The Global Diffusion of Adult Basic Education

Adult Basic Education is an essential tool of social policy. It aims at tackling unemployment, integrating marginalized groups, fostering development, etc. Despite the rising importance and attention to lifelong learning, past research barely investigated ABE as a specific (social) policy field. Mostly, this is due to the lack of systematic data and a focus on formal schooling. This chapter investigates which determinants are most influential on the adoption of policies concerning the basic education of adults. The contribution, thereby, adds to the understanding of diffusion processes of policies on widening the right to education for previously marginalized groups of people.

Stuck and Exploited Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Italy between Exclusion, Discrimination and Struggles

Refugees and asylum seekers in Italy are ‘stuck’ because they often end up caught in the legal and social limbo of the reception system. The effects of the pandemic and lockdown measures to avoid transmission have stacked on top of these conditions. This scenario, along with the Italian policy field increases the vulnerabilisation of refugees and asylum seekers for their labour exploitation, but also create a space for media struggle, where political forces and social entrepreneurs clash and manipulate the issue of “asylum seekers”. This introductory chapter analyses these aspects, introducing the thematic lines of the volume and presenting its contribution.

Law & Development

Law and development (L&D) is a dynamic academic and policy field. Since the second half of the twentieth century, anthropologists, lawyers, economists, and political scientists have taken a special interest in L&D. Due to such multidisciplinary engagement and its dynamism, L&D is at once a field or discipline of inquiry, an approach or way of thinking, a phenomenon to be observed, and a funding device to be deployed in development practice. In this chapter, by going beyond the conventional narratives of L&D studies, the authors examine the idea of development and law, along with their interactions in the context of L&D at national and international levels. This comprehensive investigation shows the deeper theoretical, political, ideological, and legal perspectives that underpin and structure the scholarship, policy, and practice of law and development. The chapter then critically reviews the three moments of L&D, which have their distinct common features, and suggest why L&D should contribute more actively to forming concepts of development, rather than building on current understandings. Additionally, while the authors recognize that L&D has had a particular association with the development agenda of ‘developing’ countries, they argue that it may also be applied to the ‘developed’ on a range of issues, such as reducing inequality and ensuring sustainable development.

An Interview with Professor Sheila Jasanoff: on Lessons from Science, Technology, and Society

MIT Science Policy Review spoke with Professor Sheila Jasanoff about her pioneering work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), the role of the public in policymaking, and some of the important lessons and recommendations drawn from her work in STS. She is the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she founded and directs the STS Program. Her work exploring the role of science and technology in law and public policy has been internationally recognized and the insights she shared are sure to benefit scientists interested in entering the policy field. This interview was edited for clarity.

Into the Field: a Reflexive Narration of Critical Policy Studies

This article aims at presenting a narrative of Critical Policy Studies as a school of thought that is built, reflexively, within the Policy Studies field, consolidating and pluralizing it. This approach, although little known in Brazil, represents, increasingly, an alternative and a consistent path of studies, that distinguishes itself by assuming the centrality of language as an unit of analysis in policy processes; choosing interpretation as a method; taking the arguments as the main research material and post-positivism as its purpose. Methodologically, this article has been built through a narrative review of the literature and it adopted, as a starting point, the discussion forum on “what is critical?”, published in the Critical Policy Studies Review (2016 edition), and the Handbook of Critical Policy Studies itself (Fischer, Torgerson, Durnová & Orsini, 2016). In five sections, we narrate the development of Critical Policy Studies School passing, mainly, through interpretative and argumentative approaches, seeking to establish fertile dialogues with analysts, bureaucrats, managers and researchers. As well as with all those interested in facing the challenges of producing other narratives and developing new research and teaching processes in this field of studies, with the objective of making the Policy Studies field more diverse and more consistent with the Brazilian reality. We conclude that, paradoxically, the plurality - disciplinary, epistemological, methodological, theoretical and thematic - that characterizes the development of the Policy Studies field, in Brazil, still falls short of meaning more participatory, inclusive and democratic public policies. In this sense, we believe that the effort to contribute to the introduction of this literature in the Brazilian Policy Studies field not only presupposes the adoption of a critical-reflexive research stance, but also represents a first step towards the adoption of increasingly democratizing practices in the Policy field.

The Pendulum of Majoritarianism: Turkey’s Governmental Self-Identity and Turkish–Egyptian Relations

Turkey’s relations with Egypt abruptly hit rock bottom following the Egyptian army’s ousting of Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. Despite significant political fluctuations between the two countries, there is a gap in academic literature about addressing alterations in Turkish–Egyptian relations holistically. To this end, this article proposes that Turkey’s volatile relationship with the Egyptian governments since the so-called Arab Spring is partially a reflection of broader institutional changes in Turkey’s domestic settings. One of these salient changes is the discursive transformation of Turkish national self-perception. This article shows how Turkey’s new governmental self-understanding of “majoritarianism” manifests in its relations with Egypt. It asserts that this transformation in the governmental perception of the national-self made Turkey’s policies on Egypt, which oscillate between one extreme to another, “conceivable/thinkable” via the medium of national identity discourses. It shows the interplay between the governmental identity discourses of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) elites and Turkey’s policies on Egypt in the institutional/non-discursive foreign policy field.

The Nature of the Policy Field and Business-Government Relations

This chapter studies the nature of the policy field and its impact on business-lobbying in the EU. Drawing from theories on institutional legitimacy and information-access it observes the variation in density and diversity across regulatory and (re)distributive policy fields, and committee hearings. Empirically, the chapter employs business group surveys, conducts meticulous analysis of a population of 12,000 interest groups lobbying preferences across multiple policy fields assessing their density and diversity as well as their clustering. It includes a case study on business diverse coalition building focusing on net neutrality. Finally, the chapter observes the distribution of business interests across the European Parliament’s committee hearings. In doing so, this chapter contributes to discussions on legitimacy and public policy, chameleon pluralism, business mobilization, and the nature of the policy good.