Policy learning over a decade or more and the role of interests therein

When individual actors are involved in a policy process, do they assess and revise their policy preferences according to their interests or are they open to other forms of arguments over time? This study examines the effect of policy actors’ interests on policy learning. It is based on a survey conducted in 2012 among 376 Belgian actors (from 38 organizations) involved in the European liberalization policy process of two network industries: the rail and electricity sectors. Borrowing from organizational research and behavioral economics, several hypotheses are drawn from a model of the individual shared by various policy approaches, such as the advocacy coalition framework. A ‘‘simple gain scores’’ approach to the measurement of policy learning is introduced. Regression analyses show that policy actors align their policy preferences with the impacts of policies on their own material well-being (personal interests) and the material prosperity of their organization (organizational interests). This tendency is independent of the importance that policy actors give to their interests in their everyday lives. This suggests that policy actors experience a sort of ‘‘interest shift’’ when they assess their policy preferences over time. This shift, however, exerts a limited influence on policy learning. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Learning in a Belgian Hospital: Conditions of biomedical innovation in the Sector of Health Sciences at the Université catholique de Louvain.

__INTRODUCTION __ This report is part of “Medlearn”. Medlearn is a research project coordinated by Prof. E. MONTPETIT (Université de Montréal, Canada), in collaboration with Prof. D. AUBIN (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium) and Prof. M. ATKINSON (University of Saskatchewan, Canada). Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) are often at the center of biomedical innovation. The objective of this research project is to better understand the conditions of biomedical innovation within AMCs, that is the capacity of diversified actors to work together behind biomedical research. An AMC is composed of a hospital and a faculty of medicine, both depending of an university. For this reason, an AMC has three missions: It provides not only health care services, but also education and research in the field of biomedicine. To meet its objective, Medlearn is composed of two steps. The first step is devoted to qualitative case studies of three AMCs, respectively located in North-America, Europe, and Asia. They aim at familiarising the researchers with the nature of biomedical innovation and with the actor networks who support it in such organizations. The second step of Medlearn consists in a quantitative study of a more extended number of AMCs on the same three continents. It aims at testing the competing hypotheses retrieved from theories and on the basis of the case studies

Policy learning and policy change: Theorizing their relations from different perspectives

All politics and policy issues involve the accumulation of data about problems and solutions in context of social interactions

Analyse du régime institutionnel du secteur ferroviaire en Belgique (1832-2009) [Analysis of the institutional regime of the railways in Belgium]. Final report of the historical analysis of railways for the DUREBEL project

__Abstract__ Ce rapport sur le secteur ferroviaire belge est le premier issu du projet de recherche intitulé « Impacts de la libéralisation sur la durabilité des industries de réseaux de transport : Analyse comparée des secteurs du rail et de laviation civile en Belgique » (DUREBEL). Ce projet a pour objectif danalyser linfluence de la configuration des acteurs et des fonctions de régulation sur la libéralisation des industries de réseaux de transport et détudier les impacts de ces changements sur la durabilité des réseaux. Le projet DUREBEL est financé par le Conseil de la recherche de lUniversité catholique de Louvain (Fonds spéciaux de recherche, janvier 2009 mars 2011). Il est dirigé par le Prof. D. Aubin et réalisé en collaboration avec deux chercheurs en science politique, Stéphane Moyson et François Lohest. Ce projet DUREBEL est conduit en parallèle avec le projet suisse intitulé « Impacts de la libéralisation sur la durabilité des industries de réseau : Une analyse comparée des secteurs ferroviaire et de laviation civile en Suisse » et coordonné par le Prof. S. Nahrath (IUKB, Sion)

Policy learning and policy change: Theorizing their relations from different perspectives

Abstract All politics and policy issues involve the accumulation of data about problems and solutions in context of social interactions. Drawing on these data, policy actors acquire, translate, and disseminate new information and knowledge toward achieving political endeavors and for revising or strengthening their policy-related beliefs over time. ‘Policy learning’ is a concept that refers to this cognitive and social dynamic. Articles in this special issue examine the relationship between policy learning and policy change from different theoretical perspectives. In this introduction to the special issue, we describe the current approaches that structure the field and gaps in knowledge separating policy learning and policy change. We introduce a refined conceptual framework to outline and compare the articles in the issue. These articles point to several facets of the learning phenomenon. First, the articles focus on the nature and consequences of learning by specific groups of society, such as advocacy coalitions, epistemic communities, citizens, street-level bureaucrats, and policy brokers. Second, they present learning processes in which information and experience are used to acquire new knowledge on policy objectives to substantiate and legitimize them or to change or form beliefs. Third, they identify several cognitive and social processes to strengthen the connection between policy learning and policy change. Finally, the articles point to several psychological, social, and institutional factors fostering or impeding these cognitive and social processes. This introduction concludes with avenues for future research.</jats:p

Organizational Socialization in Public Administration Research: A Systematic Review and Directions for Future Research

Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, we conducted a systematic review of 58 public administration studies of organizational socialization. Organizational socialization is the process of mutual adaptation between an organization and its new members. Our findings demonstrate a growing but geographically disparate interest in this issue. Public administration studies contribute to this research area with novel insights into the determinants of organizational socialization and its effects on employees’ public service motivation, Eurocrats’ support of supranational institutions, person–organization fit, and differences in the socialization of male and female public employees. The review also shows that the effects of organizational socialization on the homogenization of employees’ attitudes should not be exaggerated, especially relative to other homogenizing factors such as attraction or selection effects. The reviewed articles are methodologically eclectic, with a recent but growing interest in longitudinal designs. There are also weaknesses in the operationalization of organizational socialization. We conclude with an agenda for future studies on organizational socialization in public administration research.</p

Organizational socialization in public administration research: A systematic review and directions for future research

status: publishe

What Do Public Officials Think About Citizens?

This chapter looks at the views public officials have of citizens, in particular their level of trust toward citizens’ ability, integrity and benevolence, when engaging in administrative interactions. Public officials’ trust is essential, in interactive governance, because it may stimulate the compliance and trust of citizens toward public administration. In turn, this may increase the effectiveness of public service delivery. Public officials’ trust builds over time when they have interactions with trustworthy citizens. Hence, trust between public officials and citizens is at the same time an essential requirement for interactive governance and an outcome of such interactions. Extensive research thus far has not yet revealed many individual factors of officials’ trust toward citizens nor their perceptions of citizens’ trustworthiness. In addition, few studies have been conducted on the institutional and organizational factors of trust and trustworthiness. We discuss this research before suggesting avenues for future studies

Insuffisance rénale aiguë après rectosigmoïdoscopie.

We report the case of a 24-year old man with a past history of vesical extrophy and ureterosigmoidostomy in childhood, admitted with acute left flank pain and acute renal failure. The complaints started the day following the endoscopic resection of a sigmoid polyp. The stricture of the ureterosigmoid junction was diagnosed by intravenous urography. Conservative treatment with endo-ureteral dilatation was successfully performed. At 2 years of follow-up, the patient is still asymptomatic, without any residual hydronephrosis.Case ReportsEnglish AbstractJournal ArticleSCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe