Suchergebnisse

The role of generalist courts in reviewing the work of expert agencies is generally portrayed as either an institutional necessity on the one hand or a Pandora's Box on the other. Courts are expected to ensure the accountability of agency actions through their legal oversight role, yet on matters of science policy they do not have the expertise of the agencies nor can they allow themselves to become amateur policymakers in the course of their review. Given these challenges, we set out to better understand what courts are doing in their review of agency science. We conducted a qualitative examination of the courts' review of challenges to agency scientific choices in the entire set of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Our study revealed an increasingly rigorous and substantive engagement in the courts' review of scientific challenges to the EPA's NAAQS over time that tracked the Agency's own progress in developing rigorous analytical approaches. Our findings, albeit preliminary, suggest the emergence of a constructive partnership between the courts and agencies in science policy in NAAQS cases. In overseeing scientific challenges, the courts appear to serve as a necessary irritant, encouraging the agency to develop much stronger administrative governance and deliberative decisions on complex science-policy issues. Conversely, in developing stronger decisionmaking processes, the resulting agency efforts have a reciprocal, positive impact on the courts' own standards for review. The courts and agencies thus appear to work symbiotically through their mutual efforts on the establishment of rigorous analytical yardsticks to guide the decision process. While our findings may be limited to the NAAQS, which likely present a best case in administrative process, the findings may still offer a grounded, normative model for imagining a constructive and even vital role for generalist courts in technically complex areas of social decision making. ; The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Business

The policy literature has generally conceptualised crises as urgent public threats with clearly demarcated 'focusing events'. Consequently, most studies have identified the main challenges faced by expert agencies involved in evidence-based policymaking as managing uncertainty, time pressure and communication. However, less focus has been devoted to analysing the concrete challenges faced by expert agencies during creeping crises. Creeping crises are characterised by spatial and temporal fragmentation and elusiveness, which create an additional challenge for expert agencies: placing the crises on the political agenda. Comparing two global creeping crises: climate change (CC) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), this article highlights two distinct strategies for influencing policymaking. The analysis shows how two expert agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), pursue different strategies when setting the global agenda and influencing policymaking. The findings show that the WHO's approach to policymaking regarding AMR has been mostly guided by top-down, science-led, formal engagements and strategies. This approach has successfully increased the salience of the global challenge of AMR, providing strong, evidence-based solutions, but it has been less successful in promoting the challenge onto the global political agenda. In contrast, the UNFCCC's approach to policymaking has relied more on horizontal, bottom-up, multidisciplinary, informal strategies. This approach has enabled a broader coalition of advocacy actors and placed CC persistently on the global political agenda. In this way, the article enhances our understanding of the role experts play in drawing attention to creeping crises.

This article provides, through the lens of the theory of representative bureaucracy, a detailed and systematic assessment of diversity regarding gender, nationality, educational qualifications and professional background among the individuals serving in the management boards and scientific committees of European Union agencies (EAs). Drawing on a novel dataset of 508 members, our findings show that these decision-making bodies are generally composed of male experts, and that their inclusiveness of nationalities seems to be related to their formal institutional design. We also find that experts generally have extensive scientific training, even in those agencies that include national representation. This finding provides tentative support for the idea that representative bureaucracies can have a high degree of specialization. Our results also demonstrate that while EAs seem to be open to experts who have worked in the private sector, these bodies show a limited inclusiveness towards individuals with experience in civil society organizations. ; This research benefited from a Jose Castillejo Mobility Grant awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports to conduct research at the Copenhagen Business School.

Potential and applications of expert systems for improving operations and management in public agencies; US; 5 articles.

Due to the public good character of protective measures against natural disasters events, their allocation is very often in the realm of bureaucratic and expert agencies. Based on the economic theory of bureaucracy the behavior of a bureau providing the good protection against natural hazards is analysed. The existing model is extended by further institutional constraints accounting for societal controll mechanisms. The main proposition is that the allocation of protective measures through natural-hazard-management-agencies does also result in cost and allocative inefficiencies, however, the amount of allocative inefficiencies is relatively higher as compared to a normal bureau. This is mainly due to the potential of blame-shifting from politicians to bureaucrats. The considerations made in this paper can help to design a more efficient institutional framework in societal natural hazard management.