scholarly journals Public Policy and Policy-Making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Yalmanov

This research adopts a methodological approach to the analysis of policy-making, which allows both a comprehensive study of policy-making and also helps to determine the content of public policy. The research, firstly, critically reviews the popular political science conceptual models of policy-making to determine factors that make the existing models unfit to explain the essence and fundamental attributes of this process. Then, the main characteristics of political decisions based on the normative approach will be highlighted and the key features of this mechanism will be determined. Policy decisions features considered in the context of political science are interconnected. Key features such as political power, interests, responsibility and rationality lead to a conclusion about the preventive nature of political decisions. The preventive orientation of political actions means the intention to create, direct and control events distant in the time continuum in the right way, anticipating undesirable effects in the exercise of power capability. The normative approach to study of policy-making creates a methodological basis for determination of public policy and shows that public policy is the definition of strategic goals for the development and consolidation of society, through activities related to the development of a political course for the society development and integration through policy-making. Keywords: public policy, policy-making, theory of policy-making, rationality

Author(s):  
Johannes Lindvall

This chapter introduces the problem of “reform capacity” (the ability of political decision-makers to adopt and implement policy changes that benefit society as a whole, by adjusting public policies to changing economic, social, and political circumstances). The chapter also reviews the long-standing discussion in political science about the relationship between political institutions and effective government. Furthermore, the chapter explains why the possibility of compensation matters greatly for the politics of reform; provides a precise definition of the concept of reform capacity; describes the book's general approach to this problem; and discusses the ethics of compensating losers from reform; and presents the book's methodological approach.


1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison

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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Musikanski

This author examines subjective indicators of well-being as they relate to the happiness movement, a global effort to create a new economic paradigm. The essay focuses on the prominent international institutions that are developing happiness metrics as well as agencies exploring the use of happiness data for crafting supportive public policy. A definition of happiness metrics, based on international institutions, identifies the primary questions that compose perceived happiness and how this data can be used.


UK Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 171-191
Author(s):  
Andrew Blick

This chapter starts with a definition of the term ‘referendum’. A referendum is a means of involving the public in political decisions via voting on specific issues such as leaving the European Union. The chapter focuses on the use of referendums at the local level. It sets out the key features of a referendum. Who is allowed to vote in referendums? What sort of questions are put to voters? Under want circumstances should a referendum take place on specific issues? What are the risks associated with holding a referendum? The chapter also looks at regulations surrounding referendums in the UK. The theoretical considerations that the chapter examines are the fact that a referendum subject tends to be controversial, the relationship between referendums and direct democracy and the implications of the results.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-487
Author(s):  
Jeb Barnes ◽  
Thomas F. Burke

The concept of adversarial legalism has been widely used by scholars of law, public administration, public policy, political science, sociology, and Law and Society, but the varying ways in which the concept has been employed raise concerns that it has become stretched to the point of incoherence. We argue that adversarial legalism entails both a style, an everyday practice of dispute resolution and policy making with distinct attributes, and a structure of governance that can be compared to other structures of authority. Untangling these aspects of adversarial legalism allows us to make sense of its different uses and identify future avenues of inquiry. Despite its wide application, adversarial legalism is in fact underutilized, especially in studies aimed at understanding consequences of judicialization, legalization, and juridification in the United States and abroad.


2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (02) ◽  
pp. 516-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Hollis‐Brusky

This essay reviews two recent works in political science on the American conservative legal movement: Steven M. Teles's The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (2008) and Ann Southworth's Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (2008). It examines these books in the context of a larger debate over the variables that best explain constitutional change in general and the recent “conservative counterrevolution” in Supreme Court jurisprudence in particular. It shows how these studies build on the scholarship of Charles Epp, who argued in The Rights Revolution (1998) that serious constitutional change requires not only the right cast of characters on the court, but also a strong “support structure” in the legal profession and civil society. Finally, it draws on the author's own research on the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy to illustrate some important avenues for further inquiry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1022-1031
Author(s):  
Silvia Marino

The present paper tackles the development of the notion of public policy in the definition of the concept of marriage. It starts from brief remarks on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the field of the right to free movement of people and of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to private and family life. Then, it analyses the uncertainties stemming from the national divergences. Further, the impact of the Coman case on the applicability of EU measures on civil judicial cooperation and on the notion of public policy is examined. Conclusively, the paper submits some considerations on the modern function of the public policy.


Author(s):  
Vijayaraghavan Varadharajan ◽  
Rian Leevinson J.

Over the past decade, intelligent cities have undergone rapid transformation. The definition of an intelligent city may vary based on the context and the purpose served. However, the next generation of intelligent cities will have unique characteristics that will set them apart from the existing intelligent cities. They will be more people-centered, and they will be formed through the fusion of technology, government, organizations, and people. This chapter explores four intelligent cities in Europe that are setting examples for innovation, ingenuity, technology, public policy making, and sustainable development: London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Stockholm. With growing emphasis on people involvement in decision making, the intelligent city ecosystem is continuously evolving. However, technology continues to play a prominent role in shaping the intelligent city paradigm. In this contribution, the authors also examine different emerging technologies such as quantum computing, autonomous vehicles, AI, ML, etc. that could potentially impact the next generation of such cities.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Ziegler Rogers ◽  
Nicholas Weller

AbstractState capacity is a key concept for research in public policy and political science. Despite its importance, there is no broadly accepted measure of state capacity in the existing literature, and frequently used measures of capacity have not been examined for their validity. We begin with an explicit definition of state capacity – the state's ability to implement public policy – and connect this definition to a measurable outcome of state capacity – the state's taxation of income. We show that this measure, income taxes as a percentage of total tax revenue, is a useful indicator of state capacity and meets higher standards of measurement validity than other tax-based indicators. We also compare our measure to the most common existing indicators of state capacity to show that income taxation is a better theoretical and statistical measure of states’ effectiveness in policy implementation.


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