The Political Hand: Policy Implementation and Youth Employment Programs

1986 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Levin ◽  
Barbara Ferman
2006 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 891-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Strauss

The early to mid-1950s are conventionally viewed as a time when China broke sharply with the past and experienced a “golden age” of successful policy implementation and widespread support from the population. This article shows that the period should be seen as neither “golden age” nor precursor for disaster. Rather it should be seen as a period when the Chinese Communist Party's key mechanisms of state reintegration and instruction of the population – the political campaign and “stirring up” via public accusation sessions – were widely disseminated throughout China, with variable results. The campaigns for land reform and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries show that levels of coercion and violence were extremely high in the early 1950s, and the campaign to clean out revolutionaries in 1955 and after suggests some of the limits of mobilizational campaigns.


2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110432
Author(s):  
Jordan Greene ◽  
Kristin Seefeldt

Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) help connect youth to opportunities for career exploration, skill development, and mentorship. Despite heightened investment in SYEPs, research regarding positive impacts is limited. Most of the common SYEP evaluation strategies are rooted in deficit thinking and focus on outcomes such as reducing violent crime, risk behaviors, gaps in unemployment, and increasing educational attainment. Despite recent shifts toward approaches that acknowledge structural oppression in adolescent research more broadly, evaluations of SYEPs often perpetuate a discourse of deficiency about marginalized communities by emphasizing disparities without acknowledging the systemic forces that create them. In this article, we utilize the Five Cs of Positive Youth Development to present an alternative set of outcomes identified from focus groups and surveys with youth ages 16 to 24 who participated in SummerWorks, a 10-week SYEP located in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Specifically, we find that SYEPs may help youth make the transition to adulthood, build community and increase their social capital, and access knowledge, resources, and opportunities. Through this approach, we hope to expand the literature on the impacts of SYEPs and encourage antiracist evaluation strategies that build on these findings and challenge deficit thinking.


Author(s):  
Eva Sørensen

The legitimacy of representative democracy hinges on its ability to implement the policies that politicians make. Citizens may experience that their interests and viewpoints are taken into account in the political process, that the political process is fair, and that policies made are relevant and convincing responses to the problems they experience and aspirations they have. If policy implementation fails, it is likely to have a negative effect on citizens’ assessments of the efficiency and effectiveness of the political system, its executive institutions, and the competence and skill of incumbent political authorities. It reduces the political system’s outcome legitimacy. New theories of co-production and co-creation and research into how public and private actors work together to promote public value suggest that successful implementation of policy outcomes is more likely when relevant and affected societal actors are involved. This involving approach to getting things done leads to the formulation of a concept of socio-political implementation referring to co-created policy-implementation. Most of the socio-political implementation research tends to overlook the important role of politics and political leadership for successful co-creation of policy implementation. Chapter 7 argues that politicians have a crucial role to play as interactive political leaders of co-created policy implementation.


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