74 research outputs found
Public Policy Analysis: Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle
I am extremely grateful for the honour that the UAB has bestowed on me today. Even if I have a lingering feeling that I do not really deserve it, I am not only very happy to receive it but also very proud of it. It shows that my efforts of the past fifty years have been recognized as worthwhile by my colleagues and friends. My pride, however, does not prevent me from understanding that this doctorate has not been awarded to me in recognition of any earth-shattering “discovery” able to alter t..
When red tape saves time: The Anti-corruption controls for the 2015 Universal Exposition
When a major corruption scandal emerged during the organisation of the 2015 Universal Exposition in Milan, the government set up a brand-new system of preliminary controls for the procurement of all Expo contracts. Controls can certainly be beneficial in many respects, but they inevitably complicate procedures and even produce delays and red tape. Indeed, for a time-pressed schedule as that of the 2015 Expo, preliminary controls were considered a fatal blow. Contrary to expectations, not only bureaucratic delays did not materialise, but controls actually sped up procedures. Therefore, it is worth explaining and learning from this unique outcome. Can it be replicated in other cases? We answer this question by building a model of controls based on programme and non-programme features that support three causal mechanisms: threat attribution, repeated interactions, and actor certification. Such a model is an indispensable tool for designers; it allows to explain how controls work in practice and provide clues on how to adjust the design of the policy to changing contexts. In this respect, the analysis of the Expo controls and their subsequent replications raises several methodological issues relevant to extrapolation-oriented research
Horse allergens: An underestimated risk for allergic sensitization in an urban atopic population without occupational exposure
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The effect of pet ownership on the risk of allergic sensitisation and bronchial asthma
AbstractAn increasing volume of evidence suggests that early contact of children with the allergens of furred pets (especially those produced by cats) may determine a lower risk of developing allergic sensitisation to these materials. A possible explanation of this data is that an early inhalation of high levels of the major cat allergen Fel d 1 induces the production of IgG and IgG4 antibodies with a “protective” effect.Other authors have shown that the prevalence of allergic sensitisation to cats, in adults, is reduced in those patients exposed to the lowest and highest levels of the allergens. On the contrary, the risk of developing sensitisation to cats is significantly higher when the patients were exposed to intermediate levels of Fel d 1. Moreover, epidemiological studies have demonstrated a relatively low prevalence of cat allergy (about 10%) in some countries where rates of cat ownership are high.This data confirms the role of indirect exposure to pet allergens in inducing allergic sensitisation. Clothes of pet owners have been indicated as the carriers for the dispersal of these allergens in pet-free environments. However, it is important to point out that exposure of highly sensitised patients to relevant amounts of pet allergens (such as in a pet shows/shops) may determine a dramatic exacerbation of nasal and/or bronchial symptoms
Understanding Policy Decisions
The aim of this textbook is to introduce students and young researchers to the analysis of the decision making process. More precisely it provides a conceptual framework that can be used both for understanding how public policy decisions are taken and for designing strategies able to overcome the obstacles that make policy change difficult.
As will be explained in the following pages it is only to be expected that in contemporary political systems policy innovation (i.e. the transformation of the ways in which collective problems are dealt with) is difficult. This is a common feature of modern democracies and no amount of tinkering with the institutional settings within which policy making take place is bound to make it disappear.
Furthermore the new and novel challenges that governments, at all levels, have to face if, on the one hand, make policy innovation all the more necessary, on the other hand add further obstacles to an already difficult enterprise.
This book is built on the premise that there is no simple solution to this problem. For instance there is not a shred of evidence that a specific organizational or procedural arrangement is systematically better at making policy innovation possible. This is a field in which there are no universal truths to transmit to the students.
However there is a vast body of literature that in the last decades has investigated how policy is made and which factors play a role in explaining decisional success and decisional failure. The social and managerial sciences can therefore provide some guidance in the form of identifying said factors.
This book tries to go a step further. It contains a conceptual framework i.e. the specification of different variables explaining decisional outcomes. The advice to the policy innovator – the policy entrepreneur as it is known in the literature – is to pay attention to all these elements and to their combination in specific contexts. Only the careful analysis of the individual decision making process can substantiate the judgment about the feasibility of the transformation at the same time giving useful inputs for building the most appropriate decisional strategies.
In other words the possibility to introduce policy reforms with minimal strife depends strictly on the ability to correctly “read” the decisional situation. The “art and craft” of public policy analysis, as suggested by Aaron Wildavsky, one of the fathers of the discipline, is able to improve governance if it combines intellectual rigueur with an hands-on experience in treating collective problems. From this point of view a vast knowledge of substantive policy fields is useful if and only if it is coupled with a realistic theory of how public policies take shape. I hope that this book is able at least partly to contribute to increase the understanding of the ways in which the political systems process policy proposals, sometimes rejecting them and sometimes adopting more or less transformed versions of them.
It is my firm belief that decisional analysis, if correctly taught and learned, makes it possible to formulate reliable predictions about the feasibility of policy change and, more in general, to improve policy making.
This implies a familiarity with the analytical tools as well as an ability to identify the correct methodologies
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