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This article presents a bibliography of papers on policy studies that appeared in the volume 1 of the journal "Policy Studies Review." The papers mentioned in the list includes "Legalism in Social Regulation," by Eugene Bardach, "Criteria for Compensating Those Harmed by Public Programs," by James Barth et al, "Throwing Money at Schools," by Eric Hanushek, "A Comparison of Multiple Objective Optimization Methods," by Kirk Karwan et al and "Adaptive Evaluation Designs," by Richard Larson.

Policy PointsFaced with urgent threats to human health and well‐being such as climate change, calls among the academic community are getting louder to contribute more effectively to the implementation of the evidence generated by our research into public policy.As interest in knowledge translation (KT) surges, so have a number of anxieties about the field's shortcomings. Our paper is motivated by a call in the literature to render useful advice for those beginning in KT on how to advance impact at a policy level.By integrating knowledge from fields such as political science, moral psychology, and marketing, we suggest that thinking and acting like marketers, lobbyists, movements, and political scientists would help us advance on the quest to bridge the chasm between evidence and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major sociohistorical processes have profound effects on oral health, with impacts experienced through structural oppression manifested in policies and practices across the lifespan. Structural oppression drives oral health inequities and impacts population‐level oral health. In this global perspective paper, we challenge old assumptions about oral health inequities, address misleading conceptualizations in their description and operation and reframe oral health through the lens of intersecting systems of oppression. Furthermore, we emphasize the need for oral health researchers to explore causal pathways through which oppression harms oral health and engage in social science concepts to understand the root causes of oral health inequities fully. Finally, we call on policymakers, dental scholars and decision makers to consider health equity in all policies and to take a systems‐oriented approach to effectively address oral health inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the development effects of official aid is crucial to building a better bridge between research and policy. This paper reviews the current evidence regarding the impact of aid on growth and poverty reduction, and develops a new narrative. In the light of this narrative, the paper then examines aid trends, focusing on the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific. The paper then turns to recent discussion of new and innovative sources of development finance and considers how research has influenced the policy debate through a recent World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU–WIDER) study for the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. The paper concludes that aid broadly works, that poverty would be higher in the absence of aid, and that the shortfall in aid during the 1990s has, by implication, made it more difficult to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Hence, a considerable catch-up in aid and other development finance flows is now necessary if poverty is to be substantially reduced by 2015. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arctic currently holds a prominent place in global policy. It is a sparsely populated region experiencing major consequences of global change, such as climate change, shifting demographics, and globalization. These substantial and rapid changes create both opportunities and risks for economic development. Informed policy‐making for sustainable development in the Arctic will require an understanding of the specific structures of arctic economies, with a focus on the existence of mixed economies that contain both subsistence and market aspects, the interplay among different economic systems, and the broader contexts in which they function. This paper presents a conceptual framework that allows for comparative analysis of arctic economies within their institutional, social, cultural, and environmental contexts. Utilization of the conceptual framework will enable more complete system‐level analyses by helping to describe the complex relationships among apparently disparate parts of the Arctic's diverse economic systems. The framework can be used across the social and natural sciences, practice, and policy‐making. Furthermore, this framework is applicable to regions outside of the Arctic that also have distinct mixed subsistence and market economies. This paper presents a conceptual framework that allows for comparative analysis of arctic economies within their institutional, social, cultural, and environmental contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the research origins of one well-known claim which has been used in policy documents over the past 25 years, namely that four years of education increase agricultural productivity. The oversimplification of the original research findings has influenced funding patterns of aid agencies, leading to a concentration on primary education in Africa. While this demonstrates a ‘successful’ case of research leading to policy change, it also highlights the way in which simple policy ‘narratives’ can result in inappropriate policy positions. We argue that policy positions on this link between education and the environment are also based on commonsense without sufficient research into what appears to be not a one-way but a two-way inter-relationship between quality education and training and the wider environment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the Organized Section on Public Policy is committed to producing rigorous empirical and theoretical knowledge of the processes and products of governing and the application of that knowledge to critical policy issues. The Best Paper Award is given for the best paper on Public Policy given at the previous APSA Annual Meeting. Nominations have closed. The Aaron Wildavsky Award is for a book or article published in the last ten to twenty years that continues to influence the study of public policy.

Better utilization of research and evidence in development policy and practice can help save lives, reduce poverty and improve the quality of life. However, there is limited systematic understanding of the links between research and policy in international development. The paper reviews existing literature and proposes an analytical framework with four key arenas: external influences, political context, evidence and links. Based on the findings of stakeholder workshops in developing countries around the world, the paper identifies four key issues that characterize many developing countries. These are: (i) troubled political contexts; (ii) problems of research supply; (iii) external interference; and (iv) the emergence of civil society as a key player. Despite these challenges, two institutional models seem to be particularly effective: (i) think tanks and (ii) regional networks. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on articles on policy sciences that appeared in the Spring 1976 issue of the periodical "Policy Studies Journal." The articles are devoted to continuation of the productive colloquy that has ranged across the social sciences. The intent of articles in this issue has been to widen the discussion in one direction, giving representation to the perspectives of those within government, and to narrow its focus in another, concentrating on empirical materials.

The article provides information on the reports featured within the November 2006 issue of "Review of Policy Research." The papers were initially presented at a conference supported by Florida State University's DeVoe Moore Center, where it addressed issues of political behavior, the development of public and private institutions and the intersection of behavior and institutions in the practice of local government.

The article presents proceedings for the Policy Studies Organization, which is a related society of the American Political Science Association, the International Political Science Association, and the International Studies Association. News about the operations of the Policy Studies Organization is presented.

This paper argues that evaluations of public–private partnerships thus far point to contradictory results regarding their effectiveness and value-for-money. Despite continuing political popularity, greater care is needed to strengthen future evaluations and conduct such assessments away from the policy cheerleaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the potential and actual use of child social indicators and indices in the policy-making process. It opens with a brief overview of the child indicators field and its current development and trends. A discussion of these new developments follows, with special emphasis on the consequences of the changing field to the potential role of child social indicators in the policy-making process. The third section focuses on existing knowledge on indicators of children's well-being and the information needed to enhance their policy impact. The article then turns to discuss two major efforts to measure and monitor children's well-being: the UNICEF child well-being index and the Foundation for Child Development (FCD) child well-being index. As both cases were mainly data driven, the paper uses them as case studies assessing the potential for using existing indicators of children's well-being in the policy process. The paper if finalized with discussing the two indices within a context of a future oriented research and indicators development agenda for anyone who want to enhance the policy impact of indicators and indices of children well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bridging research and policy is a topic of growing practical and scholarly interest in both North and South. Contributions by four experienced practitioners and in four papers by researchers illustrate the value of existing frameworks and add four new lessons: the need for donors and research foundations to foster research capacity and to protect it from political interference; the need for researchers to use detailed case material in order to inform high-level policy debates within and across national boundaries, often by working in cross-country teams; the importance of presenting research results in such a way that they cannot be over-simplified; and the value of creating alliances between researchers and civil society advocacy groups. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1939 American scholar Robert S. Lynd first published his classic book Knowledge for What? ( ). It provided statements on the requirement for social science knowledge to serve policymaking. This paper addresses the requirement for science and technology education policy to undergo changes dictated by the 21st-century environment. It also identifies the inseparable links between political governance and educational policymaking. Views of 50 global professionals were solicited for their answers to the fundamental question: Science and technology for what? Experience of the respondents was in science, technology, education, religion, defense, engineering, space, business, and government. This paper classifies and summarizes those responses, then provides the author's analysis and conclusion that humanity has reached the point in history where its long-term future is doubtful if both policymaking and education fail to formally conclude that the answer to the question, Science and technology for what? . . . is determined to be: Global humanity. The paper, therefore, is more concerned with the strategic answers to the meta question of Science and technology for what? than the precise answers for individual science disciplines. The paper data-reduces focus group responses into 18 categories ( ), and provides only illustrative discrete uses of what education for science and technology within those categories should do. The reader will grasp the complexities of moving from strategic decisions to changes within the disciplines of science and the applications of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." The article's main point is that sociology is more open than the other social sciences and therefore more suited to open democratic public debate At the same time the authors argue that openness must not be confused with epistemological relativism because that simply produces argument without any basis for closure except by exhaustion. What is welcome is the argument that policy debates need to engage the wider public The authors' ideal of "political arithmetic" has a democratic pedigree that can hardly be gainsaid.

This paper advances the position that sociology needs to develop an approach to research which focuses on fundamental social problems. In doing so it shares many of the intellectual values and goals of political arithmetic while seeking to move methodologically beyond it. Since such problems are complex they will require, typically, interdisciplinary input and a concomitant approach to the development and appraisal of theories. We are not, therefore, advocating the primacy of sociology but arguing that it has a distinctive part to play in addressing the fundamental problems of the twenty-first century. However, a policy-oriented sociology has also to take up the task, so clearly defined by the tradition of political arithmetic, which is to hold governments to account. Consequently a central principle of a new policy science is that it should contribute to democratic debate about policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper two disparate areas of social science theory, actor–network theory and policy networks, will be brought to bear on the problem of explaining the rapid development of an area of medical science and health policy in the UK. There has been a surge of interest in the treatment and management of personality disorder from within both the psychiatric profession and government ministries, and particularly those personality disorders deemed to be severe or dangerous. This has resulted in the development of a new psychiatric classification, the ‘dangerous and severe personality disorder’ (DSPD), and the funding and development of a new service to deal with it. Major new mental health legislation has been set in train to provide legal backing for the pre–emptive detention of patients with such a diagnosis, despite widespread uncertainty over its status, reliability or predictive capability. In the process of presenting and analysing this development, actor–network theory and policy networks will themselves be reviewed and compared, and common and incompatible elements, foci and mechanisms identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a conundrum that merits scholarly attention--why social scientists' ability to generate high quality research has outpaced their ability to disseminate research into the policymaking process. The paper describes Family Impact Seminars, a series of seminars, briefing reports, and follow-up activities that provide up-to-date, solution-oriented information to state policymakers. In support of the proposed "three-communities" theory, the utilization of research in policymaking appears to depend upon several pragmatic practices and procedures, ten which are detailed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the changing policy-making context and how this is increasing the complexity of policymaking. It argues that a useful way of dealing with this problem is the development of the ability of policy-makers to appreciate wholes and gain a systems awareness of the issues surrounding policies. It offers simulation gaming as a way of rapidly developing this ability. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we identify and seek to resolve a certain paradox in the existing literature on networks and networking. Whilst earlier policy network perspectives have tended to emphasize the structural character of networks as durable, dense and relatively static organization forms, the more recent strategic network literature emphasizes the flexible, adaptive and dynamic quality of networking as a social and political practice. However, neither perspective has yet developed a theory of network formation, evolution, transformation and termination. In this paper, we seek to rectify this omission, advancing a 'strategic relational' theory of network dynamics based on a rethinking of the concept of network itself. We illustrate this perspective with respect to the policy process centred in and around Westminster and Whitehall, drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with ministers and officials from four departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first surveys the four principal positions in the debate about the policy influence of professional experts -technocracy, extensive mandates, limited mandates, and "servants of power" -and finds none entirely satisfactory. While the limited mandates position is the best general characterization of the policy influence of experts, many instances reveal more extensive influence. The papers argues for shifting the discussion from general characterizations to the systematic analysis of variation in the extent and significance of professional influence. A framework for analyzing this variation is proposed. The framework highlights the importance of depoliticization, the framing of issues as narrowly technical or involving the protection of a central cultural value, political situations that encourage the informal capture of power by professional experts or the delegation of power to experts, and the differing level of legitimacy enjoyed by professional occupations, based on their centrality in social regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the transactions cost approach (TCA) is used to define organizations and to predict their forms under certain conditions. Next, Aaron Wildavsky's approach is used to define the policy process and to predict its form in particular organizations. Two assertions follow: namely, that the most efficient organizational form may be predicted from knowledge of underlying transactions costs, and that the form of the policy process in an organization can be predicted from knowledge of the organization's form (regardless of whether it is the most efficient form). Recent natural gas policy in the U.S.A. is used to illustrate these propositions, and several conclusions are offered about 1) the potential applicability of the TCA to the public sector and to the policy process and 2) about the potential applicability of Wildavsky's version of the policy process to differing organizational forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on policy impact has increasingly focused on the practical application of social science research. This paper outlines four roles--substantive expert, information processor, change agent, and scholar--which have helped to increase the potential usefulness of our research while maintaining linkages to the academic community. This paper suggests the general nature of these roles and suggests specific implementation strategies, which need to be pursued as an early and continuing aspect of the research enterprise. Balancing these multiple roles presents several analytical and ethical difficulties, but helps to establish credibility in both the scientific and policymaking communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the growing discrepancy between the steadily rising steering ambitions and the increasing fragmentation of social and political life, governance networks are mushrooming. Governance through the formation of networks composed of public and private actors might help solve wicked problems and enhance democratic participation in public policy-making, but it may also create conflicts and deadlocks and make public governance less transparent and accountable. In order to ensure that governance networks contribute to an effective and democratic governing of society, careful metagovernance by politicians, public managers and other relevant actors is necessary. In this paper, we discuss how to assess the effective performance and democratic quality of governance networks. We also describe how different metagovernance tools can be used in the pursuit of effective and democratic network governance. Finally, we argue that public metagovernors must develop their strategic and collaborative competences in order to become able to metagovern governance networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an update on Policy Studies Organization (PSO) in the U.S. PSO holds concurrent meetings with the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) in New Orleans, Louisiana every January, with the American Association for the Advancement of Science every February. PSO established and raises funds for three endowments that are held in permanent trust by the American, Midwest, and SPSA. It has also established the Walter E. Beach Fellows Endowment with the SPSA to enable foreign scholars to attend the annual meetings of the Southern.

Regulatory transparency—mandatory disclosure of information by private or public institutions with a regulatory intent—has become an important frontier of government innovation. This paper assesses the effectiveness of such transparency systems by examining the design and impact of financial disclosure, nutritional labeling, workplace hazard communication, and five other diverse systems in the United States. We argue that transparency policies are effective only when the information they produce becomes “embedded” in the everyday decision-making routines of information users and information disclosers. This double-sided embeddedness is the most important condition for transparency systems' effectiveness. Based on detailed case analyses, we evaluate the user and discloser embeddedness of the eight major transparency policies. We then draw on a comprehensive inventory of prior studies of regulatory effectiveness to assess whether predictions about effectiveness based on characteristics of embeddedness are consistent with those evaluations. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasizes the importance of a close relation between researchers and policy-makers involved in development research and policy work. Major shifts in development policy; Approach to the Poverty Reduction Strategy; Aid allocation paradigm.

This paper comments on an article by Lauder, Brown, and Halsey, that deals on a political arithmetic to make sociology useful. These are some of the significant issues raised in the article: 1) relationship between social science and policymaking; 2) association between quantitative and qualitative approaches in social science, and; 3) need for policy research to draw on many disciplines. However, while raising important questions, there are some major uncertainties surrounding the authors' argument. They announce that they are to advance the position that sociology needs to develop an approach to research which focuses on fundamental social problems. But what they are proposing is not really new, since much sociological research has been concerned with fundamental social problems.

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." Two key issues are addressed in a selective way. First, what is and what should be the role of social science, and sociology in particular, in informing policy making. Second, what is the wider role of social science in facilitating the democratic debate, and in holding policymakers to account. Too little social science research is directed at important issues Incentives in academia are not well aligned to achieving socially optimal goals, whether that be for inter-disciplinary working or policy influencing behavior.

Family policy has come of age in the 1990s, yet it has not achieved a status commensurate with that of economic or environmental policy. Because family policy has been difficult to define, this review proposes an explicit definition of the term family policy and a companion implicit term, a family perspective in policy making. It updates the rationale for family policy, arguing that family commitment at its core is particularly consequential in an individualistic market economy with a small social safety net. It chronicles recent developments including philanthropic commitments, state and federal policy initiatives, and the use of research to inform family policy making. Selected family policy issues including family and work conflict, long-term care, family poverty, and marriage, are overviewed. The paper concludes with developments during the decade in theory, methods, and dissemination that hold the potential for capitalizing on the current popularity of families as a theme in policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How elective are procedural controls? Why are they effective or ineffective? One way politicians and courts try to influence the decisions of administrative agencies is by imposing procedural requirements on the agency decision process. During the 19601990 time period, Congress and the courts imposed a succession of increasingly rigorous procedural requirements on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's hydroelectric licensing program in an attempt to make the agency more responsive to environmental concerns. In this paper, I examine the agency's reaction to these three "procedural controls" in an attempt to explain why these attempts met with only limited success. I find that each time Congress or the courts imposed a new procedural requirement on the FERC decision-making process, the agency was able to construe the new requirement narrowly and to use its retained substantive discretion to minimize the policy effects of the new procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the development of the Social Charter since its adoption in December 1989. We examine and evaluate the more important policy instruments. It is shown that the mandatory and often ambitious 'minimum standards' set by the Commission are difficult to justify in efficiency terms by reference to market failure. Furthermore, the imposition of uniformity on states that are diverse in their patterns of regulation will retard competition between social systems. It is also likely that the countervailing moves taken by firms in reaction to the imposition of arbitrary standards will frustrate the redistributive aims of the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses constraints on and opportunities for the use of social science knowledge about environmental stressors in the making of public policy. It first identifies groups for which knowledge about stressors can be useful, including various levels of government and the branches within those levels. Then a spectrum of types of use of knowledge is set out. Constraints on use noted include the differences in the agendas of the social science research and policy communities, the legal and philosophical limitations on a research directed public policy and the differences in the two communities relating to the nature of inquiry. In the final sections, conditions that point to the increased usefulness of stressor research are identified and opportunities for increasing the links between the policy and research enterprises are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues against the merely metaphorical use of concepts such as 'network' in the analysis of policy processes that involve relationships between government and interests. It juxtaposes some contributions from anthropology and sociology with the more familiar literature of political science and policy studies. It considers the question of norms, upon which an analysis of networks has some bearing. Next, it focuses upon the understanding of human agency and trust as a micro-analytic strategy for research on meso-level interactions, or 'networking'. In the light of this, it then looks at the education policy process in Britain, with particular reference to Scotland, as seen in recent literature. It ends by discussing the changing education 'partnership' in Britain, construing this concept as one that serves both actors as well as observers, and which has affinities with other analyses of policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most common role descriptions for professional policy analysts may be described as "problem solving" models. These models assume that most policy issues are essentially technical problems which can be solved through professional expertise. This paper outlines an alternate advocacy analysis model which assumes that many policy problems are matters of competing self interests and that analysts will often be sought to provide the strongest possible case for a client's preference. It also reviews questions of feasibility, credibility, appropriate training, and ethics for an advocacy analysis profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is a method of policy analysis that offers great potential for integrating scientific policy analysis into a democratic political process. This potential has not been realized in large part because there has been no theoretical framework to guide SIA. In this paper I propose such a framework, using Habermas' (1970) pragmatistic approach to policy. The framework suggests heavy emphasis on use of SIA early in the policy process and on methods that emphasize impact identification and portrayal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper represents only a few general considerations based upon the set of replicated group-experiments conducted by Organization of Comparative Social Research (OCSR), that may be of some value for future undertakings of the same kind as our OCSR studies. Replication of an experiment in different cultural settings tends to accentuate some problems pertaining to empirical testing of social psychological theory in general.The crucial process of translating a single hypothesis into experimental terms is briefly considered. The difficulties involved depend upon the way we phrase our hypothesis; the more operational its language, the easier will be its translation into experimental manipulations and measurements. In extreme cases, when concepts are defined in terms of detailed operations such translation becomes superfluous. If our ultimate aim is to establish a body of general social psychological theory, however, strictly operational anchoring may be a very dubious procedure. A survey of current contributions toward empirically established social psychological theory therefore by and large seems to support a more daring and flexible approach.

The present paper discusses and illustrates some of the interpretative and methodological problems involved in replicated cross-national research by describing limited aspects of the set of replicated experiments conducted by the Organization for Comparative Social Research in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Holland, Norway and Sweden. Rather than repeating this material, we shall attempt to consider a single, key question of replicated research, if there are differences in the results of replicated experiments, how are such differences to be interpreted? Though systematic replications have been unfortunately rare in the social sciences, a sufficient number of such studies have accumulated to give us some experience with the interpretative problems involved in replication. When the results of replicated researches have been similar, the interpretation is usually clear and straightforward. Reproducibility has been demonstrated and, if the subject populations or the design of the experiment has been allowed to vary, there is evidence for the generalizability of the hypotheses involved. When the results of replicated researches have differed, however, interpretation has usually been exceedingly ambiguous.

The article announces the international contest entitled "The Social and Political Thought of Luigi Sturzo" by the Luigi Sturzo Institute in Rome. A sum of four million Italian lire will be awarded to the best paper and it will be published in a journal. Interested students of any nationality may compete and submit their works written either in Italian, English, French or German. The submitted piece must bear the author's identification or pseudonym on the title page and must be sealed in an envelope containing its full name and address. All entries must reach the secretariat office in five typewritten copies not later than June 30, 1969.

The article focuses on the contemporary issues related to public policy studies in the field of water resources. The papers present but a small and a necessarily unrepresentative sample of the public policy studies with a substantive focus on water. The papers have been chosen with an eye on picking up new approaches to water policy analysis. The papers seem to exemplify the working through of contemporary issues in policy studies, or, in some cases, current issues in water politics. Water is a resource having economic value but it also is unique in its flow and common property characteristics and its distinctive valuation by publics who depend on it.

The article presents proceedings for the Policy Studies Organization, which is a related society of the American Political Science Association, the International Political Science Association, and the International Studies Association. News about the operations of the Policy Studies Organization is presented.

This section contains papers by Naresh Saxena and Matthew Taylor, drawing on their experience from both sides of research–policy divide. Saxena reviews the complex interplay between research and policy in India. He highlights six key lessons for researchers, including the need to be committed to policy, address high level policy and communicate better. Saxena concludes that ‘some of the best examples of success (in bridging research and policy) have arisen where researchers and civil society organisations have worked well together.’ Matthew Taylor uses examples from the UK to introduce five rules for successful policy entrepreneurship by researchers. First: win the argument about what the problem is before trying to win the argument about what the solution is. Second: understand the vital importance of political context and look for political opportunities. Third: balance persistence and opportunism. Fourth: focus on application and implementation. Fifth: always be strategic, thinking about who might support and oppose a particular change. The section also contains the conference discussion spurred by their interventions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After clarifying the ideal-typical characteristics of action plans, this contribution shows how the Action Plan on Combating Terrorism emerged out of a hectic process of policy-entrepreneurship by the European Commission and other integration-minded actors. This overloaded the EU's policy-making capacity and fostered policy conflict, while the strategic dimension was neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of strengths and weaknesses of national parliaments in EU affairs, one of the most salient in the debate on the democratic legitimacy of the EU, is generally answered by assessing formal parliamentary powers which can influence their governments' EU policy. Such an evaluation, however, is flawed: Formal mandating rights are usually incompatible with the overall logic of parliamentary systems, which explains why most national parliaments make very little use of them. Even more importantly, it unduly reduces parliamentary functions to the legislative or policy-making function. Drawing on agency theory, it will instead be argued that the functions of public deliberation and of holding the government publicly to account are at least as important and therefore need to be included in a redefined concept of parliamentary strength. In particular, the article proposes a distinction between two different elements of accountability—monitoring and political scrutiny—which recognises parliamentary majority and opposition as two distinct agents of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores ways in which the effective use of scholarly research in policy-making might be improved. Contention between two sides; Whether the way research is generally organized and presented can be effectively used by policy advisers and decision-makers; Whether the policy process as it is generally pursued can connect with researchers in a way that acknowledges and makes good use of their special skills, knowledge and perspectives.

This article focuses on the journal "Journal of Policy Analysis and Management." For the first time ever, JPAM now has a managing editor and coeditor. It was editor's feeling that the increasing volume of submissions required someone to oversee and expedite the manuscript review process. David Reingold, a SPEA associate professor and University of Chicago Ph.D. in sociology has agreed to take on this responsibility. David just completed a three-year stint in Washington, D.C., as the Director of Research and Policy Development at the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency that runs AmeriCorps, the National Senior Service Corps, and Learn and Serve America.

Economics should be built upon a sociological foundation, believed John R. Commons. While pursuing this conviction his chair in sociology was terminated in 1899. From then until 1904, exiled from academia, he investigated afield for the U.S. Industrial Commission and the U.S. Bureau of Labor and participated in the National Civic Federation, amassing first–hand knowledge of conflict resolution arranged by capitalists’ “combinations” and by labor unions’ bargaining with employers. These experiences inspired ideas concerning sociology and economics and beliefs that public policy should turn away from antitrust law and instead attempt to create counterbalancing power in the economic system. He published his ideas in various journals and magazines, and in nearly three dozen unsigned editorials in The Independent. This essay critically examines his thought during this period that he brought with him when he began the work based in Wisconsin that would carry him to fame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementation has become a social science concept which, by becoming so popular and being used so often, has lost any clarity and at times appears to lose all meaning. After the initial J. Pressman and A. Wildavsky discussion, the word "Implementation" has been used to describe a huge number of policy decisions. Even more importantly for the undertaking in this paper, it has been used to try to explain the success or failure of a number of policy interventions, and even has been proposed as a means of understanding political systems taken more broadly.

This paper provides an overview of trends in the logic of policy inquiry. It compares Harold Lasswell's view of the policy sciences with the applied social science approach articulated by James Coleman and revised into multiplism by Thomas Cook. Alternative approaches presented by Trudi Miller (design science) and Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Cuba (naturalistic inquiry) are also examined. Commonalities existing among them are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]