Policy Debate Research Articles

Diffusion of innovation, innovation studies, and innovation policies: cross-fertilisation to improve smart specialisation strategies (S3)

The paper reviews the diffusion research approach to the analysis of innovations and its impact on innovation studies. This social approach brought a new understanding of the innovation process by focusing on analysing the factors that influence the spread of innovations instead of focusing on its technical basis. We also review the different approaches to the study of the spread of policies – policy diffusion, policy transfer and policy mobility. We review the reception of diffusion research in innovation studies to recover some insights and to integrate them into current innovation policy debate. We use the innovation policy of Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) as an example of how this integration could be done. After reviewing the main challenges of S3, we show the importance of improving the implementation phase of innovation policies through different mechanisms. For example, we indicate the need of paying more attention to mechanisms of policy diffusion, such as learning and, specially, socialisation as these could lead to more stable and long-term policy changes.

The TrustWorkers Project: Challenges and Methods of Building Trust into Public Scholarship

This article grapples with a critical question in public humanities work: How should academics think of trust as a theoretical problem in current public health, policy, and academic debates but also as a practice of engagement with local communities and collaborators outside the academy? We recount our experience of the TrustWorkers project at Columbia University in 2022—a project focused on the critical role of Community Health Workers as trust builders during the pandemic—to illustrate our thinking on this matter and contribute new impulses to publicly engaged scholarship.

Delay Discounting for HIV/STI Testing.

Wait time in healthcare is an important barrier to HIV/STI testing. Using a delay discounting approach, the current study examined a systematic reduction in testing likelihood as a function of delay (wait time) until testing. In Study 1 (N = 421; data collected in 2019), participants were randomly assigned to either a chlamydia/gonorrhea group or HIV group. A delay discounting task asked them to report how likely they would get tested for the assigned STI if they had to wait for the test (the delay durations varied within persons). In Study 2 (N = 392; data collected in 2020), we added a smaller, sooner outcome (consultation without testing) and tested whether the effect of delay was mediated by perceived severity of the STIs. In both studies, the subjective value of a delayed STI test was discounted. That is, people were less likely to undergo STI testing as the delay to STI testing increased. The chlamydia/gonorrhea group discounted delayed testing more than the HIV group (i.e., the effect of delay on testing decisions was stronger for the former). This effect was statistically mediated by perceived severity. We found evidence for delay discounting for HIV/STI testing and that testing decisions were more susceptible to delay when the test was for relatively mild STIs. Even mild STIs can cause serious health damage if left untreated. The findings provide strong argument for policies aimed to reduce wait times in healthcare, especially for relatively mild STIs.

The role of occupational skill sets in the digital transformation: how IT progress shapes returns to specialization and social skills

Workers’ occupational skill sets play a crucial role in successfully handling digital transformation. We investigate whether and how different types of occupational skill sets benefit from digital transformation. We theoretically and empirically analyze wage returns of workers in occupations with more or less specialized skill sets and with more or less social skills when IT increases in their industry. Applying natural language processing methods to the texts of occupational training curricula, we develop measures for occupational specialization and social skills. We use vocational education and training curricula from Switzerland because they cover approx. two-thirds of the working population. Using curricula, industry-level IT data and individual-level administrative wage data, our individual fixed-effects analyses show that IT progress leads to higher wage returns for workers in highly specialized occupations but not for workers in more general occupations. In addition, we find that high levels of social skills cannot make up for this difference when IT advances. However, our results indicate that for workers with high specialization, a combination with high social skills generates additional benefits when IT advances. Overall, our results suggest that, contrary to typical assumptions in educational policy debates, workers with specialized occupational skill sets—possibly in combination with high social skills—appear to be the ones who are particularly well prepared to cope with digital transformation.

Strengths-based Gram Sabhas? Challenges and radical possibilities when ‘measuring’ poverty in India

Poverty as an object of study in India continues to be the domain of economists, statisticians and demographers. The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSS) serves as the main instrument of data collection to measure poverty relative to economic indicators. In this paper we draw on strengths-based research undertaken in an Indian village to foreground alternative ways of conceptualising and practising data collection when measuring poverty. Explored through an analytics of biopolitics, asset-mapping exercises with young people and women revealed new subjectivities that emerged via illustrative meaning-making and dialogue. This approach to poverty measurement facilitated methods and produced outcomes that were less calculated and predefined than the NSS, and encouraged participation, even questioning of the status quo, in the ‘doing’ of the methodology itself. A strengths orientation to poverty opens up radical possibilities, particularly in India where the state-sanctioned self-­governing body, the Gram Sabhas, has a mandate to provide for the most marginalised groups. And while this governing body is not free from power imbalances, the potential it offers, when combined with strengths-based approaches (SBA) that value people for the expertise they already have, demands renewed attention in practitioner and policy debates in the country.

Does political affiliation impact transport policy debate?: Evidences from social media

AbstractSocial networking sites (SNS) have played an important role in engaging citizens to various policy discussions and debates about government, society and environment. Though SNS platforms empower citizens to express their opinion on important topics, several concerns have been raised by researchers for using SNS as discussion platform for important political, government and environmental policies. SNS platforms may be manipulated by the dominant group and citizen might also display group behaviour on these platforms while expressing their opinions of digital platforms. This study analyses political affiliations’ influence on opinion and content shared by various stakeholders on Twitter. The context of odd‐even driving policy is undertaken using text mining and statistical research methods. This research suggests that political affiliation significantly affects type and characteristics of content shared by SNS users. This study will help policymakers and researchers in better understanding of citizens responses to environmental policies on SNS platforms.

Taking stock: The contribution of policy studies to our understanding of gun policy

AbstractIn the summer of 2022, the tragic mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas once again thrust firearms policy onto the public agenda and opened an agenda window for bipartisan gun reforms in the Senate. Almost simultaneously, the Supreme Court struck down restrictions on concealed carry in New York state in the first major ruling on Second Amendment Rights since MacDonald v. Chicago. Given the salience of firearms policy to contemporary policy debates, it is important to take stock of how the discipline of policy studies has contributed to our understanding of this pressing area of policy. As we see, scholars of policy studies have largely left discussions of firearms policy to disciplines like criminology, sociology, economics, and public health. Despite this, a small group of scholars has used the theoretical toolkit of our discipline to better understand this issue. This short review article will present the contribution of policy studies to our understanding of firearms policy from Sandy Hook to Uvalde and provide suggestions for areas where the discipline can contribute to our understanding of this vitally important regulatory issue. Most importantly, more work is needed to develop robust and multidimensional evaluations of firearms policies.Related ArticlesCook, Philip J., and Jens Ludwig. 2019. “Understanding Gun Violence: Public Health vs. Public Policy.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 38(3): 788–95. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22141.Haider‐Markel, Donald P., and Mark R. Joselyn. 2017. “Special Issue Editors' Introduction: Gun Politics.” Social Science Quarterly 98(2): 377–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12415.

Assessing the impact of providing digital product information on the health risks of alcoholic beverages to the consumer at point of sale: A pilot study.

There is an ongoing policy debate in the European Union regarding the best method of providing information to consumers on the health risks of alcohol use. One of the proposed channels is via the provision of QR codes. This study tested the usage rate of QR codes placed on point-of-sale signs in a supermarket in Barcelona, Catalonia over a 1-week period. Nine banners with beverage-specific health warnings in large text were prominently displayed in the alcohol section of a supermarket. Each banner provided a QR code of relatively large image size that linked to a government website providing further information on alcohol-related harms. A comparison was made between the number of visits to the website and the number of customers in the supermarket (number of unique sales receipts) in a single week. Only 6 out of 7079 customers scanned the QR code during the week, corresponding to a usage rate of 0.085%, less than 1 per 1000. The usage rate was 2.6 per 1000 among those who purchased alcohol. Despite the availability of prominently displayed QR codes, the overwhelming majority of customers did not make use of the QR codes to obtain further information on alcohol-related harms. This corroborates the results from other studies investigating customers' use of QR codes to obtain additional product information. Based on the current evidence, providing online access to information through QR codes will likely not reach a significant portion of consumers.

Time to pay the piper: Fossil fuel companies’ reparations for climate damages

Time to pay the piper: Fossil fuel companies’ reparations for climate damages

Naïve no more: Foreign direct investment screening in the European Union

AbstractThis paper asks what explains the creation and comparative features of national Investment Screening Mechanisms (ISMs) in Europe. After providing a brief history and definition of ISMs, we provide descriptive patterns about the similarities and differences in the investment screening features of national ISMs in EU member states. We then explain differences in national screening policies by focusing on the role of public debt, Chinese investment, R&D expenditures and various geographic groupings. Finally, we make three policy arguments about the rise of ISMs in Europe: (1) ISMs have not been designed as protectionist instruments, (2) the politics of inward investment screening reflects a shift from economic to security logic in addressing the fundamental tension between the benefits and vulnerabilities of open markets and (3) the EU can use the ‘commercialisation’ of security to extend its own competence in the security sphere. We conclude by considering how the rapid expansion of investment screening in Europe could affect economic openness, as well as the role of the EU as a global actor.

Child Rights and Role of National Commission of Child Rights in Safeguarding the Rights of Children in Pakistan

The National Commission for Child Welfare and Development (NCCWD) was established by the Government of Pakistan on December 16, 1979, effective January 1, 1980, and amended several times until 1991. The Capital Administration and Development Division took over NCCWD ICT duties once the Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education decentralized. On December 2, 2011, the Prime Minister authorized moving the Ministry of Human Rights. Human Rights oversees it. The NCCWD monitors and promotes UNCRC promises worldwide. The NCCWD informs the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva and other interested parties on UN Convention implementation. how effective Pakistan has neglected child welfare, according to the report. The Convention on the Rights of the Child did not seem to promise help. In the last five years, not enough progress has been achieved to protect children's rights in the areas of education, safety, and social welfare. Although protecting children's social and security rights is vital, public discourse and policy debates have ignored it. Experts concluded from the research that Pakistan has not done enough for its children (Lansdown 2014).

The Importance of “Loss and Damage” in Supporting Climate Policy Debate

Climate change is having profound impacts on human and natural systems. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the need to address Loss and Damage (L&D) associated with the adverse effects of climate change, particularly in developing countries that are more vulnerable to its impacts. There is a range of studies, examining the concepts, resilience, adaptation and policy options for dealing with climate change losses and damages. This article discusses the actions, research and finance needs in Loss & Damage as well as the approaches to it on some topics such as adaptation, stakeholder engagement, governance and risk transfer.

Economic Assimilation of the “Third Generation”: An Intergenerational Mobility Perspective

Grandchildren of post-World War II immigrants have started entering the labor market in Western Europe. Are they on a multigenerational path toward full economic assimilation, much like the European migrant groups in US classical assimilation theory? This paper assesses the degree of economic assimilation of third-generation descendants of immigrants with divergent initial socioeconomic positions in the Netherlands. Given the diversity in starting positions of various migrant groups, we fully account for parental (economic) disadvantages from an intergenerational mobility perspective by making use of rich register data. Looking at adult children aged 20–30 and their (grand)parents, we quantify the Dutch-third-generation gap in incomes and wealth by employing a rank–rank analysis to identify ethnic disparities in absolute and relative intergenerational income mobility. Our analysis reveals that third-generation descendants of immigrants generally reach parity with their native-Dutch counterparts, regardless of their initial position when we control for socioeconomic conditions. The results signify a diminishing role of group-specific barriers across generations for all groups. As such, the third-generation descendants of disadvantaged migrants appear to be on a track toward economic assimilation, regardless of their ethno-national origin. Our conclusion highlights implications for policy and public debates on ethnic disparities.

Designing climate policy mixes: Analytical and energy system modeling approaches

A matter of debate in climate policy is whether lawmakers should rely on carbon pricing or regulations, such as low-carbon standards, to reach emission reduction goals. Past research showed that pricing is more cost-effective. However, previous work studied the two policies when implemented separately, in effect comparing two policy extremes. In contrast, we explore the full spectrum of climate policy mixes that include both types of policies but vary in how much they rely on each. We do this both analytically by extending previous theory and numerically with two energy system models. In line with past work, increasing reliance on pricing increases the cost-effectiveness of the policy mix. However, we show that this benefit exhibits diminishing marginal returns. Thus the gain in cost-effectiveness from complementing stringent standards with modest pricing is relatively large. Our results show that relying on pricing for 20% of emission reductions (and on a standard for 80%) reduces costs by 32%–57% compared to a standard-only approach. Importantly, trading off more of the standard for pricing delivers smaller and smaller gains in cost-effectiveness. For example, a policy mix that relies on each policy for 50% of emission reductions decreases costs by 60%–81%, which is already 71%–88% as cost-effective as the theoretically most cost-effective pricing-only policy.

Global value chains, neoliberalism and development practice: Reflections on Kenya's experience

AbstractGlobal value chain (GVC)‐led development discourse has gained considerable traction in the international development policy debate. Multilateral institutions and donor agencies shape value chain discourse and practice. Through the scholarly literature, this study critically reviews the conceptual underpinnings of value chain theory and its discourse. The study reviews the thematic programmatic application of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and analyses the application of value chain from a critical social theory perspective in Kenya. Findings demonstrate that the application of value chain theory to Kenya's development practice is unclear with regard to crucial elements of GVC configuration such as the state's role in facilitating development strategies, asymmetrical power relations within value chains and world historical processes affecting upgrading trajectories. This aspect is evident in the value chain‐led development interventions of the USAID in Kenya and supports neoliberal development agenda that caters to the business interests of multinational corporations.

Narrating Moscow’s housing ‘renovation’: beyond the frontstage discourses of the narrative policy framework

ABSTRACT The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has become a popular, positivist approach to studying how narratives affect the policy process over the past 10 years. In this paper, we critically evaluate its applicability in an authoritarian context. We employ a mixed-method approach to, first, present some of the narrative elements employed by principal actors in the policy debate according to the NPF, derived through quantitative content analysis, and second, to critically contrast these findings by drawing on qualitative data. The policy we examine is Moscow’s contentious Renovation program, which aims to demolish many of the city’s Soviet-era five story ‘Kruschovsky’ apartment blocks and resettle residents in new apartments. The quantitative content analysis is derived from several online government sources and that of the principal opponent of the Renovation program, an online group called ‘Moscovites Against Demolition’. The qualitative data are derived from a district in Southwest Moscow, where the first Kruschovsky apartments were developed and has locally seen vocal opposition to the Renovation program and other redevelopment projects. This study highlights the limitations of the NPF and argues that by examining the performative nature of policy narratives, we can gain greater insight into the political strategies and context that underwrite these narratives.

Mainstreaming nature-based solutions in cities: A systematic literature review and a proposal for facilitating urban transitions

Nature-based solutions are gaining prominence in urban sustainability discourses, especially in climate adaptation, in efforts to increase resilience, and as a means of promoting a range of social, environmental, and economic benefits. There are however barriers and inertia that slow the adoption of such solutions, and a term commonly used for overcoming such factors is mainstreaming. The term mainstreaming in relation to nature-based solutions is ambiguous, as it is entangled within or conflated with other similar concepts that also describe change processes. This lack of clarity is a cause for potential misdirection of planning with nature-based solutions towards more climate resilient cities. Therefore, this article expands and deepens the understanding of mainstreaming nature-based solutions in cities by proposing a (re)conceptualisation of the term mainstreaming. Our (re)conceptualisation explores mainstreaming in the context of multi-level governance, to unpack where mainstreaming can unfold within and across levels, and focuses on knowledge drivers, to unpack how mainstreaming activities are shaped. These dimensions are important for unpacking where mainstreaming can happen and what informs mainstreaming activities, facilitating more effective discourses, policy-making, and wider adoption of urban nature-based solutions. We report on a systematic literature review and synthesis of 147 articles, which proposes a new mainstreaming framework and definition by identifying five mechanisms and four roles to explain how mainstreaming processes unfold or mobilise in cities. This adds a framework and language to the academic and policy debate that is needed for operationalising nature-based solutions mainstreaming processes, and thereby to transform urban planning practices.

Lifestyle versus social determinants of health in the Dutch parliament: An automated analysis of debate transcripts

Although public health scholars increasingly recognize the importance of the social determinants of health (SDOH), health policy outputs tend to emphasize downstream lifestyle factors instead. We use an automated corpus research approach to analyse fourteen years of health policy debate in the Dutch House of Representatives’ Health Committee, testing three potential causes of the lack of attention for SDOH: political ideology, by which members of parliament (MPs) from some political orientations may prioritize lifestyle factors over SDOH; lifestyle drift, by which early attention for SDOH during problem analysis is replaced by a lifestyle focus in the development of solutions as the challenges in addressing SDOH become clear; and focusing events, by which political or societal chance events, known to the public and political elites simultaneously, bolster the lifestyle perspective on health. Our analysis shows that overall, the committee spent most of its time discussing neither SDOH nor lifestyle: healthcare financing and service delivery dominated instead. When SDOH or lifestyle were referenced, left-leaning MPs referred significantly more to SDOH and right-leaning MPs significantly more to lifestyle. Temporal effects related to election cycles yielded inconsistent evidence. Finally, peak attention for both lifestyle and SDOH coincided with ongoing political debate instead of exogenous, unforeseen focusing events, and these peaks were rendered relatively insignificant by the larger and more consistent attention for health care. This paper provides a first step toward automated analysis of policy debates at scale, opening up new avenues for the empirical study of health political discourse.

How the African Continental Free Trade Area impacts firms’ export survival: Some lessons from Kenya

The potential benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) have taken center stage in recent policy and scholarly debates. We contribute to this discussion by drawing insights from our assessment of the current levels of export survival across the following agreements: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), and the overall economic integration agreement (EIA). Using monthly firm-product-destination customs transaction data from Kenya for the period January 2006 to December 2017, we find that the average duration of trading is longer under an agreement than when there is no agreement in place by 1.12 months. The mean duration of exporting under EAC exceeds that of COMESA by 1.47 months. The probit regression results with random effects reveal that trade agreements reduce the hazard rate for exports. However, the effect differs depending on the agreement’s depth and extent: The effect is negative for the EAC and positive for the COMESA. We also find that the ‘timing’ effect differs depending on the nature of the agreement. Overall, while the AfCFTA may expand market access, it might not guarantee low failure rates for exporters.

The politics of expertise in assessing alternatives to glyphosate in France

Transitions to sustainability require not only structural policy reforms, but a rethinking of how policy-relevant expertise is produced. Scholars of Science and Technology Studies have used the concept of boundary work to examine how governments mobilize experts to establish epistemic and political authority for public policies. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which boundary work affects the scope of policy options to advance sustainability transitions, notably in the context of sociotechnical lock-in of dominant technologies. This article analyzes French pesticide regulation on alternatives to glyphosate in agriculture to reveal the governance implications of the construction of expertise. It examines how state actors and scientific experts performed cognitive and sociopolitical boundary work to affect both the framing of government-commissioned scientific reports and the institutions and policy instruments through which the government addressed the glyphosate problem. The article analyzes the factors that shaped the development of a novel regulatory instrument which restricts the use of glyphosate based on the availability and costs of alternatives, rather than on health or environmental risks alone. This process limited the framing of glyphosate alternatives to practices considered economically and practically feasible by selected experts and excluded more systemic alternatives from policy debate and instrumentation. The adoption of this regulatory instrument reflects specific institutional contexts, power differentials between governmental ministries, and the hidden political influence of a powerful agricultural sector and agrochemical industry. This article shows how expertise design plays a key role in defining the scope of policy options and determining allocations of political power.