Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy PDF Download

Author: Nikolaos Zahariadis
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589012363
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

View

Book Description
Zahariadis offers a theory that explains policymaking when "ambiguity" is present—a state in which there are many ways, often irreconcilable, of thinking about an issue. Expanding and extending John Kingdon's influential "multiple streams" model that explains agenda setting, Zahariadis argues that manipulation, the bending of ideas, process, and beliefs to get what you want out of the policy process, is the key to understanding the dynamics of policymaking in conditions of ambiguity. He takes one of the major theories of public policy to the next step in three different ways: he extends it to a different form of government (parliamentary democracies, where Kingdon looked only at what he called the United States's presidential "organized anarchy" form of government); he examines the entire policy formation process, not just agenda setting; and he applies it to foreign as well as domestic policy. This book combines theory with cases to illuminate policymaking in a variety of modern democracies. The cases cover economic policymaking in Britain, France, and Germany, foreign policymaking in Greece, all compared to the U.S. (where the model was first developed), and an innovative computer simulation of the policy process.

Author: Chan Su Jung
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 178897185X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

View

Book Description
Chan Su Jung provides a thorough review of goal ambiguity in the public sector, exploring the general assertions, arguments and empirical evidence regarding performance goal ambiguity, particularly highlighting its causes, consequences, and mediation effects. The author proposes a new conceptual framework for successful analysis of goal ambiguity that can effectively relate to diverse organizational and program characteristics.

Author: Paul Cairney
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350311979
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

View

Book Description
The fully revised second edition of this textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to theories of public policy and policymaking. The policy process is complex: it contains hundreds of people and organisations from various levels and types of government, from agencies, quasi- and non-governmental organisations, interest groups and the private and voluntary sectors. This book sets out the major concepts and theories that are vital for making sense of the complexity of public policy, and explores how to combine their insights when seeking to explain the policy process. While a wide range of topics are covered – from multi-level governance and punctuated equilibrium theory to 'Multiple Streams' analysis and feminist institutionalism – this engaging text draws out the common themes among the variety of studies considered and tackles three key questions: what is the story of each theory (or multiple theories); what does policy theory tell us about issues like 'evidence based policymaking'; and how 'universal' are policy theories designed in the Global North? This book is the perfect companion for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying public policy, whether focussed on theory, analysis or the policy process, and it is essential reading for all those on MPP or MPM programmes. New to this Edition: - New sections on power, feminist institutionalism, the institutional analysis and development framework, the narrative policy framework, social construction and policy design - A consideration of policy studies in relation to the Global South in an updated concluding chapter - More coverage of policy formulation and tools, the psychology of policymaking and complexity theory - Engaging discussions of punctuated equilibrium, the advocacy coalition framework and multiple streams analysis

Author: Reimut Zohlnhöfer
Publisher: ECPR Press
ISBN: 1785521675
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

View

Book Description
Policy issues have grown ever more complex and politically more contestable. So governments in advanced democracies often do not understand the problems they have to deal with and do not know how to solve them. Thus, rational problem-solving models are highly unconvincing. Conversely, the Multiple-Streams Framework starts out from these conditions, which has led to increasing interest in it. Nevertheless, there has not yet been a systematic attempt to assess the potential of such scholarship. This volume is the first attempt to fill that gap by bringing together a group of international scholars to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Framework from different angles. Chapters explore systematically and empirically the Framework’s potential in different national contexts and in policy areas from climate change and foreign policy to healthcare and the welfare state.

Author: Charles F. Manski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067541
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

View

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.

Author: Carl Patton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317350006
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

View

Book Description
Updated in its 3rd edition, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning presents quickly applied methods for analyzing and resolving planning and policy issues at state, regional, and urban levels. Divided into two parts, Methods which presents quick methods in nine chapters and is organized around the steps in the policy analysis process, and Cases which presents seven policy cases, ranging in degree of complexity, the text provides readers with the resources they need for effective policy planning and analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are systematically combined to address policy dilemmas and urban planning problems. Readers and analysts utilizing this text gain comprehensive skills and background needed to impact public policy.

Author: Čarna Brković
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785334158
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

View

Book Description
Why do people turn to personal connections to get things done? Exploring the role of favors in social welfare systems in postwar, postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina, this volume provides a new theoretical angle on links between ambiguity and power. It demonstrates that favors were not an instrumental tactic of survival, nor a way to reproduce oneself as a moral person. Instead, favors enabled the insertion of personal compassion into the heart of the organization of welfare. Managing Ambiguity follows how neoliberal insistence on local community, flexibility, and self-responsibility was translated into clientelist modes of relating and back, and how this fostered a specific mode of power.

Author: Rachel Augustine Potter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022662188X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

View

Book Description
Who determines the fuel standards for our cars? What about whether Plan B, the morning-after pill, is sold at the local pharmacy? Many people assume such important and controversial policy decisions originate in the halls of Congress. But the choreographed actions of Congress and the president account for only a small portion of the laws created in the United States. By some estimates, more than ninety percent of law is created by administrative rules issued by federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, where unelected bureaucrats with particular policy goals and preferences respond to the incentives created by a complex, procedure-bound rulemaking process. With Bending the Rules, Rachel Augustine Potter shows that rulemaking is not the rote administrative activity it is commonly imagined to be but rather an intensely political activity in its own right. Because rulemaking occurs in a separation of powers system, bureaucrats are not free to implement their preferred policies unimpeded: the president, Congress, and the courts can all get involved in the process, often at the bidding of affected interest groups. However, rather than capitulating to demands, bureaucrats routinely employ “procedural politicking,” using their deep knowledge of the process to strategically insulate their proposals from political scrutiny and interference. Tracing the rulemaking process from when an agency first begins working on a rule to when it completes that regulatory action, Potter shows how bureaucrats use procedures to resist interference from Congress, the President, and the courts at each stage of the process. This exercise reveals that unelected bureaucrats wield considerable influence over the direction of public policy in the United States.

Author: Richard Rose
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300058772
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

View

Book Description
Although politicians promise innovation and change when they run for office, once elected they face inherited commitments to programs initiated by their predecessors, legacies that severely limit their freedom of choice. In this book, the authors examine the ways in which decisions made by past generations of administrators control policy-making in the present.

Author: Christopher M. Weible
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000899799
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454

View

Book Description
Theories of the Policy Process provides a forum for the experts in policy process research to present the basic propositions, empirical evidence, latest updates, and the promising future research opportunities of each policy process theory. In this thoroughly revised fifth edition, each chapter has been updated to reflect recent empirical work, innovative theorizing, and a world facing challenges of historic proportions with climate change, social and political inequities, and pandemics, among recent events. Updated and revised chapters include Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, Multiple Streams Framework, Policy Feedback Theory, Advocacy Coalition Framework, Narrative Policy Framework, Institutional and Analysis and Development Framework, and Diffusion and Innovation. This fifth edition includes an entirely new chapter on the Ecology of Games Framework. New authors have been added to most chapters to diversify perspectives and make this latest edition the most internationalized yet. Across the chapters, revisions have clarified concepts and theoretical arguments, expanded and extended the theories’ scope, summarized lessons learned and knowledge gained, and addressed the relevancy of policy process theories. Theories of the Policy Process has been, and remains, the quintessential gateway to the field of policy process research for students, scholars, and practitioners. It’s ideal for those enrolled in policy process courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and those conducting research or undertaking practice in the subject.