Can critical policy studies outsmart AI? Research agenda on artificial intelligence technologies and public policy

The insertion of artificial intelligence technologies (AITs) and data-driven automation in public policymaking should be a metaphorical wake-up call for critical policy analysts. Both its wide representation as techno-solutionist remedy in otherwise slow, inefficient, and biased public decision-making and its regulation as a matter of rational risk analysis are conceptually flawed and democratically problematic. To ‘outsmart’ AI, this article stimulates the articulation of a critical research agenda on AITs and public policy, outlining three interconnected lines of inquiry for future research: (1) interpretivist disclosure of the norms and values that shape perceptions and uses of AITs in public policy, (2) exploration of AITs in public policy as a contingent practice of complex human-machine interactions, and (3) emancipatory critique of how ‘smart’ governance projects and AIT regulation interact with (global) inequalities and power relations.publishedVersio

Analyse and rule? A conceptual framework for explaining the variable appeals of ex-ante evaluation in policymaking

This article integrates disparate explanations for increasing (but variable) turns to ex-ante policy evaluation, such as risk analysis, across public administrations. So far unconnected silos of literature - on policy tools, policy instrumentation, the politics of evaluation and the political sociology of quantification - inconsistently portray ex-ante evaluation as rational problem-solving, symbolic actions of institutional self-defence, or (less often) political power-seeking. I synthesise these explanations in an interpretivist and institutionalist reading of ex-ante evaluation as contextually filtered process of selective meaning-making. From this methodological umbrella emerges my unified typology of ex-ante evaluation as instrumental problemsolving (I), legitimacy-seeking (L) and powerseeking (P). I argue that a) these ideal-types coexist in policymakers’ reasoning about the expected merits of ex-ante evaluation, whilst b) diverse institutional contexts will favour variable weightings of I, L and P in policymaking. By means of systematisation the typology seeks to inspire an interdisciplinary research agenda on varieties of ex-ante evaluation.Der Beitrag entwirft einen integrierten Analyserahmen für das Phänomen der zunehmenden und zugleich variablen Hinwendung zu Instrumenten der ex-ante Politikevaluation, beispielsweise der risikobasierten Entscheidungsvorbereitung, in vielen politisch-administrativen Systemen. Bisher unverbundene und oft kontrastierende Literaturen - zu policy tools, policy instrumentation, Evaluationspolitik, aber auch der politischen Soziologie der Quantifizierung - konzeptualisieren ex-ante Evaluation als rationale Problemlösung, symbolische Handlung institutioneller Selbstverteidigung oder (seltener) politisches Machtspiel. Der Beitrag synthetisiert solche scheinbar konträren Erklärungsansätze in einer interpretativistischen und institutionalistischen Lesart, nach welcher Akteure des politisch-administrativen Systems den Toolkits der ex-ante Evaluation drei verschiedene Leistungsversprechen - instrumentelle Problemlösung, Legitimitätsbeschaffung und Machtgewinn (ILP-Typologie) - zumessen. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass a) diese drei Idealtypen in der Bedeutungszuweisung an ex-ante Evaluationsinstrumente immer ko-existieren, b) diverse institutionelle Kontextbedingungen allerdings eine unterschiedliche Gewichtung der respektiven I-, L- und P-Interpretationsrahmen in der Politikgestaltung begünstigen. Durch Systematisierung bisher nebeneinanderstehender Forschungsstränge soll die integrierte Typologie eine interdisziplinäre Forschungsagenda zu Variation von Politikevaluation und Evaluationspolitik inspirieren

Peace and Prosperity for the Digital Age? the Colonial Political Economy of European AI Governance

We are not short of alarming accounts of the global power asymmetries and detrimental environmental, social, and political effects fostered and amplified by the production, design, and use of artificial intelligence technologies (AITs). From 'surveillance capitalism' [66], via the 'black box society' [50], 'automated inequality' [22], 'algorithms of oppression' [47] to 'extractive politics' [17]; from the 'Californian ideology' [4] of 'Big Tech' in Silicon Valley to the world of start-ups and specialist public sector contractors, like Palantir and Clearview, scholars highlight a wild west of disruptive technological innovation that has gone largely untamed. The whole globe is embroiled in its production and effects while the costs of 'externalities' are paid by others: through large-scale environmental degradation from rare metal mining [17], intensive carbon consumption [19], underpaid and underemployed click workers [3], [58], [61], violations of privacy and data protection [5], [48], and the amplification of societal biases in automated decision-making (a useful collection in a 2021 special issue of it Fordham Law Review).</p

Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence: Vantage Points for Critical Inquiry

This chapter introduces three key lines of critical inquiry to address the relationship of artificial intelligence (AI) and public policy. We provide three vantage points to better understand this relationship, in which dominant narratives about AI’s merits for public sector decisions and service provision often clash with real world experiences of their limitations and illegal effects. First, we critically examine the politicaldrivers for, and significance of, how we define AI, its role and workings in the policy world; and how we demarcate the scope of regulation. Second, we explore the AI/policy relationship, by focusing on how it unfolds through specific, but often contradictory and ambivalent, practices, that in different settings, combine meaning, strategic action, technological affordances, as well as material/digital objects and their effects. Our third vantage point critically assesses how these practices are situated in an uneven political economy of AI technology production, and with what implications for global justice

Labour Migration Management as Multidimensional Border-drawing: A Comparative Interpretive Policy Analysis in the EU

COPYRIGHT Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with the author. A copy of this thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that they must not copy it or use material from it except as permitted by law or with the consent of the author. This thesis may be made available for consultation within the University Library and may be photocopied or lent to other libraries for the purposes of consultation

Entgegen aller Wahrscheinlichkeiten? Erklärungsansätze für die Diffusion risikobasierter Regulierung im föderalen System Deutschlands

Die anglo-amerikanische Verwaltungswissenschaft und -praxis hat in der sogenannten 'risikobasierten Regulierung' (RBR) ein Instrument identifiziert, welches eine effiziente und effektive Priorisierung knapper Ressourcen erlaubt und damit die Legitimität von Verwaltungshandeln stärken kann. Obwohl RBR als universales Regulierungstool gehandelt wird, gilt ihre Anwendung im fragmentierten föderalen System Deutschlands als eher unwahrscheinlich. Der Beitrag untersucht die vermutete institutionelle Inkompatibilität von RBR und Föderalismus kritisch und versucht dabei die empirisch beobachtbare dezentrale Diffusion von RBR in drei Politikfeldern - der Lebensmittelsicherheit, dem Hochwasserschutz und dem Arbeitsschutz - zu erklären. Eine interpretative Policy-Analyse demonstriert, dass die dezentrale Hinwendung zu RBR in Deutschland einerseits mithilfe verschiedener isomorpher Anpassungsprozesse erklärbar ist, die andererseits durch steuerungspolitische Strategien dezentraler Akteure im Mehrebenensystem Europas zusätzlich befördert werden. Die gestiegene reformpolitische Bedeutung von RBR im föderalen System Deutschlands, sowie die institutionellen und steuerungspolitischen Gründe für diesen Bedeutungszuwachs, bedürfen forschungsseitig systematischere Aufmerksamkeit.In Anglo-American public administration research and practice 'risk-based regulation' (RBR) counts as an instrument to enable an efficient and effective prioritization of interventions which can eventually increase the legitimacy of administrations. Despite being promoted as a universal regulatory tool, RBR is considered to be rather incompatible with Germany's fragmented federal system. This article examines the expected institutional incompatibility critically, seeking to explain the empirically observable de-central diffusion of RBR across three policy domains: food safety, flood protection and work safety. An interpretive policy analysis demonstrates that the de-central adoption of RBR in Germany can be explained by a combination of different isomorphic adaptation processes and their support by the governance strategies of de-central actors in Europe's multi- level governance setting. The increased reformpolitical weight of RBR in Germany’s federal system, and the institutional and governance-related reasons for this growing relevance, require more systematic attention in research

Non-lethal exposure to H2O2 boosts bacterial survival and evolvability against oxidative stress

Unicellular organisms have the prevalent challenge to survive under oxidative stress of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). ROS are present as by-products of photosynthesis and aerobic respiration. These reactive species are even employed by multicellular organisms as potent weapons against microbes. Although bacterial defences against lethal and sub-lethal oxidative stress have been studied in model bacteria, the role of fluctuating H2O2 concentrations remains unexplored. It is known that sub-lethal exposure of Escherichia coli to H2O2 results in enhanced survival upon subsequent exposure. Here we investigate the priming response to H2O2 at physiological concentrations. The basis and the duration of the response (memory) were also determined by time-lapse quantitative proteomics. We found that a low level of H2O2 induced several scavenging enzymes showing a long half-life, subsequently protecting cells from future exposure. We then asked if the phenotypic resistance against H2O2 alters the evolution of resistance against oxygen stress. Experimental evolution of H2O2 resistance revealed faster evolution and higher levels of resistance in primed cells. Several mutations were found to be associated with resistance in evolved populations affecting different loci but, counterintuitively, none of them was directly associated with scavenging systems. Our results have important implications for host colonisation and infections where microbes often encounter reactive oxygen species in gradients