Search results
7 Evidence-based policymaking: Towards epistemological infinitude? Introduction This chapter examines the evidence-based policy (EP) movement. It tries to map and understand how and why new experimental and statistical techniques for producing knowledge have spread from medicine to education, crime prevention, employment and other social areas. EP is perhaps the clearest movement away from the neoliberal concern over epistemological finitude. While van Mises, Hayek and Popper were all concerned with excessive state intervention because of the cognitive
11 Policy-making under direct rule What has been the impact of direct rule on policy-making and policy outcomes? In assessing this, there are a number of significant contexts. Firstly, direct rule administrations have come from both Labour and Conservative Governments and this can account for the content of some policies and changes in policy (see Table 11.1). Secondly, policy decisions under direct rule covered both transferred matters and reserved/excepted matters and at times Governments treated policy as a unified entity. In some areas such as equality
chapters so far we have examined how the various ‘players’ – be they in the legislature, executive, pressure groups, media or judiciary – affect the making of decisions. In this chapter we sharpen the focus a little and examine the machinery at closer range. Policy-making as a ‘system’ Writing in 1979, Martin Burch suggested the process of government decision-making could be seen in terms of ‘inputs’, in the form of demands on the system, and ‘outputs’, in the form of consultation and White Papers, guidance notes, statutes, delegated legislation, public services
This book examines the intellectual frameworks within which the case for war in Iraq has developed in the US and the UK. It analyzes the neoconservative roots of the decision to go to war. The book also analyzes the humanitarian intervention rationale that was developed in the context of the Kosovo campaign, Tony Blair's presentation of it, and the case of Iraq. It looks at the parallel processes through which the George Bush administration and Blair government constructed their cases for war, analyzing similarities and divergences in approach. The book considers the loci of the intelligence failure over Iraq, the lessons for the intelligence communities, and the degree to which the decision to go to war in Iraq represented a policy rather than an intelligence failure. It then complements the analyses of US prewar intelligence failures by analysing what post-war inquiries have revealed about the nature of the failure in the UK case. The book discusses the relationship between intelligence and policymaking. It looks at how US Congress dealt with intelligence before the war. The book also examines how the Bush administration tried to manage public opinion in support of its war policies. It then looks at the decisionmaking process of the Bush administration in the year before the war in Iraq. Finally, the book also provides excerpts from a number of speeches and documents which are key to understanding the nature of national security decisionmaking and intelligence failure.
9780719055157_4_003.qxd 20/3/09 12:06 PM Page 34 3 The EU framework for UK policy-making The purpose of this chapter is to offer a review of the EU framework within which UK central government operates. This EU framework is important for a range of reasons, but most centrally because it is the main source of Europeanisation effects. There are other sources of Europeanisation, such as the separate, Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, but we have excluded them from our study. Europeanisation and European policy are also closely bound up with a series of
3 European Union policy-making towards Mercosur Introduction The EU is not a state and is not a traditional international organization. It is common to characterize it as a hybrid system with a federal component, but nothing comparable exists at this point in time. To understand EU policy-making towards Mercosur it is important to understand the internal system of the EU, its internal policy-making and the internal system of Mercosur, particularly given that Mercosur has tried to replicate the institutional design of the EU. Since its creation in 1957 in the
12 Regions, central government power and policy-making Central policies and vertical authority The engagement of regions with local higher education institutions implies that those responsible for regional administration have the will and ability to choose partnership. The reality of government power however is such that the degrees of freedom to make and sustain collaborative arrangements are often severely limited: circumscribed by attitudes and policies, political and bureaucratic practices that prevent and frustrate. On the other hand central government can
6 The EU and labour migration policy-making in the UK and Spain Introduction The key questions this chapter tackles are to what extent the EU impacts on debate over policy at the national level, how this impact is mediated by domestic structures and what kinds of effects it has. In order to answer these questions, the chapter first considers what might be meant by the Europeanisation of immigration policy. This is then followed by a brief analysis of the emerging EU migration regime before the impact of the EU on national policy-making in the UK and Spain is
, and agreed that the time had come to introduce internment. 28 This policy-making process and the extent to which the impetus came from London or from Belfast have been analysed at length elsewhere. 29 None the less, the key reasons for internment can be identified, and doing so helps explain how the ‘five techniques’ came to be used in Northern Ireland. There is no evidence that collecting intelligence by using the