Policy Analysis Research Research Articles

Creating ‘healthy built environment’ legislation in Australia; a policy analysis

Influencing healthy public policy through health advocacy remains challenging. This policy analysis research uses theories of agenda setting to understand how health came to be considered for specific mention in legislation arising from land-use planning system reform in New South Wales, Australia. This qualitative study follows critical realist methodology to conduct a policy analysis of the case. We collected data from purposively sampled in-depth interviews (n = 9), a focus group and documentary analysis. We used three classic policy process (agenda setting) theories to develop an analytic framework for explaining the empirical data: Multiple Streams; Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and Advocacy Coalition Framework. The reform process presented a window of opportunity that opened incrementally over a 2 year period. The opportunity was grasped by individual policy entrepreneurs who subsequently formed a coalition of healthy planning advocates focused on strategically positioning 'health' as legislative objective for the new system. The actual point of influence seemed to appear suddenly when challenges to a perceived economic development agenda within the reforms peaked, and the health objective, see as non-threatening by all stakeholders, was taken up. Our analysis demonstrates how this particular point of influence followed sustained long-term activity by health advocates prior to and during the reform process. We demonstrate a theory-driven policy analysis of health advocacy efforts to influence an instance of major land-use planning reform. The application of multiple policy process theories enables deep understanding of what is required to effectively advocate for healthy public policy.

Applying Behavioral Insights in Policy Analysis: Recent Trends in the United States

An understanding of human nature and of the motivations that drive human behavior have always informed public policies. The use of behavioral research in public policy analysis, which flows largely from social and cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and other behavioral sciences, came into sharp focus in the last decade. Since then, policy initiatives incorporating behavioral insights have flourished, and thousands of research articles have been published on that topic. A lot of this research has focused on how behavioral insights used by governments at all levels can improve the delivery of governmental services and improve compliance and use of government services by the public. We review recent trends in policy initiatives that specifically incorporate behavioral insights in the United States and outline a framework for further integrating behavioral insights into the various stages of policy analysis and policy design.

Identical Twins? Destination-Based Cash-Flow Taxes Versus Consumption Taxes with Payroll Subsidies

The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed by the Economic Modeling Division of the IMF for policy analysis and international economic research. This paper uses GIMF to illustrate when a destination-based cash-flow tax is equivalent to a combination of a consumption tax and a labor subsidy, as the latter combination have been advocated as proxies for the implementation of destination-based cash-flow taxes. The paper documents the conditions under which both types of taxes are identical and how the equivalence in terms of the real economy and tax revenue responses can be broken, namely after the introduction of finitely lived consumers that value government debt as net wealth (real economy) and the introduction of untaxed government expenditure (tax revenue).

No Business Taxation Without Model Representation: Adding Corporate Income and Cash Flow Taxes to GIMF

The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed at the International Monetary Fund for policy analysis and international economic research. This paper documents the incorporation of corporate income, cash-flow and destination based cash-flow taxes into the model. The analysis presented considers the transmission mechanism of these taxes and details how financial frictions interact with each of the taxes.

No Business Taxation Without Model Representation: Adding Corporate Income and Cash Flow Taxes to GIMF

The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed at the International Monetary Fund for policy analysis and international economic research. This paper documents the incorporation of corporate income, cash-flow and destination based cash-flow taxes into the model. The analysis presented considers the transmission mechanism of these taxes and details how financial frictions interact with each of the taxes.

El análisis de políticas públicas: la evolución de una disciplina y su relevancia en Colombia

For several decades, the so-called policy turn has become more relevant in the context of Latin America in general, and Colombia in particular. Both in the political and academic spheres, research projects or intervention have been put forward which, directly or indirectly, relate to a vague and general notion of public policy. However, the advances in the specific field of the policy theory are timid. Therefore, it is necessary to deepen and energize the proper disciplinary debates of policy, beyond the study of any policy in particular. Thus, this article explores the historical development of policy studies as an umbrella concept, and problematizes two different sub-fields -policy analysis and policy process research– to shed some light on the matter. Finally, the article concludes that despite difficulties and inconveniences while establishing definitive distinctions in this field, it is necessary to build some references to expand and maintain the dialogue between the workers within the different policy fields.

Identical Twins? Destination-Based Cash-Flow Taxes Versus Consumption Taxes with Payroll Subsidies

The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed by the Economic Modeling Division of the IMF for policy analysis and international economic research. This paper uses GIMF to illustrate when a destination-based cash-flow tax is equivalent to a combination of a consumption tax and a labor subsidy, as the latter combination have been advocated as proxies for the implementation of destination-based cash-flow taxes. The paper documents the conditions under which both types of taxes are identical and how the equivalence in terms of the real economy and tax revenue responses can be broken, namely after the introduction of finitely lived consumers that value government debt as net wealth (real economy) and the introduction of untaxed government expenditure (tax revenue).

Barriers to entry index: a ranking of starting a business difficulties for the United States

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a new data set documenting various costs to starting a business across the 50 US states for the year 2011.Design/methodology/approachThe first ranking weights and organizes measures using principal components analysis. The second ranking averages subcomponents of the data across groups of variables with common themes.FindingsMost states largely maintain their relative position across both Methods 1 and 2 despite the difference in organization and weight of variables and groups across the two ranking methods – 21 of the top 25 states remained in the top 25 in both the Methods 1 and 2 rankings. Some states experience not insignificant changes between the two indexes and a few experience substantial changes. These changes can be attributed to the importance Method 1 places upon final fees, final processing time, and application formats for the Secretary of State.Research limitations/implicationsA lack of empirical evidence, additional data, and a definitive theory on the impacts of barriers to entry measures for the USA constrains both how the data are presented as well as which measures were collected. This paper attempts to accommodate for this by presenting rankings derived from different methodologies.Practical implicationsThe composite barriers to entry measures can be used in policy analysis and possible research on rent-seeking. These data can also be used to study the determinants and relative costs of entrepreneurship.Originality/valueThis paper presents entry-specific regulatory measures currently undocumented in the literature.

Towards universal health coverage: building capacity in health systems and policy research in Ghana

Introduction The resources, actors and institutions generating and translating knowledge into improving the health system performance are limited and not strong in most developing countries. In Ghana, it is revealed that there is no particular dedicated institution specifically mandated to conduct research and/or teaching in health systems research and policy analysis. Notably, the efforts of institutions like Ghana’s renowned universities in even research and teaching …

Energy policy in the Caribbean green economy context and the Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD) framework as a proposed tool for its development

Market integration efforts of Caribbean small island developing states have become transposed on the growing paradigm shift towards green economy pathways. Central to this is the challenge of implementing Caribbean energy policy in a manner that is aligned with green economy ideals and face the realities of regional indebtedness and environmental impacts. Here we analyze the current state of the Caribbean energy policy development arena and propose that the currently weak policy and institutional design regime might potentially benefit from the application of the Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD) model especially within the operational context of the green economy. It allows us to identify current policy dilemmas, bottlenecks and discrepancies and to disentangle some of them while offering up a way forward with others. We do not so much offer distinct recommendations but focus more on delineating how to clear the pathway for sound policy intervention and outcomes. By doing so we set forth a challenging agenda for future policy analysis research that will advance Caribbean energy policy in more robust ways.

Interpretive policy analysis: Marshallese COFA migrants and the Affordable Care Act

BackgroundSince the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the rate of uninsured in the United States has declined significantly. However, not all legal residents have benefited equally. As part of a community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership with the Marshallese community, an interpretative policy analysis research project was conducted to document Marshallese Compact of Free Association (COFA) migrants’ understanding and experiences regarding the ACA and related health policies. This article is structured to allow the voice of Marshallese COFA migrants to explain their understanding and interpretation of the ACA and related polices on their health in their own words.MethodsQualitative data was collected from 48 participants in five focus groups conducted at the local community center and three individual interviews for those unable to attend the focus groups. Marshallese community co-investigators participated throughout the research and writing process to ensure that cultural context and nuances in meaning were accurately captured and presented. Community co-investigators assisted with the development of the semi-structured interview guide, facilitated focus groups, and participated in qualitative data analysis.ResultsContent analysis revealed six consistent themes across all focus groups and individual interviews that include: understanding, experiences, effect on health, relational/historical lenses, economic contribution, and pleas. Working with Marshallese community co-investigators, we selected quotations that most represented the participants’ collective experiences. The Marshallese view the ACA and their lack of coverage as part of the broader relationship between the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the United States. The Marshallese state that they have honored the COFA relationship, and they believe the United States is failing to meet its obligations of care and support outlined in the COFA.ConclusionWhile the ACA and Medicaid Expansion have reduced the national uninsured rate, Marshallese COFA migrants have not benefited equally from this policy. The lack of healthcare coverage for the Marshallese COFA migrants exacerbates the health disparities this underserved population faces. This article is an important contribution to researchers because it presents the Marshallese’s interpretation of the policy, which will help inform policy makers that are working to improve Marshallese COFA migrant health.

Why do policies change? Institutions, interests, ideas and networks in three cases of policy reform.

Policy researchers have used various categories of variables to explain why policies change, including those related to institutions, interests and ideas. Recent research has paid growing attention to the role of policy networks-the actors involved in policy-making, their relationships with each other, and the structure formed by those relationships-in policy reform across settings and issues; however, this literature has largely ignored the theoretical integration of networks with other policy theories, including the '3Is' of institutions, interests and ideas. This article proposes a conceptual framework integrating these variables and tests it on three cases of policy change in Burkina Faso, addressing the need for theoretical integration with networks as well as the broader aim of theory-driven health policy analysis research in low- and middle-income countries. We use historical process tracing, a type of comparative case study, to interpret and compare documents and in-depth interview data within and between cases. We found that while network changes were indeed associated with policy reform, this relationship was mediated by one or more of institutions, interests and ideas. In a context of high donor dependency, new donor rules affected the composition and structure of actors in the networks, which enabled the entry and dissemination of new ideas and shifts in the overall balance of interest power ultimately leading to policy change. The case of strategic networking occurred in only one case, by civil society actors, suggesting that network change is rarely the spark that initiates the process towards policy change. This analysis highlights the important role of changes in institutions and ideas to drive policymaking, but hints that network change is a necessary intermediate step in these processes.

Top Ten+ List

This article presents a “top ten+ list” of lessons learned from the ontological turn. Across various terms and insistences, the article surveys theories of social change, the subject and agency, the canons constructed, the methodologies materialized, the “more and other than reflexivity” researcher subjectivity endorsed, and the edges of both policy analysis and quantitative research that already instantiate such lessons. It concludes with a meditation on how to think this latest turn within something other than a temporality of successor regimes, end-isms, and apocalyptic breaks.

Public policies and health systems in Sahelian Africa: theoretical context and empirical specificity.

This research on user fee removal in three African countries is located at the interface of public policy analysis and health systems research. Public policy analysis has gradually become a vast and multifaceted area of research consisting of a number of perspectives. But the context of public policies in Sahelian Africa has some specific characteristics. They are largely shaped by international institutions and development agencies, on the basis of very common 'one-size-fits-all' models; the practical norms that govern the actual behaviour of employees are far removed from official norms; public goods and services are co-delivered by a string of different actors and institutions, with little coordination between them; the State is widely regarded by the majority of citizens as untrustworthy. In such a context, setting up and implementing health user fee exemptions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger was beset by major problems, lack of coherence and bottlenecks that affect public policy-making and implementation in these countries.Health systems research for its part started to gain momentum less than twenty years ago and is becoming a discipline in its own right. But French-speaking African countries scarcely feature in it, and social sciences are not yet fully integrated. This special issue wants to fill the gap. In the Sahel, the bad health indicators reflect a combination of converging factors: lack of health centres, skilled staff, and resources; bad quality of care delivery, corruption, mismanagement; absence of any social security or meaningful commitment to the worst-off; growing competition from drug peddlers on one side, from private clinics on the other. Most reforms of the health system have various 'blind spots'. They do not take in account the daily reality of its functioning, its actual governance, the implicit rationales of the actors involved, and the quality of healthcare provision. In order to document the numerous neglected problems of the health system, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is needed to produce evidence.

Quo vadis public procurement of innovation?

Governments are actively looking for ways to use public procurement so that it would become more effective in facilitating innovation across public and private sectors. However, a shift towards public procurement of innovation (PPI) has proven to be difficult. Whereas the contemporary debate has mostly focused on how to reduce the barriers of PPI through re-conceptualizing the procurement process, there is a need to take into account also wider strategic factors through which governments create capacity to undertake PPI. By revisiting historic and contemporary policy initiatives, four strategies for the future can be envisioned: PPI as experimental innovation policy, from fiscal policy under austerity to PPI, mission-oriented PPI and shifts in administrative culture towards PPI. Each of the strategies demands different capacities from the entrepreneurial sector, as well as state, policy and administrative capacities from the public sector. These issues should be an inherent part of future policy-making and offer new avenues for PPI-related policy analysis and academic research.

‘Including health in systems responsible for urban planning’: a realist policy analysis research programme

IntroductionRealist methods are increasingly being used to investigate complex public health problems. Despite the extensive evidence base clarifying the built environment as a determinant of health, there is limited knowledge...

A Foreign Policy Analysis Perspective on the Domestic Politics Turn in IR Theory

Over the last 25 years, there has been a noteworthy turn across major International Relations (IR) theories to include domestic politics and decision-making factors. Neoclassical realism and variants of liberalism and constructivism, for example, have incorporated state motives, perceptions, domestic political institutions, public opinion, and political culture. These theoretical developments, however, have largely ignored decades of research in foreign policy analysis (FPA) examining how domestic political and decision-making factors affect actors’ choices and policies. This continues the historical disconnect between FPA and “mainstream” IR, resulting in contemporary IR theories that are considerably underdeveloped. This article revisits the reasons for this separation and demonstrates the gaps between IR theory and FPA research. I argue that a distinct FPA perspective, one that is psychologically-oriented and agent-based, can serve as a complement, a competitor, and an integrating crucible for the cross-theoretical turn toward domestic politics and decision making in IR theory.

Where is the policy in health policy and systems research agenda?

Where is the policy in health policy and systems research agenda?

Regulating farmer nutrient management: a three-state case study on the delmarva peninsula.

Growing concern about water quality issues, along with a series of fish kills in 1997, prompted Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia to adopt regulations to reduce nutrient pollution from agricultural nonpoint sources. All three states required farmers to follow a state-certified nutrient management plan that would "optimize crop yields and minimize environmental losses," although the policy-making processes in each state were different. The objective of this political and policy analysis research was to determine if the policy-making process affected farmer compliance and whether nutrient management practices have improved. Sixty farmers on the Delmarva Peninsula, which includes all three states, who grew corn and used poultry manure as a nutrient source were interviewed, as were 68 policy stakeholders. Analysis of state regulatory agency data indicated that the contentious policy-making process in Maryland resulted in initially poor administrative compliance (i.e., obtaining a plan), whereas collaborative approaches in Delaware resulted in very good initial compliance. Interviews with farmers indicated good adoption of four practices: possessing a current plan, taking soil and manure nutrient tests, and split-applying nitrogen fertilizer. Farmers reported poor adoption (60% or less) across all three states of other practices: taking residual nitrogen credits for previous use of legumes or manure, keeping manure-free setbacks next to surface waters, avoiding manure application in winter, and frequent calibration of manure spreaders. Although nutrient management plans were required, many aspects of implementation and enforcement meant that adherence to plans was largely voluntary. This research helped identify successes, shortcomings, and lessons learned about regulating farmers.

Policy analysis research in higher education: negotiating dilemmas

Increasingly, qualitative research is funded by agencies – whether government or national agencies or in the private sector – that have a direct interest in the research that they are funding. Especially in qualitative research in such situations, methodological issues arise but so too do dilemmas, both in the actual conduct of the study and in the writing and the positioning of ensuing texts (for example, in relation to value neutrality and value commitment, in doing justice to the multiple and conflicting interests of various constituencies and in steering among competing ideologies). Here, in this paper, such dilemmas are brought out in an account of a study conducted in the UK in the 1990s, to review and to evaluate the UK’s then quality assurance system.