scholarly journals Putting Distribution First

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hockett
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The Many

AbstractIt is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectivelyTo attend systematically to this form of inter-translatability, with a view in particular to that which maximization formulations latently prescribe that we distribute and equalize, might be called “putting distribution first.” It is explicitly to recognize the fact that all law and policy are implicitly as equalizing and citizen-defining as they are aggregative and maximizing, and to trace the many salient consequences that stem from this fact. It is likewise to recognize that all law and policy treat us as equals in some respects and as non-equals in other respects. Putting distribution first by attending explicitly to these “respects” yields greater transparency about how well or poorly our laws and policies manage to identify, count, and treat us as equals in theThis Article works to lay out with care how to put distribution first in normative legal and policy analysis. The payoffs include both a workable method by which to test proposed maximization norms systematically for their normative propriety, and an attractive distributive ethic that can serve as a workable normative touchstone for legal and policy analysis. Indeed, the Article concludes, much — though not yet quite all — of our law can illuminatingly be interpreted as giving inchoate expression to just such an ethic.

scholarly journals Putting Distribution First

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Hockett
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Social Aggregation ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right ◽  
In Virtue Of

It is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectively define ourselves by reference to that which we distribute and equalize. For it is in virtue of that which we distribute and equalize that our policy formulations treat us as politically “counting” or “mattering” for purposes of social aggregation and maximization.To attend systematically to this form of inter-translatability, with a view in particular to that which maximization formulations latently prescribe that we distribute and equalize, might be called “putting distribution first.” It is explicitly to recognize the fact that all law and policy are implicitly as equalizing and citizen-defining as they are aggregative and maximizing, and to trace the many salient consequences that stem from this fact. It is likewise to recognize that all law and policy treat us as equals in some respects and as non-equals in other respects. Putting distribution first by attending explicitly to these “respects” yields greater transparency about how well or poorly our laws and policies manage to identify, count, and treat us as equals in the right respects.This Article works to lay out with care how to put distribution first in normative legal and policy analysis. The payoffs include both a workable method by which to test proposed maximization norms systematically for their normative propriety, and an attractive distributive ethic that can serve as a workable normative touchstone for legal and policy analysis. Indeed, the Article concludes, much — though not yet quite all — of our law can illuminatingly be interpreted as giving inchoate expression to just such an ethic.

Public Policy Making and Public Policy Analysis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee S. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Policy Analysis ◽  
Professional Class ◽  
The Many

This chapter reviews the development and growth of the policy-analytic profession. Historically, government decision makers have often called upon those with expertise to assist them in reaching their decisions. This chapter, however, concerns a new professional class of advisors that began developing during the 1950s in the United States. This new profession assists policy makers in understanding better their alternatives and relevant considerations for choosing among them. From here, the chapter offers some perspective on the research to date that has attempted to assess the effects of the profession—a perspective that emphasizes some important differences across the many types of governmental settings that utilize policy analysis, and the methodological difficulties that assessment efforts confront.

Assessing Compliance with the crc

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Heymann ◽  
Kristen McNeill ◽  
Amy Raub
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Information ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Complementary Approach ◽  
Analysis Center ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Sample Set ◽  
Monitoring Progress ◽  
Over Time

Currently, the report-based monitoring system of the crc provides a wealth of qualitative information about country performance, but not in a form that is frequently updated, easily analysable and comparable across countries and over time. To date, a broad range of quantitatively comparable indicators of laws and policies relevant to the crc have not been widely available. Through the world Policy Analysis Center, we have collected and analysed primary legislative texts, international reports and other sources to create such indicators for all States Parties. In this article, we draw on this new data set to propose a complementary approach to monitoring progress on crc obligations using quantitatively analysable indicators of law and policy, and operationalise a sample set of indicators to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of this approach in assessing country action on children’s rights and compliance with the crc.

Review Essay on Charles F. Manski's Public Policy in an Uncertain World: Analysis and Decisions

2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 799-804
Author(s):  
John Geweke
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Economics Profession ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Future Policy ◽  
Policy Setting

Public policy setting often involves quantitative choices with quantitative outcomes. Yet unqualified statements about the precise consequences of alternative choices characterize much of the policy analysis bearing on these decisions. Public Policy in an Uncertain World: Analysis and Decisions by Charles F. Manski characterizes and richly illustrates the nature of this unwarranted certitude. It details specific constructive alternatives on which the economics profession has achieved varying degrees of consensus. Those in our profession charged with the education of future policy analysts should consider using it and how to round out its presentation of decision making from their own perspective. (JEL D02, D04, D80, E61)

The Legacy of Racism for Children

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Racial Disparity ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Child Sex Trafficking ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Adolescent Victims

The Legacy of Racism for Children: Psychology, Law, and Public Policy is the first volume to review the intersecting implications of psychology, public policy, and law with the goal of understanding and ending the challenges facing racial minority youth in America today. Proceeding roughly from causes to consequences—from early life experiences to adolescent and teen experiences—each chapter focuses on a different domain, explains the laws and policies that create or exacerbate racial disparity in that domain, reviews relevant psychological research and its implications for those laws or policies, and calls for next steps. Chapter authors examine how race and ethnicity intersect with child maltreatment (including child sex trafficking, corporal punishment, and memory for and disclosures of abuse), child dependency court decisions, custody and adoption, familial incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline, police–youth interactions, jurors’ perceptions of child and adolescent victims and defendants, and U.S. immigration law and policy. The book is meant to be accessible to all who want to end law- and policy-related racial disparities for children—researchers, students, teachers, social workers and social service administrators, police, attorneys, judges, and the general public. Much of the value of this book lies in its potential to influence law and policy, and to help those working on the front lines understand what they can do to end the legacy of racism for children.

The Common Law in Australia: Its Nature and Constitutional Significance

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Zines
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Policy Paper ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
National University ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common

This article originally was published as a Law and Policy Paper. The Law and Policy Papers series was established in 1994 by the Centre for International and Public Law in the Faculty of Law, the Australian National University. The series publishes papers contributing to understanding and discussion on matters relating to law and public policy, especially those that are the subject of contemporary debate. In 1999 the papers were published jointly by the Centre for International and Public Law and The Federation Press. This article is reproduced in the Federal Law Review with the permission of the original publishers.

What’s Next for a National Infrastructure Policy: An Encore or a Requiem?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1087724X2110146
Author(s):  
Richard G. Little
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Infrastructure Systems ◽  
Infrastructure Policy ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
The Many ◽  
National Infrastructure ◽  
Roll Out

In an essay almost 30 years ago, Professor Dick Netzer of NYU asked the question “Do We Really Need a National Infrastructure Policy?” and came to the conclusion that we did not. As the Biden Administration prepares to roll out a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure package, the nation is faced with numerous questions regarding the infrastructure systems necessary to support continued economic growth and environmental sustainability. The purpose of this essay is to look to recent history for guidance for how to proceed by revisiting the underlying premises of the Netzer essay and reconsider whether a National Infrastructure Policy is needed. Because linking infrastructure to broader public policy objectives could both unite the nation and position it to address the many challenges that the 21st century will present, I believe the idea of a National Infrastructure Policy definitely deserves a second look.

Ethics and Public Policy

1981 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
George J. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Public Policy Analysis ◽  
The Government ◽  
New Framework ◽  
Selection Of

The purpose of this course is to introduce a new framework linking the humanities to public policy analysis as pursued in the government and the academy. Current efforts to link the particular contributions from the humanities to problems of public policy choice are often narrow either in terms of their perspective on the humanities or in terms of their selection of the possible means of influencing policy choice. Sometimes a single text from one of the humanities disciplines is selected to apply to a particular issue. At other times, arguments about the ethical dimensions of a single policy issue often are pursued with a single — or sometimes, no — point of access to the policy process in mind.

A Note on “Public Policy”

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Government Body

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.

scholarly journals Disability and Vulnerability: Challenging the Capacity/Incapacity Binary

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverley Clough
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Mental Capacity ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Perceived Vulnerability ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Mental Capacity Act 2005 ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Mental Capacity Act

This article engages with emerging debates in law and feminist philosophy around the concept of vulnerability. Central to this is the call to re-imagine and re-frame vulnerability as universal – as something which is experienced by all individuals, by virtue of their humanity and context as social beings. The implications of this for laws and policies predicated on groups or categories as ‘being vulnerable’ will be explored in this article, using the concept of mental capacity as an example of how the boundary between capacity and incapacity can be contested through this lens. The article will critically consider the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and associated literature, such as Court of Protection cases, the House of Lords Select Committee's post-legislative scrutiny and Serious Case Reviews, which demonstrate the growing concern about the inadequacy of the binary between capacity and incapacity. This in turn provokes a challenge to accepted wisdom in the context of disability more broadly, inviting us to think in particular about the responses to perceived vulnerability that are currently deemed appropriate. Insights from the legal literature invite further exchanges with social policy theorists as to the concept of vulnerability and its challenges and implications for law and policy.

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