RC32 - Public Policy and Administration

The 2012 conference of the Network of Schools and Institutes of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee) will be held in Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia (FYR Macedonia) from May 23 -26, 2012.

The conference theme is "Public Administration East and West:Twenty Years of Development"

The Jean-Monnet Centre for European Studies and Transnational Regulations at the University of Oldenburg (Germany) offers a full-time position for a sociologist or political scientist for the coordination of an EU project entitled "Combating Poverty in Europe: Re-organising Active Inclusion through Participatory and Integrated Modes of Multilevel Governance" (COPE). The position is for an initial duration of two years, starting from February, 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The project focuses on the political and organisational challenges of the complex governance models which have evolved in the field of European, national and local poverty, inclusion and minimum income policies. COPE will study how minimum income schemes for three different groups (lone mothers, long-term unemployed, working poor) are organised in five EU countries (Italy, Germany, Poland, Sweden and the UK) and how they cope with multilevel and multi-stakeholder modes of co-producing active inclusion policies. In addition, we will analyse the impact of multilevel, multidimensional and multi-stakeholder regimes on the individually perceived situation of the poor and the life courses of the most vulnerable social groups.

RC 48 on “administrative culture” has a new chair, Dr. Rosamund Thomas, director of the Centre for Business and Public Sector Ethics in Cambridge, UK. IPSA members interested in joining RC 48 are invited to contact Dr. Thomas as soon as possible at info@ethicscentre.org, citing full details, including contact information and a photograph for the new RC 48 website.

This research group will present the following two panel themes at the Madrid Conference in 2012: “Ethics in Public Administration, Including Corruption/Anti-Corruption”; and “Current and Future Issues in Public Administration as They Affect Administrative Culture.”

Persons intent on presenting a paper on one of these themes at the Madrid Conference are asked to contact Dr. Thomas. If business ethics and anti-corruption are your fields of interest, please see Rosamund’s new book Business Ethics (ISBN 978-1-871891-04-1). For details please contact Dr. Thomas at the email address cited above or go to www.ethicscentre.org .

The third issue of Policy & Internet for 2011 contains six articles, all of which focus on a substantive public policy issue arising from widespread use of the Internet: the links between software piracy and country corruption, voter targeting online in political campaigns, cultural aspects of digital citizenship, the increasingly 'conditional' nature of governments' public and social policies, policy responses to the growing problem of online hate speech, and policy considerations for the regulation of cross-border data flows. You may access any of the articles below at no charge.

Public Policy and Administration at the at IPSA World Congress Madrid 8-12 July 2012

The Next Big Thing for public policy and administration people is the IPSA World Congress in Madrid. We have a wide range of panels organized, some co-sponsored by other research committees. If you’re interested in any of these panels, contact the organizers for further details. To register for information on the congress, go to www.ipsa.org.

RC32 panels

1. Public policy development in post-communist countries: problems and decisions Proposers: Alexander Sungurov (St Petersburg)(asungurov@mail.ru) and Zdravko Petak (Zagreb) (zpetak@fpzg.hr)

2. Speaking truth to power? Critical perspectives on evidence-based policy making Proposers: Pekka Kettunen (Jyväskylä, Finland)(pekka.t.kettunen@jyu.fi), Holger Strassheim (Humboldt, Berlin) holger.strassheim@hu-berlin.de)

3. Patient empowerment and democratic policy: political challenges and theoretical issues (co-sponsored by RC25 Health Policy and Public Policy Group, Belgian Association of Political Science) Proposers: Fabrizio Cantelli (Universite Libre de Bruxelles Fabrizio.Cantelli@ulb.ac.be), with Hal Colebatch, New South Wales, hal@colebatch.com) and Jim Bjorkman bjorkman@iss.nl) as a co-sponsors

4. Governance, metagovernance and the state (co-sponsored with RC31 Political Philosophy) Proposer: Paul Fawcett (Sydney)and Hal Colebatch (New South Wales hal@colebatch.com), Preston King pking@morehouse.edu) as co-sponsor.

5. Making it official: organisation, discourse and technology in the construction of policy Proposer: Hal Colebatch (New South Wales and RC32), hal@colebatch.com),

6. Public policy making and challenges of underdevelopment (co-sponsored with RC30 Comparative Public Policy)

Proposer: Godwin Onu (Oko Federal Polytechnic, Nigeria, godwinonu2003@yahoo.com)

7. The Rescaling of Environmental Governance Chair: Dr Jens Newig (Leuphana University, Germany newig@uni.leuphana.de) Co-Chair: Dr Timothy Moss (Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS), Erkner, Germany MossT@irs-net.de) Discussant: Dr Mark N Lubel (University of California, Davis mnlubell@ucdavis.edu)

8. Policy making for the rural sector Proposer: Troy Whitford (Charles Sturt, Australia). twhitford@csu.edu.au)

9. The provision of public services; from public/municipal sector to private sector provision – and reverse (“re-municipalization“)? (co-sponsored with RC05 Local Government) Proposer: Hellmut Wollmann, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany hellmut.wollmann@rz.hu-berlin.de

10. Policy Work in Comparative Perspective (co-sponsored with RC30 Comparative Public Policy) Proposer: Michael Howlett (Simon Fraser University, chair of RC 30, Howlett@sfu.ca)

11. Policy processes as politics (co-sponsored with RC30 Comparative Public Policy) Panel Chairs: Mark Bevir (Berkeley, USA) & Philippe Zittoun (ENTPE-LET Lyon, IEP Grenoble, France)

12. Comparative governance and public administration education Chair: George Vernadakis, Middle Tennessee State, USA, gvernard@mtsu.edu Co–Chair: Ivan Kopric, Zagreb, Croatia ikopric@pravo.hr Discussant: Leslie Pal, Carleton, Canada, lesliepal@gmail.com

RC32 has just held a very successful conference on ‘Developing policy in different cultural contexts’ in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This was held in the University of Zagreb’s Centre for Advanced Academic Studies on the edge of the Old City (see photo), and was well attended by scholars both from the ‘transitional polities’ of the western Balkans (the former Yugoslavia), and from further afield. The conference brought together a number of scholarly and professional perspectives, and was co-sponsored by RC5 (local government), the Research Committee on Public Policy and Governance of the Russian Political Science Association, the Croatian Political Science Association, and the Croatian Institute of Public Administration.

The topics discussed ranged from analytical constructs to empirical reports, and from the local through the national to the European scale. There was particular interest in policy as a field of specialized activity, with ‘policy analysts’ emerging as a professional group, while at the same time, non-government groups are being drawn into the policy process, raising questions about what impact this official recognition might have on their character and mode of operation.

Many of the papers focused on the ‘modernisation’ of the governmental process in the western Balkans, and the impact of external models on this process – the norms of the OECD, the expectations of aid donors, and most of all, the specific requirements of the EU for candidate countries: the acquis communitaire.

More detail is available on the conference website http://www.politologija.hr/hr.konferencije.php?id=34&konf=3

CALL FOR SYLLABI.

On behalf of the Policy Studies Organization we invite you to submit your syllabi for publication in the PSO Proceedings, available permanently online at http://www.psocommons.org/psoproceedings/. We believe there is lots of work being done in policy teaching that needs to be shared.

The PSO Proceedings are a tool for teaching. They appear four times a year as an adjunct to all ten of the PSO journals and are among the most widely distributed sources in the policy world. Besides syllabi, other material such as meeting and professional announcements, necrology, scholarships and fellowships will be also considered for inclusion. All material should be sent in .doc or any other editable format, and should be sent to the Proceedings Editor, Daniel Gutierrez at dgutierrezs@ipsonet.org.

Sincerely, Paul Rich President Policy Studies Organization This message was sent by: Policy Studies Organization, 1527 New Hampshire Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036

Manage your subscription: http://app.icontact.com/icp/mmail-mprofile.pl?r=1027210796&l=60453&s=S0SO&m=2008999&c=421923

New Issue Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy

http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp

The Policy Studies Organization and Berkeley Electronic Press are pleased to announce the following new issue of Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy.

Guest Editor: Brian J. Gerber Editorials

Guest Editor's Introduction: Assessing the Complex and Multidimensional Characteristics of Evacuation Incidents

Brian J. Gerber

Articles

An Inventory and Assessment of Models Used to Predict Emergency Evacuation and Consideration of Increasing Policymaker Involvement

Carol Abel Lewis

Shelter-in-Place versus Evacuation Decision Making: A Systematic Approach for Healthcare Facilities

Dennis Zaenger, Natasha Efrat, Robert R. Riccio, and Kelly Sanders

Understanding Public Response to Nuclear Power Plant Protective Actions

Fotini Walton and Brian Wolshon

Chronic Disease as an Evacuation Impediment: Using a Geographic Information System and 911 Call Data after Katrina to Determine Neighborhood Scale Health Vulnerability

Andrew Curtis

Estimating and Mapping the Direct Flood Fatality Rate for Flooding in Greater New Orleans Due To Hurricane Katrina

Ezra C. Boyd

Management of Evacuee Ingress during Disasters: Identifying the Determinants of Local Government Capacity and Preparedness

Brian J. Gerber

Proceedings

Proceedings of the PSO, New Series no. 11

Daniel I. Gutierrez-Sandoval About this journal

In an era of crisis, hazards, and disasters, much attention has been paid to techniques for predicting risks and managing crises. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy looks at the larger picture, to study the ways that societies measure and understand risk in the first place, how policies ought to address risks, and how risks become crises. Risk and crisis raise fundamental policy questions with broad social science implications; the journal studies these questions across the spectrum of risks and crises – natural hazards, public health, terrorism, and societal and environmental disasters, in order to frame successful new policy approaches and to advance social science scholarship broadly. Edited by leading scholars in this major emerging field, the journal will appeal to social science scholars as well as policy makers and practitioners of security, emergency management,

There has been some very fruitful discussion about policy practice, and in particular about policy activity as work, at a number of venues over the last couple of year, including a workshop in Utrecht in 2007, a conference in Dubrovnik in 2008, the IPSA World Congress in Santiago in 2009, and the Interpretive Policy Analysis conference in Grenoble in June this year.

The discussion at Utrecht gave rise to a book, Working for Policy, edited by Colebatch, Hoppe and Noordegraaf, which has just been published by Amsterdam University Press. It brings together theoretical work, empirical research, and experiential accounts by policy practitioners; see http://www.aup.nl/do.php?a=show_visitor_book&isbn=9789089642530 for more details.

In 2011 there will be a number of venues to continue this discussion, but since they are all being sponsored by different organisations and will have different characteristics, I thought it worth telling everyone about all of them, so that you can all decide which (if any) of them would be a good place to discuss your research and to raise questions which should be pursued.

First up is the annual conference of NISPAcee, the Network of Schools and Institutes of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe, which will be held in Varna, Bulgaria on 19-22 May. Here, the underlying question might be seen as ‘what do we know about the management of public business, and how do we teach it ?’.

There will be a ‘Working group on public policy development issues’ which will be specifically addressed to the practices through which policy is developed, and what this tells us about the learning needs of different participants (and would-be participants) in the policy process. Proposals for papers for this working group should be submitted by 15 November. See http://www.nispa.sk/_portal/conference.php?sid=654&cid=19, the conference web site; more information can be obtained from Les Pal (lesliepal@gmail.com)

There has been a particular interest in Croatia in policy as a vehicle for interrogating and participating in governing, and there will be a further conference in Dubrovnik in June (probably 10-12: to be confirmed) on the topic ‘Developing policy in different cultural contexts: learning from study, learning from experience’. This will be hosted by the IPSA Research Committee on Policy and Public Administration in conjunction with the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb, the Croatian Political Science Association, and the Croatian Institute of Public Administration. It will have four elements:

1) analytical conceptual questions

2) research on policy practice, especially in South-East Europe

3) reforming public administration in South-East Europe

4)a specific focus on policy practice relating to higher education

Those interested in presenting at this conference should contact Zdravko Petak (zpetak@fpzg.hr) or Hal Colebatch (hal@colebatch.com).

The third opportunity is the European Consortium for Political Research meeting in Reykjavik on 25-27 August, at which a section is being organized on ‘The Argumentative Turn Revisited: Policy Discourse and Public Deliberation’. In this section, a panel on ‘The interpretive turn and the work of policy’ has been proposed (to be confirmed), which will examine the contribution of Fischer and Forester’s The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning to more recent empirical and conceptual research on policy practice, and in particular, explore questions about

- problematisation and participation

- stabilization of practice, norm-setting, identity and accountability

- linkage and the negotiation of meaning across organizations

- the mobilization of public authority in governing public concerns

See http://www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/ or contact Rob Hoppe at r.hoppe@utwente.nl.