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Reporting systems constitute an essential part of today's safe sport initiatives across the world. Informed by literature on reporting wrongdoings in organisational contexts and a political sociology approach to policy instrumentation, this article examines how abuse reporting systems are utilised in youth high-performance sport environments. Drawing from 51 interviews with both user and provider groups of South Korea's reporting facilities, the results offer three main uses of the country's safe sport reporting mechanisms: (1) 'good use' that relies on their communicative capacity to signal changing organisational culture; (2) 'non-use' that derives not only from the fear of reprisals, but from more subtle relational and situational concerns, such as teams' dissolution; and (3) 'misuse' of the systems as a tool to advance individual agendas as opposed to protecting victims. The findings of this study not only provide evidence for both positive and perverse effects of safe sport reporting facilities per se, but also illuminate the importance of social and institutional conditions that can both enable and constrain this newly implemented policy measure for athlete safeguarding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, smart transportation has been more and more deeply integrated into urban governance, economic development and people’s life now. Current research on smart transportation lacks an examination from the perspective of public policy. And the analysis and experience summary of smart transportation policies are not enough. Therefore, on the basis of literature review on smart transportation policies, this paper selects smart transportation policies issued by Beijing and Shanghai as the research object, constructs a three-dimensional analytical framework containing policy objective, policy instrument and policy thematic characteristics, and makes a comparative analysis on smart transportation policies of Beijing and Shanghai based on text mining and content analysis. And the models of smart transportation development of Beijing and Shanghai are extracted. Finally, this paper puts forward some suggestions to optimize smart transportation policies so as to provide useful reference for the formulation and implementation of smart transportation policies in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban conservation and (re)development can be conflicting or balanced. Governments’ dual role in conserving cultural heritage and promoting development makes balancing the urban conservation – (re)development relationship a dynamic process. After coding the policy documents issued by China’s governments from 1906 to 2023 with the conceptual framework of layering, the following conclusions are drawn: (1) core policies promote the development of the policy system; (2) policy evolution of heritage conservation is categorized into five phases and policy objects evolved from heritage conservation to institutional and capacity construction; (3) the layering of instruments and actors is analyzed in terms of changes to the layering approach, audience, and structure; (4) the dynamic relationship between urban conservation and development can be explained by the time-lag of heritage conservation policy-making in relation to the urban development stages and the gap between policy goals and implementation; (5) the evolution of heritage conservation policies with urban development stages is categorized as drift, stagnation, hysteresis, and adjustment connected with policy goal conversions. This research argues that the earlier friction between urban conservation and development shifted to a mutually beneficial convergence, but that balancing urban conservation and development is challenging in the context of power decentralization and pro-growth ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ambitions to fund excellent researchers and path-breaking research unite a whole family of funding instruments ranging from Centres of Excellence to individual grants. While instruments aimed at funding excellence share a number of commonalities, there are important subsidiary features which determine their overall efficacy. The paper uses a case study of the Swedish Distinguished Professor Grant (DPG) to investigate the role of subsidiary features in enabling conditions associated with path-breaking research. Interviews were conducted with DPG recipients, to develop an “affordance analysis” identifying how features of the instrument enabled certain researcher actions and opportunities. Results suggest that while long duration and large funds are central to research excellence, the way in which subsidiary features such as reporting, planning and content requirements are structured affect the level of risk-taking. In terms of policy, the paper offers specific and general suggestions for the design of excellence funding instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do environmental targets improve the environmental performance of local governments? Previous studies have reached inconsistent conclusions on the effectiveness of environmental targets. Drawing on the principal-agent theory, this article identifies goal divergence and information asymmetry as challenges that impede the achievement of environmental targets. We analyze two policy instruments put in place to steer implementation, namely the mandatory target system and key cities for emission reduction, as components of the national 11th Five-Year Plan. We apply the difference-in-differences (DID) method to a longitudinal dataset of Chinese cities from 2001 to 2010 to investigate the impact of the two policy instruments on air and water pollution. Combining time variations, inter-provincial differences, and inter-prefectural differences in policy intensity, we find that mandatory pollution reduction targets have a pollution-reducing impact on two targeted pollutants, and key environmental protection cities reduce emissions only for air pollutants. However, we find no evidence of a synergy between the two types of policies. Our findings contribute to the understanding of implementation problems for government agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the significant pressure to diversify energy supply and reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, harnessing the vast geothermal resources has been made a priority in China's renewable energy development plans. This review provided an overview on the development of geothermal power generation and direct use in China, identified the key barriers for geothermal energy utilization, particularly in power generation, and proposed corresponding measures for boosting the growth of geothermal industry. Little progress was made in geothermal power generation over the past decades, while geothermal direct use, particularly geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) and district heating, has been growing quickly. Development of geothermal power generation was primarily limited by the lack of high temperature hydrothermal resources near the major demand centers. A series of technological challenges associated with drilling under extremely high pressure and temperature conditions, transportation of heavy equipment, long-distance electricity transmission, and hot dry rock (HDR) exploitation, also hindered large-scale development of geothermal resources for power generation and district heating. There were no social barriers for geothermal exploitation except in hot spring tourism areas, while the high cost could limit the consumer acceptance of geothermal heating/cooling solutions. Significant investment in research and development of enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technologies for exploiting HDR resources and establishment of favorable policy instruments are recommended as key technological and policy measures to accelerate the growth of geothermal energy market, while the potential social barriers for the development EGS projects in the densely populated areas should also be recognized and mitigated in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have examined disasters and crises affecting the tourism industry but very few have explicitly explored public opinion regarding a health-related crisis alongside a policy response to its occurrence. The COVID-19 pandemic with its rapid evolution and lasting detrimental implications has provided a unique opportunity to fill this knowledge gap. This study conducts a systematic content analysis of an online petition platform to explore public opinion on COVID-19 in the tourism context and the actions undertaken by the national government of China. The results demonstrate that trip cancellations and postponements represent the prime area of tourist concern, closely related to the issue of refunds. Mounting dissatisfaction with the service provided is triggered by ineffective communication about how to cancel and process refunds, and generates numerous complaints. However, the study finds that the policy action does not always regard tourist concerns, demands, and interests, because it primarily revolves around the problem of financial losses and focuses on the rapid economic rebound of the national tourism industry. The study recommends the need for policy instruments to understand and subsequently integrate public concerns in the design of interventions for crisis recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation to impacts of climate change is a key pillar of climate change policy, and local governments have historically played a major role in the design and implementation of these policies. An array of political, economic, institutional, social, and individual factors influence adaptation policy instrument choice. At the local government level, these choices also reflect inter-governmental dynamics that can constrain or support local efforts. We analyze eight hypothesized drivers of local adaptation policy instrument choice using fractional regression analysis and multilevel modelling. Local governments are pursuing diverse adaptation policy implementation styles that are associated with different levels of internal capacity, local political economies and problem perception. Dependence on national governments, the presence or absence of national adaptation mandates, national decision-making traditions, and national adaptation policy approaches may also influence local policy instrument choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying the construal-level theory, this study compares two different recycling campaigns to analyze the effects of the interaction between social distance and message orientation on citizens' (policy-takers) responses to public information campaign messages. The results of an experimental study show that messages focused on high-level (why-laden) features were more persuasive when the messages were framed in terms of socially distant entities (the planet/Earth), while messages focused on low-level (how-laden) features were more effective when asking participants to make judgments about their proximal entities (their country/local community). Policy implications for designing public information campaigns as a policy tool are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood's cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has embraced the use of indicators as policy instruments for achieving common aims. One of the indicators, 'early school leaver' (ESL), depicts the proportion of young people leaving education and training prematurely. Initially defined as an education policy indicator, it has been transformed into a performance indicator measuring the targets of the current Europe 2020 strategy. In this article, we examine how the indicator works as a policy instrument at different levels of governance applying the conceptual tools provided by the policy instrumentation approach to unpack the components, pinpoint the political effects, and reveal the power relations they produce. Thus challenging the taken-for-grantedness of comparison as a way of knowing we have intended to shift the focus of discussion concerning the role of large-scale comparisons in education towards more productive directions: moving from problematisation and deconstruction of comparison to engaging with processes of measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain the emergence of South African inclusive agricultural business models in relation to the land reform policy. We demonstrate that in South Africa such policy instruments linking small-scale and large-scale farmers respond to endogenous dynamics linked to the failure of its land reform policy. We study the land reform policy change induced by its policy instruments. Indeed, introducing the market as the preferred means to implement land reform caused unanticipated side effects, creating constant pressure for change that such inadequate instrument exerted on the set policy objectives during the first phase of policy implementation. After cohabitating uneasily with rather antagonistic policy goals, policy instruments ultimately led to a change in policy objectives, shifting from supporting small-scale black subsistence agriculture to targeting a class of emerging farmers committed to commercial agriculture. Inclusive Business Model's policy instruments were subsequently identified as the best fit to achieve the re-adjusted policy goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from solving the root cause of environmental problems in tourism industry, this paper visualizes the relationship of essential concepts in policy network and analyzes the centrality by applying co-word analysis with social network technique. In addition, multi-dimensional scaling analysis demonstrates the policy cluster distribution, and the structure of policy is analyzed from three dimensions. (1) In terms of policy content, the government has invested a lot in protecting tourism environment; however, with regard to means of environmental protection, systematic and specific environmental protection strategies are still inadequate. (2) In respect of policy structure, environment model policies are predominant, while supply-side policy and need-based policy are insufficient relatively. (3) Regarding policy means, the government relies on strict rules and regulations as a means of control; however, problems of inefficiency still exist. Therefore, environmental economic policies should be improved so as to stimulate fundamental role of market in allocating resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of diversity policies in the private sector is mostly a result of a voluntary engagement of companies. When interested, they decide about the ways and goals of such policies, implications for human resource management and the inclusion of staff with a migration background. This article explores a specific situation in which public authorities offered support and resources to companies in order to develop diversity policies. I present a first analysis of the implementation dynamics of the Brussels Diversity Plan, a policy instrument launched in 2007 by the Government of the city-region of Brussels. Building on the theoretical tools of the political sociology of public policies, I use qualitative material (interviews and administrative documents) to explore implementation processes in three private companies. I show that public authorities can play a decisive role in developing diversity policies in the private sector through incentives rather than constraint. Yet, the room for manoeuver offered to companies leads to important variations regarding how processes unfold and the results achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods for the environmental assessment and certification of ‘green’ buildings are increasingly being adopted by local governments and other entities as a means of meeting environmental, and often energy-related, goals. Literature on building environmental assessment has examined how these tools are interpreted by stakeholders in design and construction, but less attention has been paid to their interpretation and usage as objects of policy – despite this being a channel through which they have a potentially huge impact. Based on a case study of the emergence of green building in Israel, and drawing on socio-technical literatures, this paper explores the meanings attributed to building environmental assessment in the policy context. It finds that these meanings include a platform for divergent environmental goals and a proxy measure for greenhouse gas abatement. The analysis suggests that for policy-makers, the significance of green building lies not in its constituting a set of environmental benchmarks but as a standard that gains currency as a black-boxed policy object. An open discussion is needed on the various logics driving the use of green building tools in public policy, and what they hope to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the European Social Fund (ESF), the European Union subsidizes social inclusion and occupational trainee projects. This policy instrument is formulated by European Union institutions and implemented by regions through a call for projects which requires innovative actions and a result-oriented strategy. It is a key vantage point to observe sub-national implementation of an European Union policy instrument in a sub-national practitioner’s perspective, a topic under-investigated in the literature. For a project to receive funding, sub-national practitioners must take the European Union requirements (accounting standards, evidence of innovation etc.) and their social needs into account. Against this backdrop, this research tackles an original question: how can local practitioners adapt their policy actions to fit with European Union requirements? Taking the region of Wallonia in Belgium as a case study, the ESF implementation is considered as a specific policy process in sub-national policy sectors. Adopting an in-depth qualitative perspective, this research contends that it depends on practitioners’ learning, practices and experience of past applications, their specific socio-economic context and income maximization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of health targets as a form of performance measurement has become more prominent internationally as governments have sought to control public expenditure, produce greater efficiency and improve accountability. However, health targets have faced criticism for their potential to produce negative outcomes within a health system. This paper examines how a health target was used as a policy instrument within the New Zealand health system to improve immunisation coverage at two years of age. It explores how the immunisation health target was implemented within four case study sites and discusses the effectiveness of the health target as a policy instrument for improving immunisation coverage and addressing persistent immunisation inequities. Measuring and monitoring performance towards the immunisation health target improved accountability for immunisation coverage within the New Zealand health system and focused attention on improving immunisation coverage in a way that previous policy attempts had failed to do. Health targets may be an effective policy instrument for creating change within specific areas of a health system if their potential for dysfunctional consequences are taken into consideration at the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Performance measurement has an implicit performance theory embedded within its practice; performance measurement perforce performs. Performance measurement has a performative effect on performance. Drawing together and building on the various empirical observations from the preceding papers in this collection, this concluding paper firstly examines the circumstances in which performance measurement performs, that is, when it produces ‘authentic’ performance improvements, compared to when performance measurements misfire. The paper secondly explores several paradoxes of performance measurement – such that performance measurement measures only part of the performance it seeks to be performative on, incentives to perform incentivise poor performance and so on. These paradoxes, contradictions and ironies must be apprehended and appreciated in discovering, discerning and deciphering the diverse dynamics of measuring performance. They also demonstrate that analysing and working with performance measurement requires a perspective that eschews absolutes and clear directions, and embraces the uneasy and potentially destabilising tension of Escher’s performative art. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Performance indicators have both technical and value dimensions, capable of providing data for monitoring and reporting in addition to framing policy problems and their solutions. This paper considers the performance indicators proposed in a recent child protection inquiry in Australia that recommended ‘decreasing the numbers of children in the child protection system’ as a primary policy objective. The paper examines the context in which the indicators were set, the values and theories they endorse, and how they position stakeholders. The analysis shows how the indicators communicate that child protection services should be only for the most serious cases of child maltreatment, and the reach of statutory services should be curtailed. Children who have been maltreated or who are at risk of harm from abuse or neglect should be diverted from the child protection system (positioned as bad) to the family support system (positioned as good), and at the same time from the state to the nongovernment sector. The shifting relations between government, service providers, and families signified by the indicators can be seen in a broader international context of tightening the boundaries around child protection and concurrently advancing concepts of compliance within family support. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article concerns policy implementation and examines the processes of translation through which policy may be enacted at local level. In particular, it focuses on education policy and constructions of teacher professionalism, drawing on a framework of critical logics – social, political and fantasmatic – which examine different dimensions of social reality. Social logics describe practices, and particularly the ‘rules’ which govern practices, in a given social domain; political logics are diachronic, enabling an examination of the ways in which practices are contested and/or change over time; fantasmatic logics concern ideologies and the interpellation of subjects into discourses. The linguistic focus of this approach is supplemented by a sociomaterial analysis which examines the materialities inherent in these processes. The article takes as its case a political moment in Scotland in which the discursive context for teacher professional development is undergoing a shift from continuing professional development to professional learning. Here, we analyse the language and material practices of those charged with organising teacher professional development in four local authorities in Scotland. This case is used to explore linguistic and material enactments of policy as a series of translations in which practices emerge and unfold in unpredictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) for lifelong learning has been characterized as a policy instrument with a number of contested ideas, raising questions about the process through which such instruments are developed at European level. The introduction of the EQF is in this article examined through variations of neo-institutional theory: historical contingency perspective, rational perspective, normative perspective and a process of chance. The EQF is examined as a case, using documents and expert interviews as empirical sources. The article highlights the complex interplay between various historical processes that enabled the introduction of the EQF and how problems and solutions can drive the process forward in a dialectic manner. Furthermore, while the impact of the EQF on national level remains to be seen at this point, the analysis uncovers increased space for introducing new instruments on EU level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public enterprises are policy instruments that are “rediscovered”. In parallel, a separate scientific literature exists on entrepreneurship in the public sector but has not focused on public enterprises. This article suggests that a new perspective linking both streams of research could lead to an improvement in the understanding of the role as instruments of economic policy that public enterprises could play, in particular in the new context emerging after 2008. The paper advocates that the focus of research should not be on the governance of these institutions or the particularities of ownership but on public entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy instruments for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology investment during the learning phase are analysed and compared. The focus is on specific barriers to investment in learning during early commercial deployment. Imperfections in the carbon price signal and market failures from barriers indicate a need for support during the learning investment phase and the initial roll out of CCS in electricity generation. Different ways for CCS technology to cross the so-called investment ‘death valley’ are analysed and compared: a command and control instrument (CCS mandate), investment support (grant, tax credit, loan guarantee, subsidy by trust fund) and production subsidies (guaranteed carbon price, feed-in price, etc.). Three criteria are used in this comparison: effectiveness, static efficiency and dynamic efficiency. Policy instruments need to be adapted to the technological and commercial maturity of the CCS system. Mandate policies require handling with much care, and subsidization mechanisms must be designed to be market-oriented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an alternative perspective to those which view ‘new modes of governance’ as evidence of a democratic-participatory turn in the European Union. The temporal dimension in public policy analysis is emphasized. New modes of governance, such as the Open Method of Co-ordination and civil dialogue, are unlikely to reduce the democratic deficit in the short term. Indeed by enhancing the role of unelected institutions and allowing national executives to bypass sceptical electorates, such processes may undermine democracy in the Union. Over the long term, however, new modes of governance and their accompanying narrative may have an important role to play in the European integration process, even contributing to the ‘invention’ of a people for the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A comprehensive assessment was conducted of California's Used Oil Program, which was established in 1992 to reduce the illegal disposal, and promote the reuse, of used lubricating oil. This paper summarises selected key findings of the assessment and discusses them in the context of designing and implementing policy instruments for promoting environmentally responsible waste management. The approach known as 'community-based social marketing' is identified as a promising option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]