Public policy that does the right thing rather than the wrong thing righter

Motivated by the reprisal of ‘wicked problems’ in Australian public policy discourse we make the case for understanding climate change adaptation, water and river managing, and other complex, uncertain, natural resource issues as ‘wicked problems’. This ‘framing’ of social planning dilemmas dates back 40 years yet public policy practitioners still do not seem well equipped in terms of understandings and practices to engage with these situations and to effect systemic improvements. Drawing on a decade of research in Europe we make the case for investing in social learning as an alternative governance mechanism and as a form of praxis for managing in ‘wicked problem’ situations. We outline our main research findings to explain how we understand and enact social learning. In doing so, we also draw on the Open University UK’s 35 years of experience of teaching systems thinking and practice for managing ‘wicked problems’. We conclude by opening up an invitational space to explore the commonalities and differences in research on social learning with that on deliberative practices and governance

Can islands of effectiveness thrive in difficult governance settings ? the political economy of local-level collaborative governance

Many low-income countries contend with a governance syndrome characterized by a difficult combination of seeming openness, weak institutions, and strong inter-elite contestation for power and resources. In such countries, neither broad-based policy nor public management reforms are likely to be feasible. But are broad-based approaches necessary? Theory and evidence suggest that in such settings progress could be driven by"islands of effectiveness"-- narrowly-focused initiatives that combine high-quality institutional arrangements at the micro-level, plus supportive, narrowly-targeted policy reforms. This paper explores whether and how local-level collaborative governance can provide a platform for these islands of effectiveness. Drawing on the analytical framework developed by the Nobel-prize winning social scientist Elinor Ostrom, the paper reviews the underpinnings of successful collaborative governance. It introduces a simple model for exploring the interactions between collaborative governance and political economy. The model highlights the conditions under which coordination is capable of countering threats from predators seeking to capture the returns from collaborative governance for themselves. The relative strength in the broader environment of two opposing networks emerges as key --"threat networks"to which predators have access, and countervailing"trumping networks"on which protagonists of effective collaborative governance can draw. The paper illustrates the potential practical relevance of the approach with three heuristic examples: the governance of schools, fisheries, and road construction and maintenance. It concludes by laying out an agenda for further empirical research, and suggesting what might be the implications of the approach for future operational practice.Governance Indicators,National Governance,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance

Assuming Personal Responsibility for Improving the Environment: Moving Toward a New Environmental Norm

There is general agreement that we are nearing the end of achieving major gains in pollution abatement from traditional sources, that a significant portion of the remaining environmental problems facing this country is caused by individual behavior, and that efforts to control that behavior have either failed or not even been made. The phenomenon of individuals as irresponsible environmental actors seems counterintuitive when polls show that people consistently rate protecting the environment among their highest priorities, contribute to environmental causes, and are willing to pay more to protect environmental resources. This article is the author\u27s second effort at understanding why people who consider themselves to be “environmentalists” or support environmental causes behave in environmentally destructive ways, and what, if anything, can be done to change that behavior. The first article endorsed expansion of the abstract environmental protection norm to include individual environmental responsibility and concluded that doing this is the most promising approach to overcoming barriers to behavioral change. That article also identified environmental groups as the most effective “norm entrepreneurs” that can bring about widespread change in personal environmental conduct through carefully tailored information campaigns. This article expands on the earlier article’s discussion of the role norms play in influencing personal behavior and why changing them is a critical part of any campaign to make individuals more environmentally responsible. The best way to change norms is through education, as the first article acknowledged, but supplemental measures may be necessary. This article identifies what those additional measures might be and assesses their effectiveness. A third article will explore how republican theory supports the critical role that education performs in altering public behavior through changing norms. All three articles rest on the premise that the global climate change crisis has created circumstances in which norm change can take place, namely the occurrence of a second environmental republican moment, in which people are open to being educated about their civic responsibilities, including those pertaining to the environment. To develop these ideas, section II provides background information about individual contributions to environmental problems. Section III discusses various barriers to changing personal environmental behavior, such as the role federal laws play in perpetuating the myth that only industry is responsible for environmental harm. That section also explores certain cognitive heuristics that influence how people process information and personal barriers to changing behavior such as habits, inconvenience, cost, unavailability of alternatives, and self-interest. The role of norms in influencing behavior and how norms are formed and changed are examined in section IV. Next, section V investigates how a new norm of environmental responsibility might arise and displace competing norms. However, that section recognizes that the development of a new norm may not be an easy task because of some of the same barriers identified in section III. In section VI, acknowledging that neither norms nor the happenstance of an environmental republican moment will inexorably lead to changes in personal behavior, various norm and behavior-changing tools, such as public education, shaming and other sanctions, and market-based incentives are identified. Section VI examines the inherent strengths and weaknesses of these tools, as well as particular problems with their application to individual behavior. Section VII concludes that no single approach will work, but a combination of any or all of the above, depending on the source and nature of the problem, is called for. However, any combination of tools must include public education if a permanent new environmental norm is to emerge and change individual behavior in the long term

Social norms and human normative psychology

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch a cognitive evolutionary approach for developing explanations of social change that is anchored on the psychological mechanisms underlying normative cognition and the transmission of social norms. We throw the relevant features of this approach into relief by comparing it with the self-fulfilling social expectations account developed by Bicchieri and colleagues. After describing both accounts, we argue that the two approaches are largely compatible, but that the cognitive evolutionary approach is well- suited to encompass much of the social expectations view, whose focus on a narrow range of norms comes at the expense of the breadth the cognitive evolutionary approach can provide

COIN@AAMAS2015

COIN@AAMAS2015 is the nineteenth edition of the series and the fourteen papers included in these proceedings demonstrate the vitality of the community and will provide the grounds for a solid workshop program and what we expect will be a most enjoyable and enriching debate.Peer reviewe