Author: Lok-sang Ho
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136651071
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
As a book on public policy, this book is unique in addressing explicitly the role of human nature. Only with a good understanding of human nature can policy makers address their foremost needs and anticipate how people may respond to specific designs in policy. This way policy makers can avoid "unintended consequences." The book also provides a new perspective on the meaning of public interest, which is based on intellectual roots dating back to J.S.Mill and more recently Harsanyi and Rawls. Traditionally, economists have referred to either the Hicksian criterion or the Kaldorian criterion as the yardstick to whether a policy is welfare enhancing, not realizing that both of these criteria fail abjectly in producing a convincing test for welfare improvement. This is because ex post, typically some people will gain and some people will lose from any policy. The author argues for an alternative, ex ante welfare increase criterion that is based on how people would assess a policy if they were completely impartial and totally ignored their personal interests. It applies the principles to key policy concerns such as health policy, tort law reform, education and cultural policy, and pension reform. The healthcare reform proposals in the book illustrate the application of the principles. The author proposes a basic protection plan under which standard basic healthcare services are priced the same whether they are provided by public or private caregivers—at levels that can contain both demand side and supply side moral hazard. Annual eligible healthcare expenses are capped to alleviate worries. A "Lifetime Healthcare Supplement" that includes an element of risk sharing adds to patients’ choice and protection without compromising fiscal sustainability.
Author: Tara Dawson McGuinness
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207755
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
“Worth a read for anyone who cares about making change happen.”—Barack Obama A powerful new blueprint for how governments and nonprofits can harness the power of digital technology to help solve the most serious problems of the twenty-first century As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time—from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach—public interest technology—that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems. Through inspiring stories about successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, the authors show how public interest technology can make the delivery of services to the public more effective and efficient. At its heart, public interest technology means putting users at the center of the policymaking process, using data and metrics in a smart way, and running small experiments and pilot programs before scaling up. And while this approach may well involve the innovative use of digital technology, technology alone is no panacea—and some of the best solutions may even be decidedly low-tech. Clear-eyed yet profoundly optimistic, Power to the Public presents a powerful blueprint for how government and nonprofits can help solve society’s most serious problems.
Author: P. Iosifidis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230346588
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Petros Iosifidis addresses an increasingly prominent subject area in the field of media and communications, and one that has attracted increased attention in areas such as sociology, economics, political science and law: global media policy and regulation. Specifically, he considers the wider social, political, economic and technological changes arising from the globalization of the communications industries and assesses their impact on matters of regulation and policy. By focusing on the convergence of the communication and media industries, he makes reference to the paradigmatic shift from a system based on the traditions of public service in broadcast and telecommunications delivery to one that is demarcated by commercialization, privatization and competition. In doing so, Iosifidis tackles a key question in the field: to what extent do new media developments require changes in regulatory philosophy and objectives. It considers the various possible meanings of the public interest concept in exploring the different regulatory modes and the interplay between the local and the global in policy-making.
Author: Barry Bozeman
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589014015
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Economic individualism and market-based values dominate today's policymaking and public management circles—often at the expense of the common good. In his new book, Barry Bozeman demonstrates the continuing need for public interest theory in government. Public Values and Public Interest offers a direct theoretical challenge to the "utility of economic individualism," the prevailing political theory in the western world. The book's arguments are steeped in a practical and practicable theory that advances public interest as a viable and important measure in any analysis of policy or public administration. According to Bozeman, public interest theory offers a dynamic and flexible approach that easily adapts to changing situations and balances today's market-driven attitudes with the concepts of common good advocated by Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and John Dewey. In constructing the case for adopting a new governmental paradigm based on what he terms "managing publicness," Bozeman demonstrates why economic indices alone fail to adequately value social choice in many cases. He explores the implications of privatization of a wide array of governmental services—among them Social Security, defense, prisons, and water supplies. Bozeman constructs analyses from both perspectives in an extended study of genetically modified crops to compare the policy outcomes using different core values and questions the public value of engaging in the practice solely for the sake of cheaper food. Thoughtful, challenging, and timely, Public Values and Public Interest shows how the quest for fairness can once again play a full part in public policy debates and public administration.
Author: Joshua D. Hawley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780880996754
Category : Big data
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
"This book is about how new and underutilized types of big data sources can inform public policy decisions related to workforce development. Hawley describes how government is currently using data to inform decisions about the workforce at the state and local levels. He then moves beyond standardized performance metrics designed to serve federal agency requirements and discusses how government can improve data gathering and analysis to provide better, up-to-date information for government decision making"--
Author: Michael L. Abels
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351661736
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170
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Book Description
Policy Making in the Public Interest is the first text and workbook to provide a short and firmly focused introduction to local government policy making techniques. Each chapter introduces core policy concepts and competencies and concludes with exercises that encourage the reader to apply the theme of the chapter to a practical policy issue in local government, such as city-planning, community-economic development, public safety programming, utility planning, developing regional partnerships, and sustainable growth and development. The exercises explore issues students are likely to analyze as interns or observe in a service learning assignment with local government. For practitioners and elected officials, the exercises focus on issues commonly confronted on the job. This unique approach is designed specifically to lead the reader to a complete and multi-dimensional understanding of ‘the public interest’ and to provide tools for identifying and adopting local government policies that will support it. An accompanying eResource page contains grading forms to evaluate verbal presentations and analytical work, PowerPoint slides, downloadable forms for students and practitioners, as well as links and resources. Policy Making in the Public Interest is an essential text and workbook for classes in public policy or local government operations, a vital self-guided handbook for managers and elected officials, and a useful resource and instructional guide for workshops.
Author: Charles L. Schultze
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815719051
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Book Description
According to conventional wisdom, government may intervene when private markets fail to provide goods and services that society values. This view has led to the passage of much legislation and the creation of a host of agencies that have attempted, by exquisitely detailed regulations, to compel legislatively defined behavior in a broad range of activities affecting society as a whole—health care, housing, pollution abatement, transportation, to name only a few. Far from achieving the goals of the legislators and regulators, these efforts have been largely ineffective; worse, they have spawned endless litigation and countless administrative proceedings as the individuals and firms on who the regulations fall seek to avoid, or at least soften, their impact. The result has been long delays in determining whether government programs work at all, thwarting of agreed-upon societal aims, and deep skepticism about the power of government to make any difference. Strangely enough in a nation that since its inception has valued both the means and the ends of the private market system, the United States has rarely tried to harness private interests to public goals. Whenever private markets fail to produce some desired good or service (or fail to deter undesirable activity), the remedies proposed have hardly ever involved creating a system of incentives similar to those of the market place so as to make private choice consonant with public virtue. In this revision of the Godkin Lectures presented at Harvard University in November and December 1976, Charles L. Schultze examines the sources of this paradox. He outlines a plan for government intervention that would turn away from the direct "command and control" regulating techniques of the past and rely instead on market-like incentives to encourage people indirectly to take publicly desired actions.
Author: J.A. Chandler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131529527X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 559
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Book Description
Public Policy and Private Interest explains the complexities of the policy making process in a refreshingly clear way for students who are new to this subject. The key topics it explains are: How policy originates, is refined, legitimised, implemented, evaluated and terminated in the forms of theoretical models of the policy process; Which actors and institutions are most influential in determining the nature of policy; The values that shape the policy agenda such as ideology, institutional self-interest and resource capabilities; The outcome of policies, and why they succeed or fail; The main policy theories including the very latest insights from network theory and post-modernism; How national policy is influenced by globalization. The text is fully illustrated throughout with a broad range of national and international case studies on subjects such as the banking crisis, the creation of unitary authorities and global environmental policy and regulation. Combining both a clear summary of debates and theories in public policy and a new and original approach to the subject, this book is essential reading for students of public policy and policy analysis.
Author: Thomas A. Birkland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315292319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
A concise, accessible introduction to the public policy process that can be read on may levels. The author's direct writing style and extensive use of examples will appeal to students as well as practitioners. The book offers an extensive overview of the best current thinking on the policy process, with an emphasis on accessibility and synthesis rather than novelty or abstraction. An extensive glossary of terms, keyed to the chapters in which each term is most thoroughly discussed; an annotated bibliography; and an introduction to web-based research, with a guide to the most important and reliable public policy research sites, are among the book's many useful features.
Author: Gloria Ladson-Billings
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807774332
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Acclaimed African American scholar and teacher educator Gloria Ladson-Billings examines the field of teacher education through the accomplishments and contributions of well-known African American teacher educators—Lisa Delpit, Carl Grant, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Geneva Gay, Cherry McGee Banks, William Tate, and Joyce King. Using in-depth interviews and storytelling, Ladson-Billings depicts deeply personal portraits of these scholars’ experiences to confront race and racism, not only theoretically, but within their everyday professional lives in “the Big House” of the academy. Ladson-Billings gives these portraits even greater resonance and meaning by pairing these teacher educators with historical figures—such as Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Charlotte Forten—whose contributions to the struggle for social justice are a wellspring of hope and courage to all educators, and a tribute to African Americans whose political, scientific, and spiritual efforts made life better for us all. This compelling book is important reading for all educators who want to transform teacher education for the better. “The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is enthused and excited about Ladson-Billings’s dynamic and provoking scholarship. Its focus on outstanding African American teacher educators is a major contribution to teacher education literature. This cutting-edge research is likely to prompt some of the best of unconventional teacher education thought.” —David G. Imig, President and CEO, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education “In this moving and original book, Gloria Ladson-Billings offers complex insights about the politics of scholarship, the experiences of scholars of color in universities, and the larger enterprise of teaching and teacher education for social justice.” —Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Lynch School of Education, Boston College and President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for 2004–05.