Policy Deliberations Research Articles

A Resilience History of the Columbia River Basin and Salmonid Species: Regimes and Policies

We view the history of the Columbia River Basin through a resilience lens from the point of view of salmonids, as keystone species for the river basin ecosystems and social systems. We rely on the concept of multiple stable states as depicted in a stability landscape, as a scientific theory, but equally as a metaphor and a mental model. Using evidence-based plausibility arguments concerning the existence, creation, and potential critical transitions between regimes, we describe change over centuries. We argue that a critical transition occurred taking the state of the system from its historic regime into a novel regime stabilized by new social feedbacks and institutional configurations. By using a state space defined by four variables used in policy deliberations for salmon recovery we tie our results to historical and contemporary management issues. Knowledge of (a) which regime is currently occupied and (b) which critical transitions between regimes are possible are both crucial to effective policy formation. We draw distinctions between positions held by federal agencies, tribal agencies, and civil society organizations as to the current state of affairs and policy recommendations, raising questions about the appropriate use of decision support systems in the public process for decision making.

Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making: The Canadian Experience by Thomas Juneau and Stephanie Carvin

Thomas Juneau and Stephanie Carvin have produced an excellent and unique contribution to the intelligence studies field. Compared with research books on aspects of the U.S. intelligence community and perhaps to some extent Australia's intelligence community, works on Canada are still rare, and empirical studies such as this even rarer. The central theme is the role of intelligence analysis in policy-making within Canada from a contemporary institutional rather than “how to” perspective. The methodological approach draws on sixty-eight interviews with intelligence and policy-maker staff at all levels both current and former, which, along with the detailed analysis of secondary sources, provides an impressive foundation to explore how intelligence analysis has been used—or as they authors argue not used sufficiently by policy-makers in Ottawa. The semistructured interview approach used here is one I have used several times in my own research on intelligence governance and organizational reform across the “Five Eyes” intelligence communities over the last decade (see for example, Intelligence and Intelligence Analysis). Armed with a coherent methodological approach, the book thematically explores via five chapters the many structural/cultural barriers and even what they describe as sudden threats (or “electro-shock”) events that sometimes have resulted in improved connection between Canada's intelligence enterprise and the policy-makers it serves. All five chapters provide a coherent analysis of relevant themes, though I think chapter five (“Recommendations and the Way Ahead)” is the richest in terms of how these applied researchers offer prescriptions to the many problems of why intelligence analysis and products continue to be unseen as vital to policy deliberations in many parts of the government of Canada. The authors offer several useful recommendations for improving the overall governance and structure under which intelligence analysis occurs within agencies and across the intelligence community. For example, the focus on strengthening the analytical capabilities, leadership, and coordination of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (IAS) in a similar vein to what occurred in Australia (2018) when the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) was established could be a critical way forward for helping improve intelligence analysis excellence and influence with policy-makers. But as my own research suggests, the ONI after four years is still a work in progress on a range of the intelligence leadership and coordination functions it has responsibility for. Though as the authors rightly point out, Canadian intelligence reformers need to learn the good and bad lessons from Australia and be mindful of not “australiadizing” Canberra's solutions to Ottawa's problems (176). Other useful though potentially equally costly suggestions for improving intelligence analysis influence in the policy context included the long-debated consideration of Canada creating its own foreign (HUMINT) intelligence agency, and in the interim, CSIS taking up a greater role in foreign intelligence collection. There are also many other good ideas, but as the authors say, intelligence has not been a priority for policy-makers and any reforms have only occurred in “fits and starts” (172). But Canada's immediate and global security environment is now much less benign, and what is likely needed is a comprehensive independent review of the intelligence community—similar to the regular five yearly ones in Australia that take stock of the ever-changing security environment and how holistically meaningful reforms can take place. The authors show us in detail what recommendations in the area of intelligence analysis an independent reviewer would find useful. An excellent and timely contribution.

A Bleak Future Awaits Nurses in Traditional Employment Worldwide: Insights on Practice and Career Alternatives

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested world leaders’ capacity to manage, and they have been found wanting. Traditional, institutionalised health services will shortly be unsustainable due to unconvincing leadership and inept managerial capacity to identify and alleviate risks to nurses and other workers on the pandemic front line. The aim of this paper is to share insights on nursing career and practice options to provide nursing services to our communities; and canvass anticipated resistance to nurses choosing autonomous practice models in independent business approaches to health care provision.From analysis of the evidence and literature, it was found that the systematic ill treatment and mismanagement of nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic is appalling. Nurses are exiting hospitals and health systems across the globe. Some are leaving nursing itself. On any measure, the situation is a wholesale disaster and a wanton waste of skilled and dedicated people. When hospital and health systems become too toxic for nurses and nursing services to function fully and thrive, and when government officials and politicians trivialise and disrespect the work and value of nursing, it is time for nurses to consider other employment and practice model options. In conclusion, A groundswell of support is needed for nurses to remove normalised policies that bind them to medical control, and to break medical monopoly on universal health insurance funding to permit access by nurses to sufficient specified items to earn a wage as independent practitioners.The implications for nursing and health policy makers are: nurse safety and practice integrity need to be central to policy deliberations that affect spending on risk management and reduction. Policies that put nurses and patients at increased risk encourage those with a choice, to abandon unsafe health system employment. Administrative accountability for staff and patient safety affected by their decisions has long been neglected in health systems around the world. It is time for a reckoning.

An economic case for small scale solar-wind-augmented agriculture in exurban localities

Background: In addition to energy security and independence, infrastructure development, food production, agricultural resource management, and food security are increasingly becoming principal concerns for local and global affairs with public policy deliberations for economic, environmental, and new business initiatives. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the frailty of global supply chains and hastened the acceptance of remote work culture, motivating an urban exodus to exurbs and nearby rural communities. Globally, climate change has led to food scarcity and food supplies have been weakened by ongoing hostilities, commodity inflation, and political nationalism in banning exports. A potential solution for this is distributed small scale agriculture; which can increase food self-reliance, lower global demand, and can help achieve more equitable food availability. Methods: This paper presents a framework for designing an automatable farm for exurban locations with new population growth, identifying and quantifying the bounds on additional long-term economic benefits on an assumptive framework based model. The framework is based on localized, small scale modified pumped storage and gravity fed irrigation, where solar and wind provide the energy requirement. An economic case is made by contrasting capital cost to estimated reduction in food wastage and revenue from excess energy generation. Results: Using multidimensional US agricultural, energy, and economic data, a non-conventional economic analysis estimates that a 20% reduction in food wastage (due to use of exurban agriculture) over 10 years equates to USD $31.8 billion. This capital applied to exurban agriculture can be recovered in 10 years, plus setting up the infrastructure for long term agriculture and or local energy production for local consumption or export for additional revenue. Conclusions: Exurban agriculture, located closer to demand centers, leads to reduction in overall agriculture energy needs, improving food security and wastage. Additional energy production can generate revenue or reduce local grid-energy demand.

On Market‐Friendly Central Bankers*

We study the two‐way interaction between central banks and financial markets using a beauty contest framework. The analysis identifies when asset prices reveal useful information about fundamentals and when they reflect back the central bank's pronouncements. In equilibrium, the central bank is overly dependent on financial market signals and the information value of asset prices is diminished. Our results highlight the need to guard against giving undue prominence to market signals during monetary policy deliberations, but they can be specific to the mathematical model employed in the paper.

Blue Economy, Blue Growth, Social Equity and Small-scale Fisheries: A Global and National Level Review

One of the most promising economic arenas in the coming decades is the ocean and there are currently numerous initiatives to the ‘blue economy’ discourse that revolves around the argument that small-scale fishers’ livelihoods require greater attention. To synthesize current scientific knowledge and address prevailing research gaps surrounding this discourse, I conduct a scoping review of global literature on the blue economy, blue growth, social equity, and Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) analyse different international policy papers and national-level blue economy plans. To explore the need for further research, this review focuses on how different aspects of the blue economy risks lead to inequity in the pursuit of ocean sustainability. Based on the initial content analysis, I identify evidence for undermining social equity and justice related to the ocean and find that social equity is often overlooked in national-level blue economy and blue growth initiatives. This overlooking leads to or accelerates processes of coastal and ocean grabbing, displacement, dispossession, and exclusion which strongly impact the livelihoods of marginalized coastal communities, particularly, small-scale fishers in various parts of the world. The collected evidence suggests that there is a missing link between international policy deliberations and national-level implementation plans in the blue economy context. Numerous studies claim that critical re-thinking of policies is required to ensure the sustainability of blue economy trajectories. Unchecked economic growth in the ocean as in other realms can reinforce inequities and unjust and inequitable resource distribution patterns. To pre-empt, mitigate, and resolve likely conflicts, deeper insights are needed to address the impacts of the blue economy and blue growth on coastal livelihoods. I suggest investigating the causes of conflict and further research on how governance responds to sustain small-scale fisheries while embracing the blue economy and blue growth agendas.

Greening China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Norm Localization to Norm Subsidiarity?

Abstract From 2015, China began to promote eco-sustainability in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through not only vision statements but also specific guidelines and governance initiatives. What has driven these policy changes? Bringing together theories of norm localization, norm subsidiarity, and policy deliberation, we argue that China’s move toward green BRI began as a norm localization process where environmental norms emerged in the open policy space created by China’s top leaders carrying the ambition to make the BRI a new global governance model. After adopting a broad norm on environmental stewardship, state bureaucracies found opportunities to create procedural and operational rules. A novel procedural rule-making methodology emphasizing inclusive dialogue with host countries has emerged, driven by top leaders’ pursuit of international leadership and preexisting local norms guiding South–South cooperation. With operational rules, different actors follow their preferences to localize existing international standards or develop new ones.

Rural health frontiers: exploring insights, lessons, and priority actions identified through a global 40-speaker webinar series on rural health equity.

Tackling rural health inequities requires equity-oriented approaches within health systems (eg across human resources, service delivery, information systems, health products, governance, financing) and action at cross-sectoral levels and with communities to address social and environmental determinants. During the July 2021 to March 2022 period, more than 40 experts contributed to an 8-part webinar series on rural health equity, sharing experiences, insights and lessons learnt for both systems strengthening and action on determinants. The webinar series was convened by WHO in collaboration with WONCA's Rural Working Party, OECD and agencies in the UN Inequalities Task Team subgroup on rural inequalities. From rural proofing to advancing a One Health approach, to research on barriers to health services, to ensuring an Indigenous health focus and community engagement in medical education, the series covered a range of topics relevant to diminishing rural health inequities. The 10-minute presentation will highlight emerging lessons, where more research activity, deliberation in policy and programming domains, and joined up action across stakeholders and sectors have been called for.

From Junkies to Victims

In the context of narcotic drug epidemics, racist logics can shape policy deliberation and delimit uptake. While critical public health scholars have situated the U.S. opioid epidemic as demonstrative of such logics, in rhetoric the opioid epidemic has failed to register as an important deliberative context for representational contestation regarding race and racism. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’ (1985) steering mediums (steurungsmedium) and Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s (2015) racial formation theory, this essay analyzes the U.S. Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and Purdue Pharma executive J. David Haddox’s testimony before Congress to show the extent to which racial hegemony saturates juridical engagements at the federal level. Where wide-scale opioid use is concerned, this analysis demonstrates that disparate policy outcomes are largely a reflection of structural and representational inequality along racial lines. This essay thus invites scholars of health and medical rhetoric to consider how processes of controversy and medicalization function to preserve racial hegemony.

The Contribution of Pyrolysis of Water Hyacinth to South Africa’s Low-carbon and Climate Resilient Economy Transition: A Mini Review

Abstract South Africa is a carbon-intensive country, with coal dominating the indigenous energy resource base; however, targets have been set to reduce the national carbon emissions. The transition from coal to cleaner sources of energy generation can be encouraged by the administration of new technologies. Hence, the study aims to review research progress on the pyrolysis of water hyacinth as a tool for the smooth transition to low carbon and climate-resilient economy. Water hyacinth is suitable for energy recovery due to its high carbon content and heating value. The outcome shows that pyrolytic products such as liquid, char and non-condensable gas fractions are beneficial. This paper contributes to policy and research deliberations on promoting and adopting pyrolysis technology in addressing South Africa’s energy crisis and water hyacinth invasion.

Second Track case study: OECD Working Party on SMEs and Entrepreneurship

The importance of SMEs to national economies and international trade was not reflected in the policy deliberations of major international economic institutions such as the OECD and World Bank until the early 1990s, when an early example of the Second Track process changed the status quo. Olga Bodrova recounts the origins of OECD’s leading body on SME policies with insight from those who were there.

The Study of Policy Implementation: Does Special Autonomy Represent the Papuans Aspiration?

Special autonomy is a political consensus on the desire of the Papuans to live in prosperity by considering their indigenous rights. Two decades of the implementation of Special Autonomy for Papua, it is still considered ineffective to answer the crucial demands, such as political rights, material welfare, and indigenous participation in the development. Political participation of Papuan indigenous (OAP) is expected as the main issue of which has crucially affected the mandatory aspects, such as political conductivity, development objectivity, social welfare, and security. This research aims to figure out the importance of political participation to the OAP and how it can affect the special autonomy enforcement in Papua. The results show that political participation of Papua considerably contributes to the local institutional involvement, addressing political conductivity, directing the development target, and realizing the deliberative policy. In other findings, political supervision is highly required to be evaluated in ensuring the optimizing of political participation for OAP.

Using science-based role-play simulations to inform payment for hydrological services program design in Mexico

Payments for hydrological services (PHS) apply an incentive-based approach to achieve conservation and socioeconomic goals. PHS policies are most successful when they are designed and implemented with participation from diverse stakeholders and respond to local needs and conditions. Role-play simulations (RPS) engage stakeholders from different organizations and decision-making roles in policy deliberations and innovations. This paper explores how a science-based RPS encourages participation from diverse actors to inform PHS policy innovation in Veracruz, Mexico. We present results from two RPS workshops which engaged 69 stakeholders in negotiations on the future design of a hypothetical PHS program. Our RPS integrated qualitative and quantitative information from operating PHS programs to inform a hypothetical, but realistic, decision-making scenario. This paper analyzes data collected from surveys of workshop participants, audio recordings of workshop discussions, and post-workshop, in-depth interviews. We found the RPS fostered collaborative decision-making by engaging participants in constructive conversations about PHS program design options to effectively contribute to forest conservation and socioeconomic well-being, including incentivizing environmentally friendly farm practices and complementing cash payment with in-kind transactions. We also found the collaborative method of RPS challenged the exclusive role of technical expertise in decision-making by eliciting ideas for improvement of PHS programs and fostering understanding and empathy towards others and their interests, particularly for small landowners who do not typically participate in decision-making. We conclude that a science-based RPS can be a valuable tool for encouraging multi-stakeholder participation in policy design that reflects local environmental and socio-economic values and needs.

The Disintegration of State–Society Relations and Its Moderating Effects on Japanese Diplomacy towards China

Summary In most of the scholarship on diplomacy, whether historical or contemporary, the governmental elite-based perspective has consistently dominated. The societisation of diplomacy is the process of legitimisation of foreign policy deliberations between state and society, both domestically and internationally. This article argues that there are two types of societisation: internal and external. It defines the former as a dynamic political communication process comprising diplomatic policy deliberation and legitimisation between state and society in a domestic context. The internal dimension is yet to receive sufficient academic and practical attention. This article fills the gap in the literature on the internal societisation of diplomacy through an empirical case study of Japan’s diplomacy towards China. It shows that the unsuccessful internal societisation of diplomacy has had moderating effects on Japan’s diplomacy towards China.

The Contemporary Social Contract and Conditions of Climate Policy Intractability

Observable declines in public trust in media, government, and science have contributed to intractable climate policy conditions in the time since the landmark consensus of the 1987 Montreal Protocol. This commentary considers how scholars might measure the influence these declivities in public trust have had on the policy process. With attention to how these factors constrain the contemporary social contract, policy scholars can begin to conduct a wide range of exploratory statistical analyses to examine how declines in public trust reduce individuals’ willingness to sacrifice for the greater good and increase the likelihood of policy stagnation. Rather than examine the effective workings of the policy process, this commentary encourages scholars to confront instances of intractability and integrate measures of public trust that may be used to identify practices that nudge intransigent publics toward urgent policy reforms, restore confidence in epistemic communities, and promote consensus in international climate policy deliberations.

How states engage in and exercise power in global health: Indonesian and Japanese engagement in the conceptualization of Sustainable Development Goal 3

While long overlooked, power is central to understand how actors engage in global health policymaking. We reviewed how the Japanese and Indonesian governments exerted power and engaged in global health diplomacy during negotiations to conceptualize the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goal for health (SDG3). We conducted deliberative policy analysis including semi-structured, in-depth, interviews with more than 71 policymakers, which we analyzed adapting Barnett and Duvall's power framework. We find that both Japan and Indonesia exerted non-material power (institutional, productive and structural power) to advance largely domestic political interests. Japan's government mainly exerted institutional power, leveraging relationships within the World Bank and the World Health Organization, whereas Indonesia's government focused on structural power, with its president serving as co-chair of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Post-2015 Panel. Our analysis suggests that the ways in which states engage in global health diplomacy is shaped by the relationship between different intra-state institutions, particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Health, and is further determined by broader foreign policy and diplomatic priorities. We find that the decline of states' influence is over-stated: states continue to exercise significant power in global health diplomacy, pursuing domestic political imperatives and strategies to improve population health. As states expand their global health engagement, researchers should seek to better understand how states participate in an increasingly crowded and contested global health field.

Bottom up: Conditions supporting policy influence of civil society organisations at national and EU level

ABSTRACT Civil society organisations (CSOs) at EU-level depend on the capacity of their members to act as ‘transmission belts’: they provide analysis, influence national legislation and monitor the implementation of policies affected by multi-level governance procedures like the European Semester on the ground. CSOs have more influence on social and employment policy in some countries than in others, which may be linked to the given environment and conditions they encounter to function and participate effectively in policy debate. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) based on expert reports following interviews with national-level civil society organisations, this article investigates which set of conditions support CSOs’ influence within policy deliberation and why. The QCA solution formulas indicate that an enabling legal and administrative framework is necessary, while a high level of volunteering and participation in combination with a legal obligation to consult CSOs are conducive to policy influence at the national level. Stable and varied funding seems to play an ambivalent role. These findings are corroborated through a focus group held with EU-level CSOs, underlining their reliance on national members’ capacity to contribute meaningfully to policy consultations at European level.

Balancing national economic policy outcomes for sustainable development

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at jointly improving economic, social, and environmental outcomes for human prosperity and planetary health. However, designing national economic policies that support advancement across multiple Sustainable Development Goals is hindered by the complexities of multi-sector economies and often conflicting policies. To address this, we introduce a national-scale design framework that can enable policymakers to sift through complex, non-linear, multi-sector policy spaces to identify efficient policy portfolios that balance economic, social, and environmental goals. The framework combines economy-wide sustainability simulation and artificial intelligence-driven multiobjective, multi-SDG policy search and machine learning. The framework can support multi-sector, multi-actor policy deliberation to screen efficient policy portfolios. We demonstrate the utility of the framework for a case study of Egypt by identifying policy portfolios that achieve efficient mixes of poverty and inequality reduction, economic growth, and climate change mitigation. The results show that integrated policy strategies can help achieve sustainable development while balancing adverse economic, social, and political impacts of reforms.

Spanning the boundaries between policy, politics and science to solve wicked problems: policy pilots, deliberation fora and policy labs

Current crises have highlighted the importance of integrating research, politics and practice to work on solutions for complex social problems. In recent years, policy deliberation fora, policy pilots and policy labs have increasingly been deployed to mobilise science to produce solutions, help create popular support and guide implementation of policies addressing major public policy problems. Yet, we know little about how these approaches manage to transcend the boundaries between research, politics and practice. By systematically comparing policy deliberation fora, policy pilots and policy labs, this paper explores their mechanisms of boundary spanning including relationship and trust building, knowledge translation and developing solutions. We situate our analysis in healthcare policy and climate change policy in Germany, two contrasting policy fields that share a perpetual and escalating sense of crisis. Our findings suggest that deliberation fora, policy pilots and policy labs address different dilemmas of policymaking, namely the idea dilemma, the implementation dilemma and the legitimacy dilemma. All three approaches reduce wicked problems to a manageable scale, by grounding them in local decision-making, reducing their scope or reducing the problem analytically. We argue that despite their ambition to modernise democratic practices, unless they are institutionally well embedded, their effects are likely to be small scale, local and temporary.

Is it Time to Reassess the Focal Role of Core PCE Inflation in Assessing the Trend in PCE Inflation?

“Core” PCE inflation—that is, inflation in PCE-ex-food-and-energy—is widely used as an estimate of trend inflation. But it is long overdue for replacement. The original rationale of core inflation was to remove volatile items with transitory shocks. But aside from gasoline, the list of excluded items is far from optimal. Core inflation also su˙ers from other severe deficiencies, common to all exclusion indexes. Excluded items often have persistent trends; thus excluding them imparts a significant time-varying bias. Items that are not excluded can experience high volatility, and will cause exclusion indexes to depart notably from trend inflation—as core PCE has done at crucial moments. Two other prominent trend inflation measures, trimmed mean PCE inflation and median PCE inflation, gracefully address these issues (though neither is perfect). A wide variety of evidence comparing these three trend measures is provided. The findings indicate that, for a variety of considerations that are relevant for both trend inflation estimation and for monetary policy deliberations and communication, either trimmed mean PCE inflation or median PCE inflation are superior measures.