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This book charts the course of Kaushik Basu’s career over seven years, as he moved out of the cloisters of academe to the frenetic world of policymaking, first in India as Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government and after that as Chief Economist at the World Bank in Washington. The Indian years were a period of high inflation, growth challenges (as the global financial crisis arrived in India), and also a remarkable growth recovery story, with India moving past China’s GDP growth rate. There were corruption scandals breaking, causing widespread street protests, a lot of late-night decision-making, which one knew would rock the stock market the next day, and getting to know politicians who were outstanding as statesmen in the midst of all this, and also many who were not. The World Bank years weren’t that close to actual policymaking, but nevertheless breath-taking in their scope. They ranged from interacting with policymakers in tiny remote countries like Samoa to gigantic nations with comparable heft, such as China. It entailed sitting down with leading researchers to compute and announce global numbers on extreme poverty and rankings on how easy it is to do business in different countries (fully aware that there would be calls from irate finance ministers as soon as these were published). And there was the handling of politics within the World Bank, which could actually be as enjoyable as any global economic problem! This book is a revised version of the diary that Kaushik Basu kept for seven years. Revised because he often wrote the diary in a hurry at the day’s or even week’s end. He has now inserted some reflections in retrospect, without altering any descriptions of what actually happened.
Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award Presented by the Public and Nonprofit Section of the National Academy of Management Winner of the 2019 Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration Bureaucracy, confusing paperwork, and complex regulations—or what public policy scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan call administrative burdens—often introduce delay and frustration into our experiences with government agencies. Administrative burdens diminish the effectiveness of public programs and can even block individuals from fundamental rights like voting. In AdministrativeBurden, Herd and Moynihan document that the administrative burdens citizens regularly encounter in their interactions with the state are not simply unintended byproducts of governance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Because burdens affect people’s perceptions of government and often perpetuate long-standing inequalities, understanding why administrative burdens exist and how they can be reduced is essential for maintaining a healthy public sector. Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion is legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles. However, policymakers have sometimes reduced administrative burdens or shifted them away from citizens and onto the government. One example is Social Security, which early administrators of the program implemented in the 1930s with the goal of minimizing burdens for beneficiaries. As a result, the take-up rate is about 100 percent because the Social Security Administration keeps track of peoples’ earnings for them, automatically calculates benefits and eligibility, and simply requires an easy online enrollment or visiting one of 1,200 field offices. Making more programs and public services operate this efficiently, the authors argue, requires adoption of a nonpartisan, evidence-based metric for determining when and how to institute administrative burdens, with a bias toward reducing them. By ensuring that the public’s interaction with government is no more onerous than it need be, policymakers and administrators can reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state that works for all citizens.
Interviews with thirty-five economic policymakers who advised presidents from Nixon to Trump. What is it like to sit in the Oval Office and discuss policy with the president? To know that the decisions made will affect hundreds of millions of people? To know that the wrong advice could be calamitous? When the President Calls presents interviews with thirty-five economic policymakers who served presidents from Nixon to Trump. These officials worked in the executive branch in a variety of capacities—the Council of Economic Advisers, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of the Treasury, and the National Economic Council—but all had direct access to the policymaking process and can offer insights about the difficult tradeoffs made on economic policy. The interviews shed new light, for example, on the thinking behind the Reagan tax cuts, the economic factors that cost George H. W. Bush a second term, the constraints facing policymakers during the financial crisis of 2008, the differences in work styles between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the Trump administration's early budget process. When the President Calls offers a unique, behind-the-scenes perspective on US economic policymaking, with specific and personal detail—the turmoil, the personality clashes, the enormous pressure of trying to do the right thing while the clock is ticking. Interviews with Nicholas F. Brady, Lael Brainard, W. Michael Blumenthal, Michael J. Boskin, Stuart E. Eizenstat, Martin S. Feldstein, Stephen Friedman, Jason Furman, Austan D. Goolsbee, Alan Greenspan, Kevin A. Hassett, R. Glenn Hubbard, Alan B. Krueger, Arthur B. Laffer, Edward P. Lazear, Jacob J. Lew, N. Gregory Mankiw, David C. Mulford, John Michael Mulvaney, Paul H. O'Neill, Peter R. Orszag, Henry M. Paulson, Alice M. Rivlin, Harvey S. Rosen, Robert E. Rubin, George P. Shultz, Charles L. Schultze, John W. Snow, Gene B. Sperling, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Lawrence H. Summers, John B. Taylor, Paul A. Volcker, Murray L. Weidenbaum, Janet L. Yellen
In this book, compelling case studies show how past crises have reshaped regulation, and how policy-makers can learn from crises in the future.
In this important new book, Ray Pawson examines the recent spread of evidence-based policy making across the Western world. Few major public initiatives are mounted these days in the absence of a sustained attempt to evaluate them. Programmes are tried, tried and tried again and researched, researched and researched again. And yet it is often difficult to know which interventions, and which inquiries, will withstand the test of time. The evident solution, going by the name of evidence-based policy, is to take the longer view. Rather than relying on one-off studies, it is wiser to look to the ′weight of evidence′. Accordingly, it is now widely agreed the most useful data to support policy decisions will be culled from systematic reviews of all the existing research in particular policy domains. This is the consensual starting point for Ray Pawson′s latest foray into the world of evaluative research. But this is social science after all and harmony prevails only in the first chapter. Thereafter, Pawson presents a devastating critique of the dominant approach to systematic review - namely the ′meta-analytic′ approach as sponsored by the Cochrane and Campbell collaborations. In its place is commended an approach that he terms ′realist synthesis′. On this vision, the real purpose of systematic review is better to understand programme theory, so that policies can be properly targeted and developed to counter an ever-changing landscape of social problems. The book will be essential reading for all those who loved (or loathed) the arguments developed in Realistic Evaluation (Sage, 1997). It offers a complete blueprint for research synthesis, supported by detailed illustrations and worked examples from across the policy waterfront. It will be of especial interest to policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and students working in health, education, employment, social care, criminal justice, regeneration and welfare.
The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.
The Politics of Evidence Based Policymaking identifies how to work with policymakers to maximize the use of scientific evidence. Policymakers cannot consider all evidence relevant to policy problems. They use two shortcuts: ‘rational’ ways to gather enough evidence, and ‘irrational’ decision-making, drawing on emotions, beliefs, and habits. Most scientific studies focus on the former. They identify uncertainty when policymakers have incomplete evidence, and try to solve it by improving the supply of information. They do not respond to ambiguity, or the potential for policymakers to understand problems in very different ways. A good strategy requires advocates to be persuasive: forming coalitions with like-minded actors, and accompanying evidence with simple stories to exploit the emotional or ideological biases of policymakers.
Scientists have a choice concerning what role they should play in political debates and policy formation, particularly in terms of how they present their research. This book is about understanding this choice, what considerations are important to think about when deciding, and the consequences of such choices for the individual scientist and the broader scientific enterprise. Rather than prescribing what course of action each scientist ought to take, the book aims to identify a range of options for individual scientists to consider in making their own judgments about how they would like to position themselves in relation to policy and politics. Using examples from a range of scientific controversies and thought-provoking analogies from other walks of life, The Honest Broker challenges us all - scientists, politicians and citizens - to think carefully about how best science can contribute to policy-making and a healthy democracy.
George Tsebelis’ veto players approach has become a prominent theory to analyze various research questions in political science. Studies that apply veto player theory deal with the impact of institutions and partisan preferences of legislative activity and policy outcomes. It is used to measure the degree of policy change and, thus, reform capacity in national and international political systems. This volume contains the analysis of leading scholars in the field on these topics and more recent developments regarding theoretical and empirical progress in the area of political reform-making. The contributions come from research areas of political science where veto player theory plays a significant role, including, positive political theory, legislative behavior and legislative decision-making in national and supra-national political systems, policy making and government formation. The contributors to this book add to the current scholarly and public debate on the role of veto players, making it of interest to scholars in political science and policy studies as well as policymakers worldwide.
For decades, the world’s governments have struggled to move from talk to action on climate. Many now hope that growing public concern will lead to greater policy ambition, but the most widely promoted strategy to address the climate crisis – the use of market-based programs – hasn’t been working and isn’t ready to scale. Danny Cullenward and David Victor show how the politics of creating and maintaining market-based policies render them ineffective nearly everywhere they have been applied. Reforms can help around the margins, but markets’ problems are structural and won’t disappear with increasing demand for climate solutions. Facing that reality requires relying more heavily on smart regulation and industrial policy – government-led strategies – to catalyze the transformation that markets promise, but rarely deliver.