Policy Deliberations Research Articles

Economic comparison of loblolly pine and solar power in South Georgia, United States

In the face of deforestation from urbanization and population growth, there is a potential for an additional loss of forests from solar power generation as forest landowners may look to alternative sources of income. We compare the profitability of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations and solar power generation in South Georgia. The analysis was completed at two different scales, one acre (0.405 ha) and five acres (2.02 ha), based on the large number of small acreage forest landowners in the state. The Land Expectation Values (LEVs over 25 years project cycle) for a 350 kW (occupying one acre or 0.405 ha) and a 1 MW (occupying five acres or 2.02 ha) solar power systems are -$30,183 and $29,607 at an 8 % interest rate, respectively. In comparison, LEVs for one acre (0.405 ha) and five acre (2.02 ha) loblolly pine stands (at the site index 80 ft/24.4 m) for the same rotation cycle are $1,380 and $6,900 at a 6 % interest rate and $611 and $3,055 at an 8 % interest rate, respectively. The potential profitability of solar power systems varies, depending on whether the solar generation and pricing are high enough to overcome the significant installation, upkeep, and recycling costs. Since the potential profitability of the larger-scale solar power systems is significantly higher than loblolly pine stands at around five acres, there is a chance that small family forest landowners could convert their forestlands into solar farms, especially if their forestlands are close to a high-capacity power transmission line. This information could feed into ongoing policy deliberations on promoting conservation and renewable energy generation at the state level and beyond.

Complex Interventions for a Complex System? Using Systems Thinking to Explore Ways to Address Unhealthy Commodity Industry Influence on Public Health Policy.

Interventions are needed to prevent and mitigate unhealthy commodity industry (UCI) influence on public health policy. Whilst literature on interventions is emerging, current conceptualisations remain incomplete as they lack considerations of the wider systemic complexities surrounding UCI influence, which may limit intervention effectiveness. This study applies systems thinking as a theoretical lens to help identify and explore how possible interventions relate to one another in the systems in which they are embedded. Related challenges to addressing UCI influence on policy, and actions to support interventions, were also explored. Online participatory workshops were conducted with stakeholders with expertise in UCIs. A systems map, depicting five pathways to UCI influence, and the Action Scales Model were used to help participants identify interventions and guide discussions. Codebook thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Fifty-two stakeholders participated in 23 workshops. Participants identified 27 diverse, interconnected and interdependent interventions corresponding to the systems map's pathways that reduce the ability of UCIs to influence policy. These include, for example, reform policy financing; regulate public-private partnerships (PPPs); reform science governance and funding; frame and reframe the narrative, challenge neoliberalism and gross domestic product (GDP) growth; leverage human rights; change practices on multistakeholder governance; and reform policy consultation and deliberation processes. Participants also identified four potential key challenges to interventions (ie, difficult to implement or achieve; partially formulated; exploited or misused; requires tailoring for context), and four key actions to help support intervention delivery (ie, coordinate and cooperate with stakeholders; invest in civil society; create a social movement; nurture leadership). A systems thinking lens revealed the theoretical interdependence between disparate and heterogenous interventions. This suggests that to be effective, interventions need to align, work collectively, and be applied synchronously to different parts of the system, including multiple levels of governance. Importantly, these interventions need to be supported by intermediary actions to be achieved. Urgent action is now required to strengthen healthy alliances and implement interventions.

‘Go-No-Go’: Anticommons and Inter-ministerial conflict in India’s Forest and Mineral Governance

India’s forests, particularly in coal and other mineral-bearing regions, have been at the centre of many social and environmental conflicts. Such conflicts will likely remain salient over the next decade as India appears to be moving towards greater use of coal instead of transitioning away from it. The current governance architecture in mineral-bearing forested areas is characterized by fragmentation of rights across different stakeholders and a pluralistic institutional regime – a situation often characterized as ‘anticommons.’ ‘Anticommons’ lead to the resource getting gridlocked and underused. The Indian government undertook a critical and ambitious policy design exercise – the ‘Go-No-Go’ or Inviolate Forest Policy (IFP) policy – to address the resource dilemmas by ‘objectively’ demarcating forests for mining and conservation. This paper traces the conflict around the policy formulation as it manifested in the corridors and ministries of the government. We use a novel data source of government records of formal policy deliberations – obtained through India’s transparency law, Right to Information (RTI) – supported by conversations with senior bureaucrats, policymakers, and expert observers. We find that the quest for ‘objective’ demarcation of ‘pristine’ forests for conservation was marked by inter-ministerial conflict, laden with asymmetric power balances and involving the careful deployment of discursive frames and tactical maneuvers. We argue that the multiplicity of use-values that get valued differently a) by different individuals/groups of individuals and b) at different scales inscribe the possibility of conflict at the heart of any attempt to resolve anticommons, as can be seen in the IFP. In the process, we expose the problems in prioritizing amongst competing resource-uses, using ‘efficiency’-based approaches. Further, our analysis presents an implicit critique of the monolithic understanding of the State in the supply of property rights.

Regulating smoking in Japan: from manners to rules

Abstract Opinions vary in Japan on whether smoking is deviant today, but the behavior, once widely accepted, faces increasing regulation. Recent reforms, moving beyond reliance on nonsmokers' tolerance and smokers' etiquette, impose stricter and more detailed rules on smoking, along with penalties for noncompliance. As the Japanese government's promotional materials note, the reforms move “from manners to rules” (manā kara rūru e). The evolution of Japan's smoking regulations exemplifies a shift toward more legalistic modes of social control. Historically, Japanese governance relied on non-binding “soft law,” administrative guidance, and societal cooperation. Legalistic governance, in contrast, hinges on formal rules and proceduralized enforcement mechanisms. This article, drawing on twenty-eight interviews and qualitative analysis of policy deliberations, advocacy organization documents, court rulings, and Japanese news coverage, traces how societal actors contributed to this legalistic turn. Tobacco control advocates filed lawsuits, pursued voluntary changes through local activities, and provided information subsidies to policymakers while lobbying for local and national reforms. They thereby helped de-normalize smoking and render it regulatable. By uncovering bottom-up drivers of legalistic governance and the strategies through which societal actors influence regulatory style, this paper contributes to scholarship on governance, policy diffusion, and law and social change.

The role of healthcare providers in expanding legal abortion: Qualitative insights from Argentina, Ireland, and South Korea.

Abortion laws are key in creating an enabling environment that facilitates the advancement of people's sexual and reproductive health and rights. Around 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws in the last decades by adding new grounds allowing abortion. The road toward the expansion of legal abortion is a long, highly sensitive, and difficult process. The specific role of healthcare providers in influencing abortion law reforms has been scarcely studied. With the objective to better understand their (potential) roles, a qualitative study was conducted in 2021 focusing on three countries that had recently liberalized their abortion regulations: Argentina, South Korea, and Ireland. For each country, key informant interviews were conducted with actors in advocacy for legal change, the majority with healthcare providers. The study results indicate that healthcare providers can contribute to the expansion of legal abortion through their influence on public and legal debates. Healthcare providers were found to be scientifically credible and trustworthy. Their voice and argumentation counteracted anti-rights arguments and addressed information gaps, by providing specific clinical experiences and medical information. Healthcare providers amplified women's experiences through their testimonies and had entry points within governmental bodies, which facilitated their advocacy. These healthcare providers often functioned as individual operating obstetrician/gynecologists or general practitioners who were engaged in networks of health professionals or had previous advocacy experience. In a global context of social and political contention around abortion, extending the engagement of healthcare providers in law and policy deliberation on abortion appears to be useful. This requires recognizing the diversity of roles that healthcare providers can take up, creating a safe environment in which they can operate, equipping them with skills that go beyond the medical expert role and facilitating strategic partnerships that seek complementarity between multiple stakeholders, building on the uniqueness of each stakeholder's expertise.

Disutility of climate change damages may warrant much stricter climate targets

Cost-benefit integrated assessment models (IAMs) inform the policy deliberation process by determining cost-optimal greenhouse gas emission reduction pathways based on economic considerations. These models seek to maximise economic utility and treat estimates of climate impacts (damages) and mitigation costs at par as GDP losses, having the same impact on utility reduction. However, prospect theory suggests that a certain level of climate damages could be valued higher by society than the same level of mitigation costs, as climate damages often occur as sudden unexpected events. In this paper, we show how this concept could be taken into account in cost-benefit IAMs and explore possible consequences on optimal mitigation pathways. Our results suggest that compared to the standard utility approach, capturing explicit aversion to climate impact incidence shows optimal pathways with earlier and deeper emission reduction, lowering both net-negative emissions and mid-century temperature peaks in line with stringent Paris Agreement targets.

Gendering hawkishness in the war room: Evidence from Pakistani politicians

Can representation in foreign policy deliberations – in particular, increased female representation – impact deliberators’ support for interstate conflict resolution? While existing work on gender representation in IR suggests that increased female representation should moderate intragroup hawkishness, making conflict resolution more viable, I offer empirical evidence that qualifies this idea, based on a survey experiment on 149 male and 55 female elite Pakistani legislators. Politicians of both sexes were randomly assigned to ‘listen in’ on a hypothetical national security deliberation that was either all-male or gender-mixed. I find that politicians’ decisionmaking in these hypothetical committees was informed simultaneously by notions of committee competence and by inferences about the social desirability of hawkish outcomes in deliberative settings. Specifically, respondents assigned to gender-mixed committees became less supportive of external conflict resolution. I show how different mechanisms accounted for this increased hawkishness for men and women. Female politicians assigned to gender-mixed committees became more conscious and wary of how their participation, the result of increased representation, would be perceived, compelling them to opt for more hawkish policies. Male politicians, in contrast, attempted to overcompensate for the increased visibility of female representation by resorting to greater levels of aggression.

Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition: The Societal Implications of Policy and Legislation on Renewable Energy

Abstract The global shift to decarbonization and a sustainable economic development underscores the importance of a just energy transition. In 2019, Indonesia’s energy sector accounted for 34.5 per cent of its total emissions (lulucf included). While transitioning to green energy is paramount, it is laden with interwoven challenges encompassing technological innovation, infrastructure expansion, financing, and harmonizing socio-economic and environmental outcomes. At the heart of a just energy transition is the commitment to counteract potential setbacks, such as unemployment, ecological degradation, and ensuring equitable prospects within the transformative phase. This article delves into Indonesia’s legislative and policy framework regarding energy transition, spotlighting the obstacles and potentialities of implementing current strategies as well as contemplating the formulation of future policies that champion justice in the energy metamorphosis. Our research methodology includes a literature review with extensive interviews with pivotal stakeholders. The goal is to gauge the ramifications of Indonesia’s energy policies in their social, economic, and environmental dimensions. While Indonesia has an impressive potential in renewable energy resources, a distinct challenge remains – the absence of transparency in orchestrating a just energy transition. Forthcoming legislation and strategies should focus on community needs, particularly of marginalized people, ensuring that they benefit from a just energy transition. Incorporating stakeholders in policy deliberations is vital to shape comprehensive, inclusive strategies.

Digitalization of Family Planning Services: A Reality or Fantasy?

This position paper examines the changing environment of digitalizing family planning services, investigating how established healthcare paradigms might be transformed via the incorporation of new technology. The increasing use of digital technologies in the healthcare sector has brought attention to the provision of family planning services, leading to an examination of the practicality and achievability of this technological advancement. The study explores several aspects of this discussion, such as the present condition of family planning services, technical advancements, obstacles to digitalization, user viewpoints, and policy deliberations. The story begins by analysing the wider digitalization patterns in healthcare, setting the stage for the convergence of technology and reproductive health. The study critically examines the significance of digital technologies in family planning, including both the potential advantages and difficulties they may provide. It tackles the obstacles related to privacy, access, and cultural factors, in contrast to the optimistic potential of developing technology. The article showcases case studies and success stories that demonstrate the effectiveness of digital family planning, offering significant insights for future implementation. The report finishes by endorsing a series of policy proposals designed to navigate the complex interaction between technology, ethics, and healthcare infrastructure. These proposals prioritise the need of explicit rules, purposeful investments in digital literacy and accessibility, and smooth integration into current healthcare systems. This study examines the digitization of family planning services, highlighting its role as both a technical innovation and a potential driver of social change. It emphasises the importance of individual empowerment and well-being in discussions about reproductive health.

Intellectual Property Regimes in Central Asia: Assessing Innovation Performance, International Agreements, And WTO Participation

This article presents a comprehensive examination of the intricate relationship between intellectual property (IP) and trade in the context of Central Asia, a region characterized by burgeoning economic development and the pursuit of international trade integration. The study has two overarching sections: the first examines the intellectual property landscape, while the second elaborates the region's participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO). IP segment commences with an evaluation of Central Asian countries' innovation performance, drawing insights from the Global Innovation Index 2023. It proceeds to dissect the patterns of ratification of international IP agreements in the region. Subsequently, it delves into the implications of intellectual property activities, offering a comparative analysis of the experiences of Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in 2021. Shifting focus to the WTO section, the study examines the role of the WTO in Central Asia's trade and IP landscape. It provides an overview and analysis of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and its influence on IP protection. Finally, it explores the challenges and advancements in IP protection, laying bare the contrast between Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This article yields a multifaceted understanding of the intricate interplay between IP and trade within the Central Asian region. It unravels critical insights, emphasizing the evolving significance of IP in the landscape of international trade and offering a robust foundation for further exploration and policy deliberations in this dynamic domain.

Assessing the Impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) through Bibliometric Research

The present study evaluates the influence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on scholarly literature through the utilization of bibliometric analysis. This study examines the frequency of occurrence of terms in a dataset consisting of renowned publications, thereby uncovering significant themes and areas of focus in IFRS research. Prominent terminology such as "Financial Reporting Standard," "Reporting," and "Accounting" indicate an exhaustive examination of the practical implementation of reporting standards and accounting principles. Underappreciated terminologies such as "Mandatory Adoption" and "Earnings Management" underscore intricate domains of inquiry, addressing the complexities and ramifications linked to the implementation of IFRS. The analysis reveals overarching themes such as sustained exploration, strategic considerations, and practical application, which offer valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners. The research contributes to the delineation of research priorities, the provision of instructional materials, the orientation of policy deliberations, and the resolution of pragmatic obstacles within the ever-evolving domain of IFRS research.

Exponential authorship inflation in neuroscience and psychology from the 1950s to the 2020s.

How many researchers does it take to publish an article in top journals in neuroscience and psychology? Manually coding 42,580 articles spanning 1879-2021 from 32 journals, we examined the evolution of authorship size and its rate of change. Moreover, we assessed the driving forces behind these changes. We found that, starting from the 1950s but not earlier, the average authorship size per article in neuroscience and psychology has increased exponentially, growing by 50% and 31% over the last decade and reaching a record high of 10.4 and 4.8 authors in 2021, respectively. Single-authored articles have become a rarity today, particularly in primary research articles: 1.7% in neuroscience and 2.2% in psychology in 2019-2021 (vs. 5.7% and 11.2% in review articles). With the withering of sole authors rises a new type of authorship, group authors (e.g., a consortium). Group authorship was rare before 2000, but in 2019-2021, it appeared in 4.1% of articles in neuroscience, mostly in genetics, neuroimaging, and disease-outnumbering single-authored articles for the first time-and 0.7% in psychology, mostly in developmental and clinical research. The exponential inflation in authorship size could not be attributed to behaviors of professional editors in profit-oriented journals but aligns with a hybrid epistemic-behavioral-cultural account-an account that integrates multidimensional factors, including increased research complexity, the benefits of collaboration, the rise of government-funded research, changing norms in authorship practices, and biased incentives in evaluation. These findings suggest troubling implications for research reproducibility, innovations, equity/diversity, and ethics, calling for policy deliberations to address potential negative ramifications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Practicing deliberative policy analysis: two cases from China and Europe

ABSTRACT Deliberative policy analysis (DPA) has fallen short and has been far from reaching its potentials as an alternative to traditional policy analysis. As a response, DPA has been reframed toward a methodological orientation. This article is a follow-up to the two special issues on DPA in 2019 and 2020. It begins by outlining the methodological framework of DPA, introducing its key considerations, the process, and the proposed organizational solution. Two DPA cases, conducted in China and Europe, are presented to showcase how the framework has been used in practice, and in authoritarian and democratic context, respectively. Then, the article brings up our discussions of and reflections on the two cases from a comparative perspective, regarding their different political contexts, foci on conflicts of interests or values/worldviews, and the design of the processes. We end the article by proposing some topics for further exploration.

Mediations of cultural policymaking during COVID-19: British newspaper reporting of the Culture Recovery Fund

ABSTRACT At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural policymaking frequently came to the fore in media debates about the impact of the crisis and measures to alleviate it. In this article, we present evidence of how newspaper coverage of the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) identified and framed competing perceptions of the relative utility of policymaking in this context, while also problematising familiar assumptions about the CCIs among policymakers, journalists and (arguably) the public. Specifically, we analysed British news and editorial items (n.4,162) published from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020. It offers a novel investigation into the ways in which media and policy rhetoric overlap, interact and influence each other. In doing so, this article contributes a unique perspective to the study and practice of cultural policy, bringing to light the typically underexplored role of the news media in shaping the narratives driving cultural policy deliberation and action.

Geopolitics, conflict, and decoupling: evidence of Western divestment from Russia during 2022

How foreign firms doing business in Russia responded to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has received extensive media scrutiny. Publication lags in official and private databases on international corporate activity, traditionally used to investigate cross-national commercial ties, preclude short-term assessments of foreign firms’ responses. However, as geopolitical events unfold quickly, such assessments can offer valuable insights. In this paper, we advocate for and implement a replicable, near-time methodology that is executed at arms-length to track foreign corporate responses to geopolitical events which can inform both academic debate and policy deliberation. We apply it to the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict, estimating Western corporate divestment rates from Russia during the first 9 months of the conflict. Our findings, confirmed by extensive robustness checks, result in divestment rates in the range of 5–13%. This range is interpreted in light of the prevailing sanctions regime as well as the divestment rate witnessed after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. We also discuss the competing, often policy-induced, incentives facing international business during a time of growing geopolitical rivalry and draw implications for the design of sanctions regimes. Avenues for future research are also outlined.

The dynamic influence of energy consumption, fiscal policy and green innovation on environmental degradation in BRICST economies

The global consensus on overcoming climate change and environmental sustainability has increased the urgency towards formulating stringent environmental and fiscal policy instruments in achieve environmental sustainability. The current study extends policy deliberations by studying how energy transition and fiscal policy measures impact the ecological footprint of BRICST economies from 1995 to 2021. Our findings from Driscoll-Kraay standard errors, FMOLS, DOLS, and method of moments quantile regression identify that energy transition, renewable energy, taxation revenues and green innovation improve environmental sustainability, while non-renewable energy consumption and governmental expenditures exacerbate environmental challenges. Our econometric analysis allows us to propose that policymakers must use fiscal policy measures to introduce structural changes and foster the adoption of environmental technologies in the industrial sector. Furthermore, developing economies must broaden tax base to increase environmental spending on upgrading renewable energy infrastructure and lower ecological burden.

Choreographing for public value in digital health?

Entanglements between public and private entities in digital health are not new, yet we do not have full insight into how these public-private dances are choreographed or what notions of public value drive governments’ appetite for investing into or collaborating with private digital health firms around health data. We examine key events, actors, public discussions, policy deliberations and regulations for over 30 years to find that European Union policy has paved an innovation-friendly path for technology companies entering healthcare. The recent pandemic has normalized these collaborations even further. The paper also finds that conceptualizations of public value in digital health mostly relate to economic aspects – markets, jobs and money. Other interpretations, such as public health, long-term sustainability or the common good, tend to be sidelined. The paper closes by considering whether the advent of the European Health Data Space will change this trajectory before giving suggestions on how a focus on public health value can be re-established.

Developing normative criteria for meaningful citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy

The European Green Deal (EGD) represents the most ambitious environmental policy framework in European history, aimed at improving the health and well-being of citizens and future generations through climate action and becoming the first climate-neutral region in the world by 2050. The EC has initiated the European Democracy Action Plan and the European Climate Pact to include the participation of citizens in a meaningful way to help achieve these goals (i.e. not simply a tokenistic gesture or box-ticking exercise). While these efforts to ensure greater citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy are good first steps, there is still a lack of clarity about what meaningful citizen engagement should look like. This paper will propose that for such efforts to be successful, we need to assess different perspectives in the debate and provide recommendations based on this. This paper provides a systematic review of various approaches within the academic literature on citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy (ecocentrism, biocentrism, ecomodernism, ecofeminism, environmental pragmatism, environmental citizenship, environmental rights, and environmental justice). Following this, we provide a list of 16 criteria (in five thematic sections) for policymakers, civil society organisations (CSOs), and society, to ensure meaningful citizen participation and deliberation.

Barriers to compulsory waste sorting for a circular economy in China

Household waste source separation substantially reduces the amount of rubbish sent to landfills and incinerators. It enables value recovery from useful waste for transitioning to a more resource efficient and circular economy. Confronted by the severe waste management problems, China recently implemented its most strict compulsory waste sorting program in big cities to date. Despite the failures of waste sorting projects in China in the past, it is unclear what the implementation barriers are, how they interact, and how they can be overcome. This study addresses this knowledge gap through a systematic barrier study involving all the relevant stakeholders in Shanghai and Beijing. It uncovers the complex interrelationships between barriers using the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (Fuzzy DEMATEL) method. “Hasty and inappropriate planning” and “lack of policy support at the grassroots level”, two new barriers that are not reported in the literature, are found to be the most influential barriers. Policy implications are discussed based on the study findings to inform the policy deliberations on the implementation of compulsory waste sorting.

Using perceptual classes to dream policies in open-ended learning robotics

Achieving Lifelong Open-ended Learning Autonomy (LOLA) is a key challenge in the field of robotics to advance to a new level of intelligent response. Robots should be capable of discovering goals and learn skills in specific domains that permit achieving the general objectives the designer establishes for them. In addition, robots should reuse previously learnt knowledge in different domains to facilitate learning and adaptation in new ones. To this end, cognitive architectures have arisen which encompass different components to support LOLA. A key feature of these architectures is to implement a proper balance between deliberative and reactive processes that allows for efficient real time operation and knowledge acquisition, but this is still an open issue. First, objectives must be defined in a domain-independent representation that allows for the autonomous determination of domain-dependent goals. Second, as no explicit reward function is available, a method to determine expected utility must also be developed. Finally, policy learning may happen in an internal deliberative scale (dreaming), so it is necessary to provide an efficient way to infer relevant and reliable data for dreaming to be meaningful. The first two aspects have already been addressed in the realm of the e-MDB cognitive architecture. For the third one, this work proposes Perceptual Classes (P-nodes) as a metacognitive structure that permits generating relevant “dreamt” data points that allow creating “imagined” trajectories for deliberative policy learning in a very efficient way. The proposed structure has been tested by means of an experiment with a real robot in LOLA settings, where it has been shown how policy dreaming is possible in such a challenging realm.