DOING POLICY IN THE LAB! OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE USE OF MODEL-BASED POLICY ANALYSIS FOR COMPLEX DECISION-MAKING

For models to have an impact on policy-making, they need to be used. Exploring the relationships between policy models, model uptake and policy dynamics is the core of this article. What particular role can policy models play in the analysis and design of policies? Which factors facilitate (inhibit) the uptake of models by policy-makers? What are possible pathways to further develop modelling approaches to better meet the challenges facing agriculture today? In this paper, we address these issues from three different points of view, each of which should shed some light on the subject. The first point of view discusses models in the framework of complex adaptive systems and uncertainty. The second point of view looks at the dynamic interplay between policies and models using the example of modelling in agricultural economics. The third point of view addresses conditions for a successful application of models in policy analysis.modelling, complexity, participatory modelling, policy analysis, model use, Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Resilience: an all-encompassing solution to global problems? A biopolitical analysis of resilience in the policies of EC, FEMA, UNDP, USAID, WB, and WEF

This thesis examines the use of resilience in international policy-making. A concept that originally meant an ability of ecosystems to absorb disturbance has not only been welcomed in many disciplines outside ecology, but lately become popular in the policies of international organisations that claim resilience as a solution to various ‘global problems’ such as climate change, underdevelopment, or economic crises. The study contributes to the ongoing critical discussion on the governance effects of resilience. Here, the Foucauldian theory of biopolitics and the concept of governmentality are useful. Resilience now addresses human systems and communities with concepts from natural sciences, thus making it a biopolitical phenomenon. Specifically, the thesis asks how mainstreaming resilience affects the pursuit of agendas in six organisations: European Commission, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United Nations Development Programme, United States Agency for International Development, World Bank, and World Economic Forum. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, the study is thematically divided into adaptive, entrepreneurial and governing aspects of resilience. Each part explicates how truth, power and subjectivity are constructed in the discourse. The analysis shows that contrary to the policy claims, resilience does not function as a solution but is constitutive of the problems it attempts to solve. The current policy discourse confirms pre-existing practices and power relations, and further problematizes issues on the agendas. The thesis confirms that the policies are trapped in a neoliberal biopolitics that has problematic implications for human subjectivity and political agency. It further concludes that if resilience is to have any practical relevance and positive effects, the policy discourse has to be changed, for which current critical accounts do not offer a plausible direction. Therefore, a distinction between resilience as a policy tool and social resilience is needed, whereby the use of resilience as a policy solution is reduced to disaster risk reduction and similar technical functions, and social resilience is recognised as a communal capacity that cannot be subject to policy regulation

Adaptive Governance and Resilience Capacity of Farms: The Fit Between Farmers’ Decisions and Agricultural Policies

Greater resilience is needed for farms to deal with shocks and disturbances originating from economic, environmental, social and institutional challenges, with resilience achieved by adequate adaptive governance. This study focuses on the resilience capacity of farms in the context of multi-level adaptive governance. We define adaptive governance as adjustments in decision-making processes at farm level and policy level, through changes in management practices and policies in response to identified challenges and the delivery of desired functions (e.g. private and public goods) to be attained. The aim of the study is twofold. First, we investigate how adaptive governance processes at farm level and policy level influence the resilience capacity of farms in terms of robustness, adaptability and transformability. Second, we investigate the “fit” between the adaptive governance processes at farm level and policy level to enable resilience. We study primary egg and broiler production in Sweden taking into consideration economic, social and environmental challenges. We use semi-structured interviews with 17 farmers to explain the adaptive processes at farm level and an analysis of policy documents from the Common Agricultural Policy program 2014–2020, to explain the intervention actions taken by the Common Agricultural Policy. Results show that neither the farm level nor policy level adaptive processes on their own have the capacity to fully enable farms to be robust, adaptable and transformable. While farm level adaptive processes are mainly directed toward securing the robustness and adaptability of farms, policy level interventions are targeted at enabling adaptability. The farm- and the policy level adaptive processes do not “fit” for attaining robustness and transformability

Environmental policy making in highly contested contexts: the success of adaptive-collaborative approaches

This thesis examines the successes and failures of different approaches to environmental policy making in contexts where the level of conflict are significant, both in intensity and complexity. In this thesis the term policy making is used to cover three elements: the way that a policy is formulated, the decision making process to select the policy instruments, and the nature of the policy instruments used or proposed to be used. The research question here is “what policy making approach is most likely to succeed in highly contested contexts where levels of conflict are significant, both in intensity and complexity?” This research is built on the key proposition that some policy making approaches are, by their nature, better suited to highly contested contexts than others.The communicative/deliberative turn in planning was the starting theoretical framework for understanding how policy making can be carried out in highly contested contexts. It was argued that this framework has great value in understanding the processes involved in dealing with conflict, but that there are shortcomings. In particular, conflict is seen largely as a social problem, but conflict in environmental policy making often involves so-called wicked problems, where the conflict is deeper, more complex and involving longer timeframes than most planning conflicts. This thesis constructs a framework that describes the nature of conflict, with three broad themes being defined: social, governance, and science and information. It is argued that conflict is most likely where the resources at the centre of the conflict are scarce.Three types of scarcity are identified — decreasing quantity of a resource, increasing demand on a resource, and reducing quality of a resource.Four broad policy making approaches are defined: * The traditional expert-driven approach — a highly centralised approach dominated by the expert regulators using predominately science-based technical and statutory policy mechanisms; * The ecological modern approach — a more participative but still largely sciencebased approach, favouring the use of either market-based or voluntary policy mechanisms; * The collaborative approach — a highly participative form of policy making that does not necessarily favour a particular type of policy mechanism; and * The adaptive–collaborative approach — a special case of collaborative policy making where adaptive management measures are adopted to deal with the uncertainty of the science and information.These four approaches are analysed for their likely capacity to be successful in contexts where conflict is significant, and it is proposed that the first two are unlikely to be successful, whereas the two collaborative approaches, especially the adaptive– collaborative approach, would be successful where all the types of conflict are present.A qualitative multiple case study methodology was adopted to address the research question and to test the finding of the literature review, focusing primarily on the policy making of Western Australian (WA) Environmental Protection Authority (EPA - the peak environmental agency in WA). A specific methodology to determine policy making success or failure (evaluation) has been developed and applied in this study, involving the use of four evaluation criteria.The review of policy making by the EPA showed that whilst its policy making in cases where conflict was low were successful, it failed in cases where conflict was significant. It was noted that in all cases the policy making approaches adopted were either traditional expert– driven or ecological modern and not either of the two collaborative approaches, which, it was noted, was consistent with the finding of the literature review and would explain the policy failures in cases where conflict was significant.It was argued that recent policy making of the EPA shows some promise in dealing with conflict. This was because it has developed its Environmental Protection Policies (EPPs) more collaboratively, involving an additional complementary policy: the EPP sets high level objectives and deals with specific non–negotiable issues; and the more prescriptive implementation policy contains the detailed policy and management measures that would achieve the objectives in the EPP. These are called concurrent–complementary policies.A key part of this thesis is an in–depth analysis of a particular policy making exercise (major case study) set in a context where the three elements of conflict were significant, and the three resource scarcity types were present. The case study was Cockburn Sound, a large marine embayment approximately 20 kms south of Perth. Two concurrent–complementary policies were developed, and it was shown that the policy making approach of the implementation policy was adaptive–collaborative, and it was evaluated as being successful on all the four criteria. It was also noted that the draft EPP was a traditional expert–driven policy approach (although with a much improved level of participation) and that, it was evaluated as being unsuccessful on two of the four criteria — performance effectiveness and political support.The thesis concludes with a discussion of the broader implications for environmental policy making that can be drawn from this work, notably: that five policy making scenarios can be identified based on the nature and extent of conflict present, and recommendations made as to which policy making approach should be applied in each scenario

Study of Post-Natural Disaster Management Policy Implementation in Palu City: A Grindle Theory Approach to Policy Content

This research aims to examine the implementation of post-natural disaster management policies in Palu City by applying Grindle's theoretical approach to policy content. Palu City, as a disaster-prone area, has a history that underlies the urgency of this research. A qualitative approach with non-probability sampling techniques is used to understand in more depth the dynamics and complexity of post-disaster management policies. Primary data was obtained through in-depth interviews with informants selected purposefully, including affected residents, government institutions, and related non-government organizations. The research results highlight various aspects of the implementation of post-disaster management policies in Palu City. Constraints in land acquisition and budget limitations are the main challenges. Data analysis through Grindle's theoretical approach reveals the importance of considering policy content, such as the types of benefits produced and desired changes, as well as the policy context, including the roles and interests of the actors involved. This research also includes an evaluation of community perceptions of the policy and their level of participation in its implementation. By considering theoretical and practical aspects, this research provides a solid foundation for recommending more effective policy improvements focused on meeting the needs of affected communities and improving disaster preparedness and management in the future. Finally, this research has important implications for making policies that are more adaptive and responsive to the local disaster context and community aspirations

Reviewing agent-based modelling of socio-ecosystems: a methodology for the analysis of climate change adaptation and sustainability

The integrated - environmental, economic and social - analysis of climate change calls for a paradigm shift as it is fundamentally a problem of complex, bottom-up and multi-agent human behaviour. There is a growing awareness that global environmental change dynamics and the related socio-economic implications involve a degree of complexity that requires an innovative modelling of combined social and ecological systems. Climate change policy can no longer be addressed separately from a broader context of adaptation and sustainability strategies. A vast body of literature on agent-based modelling (ABM) shows its potential to couple social and environmental models, to incorporate the influence of micro-level decision making in the system dynamics and to study the emergence of collective responses to policies. However, there are few publications which concretely apply this methodology to the study of climate change related issues. The analysis of the state of the art reported in this paper supports the idea that today ABM is an appropriate methodology for the bottom-up exploration of climate policies, especially because it can take into account adaptive behaviour and heterogeneity of the system's components.Review, Agent-Based Modelling, Socio-Ecosystems, Climate Change, Adaptation, Complexity.

Practicing the Future: Implementing "The Policy Exercise Concept"

Methods to synthesize and assess scientific information for use in policy making range from large models to expert committees, from scenario driven free-form gaming sessions to fast and simple model building workshops. Each method has its own merits and shortcomings in general terms and each is better than the other for a particular set of practical problems. In this paper, a new approach called the policy exercise is presented. The procedural roots of this approach are to be found in free-form gaming, the Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management (AEAM) technique, and operational gaming. A policy exercise is a flexibly structured process designed to act as an interface between academics and policy makers. Its function is to synthesize and assess knowledge accumulated in several relevant fields of science for policy purposes in light of complex practical management problems. Scenario writing of "future histories" and scenario analysis via the interactive formulation and testing of alternative policies that respond to challenges in the scenarios are at the heart of the policy exercise. After describing the project background and some special concerns about formulating a procedure for a policy exercise, a general overview is provided to define roles, and some of the rules and activities in the process. Scenarios are the most important building blocks of the policy exercise procedure. Four types are defined and discussed in Section 2. This is followed by a detailed outline of the prccedure through its three phases: preparations, workshop, and evaluation

Adaptive Policies in the Family Hope Program (PKH) to achieve Sustainable Development Goals in Pangkep Regency

In general, the objectives of this study are: (1) To describe how the implementation of poverty reduction policies through the Family Hope Program (PKH) in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Pangkep Regency; (2) To find out the obstacles to the implementation of poverty reduction policies through the Family Hope Program (PKH) in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Pangkep Regency. This study used a qualitative descriptive method with informants selected through the snowball technique. Data collection methods used in this study are interviews, observations, and documents related to the research. The data collected was then analyzed using the Interactive Analysis Model of Miles, Huberman & Saldana.  Based on the results of the research, the implementation of poverty reduction policies through the Family Hope Program (PKH) in Pangkep Regency concerning assisting the Adaptive Policies theory according to Swanson & Bhadwal (2009), 5 out of 7 indicators have been implemented properly to successfully achieve Goal 1 of SDGs 2030 which related to integrated and forward-looking analysis, automatic policy adjustment, decentralization of decision-making, promoting variation, and formal policy review and continuous learning. However, 2 of them have not been optimal, namely related to multistakeholder deliberation and enabling self-organization and social networking. The research found obstacles in the implementation of these policies were the lack of involvement of the private sector, geographical constraints of the region, and the mindset of the community in receiving assistance

Adaptive Two-stage Stochastic Programming with an Application to Capacity Expansion Planning

Multi-stage stochastic programming is a well-established framework for sequential decision making under uncertainty by seeking policies that are fully adapted to the uncertainty. Often such flexible policies are not desirable, and the decision maker may need to commit to a set of actions for a number of planning periods. Two-stage stochastic programming might be better suited to such settings, where the decisions for all periods are made here-and-now and do not adapt to the uncertainty realized. In this paper, we propose a novel alternative approach, where the stages are not predetermined but part of the optimization problem. Each component of the decision policy has an associated revision point, a period prior to which the decision is predetermined and after which it is revised to adjust to the uncertainty realized thus far. We motivate this setting using the multi-period newsvendor problem by deriving an optimal adaptive policy. We label the proposed approach as adaptive two-stage stochastic programming and provide a generic mixed-integer programming formulation for finite stochastic processes. We show that adaptive two-stage stochastic programming is NP-hard in general. Next, we derive bounds on the value of adaptive two-stage programming in comparison to the two-stage and multi-stage approaches for a specific problem structure inspired by the capacity expansion planning problem. Since directly solving the mixed-integer linear program associated with the adaptive two-stage approach might be very costly for large instances, we propose several heuristic solution algorithms based on the bound analysis. We provide approximation guarantees for these heuristics. Finally, we present an extensive computational study on an electricity generation capacity expansion planning problem and demonstrate the computational and practical impacts of the proposed approach from various perspectives

The Resilience of Public Policies in Economic Development

This paper studies the resilience of public policies that governments design for catalyzing economic development. This property depends on the extent to which behavioral heuristics and spillover effects allow policymakers to attain their original goals when a particular policy cannot be funded as originally planned. This scenario takes place, for example, when unanticipated events such as natural disasters or political turmoil obstruct the use of resources to advance certain policy issues, e.g., infrastructure or labor reforms. Here, we analyze how the adaptive capacity of the policy-making process generates resilience in the face of disruptions. In order to estimate the allocation of resources across policies, we employ a computational model that accounts for diverse social mechanisms, for example, coevolutionary learning and network interdependencies. In our simulations, we use a data set of 117 countries on 79 development indicators over an 11-year period. Then, we calculate a resilience score corresponding to each development indicator via counter-factual analysis of policy disruptions. Next, we assess whether some development strategies produce resilient/fragile policy profiles. Finally, by studying the relationship between policy resilience and policy priority, we determine which issues are bottlenecks to economic development