Policy Analysis and Decision Making

Se la struttura sociale assume un volto sempre più frammentato e quasi disarticolato, il ruolo delle istituzioni rappresentative non può più essere quello di imporre politiche, ma deve divenire, invece, quello di discutere le politiche, in modo che la visione collettiva su di esse possa effettivamente maturare. La democrazia rappresentativa oggi non è solo questione di voti e di elezioni, è anche capacità di interrogare, di consultare, di discutere pubblicamente, di sorvegliare e correggere. La tutela degli interessi durevoli richiede allora al Parlamento, come sede della rappresentanza nazionale, di diventare una struttura di conoscenza capace di individuare le priorità, di imputare le responsabilità, di misurare i risultati prodotti e di creare un senso di continuità volto a pacificare e coordinare le ragioni di oggi con quelle di domani. La valutazione delle politiche pubbliche è lo strumento che può accostare le istituzioni rappresentative a un’efficace tutela degli interessi durevoli: attraverso funzioni valutative l’organizzazione pubblica può cercare di essere un fattore di rigenerazione della società non perché impone decisioni, ma perché innesca un costante processo di autoapprendimento in cui il decisore politico assume il ruolo di immettere la conoscenza nel sistema istituzionale e renderla oggetto di un vero allargamento egualitario.

Whether carried out by individuals or states,
cyberattacks are both growing in number and becoming
more sophisticated. Since the attack on Estonian cyber
infrastructure in 2007, many other examples of massive
attacks have been reported. The use of spyware and malware—such as with Stuxnet, DuQu or Flames—to disrupt
critical infrastructure has made headlines, questioning the
ability of governments and private actors to respond to
cyber threats. A broad array of potential threats poses a
substantial challenge to existing governance structures,
which are often behind the curve in comparison with the
dynamically evolving cyberspace. Using existing literature
and recent foresight studies, the article analyses the trends
in the governance of cyberspace and their implications for
governments and global regulatory regimes.

This chapter provides a policy-based reading of the drivers, processes, and long-term ramifications of the outsourcing of military support services that has thus far been all but absent from the literature. Military support services represent the vast majority of contracts let by the military, so that the findings arrived at here are seen to be representative for the broader issue of military contractorisation. Focusing on the USA and the UK, the chapter will 1) identify the structural, contextual factors that frame defence services acquisition, 2) map the defence services acquisition “policy network”, and 3) identify a systemic bias towards contractorisation. Based on these findings, the chapter will 4) conclude with an outlook over the future of military contractorisation within the political context identified earlier.

This document discusses type of institutional arrangements, organisations and shared leadership necessary to advance integrated river basin management (IRBM) in the Mississippi River Basin. The paper ambitiously proposes a Mississippi River Basin Commission, based on international best practice.

This thesis uses a contextual case study approach covering the period 1985 to 2011 to examine the construction of Trinidad and Tobago’s ICT4D policy as discourse. The guiding theory of method is contextualism as described in Pettigrew (1990), according to whom a contextual analysis can be characterised as: processual, by emphasising the evolution of actions embedded in specific contexts (structural and otherwise) over time; multi-stakeholder, by recognising the competing viewpoints of reality perceived by actors at different levels; longitudinal, by considering both historical and contemporary views of actions and events. Consistent with this approach a framework has been adopted here that views policy as an iterative process involving the generation of texts from events, the translation of texts into narratives, and competition between alternative narratives resulting in institutions, which, in turn, enable and constrain events. This framework facilitates understanding interactions between actors at multiple levels across time.

Nuclear power accidents repeatedly reveal that the industry has an incomplete understanding of the complex risks involved in its operation. Through analyzing the investigation of a nuclear power incident in Sweden in 2006, I show how the industry’s learning
practices shape recurrent normalization of risk regulation after such surprises. Learning is shaped through institutionalized measures of sufficiency and particular “risk objects” (e.g.
human factors and safety culture) created through learning from previous events. Subsequent regulatory measures are shaped through improvement scripts associated with these risk objects. These learning practices exclude alternative conceptual perspectives to understand and address safety-critical incidents. Latent risks will therefore produce similar events in the future. The article contributes to the literature on organizational learning, policy making, sensemaking and normalization in complex systems. To improve learning from incidents and regulation in high-hazard industries, social scientists and a wider circle of stakeholders should be included in the regulatory and post-incident
examination processes.

In this article, I focus on a subset of Obama’s foreign policy views, namely his beliefs about the appropriate circumstances under which the United States should engage in armed conflict.  I argue that the Iraq war served as a formative event in the development of Obama’s worldview. He derived distinct lessons from this policy failure, leading him to articulate a restrictive set of conditions that should be met before the United States considered intervening in the internal politics of another nation, absent a direct threat to national security. I undertake a detailed examination of two case studies -- the administration’s debates leading to the 2011 intervention in Libya and the decision not to intervene in Syria in 2013 -- and demonstrate how the lessons of Iraq shaped Obama’s policy choices at critical junctures in the deliberations.

The paper gives a brief history of the Equality Act of 2010, an act introduced in the UK to govern equality in organisational settings. It goes on to talk about the policy making process involved in its formation, it's implementation and some statistics which highlight it's impact in an educational context.

This paper reviews the current Corona virus situation, then examines the legal definitions of negligence and fiduciary duty in an attempt to determine whether closing a university because of health concerns over the Corona virus might result in legal liability for the university's board members and relevant university administrators.

Social policy is not just about “fixing things” but serves to create conditions under which people can flourish, to improve welfare of people and society.  Policies are driven by a mixture of political and ethical ideas on how people should relate to each other, and for creating good things and removing bad things (Bessant, Watts, Dalton & Smyth, 2006).  The extent to how effective a policy is relies on continual attention from a number of government and non-government networks and their ability to develop good policy.
Employment policies are continually high on the agenda for policy makers, with many controversial ideas and debates for what is best for employees and employers, while trying to reach a balance.  Current action by Australian Council of Trade Unions [ACTU] is taking place in the form of a four million dollar per year fund grassroots campaign to address the issues of insecure employment what has been labelled as casualisation of the Australian workforce (Sydney Morning Herald, 2012).
This paper discusses the employment policy, in particular the issues around casual employment.  There is an overview of the casual work policy and a critical analysis and evaluation of its effectiveness and the government’s responses to it.

In this paper, the primary aim is to better understand what education policy borrowing is, what are the methods to borrow education policies effectively? How to contextualize them to increase the quality of education in Afghanistan. Additionally, his paper provides an insight to the contradicting perspectives of various scholars regarding education policy borrowing. World culture and constructivism theories have been used in this paper as the main theoretical approaches. Consequently, this paper gives a general overview of the theories and frameworks used by other scholars while investigating the  education policy borrowing topic in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). The results of the research synthesis show that the proposed model by Phillips and Ochs (2004) is acceptable and already used by many scholars. In fact, education policy borrowing is one of the most contentious topic in CIE and there are different perspectives and critiques about its efficiency in the context of borrowing countries. Opponents of education policy borrowing states that education policies are just borrowed for the sake of legitimacy seeking. Similarly, lending countries may use education policy borrowing as a way of disseminating their hegemony. The results of this paper have the potential to guide both Afghan education policymakers and other stakeholders in the Afghan education system regarding education policy borrowing and how it can be used to overcome educational problems in Afghanistan.

THE INTERNAL DISCOURSE IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN ON THE ARTSAKH CONFLICT UNDER THE RULE OF PRESIDENT HASSAN ROUHANI (2013-2020)

The paper presents a study of the IRI internal discourse related to the Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) conflict during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani. It is aimed to emphasize the key concerns and principles discussed by analysts, popular media, and some public figures and to determine the main directions of the discourse.

This study is the main part of my BA thesis - with an edited Introduction and without Appendix attached.

The concept of social learning by Peter Hall has created a wide scholarship which
supports the fact that a paradigm shift in a policy change could successfully occur
through the promotion of knowledge and new ideas instead of a focus on power
relations of the influencers of policy. This research paper operationalizes the concept
of social learning in the context of the relationship of Bretton woods institutions and
African countries. The paper assumes that the failure of the paradigm of neoliberalism
which was imposed by the Bretton woods institutions in their focus on
institutional power relations, hegemony and hierarchy to African countries means
that the African continent needs a paradigm shift in its countries’ public policy,
especially in its countries’ macro-economic policies. Scholars have published their
dissatisfaction with neo-liberalism as they claim that it impacted the African countries
negatively and further worsened their economic crisis instead of stabilizing it. The
paper proposes the application of the concept of social learning in the process of
policy formulation by African countries so as to reach a paradigm shift, replacing the
paradigm of neo-liberalism with an African produced paradigm.

This Impact Report identifies and summarises the diverse impacts, resulting from the £500m of UK funding of Science and Technology in 2013, using numerous quantitative metrics and short case study extracts.  It shows how the varied impacts of a national science and technology organization and its many funded programmes can be annually identified, captured, tracked, and summarised in a public document.

The report was produced for, and by, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) -  the UK Research Council responsible for funding: (1) all UK astronomy, particle and nuclear physics research, (2) related UK science and technology facilities (e.g. as Harwell and Daresbury), (3) the UK contribution to international science (e.g. CERN, international telescopes and space missions), (4) innovation and business spin-off programmes, and (5) UK public engagement activities.

The Report was co-researched and co-authored by the STFC Impact Team, including myself while Impact Evaluation Manager in 2013, with Dr. Claire Dougan-McCallie (lead author/Head of Impact) and Jenny Beard, with additional input from senior managers, and many data and case study contributions from other key managers across STFC.

Varied key impacts are identified and reported including:

• Research amongst the best (by citation impact) in astronomy, nuclear and particle physics.
• Supported research of 226 Principal Investigators in 70 universities, led to 1,100 peer-reviewed papers in 2012.
• Facilities (the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and CLF) were used in 2012/13 by over 4,200 unique users , in over 2,400 experiments, producing over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

• Technology from CERN benefited the UK economy by over £100 billion every year.
• Funding the development of the UK’s space, internet and computer animation industries, returned over £500 billion to the UK economy per annum.
• Funded Innovation Campuses hosted over 230 enterprises and supported over 5,000 jobs.
• UK industry won £43 million in contracts from the international subscriptions funded, and had accumulated a total of £150 million since 2005.

• Funded research inspired future generations to study STEM subjects, attracting 90% of UK undergraduates to study physics, funded 782 PhD students  and 16,800 student training days.
• Between 2009 to 2012 public engagement programmes engaged people on 58 million occasions, with 2 million people engaged in face-to-face activities in 2013 alone.

Governments around the world seek to create programs that will support sustainable agriculture and achieve food security, yet they are faced with uncertainty, system complexity and data scarcity when making such choices. We propose decision modeling as an innovative approach to help meet these challenges and offer a case study to show the effectiveness of the approach.

El análisis de políticas públicas es hoy en día una asignatura consolidada en España. Sin embargo, todavía faltaba un manual que recogiese la información disponible de forma didáctica y atractiva. Éste es el reto de la presente obra, pensada por y para la docencia y la investigación básica.
En "Análisis de Políticas Públicas" el lector encontrará un repaso completo de los fundamentos clásicos de esta materia. En paralelo, tendrá acceso a los grandes debates teóricos contemporáneos que estructuran este ámbito. Finalmente, podrá disfrutar de una serie de ejercicios especialmente diseñados para poner en práctica los conocimientos adquiridos a través de casos prácticos, simulaciones y videojuegos serios. Este triple objetivo se fundamenta en una presentación clara, sin jerga y totalmente actualizada de la disciplina. En estas páginas se dedica un espacio a todos los que han aportado una piedra al edificio intelectual que es el estudio de la acción pública.
Pensado como una plataforma de intercambio intelectual, este libro presenta los elementos más relevantes del estudio de la acción pública, por lo que es de gran utilidad tanto para el alumno como para el investigador novel y el simple ciudadano.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Kaohsiung City is a special municipality in Southern Taiwan. The difference between northern and southern cities in terms of public investments, industrial structures, and social perspectives has been a problem in Taiwan because talented people keep moving from the south to the north. The difference in cognition of government's allocation of policy resources between professional civil servants and the general public demonstrates the conflict between "public opinion" and "professionalism". This study adopted the social judgment theory (SJT) to examine the cognition of individuals affected by policy resource allocation regarding the allocation of policy resources made by the Government of Kaohsiung City. The SJT is applicable to real-world circumstances in the field of judgment and analysis. The research result indicated that the affected individuals were concerned that the government lost its focus when allocating policy resources. Obscure schemes and plans for policymaking and election-oriented decision making significantly impact government allocation of policy resources. The essential problem of policy resource allocation in Kaohsiung City is that although the supply of resources is higher than the demand, the types of resources do not meet the requirements of the demand.

CBA is a system for basing decisions on the importance of beneficial differences (i.e. advantages) between alternatives.  It has key definitions, models, principles and a set of methods.


Good decisions matter because they lead to effective actions that produce desired results. That’s why the method you use to make decisions matters.

Choosing By Advantages (CBA) enables decision makers to concentrate on what is important: the advantages (beneficial differences) that each alternative could deliver to stakeholders and basing the decision on the total importance of those advantages.  By focusing on advantages for the customer/end user of the project CBA connects decision makers with their clients’ ideas about what they want.  Involving constructors ensures that build-ability is considered.

To investigate the inclusion of people with disabilities in the diversity policies of the most successful businesses in the United States, we examined the publicly available workforce and supplier diversity policies of the top 100 companies on Fortune Magazine's 2003 list of the 500 most profitable companies in the nation. The majority of these companies have extensive information about their diversity policies and practices available on their corporate website. The information was used to categorize the policies into those that include people with disabilities, do not define diversity, and enumerate what is meant by diversity (e.g. in terms of race or gender) but do not expressly mention disability. In addition, we looked beyond the diversity policies to information available on corporate websites relating to a variety of diversity initiatives. Findings suggest that the majority of the companies that top the Fortune 500 list have developed and implemented diversity policies. Of...

This paper propose a practical optimization problem of product-mix based on labor
capacity, machine capacity, raw materials and demand constrains in a Sri Lankan tea
producing company. The objective is to profit maximization, satisfying all constraints.
In this paper, the problem is formulated as a linear programming model. As a case
study, a software package (LINGO 9.0) is applied to solve the optimization problem.
As with any LP model, the reduced costs for decision variables and dual prices and
allowable fluctuation for constraints are used to conduct detailed sensitivity analysis.
Eventually, this paper comes up with a set of policy making suggestions which might
be helpful for the production planning and detailed scheduling.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

This paper focuses on analyzing ethical decision-making processes, different frameworks, challenges, and risks. In this short research, I will try to go through different approaches that are most commonly used, will try to showcase each method’s features and components, pros, and cons, how a leader can use those techniques to overcome ethical dilemmas or difficulties, and finally, make the right choice by choosing the best alternative possible.

ABOUT THIS BOOK The theory of value structure concerns the meaning of "better than" and "good," as well as the way in which values serve as a basis for rational decision making. Drawing methodologically from economics and theories of decision making, the aim of serious axiology in metaethics is to do justice to problems that have puzzled philosophers of value for centuries. Can value comparisons be cyclic? Are all values comparable with each other and can decision makers just add up different aspects of an evaluation to determine the best course of action? A Theory of Value Structure: From Values to Decisions starts with a thorough introduction to the modeling of "better than" comparisons from a normative perspective. In the philosophical part of the book, Erich H. Rast argues that aspects of "better than" comparisons can differ qualitatively so much that one aspect may outrank another. Consequently, the classical weighted sum aggregation model fails. Values cannot always be summed up and comparisons may be fundamentally noncompensatory, an indeterminacy that explains problems like the apparent nontransitivity of "better than" and hard cases in decision making. Using a lexicographic method of value comparisons, Rast develops a multidimensional theory of "better than" and shows how and to which extent it can be combined with standard methods of decision making under uncertainty by using rank-dependent utility theory.

ISBN 978-1-7936-1694-4
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793616951/Theory-of-Value-Structure-From-Values-to-Decisions

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

Foreign Policy decision-making is agreed to be one of the greatest instrument at a state's disposal to pursue its national interests. It is considered as a full political activity of states. A good Foreign Policy would obviously lead a state in fulfilling its national interests and acquiring rightful place among comity of nations. As such the study of Foreign Policy forms an important part of International Studies. However, the first problem that one faces in the study of Foreign Policy is the problem of definition or clear meaning of the term. When used, it is either out of context or entails a different meaning. As such, it becomes a "neglected concept" as most people dealing with the subject have felt confident that they knew what foreign policy was. This neglect has been one of the most serious obstacles to providing more adequate and comprehensive explanations of Foreign Policy. This article, seeks to provide a comprehensive meaning about the concept of Foreign Policy, and also look into some of the things that determines the foreign policy decision-making of a country. This work, will give many students, researchers and policy makers a good idea of what foreign policy entails and how such policy decisions are being made.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

This paper aims to examine the Italian legislation on archaeological research, which requires a special permit (called “concession” – “concessione” in Italian) by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. We will explore the history of the legislation on this permit and the current policy for issuing it, showing how the State policy led to a progressive exclusion of amateurs from this field. We will finally highlight the lack of evidence-based policy making in Italy, and call for a multi-stakeholder perspective in research design.

School Feeding Programme constitute critical intervention that has been introduced in many developed and developing countries of the world to address the issue of poverty, stimulate school enrolment and enhance pupils' performance. This study set to assess The Effect of School Feeding Programme on Enrolment, Retention and Completion of primary school pupils in Kaduna state. The objectives of the study are; examine the effect of School Feeding Programme on rate of pupil's enrolment in Kaduna State., Determine the effects of School Feeding Programme on the rate of Retention of pupils in Kaduna State, Ascertain the effects of School Feeding Programme on the rate of pupil's Completion in Kaduna State. The period allocated to the study is from 2016 to 2020, the study also captured three local governments; which are Kaduna North, Kachia and Makarfi. The sample size for the study is 113 and 16 people were interviewed at the cause of the study. However, the study reviewed relevant literatures, while Hierarchy of Human Needs and Expectancy theory is adopted as its theoretical framework. Both primary and secondary sources of data were utilized. The study adopted sequential explanatory research design. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the quantitative data, thematic analysis was used for interviews and secondary data while Simple linear regression model was used to test and interpreted the hypotheses with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20). The finding of the study revealed that there is a significant relationship SFP and enrolment and retention in public primary school, but without a corresponding increase in completion rate, the study recommends, efforts should be made from government at all level to ensure that quality teachers with adequate facilities be made available to accommodate the increasing number of pupils especially in rural areas where pupils are seen sitting on the floor. Also, we suggest the building of perimeter fences and gates around all the public schools in Kaduna state to at least curb the running away of pupils during break periods and also guarantee some level of security to them. The study therefore, concludes that as a result of SFP there have been increase in pupil's enrolment, retention and nutrition and also an appreciable improvement in rural economy