Policy Paralysis Research Articles

Federal debt pyramid and record budget deficits as a threat to national security of the USA

The article analyzes the transformation of the problem of federal debt and budget defi cits in the United States from a sphere that has a purely economic dimension to the most acute task of ensuring the US national security. It is emphasized that the main demarcation line that predetermined the distinction between the purely economic dimension of the problem of debts and defi cits and national economic security was the ratio of federal debt to GDP, equal to 119 %, recorded in the mid-1940s after the end of World War II. This indicator was considered a benchmark for the historical strength and stability of the entire US federal fi nance system. Before the start of the fi nancial and economic crisis of 2020–2021, provoked by COVID-19 pandemic, the United States believed that they had about 10–15 years during which they could solve the problem of debts and defi cits relatively painlessly, but already in 2020 as a result "Super-aggressive" fi scal policy aimed at keeping the American economy afl oat, the United States has come close to the debt-to-GDP ratio of 130 %. Forecasts by federal government offi cials indicate that the debtto- GDP ratio will not fall below this level over the next 30 years, leaving the federal fi nance system highly vulnerable to shocks and economic blows that could potentially lead to a sudden collapse of the accumulated debt pyramid. The rapid transformation of the situation with debts and defi cits into the most acute problem of national economic security has already led to an almost complete paralysis of fiscal policy, which, in the context of the recession of 2022, turned out to be almost completely devoid of a countercyclical orientation. In addition, the US Federal Reserve took the path of using inflation to reduce the debt burden on the US economy, which predetermined the formation of a "toxic" inflationary environment both in the US and in the global economy in the near foreseeable future. The debt trap that the United States fell into at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century predetermined the extremely aggressive forms of US behavior in the system of international economic relations, including the unleashing of economic wars, with the ultimate goal of demonstrating to the world community that the United States will never, under any circumstances, pay off their accumulated public debt, as well as the debts of other sectors of the US economy.

International relations: the ‘how not to’ guide

Abstract In the century of International Affairs' existence, there have been a lot of catastrophic critical junctures when a different policy decision, underpinned by an alternative epistemic framing, might have led to a more peaceful and prosperous world. In this special issue, we consider the well-intentioned efforts of humanity over the past century that turned out badly. Much of foreign policy analysis seeks to replicate successes; we humbly ask whether it might make more sense to examine how to avoid disastrous failure. In this introductory article we develop a concrete definition of policy failure and provide a motivation for why the study of failures is relevant for the coming century. We suggest a Hippocratic Oath for policy-minded scholars, and advance guidelines to help go beyond Barack Obama's ‘Don't do stupid shit’ injunction and also guard against potential policy paralysis. Finally, we offer conclusions derived from the other articles in this special issue that are relevant for both the study and practice of international relations. Armed with these insights, practitioners—and the researchers who advise them—may stand a better chance of avoiding some of the worst pitfalls of international relations; occasionally, together, we may even get some things right.

Corporate Users' Attachment to Social Networking Sites: Examining the Role of Social Capital and Perceived Benefits.

The debate on the pros and cons of employee attachment to social networking sites (SNS) has led to social media policy paralysis in many organizations, and often a prohibition on employee use of SNS. This paper examines corporate users’ attachment to SNS. An analysis of 316 survey responses showed that corporate users’ socialization in large public SNS was steeped in perceived work-related benefits, which in turn nourished their SNS attachment. Social use outperformed informational use in generating perceived work-related benefits from SNS. Weak ties in large heterogeneous networks resulted in strategic and operational benefits, whereas the effects of strong bonding in homogenous networks were limited to operational benefits. The paper contributes to research on SNS use by corporate users and the debate on the effect of SNS use for work. The findings will benefit SNS strategists of organizations and policymakers to exploit the benefit potential of public SNS.

Policy paralysis, financialisation, and the politics of facadism: housing policy post Grenfell

Policy paralysis, financialisation, and the politics of facadism: housing policy post Grenfell

Pediatric SARS-CoV-2 Infection in India: Expert Opinion without Evidence Leading to Public Health Policy Paralysis

Probably an intelligence of hindsight has potentiated many commentators to exert that current state of Indian pandemic scenario was well predicted. However, literature and references are lacking in support of concrete-confident scientific advice prior to onset of tragedy. Scientists in turn, legitimately so, have pointed towards gross underreporting of CoVID-19 statistics, political influence, ancient cultural mindset (such as, flowing river Ganga will cleanse the corona virus)

British Troops on British Streets: Defence’s Counter-Terrorism Journey from 9/11 to Operation Temperer

In May 2017, Operation Temperer – the deployment of British military personnel in support of the police following a terrorist attack or the threat of such an attack – was activated for the first time. The deployment of uniformed armed personnel as a core element of the U.K.’s CT capability represents a significant and, in the authors view, welcome shift in how successive administrations have utilized aspects of state power in response to a terrorist threat or incident. Little academic work has been devoted to explaining how and why this change occurred, with the military moving from reluctant participants in domestic CT missions, to playing a central (and public) role in providing capacity for domestic security, as witnessed under Operation Temperer. This article charts the evolution of greater military involvement in domestic counter-terrorism missions after 9/11, revealing that a decade of policy paralysis was finally broken by the combination of terrorist events in Paris in January 2015, and the intervention of a forward leaning prime minister overcoming institutional reluctance on the part of the Ministry of Defence and other government departments to put British troops on British streets.

Governance and leadership in education policy making and school development in a divided society

ABSTRACT The Good Friday Agreement (1997) brought political violence in Northern Ireland to an end and provided the basis for shared government. A consociational political structure was adopted which institutionalised community differences while encouraging coalition government. The goal was that a requirement for consensus decisions would encourage cooperation between political leaders and promote effective decision-making. This paper examines the period of devolved government in Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2017 through the lens of education policy to explore leadership on these issues. The paper will examine three policy issues: a review of the effects of academic selection in post primary education; a proposal to rationalise the administrative arrangements in education; and an initiative to promote collaborative networks between separate denominational schools through ‘shared education’. The paper will conclude that, far from providing a superordinate goal around which the different political parties could coalesce, there was a lack of systemic leadership on educational debates. Inability in most cases to establish consensus resulted in policy paralysis. The one area where this did not occur was the adoption of ‘shared education’ which may have been because this initiative was a bottom-up process based on the empowerment of teachers.

Government Activism in Bankruptcy

It is widely recognized that bankruptcy law can stymie regulatory enforcement and present challenges for governments when regulated businesses file for Chapter 11. It is less-widely understood that bankruptcy law can present governments with opportunities to advance policy goals if they are willing to adopt tactics traditionally associated with activist investors, a strategy we call “government bankruptcy activism.” The bankruptcy filings by Chrysler and General Motors in 2009 are a famous example: the government of the United States used the bankruptcy process to help both auto manufacturers resolve their financial distress while promoting the policy objectives of protecting union workers and addressing climate change. A decade later, the government of California applied its bargaining power in the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Chapter 11 case to protect climate policies and the victims of wildfires. These examples illustrate that, by tapping into the bankruptcy system, governments gain access to the exceptional powers that a debtor enjoys under bankruptcy law, which can complement the traditional tools of appropriations and regulation to facilitate and accelerate policy outcomes. This strategy is especially useful in times of urgency and policy paralysis, when government bankruptcy activism can provide a pathway past veto players in the political system. However, making policy through the bankruptcy system presents potential downsides as well, as it may also allow governments to evade democratic accountability and obscure the financial losses that stakeholders are forced to absorb to help fund those policy outcomes.

A Problem of Policy Paralysis: A Response to ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of Academic Selection: The Case of Northern Ireland’ by Martin Brown et al.

A Problem of Policy Paralysis: A Response to ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of Academic Selection: The Case of Northern Ireland’ by Martin Brown et al.

Cancer in children: The tip of the iceberg.

Pediatric cancer outcomes have improved dramatically in high-income countries (HICs) with more than 80% of patients surviving. This has been achieved through early diagnosis, the formation of collaborative research groups, and government policies. However, most children with cancer in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) do not survive due to multiple factors including lack of resources, manpower, and national level pediatric cancer policy. If we need to improve the overall outcome of children with cancer then we need to focus our attention on children in LMICs as they constitute 80% of the worldwide disease burden. This article looks at the burden of pediatric cancer, examines pediatric oncology policy paralysis, and offers possible solutions for improving care for children with cancer.

A Problem of Policy Paralysis: A Response to ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of Academic Selection: The Case of Northern Ireland’ by Martin Brown <em>et al.</em>

A Problem of Policy Paralysis: A Response to ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of Academic Selection: The Case of Northern Ireland’ by Martin Brown <em>et al.</em>

Poverty and Coping Strategies of Unemployed Youths in Cross River State, Nigeria

The study investigates how unemployed youths in Cross River state respond to and cope with poor economic conditions. The phenomenon of poverty has been identified as one of the increasing social challenges in Nigeria and has been linked to a number of social problems including street crime, substance abuse, internet fraud, armed robbery, ritual killings, kidnapping, and youth restiveness. Scholars have also argued that whereas the youth is the locomotive of national development and contribute immensely to the sustenance of the developmental momentum of a nation; youths in Nigeria are largely unemployed and redundant. The social consequences of this are enormous and can only be explained from the lens of the restricted opportunity theory and the strain theory. The study employed a cross-sectional survey research design involving questionnaires, interviews, descriptive statistics and 1,010 purposively selected respondents from six local government areas in the three senatorial districts of Cross River. The findings of the study revealed that youth poverty is a growing concern in Cross River state, and is caused by limited access to loans, lack of job opportunities, policy paralysis, among many other factors. Respondents of the study further noted that unemployed youths in the state cope with the hardship associated with poverty and unemployment by engaging in various activities including negative ones such as commercial sex work, theft, cyber fraud, and armed robbery. It is thus recommended, among other things, that the Nigerian State must invest in youth development by creating programmes and funding for small scale businesses, vocational training, and skills development.

Status and determinants of enrollment and dropout of health insurance in Nepal: an explorative study

BackgroundCompared to other countries in the South Asia Nepal has seen a slow progress in the coverage of health insurance. Despite of a long history of the introduction of health insurance (HI) and a high priority of the government of Nepal it has not been able to push rapidly its social health insurance to its majority of the population. There are many challenges while to achieve universal health insurance in Nepal ranging from existing policy paralysis to program operation. This study aims to identify the enrollment and dropout rates of health insurance and its determinants in selected districts of Nepal.MethodsThe study was conducted while using a mixed method including both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Numerical data related to enrollment and dropout rates were taken from Health Insurance Board (HIB) of Nepal. For the qualitative data, three districts, Bardiya, Chitwan, and Gorkha of Nepal were selected purposively. Enrollment assistants (EA) of social health insurance program were taken as the participants of study. Focus group discussions (FGD) were arranged with the selected EAs using specific guidelines along with unstructured questions. The results from numerical data and focus group discussions are synthesized and presented accordingly.ResultsThe findings of the study suggested variation in enrollment and dropout of health insurance in the districts. Enrollment coverage was 13,545 (1%), 249,104 (5%), 1,159,477 (9%) and 1,676,505 (11%) from 2016 to 2019 among total population and dropout rates were 9121(67%), 110,885 (44%) and 444,967 (38%) among total enrollment from 2016 to 2018 respectively. Of total coverage, more than one-third proportion was subsidy enrollment—free enrollment for vulnerable groups. The population characteristics of unwilling and dropout in social health insurance came from relatively well-off families, government employees, businessman, migrants’ people, some local political leaders as well as the poor class families. The major determinants of poor enrollment and dropout were mainly due to unavailability of enough drugs, unfriendly behavior of health workers, and indifferent behavior of the care personnel to the insured patients in health care facilities and prefer to take health service in private clinic for their own benefits. The long maturation time to activate health service, limited health package and lack of copayment in different types of health care were the factors related to inefficient program and policy implementation.ConclusionThere is a high proportion of dropout and subsidy enrollment, the key challenge for sustainability of health insurance program in Nepal. Revisiting of existing HI policy on health care packages, more choices on copayment, capacity building of enrollment assistants and better coordination between health insurance board and health care facilities can increase the enrollment and minimize the dropout.

Climate Policy Paralysis in Australia: Energy Security, Energy Poverty and Jobs

According to the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, Australia was ranked as the worst-performing country on climate change policy. The country has an ambivalent record of climate policy development as well as implementation, and has been criticized for its inaction. This paper considers why the country has been locked in climate policy “paralysis” through analyzing defining attributes of such a paralysis, and the tentative connections between domestic energy policies and international trade and development. We conducted a media content analysis of 222 articles and identified media narratives in three cases of energy projects in the country involving thermal coal exports, domestic renewable energy storage, and closure of a domestic coal power station. The analysis reveals that policy paralysis in Australian climate change policy can be traced back to the countervailing arguments that have been pervasive around domestic energy security, rural employment and international energy poverty. The political establishment has struggled to develop a sustainable consensus on climate change and the citizenry remains polarized. We also discuss how a “focusing event,” such as a major natural disaster can break the impasse but this is only possible if energy security at home, energy poverty abroad and employment imperatives across the board are clearly delineated, measured and prioritized.

Sensemaking and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic: A complex adaptive systems perspective on policy decision-making.

Governments worldwide are under enormous pressure to effectively and promptly address the increasingly complex crisis presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. To understand the difficulties inherent to policymakers’ sensemaking and learning processes during this unprecedented challenge, this article develops a perspective rooted in complexity theory. We highlight that, just as complex adaptive systems, societies affected by the pandemic and by the subsequent containment policies present non-linear and unpredictable outcomes, which highly depend on the social systems’ initial states and on the behavioral rules governing the actions and interactions of the agents composing the systems. This analysis underlines that any decision-making process in a highly complex crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic is inherently inaccurate and short-sighted. Far, however, from suggesting a policy paralysis, with this perspective we highlight the need to embed complexity thinking in policy decision-making and we present a roadmap for learning based on a flexible and adaptive approach, locally optimal solutions, and the need for international cooperation and transparent dissemination of data.

Book Review: India Emerging: From Policy Paralysis to Hyper Economics

Book Review: India Emerging: From Policy Paralysis to Hyper Economics

Terrestrial and Celestial Forces Expose Vulnerable Economists: Financial Crisis 2008 vs. 2020

The job of economist is to evaluate economic issues, analyze past economic trends and forecast the economic outlook. Economic forecasting is the process of attempting to predict the future condition of the economy using a combination of widely followed indicators or factors that affect economy. The economist conducts statistical tests and develops statistical models to determine which relationships best describe or predict the behavior of the variables under study. The experts rely on past experience and available economic data which they consider influence the outcome. It is establish fact that history never repeats. The experts fail to anticipate all the influencing factors and its quantum of effect on ultimate outcome. In an attempt to break basics of economy, Sapovadia noted in his work; whenever recession looms around, experts start blaming policy paralysis, wrong policies, policy implementation and vision of the government. Policy makers, their advisers and economist will think around narrow technical aspects of ‘economics’. Economists will talk about structural problems. Hardly someone goes beyond investment, demand, supply, saving, inflation and bank rates (Vrajlal Sapovadia, 2019). Economic forecasting is often described as a flawed science. The recent ‘coronavirus’ outbreak have once again proved that celestial forces can mangle terrestrial planning and forecast. Till end of February 2020 no one realized catastrophic impact of epidemic spread of deadly virus that virtually shaken the Chinese economy, known as dragon. Within three months of the outbreak, epidemic spread limited to China became pandemic hounding more than one third of the world’s countries (at least 66 countries) and over half of the global population.

Ghana's renewable energy agenda: Legislative drafting in search of policy paralysis

Renewable energy has been touted as the panacea to Ghana's energy crisis, and one which will lay a solid foundation for industrialisation. Consequently, recent trends in energy policy place just as much weight on clean and renewable energy as they do on the age-old quest for energy independence. Using a desktop review approach, complemented with the analysis of government policy documents, we offer a critical perspective on Ghana's renewable energy agenda. We argue that institutional weakness, ambiguous regulatory frameworks, implementation challenges, lack of proper planning and coordination, and dependencies on donor support are responsible for the poor development of renewable energy in Ghana. We also contend that, if the renewable energy agenda and, indeed, the nation is to survive and thrive, the relevant legislative framework within the renewable energy sector must be reviewed. The paper concludes by identifying practical steps that need to be taken to place the renewable energy drive on a proper policy and legislative pedestal in the country.

Slowdown and Crisis in the Indian Economy - A Study of the Macroeconomic Developments between the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 Crisis (2011-12 to 2019-20)

Slowdown and Crisis in the Indian Economy - A Study of the Macroeconomic Developments between the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 Crisis (2011-12 to 2019-20)

Energy policy as a social determinant of Australian health equity

Abstract Background Intersectoral action on social determinants of health to reduce health inequities requires policy research beyond the usual social and human services. We ask how Australian energy policy affects health equity. Methods Document analysis and policy case studies on how goals, objectives and strategies of all Australian energy policies address equity. Results Energy policy affects health via risk from unreliable energy; difficult transitions to renewables; disproportionate effects on poorer people faced with high energy bills versus other basics; ecological degradation; cost pressures on businesses and governments; job losses and policy paralysis about renewable energy and climate change. Policy features subsidies for the disadvantaged; privatisation and artificial markets; differing geographical distribution of resources and high level political conflict about whether it can deliver on 3, or only 2, of the ’energy trilemma’ of reliability, affordability and ecological sustainability. Mining, industrial and political interests, powerful enough to orchestrate the downfall of Australian prime ministers, actively close policy links between health, climate change and energy. Bridging energy and health policy requires political support for market solutions involving renewables; community generation of renewable energy; solutions for rural and remote areas; and global treaties. Intergenerational equity is a strong policy lever. Conclusions Health in All Policies approaches can creatively engage with the language and concepts of energy policy via the daily conditions of living, inequity and climate change. When it is difficult to engage, researchers can connect with non-government organisations who bridge sectors through simultaneous advocacy for equitable health, climate and energy policies. Key messages Powerful interests burn bridges between health equity and energy policy. Local and global policy levers harmonising terminology differences build bridges between energy, climate change and health equity.