How Much Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts? Evaluating Interactions Between Complex Policies

This presentation focuses on methods for the evaluation of complex policies. In particular, it focuses on evaluating interactions between policies and the extent to which two or more interacting policies mutually reinforce or hinder one another, in the area of environmental sustainability. Environmental sustainability is increasingly gaining recognition as a complex policy area, requiring a more systemic perspective and approach (e.g. European Commission, 2011). Current trends in human levels of resource consumption are unsustainable, and single solutions which target isolated issues independently of the broader context have so far fallen short. Instead there is a growing call among both academics and policy practitioners for systemic change which acknowledges and engages with the complex interactions, barriers and opportunities across the different actors, sectors, and drivers of production and consumption. Policy mixes, and the combination and ordering of policies within, therefore become an important focus for those aspiring to design and manage transitions to sustainability. To this end, we need a better understanding of the interactions, synergies and conflicts between policies (Cunningham et al., 2013; Geels, 2014). As a contribution to this emerging field of research and to inform its next steps, I present a review on what methods are available to try to quantify the impacts of complex policy interactions, since there is no established method among practitioners, and I explore the merits or value of such attempts. The presentation builds on key works in the field of complexity science (e.g. Anderson, 1972), revisiting and combining these with more recent contributions in the emerging field of policy and complex systems, and evaluation (e.g. Johnstone et al., 2010). With a coalition of UK Government departments, agencies and Research Councils soon to announce the launch of a new internationally-leading centre to pioneer, test and promote innovative and inclusive methods for policy evaluation across the energy-environment-food nexus, the contribution is particularly timely

It\u27s the Autonomy, Stupid!\u27 A Modest Defense of Opinion 2/13 on EU Accession to the ECHR, and the Way Forward

The Court of Justice of the European Union has arrived! Gone are the days of hagiography, when in the eyes of the academy and informed observers the Court could do no wrong. The pendulum has finally swung the other way. The judicial darling, if there is one today, is Strasbourg, not Luxembourg. Not hours had passed before the Court\u27s 258-paragraph long Opinion 2/13 on the Draft Agreement on EU Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights was condemned as “exceptionally poor.” Critical voices have mounted steadily ever since, leading to nothing short of widespread “outrage.

Two neglected poets of late Victorian Scotland:John Luby and James Lynch

This article seeks to offer a way forward in investigating the contribution of a hitherto neglected group of Catholic poets working in Scotland in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The works of John Luby (1856–1925) of Bridgeton and James Lynch (1840/41–1886) of Coatbridge are pre-eminent amongst these writers but they are not alone in their efforts. Others, such as Tom Burns, Thomas McMillan, Francis Joseph, John St Paul and Rev. Bernard Tracy (the first Catholic priest in Scotland to be elected to a school board), are to be found in the pages of magazines and newspapers, especially the Glasgow Observer, the weekly newspaper of the Irish Catholic diaspora in the West of Scotland, established in 1885 and the principal source of the material considered here. This article will introduce Luby and Lynch in turn, dedicating space to what is known of their lives and writings generally before providing an outline of their main concerns in a selection of the Glasgow Observer poems

George Mackay Brown's 'Celia':The Creative Conversion of a Catholic Heroine

Compares the early manuscript and published text of a short story Celia, by the Scottish Orcadian writer, poet, and Catholic convert George Mackay Brown (1921-1996), to examine the depiction of alcoholism in the story, the influence of Graham Greene, and Brown\u27s softening or repression of his original explicit Catholic themes and imagery when revising the story for publication

The role of paradigm analysis in the development of policies for a resource efficient economy

Policy makers are often called upon to navigate between scientists’ urgent calls for long-term concerted action to reduce the environmental impacts due to resource use, and the public’s concerns over policies that threaten lifestyles or jobs. Against these political challenges, resource efficiency policy making is often a changeable and even chaotic process, which has fallen short of the political ambitions set by democratically elected governments. This article examines the importance of paradigms in understanding how the public collectively responds to new policy proposals, such as those developed within the project DYNAmic policy MiXes for absolute decoupling of environmental impact of EU resource use from economic growth (DYNAMIX). The resulting proposed approach provides a framework to understand how different concerns and worldviews converge within public discourse, potentially resulting in paradigm change. Thus an alternative perspective on how resource efficiency policy can be development is proposed, which envisages early policies to lay the ground for future far-reaching policies, by altering the underlying paradigm context in which the public receive and respond to policy. The article concludes by arguing that paradigm change is more likely if the policy is conceived, framed, designed, analyzed, presented, and evaluated from the worldview or paradigm pathway that it seeks to create (i.e. the destination paradigm)

Opioid Settlement Funds: Do Not Neglect Patients With Pain

The opioid crisis has escalated in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic to new extremes and has claimed more than half a million lives in the US since 2000. Lawsuits to address the civil and criminal liability of drug companies and other groups have originated from federal, state, local, and tribal jurisdictions. When successful, there will likely be billions of dollars and significant discretion as to how these funds are spent. Several groups have produced reports with principles to address the toll of addiction using settlement funds. However, they lack actionable strategies to address the needs of patients with pain, including patients with chronic pain who are receiving long-term opioid therapy. Persons with pain should not be neglected and deserve better treatment