scholarly journals The Importance of Context and the Effect of Information and Deliberation on Opinion Change Regarding Environmental Issues in Citizens’ Juries

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9852
Author(s):  
Andrew G.H. Thompson ◽  
Oliver Escobar ◽  
Jennifer J. Roberts ◽  
Stephen Elstub ◽  
Niccole M. Pamphilis
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Least Squares Regression ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Opinion Change ◽  
Information Giving ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Climate Action

Citizens’ juries have become a popular method for engaging citizens in deliberation about complex public policy issues, such as climate action and sustainable development. Empirical evidence routinely indicates that jurors change their minds throughout the process. What is less clear is when and why this occurs and whether the causes are consistent across juries that consider the same topic but are situated within different contexts. We present evidence of opinion change in citizens’ juries through a natural experiment, contrasting three local contexts of onshore windfarm development in Scotland; viz. existing, planned, and absent. Jurors’ individual opinions of climate change, wind energy, and windfarms were measured through questionnaires at four time points: the start, following information-giving, reflection, and deliberation. Statistical examination of jurors’ responses, through paired sample t-tests, Wilcoxon sign-tests, and Generalised Least Squares regression, reveals to what extent substantive changes were associated with different phases and locational contexts. In all three juries, opinion change occurs throughout the process, on different topics, and to different degrees. While the information phase consistently influences jurors’ opinions the most, jury composition affects the magnitude and direction of opinion change, with outcomes contingent on contexts. Our findings are important for informing how mini-publics are designed and used to inform environmental policy-making at different scales.

UK Television Policy and Regulation, 2000–10

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Media Ownership ◽  
Communications Policy ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Digital Services ◽  
Broadcasting Regulation ◽  
Structural Regulation

Between 2000 and 2010, new institutional arrangements were created for UK broadcasting regulation, built upon a radical rethinking of communications policy. This article examines key changes arising from Labour's media policy, the Communications Act 2003 and the work of Ofcom. It argues that changes within broadcasting were less radical than the accompanying rhetoric, and that contradictory tendencies set limits to dominant trends of marketisation and liberalisation. The article explores these tendencies by reviewing the key broadcasting policy issues of the decade including policies on the BBC, commercial public service and commercial broadcasting, spectrum and digital switchover, and new digital services. It assesses changes in the structural regulation of media ownership, the shift towards behavioural competition regulation, and the regulation of media content and commercial communications. In doing so, it explores policy rationales and arguments, and examines tensions and contradictions in the promotion of marketisation, the discourses of market failure, political interventions, and the professionalisation of policy-making.

scholarly journals How party platforms on immigration become policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Tobias Böhmelt ◽  
Lawrence Ezrow
Keyword(s):  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Party Platforms ◽  
Legislative Activity ◽  
Do So

Abstract We focus on one of the most salient policy issues of our time, immigration, and evaluate whether the salience of immigration in governing parties’ manifestos translates into actual legislative activity on immigration. We contend that democratic policymakers have genuine incentives to do so. Furthermore, we argue that the country context matters for pledge fulfillment, and we find that the migration salience of governing parties’ manifestos more strongly translates into policy activity when the level of immigration restrictions is higher and when countries’ economies perform well. This research has important implications for our understanding of the relationships between economic performance, democratic representation and immigration policy making.

Missing in Action: Experiences of women with climate journalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zofeen Ebrahim
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Environmental Activism ◽  
Female Journalists ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Media ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Missing In Action ◽  
Experiences Of Women

This booklet narrates the stories of five female journalists from Pakistan who are working on environment- and climate-change-related issues. Women are being disproportionately and adversely impacted by climate change and female journalists are uniquely placed to understand and share their stories. However, these journalists are ‘missing in action’ from the media in sharing their experiences of environmental activism and climate action. The publication covers a range of challenges journalists face, from limitations on mobility and harassment, to gender-based discrimination in media houses. It highlights why environmental issues sometimes make headlines while remaining dormant at others.

Government Officials, Academics, and the Process of Formulating U.S. National Security Policy Toward Africa

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Larry W. Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Phone Call ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Government ◽  
Research Contract ◽  
The U.S

Relationships between U.S. government officials and academic specialists working on national security and foreign policy issues with respect to Africa are many and complex. They can be as informal as a phone call or passing conversation or as formalized as a consulting arrangement or research contract. Many contacts exist and there is no doubt that many in both government and the academy value these ties. There have been, however, ongoing controversies about what settings and what topics are appropriate to the government/academic interchange. National security and foreign policy-making in the U.S. is an extremely diffuse process.

Oceans and Watersheds: Common Problems, Common Solutions

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 42-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Walker
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Data Exchange ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Marine Policy ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Coastal Policy ◽  
Ocean Science

In its final report, An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy makes a strong case that addressing some of the most pressing coastal and marine policy issues will require developing fundamental information needed to allow policy decisions to be made within an ecosystem-based context. Establishing an effective ocean observing system is clearly one of the most important challenges and opportunities facing the ocean science and policy community. Progress is being made in hardware development, including sensor and platform designs and construction, as well as in data exchange and management, suggesting that a truly useful system for understanding and predicting ocean conditions is technically feasible, if given adequate resources, and lies in the near future.The Commission also points out that actions taking place on land have profound influence on coastal environmental quality. This conclusion has significant implications for the development of information intended to support policy making, especially with regard to two of the most widely recognized coastal policy problems, nutrient pollution and land loss. This article briefly reviews a series of coastal and watershed policy challenges endemic to a specific watershed and coastal region (i.e., the Mississippi River Basin and the northern Gulf of Mexico) to point out: i) that the interrelationship of many watershed and coastal issues is significant, ii) that efforts to acquire adequate information to support effective marine policy decisions can benefit from similar efforts taking place in watersheds, iii) that steps should be taken to ensure that decision makers shaping marine and coastal policy have access to appropriate watershed information, and finally, iv) that in many instances, policy making must dovetail efforts to address watershed and coastal policy issues, in order to increase the likelihood of success.

scholarly journals Climate Dialog, Climate Action: Can Democracy Do the Job?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Young Phillips ◽  
LaVonne Reimer ◽  
Rebecca Turner
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Ipcc Report ◽  
Climate Action

The latest IPCC report forcefully states that immediate, decisive, and large-scale actions are needed to avert climate catastrophe. This essay presumes that democratic governments are best and most desirably positioned to take these actions. Yet in the countries most pivotal to global climate, significant voting blocs are uninterested in environmental issues. The essay urges adding bottom-up dialog between environmental and anti-environmental voters, to current and future top-down technocratic “solutions.” To make this combination result in a unified pro-environment electorate, we must understand: religious objections to environmentalism; the capital-vs.-knowledge strife that slows polluting corporations’ green transitions; and the psychological mechanisms that can make inter-group dialog fruitful.

Democratic Potentials of UN Climate Change Conference Host Government Websites

2016 ◽  
pp. 1544-1570
Author(s):  
Catherine Candano
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
Government Websites ◽  
Host Government

E-government discourse implicates state-produced Websites to enable opportunities and citizen spaces on policy issues, subject to demands to be inclusive, engaging, and free from commercial interests. Policy-making for a global issue like climate change takes place at the inter-governmental United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC). It becomes critical to examine if and how the governments hosting this restrictive global policy-making space may engage citizens through their online presence—host country conference outreach Websites. The chapter explores relational underpinnings between states and citizens in such Websites by examining the values privileged by designers using mixed methods. Among UNCCC Websites from 2007 to 2009, the Danish government Website's enhanced features may have contributed to potential inclusivity for the inter-governmental process online compared to previous government's efforts. However, findings have shown such interactive Website's inherent design aspects may potentially shape the manner that climate conversations are limited in an assumed democratized space online.

Environmental Policies for Emergency Management and Public Safety

2019 ◽  
pp. 903-922
Author(s):  
Amidu Owolabi Ayeni
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Green Policy ◽  
Or Organization

Policy refers to the commitment of people or organization to the laws, regulations, and other green mechanisms concerning environmental issues. Community participation has become important in government, policy makers, and environmentalists over last few decades, and as a result, it is now an established principle as it is widely used not only in academic literature but in policy-making documents, international discussions, as well as in local debates when considering issues dealing with decision-making to achieve sustainable development. Implementation of green policy and community participation programs through representatives—organization, groups of individuals—enhances the benefits of polices and program and adds value to policy as well as making the policy's results and responses more effective and stronger.

A Computational Agent Model of Flood Management Strategies

2012 ◽  
pp. 522-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Brouwers ◽  
Magnus Boman
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Agent Model ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Robust Decisions ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Stakeholder Communication

A geographically explicit flood simulation model was designed and implemented as a tool for policy making support, illustrated here with two simple flood management strategies pertaining to the Upper Tisza area in Hungary. The model integrates aspects of the geographical, hydrological, economical, land use, and social context. The perspectives of different stakeholders are represented as agents that make decisions on whether or not to buy flood insurance. The authors demonstrate that agent-based models can be important for policy issues in general, and for sustainable development policy issues in particular, by aiding stakeholder communication and learning, thereby increasing the chances of reaching robust decisions. The agent-based approach enables the highlighting and communication of distributional effects of policy changes at the micro-level, as illustrated by several graphical representations of outputs from the model.

scholarly journals Responsive versus responsible? Party democracy in times of crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Karremans ◽  
Zoe Lefkofridi
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Contribution ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Responsible Party

This essay introduces a collection of papers dealing with the responsive–responsible dilemma of party government. The political developments surrounding the Eurozone crisis attest that the duties of government and the demands of political representation may at times be in sharp contrast with one another. In such contexts, it becomes hard for parties in government to combine responsiveness with responsible policy-making. Late Peter Mair theorized this phenomenon as the increasing bifurcation between the growing complexity of governing in a world of interdependence and the need to respond to often polarizing electoral demands. The key question is whether and how in such contexts parties find the balance between their representative and governing duties. The papers included in this special issue deal with this question in the context of the Eurozone crisis and present evidence about parties’ behavior, rhetoric, and policy outputs. In introducing the contributions here, we illustrate how this collective endeavor helps advance the debate on the major challenges to contemporary representative democracy. More specifically, we first discuss how the framework of the responsive–responsible dilemma helps understanding contemporary political developments. We then critically reflect on the distinction between responsiveness and responsibility. Finally, we present how each individual contribution approaches the question of how parties manage the tension between electoral incentives and governmental duties.

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