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Chapter 3 guides the reader inside parties by examining how candidate nominations, leadership selection, and policy platforms operate in modern democracies around the world. Kernell examines variation among these rules both within and across countries, as well as over time, and proposes a coding methodology for defining the degree of membership influence in each of the three primary dimensions. The chapter also discusses case selection and data collection.
This chapter provides an overview of policymaking that is being done at international, regional, and national levels, highlighting some of the key processes and frameworks relevant to climate-related migration and displacement. We discuss the extent to which these policies respond adequately (or not) to the needs and complexity of the challenge. We also describe a range of actors that have been actively engaged in these policymaking processes and the nature of their influence on these processes. We assess the different levels of actors in descending order of scale, starting with an overview of international policy frameworks and processes and then moving through regional and national level processes and approaches. Although we assess each level separately, they should be viewed as a network or web of interconnected actors and processes that influence one another, even as they evolve.
This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate change and its implications for voluntary migration, involuntary displacement, and immobility by providing examples from around the world. The chapters use the latest findings from the natural and social sciences to identify key interactions shaping current climate-related migration, displacement, and immobility; predict future changes in those patterns and methods used to model them; summarize key policy and governance instruments available to us to manage the movements of people in a changing climate; and offer directions for future research and opportunities. This book will be valuable for students, researchers, and policy makers of geography, environmental science, climate and sustainability studies, demography, sociology, public policy, and political science.
When aiming to change behavior, policymakers confront the challenge of implementing behavioral interventions across contexts. However, the effectiveness of behavioral solutions often hinges on context, posing a significant hurdle to scaling interventions. This study explores the application of a behavioral pattern language approach as a means to enhance intervention efficacy and support policymakers and practitioners who seek to solve problems at scales that cross diverse contexts. The study demonstrates how a pattern language can inform contextually aware solutions, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing among stakeholders. Additionally, the research finds practitioners deploy multiple solutions within complex systems to achieve more difficult behavioral change goals. Despite challenges related to replicability and evolving methodologies, the findings suggest that pattern languages offer a promising avenue for systematically generating and disseminating behavioral insights. This research contributes to advancing applied behavioral science by providing a structured approach for collaborative policymaking and research endeavors that are contextually relevant and effective.
Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is one of the most widely used renewable energy sources, generating electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past few decades, PV technology has seen widespread adoption due to technological advancements and continuously reducing costs. Traditionally, PV panels are mounted on terrestrial installations, including rooftops, agricultural fields and utility-scale solar farms. Although terrestrial PV systems perform well and are relatively scalable, they are still facing problems with land use and environmental pollution. As a result of these constraints, floating solar photovoltaic (FPV) systems have come to the fore as a viable alternative. Aquatic systems, such as lakes, reservoirs and coastal areas, can effectively utilise their surface area for the deployment of solar energy panels. This will also help to reduce land cost and water evaporation and improve overall energy efficiency, among other advantages. FPVs also have the potential to diversify and fulfil energy requirements since they liberate property in populated regions for additional crop usage. Thus, the potential scalability of FPVs is also extremely relevant towards climate and energy security objectives. FPV is still a new concept requiring thorough feasibility and performance-degradation studies to improve its uptake.
Multiple factors aligning in 2025 implicate challenges to vaccines as a primary public health intervention. Anti-vaccine proponents seek to recast immunization policies in promotion of perceived individual liberties. Recalibrating national vaccine approaches, however, runs counter to long-standing public health laws and policies grounded in a core truth: safe and effective vaccines save lives.
Evidence synthesis is increasingly recognised as an essential element of the provision and use of expert advice in areas of public reasoning and decision-making.1 Synthesis here refers to an authoritative account of the best available knowledge in a field or fields, relevant to a question of policy interest and accessible to all interested audiences. Synthesis as a practice is well established in many areas of science and medicine. Although less frequent in the humanities, recent examples from funders and the British Academy illustrate increasing recognition of its importance.2 This article outlines why synthesis matters and, while pointing to some systemic challenges, shows how it can be done. It illustrates the findings from the literature with practical material from two recent projects led by the authors.
Health technology assessment (HTA) is a critical part of healthcare decision making in many countries. Changes in Methods and Processes (M&P) of HTA agencies can affect the time and degree of patient access to treatments. Published literature focuses on the different M&P adopted by HTA agencies, rather than on how these have come about over time. Our study investigates key HTA reforms and explores their drivers and interdependencies in a set of HTA agencies in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America.
Methods
We conducted a targeted literature review on M&P guidelines and subsequent changes to those, for 14 HTA agencies. We supplemented and validated initial findings with 29 semi-structured interviews with country-specific experts. We used analytical tools to create process maps, proactivity and influence networks, and clusters of HTA agencies.
Results
We found that processes leading to M&P reforms follow similar steps across HTA agencies. The three most important drivers to reforms were HTA practice and guidelines in other countries; the healthcare policy, legal, and political context within the agency’s country; and experience of challenges in the assessment by the HTA body itself. International collaborations have the potential to accelerate the evolution of HTA systems and the implementation of reforms.
Conclusion
We identified PBAC (Australia), CDA-AMC (Canada), NICE (England), IQWiG (Germany), and ZIN (the Netherlands) as HTA agencies that are catalysts of HTA reforms as well as internationally influential. International collaborations may represent a useful route to accelerate changes as long as they ensure wide stakeholder engagement at an early stage.
Drawing from the findings on sexual minority and gender diverse (SMGD) concerns and relationships across the 12 countries included in this volume, this chapter provides a summary of the implications for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers. Although the countries are diverse with respect to SMGD-related rights and protections, a review of their results suggests that research focused on the impact of distal minority stressors and structural stigma on the well-being of SGD people is needed. Also, SMGD people continue to experience minority stressors and relationship challenges related to structural stigma and are in need of clinical interventions that are culturally responsive and take into account structural stigma, particularly for the most vulnerable subgroups within SMGD populations (i.e., bisexual, transgender, and gender diverse identified people). Finally, chapter findings have implications for influencing policy, including focusing prevention efforts directly on family and relationship concerns, developing initiatives to reduce minority stress, and strategizing mechanisms to advance SMGD people’s human rights and access to SMGD-affirmative quality care and treatment.
This chapter revisits the book’s central argument and conclusions from each chapter. It concludes that there has been substantial misunderstanding about core aspects of deterrence, which can be addressed by working from a comprehensive approach to theorizing deterrence and using this approach to guide and evaluate research. The chapter also concludes that most extant deterrence-based policies cannot and will not appreciably deter crime, and may even worsen it. The solution lies in policies grounded in stronger science built on better theory and research. Our sincere hope is that comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT) provides a helpful step in that direction.
This chapter discusses the centrality of deterrence to criminological theory and to policy, and then highlights critical shortcomings in classical deterrence theory. It points to critical problems that these shortcomings create, including incomplete or inaccurate understanding of deterrence and ineffective policy. The chapter then describes the motivation for the book, which is to advance theory and policy, the structure of the book, each of the chapters, and recommendations for sequences of chapters readers can follow to pursue their particular interests.
This chapter describes the origins of deterrence theory and problems with the overly narrow conceptualization of deterrence. It discusses the problems within the context of contemporary criminology and criminal justice policy. Many policies rest on weak or inaccurate understanding of deterrence, or are premised on research that has limited generalizability. One example: A great deal of criminal justice policy focuses only on punishment severity as a way of influencing deterrence, but one can increase deterrence in other ways, such as increasing the certainty of punishment or increasing the rewards of non-crime.
Chapter 10 is an in-depth reflection of what constitutes meaningful participation and how to ensure participation is meaningful. Adolescent voices are heard but seldom have an impact on policy, practice and service delivery. Research should not replicate exclusion and marginalisation but instead should enable inclusion. Participation also requires structural supports that enable it and sustain it over time.
Dementia is represented as a condition deserving urgent policy attention. In the United Kingdom (UK) substantial resources have been invested in it, including in earlier intervention and in basic science. This selective narrative review explores England’s national dementia policy and practices. It uses Bacchi’s framework of questions, grounded in a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality, to understand how policy initiatives, service re-orientation and lobbying campaigns shape dementia as a problem. This ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be’ (WPR) analytic approach helps explain why prevention has often been overlooked and reminds us that not all ‘stakeholders’ have the same motivations. Our preliminary conclusions are that Bacchi’s approach does elucidate the representation of dementia and illuminates how a ‘medicalindustrial-charity-complex’ shapes the representation of dementia. Bacchi’s approach could be used to construct an agenda for change in dementia research and care.
From a lower middle-class family in a small mining town in South Africa, a series of opportunities created by mentors in South Africa and abroad, together with the grit and daring to take them up, enabled me to work with some of the most innovative developmental theorists, such as Colwyn Trevarthen, and global policy figures like Jim Yong Kim, former President of the World Bank. I used these opportunities to shape a research and advocacy career that brought together knowledge and evidence relating to young children and families from a wide range of disciplines to contribute to global, regional, and national policy and programs to address the universal and enduring problems of poverty, inequality and social exclusion that limit children’s chances in life. I am extremely gratified that some of my students, assistants, and early career collaborators, driven by their talents and encouraged by my nerve, have similarly carved out global careers starting from provincial beginnings.
Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective and successful public health interventions to prevent infectious diseases. Governments worldwide have tried to optimize vaccination coverage, including using vaccine mandates. This review of recent literature and policy aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Malaysia’s childhood vaccination landscape. The document analysis was used to identify and examine information from government policy documents, official government media statements, mainstream news content, and research papers. Content analysis was then employed to analyze the gathered information. Despite the successes of Malaysia’s National Immunization Programme, a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases has raised concerns about vaccine hesitancy and refusal. Several contributing factors have been identified, including a preference for alternative medicines, doubts about halal status, fear of vaccine injury, concerns about the vaccines’ contents, conspiracy theories, as well as convenience and access barriers. While various initiatives have been implemented, Malaysia may consider using vaccine mandates, as several countries have recently done, as a potential policy intervention to address these challenges. This review benefits policymakers, epidemiologists, as well as researchers involved in regional or global policy planning and advocacy efforts. It also offers comprehensive insights into designing effective interventions and making informed policy decisions regarding childhood vaccination programmes.
While my research life course is not typical, I have been able to focus on developmental psychology in full. Studying change and continuity, risk and resilience, timing/tempo and transitions, babies to boomers. Topics include self-recognition, social cognition, puberty, pregnancy, sexuality, depression, aggression, and parenting. Poverty, inequality, family structure, neighborhood, and immigration contexts are of interest. Policy-oriented research focuses on federal policies (subsidized childcare, Head Start and Early Head Start, income transfers, housing) as well as prevention programs. My greatest pleasure has been the amazing scholars and students from psychology as well as economics, sociology, demography, endocrinology, pediatrics, biologists, and social workers.
Interest groups are an important influence in the subnational policymaking process. Previously, environmental policy scholars measured the strength of environmental groups in the American policymaking subnational process by using proxies like state-level group membership in major nationwide environmental organizations (e.g., Sierra Club). Although these prior measures of group strength have face validity, recent scholarship suggests that the utilization of group financial resources is a better measure of the influence of interest groups in state-level models. We take this approach and provide a new way to measure state-level environmental interests by using aggregated financial information (income and assets) from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data obtained via the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS). This measure provides several advantages over previous approaches because it varies over time, is derived from easily accessible public data, includes a greater diversity of environmental organizations, and it is considered reliable by prior scholars. We demonstrate its empirical value by deploying our measure in a model of state policy adoption. We encourage researchers to further utilize this new measure in their analysis of environmental advocacy at the subnational level.
This conversation brings together national and international policymakers to discuss the impact of digitalisation on access to justice. The background of the discussion is provided by the United Nation’s Global Goal 16 to ‘provide access to justice for all’. The policymakers contributing to this conversation represent the ministries of justice of Germany and Japan, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies. The discussants explore the potential of technology to provide meaningful access to law and justice. They do so within the context of their organisation’s policy initiatives such as digitalising courts and other justice institutions. Referring to reform experiences, they pay attention to facilitators and barriers of technological change. The policymakers also consider the risks of technology for access to justice and emphasise the need to keep digital vulnerability in mind.