Making Public Policy Decisions

Making Public Policy Decisions PDF Author: Damon Alexander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317697723
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
To understand public policy decisions, it is imperative to understand the capacities of the individual actors who are making them, how they think and feel about their role, and what drives and motivates them. However, the current literature takes little account of this, preferring instead to frame the decisions as the outcomes of a rational search for value-maximising alternatives or the result of systematic and well-ordered institutional and organisational processes. Yet understanding how personal and emotional factors interact with broader institutional and organisational influences to shape the deliberations and behaviour of politicians and bureaucrats is paramount if we are to construct a more useful, nuanced and dynamic picture of government decision-making. This book draws on a variety of approaches to examine individuals working in contemporary government, from freshly-trained policy officers to former cabinet ministers and prime ministers. It provides important new insights into how those in government navigate their way through complex issues and decisions based on developed expertise that fuses formal, rational techniques with other learned behaviours, memories, emotions and practiced forms of judgment at an individual level. This innovative collection from leading academics across Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and North America will be of great interest to researchers, educators, advanced students and practitioners working in the fields of political science, public management and administration, and public policy.

Making Public Policy Decisions

Making Public Policy Decisions PDF Author: Damon Alexander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317697723
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
To understand public policy decisions, it is imperative to understand the capacities of the individual actors who are making them, how they think and feel about their role, and what drives and motivates them. However, the current literature takes little account of this, preferring instead to frame the decisions as the outcomes of a rational search for value-maximising alternatives or the result of systematic and well-ordered institutional and organisational processes. Yet understanding how personal and emotional factors interact with broader institutional and organisational influences to shape the deliberations and behaviour of politicians and bureaucrats is paramount if we are to construct a more useful, nuanced and dynamic picture of government decision-making. This book draws on a variety of approaches to examine individuals working in contemporary government, from freshly-trained policy officers to former cabinet ministers and prime ministers. It provides important new insights into how those in government navigate their way through complex issues and decisions based on developed expertise that fuses formal, rational techniques with other learned behaviours, memories, emotions and practiced forms of judgment at an individual level. This innovative collection from leading academics across Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and North America will be of great interest to researchers, educators, advanced students and practitioners working in the fields of political science, public management and administration, and public policy.

On Long-term Decisions in Public Policy

On Long-term Decisions in Public Policy PDF Author: Oriana Amanda Ponta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Designing for Policy Effectiveness

Designing for Policy Effectiveness PDF Author: B. Guy Peters
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108453112
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
Argues that the central goal of policy design is effectiveness.

Public Policy

Public Policy PDF Author: Carter A. Wilson
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This new text provides students with a broad survey of public policy theory and history, detailed in plain language. It focuses on distributive, redistributive, competitive regulatory, protective regulatory, and morality policies. It incorporates pluralists, elitists, state-centered, agenda-setting, problem definition, and social movement approaches into a model of policy regimes useful in explaining long-term policy stability and short bursts of policy change. The text covers ten substantive policy areas: social welfare, health care, civil rights, environmental protection, labor, competitive regulatory, fertility control, criminal justice, education, and economics, and provides extensive discussions about recent policy changes and contemporary policy debates.

Public Policy in an Uncertain World

Public Policy in an Uncertain World PDF Author: Charles F. Manski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067541
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Manski argues that public policy is based on untrustworthy analysis. Failing to account for uncertainty in an uncertain world, policy analysis routinely misleads policy makers with expressions of certitude. Manski critiques the status quo and offers an innovation to improve both how policy research is conducted and how it is used by policy makers.

Policy Problems and Policy Design

Policy Problems and Policy Design PDF Author: B. Guy Peters
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786431351
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Public policy can be considered a design science. It involves identifying relevant problems, selecting instruments to address the problem, developing institutions for managing the intervention, and creating means of assessing the design. Policy design has become an increasingly challenging task, given the emergence of numerous ‘wicked’ and complex problems. Much of policy design has adopted a technocratic and engineering approach, but there is an emerging literature that builds on a more collaborative and prospective approach to design. This book will discuss these issues in policy design and present alternative approaches to design.

Governing for the Long Term

Governing for the Long Term PDF Author: Alan M. Jacobs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139496115
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
In Governing for the Long Term, Alan M. Jacobs investigates the conditions under which elected governments invest in long-term social benefits at short-term social cost. Jacobs contends that, along the path to adoption, investment-oriented policies must surmount three distinct hurdles to future-oriented state action: a problem of electoral risk, rooted in the scarcity of voter attention; a problem of prediction, deriving from the complexity of long-term policy effects; and a problem of institutional capacity, arising from interest groups' preferences for distributive gains over intertemporal bargains. Testing this argument through a four-country historical analysis of pension policymaking, the book illuminates crucial differences between the causal logics of distributive and intertemporal politics and makes a case for bringing trade-offs over time to the center of the study of policymaking.

Public Policy Evaluation

Public Policy Evaluation PDF Author: Stuart S. Nagel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138326941
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
First published in 1998, this volume examines how super-optimum decisions involve finding alternatives to controversies whereby Conservatives, Liberals, or other major groups can all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. This book is organised in terms of concepts, methods, causes, process, substance, and the policy studies profession. Concepts clarify that policy evaluation traditionally involves: (1) Goals to be achieved; (2) Alternatives available for achieving them; (3) Relations between goals and alternatives; (4) Drawing a conclusion as to the best alternative in light of the goals, alternatives, and relations; and (5) Analysing how the conclusion would change if there were changes in the goals, alternatives, or relations. Super-optimizing also involves five related steps, but with the following improvements: (1) Goals are designed as conservative, liberal, or neutral; (2) Alternatives get the same designations; (3) Relations are simplified to indicate which alternatives are relatively high or low on each goal; (4) The conclusion involves arriving at an alternative that does better on Goal A than Alternative A, and simultaneously better on Goal B than Alternative B; and (5) The fifth step involves analysing the super-optimum or win-win alternative in terms of its feasibility as to the economic, technological, psychological, political, administrative, and legal matters.

Institutional Constraints and Policy Choice

Institutional Constraints and Policy Choice PDF Author: James C. Clingermayer
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791449141
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Demonstrates how governmental structure and institutional rules determine who gets what in American cities.

Political Decisions and Agency Performance

Political Decisions and Agency Performance PDF Author: R. Torenvlied
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401142858
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
All over the world, many people who live in urban areas find themselves in an arduous social situation. In the third world, people in overcrowded metropolitan areas have a problem in maintaining even the slightest standards of living. But also richer parts of the world, the United States, Europe and the far-East, show growing social inequalities in their cities. And social problems are not confined to the large metropolitan areas: impoverishment, long-term unemployment, social isolation, and the dependency on welfare programs pops up in medium-sized cities and even in smaller communities. At the same time, these cities are confronted with a growing bureaucratic conglomerate which is increasingly inapt to fight social degeneration. The catastrophe seems to be total: how to deal at once with declining social conditions and bureaucratic inadequacy? Two American authors, Osborne and Plastrik (1997), claim to have found the answer: just banish bureaucracy. The liberating accomplishments of the free market will elevate ordinary citizens and force lazy, incompetent bureaucrats to do their work properly. If they succeed, they survive. Otherwise, these agencies will vanish. They illustrate their arguments with the American city of 'Uphill Battle' which stopped its decline by reinventing government. Strict performance measures, allotting financial controls and incentives to the citizens, and improving accountability have saved the city. We should, however, be very careful in taking such measures so far that they banish bureaucracy. It is far from obvious that simply banishing bureaucracy indeed will help people in poor social situations.