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High-income inequality, accompanied by substantial regional differentiation, is still a great challenge for social policymakers in many European countries. One of the important elements of this phenomenon is the inequality between income distributions of men and women. Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, the distributions of income for Italy and Poland were compared, and the gender gap in these countries was assessed. No single metric can capture the full range of experiences, so a set of selected tools were adopted. The Dagum model was fitted to each distribution, summary measures, like the Gini and Zenga inequality indices, were evaluated, and the Zenga curve was employed to detect changes at each income quantile. Afterward, empirical distributions were compared through a relative approach, providing an analytic picture of the gender gap for both countries. The analysis moved beyond the typical focus on average or median earnings differences, towards a focus on how the full distribution of women's earnings relative to men's compares. The analysis was performed in the different macroregions of the two countries, with a discussion of the results. The study revealed that income inequality in Poland and Italy varies across gender and regions. In Italy, the highest inequality was observed in the poorest region, i.e. the islands. On the contrary, in Poland, the highest inequality occurred in the richest region, the central one. The relative distribution method was a powerful tool for studying the gender gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal violence is one of the most pressing problems in Latin America and the Caribbean, with profound political consequences. Its effects on social policy preferences, however, remain largely unexplored. This article argues that to understand such effects it is crucial to analyze victimization experiences and perceptions of insecurity as separate phenomena with distinct attitudinal consequences. Heightened perceptions of insecurity are associated with a reduced demand for public welfare provision, as such perceptions reflect a sense of the state's failure to provide public security. At the same time, acknowledging the mounting costs and needs that direct experience with crime entails, victimization is expected to increase support for social policies, particularly for health services. Survey data from twenty-four Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 2008–12 show that perceptions of insecurity indeed reduce support for the state's role in welfare provision, whereas crime victimization strongly increases such preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances our understanding of the well-documented trade-off between welfare and prisons by analyzing US congressional hearings on welfare and criminal justice policies in two periods: the "Great Society" of 1961–67 and the "neoliberal" era of 1981–96. Comparing policymakers' conceptions about the causes of poverty and crime, about poor and criminal populations, and about the proper role of government, the findings show that conceptions across policy domains are similar in each period and have changed in similar ways over time. These changes correspond to markedly different policy responses to poverty and crime in the two periods, favoring welfare over prisons in the earlier period and prisons over welfare in the later period. The article discusses the implications for an understanding of the punitive turn in public policies, for theories of social control, and for research on the role of ideas in policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family Group Conferences (FGCs) are a family-led approach to social care decision making. The fundamental philosophy behind FGCs is that families are the experts on their own situations and as such should lead decision-making. The model advocates that children should be at the centre of decisions about them and should be supported to have their say at their FGC. The voice of looked after children too often gets lost in decision-making processes. Children report that professionals make decisions about them, rather than with them. FGCs have the potential to meaningfully engage with looked after children. Many services already offer FGCs to looked after children, either to consider family alternatives to local authority care, to make contact arrangements or to engage children in the care planning process. This paper will examine the use of FGCs in engaging with looked after children. It applies a case study approach, focusing on the Camden FGC Service, which has been offering FGCs to looked after children for several years. It will also draw on the existing evidence base that examines the use of FGCs with looked after children. In practice, sometimes the voice of the child can become overlooked at their FGC. Children report that their opinions get ignored by the adults in their family. Hence, this paper concludes with a discussion of how to ensure that looked after children are meaningfully engaged in decision making about their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the previous experiences of Local Agenda 21 (LA21) in Portugal and Brazil, in order to identify factors hindering implementation and how its legacy might contribute to a localized Agenda 2030. Grounded on comparative analysis of LA21 applied research, it includes questionnaire surveys and a review of reports and action plans, in addition to statements collected from informal interviews with national authorities. LA21 outcomes seem to have been adversely affected by structural constraints arising from economic difficulties, and more specifically from inherited centralist traditions of local governance. Despite the fact that aspects such as community engagement in decision-making and the safeguarding of the local commons have been on the LA21 agenda ever since the Earth Summit (1992), our results show that actual achievements in these areas are meager. Nevertheless, LA21 planted the seeds of participative, bottom-up, and transformative development in local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the low completion rates in community colleges have led policy makers and administrators to examine interventions that aim to increase persistence and success by making colleges easier to navigate for students. One of the best supported and most well researched of the current reforms is guided pathways which aims to simplify student decision making. Meta majors, the grouping of all available majors into a handful of buckets, is an important components of these whole school reforms. In this paper I test an underlying assumption of this reform—that there are consistent groupings of majors that students would consider choosing—using tools from social network analysis. I draw on these consideration networks to examine how different groups of students cluster majors together; differences in how various groups of students group majors provides insight into how such interventions could increase efficiency or exacerbate inequality. These findings provide guidance for schools on what factors to consider when forming meta major groupings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social interaction is a fundamental part of our daily lives; however, exactly how our brains use social cues to determine whether to cooperate without being exploited remains unclear. In this study, we used an electroencephalography (EEG) hyperscanning approach to investigate the effect of face-to-face contact on the brain mechanisms underlying the decision to cooperate or defect in an iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game. Participants played the game either in face-to-face or face-blocked conditions. The face-to-face interaction led players to cooperate more often, providing behavioral evidence for the use of these nonverbal cues in their social decision-making. In addition, the EEG hyperscanning identified temporal dynamics and inter-brain synchronization across the cortex, providing evidence for involvement of these regions in the processing of face-to-face cues to read each other's intent to cooperate. Most notably, the power of the alpha frequency band (8–13 Hz) in the right temporoparietal region immediately after seeing a round outcome significantly differed between face-to-face and face-blocked conditions and predicted whether an individual would adopt a ‘cooperation’ or ‘defection’ strategy. Moreover, inter-brain synchronies within this time and frequency range reflected the use of these strategies. This study provides evidence for how the cortex uses nonverbal social cues to determine other's intentions, and highlights the significance of power in the alpha band and inter-brain phase synchronizations in high-level socio-cognitive processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, states have tended to opt for one of three prostitution policy regimes: prohibition, regulation or the abolition of state regulation with a view to providing social support to the individuals involved. This is the approach France has espoused since 1960. Nevertheless, while the state has remained committed to abolitionism, the policies and laws adopted in the name of French abolitionism have varied considerably. This coexistence of stability and change challenges current assumptions of how policy regimes behave and evolve. This is because internal policy change suggests that the regime is weak, and weak regimes that experience strong political challenges are assumed to wither away or collapse. Consequently, this article presents the historical case study of contemporary French prostitution policy, and seeks to explain how and why this policy regime has changed the way it has since World War II. It describes the three phases that have contributed to the evolution of policy in this area, from sex workers’ rights protests in the mid 1970s, to the introduction of a demand-side ban on prostitution in 2016. In doing so, it explains how strong commitment to policy ideas can help sustain an otherwise weak or ineffective policy regime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the population’s awareness about the radiation exposure associated with five specific imaging tests, and their preference regarding three different formats for receiving the information before undergoing an imaging test. Methods: A quantitative and qualitative evaluation through a survey and focal groups including general population from two health departments in Spain. The sampling was carried out in stages (according to health department size) and stratified by age and sex, to get a representative sample. We randomly selected the participants from these stages to be contacted by telephone by a trained nurse. Oral informed consent was obtained. Results: Of 602 participants in the quantitative survey, 418 (70.3%) stated that they were aware of the risk associated with radiation. While the majority of these 418 participants knew that x-rays involve radiation (85.4%), fewer were aware that CT (42%) and mammography (38%) also involve radiation, and a substantial proportion believed, incorrectly, that MRI (38%) and ultrasound (18.4%) expose patients to radiation. The population preference was to receive the information using both oral and written formats, accompanied by a table showing the equivalence of the radiation associated with the imaging test to either a number of chest X-rays and exposure number of days of background radiation. Discussion: The general population does not receive enough information regarding radiation exposure and the associated risks related to imaging tests. Initiatives should be designed to reinforce the patient’s awareness when ordering a diagnostic imaging test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food intake is essential for maintaining homeostasis, which is necessary for survival in all species. However, food intake also impacts multiple biochemical processes that influence our behavior. Here, we investigate the causal relationship between macronutrient composition, its bodily biochemical impact, and a modulation of human social decision making. Across two studies, we show that breakfasts with different macronutrient compositions modulated human social behavior. Breakfasts with a high-carbohydrate/protein ratio increased social punishment behavior in response to norm violations compared with that in response to a low carbohydrate/protein meal. We show that these macronutrient-induced behavioral changes in social decision making are causally related to a lowering of plasma tyrosine levels. The findings indicate that, in a limited sense, "we are what we eat" and provide a perspective on a nutrition-driven modulation of cognition. The findings have implications for education, economics, and public policy, and emphasize that the importance of a balanced dietmay extend beyond themere physical benefits of adequate nutrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the centrality of land to rural livelihoods and the high rates of fertility in Africa, there is a need for more research that explores the intersection between gendered patterns of land ownership and reproductive health outcomes. Drawing on a household bargaining framework, I hypothesize that women's land ownership should be associated with increases in women's decision-making in multiple domains in the household including financial decision-making (the focus of bargaining literature), but also decision-making about reproductive health. Using the 2010 Malawi Demographic Health Survey (DHS), I find women's ownership of land (sole or joint) is associated with increases in women's participation in financial decision-making in the household and women's sole ownership of land is associated with increases in women's participation in reproductive health decision-making. However, women's joint ownership of land with spouses is negatively associated with participation in reproductive health decision-making, perhaps because of backlash or intra-household conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past few decades, the global food system has confronted new sustainability challenges related not only to public health and the environment but also to ethical concerns over the treatment of farmed animals. However, the traditional threedimensional framework of sustainable development is ill equipped to take ethical concerns related to non-human animals into account. For instance, the interests of farmed animals are often overridden by objectives associated with social, economic or environmental sustainability, despite their vast numbers and influence on contemporary societies. Moreover, sustainability policies necessarily involve an element of ethical evaluation; yet this element is not explicitly incorporated in prevailing frameworks of sustainable development. Our purpose in this article is to address these shortcomings by developing a Sustainability Matrix that recognizes the need to consider food system sustainability from the perspective of all interest groups affected by the issue under consideration, from a plurality of ethical standpoints. Combing sustainability principles with the basic idea of an ethical evaluation tool, the proposed Sustainability Matrix evaluates the sustainability of food-related systems, decisions and policies from the perspectives of three major strands of ethical theory and from the perspectives of human beings, farmed animals and wildlife. In terms of policy implications, the Sustainability Matrix can be applied in deciding on the specific targets of food system sustainability that can then be utilized as a basis for designing policies and measures towards the achievement of these goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses aspects of the U.S. foreign policy which secure the country's interests through an open, stable, and integrated global community. Topics mentioned include the criticism against the American internationalism as well as its post-war project, the interdependency of the U.S. in both economic and security terms which protect the interests of the country's international system and the participation of the U.S. in international institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations (UN).

This paper uses nationally-representative data from the PSID and CDS to estimate the causal effects of two parent socialization actions-talking to children about giving and role-modeling-on children's decisions whether or not to give to charity. We develop an identification framework based on the intra-household allocation and cultural transmission literatures that shows how different assumptions about parental response to time-varying unobserved changes in children's prosocial values can be combined with the child fixed effects estimate and the difference between siblings' over-time-differences estimate to infer a bound on the causal effect of parental action to socialize their children. Under the identifying assumption we think is most reasonable for socializing the willingness to give to charity, that parents treat the socialization actions of others as cultural substitutes, our estimates imply that talking to children about giving raises the probability of children's giving by at least .13. We find no evidence that parental role-modeling affects children's giving, except among non-African-American girls. The identification framework and substantive results have implications for those with a general interest in using data from naturalistic settings to estimate causal effects of parental socialization actions, those interested in the external validity of laboratory findings, and those interested in the socialization of warm glow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two causal mechanisms have been invoked to explain the positive correlation between union membership and social expenditure. Unions try to influence policy, but they are also more successful in mobilizing members in economic systems in which actors engage in co-ordinated strategic interaction. Applying insights from the policy feedback and comparative capitalism literatures, our analysis indicates that union density is a determinant of social expenditure. A strong policy feedback effect is also present whereby social expenditure has a positive effect on union density. We find a positive effect of union density on social expenditure in co-ordinated market economies, but not in liberal market economies. We discuss the implications of these findings for citizens’ capacity to influence policy in varied contexts and for the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature, and we close with some speculation about the implications of these findings in the current economic downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is mounting concern in New Zealand and worldwide about the impacts of current and projected land-use activities on freshwater quality. In 2011, the New Zealand government effected the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, requiring all regional councils to establish freshwater nutrient loads and water allocation measures in their land and water regional plans. These ‘limits’ must achieve locally defined social, economic and cultural outcomes while, as a minimum, halting any decline in water quality. The authors have participated in the Canterbury region’s strategic land and water planning activities. This has involved strategically assessing the social impacts of ‘limit options’ on aspects of catchment life and then integrating them into official reports and community deliberations, which ultimately inform the development of rules for catchment land use. This paper highlights practice issues which were confronted in the process and how they were managed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

HTN (Hierarchical Task Network) planning has shown its effectiveness and potential in emergency decision-making. In realistic emergency conditions, the temporal preferences should be considered. This paper proposes a temporal HTN planner, TPHTN (Temporal Preferences HTN), to handle the temporal constraints with preferences. The planner uses STNP (Simple Temporal Networks with Preferences) to express the temporal preferences information, and extends the operator and method to express the temporal preferences information in planning domain knowledge. In the planning process, TPHTN propagates the STNP top-down, and three definitions of level consistency are proposed to estimate the quality of STNP, and a new heuristic search is designed to choose the suitable operator/method to apply based on the quality of the corresponding STNP. When the planning process is terminated, TPHTN will generate a plan satisfying the decision-makers preferences. Finally, the effectiveness and practicability of TPHTN are demonstrated with emergency logistics problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines the evidence-based policy making and 'policy as translation' literatures to illuminate the process by which evidence from home or overseas contexts is incorporated into policy. Drawing upon focus groups with Department for Work and Pensions officials, a conceptual model of 'evidence translation' is introduced, comprising five key dimensions which influence how evidence is used in policy: the perceived policy problem, agenda-setting, filtration processes, the policy apparatus and the role of translators. The paper suggests the critical role of 'evidence translators' throughout the process and highlights the perceived importance of methodology as an evidence selection mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The relationships between policies, their values, and outcomes are often difficult for citizens and policymakers to assess due to the complex nature of the policy lifecycle. With the opening of data by public administrations, there is now a greater opportunity for transparency, accountability, and evidence-based decision making in the policymaking process. In representative democracies, citizens rely on their elected representatives and local administrations to take policy decisions that address societal challenges and add value to their local communities. Citizens now have the opportunity to assess the impact and values of the policies introduced by their elected representatives and hold them accountable by utilizing historical open data that is publicly available. Using a qualitative case study in a UK Local Government Authority, this article examines how e-participation platforms and the use of open data can facilitate more factual, evidence-based, and transparent policy decision making and evaluation. From a theoretical stance, this article contributes to the policy lifecycle and e-participation literature. The article also offers valuable insights to public administrations on how open data can be utilized for evidence-based policy decision making and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The active programs and measures on the labor market are the subject of increasing interest and comment not only because expectations for tangible effects, but also because of the relatively significant financial resources necessary for their implementation. The paper discussed the active social programs and their strategic advantages in labor market development considering the methodology of their development and accenting the role of human resources and innovative technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread calls for greater public involvement in governance, especially in relation to health policy, significant challenges remain in identifying any such legitimate ‘public’ voice. This research investigates this problem through a case study. It examines how actors experienced and interpreted a government-commissioned citizen’s jury on health spending prioritization in relation to the work of the local health care consumers’ organization. The analysis highlights an unproductive tension around this encounter, and points to more complementary ways in which such top–down and bottom–up efforts might be coordinated. It, therefore, contributes significantly to efforts to strengthen the public voice in contemporary health governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most academic research on public policy achieves little influence in government. The disconnect reflects the different ways researchers and government learn about policy. In social policy, typically, scholars make rigorous but narrow arguments about how to improve social conditions while saying little about politics or government. Policymakers, however, reason in broader, integrative ways and pay more attention to program experience and institutions. Evaluations have influence in part because they serve the governmental style. By reasoning more like policymakers, scholars could have greater influence. But to make that connection, the teaching of public policy and academic incentives must change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's remarks upon receiving the 2015 Veblen-Commons Award. Particular focus is given to the public policy in an era of unreason in the 20th century. The author discusses the three causes for the triumph of unreason, which are nostalgia for a mythical golden age, ideology, and social valuation. He says that identifying ideology and myths, remembering history and identifying error and misrepresentation are the solutions to unreason.

The role of evidence-based knowledge and research in informing immigration and settlement policy is an important but under-examined area of inquiry. Knowledge for evidence-based policy-making is most likely to be useful to policymakers when it is produced collaboratively through sustained engagement between academic and non-academic stakeholders. This paper seeks to explore the role of non-governmental organizations in evidence/research-centred knowledge mobilization/transfer by a case study of CERIS-The Ontario Metropolis Centre, one of five immigration research centres in Canada that promoted partnerships to facilitate ongoing, systematic and timely exchange of social science knowledge. We explore the strategies and outcomes of establishing and maintaining relationships among academic researchers, representatives from non-governmental organizations and government policymakers. The experience at CERIS underscores the potential benefits from partnerships with non-governmental organizations that have detailed local knowledge of immigration and settlement issues and highlights the persistent challenges of funding and power imbalances that impede equitable and effective partnerships. The CERIS experience offers valuable insights into successful knowledge exchange from which the local, national and international immigration policy community can learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the 'new age' of political clientelism discusses how political parties established their clientilist networks. This article explains the inner dynamics of clientelism, specifically the role played by the state, its institutions, the government, and social policies. I compare the socialpolicies, presidential roles, and constructed networks of the governments of Hugo Chávezin Venezuela and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia. In addition, the article provides evidence of the "new age" of political clientelism, which is based on the utilization of public policies or state institutions to form a clientelistic network in order to elect its favored candidate. The article demonstrates that such practices are highly structured in Venezuela due to the strong centralization of power in the government. By contrast, in Colombia, clientelism is less structured. However, political clientelism still focuses on obtaining the highest possible number of votes. Finally, I examine how these processes shed light on new state-citizen interactions, a re-centralization of power, and the dependency of the citizens on the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how child welfare professionals and program evaluators can use the Framework to Design, Test, Spread, and Sustain Effective Practice in Child Welfare to develop meaningful partnerships to build evidence-supported interventions for the field. It describes how the Framework promotes integration of evaluation with program and policy decision-making, and increases the use of research to improve outcomes for children and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peut-on expliquer les politiques publiques? Dans l'optique d'une démarche scientifique, des modèles ont été conçus qui simplifient des réalités d'une extrême complexité et mettent en relief des facteurs qui expliqueraient les faits sous observation. Dans cette étude, en appliquant deux des modèles couramment utilisés pour cadrer l'analyse de politiques publiques, nous montrons que, même si ceux-ci peuvent éclairer des aspects particuliers des processus examinés dans l'étude du choix de l'emplacement de Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), ils n'arrivent pas à proposer une interprétation adéquate de la décision d'établir le CHUM au centre-ville plutôt qu'à Outremont. Nous posons ainsi que, dans le domaine des sciences sociales, l'ambition de dépasser les démarches purement descriptives conduit au mieux à des interprétations qui permettent une meilleure compréhension des phénomènes étudiés. Dans cet esprit, nous présentons un modèle qui intègre les divers éléments qui composent les politiques publiques, de leur élaboration à leur mise en œuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the analysis of the legal framework for civil society in Burundi. Topics discussed include the enjoyment of freedom of peaceful assembly which must be guaranteed to individuals, the goal of the law on assemblies and public demonstrations which is to comply with international standards about peaceful assemblies, and the purpose of the legislation which is to serve as a guide in the decision making of administrative authorities.

This article has the objective of revealing the virtuous circle between the sociological production of knowledge, its incorporation into the public agenda, and the formation of policies that seek to transform gender relations. It covers the trajectory of the production of sociological knowledge about gender and caregiving in Uruguay and their links with public policies. It is argued that in Uruguay the work of research undertaken in academia has been able to promote visibility to the work of caregiving and its value for contributing to social welfare and the economic system. In 2010, the Uruguayan government took these academic researches and initiated the design of a national system of caregiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive branches of government are exercising increased control over decision-making, using a wide range of strategies to develop policy preferences and oversee their implementation. Canada, for instance, has seen a steady presidentialization of its parliamentary system, characterized by a heightened centralization of decision-making in the Prime Minister's Office. The first part of this paper identifies a number of the cognitive biases that impede sound decision-making by the executive and examines two demanding, yet effective, strategies - multiple advocacy arid the use of honest brokers-for mitigating subsequent distortions. The second part of the paper discusses challenges to effective policy implementation in light of the systematic disconnections between the executive and the public service. Finally, the merits of political patronage appointments as a means of mitigating these challenges are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In representative governments, a healthy turnover of power among ruling parties is viewed as a critical sign of democratic principles. In a political environment where voters' opinion is the key political driver, the greatest challenge facing the NGO community is often that environmental concerns only represent secondary aspects of the policy-making process. This article focuses on the transformations (or lack thereof) in Taiwan's environmental governance, under different political parties, particularly during the past few years. I begin with an overview of the key issues that have characterised Taiwan's environmental movement and its battles, starting with the democratic transition of the mid-1980s, before focusing on two developmental projects - Taiwan's eighth petrochemical plant and fourth nuclear power facility - to bring to light the most significant changes and continuities in the environmental-policy realm. I pay special attention to the post-2008 period and the ensuing renaissance experienced by the environmental movement, among others. The final section considers the consequences of the KMT's second electoral victory - in January 2012 - for environmental policies and, in light of the article's findings, summarises what has changed and what has consistently remained the same under different ruling parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of collective intelligence flowing in and across systems communities of various disciplines, and the fragmentation or connectedness of their mental models of the world, shape their capacity to assist decision-makers and social movements in defining, mapping, and addressing the world problematique, by identifying policy options and anticipating their outcomes. In their current state of fragmentation, the systems sciences' epistemic communities cannot provide that assistance. Upgrading their collective intelligence is a vital imperative. This paper is suggest the prototyping of a Collective Intelligence Enhancement Lab and describes its core idea as a platform with an innovation architecture that integrates social, electronic, cognitive, and inner technologies and processes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study of a regeneration programme which explored ways in which residents involved in the programme exerted influence over local decision-making for public services. The participation literature has extensively documented constraints on resident empowerment; this article explores the opportunities for resident influence within this context of limitations. The study employed a form of network analysis to conceptualize the regeneration partnership as a network and to explore the ways in which individuals adopted roles as ‘network brokers’ which facilitated resident influence. Institutional arrangements of the regeneration partnership were designed to promote participation through formal meetings but resident influence also occurred through network brokers in both formal and informal peripheral network spaces, thereby representing an opportunity for resident influence over and above formal participation arrangements. If this type of central–peripheral network structure and brokering is a normal pattern for participation, then the implication here is that although institutional arrangements and numbers of residents participating are important, we should also pay attention to how individuals are networked, because this seems to have implications for resident influence. This was something of an ideal case, given the comparatively benign environment for participation in the case study area, and influence for the majority of residents remained limited overall, but it points to the importance of key individuals in local participatory initiatives, their location in networks and their ‘brokering’ work in empowering local communities, which may have applicability in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author discusses the decision makers in the World War I care about their states reputation and the respectable treatment they gain. Topics mentioned include the interpretive process of Self-Other relations and the policy tools which are based on nature of self-other affective relations, the perceived degree of symbolic injury and the international moral standards. It also mentioned the German decision in the World War I have a moral perspective to gain respect as a European Great power.

Part of determining the democratic content of relationships between citizens and governance networks revolves around understanding how ordinary citizens are able to access governance networks, either directly, or indirectly though representatives. For citizenship to have any meaningful content for ordinary people, especially those who historically have been denied political and socio-economic rights, the promise of participatory democracy must lead to perceptions of ability to influence. Through the use of a survey instrument constructed to gauge perceptions of efficacy and responsiveness of local governance institutions, this article explores how citizens in Khayelitsha, Langa and Delft experience governance and service delivery in relation to their perceived ability to exercise either a direct or indirect form of agency in relation to decision-making. The article illustrates that in relation to the ordinary person in the street, perceptions of agency are weak, with corresponding levels of dissatisfaction in democracy. This is in contrast to much stronger perceptions of agency amongst community leaders in community organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports the results of a scoping review into the content of the social work qualifying curriculum in England exploring whether recommendations made by the Social Work Task Force and the Social Work Reform Board for an ‘overhaul of the content and the delivery of the qualifying curriculum’ were grounded in published research. The review found that rigorous research-based published evidence about the qualifying social work curriculum was lacking. In particular, most material dated from the early years of the social work degree and did not appear to have been replicated more recently to see if the original findings held true. Other subjects, such as how students are taught about older people's human development, had been considered by researchers but were not addressed by the Task Force and the Reform Board. The implications of this are that, while the content of the social work qualifying curriculum needs to adapt to reflect changing professional contexts, there is a need for greater consensus and clarity about what should be taught and how. The development of an evidence-based curriculum in terms of course content and delivery remains a priority for social work education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the effects of strategic culture on the parameters of the decision making elite in the Southern African Development Community. By examining the contemporary southern African foreign and security decision making track record, it also addresses the question of convergence. The article examines the theoretical and conceptual state of research relating to strategic culture and adopts a constructivist understanding of the concept. Before applying it to the Southern African Development Community case, it examines the context of African decision making by highlighting a range of issues that act to constrain choices, and it explains the Southern African Development Community decision making structures and examines the state of research relating to Southern African Development Community members’ foreign policy and national security policy behavior. The summary offers an outline of a southern African strategic culture. It finds that despite signs of extensive convergence, in reality, Southern African Development Community exercises partial convergence, frequent but mostly unsystematic interaction characterized by partially compatible interests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author discusses various aspects of channeling the health economics research initiatives which will help to assess the gap between research and implementation of health policy for general public and improve the decision-making processes in relation to the health policy in European Union. They also discuss the relationship between health economics research in framing effective health policies for social welfare.

This article explores dilemmas that arise when using a participatory, experiential neighborhood problem-solving and planning program in settings that have different expectations and beliefs about youth and adults partnering in organizational and community decision-making. Using Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecology of human development and Wong, Zimmerman, and Parker's (2010) pyramid of youth participation, a series of dilemmas are explored. These dilemmas include: negotiating challenges of power; scaling up youth-adult partnerships into organizational decision-making and governance; reconciling tensions between practices, principles, and values when disseminating a program from one organization to another; dealing with organizational events that occur outside the youth program; and succumbing to pressure to achieve funder-derived outcomes. Two insights emerge from the analysis of these dilemmas. First, young people embrace adult-provided structure when adults and young people are not ready to work in emancipatory youth-adult partnerships. Second, as we move toward emancipatory youth-adult partnerships, the developmental sphere of youth programs has to expand to include the activities, relationships, and roles that traditionally have been limited to organizational leadership and governance. Likewise the developmental sphere of the governing body has to incorporate the activities, relationships, and roles of what has typically been the youth program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social policy is one of the cornerstones of public policies that directly or indirectly affect all citizens. Due to the transformation processes in this field in the last five years, taking place in the Czech Republic, we can say that there has been a strengthening of regional policies (regional and municipal) as implementers of local social policy. The paper discusses the method of community planning of social services as a tool of regional development in the light of experience with this method in Pardubice in the context of the ongoing preparations for the second community plan. The paper draws attention to the dilemmas of basic principles of this method in practice. The study uses data from the current research on the situation of social services in the city of Pardubice, which was conducted for the purpose of decision-making processes in the regional social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented in which the author calls for replacing the law enforcement approach with social policies that will support and expand the revitalizing effects of immigration. He explains how social policies may help in shaping the relationship between immigration and crime and cites a study that integrated minority incorporation and political process theories. He concludes by urging policy markers to be advocates for positive social policies that extend the benefits of immigration.

The article discusses the use of multicriteria analysis in valuing developmental crime prevention programs. It cites the advantages of policy that invests in young children including promoting equality and social justice, improving human capital and economic productivity. It presents a structured method that provides a better policy decisions by evaluating program alternatives and eliciting individual relative utility values for use in cost-utility analyses.

The research focuses on the theme of formulation and implementation of public policy, focusing on the analysis of social management from the flow of actions (events that occur during the construction and public policy implementation) and decision making. Within the local public administration small municipalities were little studied and it was decided to analyze an innovative initiative - daycare night - at a small city in São Paulo called "Laranjal Paulista" in which picker's chicken women benefited from a daycare night. The research method used in addition to the literature review, was oral history and case study. Empirical findings suggest that the construction of an innovative project locally constituted an experience of social management because it favored dialogue between different actors and this permeated the building process of this public policy. Furthermore, it concludes that such process was established by several facts, dialogues and unexpected events that are non-linear and, in most cases, ignored by most theories relating to decision-making process, but on the other hand, are covered by social management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study on the relationship between democracy and science. It states that the goal of science is to reveal the truth about the wold, while democracy allows community members to create decisions that will reflect to their common interests. It says that the practices that develops science can also be applied to the democracy. Cosmologist Fang Lizhi believes that democracy and science requires mind independence which is needed in hypothesis formulation and testing.

This short paper revisits Bertalanffy's open systems theory and Luhmann's theory of autopoietic social systems in order to highlight the linkage between systemic complexity and the carrying capacity of the environment. Being paradigmatically focused on biological complexity, Bertalanffy's work shows this linkage to be relatively unproblematic. In contrast, Luhmann argued that autopoietic social systems are likely to develop excessive complexity which overstrains the environment's carrying capacity. The paper synthesizes these conceptions into a framework of discretionary social decision-making aimed at preventing systemic complexity from becoming excessive. Rooted in the idea of balancing the system and the environment, this framework determines the optimal level of systemic complexity as that level which systems can maximally attain without incurring the risk of self-destruction. The system-environment balance is shown to be the general systems theory core of Ulrich's critical systems heuristics and critical systems thinking more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teams and teamwork are central concepts and key mechanisms in managing organizations. Solution-Focused (SF) teams are an effective way to cope with complex organizational situations and to achieve positive results in the face of the growingly complex challenges of today's management goals. One of these core goals is Social Responsibility (SR) implementation in organizations. SR calls for integration of environmental, social and economic considerations in management and decision-making. This is a complex goal, which depends on a fundamental change in management systems and organizational culture. The principles and practices governing the way SF teams operate are best fit to provide a comprehensive approach to the complex challenges of SR implementation. These principles enable the team members to develop deep involvement and understanding on a variety of aspects relevant to the implementation of SR issues in everyday management processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including decision and policy making for blood safety, purpose of the risk-based decision-making framework (RBDM framework), and the value of transparency in public policy.