Ambiguous Policy Research Articles

Requestioning the Indonesia Government's Public Policy Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Black Box Analysis for the Period of January-July 2020.

Objectives: Indonesia responded the COVID-19 pandemic slowly these last months. The recent reports shown that the rate performance of Indonesian government in handling COVID-19 posits at the 4th worst all over the world. Meanwhile, through responsive, strict, and strategic policy, some Asia countries pushed the elimination case by doing lockdown. This paper questioned how government respond this pandemic, tried to track down the unresponsive and slow decisions, and analyze them comprehensively trough policy system framework. Moreover, we also considered a few feasible and strategic recommendations to accelerate the pandemic responding.Methods: To visualize the anatomy of problems in handling these pandemic responses, this work applied Easton's black box analysis in formulating and introducing public policy. The black box analysis would help us to portray and understood the interests, rationalities, and priorities behind introducing public policies which was implemented to handle this health problem. Besides, the policy triangle framework was used to analyze how environment influenced key actor in making decision.Results: This analysis study discovered the conflict interests in formulating and implementing public policy in handling COVID-19. The public policies are negotiated, discussed, and formulated under black box that ignore transparency, and other good governance principles. Consequently, the substance of public policy represents a certain interest of policy makers, that may conflict with the others and often contradict to the constitutional-based public interests, that is public health. It was impacted the emergence of messy and uncoordinated institutions that implement the conflicted policies. Undeniably, this situation may spark counter-productive ways, attitudes, and actions of people in responding those ambiguous policies. Therefore, this work recommended revising the coherences norms and public policies; reforming the ministry of health in public health's paradigm context; and improving the integration and coordination of cross related institutions, creating a single data on public health, and changing a new paradigm of people, including improving collective awareness in responding and handling COVID-19 appropriately.

Medicare for All, Some, or None? Testing the Effects of Ambiguity in the Context of the 2020 Presidential Election

ABSTRACTPolitical scientists have long contemplated whether candidates are better off taking more ambiguous policy positions. Taking advantage of a lack of clarity in Senator Kamala Harris’s healthcare position, I use an original survey experiment to apply these theories to the case of the 2020 presidential election. I find that ambiguity offers Harris little to no advantage over two of her leading Democratic primary opponents and, among certain subjects, harms her relative to Senator Elizabeth Warren. I also find negative effects on Harris’s favorability relative to President Donald Trump. These results have interesting implications for both the 2020 election and the broader study of candidate rhetoric because they illustrate potential downsides to avoiding clear issue statements.

Organizational and Policy Barriers to the Use of Digital Mental Health by Mental Health Professionals.

Background: Digital mental health (DMH) provides effective methods of overcoming issues of time constraints, accessibility, and availability of mental health care. They can provide a valuable means to deliver mental health care in the present pandemic. However, adoption of these methods has been slow. Mental health professional (MHP) concerns at the organizational and policy level that influence this slow adoption need to be examined. Materials and Methods: A narrative review was conducted to identify the barriers. Searches using the databases Scopus, Embase, and PubMed were conducted to identify research focused on barriers reported by MHPs to use DMH. Results: The search resulted in 356 unique citations, and 21 papers met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Forward and backward sampling resulted in identifying an additional 19 relevant papers. Discussion: Unmet needs for information, training, and infrastructure, challenges to the workflow and excessive workloads, and ambiguous policies serve as barriers to DMH use. This article recommends strategies for researchers, organizations, DMH designers, and governmental institutions to ensure efficient utilization of DMH. Conclusions: Concerted efforts at individual, organizational, and governmental levels are essential to ensure efficient utilization of DMH.

Urban development project goals and the role of professional ignorance: ambiguous policy objectives and their consequences

PurposeDrawing on the literature on professional ignorance, here defined in affirmative terms as the capacity to act regardless of the incompleteness of available information in organizations and professional communities, the article reports empirical material from an urban development project wherein policy makers' instructions are vague and, in certain domains, inconsistent with market conditions.Design/methodology/approachUrban development projects regularly include uncertainty and risk taking, and policy makers' stated objectives regarding project goals may be incomplete or merely signal a political ambition. In such situations, first-line project participants need to make decisions as if uncertainties regarding policy objectives are manageable and preferably minimal. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the proposition that professional ignorance is a key mechanism in incomplete or imperfect governance systems.FindingsProject participants actively questioned policy but acted on the instructions just the same, which is indicative of how professional ignorance is supportive of governance system that relies on first-line market actors and agencies to implement also incomplete or vaguely stated policy objectives. Incomplete policies derive from challenges in political deliberation and bargaining processes, uncertainty regarding the future and shifting preferences among policy makers and constituencies more widely. In practice, incomplete policies regularly include issues for first-level actors (e.g. on the urban development project level) to handle and to reconcile in their day-to-day work.Originality/valueOn basis of an empirical study of a major urban development project, the study contributes to a growing literature that recognizes the value of professional ignorance in governance systems and in project management practice. The study invites further scholarly research that takes an affirmative of professional ignorance but without overlooking its risks and potential malfunctions.

From Big Bang to Brexit: The City of London and the Discursive Power of Finance

This article aims to generate new insights into the City’s influence during the Brexit negotiations. Integrating theories of discursive institutionalism and business power, we set out to analyse the dynamic ‘discursive power’ of finance. From this perspective, a key source of the City’s influence historically has been a powerful strategic discourse about London’s role as Europe’s leading global financial centre. This was strengthened following the financial crisis to emphasise its contribution to the ‘real’ economy and emerging regulatory threats from the EU. We argue that Brexit challenges the City’s discursive power by removing ‘ideational constraints’ on acceptable policy discourse, and undermining the ‘discursive co-production’ of financial power by government and industry. By encouraging financial actors to re-evaluate their interests, this has contributed to increasing discursive fragmentation and incoherence. Evidence for this comes from the City’s ambiguous policy preferences on Brexit, and the emergence of a rival pro-Brexit ‘discursive coalition’.

Ad-hocratic immigration governance: how states secure their power over immigration through intentional ambiguity

ABSTRACT This article conceptualizes the term ad-hocratic immigration governance to capture how states intentionally use policy ambiguity as a tool to secure their power over immigration. It does so by analysing the flexibility, pragmatism and informality with which Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have governed immigration since the turn of the 21st century. Drawing on over 100 interviews and in-depth policy analysis, the article shows that Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have privileged executive politics, exemption regimes and case-by-case arrangements on immigration over parliamentary law-making. It demonstrates how the intentional ambiguity created by such ad-hocratic governance allowed Morocco’s monarchy and Tunisia’s young democracy to respond to external and bottom-up demands for more immigrant rights while at the same time securing the state’s margin of manoeuvre over immigration. Such theorization of ad-hocracy sheds a novel light on how immigration is governed not only across North Africa and the Middle East but also in their European neighbourhood.

The ambiguities of Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil certification: internal incoherence, governance rescaling and state transformation

There are persistent tensions of both a technical and political nature between Southeast Asia’s two major palm oil producers, Indonesia and Malaysia, and the sustainability governance mechanisms shaping global environmental and trade standards emerging from Europe. The establishment of the national Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification standard in 2011 is a sign of discontent with the transnational Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) regime, sparking debate about the legitimacy of private governance models initiated by non-governmental organizations and companies in Europe. This article questions whether the adoption of sustainability norms by Indonesia signals normative convergence or the emergence of rival governance structures that challenge the state. Evidence suggests that elements of norm adoption and rival governance coexist in Indonesia and that ISPO certification is an ambiguous policy with degrees of internal incoherence. The ambiguous nature of ISPO certification gives rise to unresolved disputes over power and authority between various actors. This article shows how these disputes came into being by framing these dynamics as part of a long historical process. Novel insights are gained by employing the state transformation framework and the concept of governance rescaling. Within this framework, we argue that the ambiguous nature of the ISPO results from complex interrelated processes of fragmentation, decentralization and the internationalization of the Indonesian state.

National security and FDI policy ambiguity: A commentary

From Germany’s chipmaker Infineon’s proposed takeover of US-based Wolfspeed being blocked in 2017 to China’s Huawei being banned in the USA and other countries in 2020; from the UK’s new National Security and Investment Bill being announced in the Queen’s Speech on December 19, 2019, to the EU’s FDI Screening Regulation fully entering into force on October 11, 2020, inward foreign direct investments are increasingly scrutinized by host-country governments on the grounds of national security concerns. While FDI policy and screening regimes work differently in different countries, they share something in common, that is, ambiguity and obscurity have become key features of FDI policies for most countries when concerned with national security. Drawing on securitization and balance-of-power theories, I contend that the ambiguity in FDI policy is intentionally constructed to leave room for power struggles. I argue that ambiguity is an important prerequisite for politicians and other political and corporate actors to engage in the securitization of FDI to support their political and commercial agendas. This commentary contributes to a better understanding of the prevailing trend of ambiguity in relation to inward FDI policy, a reality that differs from that advocated by Cuervo-Cazurra (2018).

Governmental Response to Crises and Its Implications for Street-Level Implementation: Policy Ambiguity, Risk, and Discretion during the COVID-19 Pandemic

What are the implications of governmental responses to crises for street-level implementation? The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to compare the formal role that decision-makers require of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) during a crisis. Textual analysis of 36 legislative documents and emergency regulations in Israel indicates that the additional duties assigned to police officers, teachers, and physicians reflect three interrelated changes in street-level implementation: increased policy ambiguity, higher risk exposure, and expanded discretion. Decision-makers’ expectations of SLBs during a crisis highlight the inherent limit of policy-as-written to account for the operational, action-imperative essence of on-the-ground service delivery.Note: In the interests of space, street-level theory and the pandemic context underpinning the articles for this Special Issue are discussed in detail in the Introduction to the Issue.

Health Professionals' Knowledge of how to Report a Missing Person With Dementia: A National Survey

In Australia one in five land searches conducted by Police involve a person with dementia. Over a third of these people go missing from a health care service and 15% are not found alive. Delays in commencing a specialised search for the missing person with dementia contributes to the risk of death. Delays in Police searching may result from ambiguity in current policies about how to report a missing patient/client. This study aimed to explore health professional’s knowledge about how to report a missing person with dementia and reasons for delayed reports to Police. 246 Australian health professionals completed an online survey. Most were registered nurses (n=124), allied health professionals (n=69) and medical practitioners (n=22) who worked in a range of settings including acute care (n=111), community care (n=59) and residential aged care (n=44). Over a third (n=81) did not know their care service policy for reporting a missing patient/client and did not know if their health service had a policy specific to reporting a missing person with dementia. 20% did not know how long they needed to wait before reporting a missing person to Police and fear of calling Police too soon or wasting their time were common reasons for delaying a report. These findings confirm a degree of misunderstanding about current policy and procedures for reporting a missing person with dementia. Addressing knowledge deficits and standardising approaches to reporting a missing person with dementia in Australia would be recommended as a step toward improving their health outcomes.

At Your Own Risk: A Model of Delegation with Ambiguous Guidelines

Counter-intuitive to the lessons of principal-agent models, Chinese leaders have often provided local officials with ambiguous policy guidelines that do not clarify the boundaries of discretion. While ambiguity can give local officials flexibility in policy implementation, it can also instill fear of punishment among possible transgressors and encourage preemptive self-censoring. Incorporating both perspectives, I develop a formal model that analyzes a situation in which ambiguity allows flexibility for certain types of local officials while intimidating others. I argue that central leaders use ambiguity as a screening tool to encourage only the competent type of local officials—or those who have policy expertise for producing good outcomes—to choose a gray-area policy at their own risk, while deterring the incompetent type from doing so. I illustrate the model with the case of state-owned enterprise restructuring in China. The argument is broadly applicable to interactions between any upper- and lower-level actors in bureaucratic hierarchy.

Kinopolitika i ideologiya SShA v period «holodnoj vojny»

The article analyzes the specifics of American ideology and cultural space, its influence on the activities of state and public institutions, the position of representatives of the theater and cinema corporation in the United States under conditions of control and censorship, propaganda pressure. Conclusions are drawn about the consequences of forced segregation of filmmakers into «friends» and «strangers» - the need to adapt in an atmosphere of «cold» information and ideological challenges, the examination of media-texts (films) and their images for political reliability. The ambiguity and inconsistency of cinema policy, allowing the realization of opportunities for legal cooperation and interaction with the opposition, is shown.

Teachers’ Efforts to Support Undocumented Students Within Ambiguous Policy Contexts

In this research article, authors Hillary Parkhouse, Virginia Massaro, Melissa Cuba, and Carolyn Waters examine teachers’ perceptions of their responsibilities to support undocumented students and the barriers they encounter in fulfilling them. Since the 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision guaranteed public K–12 education to undocumented students, there has been little policy guidance on how schools can support these students, particularly within the increasingly contentious political climate. Focusing on one new destination area in Virginia, the authors interviewed eighteen teachers who expressed their support for undocumented students. Of various subjects, grade levels, and years’ experience, these teachers represent a critical case in that they were likely to be more attentive to the experiences of these students than would the general teacher population. They took a variety of actions to enhance students’ feelings of security and normalcy through curricular decisions, emotional and material support, and adaptive advocacy at the school and district levels. However, the lack of clear policy led to varied interpretations of their responsibilities and a fear that their actions violated school or district guidelines.

The End of Liberal Engagement with China and the New US–Taiwan Focus

Using neoclassical realist theory, this paper focuses on how the liberal logic underpinning the US engagement policy with the People's Republic of China (PRC) – to promote the PRC's greater marketization, internationalization, political opening, and even democratization – has shaped Washington's One‐China/strategic ambiguity policy since 1972. This approach is used to deal carefully with the Taiwan Strait impasse. However, as strategic competitions intensify between the United States and PRC, the Donald Trump administration is strengthening Washington–Taipei ties, in line with conservative nationalism, to counter a more assertive and authoritarian China. Declaring the failure of past engagement upheld by presidents following Nixon, the Trump government is less cautious about upsetting Beijing through the United States' more explicit backing of the island democracy. The United States’ bolstering of Taiwan's status, though short of recognizing its sovereignty, has received strong bipartisan support in Washington and is unlikely to be changed even if Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, is elected president in November 2020.

Climate neutral livestock production – A radiative forcing-based climate footprint approach

The goal of limiting mean global temperature rise to 1.5 °C, described in the Paris Agreement, depends upon urgent action to stabilize radiative forcing (RF). However, the contribution of different greenhouse gases (GHGs) to future RF is often obscured by the application of climate metrics, such as the 100-year global warming potential (GWP100). RF climate footprints are an alternative way of presenting emissions information relating to GHGs and other climate forcers. These footprints include RF from current emissions as well as the fraction of historical emissions that remain in the atmosphere. The profile over time can support the management of RF toward targets informed by climate stabilization goals. In a study involving Australian sheep production for meat, it was found that the sector’s contribution to RF has plateaued in recent years at 0.64 mW m−2, and is projected to reach the point of net zero increase in 2020, a status that could be described as “climate neutral”. Further, on present emission trajectories, the sector’s contribution to RF will decline to 0.50 mW m−2 in 2049, which represents a contribution to climate cooling consistent with the Paris Agreement. RF climate footprints clearly articulate the diverse climate impacts of short and long-lived climate forcers, avoiding the policy ambiguity that can arise when different climate metrics and different arbitrary time horizons are chosen. This new RF framework, soon to be supported by an international (ISO) standard, has relevance in aligning food systems with the aspirations of the Paris Agreement. However, the challenge of stabilizing and managing RF downward is applicable to all sectors and organisations.

Marking time in lockdown: heroization and ritualization in the UK during the coronavirus pandemic

Realism has predominated in discussions about the coronavirus pandemic where politicians, authorities, and commentators debate over the substance and consequence of scientific facts. But while biology played a crucial role in triggering the pandemic, the resulting crisis developed through a social process. In this paper, I argue that the coronavirus pandemic in Britain was successfully framed as a crisis, but that the ritualization of solidarity normally generated by this meaning was compromised. Through an analysis of media coverage and official statements from the government, I trace the discursive construction of the crisis through the deployment of battle metaphors. Building on this discourse analysis, I show how the symbolic alignment of the pandemic and the Second World War revived symbols and tropes that informed the cultural construction of pandemic heroes. To explain why the intensity of the crisis framing was not matched in ritual performance, I consider how the government’s ambiguous policies and erratic social performance produced a state of indefinite liminality, subverting solidarity processes in lockdown. The paper offers insight into the experience of anomie during the pandemic and contributes to the strong program in cultural sociology by incorporating the crisis approach in disaster studies into the social drama framework.

Applying a ‘harm to others’ research framework to illicit drugs: political discourses and ambiguous policy implications

During the past decade, 'alcohol's harm to others' (AHTO) has emerged as an international approach to studying alcohol problems and informing policy. The AHTO approach seeks to increase political will for alcohol policy by mapping, measuring and often costing harms beyond the person who drinks (e.g. family members, co-workers). In this paper we consider the implications of a 'harm to others' approach for illicit drugs. We ask whether it could and should be used as a policy tool, given the high risks of further stigmatizing people who use drugs. We consider the ways in which the concept and measurement of 'harm to others' may be either productive or potentially harmful, depending on the extent to which the AHTO is replicated for illicit drugs. Shifting the language may assist: the term 'harm from others' appears to carry less risk of stigma. In addition, all harms inclusive of drug supply and drug consumption need to be included if a full picture of harms that accrue to other people from illicit drugs is to be achieved.

Ambiguity and conflict in pension policies implementation: evidence from China

While the literature generally acknowledges that target groups affect policy implementation, we argue that a more detailed investigation of the mechanisms and factors associated with such effect is necessary. Drawing on the Ambiguity-Conflict Model, we explore how target groups’ perceived policy ambiguity and conflict relate to the implementation of Corporate Employee Pension (CEP) policies in China. Empirically, we utilize a unique sample of all firms listed on China’s A-stock market from 2008 to 2014 and hypothesize that target groups’ perceived policy ambiguity and conflict negatively associate with the implementation outcomes of the CEP policies in China. Our results confirm such a relationship and suggest that the implementation outcomes, from most favorable to least favorable, follow the order: Administrative Implementation, Political Implementation or Experimental Implementation, and Symbolic Implementation. Such results are robust to both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises. Our research offers implications for both scholars and practitioners of pension policies in China.

Impact of Health Systems on the Implementation of Intermittent Preventive Treatment for Malaria in Pregnancy in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Narrative Synthesis.

Malaria in pregnancy is a public health challenge with serious negative maternal and newborn consequences. Intermittent preventive treatment (IPTp) with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine is recommended for the control of malaria during pregnancy within endemic areas, but coverage for the recommended ≥3 doses IPTp regimen has remained suboptimal. We searched PubMed, Cochrane library, and HINARI database from 1 January 2010 to 23 May 2020, for studies investigating the effect of the health system on IPTp implementation. Data extraction was independently performed by two investigators and evaluated for quality and content. Health system barriers and facilitators were explored using thematic analysis and narrative synthesis. Thirty-four out of 1032 screened articles were included. Key health system issues affecting the provision and uptake of IPTp were the ambiguity of policy and guidelines for IPTp administration, human resource shortages, drug stock-outs, conflicting policy implementation on free IPTp provision, hidden costs, unclear data recording and reporting guidelines, and poor quality of care. Factors affecting the supply and demand for IPTp services involve all pillars of the health system across different countries. The success of health programs such as IPTp will thus depend on how well the different pillars of the health system are articulated towards the success of each program.

Tempering Expectations: A Qualitative Study of Prosecutorial Reform

Objectives: We investigate path dependence and barriers to the acceptance and implementation of reform-minded prosecution, which focuses on reducing unnecessary incarceration, promoting fairness, engaging with the community, and improving accountability in the criminal justice system. Method: Using semistructured interviews with 47 prosecutors in two Florida jurisdictions, both with newly elected state attorneys, we explore reform-minded prosecution priorities and barriers to their effective implementation. Results: Findings suggest that though reform-minded priorities are present in the study prosecutor’s offices, existing prosecutorial norms, case-focused decision-making, policy ambiguities, and communication challenges serve as barriers to their effective implementation. Conclusions: The study highlights the role that line agents play in determining the success of reform-minded prosecution. It also identifies key barriers to reform that reform-minded prosecutors must overcome if they are to achieve meaningful changes toward greater effectiveness, transparency, and impartiality in prosecution.