Using local knowledge in policy making

This chapter presents the landscape of technical and non-technical factors shaping constraints as well as opportunities for the use of knowledge in policy-making. It describes the challenges and strategies to communicate local knowledge for influencing policy-making processes in the formal-legalistic policy-making process. The strategies include understanding the political economy of policy making process, working politically through relationship-based approach and crafting local knowledge as an ‘electoral asset’ of shared concern in a decentralised political system, made possible by local knowledge serving to constitute social identities as base of political support.

Author(s):  
Michelle Belco ◽  
Brandon Rottinghaus

The president serves dual roles in the political system: one who “commands” by pursuing his or her agenda using unilateral orders and one who “administers” and who works to continue proper government function, often with the support of Congress. In a reassessment of the literature on unilateral power, this book considers the president’s dual roles during the stages of the policy-making process. Although presidents may appear to act “first and alone,” the reality is often much different. Presidents act in response to their own concerns, as well as assisting Congress on priorities and the need to maintain harmonic government function. The authors find support for both the model of an aggressive president who uses unilateral orders to push his or her agenda, head off unfavorable congressional legislation, and selectively implement legislation, and they find support for a unifying president who is willing to share management of government, support Congressional legislative efforts, and faithfully implement legislation. At the same time, presidents self-check their actions based on the ability of Congress to act to overturn their orders, through a shared sense of responsibility to keep government moving and out of respect for the constitutional balance. The shared nature of unilateral orders does not preclude an active president, as presidents remain strong, central actors in the political system.


2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-203
Author(s):  
Soonjae Shin

A growing amount of literature in the political economy suggests that the implementation of an environmental policy is limited due to the complexity of the interests of different interest groups and the political dominance of the polluting industries. This paper examines this insufficient implementation of an environmental concept in the case of the climate policy in the U.S.A., Germany and Japan. The focuses of this analysis are the choice, design and implementation of climate policy instruments in these countries. Starting from the fact that interest groups in the policy-making process prefer different policy instruments, the analysis shows which interests are enforced via which political instrument.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026101832110098
Author(s):  
David Francis ◽  
Imraan Valodia

In 2019, South Africa implemented a national minimum wage (NMW) for the first time. This is an important intervention, given that the South African labour market continues to generate some of the highest levels of income and wealth inequality in the world. The minimum wage is intended as a structural intervention to transform the labour market by setting a wage floor, while highlighting larger issues that continue to reproduce inequality in the labour market. The process raises interesting questions about the role of social dialogue in the policy making process, especially at a time when the roles of experts and evidence are contested in political economy. This article reviews the national minimum wage process from two angles: assessing the economic evidence and examining the political economy of minimum wages in South Africa. We take this approach in order to better understand the roles of evidence and politics in the policy making process. While both processes were contested, important differences emerge from the analysis: the economic lens highlights the intersection of evidence and ideology, while a political economy review identifies important lines of contestation in the policy making process itself. The national minimum wage process shows that institutionalised social dialogue continues to be a central part of the policy making process, but that it cannot be taken for granted: the particular configuration of the social dialogue process and the roles assigned to each player matter.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 495-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Syrovatka

The presidential and parliamentary elections were a political earthquake for the French political system. While the two big parties experienced massive losses of political support, the rise of new political formations took place. Emmanuel Macron is not only the youngest president of the V. Republic so far, he is also the first president not to be supported by either one of the two biggest parties. This article argues that the election results are an expression of a deep crisis of representation in France that is rooted in the economic transformations of the 1970s. The article analyses the political situation after the elections and tries to give an outlook on further political developments in France.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 635-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Schopf

Abstract Democratisation has brought a new, riskier pattern of corruption to Korea. More groups and institutions have secured a role in a more inclusive democratic policy making process. As a result, corruption schemes now require the consent of a wide and diverse set of veto players, often including the political opposition, producing expansive democratic ‘corruption webs’. The key democratic element of competition for votes rewards opposition members in the web for blowing the whistle. Increased likelihood of exposure and punishment deter many from corruption, which has subsequently declined in Korea under democracy, as measured by perception polls, experience surveys and objective measures of elite rent exchange. The Roh Moo-hyeon NACF scandals demonstrate that democratic corruption webs also mitigate damage from scandals — forcing participants to limit rent exchange to minimise exposure to clean veto players. Democratic oversight ensures that even bribe-taking officials implement policy according to publicly-declared objectives. Finally, competition for votes encourages timely exposure of democratic corruption rackets.


Author(s):  
Carl Dahlström

This chapter introduces the section on policy-making in Sweden. It starts from the observation that, at least for outside observers, Swedish policy-making has been portrayed as a rational process. Two features of Swedish policy-making have been particularly important for the emerging of the idea of a consensual and rational process. The first, and most well known, is the corporatist policy-making style, and the second feature is the commissions of inquiry and referral systems. Two other important characteristics of the Swedish policy process concern coordination and the creation of party-political support. The chapters in this section describe these four features of the Swedish policy-making process and pay special attention to changes over time.


1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah McCally Morehouse

This research investigated the proposition that variation in the structure of the political party can account for variation in the type of policy produced. The conditions under which legislators of the governor's party supported his legislative requests in sixteen sessions chosen for different degrees of party cohesion were investigated. The findings indicate that there is very little correlation between the legislator's district primary or election competition and his support for the governor's requests. The Democratic governor is supported by legislators from the districts in which he himself has strong party support as measured by his primary vote. The Republican governor's support cannot be geographically located in this manner. With respect to socioeconomic legislation, the pattern of support for a successful governor does not depend upon socioeconomic variables within the legislators' districts, but if the governor cannot control his legislators, socioeconomic variables provide the major basis for the factions which develop.


2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 18-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Dahlberg ◽  
Jonas Linde ◽  
Sören Holmberg

Although the phenomenon of dissatisfied democrats has been frequently discussed in the literature, it has not often been empirically investigated. This article sets out to analyse the discrepancy between the strong support for democratic principles and the widespread discontent with the way democracy works. Drawing on earlier research on the sources of political support, using data from a wide range of democracies, the relevance of two contrasting explanatory perspectives are investigated. The first perspective argues that the sources of democratic discontent are found on the input-side of the political system in terms of representation. The contrasting view argues that the output-side of the political system is most important, where the quality of government plays the pivotal role. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that, in general, both types of factor are important, but also that these processes to a large extent are conditioned by the level of institutional consolidation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document