Policy Trajectories Research Articles

Analysis of public perception of national obesity management policy.

This study aimed to provide essential data necessary for shaping future obesity policy directions and strengthening the effectiveness of such measures. A literature review and expert meetings were conducted to identify policy objectives that should be included in the comprehensive national obesity management plan. Based on these objectives, a questionnaire was developed, and a survey was conducted nationwide through an online panel targeting citizens aged 15-69. When analyzing the appropriateness of promoting national obesity policies, 38.6% of respondents answered "not appropriate," while only 8.4% answered "appropriate." We also assessed the importance of the four key areas of the national obesity management policy, with 36.9% considering "improvement of lifestyle to prevent obesity" as the most important. Additionally, we analyzed the significance of specific tasks. "Strengthening child and adolescent obesity prevention and management," "enhancing group meal nutrition and hygiene," "strengthening the operation of community-based obesity and exercise clinics," and "advancing an integrated information platform for nutrition, dietary patterns, and physical activity" emerged as pivotal tasks within their respective areas. The primary tasks identified as top priorities by the public in this study regarding national obesity policy initiatives can be incorporated into future obesity management strategies. Our approach has the potential to enhance the efficacy of these policies by aligning future obesity policy trajectories with public demands and expectations.

FOREIGN POLICY INFLUENCE OF CASIMIR AND BOLESLAW II ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF KNYAZ POWER IN KYIVAN RUS’: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

This article delves into the foreign policy maneuvers of Casimir and his successor Boleslaw II, prominent rulers of Poland, as they influenced the formation of Knyaz power within the realm of Kyivan Rus’. Anchored in a meticulous analysis of contemporary chronicle sources, this study underscores the intricate interplay of political strategies enacted by these Polish monarchs vis-à-vis their relations with Kyivan Rus’. Of particular interest is the intricate web of Polish-Rus’ interactions, elucidating the motivations behind the intensification of dynastic unions between the Piast and Rurik ruling families. The research sheds light on several pivotal questions that underpin the nuanced interplay between the Piasts and the Ruriks: To what extent did the tenure of Iziaslav Volodymyrovych as Knyaz of Kyiv rely upon the support and machinations of Boleslaw II, and how instrumental was Poland in shaping the landscape of potential contenders for the Kyivan throne? Furthermore, what catalyzed Boleslaw II’s abstention from aiding Iziaslav Sviatoslavich in his adversarial struggle against his sibling, Sviatoslav Yaroslavich? The study also probes into the origins of discord between Rus’ and Poland during their joint military campaign against the Czechs, while simultaneously analyzing Poland’s role in mediating the reconciliation between Iziaslav and Vsevolod. A pertinent investigation delves into the interplay of Rome’s geopolitical strategies and its contribution to bolstering papal influence within Kyivan Rus’. Meticulously examining chronicle sources, this article evaluates the efficacy of Casimir and Boleslaw II’s foreign policy initiatives directed at Kyivan Rus’. Central to this investigation is the assessment of the role that dynastic alliances between the rulers of Rus’ and Poland played in shaping these policies. The outcomes of this rigorous analysis converge upon the conclusion that Casimir engineered a comprehensive policy framework aimed at fostering amicable and collaborative relations with the Ruriks. This objective was substantiated by the reinforcement of kinship ties between the ruling families, underscored by matrimonial bonds. Notably, both Casimir and his heir, Boleslaw II, entered into marriages with members of the Rurik lineage, thereby forging familial bonds that transcended mere blood relations. The significance of these alliances is further exemplified by the marriage of Iziaslav Yaroslavich, Knyaz of Kyiv, to Casimir’s sister, a union that granted Iziaslav a lifeline to reclaim his Kyivan throne after his expulsion. Furthermore, the article examines Boleslaw II’s cautious restraint during the internal power struggle between his maternal uncle, Iziaslav, and his father-in-law, Sviatoslav, deliberately refraining from intervening. The outcome of Boleslaw II’s neutrality led Iziaslav to seek assistance from the German Kaiser, an endeavor that proved fruitless, compelling Iziaslav to subsequently turn to the Pope for support. A comprehensive scrutiny of the mishaps within Boleslaw II’s joint military campaign with Oleg Sviatoslavich and Volodymyr Vsevolodovych highlights the root cause as a deficiency in strategic coordination, which failed to encompass the entire spectrum of potential military scenarios. Moreover, the role of Boleslaw II as a peacemaker, instrumental in the reconciliation between Iziaslav and his brother Vsevolod following Sviatoslav’s demise, is underscored. Taking a panoramic view of Poland’s overtures towards Kyivan Rus’, a consistent and purposeful policy trajectory emerges, initiated by Casimir and subsequently upheld by Boleslaw II. This policy pursued amicable relations, buttressed by dynastic concord, aiming to preclude the formation of an alliance between Germany and Rus’ and to mitigate the joint adversarial stance of the latter against Poland. To this end, Poland stood ready to extend military assistance to the Grand Knyaz of Kyiv, thereby bolstering his standing. In summation, despite certain instances of deviation, the pursued policy demonstrated a commendable degree of success.

Policy change in socially embedded local policy processes in São Paulo, 1988–2020

ABSTRACT Policy transformation is a classic theme in policy analysis. Policy models have emphasized the role of actors, coalitions, leadership, and ideas in agenda-setting, the circulation of policy frameworks and solutions, and different mechanisms of gradual institutional change that accumulate in policy trajectories. We sustain that oscillating and incremental policy trajectories also produce policy change during policy implementation, triggered by political competition and partisan politics, the embeddedness of policy communities, and multilevel effects. This theorizing is built from the recent trajectories of social assistance and housing policies in São Paulo. Both trajectories followed incremental processes of expansion and diversification, although with sectoral specificities. These cases show that cumulative positive public policy change may happen even in the face of institutional conditions that the literature considers far from ideal – an extremely fragmented party system, decentralized federalism, and weak bureaucracies and state capacities. Competitive partisan politics reinforced the creation and reanimation of policy innovations under multilevel regulation. Networks of bureaucrats and civil society activists within the relevant policy communities enabled policy replication and reanimation by entering and exiting local administrations depending on their ideological colors.

EU Agricultural and Rural Development Policies Vis-à-Vis the Ecological Crisis

The paper critically analyzes the trajectories of EU agricultural and rural policies, exploring their link to the economic, social, and environmental crises of the last few decades and drawing a balance of their outcomes. In doing so, the authors focus on ongoing patterns of agrarian change shedding light on the complex and multifaceted features of the European agri-food system, as characterized by the hybridization of diverse agricultural models and non-linear processes of rural differentiations. In this respect, EU agricultural and rural development policies, within the context of the ‘corporate-environmental food regime’, have played a key role. In particular, the article makes the point that the various attempts to reform EU agriculture and provide responses to the ecological crisis have produced an ‘institutional ambiguity’, which, in turn, reflects a range of unresolved tensions and conflicts underpinning the EU agri-food system, where discourses about sustainability are contended among actors with divergent interests and vision of rural development. Against this background, new general tendencies are emerging entailing both risk and opportunities for the building of a more sustainable EU agri-food system.

Chinese and Australian Neoliberal Policy Responses to Risks in Social Service Purchasing

China adopted neoliberal approaches to improve the supply of quality social services in the early 2000s. How did the Chinese government manage the financial and quality risks of increasing the provision via government purchasing and how did it differ from other countries? The article examines the policy trajectory of early childhood education and care in China and Australia on this question. Policy analysis of the effect of purchasing on the cost to government and quality of services shows how both countries used subsidy arrangements to engage non-profit and private providers to expand supply. When faced with market risks, they both tightened regulations, but China differed in the speed and strength of their response, restricting the proportion of private providers. The findings have implications for understanding the risks of relying on market forces in other social service sectors, and how policy can effectively respond.

When identity meets strategy: The development of British and German anti-torture policies since 9/11

Since 9/11, considerable research has been done on US interrogation and detention operations, but comparatively little is known about the involvement of other traditionally liberal states’ intelligence agencies and their evolving perspectives on torture-related policies for foreigners abroad. Particularly, the United Kingdom and Germany provide interesting cases; despite similar levels of public and political pressure regarding their indirect involvement in Central Intelligence Agency’s operations, the two states took different strategic decisions in 2010 on whether to implement new extraterritorial human rights safeguards. While the United Kingdom introduced a new intelligence guidance for interrogations overseas, the German government opted for policy-continuance, which raises the question why the two states embarked on different policy trajectories, even if they found themselves in contextually similar situations and were subjected to the comparable accountability measures. By bridging insights from Rationalist and normative literature, the article addresses this conundrum by clearly outlining the states’ differing strategic preferences, and by dissecting the multi-layered composition of these interests. As a result, the article delineates how strategic constraints pertaining to the states’ national, international, or political elite level affect decision-makers’ policy responses.

Unlabeled Imperfect Demonstrations in Adversarial Imitation Learning

Adversarial imitation learning has become a widely used imitation learning framework. The discriminator is often trained by taking expert demonstrations and policy trajectories as examples respectively from two categories (positive vs. negative) and the policy is then expected to produce trajectories that are indistinguishable from the expert demonstrations. But in the real world, the collected expert demonstrations are more likely to be imperfect, where only an unknown fraction of the demonstrations are optimal. Instead of treating imperfect expert demonstrations as absolutely positive or negative, we investigate unlabeled imperfect expert demonstrations as they are. A positive-unlabeled adversarial imitation learning algorithm is developed to dynamically sample expert demonstrations that can well match the trajectories from the constantly optimized agent policy. The trajectories of an initial agent policy could be closer to those non-optimal expert demonstrations, but within the framework of adversarial imitation learning, agent policy will be optimized to cheat the discriminator and produce trajectories that are similar to those optimal expert demonstrations. Theoretical analysis shows that our method learns from the imperfect demonstrations via a self-paced way. Experimental results on MuJoCo and RoboSuite platforms demonstrate the effectiveness of our method from different aspects.

Temporary Protection in Times of Crisis: The European Union, Canada, and the Invasion of Ukraine

<p>The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered a major displacement crisis. In an unprecedented move, the European Union activated the 2001 Temporary Protection Directive to give those fleeing the conflict temporary protection, marking the first use of the directive in 20 years. Meanwhile, Canada announced its readiness to accept an unlimited number of Ukrainians and launched the Canada–Ukraine Authorization of Emergency Travel to fast-track their arrival. This article compares the policy responses of the EU and Canada to the crisis in Ukraine, focusing on the two temporary protection schemes and differentiating between their overarching goals, policy instruments, and settings. While the policies may seem similar at first, we show that a closer examination reveals underlying disparities, contradictions, and complexities, particularly when analyzing the precise policy instruments and settings. Considering that contemporary policy trajectories are informed by the past, we suggest that while the two programs build on the respective regions’ historical and political contexts, crises also create opportunities for change, raising questions about the future direction of immigration policy in both regions.</p>

Regional policy trajectories in the Spanish education system: Different uses of relative autonomy

Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different regions have not been immune to the influence of global policy ideas that gear around promoting private provision, school choice, and New Public Management (NPM) in education. However, the consolidation of the decentralization project, together with the fact that many regional governments have aimed to construct, for a variety of reasons, singular political profiles, have resulted in markedly different policy trajectories. To show this, this article pays particular attention to recent changes in the educational governance arrangements of two important Spanish regions, Madrid and Catalonia, as they have gone through differentiated processes of educational reform. Albeit the two regional education systems share important features (such as a historical and wide-scale public-private partnership for school provision), they have engaged with, combined, and mobilized exogenous and endogenous privatization policy ideas in remarkably different ways. The article delves into the political drivers behind this policy differentiation process by paying special attention to the relations of coordination, conflict, and competition that prevail within an incomplete federal system, such as the Spanish one.

The ‘Double-Reduction’ Education Policy in China: Three Prevailing Narratives

ABSTRACT In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the ‘Double-Reduction’ policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the ‘Double-Reduction’ policy in mid−2021 by using narratives to analyse the three most circulated explanations for the policy and its timing. We use data from a range of formal and informal policy texts. The three narratives, including one policy narrative dominant in the official discourse and two alternative ones, constructed the causal stories about the policy’s rationale from multiple perspectives. The combination of multiple perspectives and a narrative approach helps reveal the policy event’s complexity and lays a foundation for researchers interested in tracking the development trajectory of this new policy.

Locating pitfalls in the EU gender equality policy

While the project of the European Union (EU) incorporated gender equality as one of its foundational objectives and its institutions have been mandated to integrate gender equality into all of their policy areas, the EU has fallen short of materializing these objectives. Gender inequality at the EU level is perpetuated through a process in which the EU, as a structure anchored in economic considerations, interfaces with androcentric institutions and member states. This substantially determines the policy instruments, tools and mechanisms within and outside its periphery, rendering ‘gender’ to be co-opted, secondary and subdued policy areas. While the discourse on gender equality policy has evolved through ‘equal opportunity’, ‘positive action’ and ‘gender mainstreaming’ approaches, the policies mostly focus on auxiliary benefits such as maternity leave, childcare services and part-time work, aiming to assist women in reconciling their work and life situations. These benefits do not substantially transform conventional gender roles within the family or at the social-economic and political levels, which to a large extent perpetuate gender inequality at large. This article analyses the trajectory of gender equality policy at the EU, the inherent factors and processes that constantly define and determine it and how it implicates the larger EU policy discourse. Using a feminist standpoint, the article explores the extent to which the new female leadership in the EU has prioritized and problematized gender equality with corresponding initiatives and actions, and the major challenges it may face in contemporary times in order to meet its objectives. To this end, some existing labour market and family policies are taken up as case studies. Various EU policy documents, key EIGE reports, press releases and other existing literature have been used as reference points for the analysis.

Transfer Dynamics in Emergent Evolutionary Curricula

PINSKY is a system for open-ended learning through neuroevolution in game-based domains. It builds on the Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer (POET) system, which originally explored learning and environment generation for bipedal walkers, and adapts it to games in the General Video Game AI (GVGAI) system. Previous work showed that by co-evolving levels and neural network policies, levels could be found for which successful policies could not be created via optimization alone. Studied in the realm of Artificial Life as a potentially open-ended alternative to gradient-based fitness, minimal criteria (MC)-based selection helps foster diversity in evolutionary populations. The main question addressed by this paper is how the open-ended learning actually works, focusing in particular on the role of transfer of policies from one evolutionary branch ("species") to another. We analyze the dynamics of the system through creating phylogenetic trees, analyzing evolutionary trajectories of policies, and temporally breaking down transfers according to species type. Furthermore, we analyze the impact of the minimal criterion on generated level diversity and inter-species transfer. The most insightful finding is that inter-species transfer, while rare, is crucial to the system's success.

Ambedkar’s Idea of Minority Rights in a Democracy: Status of Muslim as a Test

Dr B. R. Ambedkar dreamt of a society based on modern liberal ideals of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’, throughout his life. To translate his dream into a reality, Dr Ambedkar strove harder to put ‘Depressed Classes’ under the ‘Minority’ category. While arguing in favour of his argument, he put forth the socio-economic status of Dalit before the Southborough Committee in 1919. After a long struggle, he was able to achieve constitutional safeguards for dalits. Dr Ambedkar had roped in all the principles into India’s Constitution in the post-independence period to peaceful social revolution. However, after independence protection of Dalit came under the Scheduled Castes category. Nonetheless, his epistemological origin and engagement with the minority as an ‘idea’ and creating favourable space within the democratic political structure has been still relevant. This article has engaged with Dr Ambedkar’s idea of minorities and their political and economic welfare in a communal majoritarian polity. To operationalise the ideas, this article has discussed the implementation of the constitutional promise of ‘rights’ in the case of Muslims. The article also looks at successive governments’ approaches vis-a-vis Muslims’ development to ascertain the trajectory of policies.

Sumptuary administration: How contested market actors shape the trajectory of policy when regulated under fragmented governance

AbstractIn contemporary society, sumptuary laws regulate contested markets by delegating enforcement responsibilities to the private sector. This can decouple the intention behind policies from the practices to implement them. When state interests do not align concerning the legality of a market, can policy and practice recouple, and if so, how? This article reports on a case study of commercial cannabis in the United States to answer this question. Interviews with 56 cannabis industry stakeholders in California, Arizona, and Texas reveal that policy and practice recoupled through a patterned process that I call sumptuary administration. In each state, regulators drew on a unique set of schemas, or “framework of accountability,” that prioritized a subset of cannabis market participants during the policy‐making process. This resulted in missing or ambiguous sumptuary laws. To address business challenges that were tethered to this regulatory environment, cannabis businesses drew on similar schemas to identify appropriate practices. I show how grounding practices in these frameworks legitimized the preferences of the cannabis industry in the eyes of state authorities and influenced specific program policy revisions. Sumptuary administration represents a novel mechanism for understanding the social construction of legality in markets that are regulated under fragmented governance.

The UK government’s Northern Ireland policy after Brexit: a retreat to unilateralism and muscular unionism

ABSTRACT Brexit has significantly altered the trajectory of UK government policy towards Northern Ireland. The peace process was implicitly built on a presumption of continued joint EU membership by the UK and Ireland. The EU model of interdependence and cooperation was explicitly stated to be an inspiration by its key architect John Hume. However, the history of British–Irish cooperation over Northern Ireland is long and complex and cannot solely be understood through the lens of Europeanisation. Despite this, the aftermath of the 2016 referendum has seen a retreat by the UK government from a bilateral and consensual approach towards Northern Ireland to unilateralism and a ‘muscular’ unionist ideology. This has affected their governance there, hampering their relationship with local parties and undermining the agreed role of the Irish government. The impact of Brexit on UK government policy towards Northern Ireland has undoubtedly contributed to the destabilisation of the political settlement.

Populist radical-right governments in Central-Eastern Europe and education policy-making: a comparison of Hungary and Poland

ABSTRACT In the European political landscape characterized by the strengthening influence of Eurosceptic, radical-right, and populist parties, Hungary and Poland represent insightful cases for understanding how the populist radical right uses its power in government and acts in full capacity to design education policies. From a systematic comparison of the education policy trajectories taken by Hungarian and Polish populist radical-right governments, we identified three characteristic patterns of populist radical-right education policy-making in the two countries: commitment to a conservative-nationalist agenda through comprehensive, systemic interventions, the implementation of Christian identitarianism through conceptualising public education as Christian upbringing, and finally, the gradual extremisation of the education agenda combined with the growing influence of transnational conservative knowledge transfer centred on the ‘gender wars’. We find that the boundary between far-right nativist and nationalist positions and Christian-conservative standpoints has faded away, and the two governments, which identify as Christian conservative, have increasingly mainstreamed far-right agendas.

Import substitution processesin Russian industry: theoretical and practical aspects

Purpose: of the work is to study the main aspects of Russian import substitution in the context of modern political transformations. Methods: the work uses a systematic approach, the induction-deduction method, the method of assessments and scientific abstractions, the method of classification and systematization, the methods of information analysis and synthesis, the statistical method and the method of data visualization.Results: the author's definition of the term "import substitution" is revealed, which differs from the rest by focusing on the production of innovative and high-tech products both in the domestic and foreign markets with the full support of the state. The problematic issues hindering the development of import substitution processes and reducing the effectiveness of this process in the Russian Federation are identified, which can be overcome and solved if we take into account the world experience of successful import substitution and analyze the indicators of the innovation policy of the Russian economy over the past few years. The key features of import substitution as an economic process are highlighted using statistical information on the share of high-tech products of knowledge-intensive industries in the country's GDP under sanctions. The problems hindering the development and reducing the effectiveness of import substitution processes in the Russian Federation are also disclosed, as well as ways to solve them based on world practice are substantiated. Possible trajectories of the state policy for the development of import substitution have been identified.Conclusions and Relevance: the essence of import substitution should take into account both socio-economic and political factors, which will allow the state to develop steadily in the economic and industrial spheres. Measures to increase the competitiveness of products produced on the domestic market can be the modernization of the technological base of an industrial enterprise, an increase in its efficiency indicators and an emphasis on the production of goods that can withstand healthy competition and have increased added value. When implementing the import substitution policy, it is necessary to improve the industrial complex of Russia and transition to an innovative type of economic development model.

Policy formation for adult migrant language education in England: national neglect and its implications

This article is about current policy in the coordination of opportunities for adult migrants in England to learn English. People who move to a different country experience a need to learn the dominant language of their new environment, to support their settlement. A willingness to learn the language is a marker of social inclusion from a political perspective too: an insistence that migrants have an obligation to learn and use the language is a recurrent trope in political and media discourse. In the UK, language education for adult migrants focuses on the area of education known as ESOL, English for Speakers of Other Languages. Beyond the rhetoric, policy support for migrants’ learning of English across the UK is inconsistent: there is neither a UK-wide nor an England-specific strategy in policy to support access to ESOL. Where policy exists, it is formed at a local level in the absence of national direction. The aim of this paper is to consider how an important area of adult education appears to have little presence in national policy, and what the implications of this are, for practice. To achieve this, we first follow the trajectory of ESOL policy in England, considering why—despite attempts to address its coordination—there remains a lacuna. Second, we ask what the implications are of this policy gap for ESOL coordination in practice. Analysis of current policy and of interviews with key ESOL stakeholders suggests an enduring condition of fragmentation and lack of coordination to the detriment of students.

The High Court Ruling Against Ingonyama Trust: Implications for South Africa’s Land Governance Policy

ABSTRACT This article discusses the implication of the 2021 CASAC v Ingonyama Trust judgment on South Africa’s land governance policy trajectories. It explores the extent to which there are missing links between policy imperatives, the legal system, court processes and socio-economic emancipation. It argues that the failure of the state in policy design and implementation has turned courts into contradictory sites of struggle for emancipating land rights. In particular, we examine some of the key specific and broader implications that emanate from the landmark ruling in the case that was lodged by the Council for the Advancement of South African Constitution and Rural Women’s Movement against the Ingonyama Trust and Board, where the conduct of Ingonyama Trust was found to be illegal and unconstitutional, as it undermined the indigenous land rights of people occupying the land by converting their land tenure rights into leasehold. The verdict was a huge affirmation of indigenous land rights, but the judgment is unlikely to translate into clear policy. Instead, it has unleashed confusion and dilemma tied to colonial and apartheid legacies as well as competing jurisdictions. Our main argument is that court judgments become de facto policy statements, but those policies are not easily implemented because they are intersectional. We show that current land policies, including the one involving the Ingonyama Trust, has an intersectional genesis that includes old apartheid legislation and policies, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, as well as legislature and other political deals (such as negotiations to bring about reconciliation) that cannot be easily undone by any one court judgment.

30 years of children and adolescents’ rights: an analysis of the trajectory of public policy in Brazil

O Brasil é reconhecido por possuir um marco regulatório avançado em termos de defesa dos direitos da criança e do adolescente, porém os desafios cotidianos para colocá-lo em prática ainda são imensos. Diante disso, como compreender esse gap entre regulação e prática? Este artigo propõe responder essa questão ancorando-se numa perspectiva pragmatista de análise, com a utilização do método da cartografia das controvérsias para o exame dessa política pública. Trata-se de retraçar a trajetória do debate nas arenas públicas que a compõem historicamente, buscando analisá-lo a partir dos principais porta-vozes, argumentos, controvérsias e visões de mundo presentes no debate público. Os resultados evidenciam como a ação pública nesse campo se (re) configura, a partir de processos de disputa e de estabilização, nesses 30 anos, identificando seus avanços e limites. As conclusões do estudo contribuem para identificar os desafios dessa política pública e demonstram que esta ocorre na interconexão de níveis, de formas de regulação e de redes de atores, o que implica uma revisão dos métodos tradicionais adotados na análise de políticas públicas.