Making Policy in a Complex World

Making Policy in a Complex World PDF Author: Paul Cairney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108645577
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
This provocative Element is on the 'state of the art' of theories that highlight policymaking complexity. It explains complexity in a way that is simple enough to understand and use. The primary audience is policy scholars seeking a single authoritative guide to studies of 'multi-centric policymaking'. It synthesises this literature to build a research agenda on the following questions: 1. How can we best explain the ways in which many policymaking 'centres' interact to produce policy? 2. How should we research multi-centric policymaking? 3. How can we hold policymakers to account in a multi-centric system? 4. How can people engage effectively to influence policy in a multi-centric system? However, by focusing on simple exposition and limiting jargon, Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, Matthew Wood also speak to a far wider audience of practitioners, students, and new researchers seeking a straightforward introduction to policy theory and its practical lessons.

Simple Rules

Simple Rules PDF Author: Donald Norman Sull
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544409906
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Outlines an approach to high-performance problem solving and decision making that draws on insights from survival guides, pop culture, and other sources.

Making Global Policy

Making Global Policy PDF Author: Diane Stone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108624359
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Global policy making is taking shape in a wide range of public sector activities managed by transnational policy communities. Public policy scholars have long recognised the impact of globalisation on the industrialised knowledge economies of OECD states, as well as on social and economic policy challenges faced by developing and transition states. But the focus has been on domestic politics and policy. Today, policy studies literature is building new concepts of 'transnational public-private partnership', 'trans-governmentalism' and 'science diplomacy' to account for rapid growth of global policy networks and informal international organisations delivering public goods and services. This Element goes beyond traditional texts which focus on public policy as an activity of states to outline how global policy making has driven many global and regional transformations over the past quarter-century. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Simple Rules for a Complex World

Simple Rules for a Complex World PDF Author: Richard Allen EPSTEIN
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674036565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Too many laws, too many lawyers--that's the necessary consequence of a complex society, or so conventional wisdom has it. Countless pundits insist that any call for legal simplification smacks of nostalgia, sentimentality, or naivete. But the conventional view, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein tells us, has it exactly backward. The richer texture of modern society allows for more individual freedom and choice. And it allows us to organize a comprehensive legal order capable of meeting the technological and social challenges of today on the basis of just six core principles. In this book, Epstein demonstrates how. The first four rules, which regulate human interactions in ordinary social life, concern the autonomy of the individual, property, contract, and tort. Taken together these rules establish and protect consistent entitlements over all resources, both human and natural. These rules are backstopped by two more rules that permit forced exchanges on payment of just compensation when private or public necessity so dictates. Epstein then uses these six building blocks to clarify many intractable problems in the modern legal landscape. His discussion of employment contracts explains the hidden virtues of contracts at will and exposes the crippling weaknesses of laws regarding collective bargaining, unjust dismissal, employer discrimination, and comparable worth. And his analysis shows how laws governing liability for products and professional services, corporate transactions, and environmental protection have generated unnecessary social strife and economic dislocation by violating these basic principles. Simple Rules for a Complex World offers a sophisticated agenda for comprehensive social reform that undoes much of the mischief of the modern regulatory state. At a time when most Americans have come to distrust and fear government at all levels, Epstein shows how a consistent application of economic and political theory allows us to steer a middle path between too much and too little.

Systems Science for Complex Policy Making

Systems Science for Complex Policy Making PDF Author: Kuntoro Mangkusubroto
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 4431552731
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
This volume applies a systems science perspective to complex policy making dynamics, using the case of Indonesia to illustrate the concepts. Indonesia is an archipelago with a high heterogeneity. Her people consist of 1,340 tribes who are scattered over 17,508 islands. Every region has different natural strengths and conditions. In the national development process all regions depend on one another other while optimizing their own conditions. In addition to this diversity, Indonesia also employs a democratic system of government with high regional autonomy. A democratic government puts a high value on individual freedom, but on the other hand, conflicts of interest also occur frequently. High regional autonomy also often causes problems in coordination among agencies and regional governments. This uniqueness creates a kind of complexity that is rarely found in other countries.These daily complexities requires intensive interaction, negotiation processes, and coordination. Such necessities should be considered in public policy making and in managing the implementation of national development programs. In this context, common theories and best practices generated on the basis of more simplified assumptions often fail. Systems science offer a way of thinking that can take into account and potentially overcome these complexities. However, efforts to apply systems science massively and continuously in real policy making by involving many stakeholders are still rarely carried out. The first part of the book discusses the gap between the existing public policy-making approach and needs in the real world. After that, the characteristics of the appropriate policy-making process in a complex environment and how this process can be carried are described. In later sections, important systems science concepts that can be applied in managing these complexities are discussed. Finally, the efforts to apply these concepts in real cases in Indonesia are described.

Principles for a Free Society

Principles for a Free Society PDF Author: Richard A. Epstein
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 9780738208299
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The country's leading libertarian scholar sets forth the essential principles for a legal system that best balances individual liberty versus the common good.

Smart Economic Decision-Making in a Complex World

Smart Economic Decision-Making in a Complex World PDF Author: Morris Altman
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128131780
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Smart Economic Decision-Making in a Complex World is a fresh and reality-based perspective on decision-making with significant implications for analysis, self-understanding and policy. The book examines the conditions under which smart people generate outcomes that improve their place of work, their household and society. Within this work, the curious reader will find interesting open questions on many fascinating areas of current economic debate, including, the role of realistic assumptions robust model building, understanding how and when non-neoclassical behavior is best practice, why the assumption of smart decision-makers is best to understand and explain our economies and societies, and under what conditions individuals can make the best possible choices for themselves and society at large. Additional sections cover when and how efficiency is achieved, why inefficiencies can persist, when and how consumer welfare is maximized, and what benchmarks should be used to determine efficiency and rationality. - Makes the case for 'smart and rational' decision-making as a context-dependent rational process that is framed by socio-cultural environment and conditioned by institutional capacities - Explains how incorporation of the 'smart' decision-maker concept into economic thought improves our understanding of how, why and when people generate certain outcomes - Explores how economic efficiency can be achieved, individual preferences realized, and social welfare maximized through the use of 'smart and rational' approaches

Uncertainty in Policy Making

Uncertainty in Policy Making PDF Author: Michael Heazle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136530320
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Uncertainty in Policy Making explores how uncertainty is interpreted and used by policy makers, experts and politicians. It argues that conventional notions of rational, evidence-based policy making - hailed by governments and organisations across the world as the only way to make good policy - is an impossible aim in highly complex and uncertain environments; the blind pursuit of such a 'rational' goal is in fact irrational in a world of competing values and interests. The book centres around two high-profile and important case studies: the Iraq war and climate change policy in the US, UK and Australia. Based on three years' research, including interviews with experts such as Hans Blix, Paul Pillar, and Brian Jones, these two case studies show that the treatment of uncertainty issues in specialist advice is largely determined by how well the advice fits with or contradicts the policy goals and orientation of the policy elite. Instead of allowing the debates to be side-tracked by arguments over whose science or expert advice is 'more right', we must accept that uncertainty in complex issues is unavoidable and recognise the values and interests that lie at the heart of the issues. The book offers a 'hedging' approach which will enable policy makers to manage rather than eliminate uncertainty.

Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World

Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World PDF Author: M. Verweij
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023062488X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World is a powerful and original statement on why well-intended attempts to alleviate pressing social ills too often derail, and how effective, efficient and broadly acceptable solutions to social problems can be found.

Gridlock

Gridlock PDF Author: Thomas Hale
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.