System Policy Makers Research Articles

The Politics of Federalism in Argentina: Implications for Governance and Accountability

This paper contributes to an agenda that views the effects of policies and institutional reforms as dependent on the structure of political incentives for national and subnational political actors. The paper studies political incentive structures at the subnational level and the mechanisms whereby they affect national-level politics and policymaking at the national level in Argentina, a highly decentralized middle-income democracy, Argentina. The Argentine political system makes subnational political power structures very influential in national politics. Moreover, most Argentine provinces are local bastions of power dominated by entrenched elites, characterized by scarce political competition, weak division of powers, and clientelistic political linkages. Political dominance in the provinces and political importance at the national level reinforce each other, dragging the Argentine political and policymaking system towards the practices and features of its most politically backward regions.

Managing Strategic Changes Through DEEP Reforms: A View from the Perspective of U.S.–Armenia “Smart Power” Cooperation

Education is a systematic process of forming the fundamental ability to think analytically, incorporating both basic and specialized knowledge. Therefore, in the armed forces of leading countries of the world, the field of military education and personnel management is regarded as a primary factor for ensuring the efficiency of the defense security system and the combat capability of the military.Defense education reforms are a significant part of the overall reforms being implemented in the defense security sector in Armenia that are helping bring both more credibility and accountability into the Armenian Armed Forces and the National Security System on the whole. The importance of defense education has grown significantly within recent years due to the introduction of sophisticated new armament systems. Current military standards demand a new level of requirements for both soldiers and officers, and military professional education is one of the most important tools to help prepare highly qualified personnel who will be capable of implementing different tasks in the rapidly changing atmosphere of the modern battlefield.The cause and the essence of these innovations are not only due to hard power subsystem dynamics, but also require accepting the fundamentally new orientation in thinking about security that is not exclusively based on threat assessments and a presumed hard power response, as was the case in the past. Over the past decade, after the Prague NATO Summit, Armenia has employed comparative analysis and innovative decision making to smoothly turn its defense security thinking toward a goal-oriented approach that synthesizes both soft and hard security dimensions within one holistic smart power-oriented defense security policymaking system. The other important dimension of these improvements is a gradual transition from an obsolete apparatchik mode of Stalinist-style military governance of the Ministry of Defense to a modern leadership and management culture characterized by the redistribution of powers between defensepolicy institutions and military bodies and the delegation of power and duties to lower tiers in the hierarchy.In the United States, the system of professional military education (PME) must meet certain basic requirements, namely that it should be comprehensive, systemic, consistent, realistic, effective, and unanimous in concept, terms, goals, challenges, and opportunities. The U.S. system is familiar to me, due to my five and a half years of Defense, Army, Air Force, and Navy Attache service as well as having held academic fellowships at the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio, Harvard University's National Security Program, the National Defense University, RAND, and the Marshall Center for Security Studies. PME training places constant tension on the mind, will, and body, giving great attention to physical fitness and its major role in service activity of all categories of personnel.The Early Stages of Armenia's Defense Education Sector DevelopmentThe formation of Armenia's armed forces coincided with what was probably the most difficult and stressful period of modern Armenian history: the transition from a Sovietstyle totalitarian regime to independent national statehood oriented around the values of liberal democracy. Drafting the main design of the Armenian Army simultaneously with the establishment of Armenian independent statehood became a challenge that needed to be addressed precisely, given the conditions of extreme uncertainty that characterized the dynamics of the post-Soviet system of global, regional, and national security. It was a matter of great responsibility and commitment for me to be ordered by the leadership of the newly born Ministry of Defense to develop the Basics of Military Policy of the Republic of Armenia, published in 1992 as the first military-political national document outlining the doctrinal content and strategic caliber of an independent Armenia. …

A Comparative Study of National Science and Technology R&D Policy-making Systems

A Comparative Study of National Science and Technology R&D Policy-making Systems

An exogenous shock to the system? The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and British tourism policy

This paper explores the impact of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on British tourism policy development and delivery using an archival documentary review of 54 documents (dated 1999–2010) relating to strategy for tourism, identified from searches of the archives of 23 public sector organisations and government departments in Britain. The paper draws on the literature on policy communities and networks to categorise the British tourism policy community as a loosely formed issue network. The extent to which this loosely formed issue network has experienced an ‘exogenous shock’ as a result of the award of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to London is then explored through an interpretive analysis of British tourism policy between 1999 and June 2010, drawing on an inductive content analysis of policy documents which identified four prominent tourism policy themes for analysis: quality, marketing, niche markets and sustainability. The interpretive analysis suggests, first, that the tourism policy community may be strengthened as a result of the award of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to London. In particular, the political imperative to demonstrate a tourism legacy as a partial justification for the £9.3bn public investment in the 2012 Games has drawn the key government actor, the Department for Culture Media and Sport, into the community to provide a more comprehensive strategic leadership, while the British non-departmental public body, Visit Britain, is showing signs of achieving the legitimacy to deliver implementational leadership. Together, these two actors now appear to have the potential to form an emergent primary core at the same time as more meaningful interdependencies between members of the policy community appear to be developing, resulting in a more stable membership. The result is a tourism policy community that has strengthened from its relatively long-standing structure as a loosely constituted issue zone. The conclusion, therefore, is that it appears that the award of the 2012 Games to London does appear to have acted as an ‘exogenous shock’ to the tourism policy-making system, in that it appears to have resulted in an adjustment in the structure of the tourism policy community. However, what is not clear is whether this is a permanent adjustment that will be sustained once the need to demonstrate a tourism legacy to justify the 9.3bn investment in the 2012 Games has passed. If the adjustment can be sustained, then a strengthened British tourism policy community will be a valuable, if invisible, legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Sovereign Debt Crisis and the New Boundaries of the Irish State

The full force of the sovereign debt crisis has been affecting Ireland for almost three years now, although it took most of that period for it to become starkly evident that it was the sovereign’s own credit which was impaired, and not merely that of the national banking system or even of certain banks within it. The budgetary adjustments required by the collapse in government revenues as a result of the spectacular contraction of the economy (which were merely confirmed by the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Ireland, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund of November 2010) have required a far-reaching assessment of the structure of the public service, the services which it will provide in future and the terms and conditions of public servants. However, it is not merely budgetary constraints that are in play here. The failures in the policy-making and regulatory systems, which made a substantial contribution to property bubble and the ensuing collapse of the Irish banking system, have caused many to cast a critical eye on traditional ways of doing business in the political system and the public service. The strains imposed on the political and administrative systems by the necessary budgetary adjustments and by complying with the commitments undertaken as part of the “bailout” have also raised similar questions. The experience of the last two years has therefore led to calls for radical reform, from a constitutional level, right down to that of public service management. The new government, elected in February 2011 is committed to make many of these changes, starting with significant amendments to the Constitution; its ability to deliver a full programme of such reform remains in question, just as the viability of the macro-economic strategy that the bailout requires. Many of the changes envisaged in the way public services are defined, funded, organised, managed and provided are all the more radical in that they mark a sharp break, in practice, if not in theory, from the social partnership model which was in the ascendant during the boom years and which fell apart in the ensuing bust.

Towards Improved Policymaking in Ireland:Contestability and the Marketplace for Ideas

The current market for policy advice in Ireland is highly cartelised. A more contestable “marketplace for ideas” would afford greater opportunity for good ideas to challenge bad ones and would diminish the power of vested interests, including elements of the political establishment and the bureaucracy itself. Policy weaknesses could have been identified much earlier were the policy-making system more transparent and contestable. By obscuring where policy advice ends and political decisions begin, the strict interpretation of the “doctrine of the corporation sole” facilitates the evasion of responsibility and institutionalises a regime of inappropriate incentives. Greater inquisitorial powers for Oireachtas committees should prove valuable but other incentives within the system also need to be changed if more efficient outcomes are to be secured.

Veto Players and Policy Trade-Offs: An Intertemporal Approach to Study the Effects of Political Institutions on Policy

The capacity to sustain policies over time and the capacity to adjust policies in the face of changing circumstances are two desirable properties of policymaking systems. The veto player approach has suggested that polities with more veto players will have the capacity to sustain policies at the expense of the ability to change policy when necessary. This paper disputes that assertion from an intertemporal perspective, drawing from transaction cost economics and repeated game theory and showing that some countries might have both more credibility and more adaptability than others. More generally, the paper argues that, when studying the effects of political institutions on policy outcomes, a perspective of intertemporal politics might lead to predictions different from those emanating from more a-temporal approaches.

The politics of television policy: The case of digital switchover in the United Kingdom

Over the last twenty years, the nature of UK television policy-making has been transformed. Key developments, such as the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union and the development of digital broadcasting technology, have led to the emergence of a much more complex system of policy-making, incorporating numerous new policy stakeholders and political institutions. This article highlights how recent research within political science on the so-called shift from government to governance can be used to gain a greater understanding of contemporary television policy-making. Specifically, using digital switchover policy in the United Kingdom as a case study, the main issue to be addressed in this article is the extent to which the shift from government to governance can be seen as synonymous with reduced government power. Essentially, a detailed analysis of the making and implementation of UK digital television policy suggests that although increasingly challenged, the UK government remains able to achieve most, if not all, of its preferred policy outcomes.

Recasting the Macroeconomic Policy-making System in Europe

Recasting the Macroeconomic Policy-making System in Europe

Europeanization of innovation policy in Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines how innovation policies and the respective policy-making systems in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have evolved since 1990 and the role that the European Union (EU) has played in these processes. We aim to show that the EU's impact on innovation policies in CEE has been highly positive in terms of reorienting economic policies generally towards more sustainable growth, and thus, Europeanization has rectified some problems inherited from the 1990s' fast and furious industrial restructuring. Europeanization itself, however, has exacerbated other problems of the 1990s and brought additional specific problems into innovation policy in CEE: firstly, an overemphasis on linear innovation and, secondly, weak administrative environment lacking policy skills for networking and long-term planning.

The Role of the Federal Statistical System in Evidence-based Policymaking, or How to Make the Statistical System Essential

This article discusses the strained nature of the relationship between the research/analytic world and the policy/political world. The research/analytic world in general and the statistical community in particular are portrayed as not wanting to be pulled into partisan politics. At the same time, the policy makers are portrayed as not seeing that statistical analysis is essential to confronting difficult real-world decisions. The article points out that there is a fundamental pressure pushing the two together: the federal budget. It shows that over the past decade or two, funding for statistical agencies has been under increasing pressure to show the “return on investment” of the taxpayers’ dollars. The article suggests that the way out of this problem is by becoming an essential partner with the policy makers in dealing with the challenging issues that they face by supporting and advancing evidence-based policymaking.

Transitions: Taking complexity seriously

The aim of this paper is to make the case for a systematic engagement of transition studies with complexity theory and research. We argue that transition research is important for the understanding and development of possible sustainable future pathways. However, there are several controversies in transition research, including, the role of agency in transitions; the relationships between levels (niche, regime and landscapes); the origin of transitions; the identification of a transition, including starting and ending point of transition processes; and the paradox of replicability and scaling up of independent experiments. We argue that transition research, and future studies can benefit from taking complexity theory seriously. In the paper, we elaborate four insights from complexity studies that can move the research agenda of transition studies forward: empirically investigating the degree of complexity of a system; investigating complexity at the level of the policy-making system; longitudinal and retrospective research designs for the identification of transitions; methodological tools which accommodate complexity, such as agent-based modeling and ARIMA modeling. Further, we suggest how these can improve our knowledge of transitions towards sustainable future.

Veto players, party government and policy-making power

Veto theory suggests that policy stability will ensue when there are a number of policy-diverse veto players (VPs) in a policy-making system. Its propositions on policy stability and change can be easily extended to policy-making power. This paper uses veto theory to explain variation in prime ministerial power. Using new and independent data on prime ministerial power, it is found that VP theory can explain some of the variations in prime ministerial power. However, because most VPs in parliamentary democracies are vulnerable to removal, veto theory is unlikely to explain all variation – even with perfect data. It is suggested that this should lead one to investigate the nature of power relations within parliamentary core executives rather than to the rejection of veto theory.

Who needs what from a national health research system: lessons from reforms to the English Department of Health's R&D system.

Health research systems consist of diverse groups who have some role in health research, but the boundaries around such a system are not clear-cut. To explore what various stakeholders need we reviewed the literature including that on the history of English health R&D reforms, and we also applied some relevant conceptual frameworks.We first describe the needs and capabilities of the main groups of stakeholders in health research systems, and explain key features of policymaking systems within which these stakeholders operate in the UK. The five groups are policymakers (and health care managers), health professionals, patients and the general public, industry, and researchers. As individuals and as organisations they have a range of needs from the health research system, but should also develop specific capabilities in order to contribute effectively to the system and benefit from it.Second, we discuss key phases of reform in the development of the English health research system over four decades - especially that of the English Department of Health's R&D system - and identify how far legitimate demands of key stakeholder interests were addressed.Third, in drawing lessons we highlight points emerging from contemporary reports, but also attempt to identify issues through application of relevant conceptual frameworks. The main lessons are: the importance of comprehensively addressing the diverse needs of various interacting institutions and stakeholders; the desirability of developing facilitating mechanisms at interfaces between the health research system and its various stakeholders; and the importance of additional money in being able to expand the scope of the health research system whilst maintaining support for basic science.We conclude that the latest health R&D strategy in England builds on recent progress and tackles acknowledged weaknesses. The strategy goes a considerable way to identifying and more effectively meeting the needs of key groups such as medical academics, patients and industry, and has been remarkably successful in increasing the funding for health research. There are still areas that might benefit from further recognition and resourcing, but the lessons identified, and progress made by the reforms are relevant for the design and coordination of national health research systems beyond England.

Trip Notes on a Return to Israel and The West Bank: Reflections on U.S. Peacemaking, the Security Mission, and What Should be Done

The following document, previously unpublished, was written in March 2010 by a recently retired ( June 2009) U.S. Army colonel with thirty years experience in the Middle East, including tours of duty and advisory roles (in both military/security and civilian domains) from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The subject of the informal report is the author's first two trips as a "civilian" to Israel and the West Bank, where he had served two tours of duty, most recently as U.S. military attachéé in Tel Aviv during Israel's 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza and the formation of the U.S. Security Coordinator's (USSC) mission to reform Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces.Written as an internal document for military colleagues and government circles, the report has been circulating widely——as did the author's earlier briefings on travel or missions in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and especially Iraq——among White House senior staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command), EUCOM (U.S. European Command), and the USSC team.The document's focus is the state of the "peace process" and the current situation in the West Bank, with particular attention to the PA security forces and the changes on the ground since the author's last tour there ended in mid-2007. But the real interest of the paper lies in the message directed at its intended audience of military and government policy officials——that is, its frank assessment of the deficiencies of the U.S. peace effort and the wider U.S. policy-making system in the Israel-Palestine arena, with particular emphasis on the disconnect between the situation on the ground and the process led by Washington. The critique has special resonance in light of the emerging new thinking in the administration fueled by the military high command's unhappiness (expressed by CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen) with the State Department's handling of Middle East diplomacy, especially with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the grounds that diplomatic failures are having a negative impact on U.S. operations elsewhere in the region.For most JPS readers, the report has additional interest as an insider's view of the U.S. security presence in the Israel-Palestine arena. It also reflects a military approach that is often referenced but largely absent in public discourse and academic writings.The author, in addition to his tours of duty and peacekeeping missions in various Middle Eastern countries, has served as advisor to two U.S. special Middle East envoys, the U.S. negotiating team with Syria, General Petraeus, Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, Vice President Dick Cheney, and, more generally, to CENTCOM, the Department of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others. In retirement, he has worked with CENTCOM as a key primary subject matter expert in the development of analyses and solutions for its area of responsibility, leads predeployment briefings for army units heading to Iraq, and travels frequently to Iraq and elsewhere in the region as an independent consultant. He is currently in Afghanistan with the CENTCOM commander's Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence.The report, made available to JPS, is being published with the author's permission.

After the summit: women's access to water and policymaking in Brazil

This article argues that following the Earth Summit, Brazil has pursued an ineffective water policy agenda, which has undermined women's right to safe water and adequate sanitation. It sets out some examples of women's involvement in water and sanitation programmes, and argues for the integration of strong gender perspectives in public policymaking and water distribution systems. The article concludes that development projects are currently falling short on tackling women's complex needs and interests in relation to water.

Governance for Resilience: CALFED as a Complex Adaptive Network for Resource Management

A study of California’s water planning and management process, known as CALFED, offers insights into governance strategies that can deal with adaptive management of environmental resources in ways that conventional bureaucratic procedures cannot. CALFED created an informal policy-making system, engaging multiple agencies and stakeholders. The research is built on data from 5 years of field work that included interviews with participants, review of documents, and observation of meetings. We argue that CALFED can be seen as a self-organizing complex adaptive network (CAN) in which interactions were generally guided by collaborative heuristics. The case demonstrates several innovative governance practices, including new practices and norms for interactions among the agents, a distributed structure of information and decision making, a nonlinear planning method, self-organizing system behavior, and adaptation. An example of a resulting policy innovation, a method to provide real-time environmental use of water while protecting a reliable supply of water for agricultural and urban interests, is described. We outline how ideas about complex adaptive network governance differ from ideas about traditional governance. These differences result in ongoing tension and turbulence as they do for other self-organizing governance processes that operate in a context of traditional governance.

Disentangling Double Politikverflechtung? The Implications of the Federal Reforms for Bund–Länder Relations on Europe

The recent reforms of German federalism (Reform I) have established a new framework for Bund–Länder co-operation on EU policy. These seek to safeguard Germany's ability to co-operate in Europe by disentangling the joint roles and responsibilities bound up within the complex arrangements of the EU policy-making system, defined as a multiple framework of joint decisions, or doppelte Politikverflechtung. Whilst on the surface, the reforms enacted may be read as a success for the Länder in their bid to secure autonomy on European issues, closer analysis reveals that these changes may in fact hamper the Länder agenda on European issues, closing off new opportunities for influence.

Medication use and patient satisfaction: a population-based survey

In recent years, there is a growing interest to assess patients' satisfaction which further triggers the existing debate on the severe methodological issues regarding the interpretation of comparative surveys results. This cross-sectional national survey aimed to examine satisfaction of Greek households with specific aspects of medication use and their correlates. Between November 2004 and February 2005, telephone interviews were used for collecting information about socio-demographic and health-related characteristics in a systematic sample of 1000 Greek households. Respondents were classified into three categories: chronic or short-term prescribed medication use, occasional medication use and no medication use during the 3 months preceding the survey. Satisfaction was assessed through various aspects of medication use like physician's consultation, physician's response to adverse events, consultation and advice by pharmacists, symptoms' resolution, route of drug administration, drug tolerability and drug cost. The prescribed drugs' use in the 3 months preceding the survey interview was 36.9%; 28.6% for subjects under chronic treatment and 8.3% under short-term treatment. During the same time period, 52.8% of the respondents reported the occasional self-use of over the counter drugs for minor symptoms. A high prevalence of hypertension, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and endocrine disorders has been observed. In general, respondents expressed a high degree of satisfaction with all aspects of medication use examined, the only exception being costs. Age, area of residence, social insurance scheme and self-reported health status were associated with specific aspects of patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction with the aspects of medication use examined seems to be influenced by demographic and social factors; this points out to the necessity of taking into account socio-cultural variations and the structure of the health-care system in policymaking.

Puffing Away? Explaining the Politics of Tobacco Control in Germany

Germany is noted within Europe for its weak tobacco control policies and its opposition to European Union tobacco control legislation. In this article, we aim to explain Germany's stance on tobacco control. We review two explanations commonly proposed, namely tobacco industry donations to political parties and the legacy of the Nazis' opposition to smoking, and examine the politics of tobacco control in detail. We suggest that the interplay of numerous factors explains Germany's stance. Aspects of political culture including the Nazi heritage which has resulted in a dearth of public health research and teaching, institutional factors such as the reliance on industry self-regulation facilitated by Germany's system of corporatist policy-making and interest group politics are key. The tobacco industry has also successfully used framing strategies to uphold the social acceptability of smoking and undermine the acceptability of tobacco control in Germany. In addition a phenomenon that we call ‘autarkic epistemic isolation’ explains why so little policy learning from abroad has occurred. We suggest that our multi-factor model has significant explanatory power for Germany's weak stance that has resulted in a long-standing policy equilibrium. Recent events, however, suggest that this equilibrium may now have been punctuated.