Policy Dilemmas Research Articles

Fiscal and Monetary Policy Dilemma in Pakistan to Support Economic Growth

Monetary and fiscal policy are both macroeconomic instruments used to govern and have a large impact on a country's economy, businesses, production and consumption. The objective of the study is to evaluate the comparative analysis of fiscal and monetary policy in Pakistan. For this purpose, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was used, which showed the significant impact of monetary and fiscal policy on enhancing economic growth. Data was obtained from World Development Indicator (WDI) from 1990 to 2020. In this study, two models have been estimated using the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a dependent variable and Development Expenditures, Gross Fixed Capital Formation, Labor Force Participation, Corruption, Total Tax, Trade openness, Broad Money (M2), Governmental Consumption Expenditure as independent variables. The results showed that monetary policy positively impacts Pakistan’s economy. Also, the study found that fiscal policy affects Pakistan’s economy positively. But the study reveals that monetary policy is more powerful in promoting economic growth in Pakistan. So, we will suggest that promoting the monetary policy in the banking sector would provide a suitable investment atmosphere through the maintenance of inflationary rates, interest rates, and lending rates to endorse and confirm economic growth, sustainability, solidity, and progress in Pakistan.

Supply shocks and monetary policy responses in emerging economies

Supply shocks bring about important dilemmas for monetary policy in emerging economies. We compute monetary policy responses to supply shocks using quarterly data and a Bayesian panel VAR for 24 emerging economies during the period 2004–2019. In this framework, we identify supply shocks as unexpected and temporary total factor productivity innovations which are orthogonal to demand related shocks. We highlight three results from this econometric exercise. First, monetary policy is, in average, procyclical in emerging economies after temporary supply shocks. Second, monetary policy is more procyclical in fixed than in flexible exchange-rate regimes. Third, monetary policy is more procyclical in economies with a higher degree of financial openness. The latter result is a central dilemma for emerging economies during supply shocks, since it implies that financial openness prevents less procyclical monetary policy reactions due to the trade-off between exchange rate and income volatility.

Monetary Policy Normalization and Central Bank Profits: A Break-Even Point Perspective

Abstract This paper advances a simple framework explaining how monetary policy normalization (“exit policies”) may impact central bank profits. The cases of seven central banks of major and smaller economies serve as an illustration. The notion of the break-even point is applied to study the financial situation of these institutions for the period of 2014–2021. During the normalization process, interest rate increases may adversely affect profit changes, and through transfers may have an impact on the fiscal space available to the governments, creating political economy concerns. Possible remedies are discussed together with accompanying policy dilemmas.

Development aid and domestic regional inequality: the case of Myanmar

ABSTRACT There is a cyclical nature to the dilemmas confronting international donors willing to operate in Myanmar. Brief periods of relative openness led to rapid surges in development assistance, regularly interrupted by long phases of military rule and disengagement by donors. Amidst all this, many predicaments remain. This article engages with one of them: the inequality between regions. How have international donors reacted to the issue of domestic regional inequality? Recent studies suggest that official development assistance (ODA) does not target poor regions very well, but it is not always clear why this is the case. Myanmar’s sudden, yet uneven and unequal liberalization from 2011 to 2021 catalyzed huge inflows of ODA, while it also confronted donors with new policy dilemmas. The article shows that aid providers struggle with the problem of rising regional inequality, especially for political reasons. Donor and recipient interests often do not align well on this issue. In the case of Myanmar, donors who press for regional inequality to sit prominently on the agenda might fare less successfully than those who address the issue indirectly. The article concludes that regional inequality and the politics of targeting deserve a more central role in the political economy of ODA.

Of Canaries and Ropes: Theoretical and Policy Dilemmas Stemming from Canada’s Huawei 5G Networks Saga

In late May 2022 Canada joined its four other partners in the intelligence-sharing community dubbed the "Five Eyes", and banned the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei from participation in its 5G network. This article explains what has been at stake for Canada and other countries in this saga, doing so in a way that emphasizes the tightly intermeshed nature of internal and international security. The metaphors in the article’s title draw our attention to the manner in which Canadian security policy interests have been increasingly affected negatively as a result of high-tech interdependence with China. This paper explores the reasons for, and implications of this surprising denouement of an "engagement" strategy that at one time possessed a great deal of allure in Ottawa, but is now regarded with increasing skepticism.

The ethics of migration policy dilemmas

AbstractThis article proposes a new approach to the political theory of migration: the ethics of migration policy dilemmas. The core of this new approach lies in identifying specific policy dilemmas of central relevance to policy makers and other stakeholders in the field, and then submitting these dilemmas to systematic theoretical analysis. We conceptualize policy dilemmas as involving hard choices between competing moral goals and distinguish this kind of dilemma from other types of ethical choices, such as conflicting means, dirty hands, political feasibility, and politics dilemmas. We argue that, besides enlarging the range of questions asked by political theorists of migration, our approach of engaging normatively with hard policy dilemmas can help mitigate the negative political and societal effects of reductionist political positions that seek to negate the existence of competing moral goals. We make the case for a multidisciplinary approach to the normative analysis of hard ethical dilemmas, transcending both explanatory and interpretive analyses in the spirit of an applied normative political theory that aims to be action guiding.

Youth transition, agricultural education and employment in Uganda: freeing individual agency

ABSTRACT The reality of the troubles young people encounter in navigating confining social and institutional settings to become productive workers and flourishing citizens in sub-Saharan African countries like Uganda continues to attract all sorts of theoretical and social policy assumptions. One such prominent assumption is the idea that increased young people’s participation in agricultural education and work has the potential to stem escalating youth unemployment. The related narrative that young people are less keen to plunge their learning and work life in agriculture owing to its low social status poses a huge education and labour policy dilemma across SSA and similar contexts. Amid this dilemma are narratives, which seem to underplay the influential social arrangements that structure the education–work trajectories of young people and the perceptions and practice of micro-social actors in the agriculture education and labour markets. Questionable narratives that often attempt to frame young people as authors of their own troubled work transitions abound sections of social policy and development discourse. Moreover, mainstream research and evaluative studies in Uganda and similar contexts do have a traditional focus on macro and meso structures with limited methodological interest into the voices and experiences of frontline social actors. Accordingly, this qualitative study is an in-depth examination of personal and contextual influences on young people’s agricultural education-employment transitions; and exploration of how to improve transition processes for optimising learning and labour market outcomes. The findings reveal unprecedented resilience and volitions of young people to advance their education–work trajectories despite the structural barriers. The study showed a reasonable degree of enthusiasm amongst some micro-social actors in supporting young people on their life transitions though often constrained by confining social and institutional arrangements. The study yielded robust evidence into the difficulties to cause AET system improvements for better student outcomes but also delivered incredible insights for making change possible. Freeing and nurturing the individual agency of Ugandan young people to choose and pursue agricultural education and work aspirations along the constricting pathways enacted as part of societal canalisation is among the core elements of this thesis. The agency freedom and professional autonomy of frontline social actors, especially agricultural educators to enable them to practise craftsmanship, democracy and associated transformative approaches for better preparation of young people to navigate their education and career trajectories is equally a core argument of this thesis.

Entrenching Authoritarian Rule and Thailand's Foreign Policy Dilemma as a Middle Power

executive summary: This essay explores the strategies that Thailand has used to navigate the great-power competition between the U.S. and China as well as the factors that are driving contemporary Thailand's foreign policy orientation and dilemmas. main argument Recent Thai governments, whether authoritarian or democratically elected, have maintained amicable relations with Beijing while retaining close military cooperation with Washington. However, domestic political dynamics within Thailand are critical to the past and future trajectory of Thailand's bilateral relations with the U.S. and China. Bangkok's reversion toward authoritarian military rule over the past few years has created a different logic in its foreign relations. For the U.S., Thailand's authoritarian turn, although not to Washington's liking, can be tolerated as long as Thailand continues to serve U.S. strategic interests in the region. For China, cordial relations with the incumbent military government of Thailand pave the way for closer economic and political relations, yet anti-authoritarian sentiment within Thailand holds China liable and condemns China's complicity in Thailand's turn to military rule. Thus, balancing Thailand's domestic political dynamic with the foreign policy interests of the U.S. and China is the defining feature of Bangkok's maneuvering act between the two great powers. policy implications • As U.S.-China relations grow more tense, countries in Southeast Asia are feeling the squeeze from both sides. These states sense they need to prepare for choosing between the two powers while trying to delay or prevent such a choice from being necessary. • Thailand's turn toward domestic authoritarian rule creates a dilemma for both the U.S. and China. For the U.S., there is a need to tolerate an authoritarian government in Bangkok to maintain stable military and security cooperation. For China, Thailand's domestic political situation creates a backlash against Chinese interests in the country. • The current military government in Thailand is likely to prioritize its own domestic political legitimacy over relations with either power and will take advantage of the Sino-U.S. competition however best suits its own regime survival. • If Thailand reverts to a democratically elected government with popular support, healthy relationships with both China and the U.S. are more likely to result and endure.

Last Lap

What do responsible environmental behaviour and practice look like, especially for those of us who despair of effective policies being enacted by the current generation of political elites? This paper provides a personal response to the ethical and policy dilemma of our times. I attempt to explain what may seem like – and possibly is – entirely self-indulgent behaviour on the basis that I can make absolutely no difference at the sort of macro level that is needed to ‘save the planet’. In the process I try to explain why thousands of others have made similar choices and why cooperation even amongst well-intentioned and informed individuals is so hard and unlikely to succeed.

Australia’s Policy Successes in Timor-Leste

An independent Timor-Leste posed a dilemma for Australian foreign policy. On the one hand, Australia led the multinational military coalition that restored peace in 1999, and had an obvious interest in ensuring that its newest neighbour was self-reliant and stable. On the other hand, independence negated three decades of Australian diplomatic effort to control the oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea. Accordingly, Australia accepted Timor-Leste’s formal independence but tried to influence key aspects of its internal and external policies using foreign aid, espionage and other instruments of statecraft.

Experts vs. policymakers in the COVID-19 policy response

We build an evolutionary game-theoretic model of the interaction between policymakers and experts in shaping the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Players’ decisions concern two alternative strategies of pandemic management: a “hard” approach, enforcing potentially unpopular measures such as strict confinement orders, and a “soft” approach, based upon voluntary and short-lived social distancing. Policymakers’ decisions may also rely upon expert advice. Unlike experts, policymakers are sensitive to a public consensus incentive that makes lifting restrictions as soon as possible especially desirable. This incentive may conflict with the overall goal of mitigating the effects of the pandemic, leading to a typical policy dilemma. We show that the selection of strategies may be path-dependent, as their initial distribution is a crucial driver of players’ choices. Contingent on cultural factors and the epidemiological conditions, steady states in which both types of players unanimously endorse the strict strategy can coexist with others where experts and policymakers agree on the soft strategy, depending on the initial conditions. The model can also lead to attractive asymmetric equilibria where experts and policymakers endorse different strategies, or to cyclical dynamics where the shares of adoption of strategies oscillate indefinitely around a mixed strategy equilibrium. This multiplicity of equilibria can explain the coexistence of contrasting pandemic countermeasures observed across countries in the first wave of the outbreak. Our results suggest that cross-country differences in the COVID-19 policy response need not be the effect of poor decision making. Instead, they can endogenously result from the interplay between policymakers and experts incentives under the local social, cultural and epidemiological conditions.

Fitting national interests with populist opportunities: intervention politics on the European radical right

As European radical right parties grow in influence, and as foreign and security policy becomes more politicised, these parties have increasing potential to shape national debates on international affairs. This paper shows how radical right opposition parties seek to exploit policy dilemmas surrounding military intervention according to the nature of the political opportunity these dilemmas present in specific national settings. Its findings are based on qualitative comparative case studies of Front National, AfD and UKIP responses to intervention debates surrounding the Syrian civil war in France, Germany and the UK. I find that non-intervention is not an absolute value for radical right parties. Whilst liberal-humanitarian interventions are uniformly rejected, interventions on national security grounds, whether to combat Jihadist threats or prevent uncontrolled migration, prompt a range of responses shaped by the domestic political context. Yet even where these parties back intervention in votes, their discourse focuses on fitting the issue to the populist dimensions of their political agenda, especially attacking mainstream rivals for incompetence, duplicity or incoherence, and failing to protect the sovereignty and ethnic integrity of the nation.

Building Legitimacy in an Era of Polycentric Trade: The Case of Transnational Sustainability Governance

Increasing multi-polarity within global politics is understood to be a key contributor to the current legitimacy crisis facing global governance organisations. International relations scholars studying this crisis recognise that a prominent strategy to confront “Northern” dominance within this arena is through the construction of alternative governance institutions. Yet while the de-legitimation of long-established international organisations is widely discussed, there is less focused attention on how alternative institutions seek to gain legitimacy, particularly when they advance in fields where both “Northern” and “Southern” interests matter and beliefs about what constitutes proper governance may differ. This article analyses the field of transnational economic governance where the de-legitimation of pre-existing Northern-oriented governance takes the shape of new initiatives backed by Southern actors. Specifically, we focus on transnational sustainability standards governing trade and production in the global economy. This global governance arena has been transformed by the increasingly polycentric nature of global trade, in which producers governed by sustainability standards cater to rapidly expanding markets in the Global South as well as markets in the Global North. As markets have expanded in emerging economies, transnational sustainability standards must increasingly navigate and respond to actors and interests within different geographies in order to gain and establish legitimacy. The recent development of Southern-oriented sustainability standards (as opposed to established Northern-led standards) reflects the existence of diverging perspectives on the appropriateness of established rules and procedures when it comes to the regulation of trade and production. These standards are seen as partially challenging established standards but may likely seek to establish legitimacy within the wider transnational field of sustainability governance. This article examines the case of a recently established India-based sustainability standard known as Trustea to illustrate how various actors managed design and policy dilemmas to reconcile the preferences and beliefs of various audiences. The case illustrates the significance of both “Northern” and “Southern” audiences to Trustea’s legitimacy-seeking strategies in the context of broader political contestations regarding how production should be governed in relation to sustainable practices.

Anticipating The Return of Foreign Terrorist Fighters: Indonesia-Australia’s Initiative on Sub-Regional Meetings on Counterterrorism

Efforts to overcome the increasing security threats of terrorism, violent extremism, and Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have encouraged policymakers in Indonesia and Australia to strengthen cooperation in the security sector. Despite the Indonesian-Australian “turbulent” history of their bilateral relationship, the two countries have initiated a high-level meeting called the Sub-Regional Meeting (SRM) on Counter-Terrorism. Starting with six participants in 2017 (Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and the Philippines), Indonesia-Australia’s co-leadership has attracted Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand to join the 2018 Jakarta meeting and the 2020 virtual meeting. Analyzing Indonesia and Australia’s initiative on the SRM can determine to what extent this cooperation has addressed the returning FTFs as one of the most imminent regional security threats in the Asia Pacific. This study adopted Buzan and Weaver’s regional security complex elements in explaining to what extent this regional security issue has put aside Indonesian-Australian differences and led them to the co-leadership position in anticipating the return of FTFs to Asia Pacific, prone to terrorist attacks and violent extremist beliefs. The analysis unveiled that Indonesia-Australia’s SRM initiative to anticipate the return of FTFs could, to some extent, address the elements of security complexes in the Asia Pacific subregion through the mutual co-leadership, reduce the lack of regional trust and foreign policy dilemmas, build bonded trust across all levels of government administration, and obtain the advantage of the securitization of the return of FTFs.

A safe place of one’s own? Exploring practice and policy dilemmas in child welfare practice with families waiting for adequate and secure housing

ABSTRACT As in many European states, a shortage of housing in England has resulted in some families who are ‘waiting for’ adequate and secure housing in England while also having the ‘weight of’ their children being placed outside their care hanging over them. This paper reports on the development of a practice guidance document that included an online survey with 38 children’s social services practitioners in England regarding their practice experiences of responding to family homelessness. Findings suggest the complexity of the issue of family homelessness and implicitly highlight its neglect within contemporary research and policy in the UK. Homeless families are caught between the constraints of housing shortages and the complexity of the needs underpinning their homelessness. Despite these constraints, social work practice has an important role to play in providing, or facilitating families’ pathway to, housing advocacy and advice. Most importantly of all, social work practice can maximise families’ access to statutory family support provision so that families can be helped to remain together wherever this is safely possible. Suggestions for practice, policy, and research development are outlined.

Emerging Challenges for Financial Regulation at National Level

Through this article effort has been made to identify key regulatory tasks and objectives of RBI as regulator of key financial markets. The Increase in systemic risk due to greater integrity of the Indian market with the global market and with emergence of new markets and instruments have made the task of regulator most difficult as it has to constantly keep up pace with the changing marketplace and prescribe new regulatory safeguards for all market participants. The effort is to make unregulated or poorly regulated markets & instruments under better regulation. However, there are border problem between regulators over the domain of the financial markets & institutions. The paper tries to discuss the policy dilemmas and option to tackle emerging challenges, need to revisit the regulatory framework to make it more effective. It also discusses Pro-cyclicality as a special case of systemic risk and the need to move from Basel-II to Basel-III to ensure adequate bank liquidity during the credit crunch situations. This will however affect the regulatory capital the banks need to keep towards capital charge of its risky asset and the provision of additional capital buffer in the form of contra-cyclical capital will be anything but easy in implementation due to significant technical work required in understanding of business cycles. Finally, areas of further research have been identified in the paper.

Whose proxy war? The competition among Iranian foreign policy elites in Iraq

ABSTRACT How do state sponsors of proxy groups in civil wars balance their support of non-state militias with the need for political transition towards stability? This article explores the inconsistencies in Iran’s priorities and proxy strategy that at times limited Iranian influence, and complicated Iraq’s transition from war to peace. It expands on current theories on proxy warfare by focusing on the impact of diverging interests among foreign policy elites in a sponsor state. Three policy dilemmas illustrate the difference among on the one side the Revolutionary Guard and on the other side the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Intelligence. First, whether the pro-Iranian proxies should maintain their influence after the war or Iran should strengthen its link to the representatives of the formal state. Second, whether repression by Shia militias or political reconciliation should prevent Sunni Arabs from (re)joining Islamic State. Third, whether Iraq should be part of a sectarian, transnational alliance or an inclusive state that might become an arbiter to deescalate regional tension. The study contributes to the literature on Iranian proxy warfare in the Middle East and proxy warfare literature in general, by considering the consequences of differences among foreign policy elites.

Multi-Factor Triage Algorithm (MUFTA): Quantitative and Qualitative Ethical Factors on Triage Decisions During COVID-19

Background: This study shows how multiple ethical criteria evaluations result in patient screening and ranking. Furthermore, as Omicron outbreaks increase, hospital emergency departments will become overburdened with critically ill patients. It is a one-of-a-kind global triage algorithm for infectious decreases of COVID-19 and Omicron. The algorithm is qualitative and quantitative, and adaptable to various bio-ethical and social factors. The measurement of the evaluation process eliminates any inconsistencies, which is an advantage of a decision-making algorithm. The proposed algorithm is unique because there are no similar algorithms in the literature that provide triage guidelines based on social ethics, bioethics, and human dignity. Objective: It's simple to evaluate a patient's potential benefits when ethical triage judgments are structured and transparent. Furthermore, decisions made primarily based on economic considerations in stressful situations overlook the socioeconomic realities of the underprivileged. This triage algorithm eliminates the need for ad hoc triage evaluations and facilitates criteria for inclusion, such as human dignity. It also takes into account patient comorbidities and social, ethical issues. Method: Healthcare professionals use predefined ethical criteria to assign relative rankings among patients based on treatment response and social circumstances. It is a Delphi method for evaluating patient illnesses with the help of medical professionals. For example, the admission to the intensive care unit and providing a ventilator depend entirely on hierarchical multidimensional triage scoring results. This algorithm can evaluate triage scores quickly. It is robust, accurate, and quick in assessment, evaluation, and reevaluation during an emergency. A team of three experts can implement this algorithm. Result: The Consistency Scores (CR) show how well clinical and non-clinical ethical criteria may be used to make triage judgments. As a result, all specialists have reported allogeneic reactions in the triage assessment. Furthermore, this system enables decision-makers to identify cognitive biases that may influence their decisions. A Group Consciousness Ratio (GCR) of over 85% indicates that the decision-making process is transparent. Patients with a high level of social dependency, a reasonable probability of recovery, a favorable weighted average comorbidity score, and those who are less fortunate are all considered in the overall triage decision. Conclusions: This algorithm differentiates patients who need ICU (Incentive Care Unit) care and do not immediately require critical resources. As a result, patients queue up on a waiting list when the ICU demand spikes due to the increased incidence of COVID-19 infection or its variants. This situation presents a dilemma for the triage policy. Therefore, a national emergency policy requires monetary and technical assistance to expand healthcare facilities. However, the clarity of this triage policymaking is at odds with decision-makers interested in manipulating results. It is challenging to deal with consistency issues in the Delphi process in group decision-making without professional moderators and valid evaluation metrics. Therefore, transparency, consistency, and strong judgment are essential elements of the presented algorithm. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2022-SPER-07 Full Text: PDF

Approaching change through pragmatic routines: a case study of a municipal response to a teacher certification reform in the Swedish School-age Educare

ABSTRACT During the last decade, the Swedish School-age Educare has been the object of multiple government-enforced reform initiatives in order to clarify its purpose and increase educational quality and equivalence. In 2019, a teacher certification reform was imposed on the educational programme, concretizing responsibilities between categories of staff and regulating hiring procedures in order to raise the level of formally qualified personnel. At the same time, Sweden was (and still is) battling a severe teacher shortage, with teachers certified towards the School-age Educare being one of the scarcer categories to acquire. Through a single-case study, this article explores a local municipal response to this policy dilemma by focusing on the ways in which the reform demands are translated and made sense of in terms of organizational routines. The findings show that actors make sense of demands based on prior knowledge and beliefs connected to identity and qualitative endeavours of the educational programme, which in turn shape ‘scripts’ to routine performance. However, when these scripts collide with performative constraints connected to organizational capacities, pragmatic routines are designed in order to partly sustain apprehensions from the initial reform translation, which in turn shapes further routinized action.

Do people really support conservation? Evidence from China and the United States

Survey studies have consistently shown strong public support for biodiversity conservation, even though conservation regulations often face strong local resistance when they are implemented. This seemingly contradictory phenomenon is due to the fact that previous polls have sought opinion only in the abstract, yet many conservation measures are implemented at the expense of local economic development, and policymakers often face a ‘Conservation-Development Tradeoff’-a policy dilemma that remains understudied by social scientists. To fill this gap, this study conducts one of the first comparative surveys on public support for biodiversity conservation in China and the United States. I measure public support for conservation using two separate question versions online. The ‘regular version’ asks directly about individual support for biodiversity conservation, and the “tradeoff version” asks the same question but in the context of the policy tradeoff. The results show that both American and Chinese citizens are highly supportive of conservation in the abstract. But after they learn about the tradeoff effect, the aggregate support falls sharply, and the Chinese citizens show significantly less support compared to their American counterparts. The survey findings expanded on existing academic research on public attitudes toward conservation policies and can encourage future conservation policymakers to understand the significance of the tradeoff issue, as conventional wisdom may have overestimated public support for biodiversity conservation. Moreover, as China has become a crucial player in global conservation governance, understanding the Chinese public sentiment on the real-world policy dilemma can have important implications for conservation policymaking in the world.