Policy Beliefs Research Articles

Who shares? Participation in the sharing economy in the U.S.

ABSTRACT An increasing number of goods and services are now available through peer-to-peer networks, product service systems, and redistribution markets—collectively labeled the “sharing economy.” This has implications for government in the areas of regulation and the built environment. This research explores who participates in the sharing economy based on factors such as race, density, demographics and political attitudes in the U.S. Respondents who live in urban ZIP codes are more likely to have used car sharing, bicycle sharing, couch surfing, and household goods applications. However, black individuals living in more dense areas are less likely to use some of these service categories, which may be in part to discrimination or access. Age, extraversion, and presence of children in the household are also positively associated with most applications, income, and ideology appear to be largely unrelated suggesting policy beliefs are likely not a driving factor in survey respondents’ preferences. Environmental concerns only influence who participates in carsharing.

Influence analysis and promotion countermeasures of green finance policy in China-Traceability based on grounded theory and validation using the csQCA method.

Green finance is closely related to sustainable energy development. Using the NVivo12plus software, a governance model of China's green finance policy was constructed using 22 green finance policy texts at the central level as research objects. Furthermore, based on the csQCA method, Tosmana software was used to develop and verify a theoretical model of 19 policy text cases. The research results demonstrate that policy belief, policy objectives, policy tools, policy feedback, and policy cycle are the main components of China's green finance policy governance. Furthermore, policy instruments are the fundamental factors affecting the governance effectiveness of China's green finance policy. Policy goals and policy feedback dominate the influence pattern of green finance policy in China. There are three modes driving the influence of green finance policies: regulation-oriented, collaborative-driven, and tool-guided. Finally, for the optimization and improvement of green finance policies, three forces must be improved: stimulus force, driving force, and promotion force.

Cultural Consensus Analysis of Stakeholder Beliefs toward Coastal Restoration in Southeast Louisiana

Coastal land loss is a singular threat to the people, economies, and biodiversity of Louisiana. Though opinion polls indicate broad support for restoration efforts, aspects of current plans remain contentious for some stakeholders. We used cultural consensuses analysis (CCA) to go beneath the surface of restoration policy debates and identify shared beliefs about coastal land loss and restoration efforts among select occupational stakeholder groups in Louisiana. Three latent consensus groups, spanning stakeholder groupings, were identified. Data indicate broad consensus on core beliefs related to the peril of land loss and the urgency of action. And though staunch disagreement exists, there is some evidence that differences are not wholly intractable. These findings highlight a need to better understand the nature of beliefs and the frames that motivate those beliefs in policy debates and offer CCA as avenue for doing so.

Policy Changes in China's Family Planning: Perspectives of Advocacy Coalitions.

Studies on policy change focus on governmental decision-making from a technical rationality perspective, ignoring the fact that policy change is a complicated social construction process involving multiple actors. This study used the modified advocacy coalition framework to explain changes in China's family planning policy and discourse network analysis to show the debate on the birth control policy among multiple actors (central government, local governments, experts, media, and the public). It found that the dominant coalition and the minority coalition can learn and adjust deep core beliefs from each other; the sharing and flow of actors' policy beliefs drive change in the network structure; and actors' obvious preferential attachment when the promulgation of the central document, are all helpful in policy change. This study can explain macro-policy changes from a micro-perspective to reveal the process and mechanism of policy changes in China's authoritarian regime.

Resources and Policy Beliefs of the Ponorogo District's Social Work Research on Negotiating Migrant Community Needs

Ponorogo Regency is included in the top 5 regencies/cities that send the largest number of migrant workers in Indonesia and ranks first in East Java Province with a total of 10,043 Indonesian migrant workers. The high number of Indonesian migrant workers in Ponorogo Regency encourages all actors to play a role in dealing with the impacts. It is listed in the Ponorogo Regency of Regional People’s Representative Assembly Decree Number 188.4/01/2020 concerning the program for the establishment of the Ponorogo Regency Regional Regulation in 2020. This paper intends to analyze the usefulness of applying community research techniques to illuminate the nuanced requirements of immigrant com communities. Given the political interests of actors in the subsystem representing various stakeholders: Regent of Ponorogo Regency, DPRD of Ponorogo Regency, Religious Court of Ponorogo Regency, Manpower Office of Ponorogo Regency, LTSA of Ponorogo Regency, P4TKI, PPPMI, NGOs and PMI. This study aims to analyze the actors involved and the resources consisting of formal legal authorities to make decisions, public opinion, information, mobs, financial resources, and skilled leadership. This study uses a case study qualitative research method with data collection through interviews, observations, literature reviews, and data from public test results. The success of the actors in managing the trust of non-formal actors becomes the capital to convince the formal sector to be optimistic about meeting the needs of migrants. In Ponorogo social work, local community research may offer a more inclusive, community-based methodological strategy to migrant challenges. The context of policy belief and actor resource, determining success related to the ability to innovate, leadership, power, and determining the right steps are some of the recommendations from this research.
 Keywords: negotiating, policy belief, resource, community, Indonesian migrant workers

A National Portrait of Public Attitudes toward Opioid Use in the US: A Latent Class Analysis.

Opioid overdose rates have steadily been increasing in the United States (US) creating what is considered an overdose death crisis. The US has a mixture of public health and punitive policies aimed to address opioid use and the overdose crisis, yet little is known about public opinion relating to opioid use and policy support. Understanding the intersection of public opinion about opioid use disorder (OUD) and policy can be useful for developing interventions to address policy responses to overdose deaths. A national sample of cross-sectional data from the AmeriSpeak survey conducted from 27 February 2020 through 2 March 2020 was analyzed. Measures included attitudes toward OUD and policy beliefs. Latent class analysis, a person-centered approach, was used to identify groups of individuals endorsing similar stigma and policy beliefs. We then examined the relationship between the identified groups (i.e., classes) and key behavioral and demographic factors. We identified three distinct groups: (1) "High Stigma/High Punitive Policy", (2) "High Stigma/Mixed Public Health and Punitive Policy", and (3) "Low Stigma/High Public Health Policy". People with higher levels of education had reduced odds of being in the "High Stigma/High Punitive Policy" group. Public health policies are most effective in addressing OUD. We suggest targeting interventions toward the "High Stigma/Mixed Public Health and Punitive Policy" group since this group already displays some support for public health policies. Broader interventions, such as eliminating stigmatizing messaging in the media and redacting punitive policies, could reduce OUD stigma among all groups.

Activating an evidence-based identity increases the impact of evidence on policymaker beliefs about local climate policies

Evidence-based policymaking has the potential to improve the efficiency and impact of climate mitigation and adaptation policies, but that promise cannot be fulfilled if policymakers fail to change their minds (update their beliefs) when presented with new evidence. Research suggests that individuals often resist changing their mind, especially on polarized topics like climate action. Here we explore whether an ‘evidence-based policymaker’ intervention can reduce resistance when policymakers interpret new information. We hypothesize that, if policymakers wish to see themselves as ‘evidence-based’, reminding them of that identity can make changing their beliefs more comfortable. This is because belief-updating provides an opportunity to affirm their identity as an evidence-based policymaker. In two survey studies of state and local U.S. policymakers—a neutral policy pilot (n = 152) and a polarizing climate policy experiment (n = 356)—we show that the intervention was effective, even when evidence was incompatible with prior policy beliefs or party ideology. This finding suggests that making evidence-based identities salient when presenting new evidence could increase that information’s impact on climate policymaking.

Jurisdictional approaches to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in Brazil: Why do states adopt jurisdictional policies?

Although the role of subnational governments in multi-level climate governance is recognized by scholars and policymakers, we still know little about whether and why some subnational jurisdictions in the Global South decide to engage in decentralized climate action. This article yields new insights on this question by explaining variations in the decision of Brazilian states to establish legal frameworks for jurisdictional REDD+, enabling them to receive transnational climate finance, in the early stages of the emergence of REDD+ in Brazil between 2007 and 2017. We draw on key informant interviews with policy entrepreneurs and actors to understand the roles played by (1) the transnational pathways of influence associated with the regime complex for REDD+ and (2) the strategies adopted by state-level policy entrepreneurs in subnational REDD+ readiness policy processes in Brazil in five case studies (Amazonas, Acre, Mato Grosso, Pará and Amapá). According to respondents, credible market incentives were the key influence for state governors to adopt a jurisdictional framework to channel REDD+ funds, but transnational norms and material assistance played important mediating roles. The perceived credibility of market incentives was influenced by: (1) the presence of policy entrepreneurs at the state level; (2) the timing of strategies employed by policy entrepreneurs; (3) the policy beliefs held by the governor regarding environmental issues; and (4) evidence regarding availability of REDD+ finance for states.

Polarization Eh? Ideological Divergence and Partisan Sorting in the Canadian Mass Public

AbstractThere has been increasing concern among commentators and scholars about polarization in Canada. This note uses the Canadian Election Study from 1993 to 2019 to measure trends in ideological divergence, ideological consistency, and partisan-ideological sorting in the Canadian mass public. It finds only mixed evidence that Canadians are diverging ideologically and becoming more polarized—ideological distributions are unimodal and trends toward more dispersion are slight and driven entirely by the last two election cycles. Canadians are, however, becoming modestly more ideologically consistent and much more sorted—that is, partisanship, ideological identification, and policy beliefs are increasingly interconnected. These findings call for additional research on the causes and consequences of mass polarization in Canada and further efforts to situate these results, along with findings from the United States, in a comparative context.

Challenging the insider outsider approach to advocacy: how collaboration networks and belief similarities shape strategy choices

Advocacy strategies are a key success factor for public, private and third sector actors who participate in and seek to influence policy choices. Despite this, research on policy networks has paid little attention to the forms of advocacy studied by interest groups scholars. The interest groups’ literature differentiates insider from outsider strategies and assumes that interest groups with strong access to policymakers opt for insider strategies, while those with weak access are constrained to the use of outsider strategies. This literature has not considered how the full set of actors that constitute a policy network use advocacy strategies. Furthermore, the insider/outsider dichotomy oversimplifies and neglects the possibility that actors’ choices are interdependent. Using climate change policy network data from four countries that vary by interest group system, we investigate if policy actors’ choices of advocacy strategies are similar to those in their collaboration network and to those with similar policy beliefs as their own. Results show that, irrespective of the context, actors are likely to use the same advocacy strategies as their collaboration partners and those whose policy beliefs are like their own. This research demonstrates the value of using a policy network approach to move beyond the insider/outsider dichotomy on interest groups’ use of advocacy strategies. It makes a clear contribution to this scholarship by advancing the debate on strategies that policy actors employ to influence policymaking through evidencing interdependencies between the strategies used by policy actors due to belief similarity and a ‘networking effect’.

Analysing the stability of advocacy coalitions and policy frames in Ghana’s oil and gas governance

Political associations and public discourse on policy issues are essential components of any democratic system. Yet, their characteristics, particularly those concerning change or stability over time, remain largely understudied, especially outside western jurisdictions. By applying the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to the context of Ghana’s oil and gas governance, this article seeks to reduce these limitations by analysing coalition stability at the micro- and meso-levels as well as examining the stability of policy frames as expressions of policy beliefs. Applying analysis of variance and network analysis, these objectives are pursued using news media data collected between 2007 and 2019. The results show coalition stability at the meso-level but instability at the micro-level. In addition, some policy frames appear more stable while others seem less stable. This article contributes to existing knowledge by proposing two levels of coalition stability analysis, augmenting the number of ACF applications beyond western jurisdictions, facilitating comparative analysis, and producing more generalisable knowledge.

The Beliefs of the Blob

The conventional wisdom of US foreign policy has at its core a set of widely held yet underexamined beliefs. Together, these notions constitute the essence of what has become tendentiously known as “the blob,” or the official mind of US national security. Debates and analyses can proceed more productively if foreign policy beliefs, rather than the people who hold them, are moved to the center of analysis. The blob is a mindset, not a group of individuals—one that is based on a few basic assumptions about the world and the United States’ place in it. This article describes what those beliefs are and how they influence US foreign policy.

Knowledge Ecology and Policy Governance of Green Finance in China-Evidence from 2469 Studies.

CiteSpace was used to visualize the knowledge ecology of the green finance research literature in CNKI and WOS, and NVivo software was used to root the code analysis of the current green finance policies in China. From the analysis of the research hotspots, both in China and internationally, great importance is attached to the research on green finance, and the research on green financialization has broad prospects. The core group of authors on green finance research in China has taken shape, whereas the core group of authors of green finance research in the rest of the world has not yet taken shape. There is a lack of close cooperation and a relatively low level of communication among important domestic green finance research institutions, and a certain scale of cooperation network has been formed among influential international institutions. The major countries for influential international green finance research are Singapore, France, Switzerland, Canada and Saudi Arabia, and the international influence of China's green finance needs to be improved. Both domestic and foreign countries attach great importance to the balance between economic growth and the low-carbon green transition. China attaches more importance to macroeconomic development and strategic transition, but internationally, the trend is toward microcorporate green performance, policy optimization and market innovation. The research focus of green finance has achieved in three stages of evolution, namely, green industry in the early stage, green services in the middle stage and green strategy in the near future. International green finance research focuses on climate change, market players, government performance, social responsibility sharing, etc. In particular, reducing the cost of green development is the focus of international green finance. The domestic focus is on climate risk, carbon neutrality, carbon peak, low-carbon transition, carbon reduction, and green transition themes. Internationally, the focus is on financial performance, decisions, green finance, credit, drivers, quality, socially responsible investment and other topics. Considering the practical implementation of green finance in China, the governance logic of China's green finance policy consists of five main categories: policy belief, policy objective, policy tool, policy feedback and policy cycle. In the future, the development and improvement of China's green finance policy should achieve breakthroughs in the following aspects: first, guiding the main body of green finance policy to firmly establish policy beliefs; second, improving the clarity of green finance policy objectives; third, enhancing the overall effectiveness of the governance of green financial policy instruments; fourth, strengthening the green finance incentive policy feedback system construction; and fifth, improving the quality of green finance policy cycles.

Normative, rational, and relational motives in crosscoalition coordination for a VET refugee programme

AbstractShared beliefs are seen as a basis for policy coordination in the literature. Actors sharing beliefs coordinate their activities in order to translate their beliefs into policies. However, the literature shows that actors also coordinate for policy change across such belief coalitions for diverse reasons. Drawing on the literature on incentives in collective action organisations, we systematise these motives. We argue that rational motivations, such as access to material resources, as well as relational motivations, including power and reputation gains, may convince actors to coordinate. Based on 25 semi-structured expert interviews, we illustrate our propositions with a case study on the motivations that led actors to coordinate and support a vocational education and training (VET) programme for refugees in Switzerland. Coordination between a coalition of VET actors and a coalition of migration actors succeeded despite divergent policy beliefs, mainly due to rational motivations.

Environmental policy integration in a newly established natural resource-based sector: the role of advocacy coalitions and contrasting conceptions of sustainability

Contributing a new South American case study, this paper seeks to advance the research agenda on processes of policy integration by developing a better understanding of how nascent subsystems become integrated into mature ones and the role that changing beliefs of advocacy coalitions play in fostering policy integration. The paper examines environmental policy integration in Uruguay’s forestry sector since the 1990s and is based on an inductive qualitative analysis of policy documents, sector reports, parliament hearings and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. This demonstrates that environmental policy integration has increased continuously since the 1990s, accelerating particularly during the 2000s. We can derive three insights that specifically address this path of integration: a change in the policy beliefs of the dominant advocacy coalition, international salience of the minority coalition`s beliefs and participatory policy processes that foster interactions between opposing coalitions. Despite this, the two advocacy coalitions have crystallized with fundamentally different deep core beliefs about what a sustainable forestry sector should be. While one coalition argues that commercial tree plantations are sufficiently regulated in environmental terms, the other coalition maintains that the way that the pulp industry has developed in Uruguay is fundamentally unsustainable and therefore seeks to change the forestry sector as a whole.

Policy beliefs, policy learning, and risk perception: Exploring the formation of local creative Placemaking‐catalyzed policy network

AbstractThis article studies the formation of a local Creative Placemaking (CPM) policy network based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and social capital perspective of policy networks. This article hypothesizes that policy beliefs, policy learning, social capital, and the perceived risks induced by defections, as well as macro‐level changes in the broader political and socio‐economic system, influence partner selection in the local CPM policy networks. The study collected survey data from policy actors participating in the Franklinton CPM‐catalyzed revitalization project in Columbus, Ohio. An exponential random graph model (ERGM) was applied to test the hypotheses. The findings partially support the hypotheses: policy learning, certain secondary policy beliefs, and risk perceptions of changes in economic and political factors are correlated with tie formation. The reciprocity‐driven bonding structure underlies the Franklinton CPM policy network, suggesting that policy actors perceive the Franklinton CPM policy network as a high‐defection‐risk network. This study has implications for policy makers in designing engagement strategies to better involve stakeholders holding different beliefs and occupying different network positions.

Student tobacco use, secondhand smoke exposure, and policy beliefs before and after implementation of a tobacco-free campus policy: Analysis of five U.S. college and university campuses

The adoption of comprehensive tobacco policies by colleges and universities may help reduce student tobacco use. To this end, The American Cancer Society's Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative (TFGCI) awarded grants to 106 higher learning institutions to adopt 100% tobacco-free campus policies. This study measured changes in student tobacco use, reported exposure to secondhand smoke, and support for types of tobacco policies among five TFGCI grantee institutions who implemented 100% tobacco-free policies. Students at five U.S. TFGCI grantee institutions completed two independent cross-sectional online surveys regarding tobacco use, exposure to secondhand smoke, and policy attitudes, once before (n = 2499) and once after (n = 1667) their campuses adopted a tobacco-free policy. Students were less likely to report current cigarette smoking (aOR: 0.73, 95% C.I.: 0.63, 0.85) and exposure to secondhand smoke on campus (aOR: 0.42, 95% C.I.: 0.23, 0.76) following the policy change. In contrast, students were more likely to report past 30-day use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) (aOR: 2.16, C.I.: 1.77, 2.63) following the policy change, despite the policy's inclusion of all tobacco and nicotine products. Tobacco-free campus policies can be associated with decreases in tobacco product use and environmental smoke exposure. The extent of their effectiveness may vary by product and the inclusion of tailored messaging, cessation support, and enforcement approaches. To discourage use of these products among students, colleges and universities should adopt 100% tobacco-free policies, monitor product use trends, offer cessation support and messaging customized for specific groups and products, and utilize a comprehensive enforcement strategy.

Finding social (mis)alignment in older adult and opioid health policy implementation with corpus-assisted discourse analysis

• Attends to beliefs of stakeholders in health policy implementation pathway. • Argues for “policies” as social activities rather than objects. • Confirms that health systems and their agents often have conflicting policy beliefs. • Corpus-assisted discourse analysis of both documents (text) and interviews (talk). • Policymakers could use these findings and methods to align language use in policy. The effective implementation of health policies addressing opioid addiction may be jeopardized by the complex and sometimes mismatched beliefs and discourses held by policymakers, agency administrators, case managers, and ultimately target populations. Policies must be “aligned” socially across service levels, but misalignment by well-meaning stakeholders becomes a potential hindrance to implementation at different administrative levels. This observation motivates the study to ask, what do health policies and agents actually say? Data for this study come from policy documents (n = 100; words = 571,481) and ethnographic interviews (n = 29; words = 171,492) collected from rural, older adult health service offices. Results and analysis focus on comparing linguistic features, keywords and collocations, between policy texts and agents’ talk. Findings show a complex, socially mediated relationship between priorities and stances in official documents and the enacting agents, especially regarding the causes and effects of the opioid epidemic.

Shared Positions on Divisive Beliefs Explain Interorganizational Collaboration: Evidence from Climate Change Policy Subsystems in 11 Countries

Abstract Collaboration between public administration organizations and various stakeholders is often prescribed as a potential solution to the current complex problems of governance, such as climate change. According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, shared beliefs are one of the most important drivers of collaboration. However, studies investigating the role of beliefs in collaboration show mixed results. Some argue that similarity of general normative and empirical policy beliefs elicits collaboration, while others focus on beliefs concerning policy instruments. Proposing a new divisive beliefs hypothesis, we suggest that agreeing on those beliefs over which there is substantial disagreement in the policy subsystem is what matters for collaboration. Testing our hypotheses using policy network analysis and data on climate policy subsystems in 11 countries (Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Sweden, and Taiwan), we find belief similarity to be a stronger predictor of collaboration when the focus is divisive beliefs rather than normative and empirical policy beliefs or beliefs concerning policy instruments. This knowledge can be useful for managing collaborative governance networks because it helps to identify potential competing coalitions and to broker compromises between them.

Lessons (to be) learned? Germany’s Zeitenwende and European security after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT In Germany, the Russian war on Ukraine is widely perceived as a “Zeitenwende,” a watershed moment undermining key foreign policy beliefs. Despite mounting evidence contradicting them, German elites previously failed to adapt core beliefs regarding Russia and the use of force because these beliefs were not only deeply embedded in largely uncontested identity constructions but also shaped the definition of economic interests, which in turn made ideational adaptation more costly. Moreover, Germany’s extraordinarily beneficial geopolitical situation in the post-Cold War era meant that the country could afford not to learn. Although the “Zeitenwende” will trigger significant change, it is unclear which lessons exactly Germans will now be learning and how far that adaptation will go. Given Germany’s key position in Europe and its previous role in shaping the European and transatlantic policy toward Russia, the results of these learning processes will significantly shape the emerging European security order.