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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: The Task before Us -- I. TOWARD A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF POLITICAL JUSTIFICATION -- 1 The Tyranny of Minimalism -- 2 Prospectivism and "The Will to Believe" -- 3 Narrative and Moral Reasoning -- II PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY -- 4 Against a Second Pragmatic Acquiescence -- 5 Against Deweyan Democracy -- III POLI TICAL LIBERALISM -- 6 Political Liberalism and the Limits of the Political -- 7 Public Reason and Public Institutions -- 8 The Fact of Reasonable Pluralism -- Conclusion: Liberalism after Minimalism -- Index

AbstractThe policy studies literature is divided on how information processing takes place in policy processes. Punctuated equilibrium theory claims that policymakers tend to process information disproportionately, giving more weight to some incoming signals than to others. By contrast, thermostatic models of policymaking argue that policymakers respond in a more proportionate way. In this paper, we analyse information processing in the adoption of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) under the European Union's (EU) Common Fisheries Policy. Based on a novel measure for the proportionality of information processing, it shows that over time TACs have become more closely aligned with incoming signals about fish stocks. This development can be explained through a combination of changing discourses around fisheries conservation and institutional adjustments in EU fisheries policy. This analysis has implications for the debate between punctuated equilibrium and thermostatic models of policymaking and our understanding of the effectiveness of EU fisheries policies.

From page 382-- "I [the author] wish to argue that the analysis provided by the neoclassical model may not be an adequate guide to policy, even if certain of its predictions are correct. Instead, I [the author] direct attention to an alternative explanation of the effects of changes in the level of public debt, which leads to very different conclusions about the welfare consequences of such policies. According to this view, 'Ricardian equivalence' fails because of imperfect financial intermediation. Some economic units are liquidity constrained, which is to say that they are unable to borrow against their future income at a rate of interest as low as that at which the government borrows. Increased government borrowing can benefit such parties, insofar as they effectively receive a highly liquid asset, government debts, in exchange for giving the government an increased claim on their future income, their own claim to which represented a highly illiquid asset. A higher public debt, insofar as it implies a higher proportion of liquid assets in private sector wealth, increases the flexibility of the private sector in responding to variation in both income and spending opportunities, and so can increase economic efficiency."

ABSTRACTThis article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerges. Drawing on the conceptual tools of policy feedback and policy networks, this article describes an alternative route to paradigm shift in which change is negotiated between state actors and group representatives. Discussions of change are largely confined to sectoral policy networks and the result is a more managed series of policy changes that culminate in a paradigm shift. This argument for a second, cumulative trajectory to paradigm shift is developed by examining agricultural policy change in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia.

ABSTRACTPrior to 1974/5 the industrial problem of Italy was clearly seen as that of trying to industrialise the South. However, the end of cheap labour and cheap energy meant that Mezzogiomo industrialisation could no longer be seen in isolation from the rest of the country. Underpinning the new policy was the compromise set of measures approved at the end of 1977 to deal with the problem of 'industrial reconversion and restructuring'. It is not clear that the more general approach now in effect adds up to a coherent industrial strategy. However, a quantitative evaluation of past investment policies reveals a considerable flexibility in the policy response to the new economic conditions.

ABSTRACTThe inflationary experience of the industrial countries in recent years is explained in terms of institutional and structural changes promoting wage-price momentum. Developments such as the increasing extent of indexation of incomes and flexibility of exchange rates tend to result in downward rigidity of the rate of change of prices and wages. In the extreme, this is seen to lead to stagflation as the normal economic condition, and to the ineffectiveness of exchange rate changes for adjusting external imbalances. While output and employment continue to respond to the application of monetary and fiscal policies, the wage-price mechanism lies increasingly beyond the reach of these conventional tools. It is argued that the sufficiency of stabilization policy is restored, as a medium-term tendency, to the extent that the inflation-sustaining links between wage and price changes can be systematically restrained, such as could follow from a permanent tax-based incomes policy.

The present government came to office with a commitment to cut state spending while reducing government intervention in the economy and extending the sphere of private choice through tax reductions. This philosophy, while of significance for the longerterm development of the public sector, is actually of limited use in explaining the 1979 public expenditure reductions. These stem from one of the recurrent crises of financial control which have afflicted public spending plans in the last decade and a half. The purpose of this article is to analyse the financial and economic background to the cuts, which, it is argued, would have called for programme adjustments whatever administration had been in office, though the type of reductions made may bear the imprint of different political philosophies.

The paper analyzes how selected budgetary governance institutions can influence the motivation and capability of public sector entities to generate, implement, and diffuse innovations in public production. Numerical fiscal rules, top-down and concentrated budgetary decision-making process, medium-term budget framework and program budgeting were identified as having positive impacts. The analysis is followed by an assessment of the central government sub-sector budgetary governance system in Poland, which showed that the existing budgetary arrangements might be classified as innovation restrictive. The concentration of public decision-making within the budgetary process and integration of the budgetary governance system with other public governance systems by means of a common programmatic architecture were recommended as prerequisites for effective stimulation of public sector innovativeness.

"Policy Integration: Challenges for Public Administration" published on by Oxford University Press.

Digitization is considered to radically transform healthcare. As such, with seemingly unlimited opportunities to collect data, it will play an important role in the public health policy-making process. In this context, health data cooperatives (HDC) are a key component and core element for public health policy-making and for exploiting the potential of all the existing and rapidly emerging data sources. Being able to leverage all the data requires overcoming the computational, algorithmic, and technological challenges that characterize today's highly heterogeneous data landscape, as well as a host of diverse regulatory, normative, governance, and policy constraints. The full potential of big data can only be realized if data are being made accessible and shared. Treating research data as a public good, creating HDC to empower citizens through citizen-owned health data, and allowing data access for research and the development of new diagnostics, therapies, and public health policies will yield the transformative impact of digital health. The HDC model for data governance is an arrangement, based on moral codes, that encourages citizens to participate in the improvement of their own health. This then enables public health institutions and policymakers to monitor policy changes and evaluate their impact and risk on a population level.