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Globally, the increased reliance on consultants and contract employees has raised many concerns vis‐à‐vis more traditional "in‐house" provision. One such concern is the manner in which consultants have been displacing traditional advisors in important aspects of government business while others raise issues with the quality of services rendered and the (undue) influence of the advice tendered. This trend has fuelled research in political science, management, public administration, and public policy chronicling the possible rise of a "consultocracy" and leading to calls in many countries for better regulation of consultants, who currently exist almost everywhere in an unregulated "wild west." We examine the Canadian situation, the current lack of regulation of policy and management consultants, and prospects for reform, drawing on contract data, interviews with consultants and government employers as well as comparisons with the situation in other countries like the UK. We argue that establishing a more professional licensing and credentialing system for the consulting industry through a regulatory intermediary would improve the efficiency of its services and allay many of the concerns raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy professionals play an important role in political and administrative systems. However, the exact configuration and distribution of such personnel within agencies remains largely unknown. Early works noted the creation of small dedicated "policy shops" in many governments after 1960 where many policy professionals were located. Studies in Canada and elsewhere subsequently confirmed this organizational form but questions such as how many professionals are employed and where these units are located within existing departmental structures remain opaque. In this article, we provide an organizational mapping of professional policy personnel in the Ontario Public Service (OPS). We find that four major personnel distribution patterns exist within the OPS with only some analysts and professionals working in "classical" policy shops. These findings underscore the need to re‐evaluate the organization and staffing of professional policy analysts in government in order to better account for the kinds of work policy professionals do in modern administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current work on policy design typically views policy-making as an activity on the part of well-intentioned governments desiring to serve the public interest by marshaling accurate evidence in a dispassionate, technical way in the attempt to address and resolve public problems. Even those studies which do note the political and power-based nature of many aspects and instances of policy-making still hold out hope that these "distortions" can be corrected and effective policy solutions emerge from policy deliberations. While this optimism is laudable, such thinking does a disservice to policy design and policy studies by failing to address head-on the possibilities, often observed in policy-making practice, that policy-makers may be driven by malicious or venal motivations rather than socially beneficial or disinterested ones and that policy targets also have proclivities and tendencies towards activities such as gaming, free-ridership and rent-seeking that must be curbed if even well-intentioned policies are to achieve their aims. This paper addresses both these issues and the state of the policy design literature on the causes, consequences and correctives for such behaviour. It proposes a new research agenda dealing with this "dark side" of policy behaviour and the manner in which policy designs can include procedural policy tools in order to deal with these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do international regime complexes develop? Are hard-law regimes effective in integrating regime complexes for international water resources management? Are there other alternatives? This article introduces international regime complexes and argues that these form a superior alternative to hard law and traditional global integrated regimes for many global policy issues. Failure of hard law to overcome fragmentation and generate integrated policy outcomes in international forestry, migration and water resource management is presented. Additional insights are drawn from two successful cases of water management in North America to argue for international regime complexes for better multi-level governance at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although understanding initial responses to a crisis such as COVID-19 is important, existing research on the topic has not been systematically comparative. This study uses topic modeling to inductively analyze over 13,000 COVID-19 policies worldwide. This technique enables the COVID-19 policy mixes to be characterized and their cross-country variation to be compared. Significant variation was found in the intensity, density, and balance of policy mixes adopted across countries, over time, and by level of government. This study advances research on policy responses to the pandemic, specifically, and the operationalization of policy mixes, more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Getting the incentives (and disincentives) right in order to ensure proper levels of compliance with government initiatives is a vital assumption of much of the writings on policy design. The assumption, however, overlooks or underestimates other critical factors that affect compliance. This includes policy-makers' behaviour in the social and political construction of policy targets and it also minimizes the complex objective and subjective conditions that affect the target population's attitudes and behaviours in relation to policy-maker aims and goals. The notion of policy-takers as static targets who passively receive policies without trying to evade or even profit from them is as misguided as the assumption that policy-makers only consider evidence on policy tools' effectiveness before selecting them. This article highlights the critical issue surrounding the choice and workings of policy tools and introduces the papers in this special issue. It indicates how they contribute to filling the gaps in our existing understanding of policy tools and advance our understanding of both policy-maker and policy-taker behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy studies to date have focused almost exclusively on the "good" side of policy formulation, that is, dealing with concerns around ensuring that knowledge is marshalled towards developing the best feasible policy under the assumption of well-intentioned governments and accommodating policy targets. This work has not carefully examined nor allowed for the possibility that government intentions may not be solely oriented towards the creation of public value or that policy targets may indulge in various forms of "misconduct" – from fraud to gamesmanship – which undermine government intentions. Although self-interested, corrupt and other similar kinds of policy-making have been the subject of many studies in administrative and regulatory law, this work has generally been ignored or paid only lip service by policy studies. This is changing, however, as the question of the behaviour of policy targets in particular has increasingly become a source of interest among policy scholars. This article reviews these developments and behaviours in order to aid the process of improving policy designs to deal with this "dark side" of policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policies are the products of political conflict, constituted by mixes of diverse tools and instruments intended to achieve multiple goals that may change over time and not always be internally consistent or coherent. Recent studies dealing with policy robustness and resilience have theorized about the temporal development of mixes of policy instruments and the need to ensure consistency and coherence over time, yet they have generally failed to develop these insights into lessons for policymakers and practitioners. Drawing on evidence from the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the USA, this paper examines the relationship between policy mixes and policy resilience or the ability of a policy to withstand challenges to its elements and to remain effective over time, even when deliberate efforts are made to alter, adapt, or repeal all or part of its original content or intention. Although the ACA is at an early stage in its history, it provides many lessons about how, and how not, to design complex policy mixes that can survive determined political opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational policy transfer is a well‐documented phenomenon with studies from across many disciplines. However, the literature tends to over‐theorize but under‐operationalize what is transferred and how it is transferred. A significant issue in this regard concerns 'agency': that is, who is supplying and who is demanding policy lessons and examples. This paper highlights a relatively new concept in comparative policy studies, that of the 'instrument constituency', within the framework of transnational policymaking. It argues that instrument constituencies or groups of actors unified by their strong affinity with a specific policy tool are key agents in the transfer process, acting as suppliers and brokers of policy ideas, constantly searching to match their preferred solutions to policy problems. As this paper will show, incorporating such constituencies into policy transfer studies allows a better understanding of transfer as part of a sequential process of diffusion, and how knowledge about a policy instrument is assembled and transferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress reaction profiles are affected by both catalyst activation and deactivation processes occurring alongside the main reaction. These processes complicate the kinetic analysis of reactions, often directing researchers toward incorrect conclusions. We report the application of two kinetic treatments, based on variable time normalization analysis, to reactions involving catalyst activation and deactivation processes. The first kinetic treatment allows the removal of induction periods or the effect of rate perturbations associated with catalyst deactivation from kinetic profiles when the quantity of active catalyst can be measured. The second treatment allows the estimation of the activation or deactivation profile of the catalyst when the order of the reactants for the main reaction is known. Both treatments facilitate kinetic analysis of reactions suffering catalyst activation or deactivation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress reaction profiles are affected by both catalyst activation and deactivation processes occurring alongside the main reaction. These processes complicate the kinetic analysis of reactions, often directing researchers toward incorrect conclusions. We report the application of two kinetic treatments, based on variable time normalization analysis, to reactions involving catalyst activation and deactivation processes. The first kinetic treatment allows the removal of induction periods or the effect of rate perturbations associated with catalyst deactivation from kinetic profiles when the quantity of active catalyst can be measured. The second treatment allows the estimation of the activation or deactivation profile of the catalyst when the order of the reactants for the main reaction is known. Both treatments facilitate kinetic analysis of reactions suffering catalyst activation or deactivation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the literature on evaluation has theorized about the distinction between internal and external evaluation, hardly any research has compared them empirically. This article examines whether the lessons of internal evaluations differed from those of external evaluations in the case of international development aid. It analyzes internal evaluations of the Asian Development Bank for nearly 1000 sovereign interventions across 38 countries in the Asia-Pacific during 1996–2016, using computational text analysis or text mining techniques. The results show that internal evaluations focused more on micro- and meso-level characteristics, while external evaluations laid more emphasis on meso- and macro-level constructs, such as dimensions of policy and the institutional environment in the recipient country, or its level and rate of economic growth. The article concludes that internal and external evaluations can be combined to create a multilevel evaluation framework that integrates micro-, meso-, and macro-level lessons to facilitate better learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enantioselective reduction of ketimines was demonstrated using chiral N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)-stabilised borenium ions in frustrated Lewis pair catalysis. High levels of enantioselectivity were achieved for substrates featuring secondary N-alkyl substituents. Comparative reactivity and mechanistic studies identify key determinants required to achieve useful enantioselectivity and represent a step forward in the further development of enantioselective FLP methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "policy advisory systems" was introduced by Halligan in 1995 as a way to characterize and analyze the multiple sources of policy advice utilized by governments in policy-making processes. The concept has proved useful and has influenced thinking about both the nature of policy work in different advisory venues as well as how these systems change over time. However, to date this work has examined mainly cases of developed countries and its application to developing and transitional countries is less certain. This paper sets out existing models of policy advisory systems based on Halligan's original thinking on the subject and assesses the findings of many existing studies into OECD countries that advisory systems have been changing as a result of the dual effects of increased use of external consultants and others sources of advice – "externalization" – and the increased use of partisan advice inside government itself – "politicization". Determining whether or not such changes have also characterized the situations found in developing and transitional countries and at the international-domestic and state-sub-state levels is the subject of the papers in this Special Issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From “alternative facts” to “fake news,” in recent years the influence of misinformation on political life has become amplified in unprecedented ways through electronic communications and social media. While misinformation and spin are age-old tactics in policy making, and poor information and poorly informed opinion a constant challenge for policy analysts, both the volume of erroneous evidence and the difficulties encountered in differentiating subjectively constructed opinion from objectively verified policy inputs have increased significantly. The resulting amalgamation of unsubstantiated and verifiable data and well and poorly informed opinion raises many questions for a policy science which emerged in an earlier, less problematic era. This article examines these developments and their provenance and asks whether, and how, existing policy making models and practices developed and advocated during an earlier era of a sharper duality between fact and fiction have grappled with the new world of “truthiness,” and whether these models require serious revision in light of the impact of social media and other forces affecting contemporary policy discourses and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comment on the article "Punching below its weight: Canadian public administration scholarship on the world stage." Topics discussed include study of Canadian public administration, analysis of articles published in Canadian periodicals, government policies on article publishing, political science of Canada and citations in articles.

The purpose of this study is to understand the role of international and domestic actors, ideas and processes in the diffusion of public policies. It argues that existing studies on the subject do not provide an adequate explanation of the mechanisms through which diffusion takes place, nor do they sufficiently address the roles of actors affecting the policy transfer process. We address these shortcomings by studying the diffusion of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs from Brazil and Mexico to the Philippines over the past decade. We use the concept of an 'instrument constituency' to delineate and trace the various actors and channels involved in the diffusion of CCTs. The case study shows that these groups of actors dedicated to the articulation, adoption and expansion of particular policy instruments are central players in transnational diffusion of policies and offer a robust explanation of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy analysis has always been interested in better understanding and improving the sets of policy tools adopted by governments to correct policy problems. Comparative policy studies have contributed much towards clarifying the nature of the processes of policy analysis and policy formulation which result in the construction of these policy portfolios. Past studies have helped clarify the role of historical processes, policy capacities and design intentions in affecting policy formulation processes - from “design” to “non-design” ones - and more recently have begun to articulate basic principles for better policy designs. Effectiveness in this work has been evaluated at three levels of consideration: that of the analysis of effective formulation environments or spaces that are conducive to the design of effective policies; through studies of how effective policy tool portfolios or mixes can be constructed to effectively address complex policy goals; and through a more specific and traditional focus upon what constitutes the effectiveness of particular types of policy tools within a mix. Each of these contributions is examined in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the idea that policy-makers are motivated by the desire to earn 'credit' for their work has a long history, policy studies since Weaver (J Public Policy 6(4):371-398, 1986) have also used the concept of 'blame' to help understand these often observed but little studied aspect of policy decision-making activity. Observed credit- and blame-related activities range from the agenda-denial behaviour of politicians to the use of policy evaluations to paint overly positive pictures of the effectiveness of policy efforts. Despite their frequent invocation by analysts, however, the status of 'blame' and 'credit' and their component parts is not well understood and different uses and conceptions of the term abound in the policy literature. This article addresses three issues surrounding the concepts which require clarification: first, the relationship between 'blame' and 'credit' as motivators of policy agents and activities; second, the related but not synonymous behavioural notions of 'blame avoidance' and 'credit claiming' and their relationship to more primordial ideas of 'blame' and 'credit'; and third, the notions of 'reactive' versus 'anticipatory' blame avoidance and credit claiming. The article develops a framework to help move the discussion of these three issues and of the basic concept forward. It argues that blame especially should be studied more widely from the view of the public as well as that of the public official, and that both concepts should be analysed as part of the larger issue of the legitimation of public actions, rather than, as is often the case, solely as an aspect of the utilitarian calculations and risk management activities of politicians and officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-production is an area of policy making in many countries which has received little treatment in the policy studies literature. It has been studied in the field of public administration and public management however, albeit mainly in the case of education-related activities in Scandinavian countries. Using the cases of co-production of support services for the disabled and the elderly in the little-studied programs found in Croatia and Thailand as illustrative examples, this article examines how the concept of co-production can be viewed as an example of the use of a new policy tool, bringing together the insights of both policy and management theory in order to understand its origins and evolution. The article highlights the importance of viewing co-production using an integrated lens if studies of co-production are to advance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The weight of much expert forest management opinion is that issues such as climate change can be effectively addressed only if forest policy-making moves from a purely sectoral focus and undergoes a shift to a more integrated multi-issue, multi-sector policy-making process. This is because credible adaptation policies in the sector require greatly enhanced multi-sectoral policy integration if they are to succeed. But this requirement may be beyond the capacity of many countries to deliver. This article explores the integration challenges faced by forest policy-making in Canada and the United States and uses the case of assisted tree migration to probe the reasons for the failure of institutions in both countries to develop and manage better vertical and horizontal integration in a climate change-related forest policy area. The article emphasizes the importance of previous rounds of policy-making or “policy legacies”, which serve to constrain contemporary policy options. It argues that due to the presence of many such legacies, forest policy development will continue to feature incremental adjustments through policy layering and policy drift, processes which limit the prospects for greater integration and better climate change adaptation in this sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the discussion on Harold D. Lasswell Prize awarded to the best article in each volume of Policy Sciences contributing most to the theory and practice of the policy sciences.

The article discusses the history of policy design and policy sciences in Canada since the 1960s. Journal articles and book chapters cited include "Studying Public Policy" by R. Simeon in volume 9, issue 4 of the "Canadian Journal of Political Science"; "Instruments of Government: Perceptions and Contexts" by S. H. Linder and B. G. Peters in volume 9, issue 1 of the "Journal of Public Policy"; and "The Elements of Effective Program Design: A Two-Level Analysis" by Michael Howlett, Ishani Muherjee, and Jeremy Rayner in volume 2, issue 2 of the journal "Politics and Governance."

Public policies are composed of complex arrangements of policy goals and policy means matched through some decision-making process. Exactly how this process works and which comes first-problem or solution-is an outstanding research question in the policy sciences. This article argues the emerging concept of an 'instrument constituency'-a subsystem component dedicated to the articulation and promotion of particular kinds of solutions regardless of problem context-can help policy scholars answer this critical question and better understand policymaking. At present, however, there is only limited empirical evidence of the existence, accuracy, and relevance of the instrument constituency concept. This article clarifies and refines the concept through cross-sectoral and cross-national case studies, demonstrating its utility in aiding our understanding of policy processes and their dynamics, including the issue of how problems and solutions are proposed and matched in the course of policy adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For close to three decades multiple frameworks of policy-making have served as competitive characterizations of policy processes. All claim to provide accounts that capture diverse factors such as changing governance norms, actors and ideas which drive programme interventions and policy outputs. Paradoxically, the resilience of different models such as the policy cycle framework and the multiple streams framework has been accompanied by numerous critiques that they are “incomplete” and even divorced from the real world. This article presents an effort to synthesize and reconcile these frameworks in which the appeal and strengths of each can be retained while going some way to overcoming their weaknesses and limitations. It does so through the introduction of an integrative metaphor for policy-making – what Wayne Parsons termed “weaving” – which can be applied to all stages of public policy, and is flexible enough to cope with issues such as power, complexity and critical junctures while reconciling different groupings and sets of actors highlighted as significant policy players in earlier models. It elaborates this framework before applying it by way of illustration to one of the most controversial policy initiatives in modern British history: the 1989–93 poll tax. The article and case study highlight the potential for its general application in policy studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Kingdon’s multiple-streams framework has been widely used since the publication of his bookAgendas, Alternatives and Public Policiesin 1984. The popularity of this agenda-setting framework in comparative policy analysis is especially interesting because the book focused exclusively on the United States. It is not clear, however, that a framework developed exclusively on the basis of the examination of a single, somewhat idiosyncratic national case should be able to generate insights useful in comparative research. This article discusses the nature of the multiple-streams framework and its impact on comparative policy analysis, before outlining its contribution to key debates in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What capacities are needed on the part of policymakers in areas such as the agri-food biotechnology sector in order to attain excellence at the individual, organisational and systemic levels of regulatory operation? To address this question, this paper draws upon work recently carried out on regulatory excellence by the Penn Programme on Regulation and couples it with recent studies on how to build policy capacity. Derived from a multi-jurisdiction, multi-sector review of regulation, the Penn programme identified three core areas or ‘pillars’ of regulatory excellence – namely, stellar competence, empathic engagement and utmost integrity –which reflect the kinds of individual actions of a regulator, the traits of the regulator as an organisation, and the broad systemic outcomes of regulation which are needed for excellent performance. This work does not examine what is needed on the part of public organisations to achieve these goals, however, and to this end, the paper draws upon a second set of recent studies into the various types of policy capacities that affect policy-making to illustrate what regulators must do in order to achieve excellence. Examples from agri-food biotechnology regulation are used to illustrate the concepts of, and prerequisites for, achieving regulatory capacity and excellence in this sector, although the lessons and implications are also valid in many others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies increasingly come in complex packages and understanding the nature of design criteria for such portfolios is increasingly important. However, existing studies of policy mixes fail to carefully define the dependent variable of the inquiry. As a result, theorization of policy design has lagged, the cumulative impact of empirical studies has not been great and understanding of the phenomena, despite many observations of its significance in policy studies, has not improved significantly over the past three decades. This paper aims to revitalize this important aspect of policy design work and policy studies by distinguishing between mix types and their impact on policy formulation. It defines key types and subtypes of mixes based on the complexity of design variables such as the number of goals, the number of policies and the number of levels of government and sectors involved in the design of a policy bundle. The taxonomy is then used to assess the validity and applicability of oft-cited but under-examined portfolio design principles and precepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many visions of governance, governments are portrayed as playing a “steering”, rather than “rowing”, role. The widespread use of privatization, deregulation, decentralization and third-party governments are often mentioned as concrete manifestations of the broad transformation which has led to new forms of governance. Examined more closely, however, the large and growing body of literature on governance has done little to clarify what is “new” about “new governance”. Does it indicate a clean break from institutions and processes of the past, or is it merely chronicling an assortment of instrument changes necessary for governments to adapt to changing socio-economic conditions? Do the changes really indicate the emergence of a new system in which the government is merely another player on a par with societal and international counterparts? More fundamentally, is governance a normative framework reflecting the hopes and desires of those who prefer smaller governments, or an empirical description of an existing reality? This article briefly surveys existing studies in the field as an introduction to the articles in this special issue. These articles provide strong arguments in support of the view that governments continue to play a pivotal role in policy-making, and that if this fact is not taken into consideration then the perception is of governance risk being anchored to a merely normative or prescriptive view rather than an empirically robust one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Use of metaphors is a staple feature of how we understand policy processes -- none more so than the use of 'policy stages '/'cycles' and 'multiple streams'. Yet even allowing for the necessary parsimony of metaphors, the former is often criticised for its lack of 'real world' engagement with agency, power, ideology, turbulence and complexity, while the latter focuses only on agenda-setting but at times has been utilised, with limited results, to understand later stages of the policy process. This article seeks to explore and advance the opportunities for combining both and applying them to the policy-formation and decision-making stages of policy making. In doing so it examines possible three, four and five stream models. It argues that a five stream confluence model provides the highest analytical value because it retains the simplicity of metaphors (combining elements of two of the most prominent models in policy studies) while also helping capture some of the more complex and subtle aspects of policy processes, including policy styles and nested systems of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The willingness of defence departments to select the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) for their fifth-generation multirole fighter has frequently been analyzed as stemming from the close historical connections allies such as Japan or Canada have with the United States. However, such an approach glosses over or ignores the operation of military procurement processes which are more idiosyncratic and subject to many pushes and pulls from different actors and directions. This article compares the experiences of Australia and Canada in procuring the JSF. Both countries are British Commonwealth members, with a long history of supporting western, and in particular, US alliances. But while Australia has secured its F-35 procurement and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has already received its F-35s, Canada has only recently overcome a lengthy F-35 procurement battle that remains mired in controversy and will not deliver to the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) an aircraft for several years yet. This comparative case study between Australian and Canadian defence priorities offers a new explanation for this disparity of procurement success based on the need to both create and maintain alignment between government strategic defence policy and military service doctrine if major platform purchasing decisions are to survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy design as a field of inquiry in policy studies has had a chequered history. After a promising beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the field languished in the 1990s and 2000s as work in the policy sciences focused on the impact on policy outcomes of meta-changes in society and the international environment. Both globalization and governance studies of the period ignored traditional design concerns in arguing that changes at this level predetermined policy specifications and promoted the use of market and collaborative governance (network) instruments. However, more recent work re-asserting the role of governments both at the international and domestic levels has revitalized design studies. This special issue focuses on recent efforts in the policy sciences to reinvent, or more properly, 're-discover' the policy design orientation in light of these developments. Articles in the issue address leading edge issues such as the nature of design thinking and expertise in a policy context, the temporal aspects of policy designs, the role of experimental designs, the question of policy mixes, the issue of design flexibility and resilience and the criteria for assessing superior designs. Evidence and case studies deal with design contexts and processes in Canada, China, Singapore, the UK, EU, Australia and elsewhere. Such detailed case studies are necessary for policy design studies to advance beyond some of the strictures placed in their way by the reification of, and over-emphasis upon, only a few of the many possible kinds of policy designs identified by the 1990s and early 2000s literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of external policy and management consultants in government has been receiving increasing attention in many countries, including Canada. We explore new data on management consulting compiled from information released since the creation of the Federal Accountability Act to address the supply side of contracting. We find several large multi-year contracts have taken up a larger percentage of contracting activity while the number of smaller contracts has declined. The data suggest a pattern of oligopsonic demand concentrated mostly in a handful of very heavy users and an increasingly oligopolistic supply pattern where less than 5% of companies accounted for 80% of total contract values and where repeat contracts are the norm. Measures of accountability and transparency need to extend to the 'invisible' public service of contract consultants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy consultants are external analysts who provide paid policy-related advice to governments on a contractual basis. Previous research on policy work has examined the work done within governments and by policy consultants separately but has not systematically compared and contrasted the two. A key question regarding the nature of policy advisory practices and policy advice systems in general, however, is whether consultants are duplicating the work of government officials in order to help “triangulate” internal advice or whether there is more of a complementary approach in which consultants supplement the work of internal analysts. This article explores the differences among the two groups using data collected over the past five years in two sets of surveys into internal and external policy work in Canada. The analysis finds a “complementary” relationship to exist, contrary to the conventional wisdom that outside or external advice is sought mainly in order to avoid biases in internal advice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of external consultants in government management and policy realms has drawn increasing attention in many countries including Canada. Studies were undertaken internationally in the 1990s and 2000s as legislatures and their accounting arms became concerned with the hidden costs of 'corporatization' of the public service and tried to expand benchmarking measures for government efficiency to include external consultants. Accounting for these increases in expenditures on consultancy, however, remains a challenge given the state of governmental financial and personnel reporting. The data on which existing reports have been drawn are very weak. This article examines results using a new dataset compiled from Proactive Disclosure reports in order to help clarify the situation of policy and management consulting in Canada at the departmental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to develop extensive forest-based climate change vulnerability assessments have informed proposed management and policy options intended to promote improved on-the-ground policy outcomes. These assessments are derived from a rich vulnerability literature and are helpful in modeling complex ecosystem interactions, yet their policy relevance and impact has been limited. We argue this is due to structural-functional logic underpinning these assessments in which governance is treated as a procedural "black box" and policy-making as an undifferentiated and unproblematic output of a political system responding to input changes and/or system prerequisites. Like an earlier generation of systems or cybernetic thinking about political processes, the focus in these assessments on macro system-level variables and relationships fails to account for the multi-level or polycentric nature of governance and the possibility of policy processes resulting in the nonperformance of critical tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulation has been the subject of a significant amount of scholarship, mostly debating the necessity of regulatory action or examining the phenomenon of capture. Less attention has been paid to the early stages of regulatory development, during which the structure of the regime is defined. By revisiting the life-cycle analogy of regulation first proposed by Bernstein in 1955, we offer a new model that explains the development of these early stages in greater depth. This model is then applied to case studies of several sectors in the US and UK to highlight the general pattern of early regulatory regime development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the infrastructure policy sector's capacity to respond to climate change adaptation through an analysis of the Canadian case. It includes a three-level examination of capacity: at the macro level through a virtual policy network analysis; at the meso level through examination of the lead department's evolving mandate and resources; and at the micro level through analysis of survey data related to departmental workers policy tasks and attitudes. Four hypotheses across these three levels are set out and tested at the national and subnational levels. Together, the findings suggest that the policy capacity in the Canadian infrastructure sector will be unable to meet the demands placed upon the sector to respond to the increasing challenges of climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue contributes to extant empirical scholarship assessing governmental capacity to meet significant policy challenges, in this case those related to climate change adaptation. The study includes detailed examination of five policy sectors-finance, infrastructure, energy, forestry, and transportation-in two countries, Canada and the United States-in order to determine what kinds of governance arrangements and analytical capacities exist in this area, how they are changing (if at all), and how they interrelate with the status and evolution of climate change outcomes in each sector. The articles provide a comprehensive sampling of policy network structure and behavior, organizational mandates and resources, and actual job duties and training of policy actors across these sectors at both the federal and subnational level of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite all the attention paid to the topic of policy analysis as a conceptual endeavour, empirically, the actual work of policy analysts is little investigated and little known. This is true generally of most countries and jurisdictions but it is most acute at the subnational level of government in multilevel states. Recent work in Canada, however, based on comprehensive surveys of analysts of provincial and territorial policy, on the one hand, and regionally and Ottawa-based federal policy workers on the other, has found many similarities with national-level work but also significant differences. This work has highlighted differences in the distribution of tasks across jurisdictions—mainly the extent to which policy work involves implementation as well as formulation-related activities—as key distinctions found in policy work across levels of the Canadian multilevel system. This article uses frequency and principal components analysis (PCA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to probe these dimensions of policy work. It shows provincial and territorial analysts to be similar to regionally based federal workers in task allocation, undermining a straightforward depiction of differences in policy work by level of government. The extent of autonomy enjoyed by policy workers in different jurisdictional venues, both from internal actors and those outside of government, is shown to be the key driver of differences in policy work across levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on how the European Union (EU) has responded to climate change adaptation and mitigation and how a similar approach can be taken by the government in British Columbia. The authors explain that most mitigation efforts around the world have failed to reverse global warming, causing a great need for adaptation policies. They discuss the importance of trans-municipal efforts to address climate change, explore how local and federal governments in the EU are working together on this issue, and analyze policy programs implemented by the British Columbia Ministry of Environment.

Recent studies by Hood have underscored the significance of the desire of decision-makers to avoid blame for poor policy initiatives, highlighting the importance to policy-making of learning about how best to avoid policy failure. This article examines several different concepts of policy failure in the literature on the subject, such as policy accidents, errors, mistakes, and anomalies, along with recent work by McConnell and his colleagues on the general types and sources of such failures. The article distinguishes between ‘thin’ (technical-strategic) and ‘thick’ (political-experiential) policy learning and links them to McConnell’s three categories of political, programme, and process failures. The analysis points to the significant and underappreciated roles played by process and political problems in the analysis of policy failure and the need to draw lessons in these areas as well as in more technically oriented programme-related ones if the prospects of policy success are to be enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governments and industries are familiar with private sector or third-party driven natural resource and agriculture certification schemes, like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) process. These schemes affect products including organics, fair trade coffee, fisheries, olive oil, cheese, milk, herbs and many more. In practice these schemes attempt to control attributes official retail products through supply chain verification of a specific product, or process qualities that involve consumer product labeling and certification of chain of custody product and process control procedures. All are difficult and costly to administer. It is necessary to monitor and inspect each step of lengthy supply chains. These schemes ensure the quality and purity of final products in the face of omnipresent dangers and incentives for producers to evade quality standards and adulterate products or processes. Many schemes operate more or less on a self-regulatory basis where producers agree to honor third-party certification of supply chain operators who, typically, are infrequently inspected. This system periodically gives rise to various forms of product and process quality scandals. New technologies linked to genomics, proteinomics, metabolomics and transcriptomics that involve cellular level identifiers in specific products show promise in improving both the quality and cost of regulatory oversight of many certification efforts. They enable rapid, low-cost confirmation of the origins and purity of many goods often without the need for intermediate supply-chain monitoring and inspection. This article describes the state-of-the-art of genomics technologies and discusses the advantages and limitations of these techniques in the areas of natural resource and agricultural certifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions have been posed about the lack of knowledge of the role public managers play in the policy process. In this study, following on the suggestions of Hicklin and Godwin and Meier in this journal, we identify different dimensions of the analyst-manager divide among professional policy workers. Using the results of several recent large-N surveys of Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial policy workers, we explore the roles each group plays in the policy analytical process and the variations in their behavior in terms of duties and tasks, attitudes, and interrelationships. We also examine these to see the impact of federalism on professional policy practices. The study uncovers three groups of policy workers and policy managers-coordinator-planners, research-analysts, and director-managers. Differences between groups of policy workers are found for their policy-related work and their perceptions of tools of policy effectiveness, and differences between levels of government are identified for issues of time demands and coordination and tools of policy effectiveness. The implications of these findings for the study of public managers in the policy process are considered in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite all the attention paid to the topic of policy analysis, the actual work of policy analysts in government is little investigated and little known (Colebatch 2005, 2006a, 2006b; Colebatch and Radin). This is true not only at the national level, which has been the subject of most existing studies, but especially at the sub-national level, where substantial powers rest. In order to address this gap, this article presents evidence from the first, large-scale set of surveys of Canadian federal, provincial and territorial policy analysts, examining the similarities and differences in their policy work. While many similarities exist in areas related to overall governance trends, such as consultation and participation work overtaking more technical policy evaluations, there are significant differences in the nature of policy work and attitudes, which are linked to the lesser autonomy from political masters experienced by sub-national analysts. The results suggest that sub-national policy work must be studied carefully in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. Triage data are widely used to evaluate patient flow, disease severity, and emergency department (ED) workload, factors used in ED crowding evaluation and management. We defined an indicator-based methodology that can be easily used to review the accuracy of Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) performance. Methods. A trained nurse reviewer (NR) retrospectively triaged two separate month's ED charts relative to a set of clinical indicators based on CTAS Chief Complaints. Interobserver reliability and accuracy were compared using Kappa and comparative statistics. Results. There were 2838 patients in Trial 1 and 3091 in Trial 2. The rate of inconsistent triage was 14% and 16% (Kappa 0.596 and 0.604). Clinical Indicators "pain scale, chest pain, musculoskeletal injury, respiratory illness, and headache" captured 68% and 62% of visits. Conclusions. We have demonstrated a system to measure the levels of process accuracy and reliability for triage over time. We identified five key clinical indicators which captured over 60% of visits. A simple method for quality review uses a small set of indicators, capturing a majority of cases. Performance consistency and data collection using indicators may be important areas to direct training efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stable carbon isotope fractionation is a valuable tool for monitoring natural attenuation and to establish the fate of groundwater contaminants. In this study, we measured carbon isotope fractionation during aerobic and anaerobic degradation of two chlorinated benzenes: monochlorobenzene (MCB) and 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene (1,2,4-TCB). MCB isotope fractionation was measured in anaerobic methanogenic microcosms, while 1,2,4-TCB isotope experiments were carried out in both aerobic and anaerobic microcosms. Large isotope fractionation was observed in both the anaerobic microcosm experiments. Enrichment factors (ϵ) for anaerobic reductive dechlorination of MCB and 1,2,4-TCB were -5.0‰ ± 0.2‰ and -3.0‰ ± 0.4‰, respectively. In contrast, no significant isotope fractionation was found during aerobic microbial degradation of 1,2,4-TCB. The cleavage of a C-Cl σ bond occurs during anaerobic reductive dechlorination of MCB and 1,2,4-TCB, while no s bond cleavage is involved during aerobic degradation via dioxygenase. The difference in isotope fractionation for aerobic versus anaerobic biodegradation of MCB and 1,2,4-TCB can be explained by the difference in the initial step of aerobic versus anaerobic biodegradation pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty-five years ago Arnold Meltsner observed that professional policy analysts in the U.S. government undertook several roles in the policy-making process, the most common of which involved 'technical' information processing while others were more 'political' in nature. Although still prescient, more recent empirical studies of professional policy work have found little evidence of the predominance of technicians in the ranks of analysts employed in public policy bureaucracies. However, only very weak and partial information exists on the situation in most countries, and descriptions of the nature of policy work often remain primarily normative and lacking in empirical referents. This article reexamines the duties and nature of contemporary professional policy analysis in the Canadian bureaucracy. It reveals that contemporary policy work is constituted by more complex and multisided practices than Meltsner and his followers described. These findings are significant for those wishing to understand, and improve, the nature of policy work in contemporary government. Hace treinta y cinco años Arnold Meltsner observó que los analistas legislativos profesionales en el gobierno de los Estados Unidos se encargan de diferentes tareas en el proceso legislativo, el más común involucraba el proceso de información 'técnica' mientras que otros eran de una naturaleza más 'política'. Estudios empíricos más recientes del trabajo profesional legislativo han encontrado poca evidencia del predominio de técnicos en puestos analíticos en las burocracias del sector público. Sin embargo, existe tenue y parcial información sobre la situación de la mayoría de los países y la descripción de la naturaleza del trabajo legislativo permanece normativa y carente de referentes empíricos. Este estudio reexamina los deberes y naturaleza de analistas legislativos profesionales en la burocracia Canadiense y revela que el trabajo legislativo contemporáneo está constituido por prácticas más complejas de las que Meltsner y sus partidarios describieron. Estos hallazgos son significativos para aquellos que deseen comprender y mejorar la naturaleza del trabajo legislativo en la gobernabilidad contemporánea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]