Governing policy evaluation? Towards a new typology

As policy evaluation matures, thoughts are turning to its governance. However, few scholars have combined insights from the evaluation and governance literatures to shed new light on this matter. In order to address this important gap, this article develops a new typology of ways to comprehend and perhaps ultimately govern ex-post policy evaluation activities. The article then explores its validity in the context of climate policy evaluation activities, a vibrant policy area in which the demand for and practices of evaluation have grown fast, particularly in Europe. The analysis reveals that the typology usefully guides new thinking, but also highlights important gaps in our empirical knowledge of the various modes of governing policy evaluation. The article identifies a need for a new research agenda that simultaneously develops a fuller understanding of these evaluation practices and the options for governing them

Architectures of control in consumer product design

Copyright @ 2005 Social Services Research GroupThe idea of architectures of control is introduced through examples ranging from urban planning to digital rights management, and the intentions behind their use in consumer products are examined, with reference to case studies of printer cartridges and proposed 'optimum lifetime products.' The reactions of the technical community and consumers themselves are also explored, along with some wider implications for society

A marine heat wave drives massive losses from the world\u27s largest seagrass carbon stocks.

Seagrass ecosystems contain globally significant organic carbon (C) stocks. However, climate change and increasing frequency of extreme events threaten their preservation. Shark Bay, Western Australia, has the largest C stock reported for a seagrass ecosystem, containing up to 1.3% of the total C stored within the top metre of seagrass sediments worldwide. On the basis of field studies and satellite imagery, we estimate that 36% of Shark Bay’s seagrass meadows were damaged following a marine heatwave in 2010/2011. Assuming that 10 to 50% of the seagrass sediment C stock was exposed to oxic conditions after disturbance, between 2 and 9 Tg CO2 could have been released to the atmosphere during the following three years, increasing emissions from land-use change in Australia by 4–21% per annum. With heatwaves predicted to increase with further climate warming, conservation of seagrass ecosystems is essential to avoid adverse feedbacks on the climate system

The Conundrum of Order: The Concept of Governance from an Interdisciplinary Perspective

The term governance has made an impressive career in a number of disciplines concerned with regulation, order and law. This chapter draws on insights from legal studies, sociology, political science, anthropology, history and geography to paint a multifaceted picture of existing, competing and complementing approaches to the concept of governance. For reasons of space, the chapter can but point to the different variations on a theme, as governance occupies an ambivalent place in past and present discourses on political (or, legal or economic) order and society. It is argued that beyond pointing to crucial phases of methodological and theoretical transformation within different disciplines such as the often perceived transition ‘from government to governance’, governance is itself a deeply interdisciplinary concept