So-called ‘toxic’ Prevent scheme to halt radicalisation has been misrepresented new research shows

Governance, News, Policy & Politics, , ,

Paul Thomas

Text by Sarah Brown based on Paul Thomas’ article: Changing Experiences of responsibilisation and contestation within counter-terrorism policies: the British Prevent experience

Britain’s Prevent Strategy was arguably the first post 9/11 attempt to operationalise ‘soft’, preventative counter-terrorism policies and it has been since significantly studied and copied by other states. Such preventative counter-terrorism policies adopted internationally have proved to be controversial, as fierce criticisms of Britain’s Prevent strategy have shown.

In some cases, subsequent modifications have attempted to address these criticisms but the negative public understanding of Prevent has stuck, based on those original criticisms.

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Is it time to give up on evidence-based policy? Four answers

Evidence-based policy, Policy & Politics,

richard frenchRichard D. French

This blog post was originally published on the Discover Society – Policy and Politics blog on 2 January 2019.

I have watched an enthusiastic, well-intentioned lobby for evidence-based policy on my campus for several years. However, I frequently reflect that if I were to opine publicly on evolutionary biology, or astrophysics, with as little knowledge of the subject as various scientifically trained persons hold forth on public policy, I would soon be read out of the intellectually reputable part of the university community – and rightly so.

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The Role of Public Sector Boards

Governance, Policy & Politics, Public sector management, , ,

Thomas SchillemansThomas Schillemans

For many organisations providing important public services, such as education, health care or community services, non-governing boards serve as the primary accountability mechanisms for daily management. The ‘boardisation of the public sector’, as Wilks described this, has evolved considerably. In my country of residence the Netherlands, for instance, the guesstimation is that we have almost 50,000 positions on those boards, six times as many as in democratically elected local councils. A large proportion of those positions have been created in the recent past. This would suggest that the board model is a major success.

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How are social impact bonds created and implemented?

Policy & Politics, Social Policy, , ,

Lowe_Kimmitt_Wilson_Gibbon2Toby Lowe, Jonathan Kimmitt, Rob Wilson, Mike Martin* and Jane Gibbon

This blog post was originally published on the Discover Society – Policy and Politics blog on 4 December 2018.

In 2010, the UK’s Ministry of Justice established the first Social Impact Bond (SIB) – a new policy tool, designed to link the outcomes of social interventions to payments. The idea was that the financial risk of these interventions would be borne by a private investor rather than public funds. In our recent research article published in Policy & Politics, we set out to offer one of the first detailed accounts of how these mechanisms are created and implemented. Our results highlight three levels of analysis (macro, intermediate and micro) where tensions and congruencies can be found.

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Meeting the Challenge of Populism: The Future of Governance and Public Management

Policy & Politics, , , , ,

Gerry StokerGerry Stoker

This blog post was originally published on the Discover Society – Policy and Politics blog on 6 November 2018.

In my recent Policy & Politics article, I explore the question of whether the governance paradigm can survive the rise of populism.

The governance paradigm that came to the fore from the 1980s onwards reflected a sense that the conditions for governing in contemporary democratic states were undergoing some profound changes. It encouraged the use of new policy tools: networks and markets. For its advocates, its style of working was not only more effective, but more democratic because it allowed a wider range of people direct influence over making decisions.

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Free research articles for APPAM 2018 from Policy & Politics on improving policy-making by engaging with evidence

Evidence-based policy, News, Policy & Politics, , ,

Sarah Brown 1Sarah Brown,
Journal Manager of Policy & Politics

In celebration of this year’s APPAM theme of improving policy-making by developing and engaging with evidence, we bring you the latest and best of our research on this topic. From our prize-winning article on Evidence translation: an exploration of policy makers’ use of evidence by Jo Ingold and Mark Monaghan, which defines a new conceptual model of evidence translation highlighting the crucial role evidence plays in the policy process, to Richard French’s exploration of answers to the question whether it is time to give up on evidence based policy.

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Policy & Politics Highlights: our Winter collection

News, Policy & Politics, , , , ,

Sarah Brown 1Sarah Brown,
Journal Manager of Policy & Politics

Policy & Politics Highlights collection 1 November 2018 – 31 January 2019.

For our Winter Highlights collection from Policy & Politics, we’ve chosen three of the most popular articles from our recent special issue on Practical Lessons from Policy Theories.

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