Policy Change

A consensus of the Workgroup on Community and Socioeconomic Issues was that improving and sustaining healthy rural communities depends on integrating socioeconomic development and environmental protection. The workgroup agreed that the World Health ...

City logistics policies require an understanding of several issues (eg freight distribution context, preferences and relationship among agents) seldom accounted for in current research. Policies run the risk of producing unsatisfactory results because behavioural and contextual aspects are not considered. The acquisition of relevant data is crucial to test hypothesis and forecast agents' reactions to policy changes. Despite recent methodological advances in modelling interactive behaviour the development of apt survey instruments is ...

We quantify the effects on poverty and income distribution in Ecuador of bilateral trade liberalization with the US and a budget-neutral value added tax increase which seeks to compensate tariff revenue losses. We stress the study of fiscal policies that the government could tap in order to compensate for tariff revenue loss. This is a very important issue for Ecuador because this country adopted the US dollar as its currency in 2000, forgiving the use of important policy instruments. To study these issues we combine a reduced-form micro household income and occupational choice model (using 2005/6 data from the Ecuadorian LSMS) with a standard single-country computable general equilibrium model (employing a 2004 SAM). We follow a sequential approach that simulates the full distributional impact of trade and tax policies. We find that the impact of these policy changes on extreme poverty and income distribution is small but positive.

This paper sets out to develop an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This a priori framework is a significant improvement over existing critical juncture frameworks that lack any predictive element. It is an advance for historical institutionalism in particular, and political science in general. After the new framework is set out in detail here, it is tested. The framework is used to examine a number of potential critical junctures in macroeconomic policy, drawn from Ireland, Sweden, Britain, and America in the latter half of the twentieth century.

There is increasing pressure in international development to demonstrate that aid spending has an impact. This includes spending on policy research. While there is much debate about appropriate methods and evidence for demonstrating impact, ‘a more recent development is the movement to include practice-based evidence alongside more traditional scientific evidence in the accumulation of knowledge about what works, when, and why?’ (Forss, Marra and Schwartz 2011: 5).

The concept of practice-based evidence accepts that the world is a complicated, messy place that cannot be easily controlled. Those promoting its use suggest that it can provide additional insight about impact. Impact evaluation is an assessment of both the intended and unintended outcomes of a given intervention, where ‘the proper analysis of impact requires a counterfactual of what those outcomes would have been in the absence of the intervention’ (OECD 2001).

This paper explores the challenge of using practice-based evidence gathered with civil society organisations – and agencies that support them – to learn more about the impact of policy-related work. Specifically, it uses the work undertaken in the Sexuality, Poverty and Law programme at the Institute of Development Studies, and focuses on one case study that looked at sex workers’ experiences of economic empowerment programmes in Ethiopia. The purpose is not to assess the case study or particular interventions, but to better understand what policy impact might look like.

The recent economic crisis provided a shock to the system, and led
governments to scramble for solutions to problems of falling
economic growth, high unemployment and weak job creation.
Many European governments responded to protectionist calls by
restricting immigration policies, even towards the highly skilled.
Yet countries have faced different challenges and thus the cross-national variation in the demand for policy closure or openness is
remarkable. Some seized the opportunity to restrict their high-skilled
immigration policies, while others took advantage of the
crisis for further liberalisation. The article explores different
reasons for this variation, ranging from socio-economic conditions,
the inflow of labour migrants to the role of labour market
institutions and political actors. Countries badly affected by the
crisis and with a recent influx of labour migrants were more likely
to respond to mobilised groups lobbying for restrictive policies
than those countries weathering the crisis relatively better but
suffering from continuing labour shortages. The article examines
the changing conditions and the role of mobilised stakeholders to
explain policy change in selected European countries. It also
presents an updated index on states’ openness to high-skilled
immigrants to measure change over time. The findings are based
on position statements of stakeholders, official documents and
media coverage.

We wished to gain insight into Canadian hospital policy changes between 2000 and 2007 in response to (1) the initial results of the Term Breech Trial suggesting delivery by Caesarean section was preferable for term breech presentation, and (2) the trial's two-year follow-up and other research and commentary suggesting that risks associated with vaginal breech delivery and delivery by Caesarean section were similar. We also wished to determine the availability of vaginal breech delivery and the feasibility of establishing breech clinics and on-call squads, and whether these could include midwives. In 2006, we sent surveys to the 30 largest maternity centres in Canada asking about their changes in practice in response to results of the initial Term Breech Trial and the subsequent two-year follow-up and the possibility of establishing breech clinics and on-call delivery squads and whether they could include midwives. Of the 30 surveys sent, responses were received from 20 maternity...

This article explores the impact of policy changes in the education sector on the development of the book publishing sector in Kenya. The article begins by detailing the current status of the book publishing sector in Kenya. Then the interdependence between the education and book publishing sectors is highlighted. The government policies that have shaped the education system in Kenya are analysed with a view to establishing how they have affected the book publishing sector. An overview of the new school textbook policy that was introduced in 1998 is presented in order to show how it has influenced the textbook production and procurement. Then the introduction of the Free Primary Education (FPE) is discussed because it is the most recent development in the education sector that has provided tremendous impetus to the development of the book publishing industry in the country. The challenges encountered by the Government of Kenya in implementing the FPE and those faced by the book publ...

This article examines how spatial planning systems have changed in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece in times of economic recession and austerity politics, in amid pressures of external actors and local conditions and traditions. We analyse the round of reforms of spatial planning and territorial governance implemented by national governments under pressures by European institutions, as well as local responses to them. On the one hand, we highlight how European institutions have used the conditionalities attached to bailout packages and other instrument of pressure to frame what can be considered an implicit Southern European spatial planning policy developed by the European Union. On the other, we suggest that Southern European planning amid crisis and austerity should be understood, together, as field that problematizes the idea of Europeanization of planning; a space used as ‘prototype’ for new rounds of neoliberalization; and a political space that continuously develops through top-down/bottom-up dialectic conflicts.

Greater use of interrupted time-series experiments is advocated for community intervention research. Time-series designs enable the development of knowledge about the effects of community interventions and policies in circumstances in which randomized controlled trials are too expensive, premature, or simply impractical. The multiple baseline time-series design typically involves two or more communities that are repeatedly assessed, with the intervention introduced into one community at a time. It is particularly well suited to initial evaluations of community interventions and the refinement of those interventions. This paper describes the main features of multiple baseline designs and related repeated-measures time-series experiments, discusses the threats to internal validity in multiple baseline designs, and outlines techniques for statistical analyses of time-series data. Examples are given of the use of multiple baseline designs in evaluating community interventions and policy...

Greek port cities find themselves in a profound and encompassing change as they try to improve their image and confront the competition for advanced port services and facilities and the need for urban revitalization. As port functions are increasingly relocated towards the outskirts of port cities, disadvantaged neighbourhoods and docks are turned into modern housing and commercial areas or cultural

Brazil and Canada, countries with large territories and with a minority Indigenous population scattered throughout the land have developed distinct ways to address such claims. Started in 1973, the Canadian public policy towards land claims recognition was reviewed in 1985 after a consultative process including Native groups from all over the country. This process was successful in changing some key aspects of the policy, leading to the design of the contemporary Comprehensive Land Claims Policy. The modern Brazilian policy to address native land claims was regulated in the early 1990’s. In 2016, Indigenous groups were called to participate in the 1º National Public Policy Conference on Indigenous Policy. However, this participatory institution was not able to change the current demarcation policy.  To explain this variation in the observed policy change, we carried out case studies using both quantitative and qualitative data. To provide a contextual analysis of the participatory institutions, we suggest that not only the design of the participatory institutions should be taken in account, but also broader factors such as: 1. Constitutional provisions; 2. The role of the provinces and states; 3. The government agenda during the periods under investigation and; 4. The Indigenous political mobilization and civil society associations. Documental data and 12 interviews collected with key actors in both countries were used as analysis material. We concluded that, in the Canadian case, the virtuous interplay between the participatory institutional design, the incentives for change provided by the recently enacted constitution, the cooperative role of the provinces and the absence of concerted bureaucratic and political opposition provided the political environment which allowed policy change. In the Brazilian case, on the other hand, the internal undermining of the Conference by the government, its lack of political centrality and the presence of strong political interference of economic sectors organized in the Congress without the mediation of the head of the executive provided a political landscape where policy changes proposed by Indigenous peoples became unlikely. In both cases, the variable “Native collective agency” seemed to play no important role in the observed outcomes.