When digital mass participation meets citizen deliberation: Combining mini-publics and maxi-publics in climate policy-making

Notwithstanding the rationale and the demand for public participation in climate policies, aggregated perspectives of maxi-publics are often belittled as uninformed, self-interested and short-term focused. The upcoming vogue of climate assemblies, citizen parliaments and other forms of mini-publics is to give citizens a central role in climate policy-making and in some cases to break political impasse. Yet climate mini-publics face challenges in political environments too, such as co-option, favoring expert-opinions and losing touch with the broader public. To remedy such pitfalls, recent papers have argued to combine synchronous deliberations of small groups of citizens with online participation procedures for the larger public. In this article, we report the results of a three-step combination model, where first a mini-public in the region of Súdwest-Fryslân (NL) were given a ‘carte blanche’ to draft the content and the parameters of several related policy alternatives. Second, their proposals where fed into a digital participation tool, the Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) to consult the wider public. A total of 1,376 (approx. 2% of the inhabitants) expressed their preferences and explained why they favour a dominant role for the municipality and the residents but are reticent about giving the market too big a role. Third, a citizen forum translated the outcomes of the maxi-public into policy recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the municipal council. In this paper, we report our findings of combining mini-and maxi-publics and how actors involved evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the combination of these two participatory approaches.

Harm and Helmets: How Harmful Social Costs Fail to Justify Paternalistic Health and Safety Regulations

Mill’s harm principle and the financial externalities of risky behavior are routinely invoked to justify health and safety regulation. However, this approach fares poorly when subjected to theoretical scrutiny. First, it is false: individuals engaging in risky behavior do not harm others. Second, even if risky behavior were harmful to others, the argument from harmful externalities does not imply safety-enhancing policy interventions, at least not without additional appeals to paternalism. Third, focusing on the economic impacts of accidents invites perverse victim-blaming attitudes toward accident victims that undermine democratic values and justice. To improve our moral understanding of health and safety regulation, I sketch a theory of public policy justification grounded in the controversies which attract our attention to paternalistic polices in the first place. On this account, justificatory arguments are plausible if they identify goods that individuals genuinely affirm on their own terms, are sensitive to causal responsibility and imbalances between restraint and protection, and comparatively engage with possible policy alternatives. Illustrating the shortcomings of one dominant approach to public policy justification and reorienting us toward the controversies that policy justifications need to confront reflect two ways that political theory can help enhance justice in public policy design and articulation.

The Importance of Disability Identity, Self-Advocacy, and Disability Activism

Disability identity development is an important part of the experience of people with disabilities. Participation in disability community activism and advocacy for the goals of the disability community is related to self-advocacy and plays a fundamental role in shifting individuals’ views of themselves and their disabilities. This article explores a political disability identity conceptual framework and provides recommendations for teachers to develop an understanding of disability in school focused on self-worth and pride; awareness of discrimination, common cause within the disability community, and policy alternatives; and engagement in political action.

Physicians’ perception toward using telephone consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea

Background: As the world faced a pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in 2019, telemedicine quickly spread and was widely adopted. This was the first instance where telephone consultations were temporarily allowed in Korea. We used data from the 2020 Korean Physician Survey and analyzed the physicians’ perceptions of telephone consultations, the reasons for providing these consultations, and the level of physician satisfaction after providing it.Current Concepts: A total of 6,342 respondents were selected for the final analysis of the research results. Regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic, the data showed that most physicians had a negative perception (77.1%) toward the introduction of the telemedicine system. A third (31.1%) of physicians surveyed had provided medical treatment via telephone consultation. According to the position the physicians held, professors, fellows, self-employed physicians, and public health physicians had the most experience in this method of consultation. The use of telephone consultation was highest in the field of internal medicine (44.5%) treatment. Data also showed that most physicians (83.5%) who provided such consultations experienced difficulties in making a medical judgment that could ensure their patients’ safety.Discussion and Conclusion: The results of this study verified that physicians’ opinions about the telemedicine system differed according to service, area of specialization, region, and type of medical institution. A closer review and establishment of policy alternatives are required to explore the possible expansion of teleconsultations and related medical treatments in the future.

Blame Avoidance, Crisis Exploitation, and COVID-19 Governance Response in Israel

Surprisingly, although the Israeli government adopted unregulated, unorganized, inefficient, uncoordinated, and uninformed governance arrangements during the first wave of COVID-19, the public health outcome was successful, a paradox that this theoretically informed article seeks to explain. Drawing on insights from blame avoidance literature, it develops and applies an analytical framework that focuses on how allegations of policy underreaction in times of crisis pose a threat to elected executives’ reputations and how these politicians can derive opportunities for crisis exploitation from governance choices, especially at politically sensitive junctures. Based on a historical-institutional analysis combined with elite interviews, it finds that the implementation of one of the most aggressive policy alternatives on the policy menu at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis (i.e., a shutdown of society and the economy), and the subsequent consistent adoption of the aforementioned governance arrangements constituted a politically well-calibrated and effective short-term strategy for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Explaining the Changes in Brazilian Foreign Policy towards South America under Michel Temer’s Administration (2016-2018): The Return to the Logic of Open Regionalism

The administration of President Michel Temer (2016-2018) led to significant changes in Brazilian foreign policy towards South America as opposed to the country’s goals that had remained in place for over a decade. This article addresses the question of how and why these changes unfolded under Temer’s government. Anchored in an analytical framework of Public Policy Analysis, we develop two main arguments. Firstly, we claim that the changes in foreign policy towards South America represented a paradigmatic transition from a post-liberal strategy to the restoration of the logic of open regionalism. Secondly, we argue that this change resulted from the coupling of the three dimensions of the political process: problem recognition, policy alternatives, and politics. The primary cause of such change was the political dispute in the public arena between business groups and party leadership.

The Growth of Platform Work as Precarious Work that Threatens Indonesia’s Target to Meet Decent Work as Formulated in Goal 8 of SDGs

This article discusses the implications of the emergence of platform work as a form of precarious work that threatens Indonesia’s target to meet Goal 8 of SDGs. Despite the work platform providing employment opportunities to many workers, most work in the non-standard employment (NSE) category. This means that they work precariously due to insufficient work protection, which may lead to severe consequences to decent work and productive work as critical elements of Goal 8 of SDGs. This research aims to assess the implementation gap Indonesia faces in realizing the roadmap of Goal 8 of SDGs. Using the qualitative descriptive research method, the authors analyzed and explained the challenges through comparative data study from 2016 to the year 2020, with emphasis on four main area indicators of Goal 8 of SDGs. We concluded that promoting precarious work in Indonesia might hinder the implementation of the 8th goal of SDGs on decent work. We offer some policy alternatives to mitigate the challenges by underlining the importance of new regulations to extend job protection to all workers regardless of the employment relationship.

Economic tradeoff between domestic well impact and reduced agricultural production with groundwater drought management: Tulare County, California (USA), case study

Formal policy analysis can aid resource management where groundwater is used intensively. Approaches for developing equitable and effective pumping allocations for drought are evaluated in the context of the 2012–2016 drought in Tulare County, California, USA. Potential economic impacts of policy alternatives on two user groups with conflicting interests are considered. Tradeoffs between losses of agricultural profit and response costs for domestic wells that run dry are estimated for various maximum groundwater depth policies. A welfare maximizing approach for identifying policies that limit depth to groundwater is evaluated and found to be ineffective because agricultural opportunity costs are much larger than domestic well costs. Adding a fee for additional drought groundwater pumping is proposed as a more impactful and balanced management policy approach. For the case study presented, a fee range of $300 to $600/acre-foot ($300–$600/1,233 m3) yielded an effective groundwater management policy for reducing domestic well impacts from drought and balancing agricultural impacts of drought with the need to replenish additional drought pumping in wetter years. Recent management policies enacted in the study area agree with this finding. These results may provide a useful perspective for analytically examining and developing groundwater management policies near the study area and elsewhere.

Analisis Kebijakan Pengentasan Kemiskinan “Laboratorium Kemiskinan” Kabupaten Pekalongan

Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memberikan alternatif kebijakan terhadap pelaksanaan kebijakan pengentasan kemiskinan “Laboratorium Kemiskinan” di Kabupaten Pekalongan. Laboratorium Kemiskinan adalah kebijakan dalam rangka pengentasan kemiskinan yang memiliki ruang lingkup wilayah kabupaten. Kebaruan (novelty) program ini adalah pelibatan semua pihak (Pentahelix). Laboratorium kemiskinan juga dilakukan dengan pendekatan topografi wilayah yang di setiap wilayah topografi tersebut memiliki karakeristik, sebab dan solusi kemiskinan yang berbeda. Metode penelitian menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif deskriptif dan dilaksanakan di Kabupaten Pekalongan. Pengumpulan data menggunakan observasi, wawancara, dan dokumentasi. Dalam implementasinya, Laboratorium Kemiskinan mengalami beberapa permasalahan, yaitu: 1. Perangkat Daerah terkait belum berperan secara maksimal; 2. Pemerintah Desa Model kurang aktif dan responsif. Alternatif untuk mengatasi permasalahan, yaitu: 1. Membuat Regulasi tentang Pembentukan Tim Pelaksana Laboratorium Kemiskinan; 2. Meningkatkan Koordinasi antar Perangkat Daerah Pelaksana Laboratorium Kemiskinan dan Desa Model; 3. Menyusun Petunjuk Teknis Kebijakan Laboratorium Kemiskinan. Di antara ketiga alternatif tersebut, alternatif yang direkomendasikan adalah menyusun Petunjuk Teknis Laboratorium Kemiskinan. Kata Kunci: Pengentasan Kemiskinan, Laboratorium Kemiskinan, Juknis Abstract: This study aims to provide policy alternatives for the implementation of poverty alleviation policies "Laboratorium Kemiskinan" in Pekalongan Regency. The Laboratorium Kemiskinan is a new policy in the context of poverty alleviation which has district scope. The novelty of this program is the involvement of all parties (Pentahelix). Laboratorium Kemiskinan are also carried out with a regional topographic approach, which in each topographic region has different characteristics, causes and solutions to poverty. The research method used a descriptive qualitative approach and was implemented in Pekalongan Regency. Collecting data using observation, interviews, and documentation. In its implementation, the Laboratorium Kemiskinan has experienced several problems, namely: 1. The relevant regional apparatus has not played an optimal role; 2. Model Village Government that is less active and responsive. Alternatives to solve the problem, namely: 1. Making regulations on the establishment of a Laboratorium Kemiskinan Implementation Team; 2. Increasing the coordination among regional apparatus for implementing the Laboratorium Kemiskinan Village Models; 3. Develop Technical Guidelines for Laboratorium Kemiskinan Policy. Among the three alternatives, the recommended alternative is to compile the Laboratorium Kemiskinan Technical Guidelines. Keywords: Poverty Alleviation, Poverty Laboratory, Technical Guidance.