Public Policy Debate Research Articles

Economic knowledge and the scientization of policy advice

The growing role of economic expertise in contemporary policy-making has received increasing scholarly attention. Yet, so far, this discussion has only been tenuously linked to relevant debates in public policy and administration, such as the work on policy advisory systems. The article attempts to bridge this gap by examining the changing reliance on academic economic knowledge within policy advisory bodies. It does so by analysing appointments and citation patterns in Norwegian advisory commissions in economic policy over the last 45 years. The analysis shows a marked increase in the number of academic economists appointed to commissions and in citations to economic literature. Moreover, it reveals an orientation towards the most prestigious outlets of the international economics discipline. This development can be interpreted as a scientization of policy advice in the economic field, that is, a growing reliance on academic expertise for analysis and arguments about public policy.

Bioethics, policy compromise, and religious pluralism

Summary Democratic society is defined by pluralism and diversity of religions, worldviews and lifestyles. According to a popular proposal, compromise is the preferred method for resolving disagreements about public policy regarding bioethical issues. Citizens are expected to make concessions in order to be able to practise as much of their religions or worldviews as possible. However, since religions and worldviews engage commitments, which are fundamental, moral identity-conferring and indefeasible, compromise can play only a limited role in a democratic society's efforts to arrive at public policy regarding controversial bioethical issues. An analysis of compromise shows that it can be a valuable method for resolution of bioethical disagreements if they do not engage the most fundamental, identity-conferring and indefeasible commitments of the disagreeing parties. When disagreement involves such commitments, a compromise is morally impossible for each party. The paper offers an alternative perspective on bioethical policy debates. Since bioethics emerged and developed in a democratic society, bioethical policy debate and its results should be conceived of as expressive of and defined by the values and ideals of a democratic society, rather than as simply a process of seeking a compromise. Bioethical debates are not and cannot be conducted in a social or normative vacuum. They are part of the practice of bioethics, which is defined by democratic values and ideals. Thus, bioethics is a bounded enterprise of inquiry and discourse developed in and for a democratic society. Sensitive and responsive to religions and worldviews, public policy solutions developed in such a society are premised on democratic values and ideals rather than on any particular religious, theological or philosophical doctrine. Bioethical policy debate presupposes a commitment of its parties to the democratic values and ideals. This commitment shapes the debate's process and outcome. Accordingly, a public policy debate on bioethical issues, which involve citizens’ most fundamental, identity-conferring and indefeasible commitments, should not be directed at a compromise – although there certainly is ample room for it – but at adjustment of both the debate process and its outcome to the values and ideals of a democratic society. The goal of bioethical debate or democratic debate on bioethical issues, aimed at generating public policy solutions to bioethical controversies involving citizens’ most fundamental, identity-conferring and indefeasible commitments, is not a compromise between the disputing parties but public policy adjustment to the democratic values and ideals.

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

Invited Commentary

Invited Commentary

How to bring science and technology expertise to state governments

Science and technology (S&T) are increasingly integrated with all aspects of society. As a result, the ability to evaluate scientific information becomes ever more critical for policy and governing decisions. But such information is complex, and it can be misunderstood, distorted, or mischaracterized. The scientific community can help ensure that sound science informs public policy debates, but finding an effective, robust, and reliable means of doing so is a challenging task. Scientists participating in the California Science & Technology Fellows Program help state lawmakers in Sacramento create evidence-based policies. The model can and should be replicated elsewhere, argue the authors. Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Steven Frame. A well-tested vehicle is the California Science & Technology Policy Fellows Program, now accepting applications for its 10th yearly class of fellows. Here we present evidence that this program has had a substantial impact on policy at the state level, and we argue that other states of all political stripes would be wise to consider similar efforts to further the public good for their respective citizenry. For more than 40 years, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellowships program has placed scientists and engineers with advanced degrees in positions in the US government in Washington, DC, large numbers of whom have subsequently taken on permanent policy roles (1⇓–3). Inspired by the AAAS example, a program for placing S&T fellows in state legislatures was conceived and seed-funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (https://www.moore.org). This program was further supported by a 2007 convocation held at the National Academies to survey the status of state S&T policy advising, which concluded that “almost all legislators and their staffs need help in dealing with science and technology policy issues” (4), and that “A mechanism for sharing best practices … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: balberts{at}ucsf.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

In Pursuit of a Twenty-first Century Just City

A reexamination of the role of equity in planning is critical at this contentious period in US history. Racism and anti-immigrant sentiments have arisen in our public policy debates, cities have again experienced riots, and inequality has grown. Equity has long been a center of tension throughout planning history, and the field has struggled to balance activism and technocratic expertise. This article provides a literature review to inform and explore how planners can engage equity in this current contentious time period.

Migration and race in Europe

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing public policy and political debate about issues related to migration and refugee movements across the borders of Europe. This has been evident in...

A Comprehensive Overview of Government Hacking Worldwide

There has been an ongoing and heated public policy debate on the appropriate role of and limitations to government hacking in maintaining a proper balance of national security and privacy. Asserting that they are compelled to use government hacking tools to protect their countries and populations, law enforcement and government agencies are increasingly strident in expressing the importance of accessing and intercepting encrypted communication data. However, many non-governmental and civil society organizations and activists strongly oppose government hacking because they consider its methods and techniques are extremely invasive and potentially compromising to the fundamental right of privacy. They are also concerned that the implementation of hacking techniques or similar methods would weaken encryption standards and place the security of the Internet at risk. This paper presents an overview of the current status of government hacking and discusses challenges to lawful interception (LI) technology and rules. The current state of LI and government hacking in five countries is reviewed, and capability is assessed in terms of several widely publicized events, in an effort to analyze the limitations of current solutions. Finally, the open challenges to and future direction of government hacking are highlighted.

Letter From the Editor

Letter From the Editor Christopher Gaffney Colegas e camaradas, As many of you know, this is my last issue as editor of JLAG. It has been a rewarding and intense four years and I have been fortunate to work with a talented and dedicated team of associate editors, book review editors, guest editors, copy editors, International Board members, graphic designers, authors, reviewers, and collaborators. Before going any further, I would like to thank the core members of the JLAG team: Jörn Seemann, Johnny Finn, Eric Carter, Martha Bell, Jim Freeman, Andrew Sluyter, Kendra McSweeney, Brad Jockish, and the CLAG board. Your heavy lifting, conversations, and teamwork in bringing the 12 issues of my tenure to fruition were of vital importance to our collective success. As I have moved the editorship from the Universidade Federal Fluminense, to the University of Zürich, to New York University, JLAG’s form and content has been enriched through the conversas, inspiration, and support from colleagues in each of those institutions. In taking over the editorship from David Robinson, my team and I were faced with persistent questions about how to open JLAG more explicitly to new contributors while maintaining the journal as a traditional and accessible outlet for CLAG members. In this project, I feel we have been successful as our full-text downloads have increased by around 10,000 per year, with more than 28,000 downloads in 2017. We are on pace to top this in 2018. A felicitous outcome of this readership increase is that we have a steady pipeline of articles and are publishing thicker volumes with extremely good content. Our rankings in citation indices have crept up steadily and we are attracting a broader, more diverse range of scholars to our pages. Increased readership has brought more money to CLAG and JLAG, allowing us to take longer working with authors and reviewers and to invest in copy editing. This extra revenue will result in more grants for students which will hopefully create a virtuous feedback loop with JLAG for years to come. These gains might not have been possible without a number of other critical interventions that we undertook over the past four years. We instituted an online submission and review platform, created a new website for the journal and for CLAG (with thanks to Tim Norris). We introduced a JLAG forum section, JLAG Perspectives, JLAG Retrospective, and a series of special issues. We have started ad swaps with prominent Latin American academic publications, actively promote our articles on Twitter @JLatAm-Geog, and will be hosting the second JLAG Annual Lecture at the 2019 AAG in Washington D.C. This year we published abstracts in Mandarin for the first time and have created significant momentum for the incoming editorial team, led by Johnny Finn, to pick up and run with. As the Americas move deeper into turbulent political waters, maintaining JLAG as a site of sustained, critical engagement will [End Page 6] become ever more necessary. The unfolding traumas of the “border” between the United States and Latin America have never been more poignant; we have sought to publish authors who speak to the need for academics to engage public policy debates and to become more deeply involved in the lived realities of the regions most vulnerable populations. While I understand that there are some concerns about the “overt politicization” of academic debates, I hold that the academy is not a politically neutral site of intellectual production but rather an active political field. The need for critical scholarship that reaches beyond the academy has never been more urgent. While this is not, of course, the only form of political engagement that is open to us, it is one to which I hope these four years of my editorship have given some impetus for this to occur in the pages of JLAG. This last issue of my tenure is the product of a classic CLAG interaction. Matt Fry and Elvin Delgado approached me back in 2016 with an idea for a special issue on the petroleum industry in Latin America. We met over pints at the AAG in Boston in 2017 and hashed out the broad outlines of a...

A comparison of definitions of affordability for flood risk adaption measures: a case study of current and future risk-based flood insurance premiums in Europe

Risk-based insurance is a commonly proposed and discussed flood risk adaptation mechanism in policy debates across the world such as in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. However, both risk-based premiums and growing risk pose increasing difficulties for insurance to remain affordable. An empirical concept of affordability is required as the affordability of adaption strategies is an important concern for policymakers, yet such a concept is not often examined. Therefore, a robust metric with a commonly acceptable affordability threshold is required. A robust metric allows for a previously normative concept to be quantified in monetary terms, and in this way, the metric is rendered more suitable for integration into public policy debates. This paper investigates the degree to which risk-based flood insurance premiums are unaffordable in Europe. In addition, this paper compares the outcomes generated by three different definitions of unaffordability in order to investigate the most robust definition. In doing so, the residual income definition was found to be the least sensitive to changes in the threshold. While this paper focuses on Europe, the selected definition can be employed elsewhere in the world and across adaption measures in order to develop a common metric for indicating the potential unaffordability problem.

Who says what about sugar-sweetened beverage tax? Stakeholders' framing of evidence: a newspaper analysis

BackgroundIn politically contested health debates, such as sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxation, stakeholders seek to present evidence and arguments for or against specific policy initiatives, based on their interests. The news media have a crucial role in shaping public opinion and the political climate by selectively choosing which issues to focus on. This study examined how stakeholders' positions and evidence on SSB taxation were represented in the media with a view to informing future public health advocacy strategies. MethodsWe conducted a structured search of the Nexis database to identify all newspaper articles relating to SSB taxation published in 11 national UK newspapers between April 1, 2015, and Nov 30, 2016. Newspaper articles were excluded if they did not specifically cite stakeholder arguments for or against SSB taxation. The final sample contained 491 articles. Two reviewers double coded a 25% random sample of articles to develop and test a coding frame, before systematically coding the content of the remaining articles. Qualitative content data were entered into NVivo (version 11) and the constant comparative approach was used to identify emergent patterns and themes with particular emphasis on differences across the data. FindingsA wide range of stakeholders (n=287) presented evidence and arguments for or against SSB taxation (1924). Stakeholder positions were largely reflected by their vested political interests. Industry stakeholders were more likely to draw upon market justice frames in opposition to taxation, asserting that they were already taking voluntary action and such measures would be anti-competitive. Public health advocates and campaigners however were more likely to draw upon social justice frames in support of SSB taxation as one of a package of policy-level measures needed to change behaviour with regard to sugar consumption. InterpretationA complex, poorly-understood, interdependency exists between the framing of evidence in public policy debates, media representations of this evidence, and the influencing strategies used by stakeholders. These insights into stakeholders' framing of evidence could inform wider debates about the media strategies of global producers and marketers of unhealthy commodities manoeuvring to directly lobby the public, and help public health advocates develop more effective media advocacy strategies. FundingSupported by the UK Medical Research Council as part of the Understandings and Uses of Public Health Research programme (MC_U130085862, MC_UU_12017/6) and the Informing Healthy Public Policy programme (MC_UU_12017/15) and by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorates (SPHSU15). The funders had no role in the commissioning of the study, writing of the abstract, or decision to submit it for publication.

Expanding the Political Psychology Toolkit: The Potential of Discursive Psychology for Understanding Contentious Political Debate at a Grassroots Level

In its location at the intersection of political science and psychology, political psychology draws on many of the research techniques of both disciplines in its exploration of power, voting behavior, leadership, attitudes, and values. One hitherto relatively underutilized approach for understanding public policy debate is discursive psychology (DP). Applying this perspective to a contentious policy issue in Australia, we seek to demonstrate that this approach can add richness and depth to our understanding of how ordinary citizens engage in public policy debates. We suggest that this type of analysis can augment insights obtained from more traditional methods—such as focus groups, experimental approaches, and opinion polling—by analyzing how debates are constructed and presented at the grassroots level. This research is innovative in two ways. First, it applies a rigorous, empirical research approach to an area in which it has not previously been used: the study of public policy issues. Second, rather than analyzing the communicative practices of political leaders, we consider the rhetorical arguments made by ordinary citizens in their engagement with political issues and how they negotiate what counts as evidence. This can provide insights into how public debate can be conducted more productively and respectfully.

Constructing Economic and Civic Values through Public Policy Debate: The Case of the National Housing Act of 1934

Abstract This article situates the entrenchment of an American commitment to home ownership at a critical moment in U.S. history—the passage of the National Housing Act of 1934 (NHA). An examination of the introduction, deliberation, and promotion of the legislation reveals how policymakers concretized the value and civic import of residential property. The analysis shows how policymakers, housing advocates, and NHA skeptics collectively framed borrowing for home ownership to be a progressive, secure, and patriotic investment. The NHA discourse illustrates the power of policy rhetoric to define American experiences and prescribe American values.

Biodiversity and overcoming the contemporary environmental crisis: A discussion on anthropocentric and ecosystem-based approaches to sustainable development

Talking about the biosphere equilibrium, our society has been primarily focused on discussing anthropo-centered issues such as climate, greenhouse gas concentrations, levels of environmental pollution, to name a few. Processes occurring in nature have been marginalized too often in public policy debates. However, diminishing biodiversity and ecosystems degradation are at the core of the current ecological crisis. While perusing development, too often we forget that the Earth’s condition, which enables humans to thrive, is a product of the biosphere and its ecosystems; current human livelihoods are based on ecosystem services. The paper discusses the role which the biodiversity and ecosystems discourse should be playing in shaping the development and environmental policy debate across academic, social, and policy sectors. Refs 18. Figs 4.

Locating Temporary Migrants on the Map of Australian Democracy

This article asks whether there should be a limit on the number of years that a temporary migrant can reside in Australia before either being granted permanent residence or required to depart.<br />Temporary migration on the scale now experienced in Australia is a relatively recent phenomenon that contrasts strongly with the established pattern of permanent settler migration that characterised Australia in the 20th Century. As a result, the question of whether or not there should be a limit to temporariness has not yet been addressed in public policy debates.<br />Drawing on the approach of Jospeh H. Carens (2013), I take Australia’s self-definition as a liberal democracy as a standard to which the nation sees itself as ethically and politically accountable. I argue that a commitment to liberal democracy renders a purely contractual approach to migration invalid—more specifically, a migrant’s consent to the terms of a temporary visa does not provide sufficient ethical grounds to extend that temporary status indefinitely. Moving beyond a contractual approach to consider whether current temporary migration arrangements are consistent with the principles of representative democracy raises debates within liberalism, particularly between cosmopolitan and communitarian perspectives. I argue that practical policy must reconcile these cosmopolitan and communitarian positions. I consider, but reject, the option of strictly time-limited temporary visas that would require migrants to depart after a set number of years and instead recommend a pathway to permanent residence based on duration of stay.

Re-evaluating local government amalgamations: utility maximisation meets the principle of double effect (PDE)

Public policy debates are often dominated by economic analysis of aggregate financial benefit. However, public policy formulated on this basis is frequently regarded as profoundly unsatisfactory by stakeholders. Focusing upon municipal amalgamation, this paper provides an alternative framework for public policy analysis which emphasises the importance of intent, process and uncertainty in decision making. We contend that an approach of this type better accommodates public opinion on contentious policy reform. Moreover, it reminds policy makers that even the most admirable economic outcome must still be achieved through a morally licit process.

Desigualdad y Violencia en Latinoamérica

This document describes the Latin American paradox in which sustained levels of economic development seem to go hand in hand with unprecedented levels of violence driven by inequality as its principal root cause. From a multidimensional perspective, the focus centers on exploring how unaddressed basic needs and conditions of inequality can generate psychosocial consequences in individuals by creating emotions that can trigger into acts of violence; the article also attempts to explain how extracting industries contribute to these persisting inequities. From an economic perspective, we note how during the twentieth century the West became battlefield of conflict between two economic key principals. Efficiency (as defined by the neoliberal school of thought) versus Equity (defined by the Keynesian philosophy), a school of thought that suggested that the priority given to former concept exacerbated the levels of inequality and adversely affected the most vulnerable sectors of civil society. The article will them discuss how this clash of ideas is currently located at the center of the entire public policy debate.

‘Time to move on’ or ‘taking more time’? How disregarding multiple perspectives on time can increase policy-making conflict

This article argues that when different perspectives on time remain disregarded in a public policy debate, policy-making conflict can increase. We present an in-depth qualitative analysis of media articles from 2005, 2009, and 2014 in the debate surrounding the contested ‘Oosterweel connection,’ a multibillion-euro infrastructure project in Antwerp (Belgium). Although concerns of time management motivated arguments to speed up the policy-process, the insensitivity of policy-makers to multiple perspectives on time increased conflict. Firstly, while administrative actors reasoned mainly from a procedural time perspective and saw time as scarce, citizens reasoned mostly from an impact-based time perspective and saw time as abundant. A binary debate on policy-making tempo (high versus low) ensued. Secondly, political actors often reasoned from political perspectives on time. Their actions, which were intended to appease, did not end the binary debate and sometimes reinforced it. As the debate on the Oosterweel connection persisted, parties increasingly believed that not only were their infrastructure goals incompatible, but so too were their goals for time management. This increased conflict.

Irish Adventures in Nation-Building by Bryan Fanning (review)

future. Through archival research, interviews and legal analysis, it sheds light on that web of mutually regarding personal relationships that have shaped our constitutional law. For lawyers, it provides invaluable context for the legal decisions that have influenced our constitutional system and political community. For non-lawyers, it provides an engaging and provocative introduction to the fundamentally important work of the Supreme Court. In providing this excellent account of a misunderstood but foundationally important institution, Mac Cormaic has provided a valuable service to our democracy. Dr Oran Doyle is Associate Professor of Law and Head of School, Trinity College Dublin. He has published extensively on constitutional law. Irish Adventures in Nation-Building, Bryan Fanning (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), viii+196 pages. This collection of eighteen essays covers the relationship between ideology and public policy in the cultural, political and economic development of modern Ireland. It ranges from the Famine to the boom-era inflow of immigrants and the argument over the roles of liberalism and corporatism in the economic bubble and crash of early twenty-first century Ireland. It is unusually coherent for a collection of occasional pieces, partly because the author provides an introductory essay setting out its main concerns and linking it to the analysis of such theorists of nationalism as Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, partly because it forms part of a wider intellectual project. This comprises several related books in which Fanning interrogates the formation and adaptation of official versions of Irish identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through debates in policy journals and through attitudes to immigrants and ‘New Irish’ citizens in the twenty-first century. Some of these essays are more convincing than others. For example, the comparison between state development strategies and official culture in Ireland and Taiwan lends a new dimension to the concept of the ‘Celtic Tiger’(not least because so few Irish readers will know much about Taiwan). The surveys of the changing nature of public policy debates in Studies (incidentallycritiquingsimplisticassumptionsthatpost-independenceIreland 240 Studies • volume 106 • number 422 Summer 2017: Book Reviews was sharply divided between Catholic reactionaries and liberal modernisers) and of the extent to which The Bell, for all its perceptive criticisms of Irish society, remained a creature of its time, are likewise valuable contributions to knowledge. (More might, however, have been said about the overlap and tensions between Peadar O’Donnell’s communitarian-Marxist approach and Sean O Faolain’s enlightened liberal-bourgeois project). The analysis of the rise and fall of Irish Thomist sociology is also helpful. On the other hand, the discussion of Pádraig Pearse, centred on a 1906 article in which Pearse fantasised about a glorious Irish-speaking republic of 2006 in a world where English was only spoken by a few peasants in Somerset, is two-dimensional: it misses several hints that Pearse – who, contrary to contemporary perceptions, did have a sense of humour – was speaking tongue-in-cheek and engaging in self-conscious hyperbole, and it fails to note that Pearse’s idealisation of Cuchulain and his world resembled contemporary British public-school idealisation of mediaeval chivalry. (This was explored in Mark Girouard’s The Return to Camelot; as Girouard points out, a major progenitor of this ethos was The Broadstone of Honour by the early nineteenth-centuryAnglo-Irish convert to Catholicism, Kenelm Digby). In this context, Fanning’s contrast between Pearse’s idealised future and the current Irish vogue for the television series A Game of Thrones (which consciously reacts against the chivalric myth by emphasising the bloody and rapacious aspects of feudal knighthood) may be more appropriate than he realises. The essay format naturally lends itself to suggestion rather than comprehensiveness, and it is no disrespect to Fanning’s achievement to point out that some of the issues he raises are more complex than he presents them. For example, he accepts the ‘modernist’ theory of nationalism, and its emphasis on such matters as the way in which national identities, which present themselves as outgrowths of peasant folk cultures, in fact derive from a process of codifying and adapting premodern identities – this produces a standardised high culture capable of meeting the requirements of social and political modernity...

Price competition with differentiated goods and incomplete product awareness

We investigate the effects of increased transparency on prices in the Bertrand duopoly model. Market transparency is defined as the proportion of consumers that are fully informed about the market and thus not captive to one firm. We consider two main cases of strategic interaction, prices as strategic complements and as strategic substitutes. For the former class of games, conventional wisdom concerning prices is confirmed, in that they decrease with market transparency. Consumer welfare always increases with higher transparency but changes in firms’ profits are ambiguous. For the latter class of games, an increase in market transparency may lead to an increase in one of the prices, which implies ambiguous effects on both consumer welfare and firms’ profits. An example with linear demand for differentiated products is also investigated. The results of the paper shed light on the mixed evidence concerning the effects of the Internet on retail markets and may illuminate some of the ongoing related public policy debates.