social policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-36
Author(s):  
Paul Spicker
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Methodological Collectivism ◽  
As If

Methodological collectivism looks for explanations and patterns of behaviour not in the actions of individuals, but in the actions of groups - including classes, ethnic groups and societies taken as a whole. It extends beyond groups, however, to categories or blocs of people, treating them as if they can be understood in collective terms. This is the characteristic approach of sociology, but it also has an important pragmatic purpose in the development of public policy.

scholarly journals Southern social world-regionalisms: The place of health in nine African regional economic communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 146801812096185
Author(s):  
Nicola Yeates ◽  
Rebecca Surender
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
World Health ◽  
Regional Health ◽  
Regional Economic

This article presents key results from a comparative qualitative Social Policy study of nine African regional economic communities’ (RECs) regional health policies. The article asks to what extent has health been incorporated into RECs’ public policy functions and actions, and what similarities and differences are evident among the RECs. Utilising a World Health Organization (WHO) framework for conceptualising health systems, the research evidence routes the article’s arguments towards the following principal conclusions. First, the health sector is a key component of the public policy functions of most of the RECs. In these RECs, innovations in health sector organisation are notable; there is considerable regulatory, organisational, resourcing and programmatic diversity among the RECs alongside under-resourcing and fragmentation within each of them. Second, there are indications of important tangible benefits of regional cooperation and coordination in health, and growing interest by international donors in regional mechanisms through which to disburse health and -related Official Development Assistance (ODA). Third, content analysis of RECs’ regional health strategies suggests fairly minimal strategic ambitions as well as significant limitations of current approaches to advancing effective and progressive health reform. The lack of emphasis on universal health care and reliance on piecemeal donor funding are out of step with approaches and recommendations increasingly emphasising health systems development, sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) and primary health care as the bedrock of health services expansion. Overall, the health component of RECs’ development priorities is consistent with an instrumentalist social policy approach. The development of a more comprehensive sustainable world-regional health policy is unlikely to come from the African Continental Free-Trade Area, which lacks requisite social and health clauses to underpin ‘positive’ forms of regional integration.

On Defining Politics and How to Take it into Account

1983 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 13-13
Author(s):  
Avery Leiserson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Elective Office ◽  
Teachers And Students

This essay addresses the problem of teachers and students who have reached the point of trying to find a common ground for perceiving (seeing) politics. This may occur almost any time during any social science course, but it cannot be assumed to happen automatically the first day of class in government, citizenship, or public affairs. Hopefully, the signal is some variant of the question: “What do we mean by politics, or the political aspect of human affairs?” A parade of definitions — taking controversial positions on public policy issues; running for elective office; who gets what, when and how; and manipulating people—is not a mutually-satisfying answer if it produces the Queen of Hearts’ attitude in students that the word politics means what they choose it to mean and nothing more.

Mental Money Laundering: A Motivated Violation of Fungibility

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Imas ◽  
George Loewenstein ◽  
Carey K Morewedge
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Money Laundering ◽  
Consumer Choice ◽  
Mental Accounting ◽  
Moral Behavior ◽  
Corporate Behavior ◽  
Mixed Support ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
As If

Abstract People exploit flexibility in mental accounting to relax psychological constraints on spending. Four studies demonstrate this in the context of moral behavior. The first study replicates prior findings that people donate more money to charity when they earned it through unethical versus ethical means. However, when the unethically-earned money is first “laundered”––the cash is physically exchanged for the same amount but from a different arbitrary source—people spent it as if it was earned ethically. This mental money laundering represents an extreme violation of fungibility. The second study demonstrates that mental money laundering generalizes to cases in which ethically and unethically earned money are mixed. When gains from ethical and unethical sources were pooled, people spent the entire pooled sum as if it was ethically earned. The last two studies provide mixed support for the prediction that people actively seek out laundering opportunities for unethically earned money, suggesting partial sophistication about these effects. These findings provide new evidence for the ease with which people can rationalize misbehavior, and have implications for consumer choice, corporate behavior and public policy.

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