LIST OF PANELS

Policy transfer among states continues to attract scholarly attention, and the literature now has grown exponentially in at least six broad streams (see (Hadjiisky, Pal, & Walker, forthcoming 2017): (1) diffusion/learning/policy transfer focused on public policy dynamics (players, processes, and institutions) and transfer as largely a process of choice (D. Dolowitz & Marsh, 1996, 2000; D. P. Dolowitz & Marsh, 2012; Rose, 1993, 2005; Wolman, 1992); (2) development and transfer of governance models (Andrews, 2012, 2013; Rodrik, 1996, 2006; Williamson, 1993); (3) international relations/international governmental organizations and their independent role in transfer (Abbott, Genschel, Snidal, & Zangl, 2015; Barnett & Finnemore, 1999; Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998); (4) global public policy networks (Haas, 1992; Stone, 2013); (5) Europeanization (Leuffen, Rittberger, & Schimmelfennig, 2013); and (6) policy mobilities (Peck & Theodore, 2015: 5; Temenos & McCann, 2013; Ward, 2011). Despite this development in research, the field remains undertheorized (Benson & Jordan, 2011, 2012), and heavily focused on conventional dynamics: state-to-state transfers; North-South; the main international organizations. Very little work has examined non-state transfers through, for example, the role of the consultants or industry associations, or the growing number of South-South, and even in some cases, South-North transfers. There is almost nothing on the transfer of policy-enabling technologies such as GPS monitoring and surveillance in trans-border shipments, operating systems, or management software. The transfer of policy models through training, education, study tours, or exchanges is largely ignored. This suggests that within the policy transfer field more needs to be done to examine the nature of policy tools being transferred and how such tools fare in the transfer process. The panel will invite papers that will extend and deepen work in the field in two ways. The first is to focus on theory building, to innovate and renovate our thinking about policy transfer by widening the lens to include more players, wider dynamics, and better empirical data. The second is to encourage submissions of research on innovative practices in transfer that go beyond the tired metaphor of the “toolkit” or, at best, “policy models.” We know that practitioners have a strong appetite for innovation and for what they see as “lessons”. We also know that transfer agents can face resistance when “selling” their products, as well as competition from other agents working the field (e.g., consultants or other international organizations). As a result, they look for innovative ways to transfer. Scholarly work needs to be alive to this dynamic, to be more critical of the transferability of specific policy tools, and to reflect this better in a more developed theoretical framework.

Despite its importance for politics, leadership does not find a common definition across disciplines and that is quite difficult to operationalize in the public sector. On the one hand, the study of political leadership has been moving from the focus on the personal characteristic of leaders towards the attention to the functioning of leadership in institutions (Blondel 1987) and the different resources of leadership capital (Bennister et al. 2014). On the other hand, public administration and public management have focused on the characterization of public sector leadership, listing features for success (Fernandez and Rainey 2006) or showing possible application of different theories such as managerial, traditional, transactional, transformational, horizontal and ethical leadership (Van Wart 2013). While some studies on organizational reform propose to focus on policy leadership to understand the unraveling of change processes (Gleeson et al 2011), the space for leadership as a distinct function in the policy process seems quite restricted: for example, the frameworks on policy change do not account for leadership as they do for other concepts such as entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, it is quite trivial to notice that different kinds of leadership (political, bureaucratic, societal) can play a distinct role in policy dynamics. Still, the applications of the concept of leadership in public administration and public management suffer from conceptual and empirical problems (Tummers et al 2015; Chapman et al 2016), while is quite absent in public policy. Our panel would like to open a debate on the different concepts and applications of leadership in public management, public administration and public policy, in order to understand its usefulness for the study of the policy process, with a particular but non-exclusive focus on change processes. In so doing, the panel proposes to approach the issue of leadership in public policy by asking some questions: What are the main and common dimensions of leadership in the different academic disciplines? Is leadership a political phenomenon that can be theoretically and empirically observed only at the individual level of analysis, or also at the organizational and at the systemic level? Are the different frameworks and so-called 'theories' of leadership useful for the study of the policy process? How can they be operationalized? Can they be used for comparative research on public policy? What is the explanatory potential of leadership for dynamics of policy stability and change? What empirical studies on leadership in the policy process exist and how do they describe leadership? What are the institutional, socio-economic, psychological aspects that affect leadership in the policy process? Blondel J., (1987), Political Leadership. Towards a General Analysis, London: SAGE Publications. Bennister M., T'Hart P., Worthy B. 2015. Assessing the Authority of Political Office-Holders: The Leadership Capital Index. West European Politics 38(3): 417-440. Chapman, C., et. al. 2016. ‘How Public Service Leadership Is Studied: An Examination Of A Quarter Century Of Scholarship’, Public Administration, 94, 111–128. Fernandez, S., and Rainey, H. G. 2006. ‘Managing Successful Organizational Change in the Public Sector’, Public Administration Review, 66, 2, 168–76. Gleeson, D., et al. 2011. ‘Negotiating tensions in developing organizational policy capacity: Comparative lessons to be drawn’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 13, 3, 237–263. Tummers, L., and Knies, E. 2015. ‘Measuring Public Leadership: Developing Scales For Four Key Public Leadership Roles’, Public Administration, doi: 10.1111/padm.12224 Van Wart, M. 2013. ‘Lessons from Leadership theory and the Contemporary Challenges of Leaders’, Public Administration Review, 73, 4, 553–565.

From the perspective of governance and social capital, trust is conceptualized as a critical contextual element which enables cooperation and facilitates actors to participate in the public policy process as well as resolves conflicts. This is because trust and network reduces the transaction costs involved in mutual distrust and the monitoring process. Most studies of social capital have focused on collaboration or government trust of which citizens possess. Government trust enhances the policy compliance of citizens and induces continuous and pragmatic responses to complex problems. However, extant studies are limited in discussing the scope of government-citizen collaboration by assuming a unilateral direction of trust on part of the citizens toward their government. This panel defines the level of trustworthiness that the public policymaker has towards citizens as a major factor in the policymaking process. That is, we believe that trustworthy behavior and characteristics of citizens are important elements in determining the level of trust public policymakers possess toward them. The ability, benevolence, and integrity of citizens compose the indicators of their trustworthiness. At the same time, perceptions or judgments of the trustworthiness of citizens are affected by diverse interactions and role perceptions that the public policymakers hold. The interaction public policy makers have with citizens needs to be carefully analyzed through the institutional mechanisms of interaction and the group characteristics of citizens.

Decades of literature in study helps understand policy experimentation in western democratic countries. For example, governments with sharing similar social problems and political pressures created by electoral institutions tend to responds by adopting similar welfare and regulatory policies. Likewise, geographically proximity facilitates neighboring governments mutually learn from each other. In terms of vertical intergovernmental relations, central (or federal) governments sometimes design policy experimentations through top-down legislation, or select pilot sites to implement policy experimentations. However, some distinct features in authoritarian China, such as political loyalty, fiscal resource sharing, administrative centralization, and peer competition, have much complicated our analysis on policy experimentation. Unfortunately, it is still unclear why and how policy experimentation occurs in authoritarian regimes like China. This panel will discuss the dynamics of policy experimentation in the specific circumstance of China.

Water governance is considered one of the most important public policy issues in China, with a tradition as long as the history of Chinese civilization. As a result of China’s rapid industrialisation and urbanisation over the past three decades, the country’s water policy has been constantly changing. There has been a remarkable transformation of water policy to confront the complexities brought by deteriorating water ecology, frequent water shortages and threats of flood. Water policy and associated governing practice play an important role in sustainable economic and social development in China, and water governance in China will continue to evolve and develop as China makes further progress towards a high-income economy. Policy process research concerns stasis, change and complexity of interaction in public policy over time entailing actors, structures, cultures, institutions, and socioeconomic and biophysical conditions. The complexity of the policy process is understood by theoretical inquiry into practical reality, and development in policy theory requires constant attention to complex interactions that are defined by changing circumstances. Chinese water governance provides a unique lens to understand public policy, and yet it receives little attention in the study of policy theory. The proposed panel, entitled “What Can China’s Water Governance Contribute to Policy Theory?”, is co-organised by School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, and Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. It aims to fill in this gap by highlighting the importance of Chinese water governance to the domain of public policy theory. Given that China provides unique contextual circumstances with high hydrological uncertainty, rapid economic development, an authoritarian political regime, and long-enduring Chinese culture, China’s experiences with water governance have significant potential to contribute to modern policy theory, including that related to policy decisions, the policy process, policy evaluation and comparative policy analysis.

The objective of this Panel titled “Designing policy mixes for sustainable socio-technical transitions" is to further our conceptual and theoretical understanding of policy transitions and policy mixes for sustainable transitions and to provide insights for policy practice by empirically grounding these concepts and frameworks. Key questions that the panel papers and discussion is expected to address include the following: - What are the characteristics of policy mixes designed to enable sustainable socio-technical transitions in different policy areas such as energy, water, agricultural production, environment, ICT etc. given the high levels of uncertainty in the future policy context stemming from climate change and rapid technological disruptions? - What constitute good policy design principles (using conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence) to enable sustainable transitions and transformations? Relevance In terms of uncertainty in the policymaking context, there exists a range that moves from total ignorance of reality, to the deepest layer of uncertainty i.e., “unknown unknowns” (Walker et al., 2010). Effective policy mixes are expected to accommodate uncertainties in the future policy context by being flexible and adapt over time in expectation of a range of anticipated and unanticipated conditions (Swanson and Bhadwal, 2009; Taeihagh et al., 2014). Apart from incremental policy change over time, when large changes are expected in the future policy context, the switch to transformative (completely new) policy options can be facilitated by incorporating these into the suite of policy strategies early on, which can also help “accommodate the long lead-times on associated decisions and actions” (Howden et al., 2010; Park et al., 2012). Planned transitions thus require responses that include both incremental and transformative strategies, though the composition of a policy mix of different alternatives in practice warrants further research (Smith et al., 2010; Park et al., 2012, Taeihagh et al. 2013). The policy literature is, however, inconclusive on whether policymakers prefer incremental changes under conditions of uncertainty or innovation when necessary through radical policy shifts through policy packaging. Crafting of conscious policy choices to enable transitions and transformations while considering the likely changes in the future policy context thus form the motivation for this panel.

The concept of policy paradigms is one of the most widely used in the policy literature. Amenable to both rationalist and constructivist lenses on policy-making, policy paradigms exist at the nexus between policy ideas in the abstract and the actionable ideas that guide policy formulation and implementation. Policy paradigms constitute guiding logics upon which policy-makers draw in all stages of the policy process. Questions remain, however, concerning the role played by policy paradigms when paradigms are contested. When actors are faced with numerous and incommensurate interpretations of policy issues, the predictability and stability normally associated with policy paradigms gives way to considerable uncertainty. Although variables likely to determine policy outcomes in the absence of paradigmatic consensus have been identified in the literature (e.g., influence, resources, legitimacy, lesson drawing and anomalies), a standard approach to analyzing policy-making in contexts of paradigmatic contestation has yet to be developed. The aim of this panel is to explore the dynamics of policy-making when paradigms are contested in an effort to gain a more systematic understanding of the role played by policy paradigms when they are not decisive in determining the course of policy-making. As policy-making has become more open, consultative and trans-jurisdictional, it is expected that paradigms are increasingly contested and/or not decisive.

Using crowds is more than a procedural novelty: it is a form of co-production which opens new venues for direct contact between the state and citizens that can affect the force and direction of decision making. However, to date, both 'crowdsourcing' and 'co-production' remain ill-defined and weakly investigated. This panel will present papers discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the use of this tool for public policy-making. Papers will contrast digital crowdsourcing with other types of tools and present evidence of its success and failure to enhance policy-making. Cross-national and cross-sectoral studies are especially welcome as are theoretically informed case studies.

This panel is dedicated to the development of a political sociology approach of the policy process. Its aim is to discuss its main characteristics and its contribution to the understanding of the policy process. Our starting point is the statement made by Hacker and Pierson (2009) stressing that policies are not only the core terrain of political competition but also its main prize: control over policy is the heart of politics, related to the issues of political power and political legitimacy. In order to grasp these political dimensions of policies we propose to develop an analytical framework combining a sociological analysis of policy actors and policy processes. The sociological analysis of actors relies upon methods focused on the constitutive elements of policy actors: their social backgrounds, occupational careers and specializations, formal position-holding, reputations for policy influence, and not least shared ideas. In this perspective the methodological tools of the elite’s sociology (socio-biographic analysis, positional analysis, network analysis…) are very useful, but they need to be combined with other sociological methods able to analyze what they actually do in the policy process, as the pragmatic approach does (Zittoun, 2014). It is an empirical and comprehensive scientific approach, which considers as essential the inquiry work at the micro-level to observe, to describe and to understand the logic of the policymakers’ concrete practices during the policy process. In that sense, it is an actor-centered approach with a specific attention to the role of “programmatic” actors structured around policy change proposals (Hassenteufel and al. 2010). Second, this approach gives a great importance to the cognitive, discursive and analytical skills of the actors to define concepts and situation, to argue, to develop strategies, to discuss, to persuade and to convince, to build agreement and disagreement with other, to give meaning to their purpose, to adapt themselves to the different contexts, etc. Third, this approach rejects the distinction between discourse and practice but also between idea and interest considering that ideas are a discourse which can’t be separated from its enunciation. This perspective insists on ideas “in action” to challenge all analytical tools which propose an isolated analysis of ideas and practices. Last, this approach considers as essential the inquiry, the experiment, the learning and the test developed by the actors themselves confronted to uncertainty. To define a concept, to analyse situations, to make new proposals, to produce arguments, policy actors have to test them inside interactions which challenge with critiques. During this controversial process, their discourses need to “resist” which implies to strengthen arguments and to adapt them, in order to build discursive coalitions improving their influence on the policy process. The main task of the panel consists to discuss the methods, the concepts, the hypotheses and the contribution of a political sociology perspective on the policy process. All papers which can contribute theoretically, methodologically or empirically to this approach are welcome.

The panel aims to raise attention to the systems theory approach. The approach notoriously originates in the 1950s at least and gained some attention in various disciplines in the following decades. The role of systems theory in social science generally, and in public policy in particular, however, remained relatively modest. At the theoretical and methodological level, the concepts of systems theory have been relatively under-utilised when theorising about the policy process. Some methodologies for operationalising the systems theory approach - like systems dynamics and agent-based models - gained some attention but they have remained somehow limited to specific applications. The expected results from the panel consist of a fresh view onto the ways systems theory is used in the study of the policy process. Studies that relate the systems theory approach to public policy would be helpful to critically assess the potential contributions of the former to the latter. Studies that show how principles of systems theory can result in pieces of policy analysis, policy design, guidelines for policy implementation, and policy evaluation, are also welcome because they can help forming and consolidating a literature around the approach.

More than a decade ago Peter John (2003) asked “is there life after policy streams, punctuations, and coalitions?” Few years later Peter May (2010) followed the suite asking policy scholars to go “beyond subsystems” and employ “policy regimes” lens. These calls reflect a growing sense of a lack of theory development in Policy Sciences (PS), be it competitive theories or complementary in a progressive way. The discipline, despite its rich and long history, offers only heuristic models or loose frameworks (often without strong theoretical foundations) ranging from the first generation rationalism and incrementalism to second generation Garbage Can, Multiple Streams, and Advocacy Coalition Framework. The third generation of theory building in Policy Sciences appears to be stagnated. The scholars working in any one particular tradition rarely engage other frameworks within PS or theories across disciplines like International Relations (IR), Comparative Political Economy (CPE), and more importantly recent developments in New Institutional Economics (NIE), all of which are concerned with the similar issues. If the third generation of policy theories were to produce cumulative knowledge and a better understanding of the complex policy process in an increasingly globalised setting, a synthesis is imperative. Recently Policy Science scholars have called for incorporation of the cumulative knowledge from IR and CPE into the policy process frameworks (Jochim and May 2010; John 2013). Such a synthesis is also required across the supposedly incommensurate epistemological divides (positivist v. constructivist) within these disciplines, if we are to accumulate knowledge in a progressive way (Checkel 1997; Shapiro and Wendt 2005; Walker 2010). This panel invites policy scholars to take up this challenge and propose innovative frameworks and possibly concrete theories of the policy process that incorporate emerging realities of the policy process, particularly in light of the challenges posed by globalisation to PS. Papers particularly developing and fine tuning the Policy Regimes Framework/Perspective are encouraged.

Objectives This panel aims to assemble scholars who take a public policy perspective on current developments in agri-food policy, with a view to contextualise these in broader trends in public policy and to contribute to conceptual discussion on public policy, in particular on policy interlinkage and integration, transformational policy and policy capacity, transnational co-regulation and the consequences of anti-corporate and anti-globalization protests. Background: Over recent years, agricultural and food policy has morphed from a confined policy field that was often considered rather marginal due to the farm sector’s declining economic importance and employment to a policy area at the centre of much attention from the public, policy-makers and public policy scholars. There are various reasons for this shift. First, the global food crisis has reminded policy-makers that food price hikes can trigger public protest and destabilise entire political regimes. Second, new public concerns link agriculture and food to a wide array of issues, from climate change and the environment to animal welfare and healthy diets. This has triggered calls for and attempts at policy integration. Third, concerns over the sustainability and resilience of current food production systems have made both the agricultural sector and agricultural policy the target of attempts at transformational change, raising urgent conceptual and strategic questions about the role of public policy in developing long-term transitional policy visions and the capacity to steer encompassing sectoral transformation. Fourth, the globalization and financialisation of the agricultural and food sectors has created a range of new institutional arrangement, often through private regulation or co-regulation, that has transformed the role and capacity of public policy in ways that have not been fully understood. Fifth, the developmental pathway of agriculture and food policy has become increasingly politicised over recent years, with a transnational social movement challenging “Big Ag”. Such repoliticisation of public policy in resistance to globalization and corporatisation is a broader trend that has the potential to change the context of public policy significantly. Scientific relevance While agri-food issues have always received much attention among sociologists, political scientists and policy scholars have also taken a significant interest in studying agricultural policy-making over the years. The agricultural policy sector could be considered an extreme case of a compartmentalized and ‘exceptionalist’ policy-making process, characterized by a distinct set of sector-oriented institutions and ideas, well-organized and well-resourced sectoral interest groups, substantial government intervention and significant redistribution of economic assets to a relatively small group of producers and land owners. The sector is therefore almost a laboratory to study how the broader trends of policy interlinkage, sustainability challenges and stability concerns, internationalisation and anti-globalization movements affect public policy. It allows to test the traction of policy strategies such policy integration, transformational policy, and transnational co-regulation. Building on their special issue in the Journal of European Public Policy (to appear in 2017), the panel convenors aim to continue their conceptual project of using analysis of current developments in agri-food policy to characterise and understand broader trends in public policy.

The concept of policy styles has existed in the policy sciences since Richardson et al's groundbreaking work on Policy Styles in Western Europe appeared in 1982. However the concept remains under-developed both theoretically and empirically. This panel will bring together scholars from around the world to discuss aspects of the concept, including its purview and unit of analysis - sectoral, national, institutional - and its content and components in different countries.

This panel examines how different models of the public/private sector financing affects the delivery of healthcare service outcomes in different developed nations. For example, the U.S. complex mix of about 50% public and 50% private financing has contributed to the highly fragmented character of healthcare services that serve different population groups. The Canadian model of about 70% public and 30% private financing sometimes labeled "narrow but deep" results in universal access without financial barriers to hosFpital care and ambulatory medical services but greater variation in coverage at the provincial/territorial level for prescription drugs and other long-term healthcare delivery services. The Swiss model of mandated but individual choice of basic health insurance has also resulted in extensive regulated services and some variation in access across Cantons. The Japanese model includes universal insurance for medical and hospital services that is provided by public and private hospitals and physician care in many small physician run clinics. The italian model of overall universal health insurance administered at the regional level includes a significant degree of "contracting out" of delivery of services. In France universal coverage goes hand in hand with significant private options in a complex system. This panel examines how different models , of which I have provided some examples, with a variety of public/private financing arrangements affect the quality of healthcare services and the achievement of social equity.

Normative assumptions and traditional stereotypes characterize most debates on administrative cultures in the East and the West. Two contrasting views dominate. The dichotomous view suggests civil servants in both spheres hold different values and attitudes engrained in antithetical traditions with regard to the role of the state, stages of democracy, individual versus collective freedoms, and power distance (e.g., Berman 2011; Hofstede 1980; Schwartz 1999). The second view emphasizes increasing convergence or even universalism of practices and values as a result of the “global public management revolution” (Kettl 2005, 1), often referred to as New Public Management (NPM) since the 1980s. Recently, Mahbubani (2013) has written on the “great convergence” between Asia and the West due to increasing exchanges of management ideas and best practices, and almost universal acceptance of Western good governance values. More specifically, Xue and Zhong (2012, 284) suggest NPM-like reforms have affected administrative culture in China while Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011, 291-293) make a similar case for Western European and Anglo-Saxon countries. According to Xue and Zhong (2012, 284-285), “China has learned a great deal from international experiences in public administration reform” and is transitioning from “a public administration system based on personal will and charisma to one that is increasingly based on rule of law”. Some even claim such a system is preferable to achieve better governance (e.g., Zheng 2009; Guo 2008; Wei 2010); implying Western-inspired transition should be embraced rather than rejected on particularistic grounds. Conversely, in Western Europe NPM-based approaches are often seen as detrimental to “classical” Weberian principles and values such as expertise, lawfulness, and loyalty (Kernaghan 2000; Van der Wal 2011). At the same time, there are vast differences within the Eastern and Western hemispheres as research shows (Lynn 2006; Painter and Peters 2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). More so, even countries that are generally classified as belonging to a ‘Confucian tradition’ – such as China, Singapore, Japan, and South-Korea – differ tremendously in terms of how their systems have evolved, how their governments function and perform, and how individual civil servants behave (Berman 2011; Chen and Hsieh 2015; Drechsler 2014, 2015; Walker 2011). The same goes for countries with a ‘Weberian’ or rechtsstaat tradition (Drechsler 2005; Van den Berg, Van der Meer and Dijkstra 2016; Van der Meer, Steen, and Wille 2015). In short, in the majority of debates on how public administration compares between the East and the West statements and assumptions are intertwined on how systems, values, and practices actually look like and how they should look like. Empirical comparative data is almost non-existent, with some recent exceptions (e.g., Berman 2011; Berman et al. 2013; Haque 2013, 2015; Van der Wal 2015). However, increasing interconnectedness, collaboration and both converging and competing interests between Asia and the West in what some call the ‘Asian century’ (Bice and Sullivan 2014; Mahbubani 2008; Vielmetter and Sell 2014), necessitates deeper understanding of how public sectors in both regions work, how and why they differ, and what that means for collaborative potential and performance.

This panel will integrate methodological issues in comparative politics and comparative sociology with those used in policy analysis. We argue that if the promise of comparative policy analysis is to be fulfilled, then greater attention must be given to ways of linking comparative methods with policy, and likewise how to link methods associated with policy analysis to comparative cases. Too often these connections of research traditions are not made clearly and the resulting research may not contribute as much as it might, either to comparative studies or policy studies. As well as the substantive differences among these research traditions, there are marked differences between large-N and small-N traditions of research, especially in policy analysis. In this panel we would want to concentrate on the utility of the methods themselves more that on the application of the methods. That said, the methods should always be considered in light of how they can address policy problems. As well as the intellectual developments we expect from this panel, we intend to use the papers as a major component of a Handbook for Methodology for Comparative Policy Analysis.

Understanding Causal Mechanisms that Make Financial Systems More (in)Stable Causal mechanisms (or processes) aim to explain why and how certain outcomes are produced by the actions of various actors embedded in various contexts. Here the emphasis is on properties of actors, their interactions and actions informed by micro and macro-level contexts. There have been wide consensus in the policy science and political science disciplines that causal mechanisms are understudied (Gerring, 2008; Capano, 2009; Howlett and Cashore, 2009; Real-Dato 2009; Falleti and Lynch, 2009; Capoccia, 2016). Moreover, the current political economy scholarship is still searching for ‘the right intellectual questions of the [global financial] crisis and to guide us toward appropriate responses’ (Green and Hay 2015: 334). On this account, it has been recently argued that there is a key lesson for politicians, policymakers, and bureaucrats who are engaged in ‘successful policy design’ (Howlett 2009, 2011): They should identify and steer a set of structural and institutional complementarities, and agency level enabling conditions guiding policy design and implementation that would dynamically guard against excessive risk taking over a period of years (Bakir, 2013, 2017). The policy design literature has produced much insights on the various ways in which policy means, or ‘instruments’, can by classified and combined as ‘policy mixes’ (Elmore 1987, va der Doelen 1998, Gunningham et al. 1998). This recognition that the utilization of policy instruments by governments as part of a larger policy mix adds a significant dose of nuance and realism to the study of policy instruments. Scholars of policy design have subsequently sought to understand the internal workings of the policy mix, studying complementarities and interactions between policy instruments within a mix, and emphasizing how processes of policy patching or layering can result in greater consistency, coherence and congruence in a policy mix (van der Heijden 2011; Rayner 2013; Howlett and Rayner 2013; Howlett et al. (2014). However, there remains insufficient specification of the exact relationship between these policy instruments or instrument mixes and the policy goals which they purport to achieve. Despite the pride of place that this policy means-goals connection holds in policy design studies, the reality is that insufficient work has been done on the causal mechanisms that link the two design components. Furthermore, policy instruments do not exist in a vacuum. Policy instrument choice is often influenced by contextual elements such as political or organizational culture and social relations (Linder and Peters 1989, 1990; Salamon 1989; Howlett 2004; Woo, 2016). This panel aims to address a pressing practical and intellectual need for 1) a better understanding of how specific causal processes effect financial stability and 2) how causal mechanisms may be designed or managed in practice through aligning and reinforcing various incentives thereby producing financial stability that would not otherwise occur. Specifically it calls for cutting-edge empirical and theoretical research on causal processes generated by structural, institutional and organisational complementarities that reinforce each other’s incentives and compensate for each other’s shortcomings that influence policy design and implementation processes and various actors’ behaviour and financial stability (See Campbell, 2011; Bakir, 2013, 2017; Woo, 2016). It encourages conceptual and empirical contributions on (1) our conceptual understanding of mechanism-based explanations that explores why and how financial (in)stability is produced; (2) causal processes that resides at the level of the interactions between context dependent actors; (3) causal linkages between policy subsystems and policy mixes; (4) interactions among interdependent structural and institutional complementarities as causal mechanisms that inform actor behaviour and financial stability; (5) how a balance between policy mixes can be achieved so that they can mutually reinforce each other and compensate for the shortcomings of another in the realm of finance; (6) causal mechanisms in the post-GFC era that produce institutional reforms in regulatory governance arrangements such as multiple, unified, or twin peaks models; and (7) a systematic approach that enhances qualitative rigor in inductive interpretive research that makes a causal argument credible (list is not exhaustive). Selected References Bakir, C. (2013). Bank Behaviour and Resilience: The Effects of Structures, Institutions and Agents. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bakir, C., 2017. How can interactions among interdependent structures, institutions, and agents inform financial stability? What we have still to learn from global financial crisis. Policy Sciences (forthcoming). Campbell, J.L., 2011. The U.S. Financial Crisis: Lessons for Theories of Institutional Complementarity. Socioeconomic Review, 9 (2), 211–234. Capano, G. (2009). Understanding Policy Change as an Epistemological and Theoretical Problem, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 2009, 11, pp. 7-31 Capoccia, G., 2016. When do Institutions “Bite”? Historical Institutionalism and the Politics of Institutional Change. Comparative Political Studies, 49 (8), 1095-1127. Elmore, R.F., 1987. Instruments and Strategy in Public Policy. Review of Policy Research, 7 (1), 174–186. Falleti, Tulia G., and Lynch, J.F., 2009. Context and causal mechanisms in political analysis. Comparative political studies, 42 (9): 1143-1166. Gerring, J., 2008. The Mechanismic Worldview: Thinking Inside the Box. British Journal of Political Science, 38 (1), 161–179. Green, J., and Hay, C., 2015. Towards a new political economy of the crisis: Getting what went wrong right. New Political Economy, 20 (3), 331–341. Gunningham N., Grabosky P., and Sinclair D., 1998. Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Howlett, M., 2004. Beyond Good and Evil in Policy Implementation: Instrument Mixes,Implementation Styles, and Second Generation Theories of Policy Instrument Choice. Policy & Society, 23 (2), 1–17. Howlett, M., 2009. Governance Modes, Policy Regimes and Operational Plans: A Multi-Level Nested model of Policy Instrument Choice and Policy Design. Policy Sciences, 42 (1), 73–89. Howlett, M., 2011. Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments, 1st edn. London: Routledge. Howlett, M., and Cashore, B., 2009. The Dependent Variable Problem in the Study of Policy Change: Understanding Policy Change as a Methodological Problem. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 11 (1), 33-46. Howlett M., and Rayner J., 2013. Patching vs Packaging: Complementary Effects, Goodness of Fit, Degrees of Freedom and Intentionality in Policy Portfolio Design. Rochester, N.Y.: Social Science Research Network, SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 2273342. Howlett M., Mukherjee I., and Woo J.J., 2014. From Tools to Toolkits in Policy Design Studies: The New Design Orientation and Policy Formulation Research. Policy & Politics, 43 (2), 291–311. Linder SH, Peters BG (1990) Policy Formulation and the Challenge of Conscious Design. Evaluation and Program Planning, 13 (3), 303–311. Rayner, J., 2013. On Smart Layering as Policy Design: Tackling the Biofuels Policy Mess in Canada and the United Kingdom. Real-Dato, J., 2009. Mechanisms of Policy Change: A Proposal for a Synthetic Explanatory Framework. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 11 (1), 117-143. Salamon, L.M., 1989. Beyond Privatization: The Tools of Government Action. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press. van der Doelen, F.C.J., 1998. The “Give-and-Take” Packaging of Policy Instruments: Optimizing, Legitimacy and Effectiveness. In: M-L. Bemelmans-Videc, R.C. Rist, and E. Vedung, eds. Carrots, Sticks , and Sermons: Policy Instruments and Their Evaluation. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 129–146. van der Heijden, J., 2011. Institutional Layering: A Review of the Use of the Concept. Politics 31 (1), 9–18. Woo, J.J., 2016. Business and Politics in Asia's Key Financial Centres: Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Singapore: Springer.

Transformative Constitutionalism and Public Policy Our research is focused on a comparative question of differences in Public Policy orientation between countries following ‘Liberal Constitution’ and ‘Transformative Constitution’. The nature of the formation of the State is critical to the role and function of public policy for those contexts. The process of the State formation is hugely different in Global North and Global South. Enlightenment and subjugation of feudal forces to democratic and capitalist process explain the origin of the modern state in Global North (Moore 1966). In most of the Global South, where colonialism was critical to the State formation, what brought the society together is through two processes: a) mobilisation against colonial forces, and b) process of the making of the Constitution. The second aspect is what makes Law inseparable from Public Policy question in the countries of Global South. Western Liberal Democratic Traditions (where the discipline of Public Policy originated) gave shape to traditional Liberal Constitutions, which emphasized negative rights (Nussbaum 2006). Within this framework, typically the judiciary is engaged in an adjudication process involving private interests. The relevance of judgements for public interest is incidental. On the other hand, new Constitutions in the Global South gave space for positive action from the state. The literature on Transformative Constitutionalism (Vilhena, Baxi and Viljoen 2013) show that ‘public interest’ was deliberately built into legalism in those constitutions. Interestingly, in Global South where impunity is high, largest number of court cases are against the State. Thus, in public problem solving, the role of judiciary is hugely different in contexts where Liberal Constitution is followed compared to Transformative Constitution. Pro-active judiciary in various countries of Global South have directed and monitored how the State deals with public policy questions of education, health, food security, access to land and water, corruption etc. This line of inquiry takes us to area which is less studied, namely the interface of law and public policy (Kreis and Christensen 2013). This inquiry could reveal some of the unique features of public policy in Global South and countries of transitional development. Such finding would challenge the dominant models of public policy conception as emanating from the Western world, and would have great relevance to contextualise the discipline for teaching, research and practice. References Kreis, A. M. and Christensen, R. K. (2013) “Law and Public Policy”, Policy Studies Journal Vol. 41 (s1) pp. S38-S52. Moore, B. (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. London: Beacon Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2006)“Poverty and Human Functioning: Capabilities as fundamental entitlements”, in Poverty and Inequality (eds. David B. Grusky and Ravi Kanbur), Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pp. 47-75. Vilhena, O., Baxi, U. and Viljoen, F. (2013) Transformative Constitutionalism. Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press.

Collaborative and deliberative approaches to policymaking have received increasing attention over the last decade. Collaborative approaches seek to bring stakeholders together to develop consensus-oriented policy designs through face-to-face interaction and negotiation. Deliberative approaches focus on the policy making process as a form of reasoned discussion aimed at producing well-informed opinions. Both approaches stress the importance of a communicative rationality, without necessarily assuming that communication takes place in ideal situations. While a first generation of scholarship has demonstrated how both collaborative and deliberative approaches operate in democratic settings, we still lack a well-developed understanding of the contextual conditions in which these approaches are likely to flourish or wilt. This contextual knowledge is critical, because there is a tendency to see collaborative or deliberative approaches as universal in their applications. However, some national contexts are much more likely to facilitate collaboration and deliberation than others. The purpose of this panel is to explore how different national (or local or regional) institutions, policy styles, or political dynamics foster or constrain collaborative and deliberative approaches to policymaking. We propose a number of preliminary hypotheses to guide our comparative investigation of collaborative and deliberative approaches. First, we anticipate that collaborative and deliberative approaches are more likely to work well in nations or communities with active civil societies and with pluralistic political cultures. These approaches are unlikely to either arise or be successful in statist cultures with weak civil society and more elite or clientelist forms of politics. An exception to this claim is when the state uses these mechanisms instrumentally to mobilize legitimacy or public input. Second, we expect these approaches to be more prominent in nations where consensus democracy and corporatist bargaining are well-developed and where citizens have high trust in government institutions. These conditions can create supportive cultural norms for collaboration and deliberation, while also creating conditions where state institutions are open to public input. Majoritarian and adversarial democracies are less likely to foster supportive conditions for collaboration and deliberation, though adversarial policymaking may foster collaborative governance as an antidote to political stagnation. A final expectation relates to the vertical dimension of politics. Federalist countries are more likely to be pluricentric and hence more likely to create conditions of shared and distributed power. These conditions create incentives for collaboration and deliberation. However, unitary states with strong decentralization may create analogous conditions. Our panel would select panelists based on their ability to shed light on the comparative conditions for collaborative and deliberation. While papers would not have to be explicitly comparative, the panel as a whole should be able to generate an empirically-grounded discussion of how different national context create the demand for or the success of collaborative and deliberative approaches to policymaking.

Public policy must reflect and arbitrate between the diverse preferences of societal groups, organized interests and citizens. In democracies at least, public policy representation is one of the crucial parameters for judging the quality of governance (United Nations 2015). Accordingly, it has been the topic of a voluminous literature spanning across the disciplinary borders of Public Policy, Public Administration, Political Science, and Sociology (e.g. Achen and Bartels 2016, Burnstein 2014, Lax and Phillips 2012, Page and Shapiro 1983, Soroka and Wlezien 2010, Stimson et al. 1995, Rasmussen et al. 2015). Furthermore, inequalities in representation figure prominently on both the political agenda (Gilens 2012, Rasmussen et al. 2014). There is no lack of arguments that representation is biased towards the preferences of certain groups of citizens or organized interests at the expense of the views of the general public. As a result, there is growing interest in studying whose preferences are reflected in public policy making. This research has been based on different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Despite several seminal contributions to the research field), research has been predominantly focused on a small set of geographical regions and has rarely considered the impact of different types of societal actors within the same project. Expanding research on the theme of policy representation to other parts of the world that represent different systems of government can contribute to increasing the understanding of the mechanisms behind (bias in) policy representation. It will help judge the value of the instruments for increasing input from ordinary citizens in policy-making and regulating the behavior of lobbyists, which are increasingly an object of scholarly discussions and public debates (Baumgartner et al. 2009, Binderkrantz et al. 2015, Dür et al. 2015, Gray et al. 2004). In sum the scientific relevant of the proposed panel is in bringing the study of policy representation to the next level in terms of theory, empirical scope, and integration within the broader study of public policy making. The objectives of the panel are: to extend the scope of research on policy representation to policies and parts of the world that have so far not been systematically studied; to advance our understanding of bias in policy making, both in empirical and theoretical terms, and the mechanisms through which bias occurs; to bring together scholars working on policy representation from a variety of disciplines, theoretical perspectives, and normative assumptions. Cited literature: Achen, Christopher H., and Larry M. Bartels. (2016 ) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Baumgartner, Frank R., Berry, J.M., Hojnacki, Marie, Kimball, David C., & Leech, Beth L. (2009). Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Binderkrantz, Anne S., Christiansen, Peter M., & Pedersen, Helene H.. (2015). Interest Group Access to the Bureaucracy, Parliament, and the Media. Governance, 28(1), 95-112. Burstein, Paul. (2014). American Public Opinion, Advocacy and Policy in Congress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dür, Andreas, Bernhagen, Patrick, & Marshall, David. (2015). Interest Group Success in the European Union: When (and Why) Does Business Lose? Comparative Political Studies, 48(8), 951-983. Gilens, Martin. (2012). Affluence and Influence: Economic Power and Political Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Fondation and Princeton University Press. Gray, Virginia, Lowery, David, Fellowes, Matthew, & Mcatee, Andrea. (2004). Public Opinion, Public Policy, and Organized Interests in the American states. Political Research Quarterly, 57(3), 411-420. Lax, Jeffrey R., & Phillips, Justin H. (2012). The Democratic Deficit in the States. American Journal of Political Science, 56(1), 148-166. Page, Benjamin I. and Robert Y. Shapiro (1983). “Effects of Public Opinion on Policy.” The American Political Science Review 77(1): 175-190. Rasmussen, Anne, Carroll, Brendan, & Lowery, David. (2014). Representatives of the Public? Public Opinion and Interest Group Activity. European Journal of Political Research, 53(2), 250-68. Rasmussen, Anne, Reher, Stefanie and Toshkov, Dimiter. (2015). Policy Representation in Europe: A Comparative Study of the Relationship between Public Opinion and Public Policy. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association. San Francisco. Soroka, Stuart N. and Christopher Wlezien (2010). Degrees of Democracy: Politics, Public Opinion, and Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stimson, James A., Michael B. Mackuen and Robert S. Erikson (1995). “Dynamic Representation.” The American Political Science Review 89(3): 543. United Nations (2015) Responsive and Accountable Public Governance. 2015 World Public Sector Report. New York: United Nations.

Global policy models have been increasingly celebrated, but what do we know, on a theory basis, about why and how they turn global? ‘Best practices’ are no longer understood as absolutely best, but policies keep being transferred from city to city, state to state, and country to country. Various actors have actively and purposefully engaged in policy transfer, and many hope that the more policies are transferred, the more development will be achieved. But is that so? Why do policymakers engage in policy transfer? Are all good policies transferrable? Is there such a thing as effective transfer? Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, p. 3) define policy transfer as “a process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting”. Since that seminal article, numerous other publications have tried to describe, characterize, classify and explain the policy transfer phenomenon. Stone (2012) makes an extensive review of over 800 journal articles dedicated to the topic, revealing that several terms are used to name processes of these kinds, with slight conceptual differences: “diffusion”, “transfer”, “convergence”, “translation”. According to Stone, the policy transfer literature is especially interested in the motivations and the decision-making rationale of agents involved in policy transfer. The convergence literature, in turn, rather gives emphasis to the role of structures, institutions and other globalization processes as drivers of global policy isomorphism. Finally, scholars who have worked with the idea of translation are focused on studying the modifications, mutations and adaptations that these policies undergo when being exported/imported. In the framework of these various existing terms and their slightly different connotations, the panel will address policy transfer and international policy diffusion, with a particular focus on the reasons, processes, and features of transfer and non-transfer. The panel will go beyond the ‘best-practice’ black box, presenting and debating cases that examine policy transfer and policy diffusion processes in detail. The goal is to gather scholars from different countries and policy fields and to create dialogue around the contribution of their research to building theory. Dolowitz, D., Marsh, D. (2000). Learning from abroad: the role of policy transfer in contemporary policy-making. Governance 13: 5 – 24. Stone, D. (2012). Transfer and translation of policy. Policy Studies, 33:6, 483-499.

Achieving effective and efficient coordination is at the heart of good public policymaking. This panel proposes to examine the multi-faceted coordination challenges and opportunities by looking at the case of knowledge policy domain through an explicit framework emphasising its multi-issue, multi-actor, and multi-level nature. The global shift towards knowledge-based societies has placed knowledge at the core of contemporary public policy. However, the governance of knowledge requires collaboration across multiple policy sectors, e.g. higher education, research, and trade. While this brings forward the multi-issue aspect of policy coordination, it also points to the presence of state actors (e.g. different ministries and agencies), businesses, as well as non-state actors (interest groups and stakeholder organizations), adding a multi-actor aspect. Extant research has revealed how these two features already contribute to several coordination challenges – duplication, inconsistencies, clashing priorities, and potential bureaucratic and political conflict (Braun, 2008; Peters, 2015). So far largely missing from these analyses of policy coordination is a consideration of multi-level governance aspects. This includes ‘new’ actors increasingly involved in the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of policy which are operating across governance levels (Gornitzka & Maassen, 2000; Olsen, 1988), but also transnational and sub-national governance layers, given that devolution to regions—both supranational and subnational—is an important feature of contemporary governance (Chou & Ravinet, 2015; Jayasuriya & Robertson, 2010; Piattoni, 2010). So far, these multi-issue, multi-level and multi-actor dimensions have largely been studied in isolation from each other, preventing a full(er) understanding of the nuances and complexities of policy coordination. This panel invites researchers from diverse disciplines interested in knowledge policies to examine “the three multi’s” in a systematic and explicit manner, including explorations of interactions between them. All accepted papers must have a clear conceptual approach, supported by empirical examples, preferably beyond a single case study. We propose three sections, each giving primacy to one of the three multi’s, while at the same time highlighting interactions with the other two. ReferencesBraun, D. (2008). Organising the political coordination of knowledge and innovation policies. Science and Public Policy, 35(4), 227-239. doi:10.3152/030234208x287056Chou, M.-H., & Ravinet, P. (2015). Governing higher education beyond the state: The rise of ‘Higher education regionalism'. In H. De Boer, D. D. Dill, J. Huisman, & M. Souto-Otero (Eds.), Handbook of Higher Education Policy and Governance (pp. 361-378). London: Palgrave.Gornitzka, Å., & Maassen, P. (2000). Hybrid steering approaches with respect to European higher education. Higher Education Policy, 13(3), 267-285. Jayasuriya, K., & Robertson, S. L. (2010). Regulatory regionalism and the governance of higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 1-6. doi:10.1080/14767720903573993Olsen, J. P. (1988). Administrative reform and theories of organization. In C. Campbell & B. G. Peters (Eds.), Organizing governance, governing organizations (pp. 233-254). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Peters, B. G. (2015). Pursuing horizontal managment: the politics of public sector coordination. Kansas: University press of Kansas.Piattoni, S. (2010). The theory of multi-level governance: conceptual, empirical, and normative challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In recent years, new conceptions of systemic corruption as a dysfunctional informal institution consisting of a series of collective action dilemmas (social traps) have emerged in anticorruption research. These approaches emphasize the role of social norms and cultural beliefs as coordinating devices or mechanisms that sustain particular equilibria. Definitions of systemic corruption as an informal institution are a welcomed addition to the analyst’s toolkit. But they describe an all-encompassing form of corruption that leaves very little room for human agency. And they refer only to extreme cases, supposed to represent the exception more than the rule. This panel seeks to fill those gaps.

The panel is aimed at analyzing various public administration reforms in the Central Asia region (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). Political transformation over the recent decade has re-shaped the geopolitical landscape in the Eurasian region and created new challenges for future development of Central Asian countries. There is a shortage of academic research on this region, hence, this panel aims to improve scholarly knowledge on policy analysis and practices in Central Asia. The recent global economic crisis has increased the importance of good governance and the capacity of the government bodies to design, implement and evaluate public policies. The governments of Central Asian countries have attempted to transfer “best” international practices from all parts of the world and introduced various socio-economic and political reforms with varying degrees of success. This panel seeks to analyze whether the governments of Central Asian countries have been able to overcome Soviet legacies, adopt international practices to the local context, and meet new global social, economic and political challenges. The panel invites papers on various aspects of the public policy and management reform processes in any of the Central Asian countries with a particular focus on civil service and public sector reforms, including labor and welfare relations, migration, education, economic and budgetary policies. Regardless of their theoretical and/or analytical point of departure, papers are expected to draw significantly on original empirical research. A selection of the accepted papers will be considered for potential publication in a special issue of an international peer-reviewed journal. This panel is interdisciplinary and will combine international and regional scholars from Central Asian countries who represent different academic traditions and institutes.

The tools approach to public policy has a long history but only recently has it begun to address complex questions of tools mixes and tool portfolios. Rather than focus on selecting a single tool which has historically characterized studies in the areas, recent studies focus on mix of tools as well as hybrid tools that combine elements of different kinds of tools. They recognize that many contemporary policy problems are often too complex for binary comparisons and scoring for the purpose of selecting the most effective tool. They acknowledge that a concert of tools – substantive, procedural, behavioral nudge, and so on ‑ are required to address the different types of behavior that often lie at the source of the problem. These complexities in the substance and context of design and selection of policy tools choice are most evident in the areas of environment and social policies.

In order to be effective, the policy process and policies must be coordinated and coherent, both horizontally and vertically. Against the need for greater integration and coherence due to increasing interconnectedness and complexity of problems is the reality that the policy process has become more disjointed and policies more fragmented in many sectors and issue areas. Horizontal coordination was stymied with New Public Management reforms promoting agentification, competition and individual rewards. Expansion of popular participation and co-production further fragmented the process. Vertical coordination went through similar attenuation with the spread of decentralization in recent decades. The adverse effects of these well-intended reforms are increasingly recognized as policymakers make deliberate efforts to overcome them through 'Whole of Government' reforms and right-siting rather than decentralization of policies.

Policy formulation has been historically a black box of the policy process. Little is known about where policies options come from and how they are assessed and selected. Recent works in the area - such as that on policy work, policy advisory systems and instrument constituencies - have begun to open up this black box and shed light on specific aspects of policy formulation. Papers in this panel will continue this process of exploration and discovery by discussing conceptual and empirical papers as well as case studies on the background, dynamics and outcomes of policy formulation.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Policy requires a modicum of legitimacy in order to be effective, which raises the question what makes a policy and the government legitimate. While non-democratic systems have always had uneasy legitimacy, except in the most dictatorial systems where issues of illegitimacy can be simply ignored, this was relatively straightforward for governments elected by universal franchise. But as public trust in governments in a large number of countries around the world have declined in recent years, questions are being asked about what they can do to stem the decline and regain it. A vast literature on “good governance” has emerged emphasizing transparent, accountable, and participatory policy process to bridge the democratic deficit. The assumption of this literature is that such a process would enhance both legitimacy and performance. There is another line of thinking that what matters is performance and outcomes: governments that meet the expectations of their population not only enjoy support of their population but, as a result of the enhanced legitimacy, able to make better policies and implement them more effectively. Are their substantial differences between legitimacy centered on process or performance? What are they? Can a meaningful distinction be made across countries based on their conceptions of legitimacy? The argument is especially pertinent to East Asia where certain countries, including China in recent decades, are said to have flourished due to emphasis on performance rather than adherence to principles of good governance.

Social integration processes were devised of by historic leading sociologist as the mechanisms through which a society holds together, populations are made into a collectivity. Today’s societies are facing the challenges of increased individuation, new socialization technologies, diversity in ethnicity and religious or irreligious beliefs often in relation with migrations, globalization with increased inequalities, and higher distrust in police and government. Obvious manifestations of disunion can be outgroup defiance, hate crimes, agglutination/ segregation processes, national de identification, resentment vis-à-vis public institutions and organizations (school, police). Comparative surveys allow to observe how national policies impact various sections of the young population, for example to compare the effects of policies regarding school or neighborhood segregation, or policing policies in terms of stop and search and how those impact the sharing of common values, attachment to a country and inter group relations. Based on the UPYC project (Understanding and Preventing Youth Crime, a consortium of researchers, part of the 3rd sweep of the International Self Reported Delinquency Survey that covers all regions of the world), or other empirical sources, the panel will tackle the issue of cohesion in a comparative cross national fashion. The effect of school and policing policies as well as social identity (religious, ethnic, national) on cohesion and crime will be scrutinized.

The proposed panel seeks to focus attention on three objectives: Explore the type of data that is most useful to those actively working to bring about transformational change; Understand what data formats (e.g. visualizations, briefs, and infographics) are most accessible to civil society and policymakers; and Highlight the ways in which research has been translated into action at the regional, national, or sub-regional levels to advance sustainable development outcomes. Researchers have a critical role to play in producing actionable data that can be used by civil society and policymakers to enable evidence-based decision-making. It is critical to get the data produced by research institutes and universities worldwide in the hands of those that it is of most value. The challenge is to: a) identify what type of data is most useful to those pushing for positive change, b) understand in what format the research community should disseminate this information, and c) highlight promising policies in producing evidence-based research that is actionable and accessible. Creating a dialogue and open relationship with civil society groups is critical to ensuring that research priorities address the needs of civil society and policymakers so it can be actionable. The data revolution has supported the creation of new global tools that can be used by policymakers and civil society to advance sustainable development. By understanding what approaches have been feasible and effective for improving health, increasing education, and reducing poverty in other economically and socially similar countries, decision-makers have a tool they can use to move developmental outcomes. Transparency on national action also gives civil society information on concrete steps to advocate for and the power to hold their leaders accountable. Through looking at regional, national, and sub-national case studies, we can gain a better understanding of how and when civil society and policymakers use evidence-based research. These case studies can also highlight what works in creating strong mutually beneficial relationships between the research community and civil society groups. This understanding is important to the scientific community seeking to produce research that is not only theoretically sound and rigorous but that is also constructive to those actively working to bring about transformational change. This session will be chaired by the WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD) and BRAC. WORLD works to strengthen equal rights and opportunities worldwide by: identifying effective policy approaches for improving individual wellbeing and enabling countries to thrive, improving the quantity and quality of globally comparative data, and working in partnerships to support evidence-based improvements in communities and countries worldwide. ​BRAC is the world’s largest development organization, operating in 11 countries to empower people and communities in situations of poverty, illiteracy, disease and social injustice. BRAC works at the nexus of research evidence, civil society, and service provision and is internationally recognized as a pioneering social enterprise. This panel invites researchers to reflect on how to best ensure that research findings are accessible and relevant to civil society and policymakers and create meaningful dialogue between researchers and groups working on the ground for change.

The objective of the panel is to explore the nature of governance challenges of less developed countries in Asia and the Pacific in the broad areas of public policy making and institutional performance. How have different countries (both middle-income and low-income) addressed issues of participation, accountability, and transparency in their work? What role do institutions play, and how can they be strengthened? What types of incentives can be put in place to enhance institutional performance, and what specific roles can the governments play in this regard. These questions have been in the development agenda of many bilateral and multilateral development institutions.

Drug policy has been a subject of analysis since the 1980s, with a focus on the policymaking process, especially at an international level, dominated by the US and Europe. The main focus of research to date has been the conception and spread of the prohibitionist model in the Western World: the so-called “war on drugs”. However, in reality drug policy has evolved during the last 30 years in a number of divergent directions. Suffering from a fashionable renewal linked to the development of new models of regulation of the drug markets, drug policy and its study need to be analyzed through a critical lens. The aim of this panel is to explore the complexity of drug policy around the world, through analyses of both the policymaking process and the methodology used to generate that analysis. With the increase of complexity in the policymaking process, the very definition of drug policy has changed and needs to be re-examined. “Drug policy” now engenders question of public health, morality, security, human rights, economy, even as this definition changes across time and geography. In addition, actors are becoming more and more diverse. Beyond the state apparatus, multi-level governance is spreading (in different intensities according to the regions of the world) and the dynamics of change are moving away from the UN sphere. Bottom-up forces, rather than top-down political processes, are increasingly driving debates, legislation and implementations, and thus local experiences are having a greater impact on national and international policymaking. This raises the question of how to measure this new complexity of drug policies. When studying the process of policymaking, implementation or evaluation, the scientific tools must take into account these new configurations. The panel thus seeks to question models, instruments and indicators that are often used in drug policy analyses in order to discuss the broader issue of causal inferences. Being a highly politicized subject, many studies expose a cause and effect link that is inclined to be biased for or against prohibition. By raising these questions, the panel intends to encourage the conceptualization of drug policy analysis. Hence, papers comparing more than one case study or putting one case into perspective are privileged. Also, studies integrating a multidisciplinary approach are encouraged. The idea of the panel is to better understand how policies work and, in a policy science perspective, how academia can contribute to the renewal of knowledge around drug policy. In sum, by improving the understanding of drug related issues and proposing a new way of measuring drug related phenomena, the panel will enhance the studies of and for drug policy.

All across the world, culture is identified as a distinct domain of public policy. Today, cultural policy operates at multiple levels: in the global circulation of policy buzzwords and trends; in national discourses on culture and cultural production; in the implementation of cultural programmes at different echelons of government; in the activities and regulation of cultural institutions; in the practices of cultural intermediaries; and in the local, on-the-ground appropriations and resistances by cultural practitioners themselves. At the transnational level, there has been a proliferation of policy-making processes, beyond but also overlapping with traditional nation-state policy-making processes. If anything, the relationship between culture and policy has become more complex and dynamic than ever. This panel explores how contemporary regimes of policy governance impact the arts and cultural sectors. It brings together scholars and practitioners from multiple disciplines and backgrounds, to problematize current methodological and theoretical paradigms, and provide new insights into the key structures, orientations, mechanics and practicalities of cultural policy today. Ultimately it aims to advance cultural policy research by exploring new sets of references and approaches.

The main theme of the panel is comparative public policy from an Asian perspective which tries to focus on public policy and administration issues affecting Asian countries in a collaborative and globalized world. With this them in mind, a main objective of this panel is to use Asia as a context for generating useful knowledge in comparative public policy which can be adopted for addressing policy problems by taking into consideration of differences across regions. Its concern matches the theme of the conference very well which recognizes and appreciates the importance and relevancy of the fact that public policy and administration is now functioning in a collaborative manner between government and non-governmental actors which must integrate between a regional context, which is Asia in this panel, and a globalized environment. In doing so, it would like to adopt a comparative perspective with an area focus of Asia to examine how actors, including cities, states and city-states, in Asia are managing their problems, reforms, and concerns in public policy and management in this increasingly challenging and complex environment. With globalization, comparative public policy is a growing and revitalizing field in the study of public administration and public management. By being comparative, it is not arguing from an extreme angle that Asia is so unique that all Westernized and imported theories are totally irrelevant. It would like to draw attention to the importance of contextual factors of each country and region which inevitably lead to a gap, which is not necessarily unbridgeable, between existing generic theories and the theory and practice of that particular country and region. A comparative perspective is both necessary and desirable for building more comprehensive theories and promoting better practice, which actually have implications beyond Asia on all regions, including the West, the origin of many major theories of public administration and management being applied around the globe. In short, it would like to create public policy knowledge that can bridge regions by clearly identifying contextual variables and understanding their impact on our subject of concern rather than creating some unique knowledge about Asia which cannot travel outside the region. The panel aims to provide a good opportunity for scholars and experienced practitioners with knowledge and interest on this area to present their findings for promoting cross-facilitation of knowledge. Consistent with the conference theme of being interdisciplinary, the panel encourages paper submissions from all disciplines, including economics, political science, public administration, and law, that are adopting an comparative approach with an area focus on Asia. Topics which explain and examine the theory and practice gaps between Asia and the West, identify the contextual factors leading to those gaps, and importantly, make suggestions for better theory building and integration and more useful practice are particularly welcome.

Cities offer an important venue for political science as political phenomena present themselves in a dense form. While many political science classics such as Dahl’s “Who Governs?” or Hunter’s “Community Power Structure” studied urban societies, the focus of political research on cities is on politics, institutions and governance rather than on public policy. This is surprising given that urban areas are confronted with specific policy problems that differ from both rural communal problems and national challenges and demand specific urban policy solutions. We argue that there is a need to a more explicit focus on urban policies linking urban policy analysis to the large body of research on urban politics and metropolitan governance. Furthermore, policy studies to this day lack a policy sector approach to urban policies. This panel aims at filling this gap by inviting paper dealing with urban policy problems in different policy sectors. The focus should be on the specifities of urban policy processes, design, and effects. The long time objective is to put together a handbook of urban policy presenting the full range of urban policy sectors from tax policy to culture.

In the Iberoamerican scenario, there are several important studies regarding a) how political and institutional determinants influence the content of public policies into different countries, b) the way public policies are actually made (policy formulation) in contrast with predominant policy process approaches, and c) about the institutional and context determinants of public policies during implementation (Medellín Torres, 2004; Stein, Tommasi, Echebarría, Lora, & Payne, 2006; Olavarría-Gambi, 2012, 2014). However, in regions such as Ibero-America (is a region in the Americas plus Spain and Portugal comprising countries or territories where Spanish or Portuguese are predominant languages), it is important to advance in the comparative analysis of experiences that would not only generate a better knowledge and understanding about public policy formulation, but also identify patterns and key elements for a better practice in policy design and implementation, in order to promote more accurate and effective policy designs and to help avoiding policy failure. Since 2011, and with support of several international organizations such as the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the Organization of American States (OAS), and recently the Latin American Center of Administration for Development (CLAD), we have witnessed a raise (and a progressive consolidation) of open government initiatives into the national government agendas (that is, public policies and public sector reforms for strength transparency, access of information, public participation and public accountability with the intensive use of ICT). Nowadays 15 Iberoamerican countries regularly develops and implement biannual national action plans (each of them with a set of specific commitments) for the advance of open government at the national level. Since open government initiatives comprises in a high degree the most recent innovations and public sector reforms in this part of the World (this region is in fact the most prominent in the advancement of open government worldwide), we consider of a paramount scientific relevance to make a systematic effort in analyzing in a comparative fashion the advancement of open government. Using approaches for comparative analysis regarding the diffusion or public policies (Berry & Berry, 2007; Dobbin, Simmons, & Garrett, 2007) the objective of this panel is twofold: a) the identification of the determinants of the success in the advancement of public policies for open government (that is, policies and changes in public sector programs for strength transparency, access of information, public participation and public accountability with the intensive use of ICT) into the national agendas, and b) its implementation processes and pitfalls. Studies are centered but not limited to OGP national action plans.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. In the last decades there has been a new wave of public sector reforms. Most of these attempts aim to improve government effectiveness by transforming governance structures and adopting new policy instruments and processes. But many of them have produced limited or mixed results as they were targeted on isomorphic institutional changes, supported by a narrow group of government actors intending to gain political and financial support from the international community and privileged constituencies. On the other hand, there have been several attempts to do reform differently, not ignoring contextual factors and the complexity of problems faced by developing countries, but fostering innovation, adaptation and learning. Among these reforms we can mention the efforts to advance new modes of governance and social coordination, new uses of social media and social networks, new monitoring and evaluation strategies, the incentive to develop a wide range of learning communities and communities or practice in the public sector, and the use of social analytics in planning, implementing and evaluating public policies and governmental programs. Public policy reform, and specially, public policy innovation, is a somewhat new subject that has been receiving growing attention in academic and professional circles. But to understand the role of public policy innovation in developing countries requires new analytical frameworks, new methodologies, and a better understanding of the dynamics of organizational and institutional changes and the ways to engage citizens on the decision making process and the co-production of collective goods. In other words, as the strategic importance of fostering public policy innovation became acknowledged, many important questions stay unanswered, such as: What exactly should be considered as a public policy innovation in the developing world, and what impact they have on politics and collective life, locally, nationally and internationally? What conditions, causal mechanisms or different modes of public policy innovations might be identified both historically and in the present? What do new forms public policy innovation mean for the development processes in different institutional and cultural contexts? How do public policy innovations interact with other traditional institutions and organizations in the public sector and society? How public policy innovation affect core functions and processes inside the government, including (but not limited to) human resources management, regulation, budgeting and financial management, project management and performance management? What methodologies are most effective for conducting research on these questions? Can public policy innovations in developed world inform new demands in Latin America, East Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (or vice-versa)? This panel is open for the experience of countries in the so-called developing regions (Latin America, Africa, Middle-East, Eastern Europe and Asia), but also for comparative studies examining experiences of different countries. We especially welcome papers that are explicitly interdisciplinary and that foster discussion of research that is informed by diverse theoretical and analytical approaches. Papers may address topics that are historical and/or contemporary. We also welcome proposals that showcase case studies that explore salient issues related to public policy innovation in developing countries.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. How do governments cope in an era of rapid social and economic change, technological innovation and transboundary policy problems? This panel seeks to contribute to the field of policy studies concerned with the ongoing changes in governance, both fast and slow, that governments have introduced in response to this changing context and the transformations in statehood that they are driving. Changing realities of participation in governance may include new arrangements of science-policy interaction as well as initiatives for the practical and/or deliberative involvement of both new and old constituencies. Increasingly our understanding and implementation of governance is challenged by trends such as digitalisation, democratic participation and resistance, scientific and technological innovation, and cross-jurisdictional policy problems. In sociology, theorists such as Bauman (2006) and Beck have examined these changes in social order and their impacts on social change. For example, Bauman has argued that the liquidity or fluidity of modern life leads individuals to live their lives under conditions of endemic uncertainty and flux. When applied to governance, this changing social order can create unpredictable and uncertain political dynamics which require a critical rethinking and consequent shift in how political authority is exercised, and how innovative governance instruments can enable a recoupling between those who exercise political authority with those who are governed by it. This is a problem that all governments face both democratic and non-democratic. As such, innovative instruments of governance are potential drivers for the governance of change. Change can be fast, slow, incremental or non-existent but potentially disruptive and paradigm shifting change will often require innovative governance processes. Similarly, slow incremental reform processes and stable governance environments can benefit from innovative governance instruments that create an environment in which change can take place by disrupting longstanding path dependencies. Any given policy sector or public management field might encompass multiple rates of change at different levels (e.g. BREXIT), requiring multiple governance approaches that are each carefully designed to target specific outcomes. This blending of governance instruments including market-based, participatory, information tools, or ‘nudge’ approaches, requires the co-production of science and politics that draws on a range of theoretical and empirical concepts from across multiple disciplines, including policy studies, sociology, and innovation studies. This panel explores this nexus of theory and practice and seeks submissions that address both conceptual and theoretical insights on styles and approaches of ‘innovative’ or ‘experimentalist governance’ and lessons about the social praxis and technical hardware required to cope with dynamism and change. In bringing together a critical understanding of theory and practice, the panel will contribute to the development of informed innovative governance design that furthers our capacity to tackle the complex challenges facing contemporary democracies. Areas of inquiry may include, but are not limited to, the following: · Public sector innovation and reform of political institutions · Multi-level governance and network governance · Public authority, policy entrepreneurship and expertise · Learning and leadership as drivers and/or moderators of change · Rapid technological change, scientific discovery and risk A selection of papers may be considered for the journal Policy and Politics.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. Disproportionate policy response denotes a misfit between the costs and benefits, or the between the ends and means of a policy, resulting in policy over- and underreaction (Maor 2012, 2014) or chronic instability. Sustained patterns of these policy responses are termed policy bubbles (Jones et al. 2014). Recently, several studies have illustrated the repertoire of disproportionate policy options, namely, policy over- and underreaction rhetoric and doctrines. These problems are closely related to another well-known issue in public policy making: chronic form of instability both in the amplitude of changes, as well as the frequency. The policy literature has long acknowledged the problem of output instability in policy making. Policies which are adopted and implemented might not last long and may be reversed immediately. These can result in large problems in so far as vital economic, social and political resources are wasted in over and under-reacting compared to a more ‘proportional’ response to social, political or other kinds of concerns. There are numerous approaches explaining this kind of policy instability, some of which are quite old. Rational choice scholars, for example, have long analyzed cases of problematic preference aggregation of individuals and groups and the cyclical policies of partisan-electoral pandering that may follow (Riker 1982; McFarland 1991). Valence issues have also been a long-standing topic in political science research (Beland and Cox 2011). Institutional researchers have been concerned with when and why policy instability is more likely than stability in outputs (Tsebelis 2002). Many researchers have also detected cycles in issue attention which culminate in ups and downs of policy making (Downs 1972; Vries 2010; Jones and Baumgartner 2005). Public policy scholars have long illustrated the structural and psychological roots that lead to well-known of patterns of punctuated equilibria (Jones and Baumgartner 2004). Moreover, this instability is often found in combination with excesses in terms of amplitude, i.e. they are signs and consequences of instances of disproportionate policy responses (Jones, Thomas, and Wolfe 2014; Maor 2012, 2014). Important examples are bubbles in financial markets or any other form of excessive under- or over-addressing of policy problems. Focusing on the dynamics of disproportionate policy response, this panel aims to shed light on policy valuation processes; on the interaction between self-reinforcing processes and the contagion of ideas and emotions which reinforces the (lack of) confidence in the policy; on the ways media attention and policymaking activities become intertwined in self-reinforcing processes; on identifying (negative) policy bubbles; and on the role of symbolic and ideological factors for how policies come to be overvalued or devalued. solutions do we see in mitigating excessive forms of instability and the prospects for more ‘efficient’ policy-making? References Beland, Daniel, and Robert Henry Cox, eds. 2011. Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Downs, Anthony. 1972. The issue-attention cycle. The Public Interest 28:38-50. Jones, Bryan D., and Frank R. Baumgartner. 2004. A Model of Choice for Public Policy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 15 (3):325-351. ———. 2005. The Politics of Attention. How Governments Prioritize Problems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jones, Bryan D., Herschel F. III Thomas, and Michelle Wolfe. 2014. Policy Bubbles. Policy Studies Journal 42 (1):146-171. Maor, Moshe. 2012. Policy overreaction. Journal of Public Policy 32 (3):231-259. ———. 2014. Policy Bubbles: Policy Overreaction and Positive Feedback. Governance 27 (3):469-487. McFarland, Andrew S. 1991. Interest Groups and Political Time: Cycles in America. British Journal of Political Science 21 (3):257-284. Riker, William. 1982. Liberalism against populism : a confrontation between the theory of democracy and the theory of social choice. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Tsebelis, George. 2002. Veto Players. How Political Institutions Work. New York New Jersey: Russell Sage Foundation Princeton UP. Vries, Michiel S. de. 2010. The Importance of Neglect in Policy-Making: Palgrave Macmillan.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. While policy-making is an inherently political practice, formal and informal governance arrangements that coordinate contemporary policy debates and processes are often organised in ways that have de-politicising effects. In western countries for example, there is evidence of an increasing disconnect between, on the one hand, election-based politics and, on the other hand, public policy decisions, leading to the rise of what The Economist has called “post-truth” politics. More generally, the globalisation of governance has accentuated this disconnection, with debates dominated by experts and technocrats and political decisions taken increasingly further away from the person in-the-street/citizen-voter. The increasing weight of private regulations in contemporary forms of governance adds another dimension to this phenomenon. These trends are particularly acute in the field of food and agriculture, with a clear tendency towards the internationalization of crucial policy processes, global multi-stakeholder platforms, mushrooming of global private voluntary standards, data-driven indicators with related monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and consensus-based decision-making processes. In different ways, these practices serve to conceal relations of power and the agendas of particular actors in the name of consultation, participation, and democracy. Alongside these broader trends, the dominant logic that has informed agriculture and food policy since the end of the Second World War has come under attack. The green revolution model of agriculture (i.e., the specialisation of agriculture dependent on fossil-fuel based inputs industrialization and uniformisation of consumption habits) has been the dominant approach advanced to grow food and feed people. This model has systematically informed agri-food public policy-making and in return public policies have tended to facilitate its implementation. However, this model has now come under scrutiny worldwide. Critics argue that structural changes to practices, rules, and institutions are needed to ensure a transition towards just and sustainable agri-food systems. To do so requires recognition of the diverse political dynamics that operate across agri-food policy spaces. Given the context, this panel proposes to explore the extent to, and the conditions under which, policy processes are being influenced by these critics, and reversely how critics are resisted and neutralised. More specifically, the panel aims at understanding the diverse ways in which politics are inserted or hidden in agri-food policy spaces, by exploring debates and controversies, their interconnections at various scales of governance, and their (dis)connection to policy-making. The panel will include papers that focus on the actors that are engaged in policy debates and controversies, the visions they promote, the resources they have to influence the discussions, and how they engage in political struggles and legitimation processes of different models for agriculture and food. Papers will focus on the dynamics of policy debates, including the role of scientists, media coverage, civil society, and the private sector. Papers will interrogate and elucidate spaces where policy decisions are taken, paying attention to practices that either depolitize the inherently political process of public policy-making for food and agriculture, or seek to re-polititize public policy-making spaces and debates.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. This panel will develop the debates generated by the resurgence of interest in human behaviour and values in the social sciences. The panel chairs are interested in empirical research and theoretical developments which explore these issues in the context of the policy process. The panel is intended to attract participants working in and around the disciplines of public policy, behavioural economics, political psychology and political science. The language of ‘nudge’ and ‘behavioural policy instruments’ implies that the role of human values, emotions and ‘non-rational’ behaviour is a recent discovery in the study of public policy, but disciplines such as psychology and related areas of political psychology have been considering these aspects of politics and collective-decision making for decades. For example, both Harold Lasswell and Herbert Simon were influenced in their early thinking by the (then) emerging field of psychoanalysis, which the former applied to his studies of political leadership. The recent surge of interest in human behaviour, evidenced by the rise in behavioural economics, nudge thinking and the behavioural sciences more generally, may signal a move away from rational actor models of politics and policy making. This panel invites papers that explore the role of human values in politics and policy from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including political science, political psychology and the other behavioural sciences. The panel seeks to generate debate around whether these approaches can enhance our understanding of the policy process and potentially lead to improved policy processes that recognise and take account of diverse values perspectives. Papers that are both supportive and critical of this behavioural turn in the social sciences are welcome, including consideration of whether there is actually anything new in these avenues of research, and whether techniques such as nudge have negative as well as positive implications for policy making, particularly in democratic systems. We also welcome discussion of the inherent contradictions between this focus on human values and behaviour and the other major development of recent decades, the emphasis on evidence-based policy making. The Panel Chairs are interested in both empirical and theoretical advances and innovations with respect to research around values, behaviour and the policy process. Possible topics for the panel include: · Methodological advances in political psychology of relevance to policy studies · Empirical studies of the success and failure of ‘nudge’ in diverse national settings · The limitations of the behavioural approach · The lessons and approaches that policy-makers might learn from psychology · The advantages and disadvantages of values analytic approaches to policy problems · The role of values in existing analytical frameworks in the policy sciences · Future directions in research

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. Over fifty-percent of the world’s population now resides in an urban setting, and these urban centers provide unique challenges for health policy makers (see Galea & Vlahov 2005; Gordon-Larsen & Nelson 2006; Rundle et al. 2006; Maas et al 2009; etc.) Not only do cities produce novel health risks, they also tend to make measurement of health inequalities more difficult as large portions of the population reside in slums and informal settlements (WHO 2010). Much research examines the differences between urban and rural health outcomes, however, urban health inequities are "different in magnitude and distribution", and they often require cross-sectoral cooperation and empowered local leadership to achieve results (WHO 2010). The purpose of this panel is to investigate urban public policy’s ability – both realized and potential – in addressing health inequalities.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. Research on the impact of institutional rules on public policy is still in a relatively early phase (Immergut, 2003). Policy making is always a matter of choice under constraints. According to Goodin and Rein and Moran (2008), the willingness of people to do what policies ask them and the willingness of electors to endorse the policies. Institutions have affected the policies and policies have changed our understanding of institutions, so public policy study help an institutional researcher have an interpretation of politics. It is important to know the institutional rules on policy decision making and the interaction effects of institutional rules with political and social background in the policy cycle from policy planning, policy formulation and implementation, policy evaluation. This panel designed to focus specially on the policy performance which is dependent on the quality of democracy, considering as the institutional rules substantially generated for suitable outcomes in certain policy fields. On the dimensions of the democracy, there is a group of key variables which related directly to the quality democracy. They are rules of law, electoral process, civil rights and political liberties, access to information. The analysis of institutional rules is observed in the president system, both head of state and head of government with/without prime ministers, the both a president and a prime minister in the semi-presidential system, the prime minister is the active head of the executive branch of government and also leader of the legislature in parliamentarianism, the system of constitutional monarchies with ceremonial monarchs, the directorial system contains elements of the presidential and the parliamentary system. They are considered as the impact of policy studies on the institutional theory.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. In 2011 Mark Warren and Baogang He introduced the concept of ‘authoritarian deliberation’. Their paper and the ideas it contained were path-breaking in several respects. They demonstrated that democratic deliberation not only happened as a civil society subversive act within a politically authoritarian setting such as China, but that it was in fact promoted by the party as a strategy of (local) governance. The paper also showed that democratic process is not an all-or-nothing, universalistic affair, but that a working democracy must be seen as an uneasy and unstable assemblage of democratic (public participation, democratic deliberation) and repressive (disempowerment of marginal groups, erosion of human rights) elements against the background of different economic, political and cultural developments, some of which (such as political despotism or corporate hegemony) are in direct conflict with the ideal of democracy. Third, the paper situated this democratic assemblage firmly within processes of governance. That is, the concerted action of state and non-state actors gives rise to the complex and constantly evolving mixes of democracy and authoritarianism that we witness in most countries. Finally, the paper forced observers to take a diachronic view of democracy. Democracies continuously develop. In terms of Dryzek’s criteria of franchise, scope and authenticity, they improve or they regress. In this panel we will explore these theoretical implications. We invite empirical studies of democratic governance in despotic or hegemonic settings, as well as more theoretical papers about democratic assemblage in a variety of political and economic settings.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. Government social expenditure has increased very fast in China since early 2000’s. The amount of government expenditure on three major areas, social security and social assistance, education and health care, increased by an average annual rate of 21.4 per cent between 2003 and 2013. The size and huge variations of the country together with the dramatic experiences of economic development in the last six decades make China standing out as a very interesting case in social policy reform. On the one hand, there are significant portions of legacies of central planning system in the current welfare system. On the other hand, given the sheer size of China, regional differences in economic and social conditions are huge. In this case, having a better understanding of the changes and evolution of the Chinese social welfare system from the perspective of the political economy can be highly value-added to the existing social policy literature. In this context, there are also several features in the recent round of the social policy reforms in China. First, while the spending on social areas has been increased very fast, financial coverage for many social programmes are still not sufficient enough. The quality of public services is still relatively low. Second, the welfare system is fragmented among different regions, between rural and urban areas and also between formal and informal sectors. Third, in some policy areas, policy initiations to expand coverage of social programmes can be very flexible and the expansion of welfare programmes can be achieved in a dramatically rapid speed. However, in some other policy areas, the policies and institutions are resilient and there are almost no significant changes in the recent decades. This panel makes an attempt to understand social policy reforms in China from the perspective of political economy. Political institutions, incentives of political players as well as policy capacity have played important roles in the social policy making and implementation. The welfare system can vary in locations, in policy areas and also be path dependent. This panel is going to discuss the dynamics of the Chinese welfare system from the political and economic institutions.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. Co-organized by Fabiana C. Saddi, Stephen Peckham, Nick Turnbull and Matthew J. Harris. The objective is to gather political-realistic studies focusing on either or both policymaking and implementation processes of performance measurement (PM) programs in health policy in developed and/or developing counties, as a case or comparative study. PM programs have been adopted in countries with distinct levels of development, and tend to continue to play an important role in policymaking. In this process, the adoption of PM has revealed some challenges during implementation and has therefore, though in different rhythm between countries, been accompanied by the valorization of political-realistic or more post-positivist type of analyses. Those programs are constructed and implemented in political and social environments with distinct organizational capacity and where people hold values and interests that can influence the implementation of rational-based PM programs. This is why concerns based on who are involved in its elaboration and implementation, as well as on where/how those processes have been realized, have recently contributed to enhance the importance of taking the politics, the cognitive/subjective (“alternative logics”) and work task and organizational aspects of PM programs into account. They have also contributed to better understand and unfold some dynamics and regularities that go beyond rational-based concerns. This literature emphasizes aspects such as political system, organizational culture, participation of staff in the implementation, appropriateness of the design, the possibilities of gaming (Bevan and Hood) and cheating and symbolic uses. Also, concerns and consequences regarding performance measurement programs have been categorized as “performance alternative logics” (Pollitt), as the “politics of performance” (Lewis) and as “performance paradox”, as examples. When applied to middle and low income countries, studies have given emphases not only to front line staff’s involvement (Songstad et al.) (Chimhutu et al.) (Ssengooba F et al.), but especially to organizational constraints (Olafsdottir et al.), given the fact that the policies still face some contradictory organizational problems (Saddi and Harris et al.). Those works are considered important for having enhanced the knowledge on motivation and impact regarding front line workers in contradictory or problematic contexts, as well as for shedding lights on how to enable the creation of a culture of evaluation in diverse and not always favorable organizational and political environments. From the policy diffusion perspective, however, we still know little comparatively about the distinctive and politically significant challenges involved in the implementation of PM programs not only across health unities with different configurations in each country, but also across countries with distinctive and similar levels of development. If those issues constitute a significant lacuna in the knowledge of comparative health policy and politics, shouldn’t we develop comparative political analyses evaluating how PM have been designed and implemented? What methods could be used to develop meaningful comparisons across countries, taking each reality into account? Could differences be explained in terms of institutional heritages, or by means of using a comprehensive and long-term political analysis? What lessons could be partially and meaningfully transferred from developed to developing countries and vice versa?

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. All around the world, more and more public action projects face strong citizen protests. From infrastructure projects to reform projects, many cases of such conflicts can be observed recently. For instance, in the past few years, plans for expansion or creation of airports have led to conflicts and tensions with the local population, like around London Heathrow airport (Griggs, Howarth, 2004). Similarly, in Germany, the Stuttgart 21 train station project has led to a great contestation among citizens. And those conflicts sometimes reach a very high level of tensions. For instance, the Notre-Dame-Des-Landes airport or the Sivens dam have been particularly contested in France and have led to important and violent mobilizations. The recent reform about labor in France is also a relevant example of a project strongly contested by the population This panel aims to gather grounded proposals which question the specificities of the mobilizations emerging against such contested projects, as well as the conditions for success of these mobilizations. It aims also to gather proposals that focus on the answers that the authorities bring to these mobilizations, including on the participatory procedures that are often set up in response. Are these procedures contributing to resolve conflicts? Are they not sometimes causing a radicalization of the confrontation? Under what conditions do they "succeed" in influencing policy processes? This panel also aims at focusing on big infrastructures projects that are now sometimes qualified as "Large Useless Imposed Projects". The idea is to question the mobilizations they may induce but also the answers that are given by authorities to these mobilizations and the results of these confrontations, postulating that tough conflicts are particularly good opportunities to study policy processes. So, the main questions which will be addressed in this panel are: - How some mobilizations manage to impact decision process more than others?- What types of responses are given by authorities to those protests?- Under what conditions do those responses "succeed"?- And, finally, what makes mobilizations around "Large Useless Imposed Projects" specific?In addition, the panel will be the opportunity to ask in what extent it might be fruitful to study policy processes through tough conflicts.

In this panel a selection of papers may be considered for the Policy & Politics journal. "Across Western democracies, from the America of Donald Trump to the France of Marine Le Pen, large numbers of people are enraged,” claimed The Economist’s post-mortem of the Brexit referendum. Polls indicated that the many Britons, like the supporters of Trump and Le Pen, were angry about “immigration, globalization, social liberalism and even feminism….[all of which] translated into a vote to reject the EU.” The panel will explore the role of globalization as the major force behind this anger, and in particular, the public policy responses contrived by governments—not just in the Western democracies, but also in Asia, Latin America, and Africa—to quell this anger. The objective is to identify policies that have worked, the challenges in formulating such policies, and to examine their content and character, in hope of deriving lessons on how governments can can address the anger and fears of those who have lost out from globalization.

In recent years, politicians and bureaucrats have expressed a desire to increase the use of evidence in policy-making. This narrative assumes a kind of linear, rational, or scientific trajectory for the use of knowledge in addressing policy problems – as if access to better quality information were the key to resolving important and difficult policy issues. However, since the 1950s, there has been among scholars a growing dissatisfaction with the idea that some policy problems might be resolved through scientific methods or holistic design efforts – or more directly, that they might even be resolved at all. Inspired by colossal failures in social planning in the 1960s, the policy literature since the 1970s (starting with Rittel & Webber, 1973) has increasingly recognised that many issues are inherently difficult to manage or resolve, owing to increasing complexity in areas of social policy, significant differences in values, interests and perceptions, and uncertainty of outcomes and consequences that had previously gone unrecognised. This has presented something of a paradox, in that governments are increasingly demanding that policy appear to be more evidence-driven while academics (who produce much of this evidence) increasingly bring to light the challenges inherent in this task. With this renewed emphasis on connecting evidence to policy, as well as the popular focus on ‘impact’ in academic research, it is time to re-examine the concept of wicked problems and the obstacles they present to linear, scientific models of policy decision-making. Are some policy problems wicked? How can the concept of wicked problems help us understand the inherent challenges of policy-making? Are some areas of policy more inclined to wickedness, or is all policy problems inherently wicked? How do complexity, uncertainty, and divergence of values and preferences intersect in processes of public policy? This Panel is concerned with conceptualisations of wicked problems and the range of policy responses to wicked problems that are available to decision-makers. What are the key features of such problems? And are they really very different in nature from more routine problems? Are we developing better ways to address these wicked problems? How do approaches vary across different policy issues? How do different political-administrative cultures respond to complex challenges? Are some issues more ‘manageable’ in some institutional settings and political contexts than in other settings? Papers addressing theoretical, methodological, and practical matters in these areas are welcome.

The aspects of this panel are twofold, with the aim to present research findings about the emergence of public policy and the role of agenda setting for policy change in countries and regions which have not been the focus of public policy research yet. Firstly, the panel will analyze the emergence of public policy as an academic discipline in selected countries beyond the paradigm of developed nations. In various advanced nations, public policy has been established and acknowledged as an academic discipline for many decades, and when discussing public policy theory and practice, we often draw on academic literature and expertise developed in the Global North. Nonetheless, we observe the rise of public policy as an academic discipline across many countries worldwide, although little is known about the experts and knowledge in the field, including the various facets of public policy theory and practice from specific country perspectives. This is specifically true for countries and regions in the Global South, where transformations take place rapidly and knowledge on the creation and theories of public policy is rare, although crucial for development. We assume that the academic discipline `public policy´ plays a vital role for policy making and political advocacy, as well as for the development of institutions which address the growing societal, economic and environmental problems faced by societies. In this context, the panel further aims at investigating when, why and by whom policy issues are put on the agenda of policy-making; and whether public policy research has an influence on agenda setting. Whereas this is a topic of high relevance, research in the field of agenda setting as an element of the policy cycle has rarely been pursued in academia. Nonetheless, agenda setting is probably the most crucial element of the policy cycle because it is determinative of future policy issues and policy making in a country or region. Cognizant of the deeply interdisciplinary nature of public policy, the panel considers aspects of history, governance, economics and law as components of public policy theory development, and investigates how these theories have influenced policy-making and, more specifically, agenda-setting in countries beyond the Western paradigm. Papers should draw on the advancement of public policy research in distinct country contexts influencing policy making in all fields including health, agriculture, education, migration, integration, environment, entrepreneurship etc. The research should preferably integrate theories of the policy process such as the Multiple Streams Theory (Kingdon 2002); Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier 1988); Punctuated Equilibrium (Baumgartner and Jones 1993); Policy Domains (Laumann and Knoke 1987; Börzel 1998) etc. As the challenges of accessing data and literature in many countries are well known, descriptive and exploratory research is also very welcome. Keywords: Public Policy, Policy Cycle, Theories of the Policy Process, Agenda Setting, Global South, Policy Making, Development

The panel is aimed to analyze the characteristics or conditions leading to policy changes. The panel is open to accept proposals of analysis of policy changes occurred in the past, contemporary policy changes and/or inter-temporal comparisons of policy changes. In doing this, the panel seeks to set links to the emerging field of work of “History of Public Policies”. The analysis focuses on how institutions – formal and/or informal – influence the policy process, on whether types of interchanges among policy actors persist over time and on whether informal institutions shape the way in which formal institutions operate or whether it is the other way around how the policy process develops. Policy change may be understood as either adaptation processes (which basically maintains a same policy-configuration), or reform processes (addressing changes in their aims and ends, its organizational structure, and service delivery to its target populations). Adaptation would deal more with linear progression or evolutionary dynamics based on learning, cooperation or contingency. Reforms are here understood as planned proactive and even breaking-path processes, with a non-linear dynamics or a non-evolutionary change, that may be fostered both inside and/or outside its organizational dimension, and even due changes at policy the domain level. The panel is aimed at discussing empirical evidence provided by case studies on policy change in different contexts. Although the panel is open to any cases, the presentation of case studies from Latin America, East Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania is highly encouraged.

This panel revisits the idea of policy entrepreneurship. The idea of policy entrepreneurship can be traced back to preeminent political scientists such as John Kingdon (1995) and William Riker (1982, 1986). Recent efforts have adapted classical theories to entrepreneurship in public affairs (Mintrom & Vergari, 1996; Sheingate, 2003; Shockley, 2008). Many policy process theories rely on some conception of policy entrepreneurship (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Carpenter, 2001; Ingram & Ullery, 1980). Revisiting policy entrepreneurship, this panel seeks to clarify, deepen, and extend its use from a theoretical and practical perspective. One theme of this panel is that policy entrepreneurship can be seen as ubiquitous in all human political endeavors. Traces of this theme can be found in prior theories (e.g., Mintrom, 2000; Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; Schneider & Teske, 1992; Schneider, Teske, & Mintrom, 1995). Another theme is that policy entrepreneurship emphasizes not only the descriptive power of identifying individual policy entrepreneurs (e.g., Carpenter, 2001; Doig & Hargrove, 1987; Frohlich, Oppenheimer, & Young, 1971) but also the explanatory power of entrepreneurship in public policy (Sheingate, 2003). For this panel we would seek papers to amplify both of these themes. Specifying the function of policy entrepreneurship in the policy process – and the different models of the policy process – is a key objective of the panel. Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (1993). Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Carpenter, D. P. (2001). The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputation, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Doig, J. W., & Hargrove, E. C. (Eds.). (1987). Leadership and Innovation: A Biographical Perspective on Entrepreneurs in Government. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Frohlich, N., Oppenheimer, J. A., & Young, O. A. (1971). Political Leadership and Collective Goods. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Ingram, H. M., & Ullery, S. J. (1980). Policy Innovation and Institutional Fragmentation Policy Studies Journal (Vol. 8, pp. 664-682). Kingdon, J. (1995). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (2nd ed.). New York: Addison-Wesley. Mintrom, M. (2000). Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Mintrom, M., & Vergari, S. (1996). Advocacy Coalitions, Policy Entrepreneurs, and Policy Change (Vol. 24, pp. 420-434). Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1992). Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Riker, W. H. (1982). Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company. Riker, W. H. (1986). The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Schneider, M., & Teske, P. (1992). Toward a Theory of the Political Entrepreneur: Evidence from Local Government. American Political Science Review, 86(3), 737-747. Schneider, M., Teske, P., & Mintrom, M. (1995). Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Sheingate, A. D. (2003). Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political Development. Studies in American Political Development, 17, 185-203. Shockley, G. E. (2008). Policy Entrepreneurship: Reconceptualizing Entrepreneurship in Public Affairs. In G. E. Shockley, P. F. Frank & R. R. Stough (Eds.), Non-market Entrepreneurship: Interdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 143-171). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, Mass. (USA): Edward Elgar.

The way in which public policy is developed or implemented has changed substantially in the past 30 years. Various new paradigms are said to have partially substituted traditional modes of public policy formulation and implementation, therewith creating room for initiatives stemming from markets, non-governmental organizations, and civil society. Scholars argue that Traditional Public Administration (TPA) has been replaced by or blended with new modes of delivery and implementation, and new perspectives on the role of government, most notably New Public Management (NPM), New Public Governance (NPG), and Public Value Management (PVM) (e.g., Bryson 2014; Moore 2013; Osborne 2010; Politt and Bouckaert). All too often such paradigms are situated and discussed chronologically as if public management practices, values, and arrangements have neatly replaced each other over time, and behavior of public managers has changed along accordingly. Clearly, however, hierarchy still affects resource allocation mechanisms and policy processes. As such, traditional public administration (TPA) keeps providing the foundational software for many current ‘upgraded’ programs and applications. Noordegraaf (2015: 3) asserts: “This means that the ‘era of new public governance’ is relative and that public management can never be reduced to one (new) grand story, whether it is old public administration, new public management or new public governance.” This observation is even more salient when we compare different regions, countries, and systems. Indeed, what we designate as ‘new’ or ‘change’ is highly dependent on contextual and cultural environment and stage of development. Seemingly similar changes, approaches, and techniques have been implemented quite differently, and with varying degrees of success, across the globe. Indeed, some question the alleged ‘convergence’ of business-like, NPM-inspired public management reforms in the past 30 years, driven by key players in the global public management industry such as the World Bank and OECD (Andrews 2013; Pollitt 2000; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). Lynn (2006: 157-158) asserts: National developments that in the 1990s had been confidently proclaimed to be harbingers of a universal new approach to democratic governance have begun to be seen as nationally variegated adaptations to various forces for change rather than as transformations of constitutional institutions: as new wine in old bottles. Thus, we should distinguish ‘talk’ from ‘practice’ (Pollitt 2010) in discussing public management reforms. Moreover, we should refrain from easy generalizations about the components and effects of such reforms across contexts. For example, in the West NPM has been declared ‘dead’ many times (Dunleavy et al. 2006), rightly or wrongly so. However, many of its core characteristics are still very much alive in externally driven as well as internally architected public management reforms in the developed world, with China being an intriguing example (Christensen et al. 2012). Clearly, there is still a world to win for comparative and contextual research into the how, why, and what of both particular reforms and reform agendas in different parts of the world. For this panel, we aim to select contributions from different countries and continents in order to meaningfully compare experiences, results, and future challenges from different contexts.

Immigration control and management is a central activity of all sovereign states. This activity goes beyond the control of borders: it includes the selection of immigrants, the management of periods of residence, the implementation of policies to support integration as well as the design of operations to deport or detain individuals. Despite a growing involvement of market actors in this vast policy sector, public administrations remain dominant actors when it comes to the design, implementation and steering of public policies related to immigration. This panel explores the contributions of public administration and public policy to migration studies. The current refugee “crisis” as well as the convergence of states toward economically driven immigrant selection shed a renewed light on governments’ and policymakers’ capacity to design and implement immigration policies. In migration studies, governments are often treated as a black box or are represented as a series of intervening variables (institutions and policy legacies), whereas societal inputs and policy outputs and outcomes are the elements of interest. Beyond a focus on public opinion, electoral results or economic conditions, this panel asks: what can unpacking the “black box” of the state—using concepts, theories and methods from public administration—bring to the study of immigration policy and politics? We argue that immigration is not only political and politicized in electoral and societal venues, it is also the object of highly technical public policies and of inherently political administrative processes. Because of this, it is crucial to consider the role of public administrations in policy genesis, development and implementation. Bureaucrats, after all, hold technical knowledge and expertise that differentiates their actions and interests from those of elected officials. They are also permanent and stable features of most democracies, whereas politicians come and go. Simply because of these Weberian characteristics, it is possible to infer a role, albeit variegated for bureaucracies in the crafting of contemporary state responses to immigration. Most of the work bridging immigration and public administration focuses on policy implementation. This panel welcomes contributions of this nature but also aims at creating a dialogue with contributions focused on the role of bureaucracies in decision-making, policy formulation, agenda-setting as well as in policy evaluation and policy learning. Using this broader lens allows for the development of work that addresses current blind spots in the literature, such as: the autonomous role of bureaucrats in immigration policy formulation, the mechanisms of influence of public administration on the content of immigration policies as well as the contemporary dynamics of political/administrative relations in this policy sector, the impact of different administrative structures on immigration politics and the effect of various resources at the disposal of bureaucrats in designing, steering and evaluation these public policies. Empirical analysis as well as theoretical and methodological papers addressing these themes will be considered for inclusion in this panel, on the basis of the dialogue they create between public administration and immigration studies.

There was a time when they stood in the shadows of executive government but political advisers – variously known as special advisers, ministerial advisers or exempt staff – have long since stepped (or been dragged) into the light. The scholarship on political advisers has also emerged into the light. Early contributions typically concerned arrangements in Westminster contexts; they also tended to comprise empirical descriptions of specific country cases, and/or to zero in on the issues of accountability raised by various causes célébres. A second wave of scholarly work on political advisers has since arrived, characterised by empirical studies from beyond Westminster, and deeper theoretical engagement with the core issues in the field and with proximate literatures. At least some of the roots of this new generation scholarship lie in ICPP 1 (Grenoble) and ICPP 2 (Milan). Clearly, impetus has also come from other sources, but both conferences featured panels bringing together researchers from Westminster and continental European jurisdictions and have generated – including through special editions of journals and a forthcoming comparative volume – considerable momentum behind the second wave literature. In that context the core objectives of the panel we are proposing for ICPP 3 are to: (1) Assess the empirical and theoretical progress made since ICPP 2. We wish to evaluate the extent to which the broad aims of (i) enriching the empirical palette; (ii) deepening the theoretical bases of the literature on political advisers; and (iii) building connections with proximate policy theories (e.g. policy advisory activity, the construction and management of policy agendas, and implementation studies) are being advanced. (2) Chart the next phase of the research agenda. Without wishing to foreclose on other avenues, our sense is that the scholarly trajectory could usefully include (iv) empirical work from countries – including from Asia – that are not yet represented with regularity in the published record; (v) richer theoretical elaboration of political advisers in situ (drawing on literatures such as historical institutionalism, core executive studies, public service bargains, etc.); (vi) theory building in the wider public administration/public policy oeuvre drawing on the work of those researching political advisers; and (vii) comparative analyses which build on and extend country case-studies. The scientific relevance of the panel includes deepening understanding of a significant and consequential element of the landscape of contemporary government and governance; contributing to theory-building (both within the specific field of policy advisers and in the wider literatures); furthering the impetus for comparative research; and fostering the epistemic community that is coalescing around the study of political advisers.

“This panel is organised in the framework of the EL-CSID project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 693799. The papers presented reflect only the authors’ view, and the Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.” http://ec.europa.eu/ As policy problems become increasingly trans-sovereign in both nature and resolution in the 21st century, the traditional divide between domestic policy-making and diplomacy becomes increasingly blurred. One major aspect of this blurring has been the development of a sharp ‘practice turn’ in diplomacy. This panel offers the opportunity to open up new vistas for public policy. The panel will identify the growing interest in taking ‘practice’ as a privileged unit of analysis in the study of internationalised policy processes. This is in contrast to the traditional privileging of agents and structures in International Relations. Diplomacy is no longer simply a narrow foreign policy practice of the modern state system. Rather it is now a wider and flexible set of human practices and policy behaviour that are adapting to the conditions of the globalized era. Diplomats are no longer members of an exclusive separate elite. They are public servants trained in a wide variety of both generic and specific managerial and administrative skills and practices to be used in the resolution of complex policy problems both at home and abroad. As is well understood, new actors have emerged both from within and outside of the apparatus of the state to presage a plural trans-border policy environment. These new diplomatic practices, as well as traditional practices extend to cultural and science diplomacy. Understanding the new practices is essential if we are to mediate between the universalism of science and the particularism of cultural—a clash which can threaten the very basis of a cooperative contemporary policy making process. In essence then modern diplomacy is no longer a matter of great events and great people (usually men) negotiating agreements and making treaties. It is also about embedded, or nested, practices and interactions of an everyday technical, social, practical and ritualized kind. The modern practice of diplomacy consists of socialized patterns of policy making transcending the sometimes overly exaggerated divide between structures and agents. Nowhere are these hybrid policy processes better observed than in modern day science and cultural diplomacy (SCD). Indeed the empirical narrative of SCD reflects an importance for the role of non-state actors beyond that found in almost any other issue-area of diplomacy. We need to see diplomacy as a foundational, but hybrid institution of modern policy making developing new practices and procedures in contemporary trans-sovereign policymaking. This proposition is recognized by states as they enhance capabilities among non-traditional diplomatic actors in the policy process. These may be official actors such as mayors, judges and regulators, but also non-state actors like philanthropic foundations, think tanks and individual experts The panel is keen to review proposals that focus on the major domains of security and economic diplomacy but especially papers on the growing interest in science and cultural diplomacy as vehicles for addressing the ‘grand global policy challenges’ identified by the UN and the EU.

International public administrations (IPAs), i.e., the secretariats of international (governmental) organizations (IOs) that constitute the international counterparts to national administrative bodies, wield independent influence on the development and implementation of public policies (Biermann and Siebenhüner, 2009). While scholars of Public Administration and Public Policy regularly investigate the impact of organizational structures and personnel of ministerial bureaucracies and executive agencies on policy-making (Aberbach et al., 1981; Maggetti and Verhoest, 2014), such research questions have only recently been posed at the level above the nation state (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Bauer et al., 2016; Stone and Ladi, 2015). Previous research has successfully identified different administrative, political and context-related factors that might enable bureaucratic influence to occur. However, integrative approaches that allows for the systematic empirical analysis of several explanatory factors under a common theoretical framework are rare (Eckhard and Ege, 2016). More specifically, the state of the art can be characterized by three deficiencies: 1) Research on IPA influence is often characterized by a focus on single instances of influence. Thus, the conditions under which international bureaucracies influence policy-making (and their relative importance in terms of explanatory power) are a matter of academic controversy. 2) Factors related to the bureaucratic fabric of IOs such as administrative fragmentation, specialization, and differentiation have thus far remained outside the focus of most empirical analyses, and efforts to link administrative patterns to IPA influence are largely missing. 3) It has also been critically observed that pertinent research is characterized by a bias toward positive (or successful) instances of IPA influence (Busch, 2014, p. 57). Cases where influence is absent are rarely included in the analysis. This makes it difficult to test the explanatory power of different potential causes of influence and take into account the possibility of asymmetric causality. Against this background, the panel aims to contribute to the current debate by probing into what could be called an international administrative governance perspective on IOs in order to study the policy impact of IPAs more systematically (see Knill and Bauer, 2016). The proposed perspective is a heuristic scheme that puts administrative tools center stage and links them to IO policy-making. Similar to a conceptualization introduced by Hood that views nodality, authority, treasure, and organization as central government tools (Hood and Margetts, 2007), we suggest focusing on the administrative toolkit for policy-related action available to IPAs. Based on this (broadly understood) perspective, the panel aims to attract scholars from different social science disciplines that study the administrative toolkit in order to conceptualize, describe and explain the policy impact of IPAs. In view of the deficiencies outline above, we hope that taking specific IPAs as the analytical starting point and comparing its administrative resources, external relations, and networking activities will improve our understanding of international administrative governance and how it matters for policy-making above the state. References Aberbach, J. D., R. D. Putnam and B. A. Rockman (1981) Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Barnett, M. and M. Finnemore (2004) Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press. Bauer, M. W., C. Knill and S. Eckhard (eds) (2016) International Bureaucracy: Challenges and Lessons for Public Administration Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Biermann, F. and B. Siebenhüner (eds) (2009) Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Busch, P.-O. (2014) ‘Independent Influence of International Public Administrations: Contours and Future Directions of an Emerging Research Strand‘ in S. Kim, S. Ashley, W. H. Lambright (eds), Public Administration in the Context of Global Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 45–62. Eckhard, S. and J. Ege (2016) ‘International bureaucracies and their influence on policy-making: A review of empirical evidence‘, Journal of European Public Policy, 23 (7), pp. 960–78. Hood, C. and H. Margetts (2007) The Tools of Government in the Digital Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Knill, C. and M. W. Bauer (2016) ‘Policy-making by international public administrations - Concepts, causes and consequences: Introduction to the special issue: Governance by international public administrations? Tools of bureaucratic influence and effects on global public policies‘, Journal of European Public Policy, 23 (7), pp. 949–59. Maggetti, M. and K. Verhoest (2014) ‘Unexplored Aspects of Bureaucratic Autonomy: A State of the Field and Ways Forward‘, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 80 (2), pp. 239–56. Stone, D. and S. Ladi (2015) ‘Global Policy and Transnational Administration‘, Public Administration, 4, pp. 839–55.

If we agree with Mariana Mazzucato’s very well-received Entrepreneurial State argument, there have been rarely such innovative organizations as public bureaucracies, at least since World War II. To put it more modestly, public bureaucracies seem to be crucial structural elements of our global innovation engine: inventing the internet and all the ‘smart’ technologies inside the iPhone are examples of something that hardly any private company has been able to achieve by itself. An at least equally amazing feat was pulling Korea, Taiwan and a few other countries up to the still-small club of highly-developed nations. What we see is that radical and systemic changes in economy and society are often based on complementary technological and social/institutional innovations and the crucial roles of public policies and bureaucracies is to support innovations both in government policies, services, institutions and organizations, and also through policies in firms and industries. Based on the current debates on climate change and energy innovations, it seems obvious that increasing complexities of technological progress and growing global financial, production and innovation inter-dependencies make it even more challenging for single firms and organizations to replicate by themselves what public bureaucracies have helped and can hopefully still help to set in motion. Today’s leading city governments are experimenting with self-driving cars, smart grids, blockchain based public ledgers, and so forth – many of these experiments that combine technological and social/institutional innovations will significantly change the way we live. Yet, what are these bureaucracies like, as organizations? How do they work, are there common principles to their successes, or failures? In the scant existing literature on this dual challenge, we can find two almost juxtaposing views on innovation bureaucracies, associated with two great social scientists: The first view argues that ‘traditional’ Weberian expert and professional organizations deliver innovations (especially in the sense of institutional complementarities); the second claims argues that Schumpeterian small and agile, often peripheral organizations do a better job at innovations than others (especially in the sense of internal dynamism and public sector innovation capacities). The debate on the role of the state in innovation often gets stuck just at this juncture, trying to find the definitive answer and policy prescription to the question: Should we still stick to modernizing Weberian meritocracies, or move radically towards experimental, start-up like governments? Therefore, in this panel, we want to look at innovation bureaucracies with an explicit focus on two of their crucial roles: How do successful innovation bureaucracies complement private sector activities and capabilities in innovation processes (institutional complementarities)? How do successful innovation bureaucracies create and sustain internal dynamism and ability for public sector innovations in policies, services, institutions and organizations? This panel sets out to get closer to an answer to these questions, mainly via case studies (countries, agencies, policy areas), but theoretical contributions are welcome as well.

By definition, public policies embody attempts to alter individuals' behavior by either forcing or permitting them to do things ‘‘they otherwise would not have done’’ (Schneider & Ingram, 1993, p. 513, see also Ayres & Braithwaite, 1992; Bardach & Kagan, 1982; May, 2004, 2005a; Weaver, 2014, 2015; Weimer, 2006). Targets of policy can be officials (Bardach & Kagan, 1982; Carley & Miller, 2012), street-level bureaucrats (May & Wood, 2003), private firms or public organizations (e.g., DeHart-Davis & Bozeman, 2001; Edelman & Talesh, 2011), states or countries (e.g. Haeder & Weimer, 2013; Keiser & Meier, 1996), local municipalities (Bondarouk, Liefferink & Mastenbroek, 2016; Treib, 2014; Versluis, 2007), and individual citizens (e.g., Edwards, 2006; Gofen, 2014; Winter & May, 2001; Weaver, 2014, 2015). Implementation studies often conclude that targets' implementation actions differ from formal stated policy. Specifically, that gap is often attributed either to the willingness of targets to comply, following their motivations, attitudes, or preferences. An alternative explanation attributes the gap to targets' capacity to comply, following their awareness and resources, as well as their autonomy to comply (see also Hupe and Hill, 2014; Weaver 2015). Although targets' compliance with policy has a central role in successful implementation, policy noncompliance has been rather ambiguously conceptualized as a behavior incompatible with a policy’s objectives (Weaver, 2014), and is rarely discussed as a heterogeneous phenomenon (Gofen, 2013, 2014; Weaver, 2014, 2015). Moreover, studies focus on targets' implementation actions as the dependent variable, while their role in policy change is overlooked (Gofen, 2014). Targets' non-compliance is often followed by governmental attempts to increase compliance by influencing policy targets’ behavior in order to bring it into line with current policy arrangements. Efforts to increase willingness to comply mostly involve incentives and information. Nonetheless, more recently attention is being paid to responsiveness, flexibility, and creativity as key components in enforcement, as well as encouraging policy targets’ collaboration and cooperation. Emphasizing the need to consider the capacity to comply, therefore reflecting a more preventive approach to compliance enforcement, scholars have suggested moving from responding to noncompliance after implementation, to attempting to prevent noncompliance already during the policy design stage. The aim of this panel is therefore twofold. First, it seeks to allow a more nuanced understanding of targets' implementation compliance and implementation noncompliance among various groups of policy targets. Specifically, how to distinguish compliance and noncompliant implementation actions, how to conceptualize and measure compliance /noncompliance, what are the analytic dimensions of compliance/noncompliance, how to increase compliance, and how to prevent noncompliance already during the policy design stage. Second, the panel seeks to move beyond the convention of implementation compliance as only following policy change. Specifically, policy change literature and implementation literature rarely interrelate: the adoption of a policy often symbolizes the last stage in policy change literature, whereas it is often the starting-point of policy implementation research. In an attempt to link these two scholarly traditions and to emphasize the reciprocal relationship between policy change and implementation compliance, the panel will also focus on studies that refer to targets' implementation actions as the independent variable.

Preventing violence involves policies that combine public health and public safety. The prevention of violence can involve different methods. There are seven methods accepted by experts as providing evidence that policy makers should consider (Who, 2010). These seven methods include: 1.Developing safe, stable and nurturing relationships between children and their parents and caregivers; 2. Developing life skills in children and adolescents; 3. Reducing the availability and harmful use of alcohol; 4. Reducing access to guns, knives and pesticides; 5. Promoting gender equality to prevent violence against women; 6. Changing cultural and social norms that support violence; 7. Victim identification, care and support programs.

The lines between public private management in the field of the provision of services of general interest have been blurred increasingly for at least the past couple of decades. And yet, most associate innovative practices with the private sector, whereas change in bureaucracies is thought of in terms of change (not necessarily for the best) or simply reforms. However, the public sector does, indeed, innovate and in fact many innovations were developed as a means of addressing a new kind of wicked problems involving arduous political environments and fragmented jurisdictions and often inadequate resources (Harris and Kinney, 2003; Steelman, 2010; Windrum, 2008). Furthermore, for innovation to flourish that is, to be implemented successfully, Steelman argues that structural foundations have to be created in order to compete with the ones that the innovation seek to change or replace and create conditions that may foster innovation over time (2010). Here we refer to ‘innovation’ as the degree that adoption of programs departs from tradition. The implementation of these means or ends is inherent to the concept of innovation. In light of serious global issues (such as climate change or the refugee crisis) as well as everyday challenges (such as the effective provision of public goods) affecting local political structures, we seek to open the black box of implementing public sector innovation. This means that our focus is not on the diffusion of innovation, but rather on the implementation of innovative practices. Our departure point is the taxonomy of public sector innovation outlined by Windrum (2008) comprising six types of innovation. The first three have been researched extensively in the private sector and it would be fruitful to be examined further in the public sector. These are (i) service innovation; (ii) service delivery innovation, and (iii) administrative and organizational innovation. The remaining three are: (iv) conceptual innovation, involving the development of new ways of thinking challenging old assumptions; (v) policy innovation as the result of learning resulting in the development of new policy concepts, and (vi) systemic innovation underpinning new ways of interacting with other stakeholders. Researching the implementation of innovation based on this taxonomy allows for the interrogation of actors, institutions and the interactions between them in a variety of substantive policy sectors and country settings, thus having a clear theoretical and empirical added value. The object of this panel is to unpack the drivers and mechanisms fostering different kinds of innovation according the taxonomy above in a variety of policies and institutional contexts. References Harris, M., & Kinney, R. (2003). Introduction. In M. Harris & R. Kinney (Eds.), Innovation and Entrepreneurship in State and Local Governments (pp. 1-32). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Steelman, T. A. (2010). Implementing Innovation: Fostering Enduring Change in Environmental and Natural Resource Governance. Washington, D:C..: Georgetown University Press. Windrum, P. (2008). Innovation and Entrepreneurshi in Public Services. In P. Windrum & P. Koch (Eds.), Innovation in Public Sector Services: Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Management (pp. 3-10). Chelenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

While we know that bureaucrats that enact policies on the "street-level" or "front-line" of the state hold significant autonomy over their actions, there is still too little attention paid to the potential consequences of this. The literature at least since Lipsky points to the fact that state agents can shape policies through implementation - but do they? In what circumstances? With what motivation? Similarly, anthropological accounts of bureaucracy point to the fact that discretion and "petty sovereignty" (Butler) can add an "illegible" element of power (Das) that furthers the reach of the executive. But does this influence the effect of policy, or clients' perceptions of the state? This panel seeks to go further than merely pointing to the potential for messy practices on the lower echelons of bureaucracy. Therefore, it invites contributions from scholars who analyse what bureaucrats actually do with their autonomy. By focussing on autonomy in general, the panel seeks to stimulate a broader debate on how bureaucratic activities contradict and reinforce each other and how it potentially effects the actual implementation process itself. This panel is thus open to studies of state agents` practices across national context and policy fields.

Use of the methodological and conceptual tools of sociology is neither new nor unproductive in public policy analyses. On the contrary, problems in the implementation process of public policies have long been subject to studies of those who come from the tradition of sociology of organisations. Organisational ethnography masterfully demonstrates the distortions between different institutional and hierarchical levels in the implementation of formal decisions. Yet, those who privilege the ethnography of policy implementation remain in minority within the community of public policy analysts. The difference between the input (decision) and output (delivery of services) can be, on one hand, explained through a top-down approach. The hierarchical levels through which the decision is diffracted are often put forward as explanation, alongside of scarce resources and means. On the other hand, the lower rank participants’, or as we now all use as a reflex “the street-level bureaucrats”, of policy implementing institutions discretionary power is no secret to the scholarly arena. These participants at the front line do not only shape the organisational rules and norms through daily practices, but also have an active relation with norms. The law or simply organisational rules deviate from the text in the hands of street-level bureaucrats. They determine the quality of services by taking strategic decisions such as speeding up or delaying the process. As any strategic actor of collective action, they make use of their expertise, the advantageous position that allows them to access to critical information, and relations with the organisational task environment. A closer scrutiny of daily exchanges amongst the lower rank participants, of relations between them and their organisational superiors and with the users of public policies would help understanding the latent dynamics of many other problems that find their place in policy analyses; e.g. horizontal and vertical accountability of implementation processes, the factors that shape public perception of policies, and bottom up reformulation and production of norms and public policies.

Central-local relation has long been a foci of research on China’s governing system. Many have used this framework to analyze China’s policy implementations. (Lieberthal and Oksenberg, 1986; Lampton, 1987; Lieberthal and Lampton, 1992; O’Brien and Li, 1999; Chung, 1995, 2000, etc.; Montinola, Qian, and Weingast, 1995; Xu, 2011, Chen and Kung, 2012; etc.). While the center could be clearly equated with Beijing or the national government, those governing entities called as the local in current literature, however, could be quite different among themselves. Along the five-level governing pyramid from the center down to province, prefecture, county, and township, all the latter four are literally local. Research on China’ central-local relation, in order to make a central-local dichotomy, therefore entails simplification of the dynamics among the subnational governmental entities, either by assuming the subnational dynamics is negligible as compared to the central-provincial one, or by assuming the two are similar or even identical.(Chung, 1995) Both assumptions could be wrong. First, dynamics among subnational entities carries weights in China’s policy implementation process. Without a clear division of labor among levels of governments as is in federal countries, China’s policy implementation relies heavily on a top-down mandate system. The level to which a policy mandate is followed or defied is to a large extent determined by the extent to which the mandate is well forced down level by level. Even the provincial government follows the mandates, the long mandate chain at the subnational levels may cause authority leakage and hence noncompliance behaviors, implicit or explicit, at the implementation frontline. Second, dynamics among subnational government entities should be different from that between the center and provincial government. Take the provincial-prefectural relation as an example, it indeed resembles the central-provincial relation in the sense that provincial governments would mandate prefectural ones of to fulfill certain policy goals, just like the central government to provincial governments. However, this relation differs from the central-provincial one as provincial governments also have incentive to cooperate with prefectural governments at all means as far as the top-down mandates are fulfilled at face value. Several recent literature has elaborated the significance and distinctive characteristics of China’s subnational politics, and more importantly, how the latter had impacted policy implementation. Policy bundling, i.e. having unwelcomed policy mandate bundled with popular policy initiatives, has been observed as an instrument for provincial governments to induce better implementation (Kostka and Hobbs, 2012). Some has noticed the strategic cooperation between county and township which produces win-win situation for all in policy implementation (Schubert and Ahlers, 2012). Still others identify different kinds of collusive behaviors of subnational government (Zhou, Lian, et.al. 2013). This panel aims to deepen scholarly understanding on the vertical relationships of China’s subnational governments. We especially welcome papers addressing the following research questions: -Distinctive characteristics of China’s subnational government relation -Transformation and changes of China’s subnational government relation -Subnational government relation and its impact on policy implementation -Cadre management system and subnational government relation

This panel proposes to analyze the ways in which learning from abroad shapes policy implementation in local settings. Implementation is the process of learning how to deliver policies (Freeman 2006). What is the role that the exchange with actors pertaining to other organizations, most notably from foreign contexts, plays in local policy implementation? How does exchange happen? Are there transnational arenas in which communities of practitioners gather? Are international and supranational organizations transferring implementation practices or models of ways of doing things? This panel is interested in unpacking such influences to assess whether they are constituted by frames, organizational conditions, local knowledge (Yanow 2004). Its objective is also to question the effects on policy-making on the ground. This panel would like to shift the focus from “transnational administration” (Stone and Ladi 2015) to the effects on policy implementation in national/local settings. This panel aims at unraveling interconnectedness in policy implementation, by following the line of “methodological transnationalism” (Stone and Ladi 2015) and by encouraging “transnational comparisons” (Hassenteufel 2005) privileging continuities rather than discontinuities. The global diffusion of public policy is a well-established field of research (Dobbin, Simmons, Garret 2007). In an attempt at analyzing and explaining the processes involved in the transfer of ideas and policies across countries, Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) have defined policy transfer in terms of diffusion and uses of knowledge. This panel proposes to stretch the concept of policy transfer by applying it at the implementation stage by questioning the diffusion and uses of knowledge about how to put policy into practice and the effects on policy-making on the ground. This panel puts policy implementation first, meaning that it does not treat policy implementation as a test to verify the effectiveness of policy transfer (Stone 1999). It questions the actors, processes and effects of transfer at the implementation stage.

Living labs, policy experiments, and other ways of ‘learning-by-doing’ gain rapidly popularity in the field of public policy. Such practices have in common that they all look for new and innovative solutions for recurring policy problems and want to systematically collect evidence about what policy solutions works. This development is reflected in the rise of “design thinking” in the policy sciences (Howlett, 2014; Bason, 2016; Mintrom & Luetjens, 2016). Design thinking can help to bring in more creativity in policy making, by applying prototyping and experimentation to enable creative learning processes (Crosby et al. 2016) and collaborative innovation. The rise of living labs, field labs, pilot programs in which all kinds of (participatory) design methods are applied, illustrates the increasing attention for this explorative style of policy-making, governance and public service delivery. However the public context in which design-thinking is applied, also raises serious dilemmas and questions (Hillgren et al. 2011). The objectives of this panel are: - to explore the principles of applying design-thinking in the worlds of policy-making and governance (what are the main elements of design approaches in this domain, what are the criteria that have to be met) - to analyse and compare current practices of design approaches for policy-making and governance in order to find out relevant patterns, styles and typologies; - to investigate the potentials as well as the pitfalls, limitations and normative dilemmas of design-thinking for policy and governance. With this panel we will contribute to the emerging scientific debate about how to come to new ways of "analysis for policy" and "evidence-based policies" with help of new ideas about applying abductive reasoning, imagination and divergent thinking. Based upon the panel we will publish a special issue about this topic in a relevant journal in the field. References Bason, C. (2016). Design for policy. Routledge. Crosby, B. C., ‘t Hart, P., & Torfing, J. (2016). Public value creation through collaborative innovation. Public Management Review, 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2016.1192165 Hillgren, P. A., Seravalli, A., & Emilson, A. (2011). Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation. CoDesign, 7(3-4), 169-183. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2011.630474 Howlett, M. (2014). From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ policy design: design thinking beyond markets and collaborative governance. Policy Sciences, 47(3), 187-207. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11077-014-9199-0 Mintrom, M., & Luetjens, J. (2016). Design Thinking in Policymaking Processes: Opportunities and Challenges. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 75(3), 391-402.

Policies are continually being designed for contexts about which policy-makers often have incomplete or no information at all. For example, in the process of design and formulation of water policy, policy-makers grapple with uncertainties owing to a lack of complete understanding of the complex biophysical, social, economic and political systems affecting and being affected. In addition to addressing current challenges, policy-makers and resource managers need to consider how current and plausible new stressors are likely to change/evolve and impact water resources over longer time horizons in the future, in order to undertake effective anticipatory policy design. In a world that is characterized by increasing uncertainty policy-makers need new approaches and tools for policy design and decision making. The objective of this panel is to review the state-of-the-art in theoretical and empirical research on policy-making under uncertainty. Some examples exist of application of tools and methodologies to support policy-makers in dealing with uncertainty. However, application and demonstration of various tools to address uncertainty in a policy context often have a rather technical angle and these have yet to be adopted as mainstream tools for policy formulation under uncertainty. A review of the state-of-the-art in theoretical and empirical research in the public policy community can contribute in crossing the bridge from isolated, technical applications to inclusion of uncertainty tools and approaches in the broader policy-making context and theories. Organizing a panel on this topic holds high relevance as developing policies under uncertainty is become a matter of considerable urgency in Asian deltaic megacities, which face multiple pressures in areas such as water, energy and human development, and is also relevant for other developed and developing urban and rural areas: in deeply inter-connected systems extreme events can easily cascade. ICPP 2017 in Singapore provides an excellent opportunity to connect regional research and practice in policy-making under uncertainty with the global research community .

The ‘evidence-based policy’ movement has argued that systematic use of best-available evidence is the major route to improved policy and program outcomes. While supporting the laudable goals of public policy effectiveness, skeptics point to the highly selective and politicized use of evidence in much policymaking. Scientific expertise can clearly play important roles in many policy debates, and there is international interest in the relationship between expert knowledge and the concerns of policymakers, public managers and issue-advocates. Increasing efforts within the policy bureaucracy have focused on promoting more evidence-informed policies and evaluations within specific policy areas (e.g. education, healthcare, social welfare, crime reduction). In the academic sector, theories about science-led or expert-informed policy-making continue to be developed and debated. Academic researchers have also attempted to develop conceptual schemas to facilitate comparisons across cases and countries. Researchers are tackling more systematically the puzzles about how expertise and research are utilized in different policy areas, and across different policymaking processes and institutional settings. The interplay between use of expert evidence and the institutional settings of decision-making provides a range of opportunities and constraints for ‘taking evidence seriously’ in policy development and program review. The obstacles and constraints to greater adoption of expert knowledge are well-known. These include the politicized context of policy debates and governmental commitments, the search for political compromises, mismatches between the cycles of policymaking and scientific discovery, low awareness of evaluation findings on the part of public officials, and ineffective communication by researchers and other experts. In response to these challenges, various “bridging” and “brokering” strategies have emerged to promote closer linkages. This panel provides a forum for developing and sharing case studies and comparative research experience concerning the relationships between expertise, research, policy and practice. These issues run across many different policy problems, institutional settings, and national boundaries. Papers are welcome on any topic that aims to enhance our conceptual and/or empirical understanding of how research claims are mobilized and how expertise is utilized in public policy settings. Some relevant questions might include: 1. What can policy scholars offer to practitioner groups in policymaking and policy advocacy? Policy theories claim to provide frameworks and heuristics that are helpful for policymakers. What kinds of insights and lessons for policymakers can be offered by the scholarly research sector? 2. How do the relationships between research expertise and policymaking differ across policy issues, sectors or countries? 3. What strategies are used to promote or embed expertise in policy processes? 4. How does policy design seek to incorporate evidence and experience from implementation practice and program evaluation? 5. What frameworks, theories or conceptual models are useful for these analyses?

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Governments around the world have been experimenting with policy design and seeking innovative approaches, as they try to increase the value for money they get from their limited funds, while simultaneously addressing intractable policy problems. In recent years, governmental interest in innovation, experimentation and measurement has spawned a multitude of policy design labs and government innovation teams. These ‘policy labs’ take a variety of forms, applying different methods and focusing on a range of issues – sometimes developing a high profile (e.g. Denmark’s MindLab), and at other times disappearing not long after they emerge (e.g. Australia’s DesignGov). Despite their differences, policy labs predominantly draw on and reflect contemporary interest in behavioural insights, design thinking and evidence-based policy making, and there is a growing body of grey literature describing and promoting policy labs. Some are located within government; and some are autonomous but sponsored by government, not-for-profit organizations, or some combination of both. Others are located within universities. Some appear to be ‘re-branded’ units, while others are clearly new initiatives. And while some specialise in particular policy sectors, others have a very broad area of interest. Yet there is still relatively little academic research on the specific form, practices and influences of these ‘innovative’ policy-making/evaluating units. If policy labs are themselves experimental, what are we learning from these experiments in policy design? This panel aims to better understand the emergence and spread of the policy lab as a distinct institutional form, as well as the particular concepts and methods being applied and promoted by these units, and their influence on policy design, implementation and evaluation. We propose a panel that sheds light on the following questions, among others: What explanations are there for this rise in policy labs? Where do policy labs come from? To what extent are they an example of policy transfer or an instrument constituency? What forms of knowledge and expertise do policy labs draw on and promote? What methods and tools are they using? How do policy labs interact with existing institutions and interests? Are there particular institutional locations, models of governance or policy realms in which policy labs thrive? What impacts are policy labs having on policy processes and outcomes? The aim of the panel is to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines and geographic locations with a common interest in understanding the origins, practices and impacts of policy labs.

Objectives of the Panel The objective of the panel is to develop stronger relations between evaluation research and public policy analysis, recognising at same time the differences of the two sub-disciplines (Geva-May and Pal; Weiss). The aim is to help evaluation in taking advantage from the studies of the policy process to improve its use by decision-makers. In the last decades, evaluation scholars devoted strong emphasis and efforts in the debate about methodologies; the discussions concerning qualitative and quantitative approaches appear now passed, with efforts to deal with the complexity of policies using mixed methods. In any case, the policy evaluation literature – both oriented to policy making and to knowledge development (Mark and Henry) seems to lack, often, systematic connections and exchanges with the researches of the different policy analysis fields; for example, the studies devoted to the analysis of policy change, policy design and instruments, and policy implementation. With the aim to develop a fruitful integration between these two sides, the panel wants to deeper themes that can be eventually discussed in different workshops. Scientific Relevance The debate on ‘Evidence-based policy’ underlines the issue concerning the role of social science in supporting the policy-making processes e the design of public programmes. The reflection of many scholars is often translated in methodological terms, and the conclusion is oriented to the adoption of approaches that improve the reliability of the causal inferences that sustain the attribution of an outcome to a programme; and the preference of the RCT designs is quite often the result. Indeed we need to sustain a wider pluralism and expansion in the use of social science techniques in evaluation (Stoker and Evans; Bastow et al.). For example, it is important obviously to collect evidences on ‘what works’ about public programmes, but at the same time policy makers and citizens are interest in the transferability issue, i.e. the effectiveness of a programme if implemented in another site; in that case we need to add to the ‘what works?’ questions regarding ‘what works, for whom, in what context’, the mechanism at the base of the observed changes, the reasons for the success of the winners and the failure of the losers, the implementation gaps, etc. (Pawson). Evidence-based policy represents a challenge for policy evaluation because underline the theme of the impact of the evaluation researches on decision-makers. References Bastow S., P. Dunleavy and Tinkler J. 2014. Measuring the Impact of Social Sciences. Research in UK Central Government Policy-Making. London: LSE. Geva-May I. and L.A. Pal. 1999. “Good Fences Make Good Neighbours. Policy Evaluation and Policy Analysis – Exploring the Differences.” Evaluation 5(3). Mark M.M. and G. T. Henry. 2006. “Methods for Policy-Making and for Knowledge Development Evaluations.” In Shaw, Green and Mark (eds). Handbook of Evaluation. London: Sage. Pawson R. 2013. The Science of Evaluation. London: Sage. Stoker G. and Evans M. 2016. Evidence-based policy making. Methods that Matters. University of Bristol: Policy Press. Weiss C. 1999. “The Interface between Evaluation and Public Policy.” Evaluation 5(4): 468-486.

As topics intensely discussed since the 1960s, policy advice and policy advocacy have been the essential topics in public policy and political life in Western liberal democracies. It has been traditionally believed that policy advice and advocacy are insufficient and inefficient in China. Since 2013 the Chinese top leadership has started to officially promote the establishment of “New Style Think Tanks with Chinese Characteristics”. In this context, think tanks, and other related intellectual organizations, have been a hot topic in China. Recently, policy advice and advocacy have become less politically sensitive than before. However, the mechanisms and dynamics need to be further explored. What are the strategies and methods these policy actors use to promote policy ideas? What are the reasons and consequences of policy advice and policy advocacy in China? What are the determining factors that facilitate or obstruct the success of policy advice and advocacy in China? Empirical quantitative and qualitative researches on this topic are welcome in the panel.

The role of experts and the legitimacy of expertise in public policy are in question. Established relationships between politicians, experts and citizens are breaking down as communities lose faith in the core institutions and practices of governance. Academics have devoted much attention to the reimagining of governance institutions and the practices of governing but have paid less attention to the role of experts and expertise in those institutions and practices. This panel will address that gap, focusing on the relationship between expertise and legitimacy. Experts play a central role in society as they provide the bridge between specialist understanding and citizen acceptance. Questioning expertise means understanding the nature of its legitimacy in the process of policy making. What determines the (input) legitimacy of experts to open up and animate the debate? What determines the (output) legitimacy through expertise to validate a public decision and close the debate? How is expertise made accountable? This panel aims to identify the determinants (political, social, economic, organisational, historical, technological or other) of the legitimacy of expert knowledge, by analysing the conditions in which independent knowledge is created and communicated and examining the role of institutions and actors in supporting or limiting legitimacy. These issues are highly relevant in a situation of concomitant distrust in expertise and public policies, and are fed by a widening gap between scientific and human progress: while scientific advances and innovation are accelerating, populism constitutes a major social risk for democracies. Recently, the authority and legitimacy of experts have been eroded by some high profile policy failures. This panel aims to understand the sources of these failures. Explanations might be both endogenous and exogenous to the activity of experts, since for policy-making, the legitimate provision of expertise requires both responsible agents and a vigilant principal (Jasanoff, 2003). In a context of the reduction of public research budgets and research privatisation, potential conflicts of interest can compromise independent expertise and its accountability. Moreover, the lack of transparency and traceability in the collection, accumulation and modification of data are problematic when science becomes more data driven. When do experts behave opportunistically, how can this be detected, and who monitors experts? Finally, in the current environment of ‘post-truth politics’, we need to better understand how new social risks (such as inequalities and populism) interact with expertise, generating doubts about and providing alternatives to expert knowledge. Jasanoff, S. (2003), ‘(No) Accounting for Expertise?’, Science and Public Policy 30(3):157-62.

The growing literature on PPPs has greatly advanced our understanding of the factors that contribute to the successful contracting of PPPs (for example, reviews of critical success factors by Osei-Kyei and Chan 2015 and Ke et al 2009), variables affecting the stability and longevity of individual contracts (Marcelo & House 2016) and the assessment of the ‘value for money’ of infrastructure procurement through PPP (Mwangi 2016). Theoretical advances in agency theory have informed contract and auction design (see Iossa & Martimort 2015, for a recent extension to a rich literature on the topic). The unit of analysis in much of this literature is the individual contract, with PPP often defined implicitly as a procurement method, and ‘success’ construed within the confines of contract terms. While such an approach has yielded interesting and useful results for contract design, tendering etc., it is only one facet of PPP as public policy. PPP may also be conceived more broadly as a policy instrument employed to achieve particular policy objectives at the sector, regional or national level. Framing PPP as a policy instrument in this way implies that a different approach to evaluation is needed that takes into account several modes of ‘success,’ including process, goal attainment, distributional outcomes and political consequences (Newman 2014). A growing body of literature on accountability and governance of PPPs draws attention to the challenges of ensuring that PPPs are consistent with mechanisms of democratic accountability (Willems and van Dooren 2016). In evaluating PPP as public policy, it is necessary to shift the focus from the individual project to the assessment of the impact of PPP on an entire sector, region or country. This shift in perspective raises many new questions, for example about the level of effective competition in PPP procurement, and in the cumulative liabilities of governments engaging in large multi-sector PPP programmes. This panel seeks to deepen our understanding of PPP as an instrument of public policy and to contribute to the elaboration of meaningful evaluation frameworks for PPP in these terms. The maturation of PPP programmes in the UK, Australia and other pioneers provides an opportunity for evaluation and to draw out lessons for countries that have recently embarked on PPP more recently.

In the past thirty years, think-tanks have attracted considerable attention within public debate and academia. Within the social and political sciences academics have attempted to classify these organisations, trace their development in specific polities, and understand their role and impact on party politics and public policy. Though important, this scholarship has overlooked two key areas of research. First, the wider literature tends to neglect how think-tanks conduct their daily activities and make knowledge claims (McLevey, 2014). Secondly, researchers have often failed to investigate intellectual life within think-tanks, and have tended to present a simplistic image of the expert-cum-political advisor, or the elite puppet (Medvetz, 2012). This is due, in part, to previous scholarship’s cursory appreciation of the interstitial location of think-tanks between academia, the media, business, and politics. As such, we concur with Plehwe’s observation that think-tanks remain “the most arcane and least understood” aspect of the policy-interest nexus (Plehwe, 2014, p. 108). In response, this panel’s prime objective is to facilitate deeper reflections on the hybrid mode of intellectualism associated with think-tanks. Our session’s second objective is to stimulate research which focusses on the actual practices of think-tanks. Such an approach has invigorated research within the sociology of knowledge (Camic, Gross & Lamont, 2011), and we expect to encourage similar developments within the field of think-tank studies. Concomitantly, our third objective is to act as a hub for interdisciplinary learning, bringing together contributions from across the social and political sciences as well as science and technology studies. Finally, this panel will make a significant contribution to the comparative study of knowledge regimes (Campbell & Pedersen, 2011). Think-tanks operate across the globe, yet the knowledge regime literature has tended to concentrate on a select group of Euro-American polities. This panel seeks contributions from the developing world alongside those from developed/Anglo-American studies. Secondly, the distinct focus on think-tanks and their intellectual practices in action is novel approach, as studies of regimes have predominantly taken a historical perspective. In sum, we aim to expand the scholarly understanding of knowledge regimes by illuminating how policy-knowledge actors, in this case think-tanks, navigate their institutional landscape, and how this landscape shapes their practice. References Camic, C., Gross, N., & Lamont, M. (2011). Social knowledge in the making. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press,. Campbell, J., & Pedersen, O. (2011). Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political Economy. In D. Béland & R. H. Cox (Eds.), Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research. Oxford University Press. McLevey, J. (2014). Think Tanks, Funding, and the Politics of Policy Knowledge in Canada. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 51:1, 54–75. Medvetz, T. (2012). Think tanks in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plehwe, D. (2014). Think tank networks and the knowledge–interest nexus: the case of climate change. Critical Policy Studies, 8:1, 101–115.

Given the cutback and austerity of public finance around the world, governments are required by the public to improve policy performance. Public policies in various domains have been increasingly subject to external scrutiny and public accountability to retain social legitimacy and citizen trust. Public money is strictly supervised in developed democracies, and public projects and programs are also under similar control in less developed countries, either democratic or authoritarian. Policies and programs are not only evaluated in traditional mandatory and top down approach, but are also monitored by external and third-party entities including community groups, media, non-profit organizations, research institutions, and international organizations. Policy evaluation is not isolated, but rather embedded in institutional contexts. In this regard, it is imperative to examine policy evaluation in performance regimes, which “refer not just to the practices of measuring and managing performance indicators but also to capture the embedded nature of these practices in almost all aspects of contemporary governance.” (Moynihan, et al., 2011: i141). The conflict values and goals, blurring boundaries and hybrid forms of organizing, as well as increasingly complicated and multiplied policy problems, make it methodologically challenging to measure and manage policy performance. Government agencies, private sectors, and non-profit organizations involved in policy implementation also strategically respond to performance regimes, which result in gaming, cheating, manipulation, goal displacement, and other unintended consequences. Despite policy evaluation is performance-oriented and result-centric, public sectors in different countries and regions have developed distinct approaches due to different cultural, political, and social contexts. These approaches are rather different, but may share similar underpinning values and rationales. It is thus meaningful to examine and compare policy evaluations in different countries and regions. In this proposed panel, we call for submissions studying policy evaluation in performance regimes from a comparative perspective. Key research questions include: How do performance regimes affect policy evaluation approaches and instruments? What role do third-party entities play in policy evaluation? What policy experts can learn from policy evaluation practices in other countries and regions? In this proposed panel, we aim to gather the scholars in this field to exchange ideas and evidences concerning policy evaluation in different performance regimes across the world.

Much of the existing literature on discursive politics centers on understanding the underlying ideologies, values and motives that impact worldviews and subsequently influence stakeholder behaviour. Far less research has extended this avenue of inquiry to the design of strategies to harness divergent views for enhanced policymaking. In environmental governance this is of applied exigence, as we collectively endeavour to realign resource usage for more sustainable results. The objectives of this panel theme are to: 1. Encourage the extension of discursive insights to applied strategies for policymaking. 2. Encourage discussion of applied viability of discursive theory across contexts. 3. Explore the links between postmodern theory and network theory. 4. Share applied insights and consider how experiences can feed into theory development. This type of research benefits greatly from broad thematic treatment as this panel theme represents because conflating theoretical perspectives and connecting cross-disciplinary researchers from the social sciences will help spur innovation in theory development.

Deliberative policy analysis (briefly DPA) might be one of the most prominent developments in the post-positivist policy movement (Fischer and Forester 1993; Fischer and Gottweis 2012). Since the early edited book of Hajer and Wagenaar (2003), DPA has made many progresses in theory development and pilot practice. However, it is still far to say that DPA has been widely recognized in the policy community (Li, 2015). Basing on the well-developed public deliberation techniques, DPA has the potential to grow into an influential alternative policy analysis mode. This proposed panel aims to revisit and reflect the theoretical and practical issues of DPA, outline the challenges ahead, and discuss its future directions. The panel invites papers relevant to the DPA approach, including but not limited to the following sub-topics: (1) Theoretical foundations of deliberative policy analysis (2) Relations between DPA, mainstream positivist policy analysis, and other post-posivist policy analysis approaches (3) DPA and relevant fields, such as public deliberation and conflict resolution (4) The roles of and interactions between policy experts, deliberative analysts, involved stakeholders, lay citizens, and policy makers (5) Organizational issues and procedures of DPA (6) DPA case study (7) DPA development in a specific country or a region (8) Review essays of DPA (9) Theoretical or practical challenges of DPA (10) Critical study of DPA References: Fischer, F., & Forester, J. (1993). The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fischer, F., & Gottweis, H. (2012). The Argumentative turn revisited: Public policy as communicative practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hajer, M. A., & Wagenaar, H. (2003). Deliberative policy analysis: Understanding governance in the network society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, Y. (2015). Think tank 2.0 for deliberative policy analysis. Policy Sciences, 48(1): 25-50.

The critical examination of political dimensions of expert knowledge has been an important pillar of the argumentative turn literature. The founding volume contained a chapter by Fischer (1993), which explained the relevance of think tanks for the succession of and competition between political technocracies in the United States. Less attention has been paid to the socio-economic background and the social co-production of think tank based expertise (but compare Medvetz 2010 on early think tanks, Jane Meyer’s 2016 “Dark Money” on recent influence). The literature on think tanks in any case can be strengthened if we explore the relationship between corporations and think tanks systematically including the place of commercial think tanks and non-commercial efforts of such think tanks that overlap with consulting business, the roles of think tanks in corporate lobby efforts at different levels (company, groups of businesses, industries etc.). More insights need to be gained with regard to the various ways in which corporations influence think tanks (funding, project finance, board membership, revolving door practices, networks etc.) Fischer, Frank, 1993, Policy Discourse and the Politics of Washington Think Tanks. In: Fischer, Frank, Forrester, John, eds., The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Duke University Press Medvetz, Tom, 2012, Think Tanks in America. University of Chicago Press Jane Mayer, 2016, Dark Money. The hidden history of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday

The ‘Argumentative Turn’ in its first iteration in 1993 by Frank Fischer and John Forester provides a counterpoint against a value-neutral, positivist policy reality, arguing that policy-making takes place within and through narratives or policy stories. This panel locates itself within the field of environmental policies given the significance of such policies in an increasingly physically-stressed world; this also aligned itself with the original planning and socio-ecological origins of the Turn. Three important characteristics of narratives are given by Fischer (1993). First, narratives are qualitatively understood. “It is not the knowledge in belief systems per se that holds the members of such coalitions together, but the “storylines” the symbolically condense the facts and values basic to a belief system.” Unlike beliefs, these storylines cannot be analysed quantitatively but can only be understood qualitatively. Second, they can possess a non-logical structure “Rather than a stable core of cognitive commitments and beliefs, they share story lines that often tend to be vague on particular points, and at times, contradictory on others.” Last, they are normatively constituted. “Storylines are not just about a given reality. While they typically give coalition members a normative orientation to a particular reality, they are as much about changing reality as they are about simply understanding affirming it.” Since then, an increasing number of policy scholars have called for a systematic use of narrative analysis in policy studies (Hampton, 2009, Feldman, 2004, Hajer, 2003, Yanow, 2007, 1992). In terms of empirical investigations, these have ranged from regulation (Bridgman and Barry, 2002), poverty (Cassiman, 2006), the role of science in public policy (Garvin and Eyles, 1997) and recycled water (Leong, 2010). This panel is related to updating, challenging and expanding the role of narratives and rethinking the argumentative turn; in particular, but not limited to, a rethinking of the three characteristics of policy narratives outlined by Fischer. First, advances in narratives methods have led some to investigate narratives quantitatively as well as qualitatively – for example, the Q methodology has been increasingly used in quantitative studies of narratives. In the water sector, Asquer (2014) has used Q Methodology to provide evidence of the different opinions about the quality of water services provision, its performance and the most adequate form of regulation for local governments in Italy. Forouzani et al. (2013) used it to identify different understandings from farmers and agricultural specialist about agricultural water poverty and its causes in Iran. Leong and Lejano (2016) used it to conduct an exploratory study of stakeholders’ perceptions about the apparent successful use of Integration Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the China Yellow River. Despite these advances however, it could be argued however, that there remains an irreducibly important role for qualitative understandings, as argued by Yanow who argues that in public policy, some goals are “verboten” – that is “publicly unspeakable because there is no explicit public consensus underlying them”. (1992:400). A more serious challenges comes from the logic of narratives - while it is true that some narratives have a non-logical structure, those public narratives informing deliberative discourses appears to require some objective logic and meaning – to have a place at the policy-making table, narratives cannot be wholly subjective; as Ricouer says, a narrative has an objective meaning that can be “constructed in various ways.” He noted that, in a public discourse, the problems of right understanding can no longer be solved by a simple return to the alleged intention of the author. (Ricouer, 1973) but must be construed by a process. “A text has to be construed because it is not a mere sequence of sentences, all on an equal footing, and separately understandable. A text is a whole, a totality.” Last, a second line of argument on the value-laden-ness of Fischer’s narrative approach. In his “deliberative governance” model, which the goal of public policy is to improve the policy making process by improving the democratic process. For his, this is essentially a participatory process with the goal of the analyst then is to serve as a public learning and political empowerment.” For Fischer then, policy making is rooted in a particular context – that of Western liberal societies, which have the wherewithal and the social inclination for widespread civic participation. Yet, in a Lasswellian fashion, the task of understanding narratives can be taken in a politically neutral fashion, for example, as suggested by Feldman et al (2004) This panel aims to kick off the discussion on Argumentative Turn 2.0 with the frameworks, policy models and methods to engage in the research of policy narratives. While the panel has been conceived along the narrative elements of the Turn, we are also interested in general theory building on the role of narratives in policy studies, as well as the accumulation of the empirical evidence on the impact of narratives. References: Asquer, A., 2014. Understanding Subjectivities in the Regulation of Local Water Services: A Q-Methodology Study of Elected Public Officers in Italy. Water, 6(3), pp.670-693. Bridgman, T. and Barry, D., 2002. Regulation is evil: An application of narrative policy analysis to regulatory debate in New Zealand. Policy sciences, 35(2), pp.141-161. Cassiman, S.A., 2006. Toward a more inclusive poverty knowledge: Traumatological contributions to the poverty discourse. The Social Policy Journal, 4(3-4), pp.93-106. Ching, L., 2010. Eliminating ‘Yuck’: a simple exposition of media and social change in water reuse policies. Water Resources Development, 26(1), pp.111-124. Feldman, M.S., Sköldberg, K., Brown, R.N. and Horner, D., 2004. Making sense of stories: A rhetorical approach to narrative analysis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 14(2), pp.147-170. Fischer, F., John Forester, eds. 1993. The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning. Forouzani, M., Karami, E., Zamani, G.H. and Moghaddam, K.R., 2013. Agricultural water poverty: Using Q-methodology to understand stakeholders' perceptions. Journal of arid environments, 97, pp.190-204. Garvin, T. and Eyles, J., 1997. The sun safety metanarrative: Translating science into public health discourse. Policy Sciences, 30(2), pp.47-70. Hampton, G., 2009. Narrative policy analysis and the integration of public involvement in decision making. Policy sciences, 42(3), pp.227-242. Hajer, M.A. and Wagenaar, H., 2003. Deliberative policy analysis: understanding governance in the network society. Cambridge University Press. Leong, C. and Lejano, R., 2016. Thick narratives and the persistence of institutions: using the Q methodology to analyse IWRM reforms around the Yellow River. Policy Sciences, pp.1-21. Ricoeur, P., 1973. The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as a text. New Literary History, 5(1), pp.91-117. Yanow, D., 2007. Interpretation in policy analysis: On methods and practice. Critical policy analysis, 1(1), pp.110-122. Yanow, D., 1992. Silences in public policy discourse: Organizational and policy myths. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2(4), pp.399-423.

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, followed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, keenly evoked people’s fear of nuclear power and clearly made it much more difficult for the Japanese to consider the problem of radioactive waste, even though the disaster produced a huge amount of additional radioactive waste to be managed. Many countries promoted nuclear power for a solution to climate change and/or national energy security before the accident in Fukushima, which was called “nuclear renaissance”. Despite the disaster in Fukushima, some nuclear power stations have been restarted in Japan and new plants are planned in UK and emerging countries. Nuclear policy must be determined based on a wide consideration of its advantages and concerns. Especially, it must be understood that nuclear power generation involves the “back end” of nuclear fuel cycle as the case in Fukushima reminds us. Should we utilize nuclear power generation? How can we design and implement comprehensive nuclear policy from the front to back end which is both socially and technically accepted? In what process can experts and citizens work together on nuclear policy? And, what triggers the agenda-setting for nation-wide debate on nuclear policy? Nuclear policy is a serious issue to be discussed at both the domestic and international levels. Some of the newly planned nuclear power plants will be built by emerging countries, such as China and Korea. Westinghouse, one of the major producers of nuclear plant, was acquired by Japanese Toshiba. The decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is supported by French AREVA. Some countries have even sought an “export” of radioactive waste or a joint repository, which might be reasonable for a country with the very small amount of waste. And, the disaster in Fukushima, as well as the past Chernobyl case, aroused attention to possible influence over surrounding countries. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been acting as the world's center for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, but does it effectively facilitate the international debate on nuclear energy at the present time? How can the domestic and international aspects of the issue connected? What determines the threshold of stakeholder? This panel aims at obtaining a general picture of this wide-ranging policy field to identify critical issues, especially (re-)emerging ones after Fukushima, to be addressed by experts in public policy and/or by taking an interdisciplinary approach. The panel invites both papers providing theoretical framework and ones from the practical perspective so that we can explore relevant policies based on a long-term vision. The panel also seeks papers that deal with cases or issues about nuclear policy in Asia, which has the rapidly growing demand and concerns of nuclear power including radioactive waste management.

Can contemporary democratic governments tackle climate crisis? Some say that democracy has to be a central part of a policy strategy to deal with climate change. Others say that it is not up to the challenge in the time frame available—that it will require a stronger hand, even a form of eco-authoritarianism. A question that does not lend itself to easy answers, it is the issue we seek to sort out and assess in these pages. While most of us come down on the side of an environmentally-oriented democracy, establishing and sustaining its practices will not take place under the existing arrangements of a capitalist dominated democratic state and its politics, described as the politics of unsustainability. Democratic governance during climate crisis, it can be argued, will have to invent a new way forward. The situation we find ourselves in—“the start of a global climate emergency”—presses for serious attention . At the same time that we carry on with our regular activities, in particular those of uncontrolled consumerism, climate change and its worrisome impacts are regularly reported to be getting worse and faster than was expected. We are, in short, running out of time left to make the kinds of changes needed to avert a very serious climate crisis, even potential catastrophe. Even if talk of catastrophe turn out to be exaggerated, climate change can still result in serious upheavals leading to various state of emergencies. Without doubt, measures will be introduced to deal with pressing emergencies— heat, flooding, hunger, migration, civil violence and more. Still, under such circumstances, it is far from certain that contemporary political systems, including democratic political systems, will be able to adequately cope with these pressures. We are thus approaching a stage of climate change in which the democratic prospects for the future look increasingly troublesome. Given the failures of governments to rise to the challenge so far, Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, has suggested that we need a “Plan B.” What that might look like poses a powerful challenge for the policy perspective. A question that presses for attention, this roundtable discussion seeks to assess the democratic policy prospects under the conditions of the climate crisis ahead.

The technocratic policy approach is not the only one that influences the development of policy studies in Asia. Critical policy perspectives are also shaded light on as a consequence of the limitations of the aforementioned approach in the real-world policy. Such perspectives are not simply categorized, but their commons are on making a critique of top-down policy making. They raise a question on the legitimacy of the conventional policy experts and their nuts and bolts. According to Fischer (2016), critical policy perspectives can be perceived as the ‘postpositivist’ movement in public policy founded on an interpretive understanding of social science. They depart form Marxism and Habermas’s critical theory, which attempts to critique scientism and technocracy. Their role is “to monitor or be on the alert for social shifts and to discursively explore and interpret their meanings through processes of critical deliberation and argumentation” (Ibid, p.98). He gives an example of the argumentative perspective as one of critical perspectives, which is now focused by some Asian scholars (e.g. Fischer & Boossabong, forthcoming; Li & He 2016). Without too specific conceptualization, this panel welcomes a wide-range of critical lens on policy studies in Asia (e.g. the perspectives that critique mainstream policy approaches and pay attention to the bottom-up policy making, the governance turn in public policy both in national and local scales, the role of local knowledge in policy analysis etc.). The paper should address; how and why critical policy perspectives are emerged in different Asian contexts? Are they useful?, and if so, in which way? It is also worth learning their success and failure in either making a critique or proposing the alternatives. References Fischer, F. 2016. What is critical? Connecting the policy analysis to political critique. Critical Policy Studies, 10(1), pp.95-98. Fischer, F. and Boossabong, P. forthcoming. Deliberative Policy Analysis. Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy, ed. J. Dryzek. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Li, Y. and He, J. 2016. Exploring deliberative policy analysis in an authoritarian country. Critical Policy Studies, 10(2), pp.235-246.

There is increasing recognition that policy institutions are complex and studying structure and culture on their own is not enough – scholars need to understand the totality of the ‘policy world’ within which agents operate. The concept of a policy world draws on Shore and Wright (2011) who saw policies as having complex ‘social lives’ and ‘agency’, both shaped by interactions with actors and agents as well as shaping them (3). It also draws on Glynos and Howarth (2007) who see policies enacted within a policy regime as well as within an established system of social and political practices. As such, policy worlds are at heart radically contingent and open up ambiguous spaces in which actors and agents compete for influence. Mainstream scientific methods are often reductionist, subordinating real-world complexity. If we are to be able to make sense of complex policy worlds, policy analysis needs to embrace the larger context, including the political. Interpretive methods provide the means required to delve into the complex, mediated and ambiguous realities within which policies are developed and implemented. Interpretivist scholars are interested in the practical ways that policy practitioners recognise and manage the complexity that confronts them. As such, much interpretive analysis concentrates on close, micro-level interactions and contextualised self-interpretations. The challenge is to scale up established interpretive methodologies to make sense of ‘policy worlds’ in ways that consider the complexities at a larger scope of policy analysis, but which still express the variety of conflicting interpretations of actors. References: Glynos, Jason, and David R. Howarth. 2007. Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. New York, NY: Routledge. Shore, Cris, and Susan Wright. 2011. "Conceptualising Policy: Technologies of Governance and the Politics of Visibility." In Policy worlds: anthropology and the analysis of contemporary power, edited by Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Però, 1-25. New York: Berghahn Books.

Research field of telecommunications policy is starting to come of age, with several international research conference associations celebrating 30 and 40 years (such as ITS, PTC and TPRC), and the Journal of Telecommunications Policy turning 40 years in 2016. The research field has developed and expanded, becoming more interdisciplinary as well as contributing with increasingly precise policy implications. Research contributions have come from economic analysis, institutional theory and policy analysis, to name a few. Several thousands of researchers have interacted with the research area over the years, both as contributors and acting as reviewers for journals and conference proceedings. This is a good time to take stock and reflect on the past developments of the research field, and consider future outlooks. In particular, the field of telecommunications policy is now really a field of Digital Policy, with increasing complex and encompassing issues. This panel session is based on contributions from leading scholars in the field, joined by young and growing researchers in the field, addressing question such as: - How would you define and scope the broad field of telecommunications policy, and the emerging field Digital Policy? - What have been the major research issues in the past? - What are the current major research issues? - What are the most promising and relevant future research problems? And what are the most interesting theory domains to address these future problems? What should be the focus of the emerging field Digital Policy? The session will include not only personal reflections of the contributors, but also time for cross-panel discussions and Q&A with the audience. The panel will include topical presentations that bear on the specific theme of the panel, plus presentations that analyze each of the questions raised in-depth. A mixture of perspectives from junior and senior researchers will be offered. Conveners of the panel proposal are: Prof. Erik Bohlin, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden & Editor-in-Chief, Telecommunications Policy Prof. Khuong Vu, National University of Singapore Prof. Hitoshi Mitomo, Waseda University, Japan Prof Yu-li Liu, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

Panel Description Policy narratives are gaining increasing attention in the world of policy analysis and practice. Roe came up with the framework to study policy narratives (1994), and a wave of research focusing on discourses and stories in the 2000s made this line of research well-established in the policy literature (e.g. Fischer and Forester, 1993; Hajer, 1995; Lejano et al., 2013). In this panel, we invite contributions which further our understanding of policy narratives. Narratives are attractive to study for several reasons. First, we make sense of the world in stories and these become an epistemological and an ontological category. Second, stories allow for agency and structure to be combined in one coherent account. Stories also often combine many different elements of decision-making, such as emotions, reason, norms, values, culture and facts. Furthermore, narratives allow both human and non-human objects to be analyzed for their agency and influence on policy processes (Latour, 1993). This literature makes a number of important propositions, which need to be further studied empirically. Moreover, the discussion of new frameworks and methods to study policy narratives is an on-going process and contributions in this field are very welcome. One proposition is that narratives keep policy networks together and are key to understanding those (Lejano et al., 2013). Another proposition is that narratives, especially in the form of myths, are key to how international relations function (de Guevara, 2016). Similar line of research proposes that narratives are key to the functioning global governance in various fields (Dany and Freistein, 2016; Mukhtarov, 2009).

The study of narratives has a long and rich history in the field of public policy. This body of work engenders a range of epistemological approaches, from interpretive and contextually based (e.g., discursive politics) to the more quantitatively oriented (e.g., Narrative Policy Framework). In turn, the accompanying assortment of narrative methodologies has been used in the analysis of a broad array of substantive public policies at multiple scales and in a variety of contexts. This diversity of approaches and policy substance has produced conceptions of policy narratives that invoke diverse theoretical and philosophical traditions and varied operational protocols. While many of these approaches to the study of policy narratives converge, there are also critically important areas of divergence. In the interest of illuminating these points of convergence and divergence, the goal of the Policy Narratives and Public Policy panel is to hear scholarly works that are centered on how narratives operate in the public policy process across different policy contexts.

Natural resource governance is a multifaceted and complex concept that demands continued analysis of the implications for public policy, corporate practices and civil society participation. This panel is specifically concerned with the activities related to non-renewable extractive industries which include the mining for metals and minerals and the exploitation of oil and natural gas deposits. Continued analysis of the policies, processes, programs, actual practices and outcomes is necessary to gain a comprehensive understanding of what natural resource governance is within our neoliberal world order as policy and products transverse the varieties of market and political systems that exist in reality today. In order to balance efficiency and equity – continued wealth creation and the promotion of sustainable development – scholars, policy makers, corporate executives and civil society actors need to evaluate the pros and cons of the policies and practices within the extractive industries that facilitate flows of product and the flows of revenue across the transnational, national, regional and sub-state levels. This modern era of neoliberalism has had profound effects on social organization by privileging market mechanisms above state regulation. It is understood that power relations between transnational corporations and governments put developing states at a disadvantage to monitor extraction levels and claim a fair share of the revenues derived from the non-renewable extractive sectors. Moreover, political corruption has contributed to the distortion of economic equity in resource rich developing states at both the national and sub-national levels. Additionally, in many cases, community opposition to industrial resource extraction has been met with state- and private-sponsored repression leading to violence, property loss and dislocation of communities. Therefore, within the sector, it is necessary to analyze governance attributes of transparency, accountability and inclusion. This panel welcomes analysis of natural resource governance at various political levels, across global regions, and specific sector and programmatic focuses which may be either interconnected or overlap the public, private civil society sectors. Relevant topics may include, but is not limited to: global governance regimes (i.e. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, the African Mining Vision for instance), terms of trade within bi- and multi-lateral trade agreements, state laws and regulations regarding corporate taxation, revenue flows, and environmental and human rights protections, intra-state conflict, and corporate and state programs designed to enhance local beneficiation such as development of occupational skills, local procurement, down-stream and side stream economic diversification and the like. Globalization and broad modernization processes produce increased demand for extractive minerals and fuels. Some benefit at the expense of others. The search for solutions to these conflicts of interest needs to continue. Moreover, the inhumane effects of wide-spread poverty need to be alleviated. The non-renewable natural resource extractive sectors are situated within the scope of these developmental issues and therefore, the governance of extractive resources must remain a focus of attention and innovation. This panel welcomes analysis of these elements of the amorphous concept known as natural resource governance.

Urbanization is a worldwide development. People settle in cities to find work and a better future. But the growing population in the cities puts pressure on housing, safety, public health, and the environment. Urban governments are unable to address these major challenges on their own. Creative and innovative solutions need to be found to keep cities livable. In the public administration literature, there is common ground for the idea that, due to increasingly complex policy challenges and the changing capacity of governments to pursue collective interests, governments need to cooperate in inter-organizational governance networks or in partnerships with citizens, social organizations, and companies (e.g. Rhodes 1997, Pierre 2000, Pierre and Peters 2000, Kjaer 2004, Sørensen and Torfing 2005, Torfing et al. 2012, Michels and Van Montfort 2015). It is often assumed that cooperation in partnerships and inter-organizational networks leads to better service provision, greater efficiency, and better opportunities for citizen groups to promote their wishes. In this panel we want to get a better understanding of how partnerships can contribute to livability in urban areas. The central question in this panel is: How do different types of partnerships between public and private actors contribute to the livability in urban areas and what can be learned from innovative and/or successful practices? The focus in this panel will be on three specific, but interconnected dimensions of livable cities: the green city: ‘livable public spaces’ and 'green in the city' (parks, pedestrian areas, roof top gardens etc). the safe city: safe neighborhoods housing in the city: affordable housing for the poor, elderly and migrants. ‘Public’ includes local, regional and national governments, whereas ‘private’ refers to private companies, civil society organizations and individual citizens. Public – private partnerships may otherwise vary widely in their nature and scope: e.g. top down versus bottom up partnerships; partnerships primarily focused on financing versus partnerships focused on policy implementation; and ‘multi-layered partnerships’, with different partnerships for funding, management and day to day operation within one project. The aim of this panel is threefold: to contribute to a better understanding of the functioning and performance of specific types of public-private partnerships that play a role in livability issues in cities. In this panel we take a broad approach of public-private partnerships, and want to combine approaches of public-private partnerships with a focus on private companies as the main private entities, with approaches from political science and public administration with a focus on citizen participation. to find innovative or successful examples of partnerships that contribute to livability of cities to get a better understanding of the factors for success and failure of different types of partnerships. Because of the often complex nature of partnerships and the contextual differences it is not possible to pinpoint factors for success and failure that apply to every type of partnership in all circumstances. Instead, the more interesting question is ‘what kind of partnership works for whom under what circumstances’(Pawson and Tilley 1997).

The Mekong River traverses six countries and over 4,300 km, with diverse stakeholders holding multiple, overlapping, and sometimes competing interests, often yielding tensions and conflict over the priorities and processes of river governance. The repercussions of various development choices on social equity and environmental sustainability have been extensively debated. Resolving these requires high capacities to assess complex problems, modes of ensuring credible commitment, and the application of broad knowledge sets. At the same time, extreme climatic conditions, and the rapid development of the Greater Mekong’s water resources are challenging existing governance structures in the region; and leading to the emergence of new governance forms. For all that is unresolved in Mekong governance, one thing is clear: in order for decisions to be perceived as binding and legitimate, intense deliberation and negotiation is required. Current barriers to consensus have been documented, including a deficiency of productive dialogue; the marginalization of important stakeholders; and limitations to the legitimacy of agreements. The panel will include following contents: mapping the local narratives of the river, hydropower, and developmental efforts. It confounds the dominant thinking that local populations are pro or anti-dam, and instead presents a more complex struggle, including the possibilities provided by growth and electricity. Map the local policy network, identify the major influencers and links of knowledge within the community, arguing that narratives are construction along two axis – cognition and social meaning Use an economic model for quantitative assessment of the high costs for resettlement and adaptation.

The objective of this panel is to bring together analytical and innovative studies on smart cities that have become a rising trend in many Asian countries and cities today. While politicians and policymakers eagerly launch smart city initiatives, exactly what these projects and their relevant policies entail remain ambiguous. What is substantially different about smart city initiatives compared to other urban development policies? What are some of the key social, economic, and even political impacts of smart city projects on urbanizing Asian societies? Asia comprises diverse countries at different stages of development, which sets the scene for exploring why and how smart city policies are implemented across varying economic, social, and political contexts. For example, there are smart city initiatives by developed Asian countries, such as Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives and South Korea’s smart city Songdo, seeking new future development paths or to reinvent their cities with the advancement of science and technology. Such effort to bring high-technology and urban management/development together under the umbrella of smart cities is not limited to the developed economies only. Today’s globalization facilitates the flow of policy ideas and technology and knowledge transfer, which provides opportunities for cities to borrow ideas and to connect to each other via various networks, across national borders. Japan’s active exporting of smart city development know-how to other Asian cities is a case in point. India recently announced to develop 100 smart cities (in collaboration with Singapore), with an eye to find new solutions for their difficult urban challenges. Despite the numerous projects, the study and comparative analysis (let alone critical analysis) of smart city policies are scant, which this panel seeks to address.

The rapid development and urbanization of countries across Asia has produced scale, spillover and other dilemmas of fragmented authority that challenge efforts to address problems at a metropolitan or regional level. Across Asia countries have dealt with collaborative regional governance and institutional collective action in very different ways, both across space and over time. The common theme to this diversity is the debate between supporters of local government mergers to expand the capacity and efficiency in service provision and those favouring local government autonomy and self-determination to promote responsiveness to citizens. Although there have been numerous empirical studies of specific problems especially regarding centralizing solutions, there has been theoretical attention and empirical assessment of decentralized self-organizing mechanisms for regional governance in Asia. Even though they constitute viable alternatives to centralization or consolidation, voluntary solutions to institutional collective action dilemmas have often been neglected by Asian scholars. This panel examines the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework and its application to the study of collaborative mechanisms in metropolitan areas by drawing on examples of the tools of collaborative governance for solving ICA dilemmas across the Asian countries. This panel debates the use of the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework to explain inter-local collaborative arrangements in a comparative perspective. The panel includes theoretical papers and empirical papers in ASIA contexts. Scholars discuss a set of theoretical propositions rooted in historical, cultural, and institutional differences between North America, and among various countries in Asia to explain the variation in the adoption of collaborative mechanisms across countries. After we together, this set of researches reveals the ICA framework as a powerful analytical tool to understand the variable geometry of inter-local collaboration across different settings.

The Post-2015 Development Agenda evolves around three global policy agendas: The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change adopted under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) in December 2015, and the New Urban Agenda (October 2016). These agendas are interconnected but distinct in that they derive from separate policy communities with their own institutional contexts. Adopting country-led implementation strategies and “localization” (involvement of subnational governments and nongovernmental stakeholders) is seen as essential for achieving the ambitious targets. The global agendas are multi-sectoral and multi-level in nature, posing significant challenges for vertical and horizontal coordination among actors facing diverse incentives and accountability channels. National sector agencies will vie for public resources and maintain their sectoral logic. Subnational governments will defend their spheres of influence and discretionary decision-making against undue interference from higher levels. Regulatory agencies, such as ministries of finance, planning bodies, and offices of government chief executives, will have their own agendas. Such a situation requires information and negotiating skills to navigate conflicting demands and agendas in order to ensure that national objectives for global agendas are embedded in public sector processes and work streams at all levels. A further consideration is that many global agenda elements are more or less local in nature. Still, central governments must dominate on some goals and establish an enabling environment for the others. Often, implementation will occur on the ground, requiring cooperation of local actors. There is also a territorial integration dimension-some goals must be pursued together in specific local jurisdictions, although they may require higher level-support. Given this diverse array of actors, it is necessary to seek ways to build on existing cooperation mechanisms and networks or create new ones that can meet the challenges at hand. Such mechanisms must be able to generate patterns of interactions that are based on common interests, provide some clarity on authority and roles, and facilitate communication and collaboration among the actors. This panel seeks to explore to what extent, and how, multi-actor collaboration in the developing and emerging countries of the Asia-Pacific region could determine and influence national agenda-setting for implementing the global agendas. What types of incentives, relationships and arrangements can help achieve cooperation and coordination for developing and implementing strategies among sectors and across levels of government? What is the role of core agencies (e.g. the offices of chief executives or national planning bodies) in dealing with the global agendas? Which existing communication mechanisms can be utilized? How can policy fragmentation (which commonly leads to policy inconsistencies and hinders sustainable progress) be limited by the policy coordination systems put in place? The panel will include 4-5 papers. Papers can adopt a conceptual and/or empirical perspective, and they may involve a comparative approach or (country- or sector-specific) case studies. The panel intends to provide insights on how developing member countries of the ADB can be better supported in policy coordination related to creating national frameworks and localizing the global agendas.

All European Welfare Systems (EWS) are facing severe challenges (Schubert/de Villota/Kuhlmann 2016) and it is uncertain as to what extent political re-actions change our acquainted worlds of welfare. On the one hand even European countries with similar sets of criteria – e.g. demographic structure, (un)employment rate, public deficit/debt) – have generated wildly diverging policy responses and it seems that national social institutions, social interests and experiences are shaping national welfare policies. On the other hand, however, also the EU plays an important role in shaping national welfare systems. EWS have nowadays become semi-sovereign welfare states (Van Gerven/Beckers 2009) as the EU has taken a strong position in influencing national policy preferences and facilitating policy learning (Kerschen 2012). National welfare states are legally and economically constrained by European rules of economic integration, liberalization and competition law. Moreover, the objectives of the EU regarding employment and social protection and the respective competences of the Union and of the European member states are defined in European treaties. So, although the future development of the EWS seems to be open to change, it is reasonable to see future processes taking place in a corridor between national path-dependency, a large variety of political intentions and EU-stimulated coordinated action (Natali/Vanhercke 2013). From this perspective it seems useful to apply a newly available constructive approach to analyze the interplay of national and European welfare policy development. In the last few years much has been published on ‘experimental’ policy-making. However these approaches all follow a trial-and-error mode of policy-making which is guided by recursive and reflective learning and adjusting processes. Dorff and Sabel (1998) devised the term “democratic experimentalism”, Stoker and John (2009) the term “design experiments” and lately Sabel and Zeitlin (2008) coined the term “experimentalist governance” and provided rather interesting empirical examples and illustrations from Multi-Level Governance in the EU (Sabel/Zeitlin 2012). “One important omission”, they state here, “concerns transformations in national welfare states particularly within the Nordic universal access, service-based welfare regimes that are arguably becoming a model for the EU as a whole” (Sabel/Zeitlin 2012, p.8). Our panel investigates this “important omission” and invites papers that analyze the development of European Welfare Systems from a multi-level policy-making perspective. Also papers discussing ‘experimental’ policy-making from a more theoretical perspective are welcome.

Innovative technologies, such as high-speed railways, wind turbines, solar, geothermal, and other types of renewable energy projects, etc. along with the recent developments in ICT such as the sharing economy, block chain technology, crowdsourcing, big data and open data initiatives are increasingly adopted around the world to increase efficiency and effectiveness and improve decision making (Taeihagh, 2015; Prpic, Taeihagh and Melton, 2015; Janssen and Helbig, 2016; Hilbert, 2016). However, these technologies become sources of new problems due to unintended consequences and by creating new, previously unimaginable risks, as a result of which the social acceptability of these innovative projects may be low (Gerrits, 2016; Li, 2016). For decision makers and practitioners, how to address these issues in order to govern risks and uncertainties in a satisfactory manner is a challenge (Brown and Osborne, 2013). This raises several interesting questions awaiting to be answered by public administration and governance scholars. What types of unanticipated outcomes can result from adoption of innovative technologies in different fields (such as ICT, energy, transport, climate change, water management etc.)? How to govern risks and uncertainties inherent in innovative and often disruptive technologies? How to reconcile the relationships between innovative technologies and incumbent industries? What are the limitations of the traditional top-down approaches in governing uncertainties in the adoption of innovative technologies? What are the implications of responsible (technological) innovation for public administration and how to achieve it? What are the best practices in governing risks and uncertainties in adopting innovative technologies? What can we learn from other disciplines in regards to the governance of unintended consequences and unintended challenges in adopting innovative technologies? This panel will be dedicated to addressing this issue through enhancing our theoretical understanding of risk and uncertainty, and our empirical insights into their governance. Papers are welcome on the following topics: Theoretical and conceptual approaches to uncertainties and risks, Risk and innovation in public service delivery, Risk / uncertainty and its governance, Innovation and governance, Risk and complex socio-technical systems, Robustness and resilient thinking (including Antifragility pending the working definition used for resilience), High-reliability organizations (HRO), Risk and engagement of vulnerable stakeholders, Transfer of risk to vulnerable stakeholders (through Automation, Sharing economy etc.) Reference: Brown, L., & Osborne, S.P. (2013). Risk and innovation. Public Management Review, 15 (2), pp. 186-208. Gerrits, L.M. (2016). For the love of complexity: Governing technological innovations. Inaugural lecture delivered in abridged form on the acceptance of the Chair of Political Science, especially Governance of Complex and Innovative Technological Systems. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press. Hilbert, M. (2016). Big data for development: a review of promises and challenges. Development Policy Review, 34(1), 135-174. Justen, A., Schippl, J., Lenz, B., & Fleischer, T. (2014). Assessment of policies and detection of unintended effects: Guiding principles for the consideration of methods and tools in policy-packaging. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 60, 19-30. Li, Y.W. (2016). Governing environmental conflicts in China: Government responses to protests against incinerators and PX plants. Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam. Prpić J., Taeihagh A., and Melton J. (2015). The fundamentals of policy crowdsourcing. Policy & Internet, 7(3), 340-361. Taeihagh A. (2015). Policy and Planning on the Interface of Socio-Technical Systems. Instruments of Planning: Tensions and Challenges for More Equitable and Sustainable Cities, 193-207.

Scientific relevance There is scientific interest to analyze and explain the contemporary challenges for democratization processes in Ibero-american countries on complex governance environment. The recognition of a multilevel socio-political dynamics under global politics represent for scholars on political institutions and policies in Latin America and Europe (Sassen, 2014) (Colomer, 2015) a renewal perspective in the ways of how is been analyze the State and it effectiveness as part of global politics. From a traditional political science perspective, according to Arendt Lijphart, are the formal and external rules, elements that usually make the preferences of citizens in public policy. From an approximation of neo-institutionalism, economic political approach discussed by North develops, highlighting its usefulness for analysis of local development. Institutions are understood within a context of markets and hierarchies, with defined through external rules that are inserted in economic activity and generate certainties and uncertainties in the economic and social actors strategies (North, 1993). Public policies in the beginning, focused on the question of the results, in the process already completed the political and public action, leading over time to analyze and observing other views that provide complementary approaches. Therefore, they paid attention also to the making or decision-making, the formulation of those decisions considered problems and assigned on the political agenda to be resolved, continued by the ways of implementation and / or execution, along with the allocation of resources, and finally to the assessment, without losing sight on the role of citizen participation. This proposal panel links with the analisys the policy making, the citizen participation, the new rol of the institutionalism and obviously the challenge global governance. Objectives Identify the deficits of state-centric perspective to understand the actual momentum of governance in Iberoamerica countries. Explore the possibilities of multilevel governance to a better understood of contemporary politics in Latin America and Europe. Analyze the importance of citizen participation, and therefore an Organized Civil Society in the decision making process of public policies. Know the main factors for effective inclusion is the iberoamerica and European community in institutional frameworks. Describe and explain the main mechanisms of participation in the European region and Latin-American experiences in contemporary politics.

Corrupt practices are by no means a new phenomenon, in the past three decades however, corruption has been reframed and thus emerged as a ‘policy problem’; a deviance from good governance standards. This process of (re)politicisation of corruption goes parallel to the seminal work led mainly by Rose-Ackerman and Klitgaard presenting corruption as a principal-agent dilemma. Klitgaard’s 1988 corruption formula C=M+D-A (corruption equals monopoly plus discretion minus accountability) has indeed been central to anti-corruption efforts with a predominant focus on cost-benefits analyses, competition most notable monitoring and control mechanisms in the form of transparency programs (Persson, Rothstein and Teorell, 2013). The road to hell is however paved with good intentions, and the ubiquitous usage of ’best practices’ in anti-corruption programs overlooks the premise that problems are ambiguous, problem criterion are volatile change and thus policy strategies might be ineffective or have even reverse effects. Corruption as a public problem is rife with standardization of problem definitions leading to error of the third type: we are attempting to solve the wrong problem. This panel seeks to aid policymakers to craft more effective interventions and assistance programs that encourage and support good governance. We aim to harmonize varying conceptualizations to provide policymakers with new perspectives, data enrichment, and grounded recommendations directly applicable to improving anti-corruption assistance and intervention strategies. Given the challenge of corruption, this panel will be of value across the international policy community.

This panel will discuss policy circulation through the lens of higher education reforms. Since the 1990-2000s and in the context of globalization, research on transnational policy transfer and circulation of policy models has become a very fertile field of study in public policy and public administration (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; James and Lodge, 2003; Stone, 2004). This branch of policy science has quickly become an enthralling approach shaped by several theoretical concepts and notions which grasp different configurations of policy circulation such as policy transfer, policy learning, policy borrowing, policy lending, policy diffusion or policy convergence. These contributions question the circulation of models and policies in contexts of intensifying transnational networks of actors and increasing international policies. Many authors have shown that studying transnational circulation of models is considered necessary when analysing national public policy. Yet, systematic analyses, which unpack, discuss, or even contest this general assumption on the basis of in-depth empirical work is still needed. A relevant approach for this agenda is certainly to focus on different forms and levels of transnational circulation within a policy sector, in order to cross, cumulate, and discuss observations on related objects. In this perspective, higher education represents a very interesting case. On the one hand, theoretical reflections on policy circulation have been stimulating the research in education science, since university systems in Europe, Asia, Africa and America have been built historically as privileged areas of international intervention (Bleiklie and Henkel, 2005; Ball, 2012; Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2012; Stromquist and Monkman, 2014). From the international point of view, higher education is also interesting because there is no sector-specific international organisation as a central forum for discussion, frame for rule making, or harmonising and standard setting. On the other hand, the sector is strongly anchored into national policy systems and cultures (cf. its functions of training national elites and high skilled manpower). In fact, one suggestion of this panel would be to shed light on the role of domestic dynamics in the success or even the failure of policy circulation. We will be interested in the role of domestic actors such as political elites, private stakeholders, academic and administrative staff as well as students influencing the evolution of the policy sector. Although transfer studies tend to underline the international dimension of policy-making, the example of higher education rather reaffirms the importance of domestic configurations in the negotiation of policies. By analysing the multilevel functioning of the sector, the aim is to clarify the blurry concept of “globalisation of higher education” through the methodological tools of policy analysis. This panel invites papers on the multiform and multilevel transnational circulation of policy models in the sector of higher education, which address the following questions (non exhaustive): Who are the transnational policy professionals in higher education? How do they network? How do policy models travel and how are they translated between the transnational, national and local levels?

Large Cities are a new phenomenon in urban history. The emergence of urbanized areas with a population over 10 millions is not only a change of absolute proportions, but it implies changes of scale as well. Most of these metropolises are located in large emerging countries; this fact certainly has particular implications in terms of their sustainable development. Their rapid emergence during the 20th century has drawn the attention of numbers of researchers, and methodological streams: studies focusing on large cities constitute an active debate and research field (Le Galès and Vitale, 2011; Lorrain 2015). To further the theoretical debate about their political and technical functioning and the evolutions they are enduring, an in-depth empirical fieldwork is needed. The aim of this panel is to use the tools of policy studies in order to grasp this urban phenomenon in the Global South. Indeed, the governance of cities in the Global South (Miraftab and Kudva, 2016) poses important methodological challenges for policy specialists and challenges conventional wisdom, often leading to the functional stretching of analytical categories. Cities such as Lima, Mumbai, Lagos and Manilla often present -but not always- commonalities pertaining to important elements of policy making. On the one hand, we witness a hyper concentration of sectoral policies that determine much of city day-to-day functioning in very few hands, which often lead to serious implementation setbacks and lockdowns that are hard to overcome. On the other hand, policy processes are loosely articulated which leads to a segmentation and/or encroachment of decisions, but also to conflictive implementation processes that limit the possibilities for evaluation and policy learning. This dual dynamic is very much related to the difficulty of national politics to account for the reality of cities and of national policy sectors to adequately integrate policy processes pertaining to subnational units. Confronted to the imperatives of multi-level, cross-sectoral and cross-territorial coordination, can urban problems become politicized enough as to derive into new, challenging policy-making processes? To what extent do central-local relations constrain the autonomization of the urban political agenda and political elites, which is often considered a key dimension of urban governance? Finally do we encounter commonalities in the set of actors engaged in the transformation of these cities (e.g., development banks, large urban firms, …) or in the diffusion and transfer of standardized policy solutions ? Building on this, we explore the dynamics of the policy process in the light of fundamental interrogations that have long animated the debates in policy sciences. As such, the study of decision-making remains a process of analysis through information gathering and processing but also of coordination and ultimately of conflict resolution within and between public and private actors and government actors and bureaucracies . In spite of this ambition however, intragovernmental interactions often follow a negative type of coordination whereby bandwagoning sequences of participation are the norm rather than more reactive policy-making, where forms of positive coordination would encourage learning processes and the inclusion of larger coalitions of stakeholders within this singular policy subsystem that are cities (Peters, 1998 ; Araral et al., 2013). While patterns of interaction between governments and society in policy networks are regarded as an omnipresent phenomenon, the particular constellation of actors within large policy networks from cities in the Global South challenge our views on how policy domains get stabilized, and how specific arrangements pertaining to culture and history determine allegiances and shape the tune of conflicts.

Capacity for global policy-making has become an important issue. Increasing number of policy sectors face a need for policy making at the global level, not only for high-profile issues such as climate change, financial markets, or public health, but also in daily operations of achieving, for example, open access to knowledge or protection of cultural heritage. One of the main challenges in global policy-making is the fragmentation of the global governance architecture, that is environment characterized by multitude of public and private actors, and heterogeneity of norms, procedures and decision-making structures (Brinkmann 2009). An ‘orchestration’ or coordination deficit has become both a theoretically interesting and practically relevant issue (Abbott and Snidal 2009). Recent literature in global governance is focusing on the role of these various actors, next to traditional actors such as states and international organizations. Research is now accumulating fast about the role of transnational networks (Raustiala 2002); epistemic communities and experts (Stone 2004); and various private actors (Hall and Bierstaker 2002). This panel will focus not on individual actor groups but on actor constellations in a policy/issue domain or ‘regime’. The key issue is how the different types of actors influence each other and what coordination mechanisms are in place to overcome the fragmentation. The panel is further inspired by increasing interest in coordination mechanisms also in national settings. Coordination mechanisms have started to get much attention particularly in the context of ‘joined-up government’ framework that seeks coordination in case of ‘wicked problems’ that cross sectorial lines (Pollitt 2003). Similarly ‘network governance’, characterized by horizontal relationships between various types of public and private actors has inspired search for effective network management and collaborative arrangements. This panel thus hopes to extend our understanding of coordination in complex setting, with a focus on global governance. This panel will bring together scholars who study fragmentation issues, particularly focusing on three themes. First, what is fragmentation, how can we operationalize fragmentation both quantitatively and qualitatively to compare sectors, how fragmentation expresses itself; and under what condition it creates major obstacles for effective policy-making. Secondly, how does interaction between different types of actors take place, how actors influence each other, and what organizational and other mechanisms are in place or experimented with to overcome fragmentation issues? Thirdly, what theoretical insights can be developed to explain policy-making in highly fragmented environment (e.g. borrowing from adaptive governance, network governance, collaborative governance, evolutionary institutionalism and other frameworks.) References Abbott, K.W. and Snidal, D. (2010). International regulation without international government: improving IO performance through orchestration. The Review of International Organizations, 5(3): 315-344. Biermann, F. et al (2009). The Fragmentation of Global Governance Architectures: A Framework for Analysis. Global Environmental Politics 9(4): 14-40. Hall, R.B. and T.J. Biersteker (2002). The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollitt, C. (2003). Joined-up Government: A Survey. Political Studies Review, 1(1): 34-49. Raustiala, K. (2002). The architecture of international cooperation: Transgovernmental networks and the future of international law. Virginia Journal of International Law, 43. Stone, D. (2004). Transfer agents and global networks in the ‘transnationalization’ of policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(3): 544-566.

Objective and scientific relevanceThe International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) Study Group on Quality of Governance aims at enhancing scientific research and insights into this challenging area of study by bringing together scholars and practitioners in sessions on conferences and beyond, and stimulating publication of presented work. Under the umbrella of ‘Quality of Governance’ the Study Group addresses several topics across different disciplines, and is gradually moving towards a better defined research agenda. The main point of departure is the shift from an emphasis on ethics and integrity to the incorporation of a multitude of values, integrity definitely being one of them, in studying the dynamics and effects of quality of governance frameworks. Surely, questions of how integrity may enhance policy formulation and implementation, and how corruption and misconduct may hinder policy objectives, are still topics of interest and cover a substantial part of what the Study group focuses on. However, questions of different types of values, their mutual relationships, and their effects on the overall quality of governance, including different instruments, policies or systems that are part of efforts to improve governance quality, are key topics we discuss. On the one hand, we aim to stimulate scientific advancement by opening up this sometimes rather normative field to empirical substantiation on a variety of values, diving into how those values are embodied and given shape in different types of policy objectives and instruments, and mapping and categorizing types of effects and conditions of success or failure. On the other hand, we aim to contribute to practical insights by translating findings to concrete policy realities and placing them in societal debates as well. Furthermore, the international character of the group and its participants spurs a truly intercontinental exchange of ideas and research findings, and matches the nature of this conference well (and vice versa).

Almost 20 years since UNDP’s seminal policy paper, the principles of good governance have inevitably permeated the public policy discourse. Literature in public policy often describes good governance as a combination of strong democracy, people’s participation in the development process, and presence of strong legislature. But while the conceptualization of good governance remains highly contested, it continues to be relevant to most governments in Asia. According to Indian Prime Minister Mr. Modi, “[m]ere good governance is not enough, it has to be pro-people and pro-active. Good governance should pull people at the centre of the development process.” Programs intended to promote good governance have been transformed to suit diversity of political, economic, administrative and social constrains faced by Asian countries and have found its way in many sectors. Against this backdrop, governance with its normative standards of being ‘good’ have been the subject of a lively debate in sectors like environment, health and education, with varying degrees of sophistication. This panel aims to gather academics and scholars working on the issue of good governance on these sectors. It seeks to contribute to advancing the understanding of how governments in Asia have continued to advance the concept of good governance in these areas. The panel discussions would be a timely contribution towards documenting the evolution of the conceptualization of good governance in Asia, as well as how it is contested and reconfigured to suit the Asian context.

This stream calls for papers that offer theoretical and empirical analyses of functioning and outcomes of state capacity which may be explained in terms of distinct institutional frameworks, historical trajectories and power relations. What are the implications for legitimacy when public institutions make policies and at times, (un)able to control and monitor those individuals/public servants/leaders who act in the name of the state? What kind of leaders or state is legitimate to ensure appropriate capacity and generate more trust in the pursuit of public interests both internally and externally? These questions focus on actors (who is doing what), institutions (how strategies and tactics of government use policies/policymaking) and the ecology of power relations and forces involving laws, institutions and entities coming together in a policy domain to better shape the decay and eroding ability of governments to govern with regards to state capacity and legitimacy. Analysis of the contribution of various actors in public policy process can be strengthened by employing various analytical models including power relations, policy network relations, policy learning and persuasive communication. Existing literature on these analytical models fall short of using empirical data from various countries to demonstrate the utility of the models. It is important to demonstrate the utility of these models by using empirical data based on specific countries in developing countries majority of which experience serious challenges with their public policy process. The overall objective of this panel is therefore to increase our knowledge and skills in the use of these models. Specific objectives include to enable policy analysts and researchers to deepen their understanding of the influence of power relations in public policy process; different types and influence of networks in public policy process; the critical role of policy learning and its typologies in public policy process; and the use of language, discourse, argument and inter-communicative approach in public policy process. The focus of each model is briefly explained below. Power relations involve power-holders, actual employment or threat to use force and resistance all played out in different spaces and levels. Power relations are dynamic, to understand them one needs to do a power analysis. Power analysis is important for understanding the context in which public policy process happens. A more nuanced and relational power analysis can provide insights to the contexts in which public policy decision and delivery process happens. Policy networks involve a pattern of formal and informal contacts and relationships which shape agenda and decision-making as opposed to the interplay within and between the formal policy-making organisations and institutions. A policy network approach conceptualizes policy-making as the result of interactions between policy-actors, and assumes that the structure of these interactions explains policy outcomes. A large number of structural characteristics are taken into account in the analysis and explanation of policy networks, but the most prominent one is the notion of centrality Policy Learning involves relatively enduring alterations of thought or behaviour intentions that result from experience and which are concerned with the attainment or revision of the precepts of the belief system of individuals or collectives. In a general way, policy learning refers to a structured, conscious change in thinking about a specific policy issue. The learning may consist of a rethink but most often will be something with an existing frame such as a better understanding of the effects of certain policy instrument Persuasive communication involves the act of making someone agree to do or believe that something is of benefit by giving them good reasons for doing it or believing it. It involves the use of argumentation and effective communication to move a policy maker into action. Persuasiveness of the policy analyst is part of the dialectic of the policy process. State capacity is multidimensional. We might define it as the degree to which a state is able to conduct the public affairs of a given polity, or even a complex of complementary state capacities. These include (but are not limited to) extractive capacity (the state’s ability to secure and mobilize resources sufficient to carrying out its purposes), coercive capacity (the state’s ability to control behavior through the threat or use of legal sanctions or force), administrative capacity, defensive capacity, and constitutive capacity (the state’s ability to deploy symbols and narratives to facilitate national consciousness, public consensus, and the like). Institutional theory would argue that administrative reform creates new institutional structure which ought to perpetuate policy changes and legitimacy in state capacity. The social systems of production (Hollingsworth, Boyer) and historical institutionalism (Crouch, Streeck) approaches emphasize broad historical trajectories, social norms and idiosyncratic power relations while regulation theory (Boyer) focus on a broad set of institutions.

Relational, non-dualist, approaches to policy analysis offer a new way of addressing some of the most vexing issues in our field. In aiming to find a way beyond individualist and holist epistemologies, relational social scientists claim to support new theories and methodologies that will uncover significant insights into the operation of social forces. In particular, they claim that relational approaches are most appropriate for revealing the scope and dynamics of network society. A central feature of relational approaches is also that they operate in close interaction with the everyday world of public policy and society. Cultivating such a politically and socially relevant policy analysis both involves revealing the often taken-for-granted, cognitive and practical horizons of policy issues, and enabling and facilitating groups to free themselves from oppressive conditions or practices by jointly designing workable alternatives. This implies that the methodological and ethical imperatives of relational approaches are to engage in theoretically innovative and empirically grounded research that is both appreciative and critical of daily policy practice, as well as the practical and discursive processes that constitute it. Relationality also aims to integrate an analysis of power relations within policy networks and fields. Relational approaches to policy analysis are especially important in a world that is characterized by dynamic complexity, urgency and unpredictability. Problems such as climate change, migration, the erosion of democracy and the ascent of relatively successful non-democratic forms of governance, the rise of the giant transnational corporation, the difficulty of global governance, mass surveillance and the demise of privacy, the governance of pluralist and conflicted urban spaces, and large private and national debt, are not only beyond the remit of traditional policy approaches and instruments but also do not allow much margin for error nor procrastination. While diagnoses of the antecedents of these issues abound, and many have been linked to the dominance of a neoliberal world order, we lack a framework that ties critical analyses to a clear and consistent conceptual vision that inspires practical transformations. We believe that relational approaches to policy analysis promise to take us in this direction.

The proposed panel seeks to achieve three key objectives: Identify innovative approaches to measuring quantitatively comparative law and policy data; Explore the merits of different methodologies to capture law and policy data in a comparative and accessible manner; and Highlight the challenges and promising practices in developing comparative quantitative databases on key law and policy issues. To date, there have been few studies that have rigorously addressed the impact of national legislation on individual outcomes. The select studies that have ventured to explore policy have often relied on qualitative sources of data, which are rich but do not allow for rigorous quantitative research. One of the greatest impediments to this type of research that would enable a data-driven approach to improving outcomes has been the lack of comparable policy data. The inaccessibility of comparative legal and policy data has hampered our ability to systemically measure a) gaps in laws and policies that we know work to improve outcomes, b) progress over time in strengthening legal rights and protections, c) what policies have been feasible and effective in different economic settings, and d) which policies are most effective at improving individual and population outcomes. When countries’ laws and policies are captured in a quantitative and comparable format that can be used for analyses and is easily accessible to the public, it increases the transparency of countries’ actions, or lack thereof, on issues that have been shown to impact outcomes. The research community also stands to benefit greatly from the proliferation of quantifiable comparable measures of comparative policy. Equipped with newly created rich datasets, researchers can undertake rigorous analyses linking policies to outcomes in order to determine which policies matter and which work best. This panel thus encourages researchers to present innovative efforts to create large quantitative databases of laws and policies at the sub-national, regional, and global levels. Given its experience with pioneering an approach to creating quantitatively comparable policy data, the WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD), at the University of California Los Angeles, is well placed to chair this panel. WORLD strives to improve the quantity and quality of globally comparative data on policies affecting human health, development, well-being, and equity. In this pursuit, WORLD has developed quantitatively comparable indicators measuring over 1,500 laws and policies on adult labor and working conditions, poverty, gender, health, education, equal rights and non-discrimination, children, and family in 193 countries. The approach taken by WORLD is only one possible approach. WORLD is committed to working with groups who are creating public use data and bringing together those who are advancing innovative methodologies to capture quantitatively comparable policy data. In this spirit, this panel aims to highlight promising practices in developing comparative quantitative databases on key law and policy issues.

The sociology of elites has generally focused on the analysis of economic and political elites, characterized as part of a ‘power elite’ (Domhoff, 1990) or a ‘shadow elite’ (Wedel, 2009) without directly taking into account their concrete role in the elaboration of public policies. At the same time, actor-centered policy studies rarely make systematic use of the methods developed by elite sociology (analyzing sociological backgrounds, training and careers, position, reputation…). Actor-centered approaches to public policy are less interested in the formation of policy elites than in the specific characteristics of individual ‘policy entrepreneurs’ (Kingdon, 1984) or political leaders, and in the formation of broader policy networks and advocacy coalitions, including organized groups. The aim of this panel is to pave the way for a methodological approach integrating the tools of the sociology of elites with those focused on the specific policy role of limited groups of actors. Narrow groups of actors can only be characterized as policy elites if it is possible to demonstrate not only their homogeneity, common traits (sociological and/or educational) and shared policy orientations, but also their effective contribution to the formulation of policy problems and solution and their implication and impact on the decision process, as shown by their capacity to steer and control policy implementation, such as in case studies on health and social policies (Hassenteufel and al., 2010; Genieys, Hassenteufel, 2015). Other challenges of the analysis of policy elites are the time dimension – a policy elite is a group that has a strong influence on a policy domain over one policy decision in a longer time period – and the power struggles in which these groups of actors are engaged (Genieys, Smyrl, 2008). In this context, we are interested in papers combining .The use of the methodological tools drawn from the sociology of elites such as: -analysis of sociological backgrounds -analysis of educational and occupational backgrounds (in order to study the specialized skill learning process in a policy domain and the accumulation of different kind of relevant resources) -positional analysis (in long period) -network analysis (to grasp the interpersonal relations) .With the use of methods allowing analysis of the policy role of actors in a diachronic perspective, especially: -cognitive analysis -discourse analysis -policy process analysis. The papers included in this panel can study policy elites in any policy domain, at every level (local, national, international…) and in every kind of political regime and do not need to combine all of these methodological tools. Empirical case studies are welcome as are more general papers tackling these methodological and theoretical issues in a broader perspective.

Globalisation and regional integration have increased complexity and interdependence, waves of democratization and the growing number of emerging countries have enlarged possibilities of comparison. Parallel to these developments, the debate on methods in public policy analysis has evolved too. First of all, case studies have occupied a prominent place in comparative policy studies. Instead of considering case studies as a ‘by default’ comparison when research resources for a large-N are lacking, process tracing offers a meaningful tool to enhance theory building and, to a certain extent, theory testing in policy studies. Comparative research designs have also integrated innovations such as compound research designs. Compound research designs, proposed by Levi-Faur (2004, 2006), aim at maximizing the explanatory capacity of qualitative comparative analysis. As the number of available ‘real’ cases is limited, comparative policy analysis may take advantage of combining two or more comparative lines of inquiry in order to strengthen the generalization capacity of their explanation: cross-country comparison, comparison across policy domains and comparison across time. From single and small-N comparisons, comparative policy studies have moved on to the issue of intermediate-N comparison with the developing of qualitative comparative analysis and fuzzy sets (QCA, Ragin 1978, 2008, Rihoux et al. 2013) in order to benefit from the complexity of each case while enhancing the generalization across cases. Based on algorithms derived from Boolean algebra, QCA simplifies the interaction of explanatory factors in order to identify configurations of causality valid across cases. Thus it allows for the development of parsimonious qualitative explanations with a strong capacity for middle-range generalization. With the increased availability and accessibility of policy-relevant quantitative data, large-N studies are also becoming more prominent in comparative policy analysis. Quantitative comparison aims at explaining and predicting patterns of policy-making processes and policy outcomes across cases and attempts to broaden the generalization of research findings. This panel aims at discussing the current state of development in comparative policy studies from a methodological point of view by focusing on these and other recent methodological innovations and their application to policy studies, and in particular in comparative policy studies. All these methods are confronted with a number of challenges specific to comparative public policy, such as case selection, the definition of the dependent variable, the availability of data, concept stretching and comparability of available, often aggregate, data. The paper in this panel will identify the challenges specific to recent methodological advances for comparative policy studies and offer an assessment of the current state of application of recent methodological innovations in the field. Furthermore, the panel aims at discussing how to address these challenges and contribute to further strengthen research designs in policy studies and in comparative public policy.

The past few decades have seen an explosion in “born digital” data – including from social media services and online platforms, smart phones, digital devices and the web. These sources of data open up new avenues for the study for social and political phenomena (Savage & Burrows, 2007; Lazer et al., 2009). This panel will examine the potential implications of a shift from “digitized” to “born digital” data and methods (Rogers, 2014). This methodological shift from a focus on polls, surveys and interviews to repurposing digital traces and big data is accompanied by a corresponding shift in ways of studying and thinking about of social life.Drawing on research in digital sociology, media studies, communication studies and Science and Technology Studies, this panel will look at how “born digital” data has and can be used in the context of public policy. In particular, it will address questions such as: How might emerging sources of digital data be repurposed to inform policy research and practice? What kinds of capacities are required for researchers, policymakers and public institutions to take advantage of these developments? What are the consequences of the growing use of born digital data for public policy-making? The digital methods agenda has been developed in order to repurpose “born digital” data for the purpose of social, cultural and political research. The past decade has seen the development of tools and methods for using digital data from a wide variety of media – including search engines, social media and sharing platforms. These have been applied to study societal issues from migration and food safety to urban planning, illness and ageing (Rogers, 2013; Rogers, Sánchez-Querubín, & Kil, 2015). The panel aims to open up space for engagements between digital methods and public policy research - including showcasing and discussing the contribution of new digital tools, methods and born digital data in public policy research, as well as advancing methodological and theoretical reflection on their growing availability and use. ReferencesLazer, D., Pentland, A., Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabási, A.-L., Brewer, D., … Alstyne, M. V. (2009). Computational Social Science. Science, 323(5915), 721–723. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1167742 Rogers, R. (2013). Digital Methods. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rogers, R. (2014). Political Research in the Digital Age. International Public Policy Review, 8(1), 73–87. Rogers, R., Sánchez-Querubín, N., & Kil, A. (2015). Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. Sociology, 41(5), 885–899. http://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507080443

The roundtable discusses two interrelated problems in public policy higher education: how to avoid ‘death by powerpoint’, and address the need for pedagogy training for PhD candidates in Public Policy Schools. The four speakers will reflect on these issues and present innovative practices and critical thinking exercises such as (1) a Socratic engagement with learners involving a collective dialogue demanding a re-examination of assumptions and conventional wisdoms, (2) mind mapping techniques to record simultaneously the evolving shape and direction of discussions, (3) scaffolding as a means of assisting learners to prepare adequately for class, (4) a framework for guiding the effective design of educational technologies (online assessment, discussion forums, concept mapping) (5) adapting executive education through hybrid online and short residency programs and (6) designing and operationalising flipped classroom/blended learning while harnessing educational technology (distributive online collaborative course, or DOCC) and enabling international collaborative teaching across multiple institutions.

While states and civil society are well drawn in terms of their institutions and ideologies, multinational corporations (MNCs) are all too often more simply sketched as mechanisms of profit maximisation. The power they wield is then seen in these terms. The result is often a rather disembodied analysis of corporate power which focuses on the role of markets versus the state, the power of capital over labour and democratically elected state representatives, and the way assumed corporate interests are served that clash with citizens’ aspirations. We have long been told that the rise of MNCs means they potentially ‘rule the world’ given the size and global scope of their operations, yet there remains a relative dearth of contemporary analysis on what their ‘ruling’ means in a policy and governance sense. The central aim of this panel will be to address the comparative lack of study of corporations and their power in the public policy process by explicitly casting them as political, rather than simply market actors, and to present case studies that illustrate what this means in practice. While it is observed that governance is now a matter for non-state transnational actors instead of/in addition to states, often the focus for analysis then returns to what this means for states. Given the aim of this panel, the intention is to explicitly re-focus debates regarding corporate power on MNCs themselves. The state is seen as legitimately ‘in charge’ if democratically elected/representative of its citizens’ aspirations and governs in light of these. In what sense are MNCs? To answer this question the panel will focus on the extent to which they set the public policy agenda because they possess the capacity do so, but also because they are seen as possessing the legitimacy to do so. As such, MNCs will be studied for the way they influence governments and exert leverage through lobbying, as well as because of their size and economic dominance. But in addition, this panel will welcome papers that consider the extent to which they create their interests in others – ie. a belief that what serves them also serves the public interest nationally, regionally and globally. If a central question for public policy scholars is ‘who governs?’, then the power of global corporations is a question of how they influence others in the policy process (eg. governments, regulatory bodies and international organisations) as well as whether they are seen as possessing the legitimacy to set the agenda and self-regulate in their own right. In casting corporations as political actors with complex identities and strategies to be examined, rather than assumed (eg. as a result of applying traditional theories of international political economy), the panel will consider how their interests and operations have explanatory power for how markets are structured, the outcomes produced for society, and the nature of the public policy process that produces these outcomes.

The goal of this panel is to bring together scholars analyzing the relationships between interest groups and political parties across time, countries and policy issues. Interest groups provide different types of goods of special interest to political parties and elected officials. They are among the main suppliers of expertise and technical knowledge on policy issues; they channel and represent citizens’ views and policy positions regarding economic, social and political problems, and on some occasions they become interested contributors to political campaigns as well. Policy-makers grant an institutional access to interest groups as a way of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of legislation, increasing the congruence between policy decisions and citizens’ preferences as represented by interest groups, reaching consensus and minimizing political conflict during the policy-making process, or maximizing their chances of re-election for the next parliamentary mandate. The goal of this panel is to bring together scholars analyzing how and why interest groups and political parties interact across time, countries and policy venues (e.g. executive, legislative and media) using quantitative and qualitative methods.

In recent years, the roles of non-state actors – including civil society organisations (CSOs), multi-stakeholder groups and business associations – have emerged as significant players in the governance of national and global supply chains. Schemes such as Fairtrade, Responsible Care, Forest Stewardship Council, Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, Marine Stewardship Council, Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Round Table on Responsible Soy, and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil have proliferated in an effort to regulate corporate production processes. Corporations have responded in different ways to these non-state market driven initiatives. While some ignore them, others use certification schemes as marketing tools to communicate their social and environmental sustainability in regard to resource management practices, fair labour wages and conditions, respect and engagement with local communities, and animal welfare. This is reflected in corporations’ social and environmental responsibility policies (CSR and CER) and plans. The responses of consumers and other non-state actors has also varied, some accepting and others rejecting these certification schemes and CSR/CER approaches. Those engaging with them seize the opportunity to challenge non-compliant corporations by withholding their ‘social license to operate’ via public advocacy campaigns through social media or traditional campaigning methods. The presence of third party certification schemes has shifted the focus of governance towards non-hierarchical steering based on balancing market requirements with community acceptance. The state, however, still provides the legislative and regulatory framework that is necessary for corporations to legally operate. Other non-state actors such as CSOs and the media may legitimise or delegitimise certification actors and schemes in this process. In summary, the private regulation of natural resources, food production, tourism and other tradeable goods and services utilising standards backed by certification and labelling is now a complex endeavour in an era where sustainable approaches to production are more widely expected, yet often difficult to achieve. The aim of this panel is to address the following topics arising from the proliferation of governance arrangements as they affect corporate supply chains. These topics include: · the evolving nature of governance in this area; · the diversity of theoretical approaches and terminology used to describe the phenomena; · the roles, impacts and legitimacy of non-state actors in private transnational regulation; · the nature and significance of partnerships between business and non-governmental actors; · the extent to which schemes have resulted in behavioural change on the part of corporate actors; and · the role of various governments in responding to the standards promoted by these schemes. This is an emerging research focus for governance and public policy scholars. The key scientific relevance of the panel lies in the limits and possibilities of non-state actors in the process of governance; the evolving relationships between business, non-state actors and governments in transnational private regulation; and the opportunities to chart and evaluate the contours and direction of contemporary private global governance arrangements including (but in some cases beyond) the state.

The financial crisis continues to cast a long shadow as governments the world over grapple with significant budget challenges arising from high levels of public debt combined with tepid economic growth. Given these fiscal challenges, the issue of multinational tax avoidance has become increasingly salient. This open panel seeks innovative perspectives on the ‘new’ political economy of multi-national tax avoidance. Whereas international tax governance was hitherto a technical regulatory issue arena, as a result of unprecedented activist campaigns, media exposés and high-profile scandals, MNC tax avoidance has become a main-stream social justice issue highlighting the limits of democratic governance. At the international level, regulatory reforms have been made through inter-governmental organisations such as the OECD while the EU is engaged in unprecedented litigation against some of the world’s largest and most powerful firms. These reforms represent a systematic campaign to address international tax evasion and avoidance, and in turn a potential solution to states’ fiscal challenges. However, as vocal tax justice NGOs argue, such initiatives have done little to address corporate tax avoidance and, as a result, the fairness and integrity of the international tax system remains under threat. The challenge of MNC tax avoidance represents a threshold test of global governance and the panel aims to attract papers offering innovative analyses of this policy challenge including but not limited to the civil society campaign for tax justice; national political and policy responses; the role of intergovernmental organisations in the policy process and corporate strategy and compliance in response to international tax reform proposals.

Quite a challenge for business in developing countries in the area of public policy is a blockage resulting from the deficit and complexity of regulations. It is worth emphasizing that more and more interest groups in and beyond business is trying to influence on the conditions of citizens and firms. In order to improve the lives of people in developing countries, different interest groups should have a real impact on changing public policy and regulation. Until we offset the difficulties that have an impact on legislative changes in developing countries economic and social progress will be halted in the different fields. Consequently, this process may lead to the inhibition of the economy and will have a negative impact on the lives of citizens in these countries. Strategic, overarching aim of the research will be an analysis on the possibility of conducting lobbying by interest groups in the developing countries and their impact on public policy. The lobbying activity is a process of constant interaction between interest groups and political institutions to reach an agreement on the control of certain variables in public policy fields. Furthermore, lobbying in the developing countries is a dynamic variable and depends on the one hand on the processes taking place at international levels and on the other hand on legislative changes in individual countries. The aim of this panel is to engage in a discussion on the actions taken by business and that that affect the lives of citizens and firms through various public policies. This panel seeks to study the influence of business in relation to: the differences of corporate strategies in developing countries, and the variation in patterns of institutional path dependence and styles of regulation. The panel aims for an in-depth examination to be undertaken on the impact of business on public policy.

In dialogue with intersectional approaches in academic and policy circles, this panel explores the role of public policies in the productions, reproduction or, conversely, the subversion of power relations. The constitutive interactions between gender and other social relations have been studied through several approaches. In the late 1970s, French materialist feminists have proposed an analysis of the relationship between gender and class, designed as coextensive and consubstantial (Kergoat 1978). In dialogue with others, Crenshaw (1989) has developed the concept of intersectionality to account for the interaction of “race” and gender in the generation of the multiple discriminations faced by black women in the US courts. Whether they use or criticize the concept of intersectionality, past and current analyses of these questions have expanded research agendas beyond the "gender / race / class" triptych to integrate other social relations such as age, religion or even ethnicity in the study of inequality and politics (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016). This panel maintains an open posture toward these debates and considers intersectionality in a multidimensional and dynamic perspective that "intersects facts and representations" and "considers the emancipatory potential of the interleaving power relations, rather than considering them systematically as domination levers "(Navarre, 2015, our translation). There are reasons to believe that intersectionality provides a fecund lens for the studies of state actions. Indeed, public policies often have a universalizing character, making them blind to some social relations of domination. The identification and labelling of target populations such as “users”, “patients” or “migrants”is a classical example of the erasure of diversity central to policies. Whatever the sector and even if they are aimed at fighting inequalities (Jacquot, Mazur, 2014), policies have differentiated impacts and outcomes according to the targeted group but these are not necessarily taken into account, beyond gender and disability. In this case, the promise of intersectional approaches is to demonstrate the role of these policies in defining and reifying power relations. At the same time, central to this standpoint is the complex rendering of individual and collective agency. Indeed, a crucial assumption of these approaches is at all actors can act strategically within power relations, since they experience simultaneously intersecting axes of privilege and domination. From that standpoint, intersectional approaches can help analysts to break away from overly structuralist and top-down research, by renewing their consideration of the groups interacting with policies. At the same time, critics of these approaches and observers of their implementation in policy design and evaluation warn that intersectionality has the potential to dilute hard-won rights in favour of a multiplication and an individualization of the areas of difference to be considered in public policies. Are these fears empirically verified and are we witnessing such problems in all policy sectors? The objective of this panel is to generate a dialogue on public policies and power relations, from multiple policy sectors and perspectives. We ask two central questions : 1) what empirical and theoretical innovations can emerge from the study of public policies through intersectional approaches? 2) what are the theoretical, political and social pitfalls associated with the mobilization of this perspective for policy studies?

Gender inequality continues to be a major challenge before the public policy makers in all societies. In recent times, the issue of gender inequality received international attention in 1970s with the organization of the first World Conference on Women in 1974 in Mexico and adoption of the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1979. These initiatives spurred the policy interventions at the national level to address the issue of gender inequality in Asian countries also. The policy approaches to gender equality ranged from welfare ism in 1950s and 1960s, Women in Development (WID) in early 1970s, Women and Development (WAD) in second half of 1970s and Gender and Development (GAD) in 1990s. The Women Empowerment is the most strategic element of GAD approach. In order to accelerate and coordinate the global efforts for women empowerment, the United Nations General Assembly created a new entity 'UN Women' in 2010. The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, adopted during the fourth world conference on women in Beijing in 1995 is considered the key global policy document on gender equality. The unlocking of half of the human resources is crucial for the success of democracy and development in Asian societies. The global and national policy interventions in the field of women equality have gone hand in hand for last five decades. The public policies addressing gender issues in Asian societies have suffered formalism and poor implementation due to deep rooted socio-cultural biases, lack of skill and literacy, economic independence and awareness. The gap between the declared objective and policy outcome are on higher side in gender related policies, because policies failed to address the required attitudinal and cultural change in the society. It needs to be reiterated that the sex (male/female) is a biological category, whereas gender is a socio-cultural category, which assigns inferior role and position for women in society. The gender issues crucial for policy domain in Asian societies are education, health, skill and employment, participation in decision making at various levels, domestic violence, environmental concerns, various forms of discrimination within and outside family and so on. In this background, the panel on 'Gender Inequality and Public Policy in Asian Societies' is proposed to realize the following objectives: To examine the various policy approaches relevant for public policies on gender equality in Asia. To analyze the status of engendering of public policies in contemporary Asian societies. To understand the socio-cultural context of Asian societies as an operational environment for public policies on gender equality. To suggest measures and innovative practices to improve the formulation and implementation of public policies on gender issues in Asian countries.

Gendered Innovations in Public Policy Research Panel sponsored by IPSA RC19 Gender, Politics and Public Policy The importance of gendered innovations in the sciences and the social sciences has become increasingly recognised in recent years (European Union, 2013; Jenkins and Keane, 2014; Sawer et al, 2016; Stanford, 2009). ‘Gendered Innovation’ has been defined as the process that integrates sex and gender analysis into all phases of basic and applied research to assure excellence and quality in outcomes (Schiebinger et al 2013). While this definition informs current research in the sciences, similar feminist approaches to public policy analysis have resulted in new theoretical, methodological and empirical understandings of how gender inequalities are produced through policy and what is required to achieve gender equality in the future. As such, feminist and gendered policy research has enhanced the field of public policy, challenging the gender neutrality of core concepts and conclusions by ensuring gender, and intersectionality, sit at the centre of the analysis, (Agustin, 2013; Bacchi, 2009; Mazur, 2002; Sainsbury, 2009; Stetson and Mazur, 2010; Verloo et al, 2005). Yet there remain many intractable policy ‘problems’, global and local, that continue to have a disproportional impact on women’s wellbeing and, at both the national and international level, systematic gender analysis remains patchy at best, often dependent on political will. Alongside this, evidence-based policy making, big data and ‘social investment’ strategies, have become the ‘go to’ concepts and methods for governments looking for ‘innovative’ solutions (Boyd and Crawford, 2013; Cairney, 2016; Lerman, 2013; Morel et al, 2012; Stoker and Evans, 2016). Scholars are engaging critically with these constructs, but seldom from a gender or intersectional perspective. We propose a panel on Gendered Innovations in Public Policy Research. We welcome papers that take stock of the innovative knowledges and understandings produced by feminist policy scholars to date, evaluate feminist policy practices that have produced innovative or transformative change, and challenge and critique contemporary approaches to policy analysis, design and evidence that continue to render gender and diversity invisible. Papers that address the future direction of gendered innovations in public policy research and analysis, be they theoretical, methodological or empirical, are also encouraged.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Questions of ethnicity, multi-culturalism, gender or social equity have become increasingly salient to political discourses and public policy-making. To the extent that societies have become more diverse and struggle with their inclusiveness, the theory and practice of representative bureaucracy also becomes more significant to students of public policy and administration. The concept of representative bureaucracy raises questions about the link between the socio-demographic make-up of public bureaucracies, government responsiveness and administrative accountability as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of public policy making and implementation. The study of representative bureaucracy is concerned with the relationships between the make-up of public sector workforces and the socio-demographic characteristics of the societies they are supposed to serve. As public bureaucracies are major players in the making and implementation of public policies, the questions whether diverse social groups are ‘passively’ or even ‘actively’ represented in public sector organizations also move to center stage of public policy analysis. So, what are the consequences of ‘representativeness’ – or the lack of it – for the quality of service delivery, for relations to citizens, and for the diversity management within public organizations? And what are the wider implications for the levels of public trust, the accountability and legitimacy of government, and for power-sharing arrangements in state and society? This panels seeks to advance the comparative analysis of the policy implications (ranging from the agenda-setting and formulation of public policies to the delivery and evaluation of public policy programs) of having or not having public bureaucracies that can serve as representative institutions. To this aim, theoretical and empirical (both qualitative and quantitative) submissions are invited. In addition to individual case or country studies, contributions with comparative perspectives looking at variation across policy domains, types of public sector organizations, levels of government or national systems of public policy-making are particularly encouraged.

In the emerging knowledge economy, science and technology (S&T) has been applauded as effective tools to connect the nature world to the human welfare and promote sustainable economic development. Broadly defined, S&T policy includes scholarship investigating the creation and supporting S&T resources and the coordination of S&T activities. Spanning across a wide spectrum S&T policy can be studied from the economic, social, and political perspectives. The demand for S&T policy and evaluation has been escalating over the last decades. Different levels of government, legislatures, public organizations, and other types of funding agencies are increasingly demanding systematic policy and program evaluation. For example, In the US, the 1993 GPRA requires federal agencies to develop and update strategic plans, to establish annual performance targets, and to report annually on program performance. In Japan, the Science and Technology Agency set up a program in Science of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy to assess the economic and social impact of research investment. Similarly, national research funding agencies around the globe have been sponsoring internal projects to evaluate how funded research projects performed. Looking ahead to the next 50 years, we believe that S&T policy and evaluation is in is critical with the information and insights that brings for better decision- making, good governance, and sustainable development for the well-being of all. This panel aims to advance our understanding on S&T policy evaluation from interdisciplinary perspective. We are interested in both theoretical and methodological (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method)studies that further our understanding on evaluating S&T policy and programs,including but not limited to the impacts of government funding, talent program, and R&D assessment through bibliometric, experimental, or comparative approaches. Any systematic assessment of the operation and/or the outcomes of a program or policy, compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards, as a means of contributing to the improvement of the science program or technology policy are particularly welcome.

Not only does technological change play an ever growing role in our daily lives (e.g., through the introduction of new information and communications technologies (ICTs)), but it also is considered a key lever in tackling super-wicked problems, such as climate change. However, technological change is presently not considered systematically in public policy research. While research on the policy designs’ effect on technological change is abundant – for example in the field of renewable energy policy, many studies investigate the effect of policy instruments on the development and deployment of low-carbon technologies – the inverse effect of how technological change affects policy-making remains largely unexplored. Only some isolated studies have explicitly analyzed the role of technological change in policy dynamics: Auld/Cashore et al. (1) discussed how technological innovation can improve the general performance and tracking mechanisms of forestry certification programs; Jacobsson/Lauber (2) analyzed the politics of the German energy system transition, touching upon the effects of technological innovation on advocacy coalitions in German energy politics; and Hoppmann et al. (3) showed how technological innovation in the German photovoltaics industry induced compulsive sequences of policy reform. Despite these efforts, the majority of current public policy research neither treats technological change in a systematic way nor considers peculiarities of different technologies (such as distinct innovation patterns), making it difficult to hypothesize about the feedback link between technological change and policy dynamics. This gap is particularly troubling for the emerging ‘new’ policy design literature that stresses the need to consider the temporal aspects of design, e.g., by designing ‘sticky’ or ‘durable’ policies that intentionally generate positive policy feedbacks. Furthermore, a better understanding of the feedback link between technology and policy dynamics is particularly crucial in policy fields characterized by high technological complexity and long time spans for change, such as in the energy sector. Here, researchers have shown that policy designs that do not consider peculiarities of different technologies risk being ineffective and thus fail to induce positive feedback. Much less is known, however, about the effect of policy-induced technological change on actor constellations and the underlying politics of policy-making. Another aspect of the technology-policy feedback link rarely studied is how technology helps in assessing a policy’s effectiveness in achieving its intended impact (e.g., smart metering and final energy consumption or remote sensing and land-use changes). This panel discusses how to foster the systematic endogenization of technological change in policy research, particularly in policy design studies. It aims to bring together perspectives and insights from innovation studies and policy analysis. Participants are encouraged to include conceptualizations of technological change, to consider policy mixes instead of individual policies and to be precise about the dimension of policy output studied. The panel is open to both conceptual papers that aim to integrate technology into policy design studies as well as empirical studies of the feedback link between technological change and policy dynamics in fields relevant to the environment, e.g. renewable energy, forestry and land-use change. References: (1) Business and Politics 12(3)(2) Energy Policy 34(3): 256-76(3) Research Policy 43(8): 1422-41.

One of the central assumptions in theories on decision- and policymaking has been that there is notenough information to take the best possible decision. The psychologist and Nobel Prize winnerHerbert Simon stated that decision-making is never 100% rational, because rationality itself is limited.Rationality is bounded due to the limited capacities of human intelligence, brain dysfunction, and allkind of difficulties within the political and administrative system. The solutions within a complex politicaland administrative system are thus suboptimal, which is why it is difficult to solve complicated societalissues. This bounded rationality assumption became dominant in theories on decision- andpolicymaking in political science and public administration. Decision- and policymaking was no longerrational-synoptic, but was more incremental and political. The assumption of bounded rationality has led to different theories on decision- and policymaking. Therational-synoptic model was succeeded by the theory of incrementalism. According to this model, theessence of decision-making was to take small steps. Of course empirical and theoretical work led to asynthesis between the rational decision-making model and incrementalism: the model of mixedscanning. At the end of the twentieth century, new models on decision- and policymaking received moreattention. These new models were based on chaos and complexity theory from the natural sciencesand theoretical biology. Based on the assumption that planning of decision-making is difficult due torelations no longer being linear, coincidence became a crucial element in explaining processes ofdecision-making. Two models shaped this development. The first one is the work of John W. Kingdonon political agendas. Kingdon makes a distinction between three streams: societal problems,alternatives and politics. Only when these three streams overlap can there be fundamental decisionmaking. The second model is termed the punctuated equilibrium model. (Baumgartner & Jones)Mostof the time political and administrative systems are confronted with stability, yet sometimes thedecision-making process becomes more turbulent. This border between stability and turbulence is thepunctuated equilibrium. The process of digitalization is changing the dynamics related to decision- and policymaking:information is no longer scarce in society and in political and administrative systems. To the contrary,data are everywhere now. Decision makers are no longer confronted with a lack of information, butrather with an endless sea of information and data. This development will continue because of newdevelopments in the IT-sector: nanocomputers, the Internet of things and artificial intelligence. Many ofthese developments are discussed with the term Big Data Revolution. As a result, the notion of limited rationality is debatable nowadays. If this central assumption is nolonger correct because of the Big Data Revolution, this must have consequences for different theoriesthat have been dominant in political science and public administration for a long period. The centralquestion of our panel is: What are the consequences of the Data and Sensor Revolution for decisionandpolicymaking, both theoretically and empirically?This general question leads to different partial questions:- What are the consequences of the Big Data Revolution for theories on decision- andpolicymaking?- Is it possible to incorporate the consequences of the Big Data Revolution into decision- andpolicymaking models?- What are the consequences of the Big Data Revolution in the daily practice of political andadministrative systems?

All definitions of governance refer, directly or indirectly, to formal and informal rules that determine the exercise of authority in the taking of collective decisions. Any given governance arrangement stipulates, more or less precisely, how various voices are heard, how decisions are made and how accounts are rendered; in short, who has the power to determine what. The working hypothesis of governance research is that some governance arrangements are better than others at solving the problems facing a society. Given the emphasis on power and authority, the literature on governance contains a strong thread to the effect that changing governance arrangements is very difficult. Entrenched interests are created by and embedded in existing distributions of authority. Stability can be an advantage, but when governance arrangements are socially inefficient, foster corruption, impede economic growth and create permanent losers, all of which are currently on display in a wide range of countries around the world, how to make change becomes a pressing social and political question. This panel will explore theoretically and empirically the mechanisms by which governance arrangements change. Papers will explore four themes. First, can governance be changed by design to improve the quality of decision-making? Democracy has been defended on the grounds that it provides epistemic advantages, but the governance literature has yet to confront the question of why policy intelligence is lacking and in what ways, and whether improving intelligence should be as important a concern as say avoiding corruption. Second, governance changes when the winners and losers of public policy unite to defend and attack the rules of competition and the distribution of decision-making authority. The relationships between governance and policy outcomes, which are often assumed, need to be explored to understand if and how policy has a lasting effect on governance. Are policy changes sufficient to bring about governance changes, or is something else needed? Third, the stress given to rules and formal constitutional arrangements has deprived governance research of a full appreciation of how informal norms develop to support or undermine the prevailing structure. A case in point is the recent popularity of the concept of social licence, which its defenders argue is as important a requirement to meet as the satisfaction of legal rules and regulations. Another important area is that of identity, whether it is based on religion, class, or socio-economic status, which is increasingly being seen as a critical factor in determining who in society has the legitimacy to set the rules and to make change. Fourth, no governance arrangement is entirely secure from the effects of exogenous change. Technologies, in particular, have disrupted not only industries but also the political interests that support them. Vested interests may be able to sustain counterclaims and critiques but yield to new technical solutions to persistent public policy problems. What is required for technological shocks to result in governance changes? Why are some shocks successful in this regard, while others are not? What is the mechanism by which technology changes result in governance changes?

The momentous decision by a small majority of the UK population on June 23, 2016 to say yes to Brexit will likely give the UK the status as the EU’s first ‘ex-member state’. The process of dissolution has not started yet; it will likely be triggered in early 2017. It is really a matter of two closely related and hard to disentangle processes: on the one hand to organise the UK’s exit from the EU, and on the other hand to sort out the UK’s future relationship to the EU. The fact that well over 1/7 of all UK law has EU-origins after 40 years’ of UK membership in the dynamically integrating EU ensures that this will be a very complex and comprehensive undertaking. For the EU it is also a significant matter. On the one hand is the question of EU complicity in the Brexit decision: is it as some Brexiters have argued a testimony to the EU’s failure and therefore only a matter of time until other states will follow Britain’s lead? Or is it a domestic matter, a reflection of the fact that the UK has never sorted out its relationship to the EU that has been ambiguous from the very start. It is fair to say that when the UK was in it was never completely in (consider non-membership in Schengen and various opt-outs). Now that it is on its way out it may not be completely out, especially if it wants to have full access to the EU’s internal market. For the EU as a constitutional construct when a member state leaves the EU will have to reconstitute itself. This process may be complicated insofar as demands for further popular referenda win through, or if significant divisions emerge inside the EU on the terms of the UK’s secession and future relationship. The Brexit saga is very interesting from a social science perspective in the sense that it raises a number of fundamental questions pertaining to political organising, political community and political belonging in a highly interdependent world. The EU has long been seen as a political experiment whose further development and entrenchment has often come as a result of crises. Will Brexit – in a situation when the EU is facing a particularly toxic mixture of other crises – be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Is Brexit a sign of EU dissolution and a return to a Europe of nation-states? Or is there no returning back - neither for the UK, nor for Europe’s other nation-states? It could be said that if the EU is divisible, so is the UK. Scotland may yet seek a new referendum to separate from the rest of the UK and (re)enter the EU. If the EU starts to unravel there is no assurance that there will be a return to a Europe of nation-states.

During the past three decades, Latin American countries have gone through significant processes of democratisation, economic liberalisation, and internationalisation. These processes have brought with them several political, economic, and administrative changes, and have opened up new policy and regulatory fields of intervention for national public sector institutions. However, while the transformations in terms of constitutional principles, legal norms, and even organizational structures are generally clear, we still know very little about: a) whether and how these formal transformations have actually changed traditional policymaking processes, old governing arrangements, executive-legislative relationships, federal/decentralisation arrangements, state-society exchanges, corruption levels and perceptions, policy analytical and regulatory capacities, or media-government relationships; b) whether we can find similar policy and governing patterns across the Latin American region, including forms of political/bureaucratic resistance or new regulatory developments, leading to some kind of regional policy convergence; or c) the extent to which recent theoretical debates in the international public policy and administration literature help describe and/or explain whether, how, and why democratisation, economic liberalisation, and internationalisation have contributed to new policy and governing patterns in each Latin American country. This panel represents an excellent opportunity to contribute to our empirical knowledge about the policy and governing transformations that have occurred in the region; to assess the usefulness of international theories, approaches, and debates to describe, understand, and/or explain ongoing political changes in the region and its various countries; and to build new policy theories and concepts grounded on the Latin American experience.

Sustainable development is one of the structuring matrix of political action in contemporary societies. It is a repository whose adoption at national and international levels is the result of ecological issues of the moment, which are articulated in a process of emergence of an "idea of ​​the environment" that guides international representations to the conservation of natural resources of the planet to be preserved for the benefit of present and future generations. It justifies the idea of ​​an eco-development which, since 1972, bears the fruits of modeling a relationship between man and his environment. The constraint of development and industrialization is now structured by the imperative of the protection and conservation of the environment, that places all states in the world in an equilibrium postulate. Therefore, the achievement of environmental and social impact assessments before, during and after became an essential and consubstantial condition for the implementation of public policies. The aim of this panel is to focus on this new paradigm that represents the environmental evaluation and environmental audit in the implementation of public policies. Without spatio-temporal boundaries and regardless of the subject of analysis (marine and coastal areas, forest policies, public works, sports facilities, private foreign direct investments), proposals of articles or communications shall record the environmental triptype of "Control, Audit and Evaluation" in the agenda setting, decision-making processes, and implementation of national and international public policies and development projects, through the actors that conduct and intervene, their harmonious or conflictual relationships.

From 1970 to 1995, global and national environmental policies spread throughout the OECD countries and beyond. However, the global agenda, which seemed ripe and ready to devote political resources on this issue, has faced substantial political and economic crises. These realities have led countries held to be pioneers, such as the United States and the EU and the EU member states to be more equivocal in their efforts. Both policy-makers and students of environmental policy need to take stock of the trajectories of environmental policy and how best to study it. One set of issues involves the question of other global priorities, particularly in light of the global economic recession but also issues of political failings that have pushed the environment down the policy agenda. The second set of issues is the nature of the contemporary environmental problems – much of the ‘lower hanging fruit’ has been plucked in terms of environmental policy in the United States and Europe. It is the more intractable and ‘wicked’ policy problems such as climate change and diffuse sources of pollution that remain. These are increasingly been tackled by the rise of new economic concepts such as the bio-based and the circular economy. Third, in the context of greater challenges to the Western democratic political system, trust in the political system focused on certain liberal characteristics ameliorated by government intervention has been increasingly contested. There is a strong comparative dimension to this proposal as there is a real question of how these trajectories are seen outside Western Europe and North America where strong industrialising logics create their own dynamics. Are the BRIC and other industrialising states merely on the same wave of environmental policy development and governance trajectory or does it differ? And do Western countries react to these trajectories with new economy-oriented than environmental policies? This proposal asks a series of questions. If we accept that there is a change in approach of environmental policy in the last 10 years, what are the drivers behind this change? What new concepts of policy are developing and how? Are there multiple trajectories that global and national environmental regimes may take? How reversible is environmental policy and what are the potential forces that might lead to future progress? In terms of studying these questions, what insights do various methodological offer, such as large N empirical analyses versus post-empirical assessments of individual cases. Is there a misfit between our current theoretical tools and the key developments and patterns in environmental policy? How much weight should be given to new approaches? Is a greater understanding of other disciplines (e.g. law, biosciences) required?

PANEL PROPOSAL – Responding to water scarcity and quality in the nexus: Effects on the water, energy and food sectors Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore The Australian National University, UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance In an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, societies are becoming less resilient with respect to shocks to water, food and energy resources. Long term developments such as population growth, urbanization and industrialization in emerging markets, as well as the impending threat of climate change, are increasing the impacts on these critically important resources. Private, public and civic institutions must respond to these challenges. The complexities of water, food and energy sectors must understood in relation to each other as well as within their own social, economic, natural, political and cultural environments, and not in isolation. Water is a critical resource for global sustainability and has a fundamental role in every sector. The effective governance of water can offer very large benefits to people and ecosystems, but typically water is not used or allocated to reflect its scarcity value. Water is also essential for crop production, be this for food, feed, fibre or fuels. Food sustainability depends on the resilience of related agro-ecosystems, of which water is a fundamental component. Water, and its proper management, are indispensable for energy production and power generation. Water is used extensively in energy extraction, refining, processing and transportation; and energy is essential for transporting water over long distances, for treating water, and distributing it to end users, and for collecting and treating wastewater. Policies that take into account trade-offs, complementarities and resource constraints between water, food and energy are not yet effectively developed despite the urgent need. In this session the speakers will discuss the effects of water scarcity (both in terms of quantity and quality) on food and energy needs today and tomorrow. Particular attention will be given to the policy framework and institutional underpinnings required to respond to the needs of the water, energy and food sectors. Case studies of projects, cities and regions will be discussed along with a framework to understand the complex interdependencies across the sectors and pathways to sustainable governance of water.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. According to the Global Policy Forum (2016), Africa, is a continent that is endowed with immense natural and human resources. It is a continent with great cultural, ecological and economic diversity that however, remains underdeveloped. The Forum posits that most African nations suffer from military dictatorships, corruption, civil unrest and war, underdevelopment and deep poverty. They then point out that the majority of countries that are classified by the UN as least developed are found in Africa. It can also be pointed out that accelerated growth of urbanization in many African countries has amplified the demand for key services that include the provision of shelter and basic services such as water and sanitation, education, public health, employment and transport. This has not kept pace with this increasing demand and in any case, numerous development strategies have failed to yield the expected results. While there are many who believe that the continent is doomed to perpetual poverty and economic slavery, there are also some who believe that Africa has immense potential for sustainable development if proper policies are crafted, adopted and implemented. The United Nations accepted Sustainable Development as an accepted approach to sustaining economic growth and prosperity without harming our planet and without exhausting our resources while at the same time improving the quality of life for all our current and future citizens. Sustainability in this case includes social, environmental and economic considerations. It helps global societies to sustain finite resources that are necessary to provide for the needs of future generations of life on the planet. In this case, human development thrust should ensure that they take care of the natural systems so that they continue to preserve the natural resources and the ecosystems upon which the economy and society depends o0n their sustainability. Ban Ki-moon once said: “Together, by stepping up efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals throughout the continent, we can and must make the 21st century the African century.” Hence, it is prudent that Africa must ensure that it starts to implement policies that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. With the adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), development policy has once again taken centre stage in the public policy agenda. Development policies are now reoriented towards engaging multiple sectors and actors to achieve the 17 interconnected and integrated SDGs. Infrastructure development, for instance, is not only about promoting economic growth but also about ensuring environmental protection, alleviating poverty, and attaining gender equity. This panel weaves together several related research themes: 1. Which public policies have been effective in bringing about sustainable development and how? 2. How can public policies provide the necessary regulatory and institutional frameworks to promote sustainable development? 3. How have multiple actors – government, civil society, private sector – come together in achieving sustainable development? Policy topics of interest are human capital (health, education, training and skills development), infrastructure (water, energy, railroads, and sanitation), gender, poverty and inequality, food security, community-led development, private sector engagement, and institutions. Of particular interest are empirical papers that employ rigorous econometric and evaluation techniques while being grounded in sound economic and development theory. However, papers using innovative mixed methods approaches may be submitted. Themes listed above are not exhaustive.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Garett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons, has been intensively critiqued since the 1980s. It has now been established that conservation policies cannot be sustainable without the involvement of local communities. Most developing countries, multi-lateral development organizations and donor agencies have since advocated participatory and joint programs of conservation, protection and restoration of natural resources. While there has been considerable success in many of these community and local projects, it has been observed that central authorities have been hesitant to scale up decentralization at the national scale and grant greater power and authority to the local level. This is understandable as such a move undermines the role of the central agencies. Further, by granting these same agencies the authority to design institutions for greater decentralization policy makers may have ensured that decentralization does not take off as effectively as desired. Often these central agencies do not have the capacity in this area, or deliberately design reform programs that extend their control over the management of natural resources, rather than restrict such control. Hence, many of the institutional and administrative reforms for sustainable development have been designed for failure or non-optimal outcomes. It needs to be accepted that just like there are many models of centralization, there are many models of decentralization as well – each leading to different outcomes – some good and others, not too bad. As the sustainability of our resources is critically dependant on the institutions for their management and the involvement of the local communities, an analysis of the different types of local institutions would help us design better institutions of local governance and better policies for sustainable development.This panel looks at the varieties of institutions in the management of natural resources by local communities. It focuses on how they interface with local politics and different institutional designs lead to diverse outcomes. It will also show how the same policy and institutional design lead to diverse outcomes. It will enhance our understanding of institutional reforms for local governance for sustainable development. This panel will bring together theoretical approaches to studying policy at the local level as well as specific cases that highlight the role of local institutions and local politics in policy making for sustainable development. We hope to bring together papers that critically analyse the administrative architecture of the existing decentralized institutions and deal with innovative ways in which local politics and informal institutions are working towards greater devolution in the face of serious opposition. It is expected that these papers will throw light on how another generation of reforms of public administration could harness social power with political power at the local level through the institutions of local governments to achieve some of the sustainable development goals. The panel will look at specific cases of administrative reforms for sustainable development:- to determine whether these were carefully thought out, emerged from specific opportunities, or were accidental- to examine the specific roles of key individuals and government departments that led to the formulation of policies for administrative reforms- to see how emerging institutions hamper effective decentralization of power and authority for effective conservation, protection and regeneration of the environment - to analyse how the same policy leads to different outcomes, either due to diverse local institutions or specific local agency- to understand how different level of capacity or social capital can facilitate or hinder effective local governance- to study the emerging structures of accountability are evolving at the local level, and changing the outcomes of existing policies.

This panel is concerned with identifying policies that sustain drinking water. Only 2.5 percent of Earth’s water is fresh rather than salty, and only 1 percent of that is available to us in rivers, lakes and underground aquifers. And all of those sources are under grave stress worldwide (Spayde, 2011). Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and 500 million people are approaching this situation. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers (United Nations, 2015) The panel should address the idea that drinking water is a limited resource. With the existing climate change scenario, almost half the world's population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030, including between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa (United Nations, 2015). Policies that promote the management of drinking water and practice conservation of drinking water should be identified. In addition the impact of climate change should be included as a factor in the development of ongoing drinking water policies. Case studies of specific water emergencies should be included for consideration. Just as important are case studies of successful water management experiences. Papers should identify what constitutes acceptable water testing procedures and what should be included in the water quality index used by a community to certify water quality.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Public engagement (PE) is a key principle of governance for sustainability, enshrined in many governmentally endorsed documents at international, regional and national level. The concept of the public generally includes both citizens and stakeholders, which are driven by commercial or non-commercial interests. Numerous academics and international organizations include PE in normative conceptual models of governance for sustainability. Usually, the underlying hypothesis is that PE can facilitate governance outcomes that are consistent with sustainability objectives (‘sustainability outcomes’). Nevertheless, it was noted in the literature that the empirical evidence to back this up is still very limited. One reason is that methodologically it may be hard or impossible to credibly show connections between PE and sustainability outcomes, because engagement often regards individual policy/organizational decisions, while any governance structure consists of numerous decisions at various scales, actor structures, opportunities for policy and actor coordination, and the qualities of such arrangements. In addition, governance outcomes will also depend on the extent and quality of implementation, compliance and enforcement – policy activities where the citizens and stakeholders may be involved in various forms, or not. When discussing relationships between PE, governance (as analytical unit) and sustainability, a more realistic dependent variable is whether the PE features observed empirically offer citizens and policy stakeholders sufficient opportunities to defend sustainability objectives and the adequate implementation of the sustainability agenda. The first scientific contribution of this panel is that it presents theoretical and empirical research analysing how various features of citizen and stakeholder engagement in policy processes may create opportunities or obstacles towards safeguarding sustainability values and outcomes in policy-making and post-decision activities (policy operationalization/implementation, monitoring, compliance, enforcement and evaluation). In addition to their role of policy stakeholders and target groups of regulatory and economic policy instruments, businesses can also implement the sustainability agenda by means of voluntary initiatives, including partnerships with social and other economic actors. This panel will also pay attention to these types of roles and responsibilities of businesses, by presenting contributions that examine the engagement of commercial actors towards human development that is safe within the Planetary Boundaries. Theoretical contributions and case- studies will reflect on the ecological effectiveness of initiatives under the Corporate Sustainability Responsibility umbrella and on the interplays between these and various regulatory and enabling policy approaches pursuing sustainability outcomes. Trade-offs and interactions between the three dominant policy approaches - voluntary, regulatory and enabling – are complex. Some broad patterns of interplays have been mapped in the sustainability and policy literature, particularly on interactions between voluntary agreements, regulations and environmental effectiveness. However, there is limited understanding of such trade-offs with respect to corporate responsibility initiatives and how they may affect the environmental sustainability performance of businesses. The papers presented in these panels take a holistic approach, by reflecting on these relationships.

Development issues had finally reached the highest political level and, for the first time, developing countries were challenged to translate their development vision into nationally-owned plans. In globalization process, there are increasingly complex challenges from shifting economic power and social inequalities to aging societies and depleting resources, poverty reduction and social issues and social cultural conflict– are placing governments under intensifying pressure. All governments must rapidly adapt and deploy public policies to meet these challenges. Tackling the challenges, governments continue to struggle with implementing sustainable policies to solve multi-dimensional problems (Hai Do 2015). The future generations can not be sure they can have what they deserve to have. The lack of equal opportunities in labor markets, weak education and poor health care put the future viability of entire societies at risk as well as developing countries may not achieve the efficient use of natural resources for long-term sustainability and their environment protection and climate change responses. Ensuring quality of life for present and future generations, stakeholders throughout society must pursue and demand more long-term thinking. Doing so requires more innovation in governance - in making public policies work for us all, now and in the future. The good governance and sustainable development must go hand-in-hand. We also believe in mutual learning as if the goal of public policy is to promote sustainable development as well as citizens’ social and economic inclusion, then governments must establish the social, economic and environmental conditions that generate well-being and empowerment. The overall research question must be explored is that what are conditions of sustainable development policy design and implementation in a globalizing complex? The sustainable development policy deal with multi-dimensional problems and multi-objectives, the attributes of the policy are complex, so environmental and economic and social policy decision makings are often under the complicated configuration conditions. It also depends on the governance with some variables located in executive capacity and accountability. Therefore, we would like to open this panel to explore deeply on the policy performance, policy conditions, governance for sustainable development in globalization context.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Sustainable development has emerged as a viable development strategy across the world. It has moved from the narrow groves of environmental concerns in 1980s to encompass the entire range of the sustainability of development process. The UN General Assembly has articulated a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015 to be achieved by the year 2030. Officially known as 'Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development', these goals underline the concerns and consensus of global community for realizing a vision of global community, which is free from poverty, hunger, illiteracy, malnutrition and diseases, gender inequality and other similar ills afflicting human society. Persistent global efforts and suitable and innovative policy interventions at national level are required to meet the goals of sustainable development. The continent of Asia and Pacific is the largest land mass in the world. The region accounts for 55 percent of the total world population of 7.3 billion. Six of the world's 10 most populous countries are located in Asia, in which China and India holds the rank of the two most populous countries of the globe. The development experience of Asian countries is mixed one so far. In 2015, out of 48 countries of Asia and Pacific, 50 percent countries are listed under the category of 'medium human development' in the Human Development Index of United Nations Development Programme. Eighteen countries are listed under the category of either 'very high' or 'high' human development and rest of the countries are listed under the category of 'low human development. There are significant variations in target achievement both across countries as well as within the countries with respect to different goals. The sub-region of East Asia has fared better in comparison to South Asia and 13 Least Developed Countries of the region. The region is still home to two-third of world's poor and faces daunting development challenges of unemployment, gender inequality, climate change, poverty, management and utilization of human and natural resources and so on. The innovative policy formulation and the effective implementation constitute one of the important inputs in the sustainable development process. There is a need to understand analyze and compare various elements of policy cycles with respect to sustainable development across the region. The sharing of policy process experience among nations may help in formulating participatory and innovative public policies for realizing the goal of sustainable development. With this background in mind this panel aims to : Understand the nature of policy formulation and implementation with Asian perspectives to achieve the goal of sustainable development; Analyze the constraints as well as innovative elements in public policy cycle across the region of Asia in the domain of sustainable development; and Suggest improvements and innovations in the public policy cycle in Asia with respect to the goal of sustainable development.

Note: This Panel is eligible for the GCPSE (UNDP) Grant. Enhancing the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), citizen participation, transparency and accountability explicitly appear as key components of seven goals (4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 15 and 16) of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Furthermore, promoting ICTs that empower citizens and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions are treated simultaneously as ends and means to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This panel will address the question on whether the promotion and use of ICTs may improve governmental outcomes (particularly, regarding the delivery of the SDGs). Moreover, the panel will explore both bottom-up and top-down initiatives in different regions of the world. In recent years, we have witnessed a global trend towards the promotion of citizen participation, transparency and accountability. A significant number of these initiatives promote the use of ICTs to reach their goals (Callen, Gibson, Jung, Long, 2016). For instance, some initiatives from civil society seek to foster citizens’ accountability efforts by reducing some of the obstacles related to participating in policy-making processes[1] and reporting[2] and monitoring[3] corruption and fraud. Likewise, governments have also used ICTs to improve development outcomes. In many developing countries, e-governance promises to broaden access and enhance delivery of public goods and services, making it less contingent to citizen-bureaucrat relationships. Additionally, these initiatives have been led by a diverse array of supranational organizations, national and subnational governments, NGOs, academic institutions and social organizations. The basic assumption behind these endeavors is that citizen participation and transparency of information may have a positive impact in governance and, ultimately, in the improved capacity to deliver developmental goals. However, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these initiatives over the conduct and incentives of incumbent governments, politicians and civil servants is still inconclusive (Khagram, S., de Renzio, P., & Fung, A., 2013; Mejia 2013; Molina, 2014; Paler, 2013). Up to date, most of the literature has focused on evaluating the intermediate outcomes of these initiatives (e.g. whether citizen participation o transparency increased), while the academic efforts to collect and process evidence on whether governance or delivery of outcomes is improved is an emerging strand of the literature (Mejia 2013). The main objective of this panel is to contribute to fill this gap in the literature by exploring qualitative and/or quantitative evidence on the effects of the use of ICTs to foster citizen participation, transparency and accountability in the delivery of public goods and, ultimately, in the governments’ capacity to achieve developmental goals. [1] See for instance, “Intelligent Vote” an online political petition’s platform created by a civil society organization in Chile. [2] See for instance “I paid a Bribe”, an online platform created by a civil society organization that allows citizens to report bribery. [3] See for instance experimental evidence of the application of ICTs to monitoring elections in Uganda and Afghanistan.

The UN Secretary General’s recent progress report on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) discusses about the first year’s progress. While discussing about SDG 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation – the report rightly points out that “industrialization drives economic growth, creates job opportunities and thereby reduce income poverty” (UN 2016: 13). In the next High Level Political Forum on SDGs to be held on 10-19 July 2017, the Goal 9 is one of the SDGs to be reviewed. It is therefore both important and timely to critically engage with policy dynamics of achieving SDG 9. In order to meet the targets of SDG 9 within the stipulated 2030, the industrially less advanced countries of the global south will have to go through a ‘big push’ somewhat akin to the ‘East Asian Miracle’ economies. That calls for a huge public policy undertaking – industrial policy coupled with other relevant policies like trade, investment, fiscal, monetary, labour, education and technology – led by respective states’ governments in partnership with businesses, labour, civil society and donors. There has been continuous debate in the development thinking about respective roles of ‘state’ and ‘market’ with respect to economic policies and strategies. The orthodox neoliberal thinking advocates hands off approach by government and omnipotence of market in resource allocation. On the contrary, the heterodox structuralist thinking stipulates that markets are powerful forces but not perfect and government interventions are necessary to improve market outcomes (Lal 2004). Although neoliberal thinking is still forceful, there has been an increasingly weaker empirical manifestation for success of free market and failure of government intervention (Amsden 1994, Wade 2014 and Mazzucato 2013). The industrial policy tools that were successfully deployed by Korea, Taiwan and NICs cannot be replicated by today’s Industrial Aspirant Countries (IACs). This is largely due to the general erosion of ‘policy space’ that disproportionately affected the IACs of global south. Despite such policy constraints, the scope of policy space is not totally out of question for the IACs. As successively documented by DiCaprio and Amsden (2004), UNIDO and UNCTAD (2011) and Lee et al (2014), at least under WTO rules, there is still considerable scope to retain and deploy policy space for industrial development. However, realization and political commitment are lacking among many IACs to adjust or reconfigure their industrial policies (DiCaprio and Amsden 2004, Lee 2015). The targets of SDG 9 provide important rallying points for the IACs to shore up political commitment and mobilize adequate resources behind industrial policies and strategies. Retention and deployment of policy space is crucial for the IACs. Because, in order to kick start their industrial development process, the IACs will have to be able to effectively use industrial policies, something not tenable if these countries cannot retain and deploy their policy spaces. Therefore, the guiding research question of the proposed panel is – whether and how IACs of the global south (especially Africa and Asia) are retaining and deploying industrial policies and strategies which are selective, proactive and strategic?

Participatory community-based development initiatives that target indigenous and traditional groups have gained attention and interest among policy makers in the last decades. Several reports and research literature show that promoting community participation at the local level boosts the impacts of public policies aiming to fight poverty, loss of environmental assets, dispossession of land and migration from rural areas. It is widely acknowledged that policies with a top-down design are likely to achieve poor results in terms of human development. Similarly, evidence shows that public policies elaborated by large institutions, such as national governments, may not translate in concrete benefits at the local level as desired. To ensure that public policies and development initiatives become more effective, agencies should further tailor their actions in line with the multidimensional features of specific local realities. Indeed, the aim of integrating multidimensional development initiatives would be to boost and strengthen local development plans and support the establishment of resilient institutions, operated and managed by local people. Participatory community-based planning and other initiatives as community protocols are being implemented all around the world with the poor, the rural and most vulnerable social groups. In this sense, those initiatives becomes an instrument of community empowerment, management and control of their territory and natural resources. They may prepare communities to be proactive rather than only reactive to outside challenges. It is appropriate to point out that indigenous and communities with traditional characteristics have, to different degrees, life styles that distinguish them from the average national society. The challenge of overcoming the gap between a national policy's intended objectives and its actual outcomes is especially significant for those social segments. Estimations reveal that around 5% of the world's population are indigenous, which corresponds to approximately 358 million people. Their territories occupy approximately 20% of the world’s land and the majority of them live in Least Developed Countries (LDC). In a scenario of limited resources, participatory local initiatives and in particular those using CPR approaches, as community protocols, could improve the well-being of those social segments. Thus, this panel aims to bring a discussion on how to design effective public policies through participatory community-based initiatives and the strengthening of local institutions.

The global growth of a younger population, albeit at varying rates in different regions, brings with it an ever evolving set of needs and required resources. The youth segment is now more globalized and inter-connected than ever. The high penetration of social media & the growing ‘international identity’ of youth has contributed to the shift in their expectations from their country and government. The growing size of the segment and the shifts in needs brings with it a new set of challenges and opportunities for policy makers. The risk of government not being attuned to the new needs of the youth segment is evident most recently in the events of the Arab Spring; which was driven by the growth of frustrated, unemployed and disengaged youth in the affected countries. Research portrays the risk disengaged youth pose to the stability of a country; hence activating and engaging youth has found its way into national priorities with some governments. It is critical that schemas and attitudes are shifted from youth being seen as a risk, to being an opportunity that can be capitalized on to develop a new national competitive advantage. This panel will seek to determine the main trends and shifts in youth needs and expectations from government and policy. The discussion and material ultimately aims to look into a framework for developing innovative and efficient measuring youth needs, and mechanisms for youth engagement policies. An objective of this panel is to also bring forward narrative that widens the scope of youth engagement and public policy; whereby youth are no longer only on the receiving end of policy developed with the aim of ‘engaging’ them, but rather explore new channels for involving youth in the process of policy formation, assessment and identification of priorities. The channels would require an understanding of motivation drivers of youth in order to provide the appropriate and effective opportunities and platforms that would be accepted by youth. The literature on the importance of youth engagement exists, but a research gap lies in the practical options for addressing the role youth can play in national public policy. The papers and concepts presented in this panel would be used to develop a volume on youth involvement in public policy, with an international approach to ‘global need’ for youth participation in setting national priorities. The volume could be presented at other international platforms to present the suggested framework, or at least instigate the need for further research on developing national frameworks for youth engagement strategies in public policy formation.

In the field of educational policies, some key questions are: financing; quality of supply; access and equity; adequacy of the curriculum; performance of students and teachers and qualification of teachers. In recent decades educational policies have experienced several changes, many of them influenced by the action of international organizations, the third sector and the private sector that somehow have motivated national governments to review their plans and programs in the area. Although national realities are not the same, it is known that large-scale assessments (national and international) and their performance indicators have forced countries to review their policies in order to make their results better compared to previous editions. If the performance issue becomes central, articulating the various actions in the field of educational policy becomes the main challenge, as countries, each in their own way, have a set of policies, educational programs and actions oriented to specific questions. All these together aim to ensure that the quality of education increases. Considering the New Public Management perspective, the concern for cost efficiency associated with the obtained results has encouraged countries to undertake national assessments in order to determine whether and how their strategies to improve educational indicators have been effective.It is hoped that through the presented papers, participants have the opportunity to meet different experiences at the national level with consistent data, and theoretical discussions that may indicate how the field of educational policies is orbiting and what discourses have shaped the international agenda within the rationality that has been stimulated by the New Public Management premisses.

This Conference in a Conference will host several sessions sponsored by RC 25 on comparative health policy and health politics. It will start with a session especially for young scholars and participants who present a paper for the first time. This will allow for a discussion of both the substance of the papers as well as the presentation itself. Next, it includes a session to discuss issues of methodology regarding comparison in the field. Other sessions focus on expanding health care access and health care insurance in Asia and elsewhere. While the very term universal coverage has become widespread, it is not always well defined. It includes both the coverage of health care financing through general taxation or health insurance, both public and private, and universal access to actual health care services. Discussing both policy intentions and the outcomes of policies across countries will improve the understanding of this point. Finally, one or more sessions, depending on the interest, will discuss current policy topics in the field, including, for example, the development of regional health networks, health care manpower, aging and health care, medical ethical issues, gender issues and other. The new format of the Conference in a Conference sponsored by RC 25 thus links the general issues of methodology with the application in the field. It supports young scholars and first time presenters as well as experienced ones, and encourages collaboration between scholars. The format allows for more flexibility in allocating time to certain sessions and topics, depending on the number of participants and their interest. We hope that it will draw many participants!!

The literature on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) comes from several disciplinary perspectives. It addresses various themes: access to essential health care, population coverage, the package of entitlements or benefits to which the covered population is entitled, and protection from the economic and social consequences of illness [Stuckler et al. 2010]. UHC is obviously a multi-dimensional concept [Abiiro and De Allegri 2015]. It can be pursued by a variety of pathways and health financing arrangements [Savedoff et al. 2012]. There is no single way to to achieve universal coverage, and fully achieving UHC is all but impossible for any country [Kutzin 2013]. All national governments face trade-offs and must make choices regarding the coverage [WHO 2010]: the proportion of the population; the range of services to be made available; the share of total costs the individual patients have to pay (user charges). The proposed panel will provide an opportunity to discuss the various facets and dimensions of UHC, both as empirical studies about its experience in different countries as well as theoretical studies. The panel especially welcomes papers with a comparative perspective. References Abiiro, G.A. and M. De Allegri (2015), Universal health coverage from multiple perspectives: a synthesis of conceptual literature and global debate, in «BMC International Health and Human Rights», 15, 1, pp. 17-23. Kutzin, J. (2013), Health financing for universal coverage and health system performance: concepts and implications for policy, in «Bulletin of the World Health Organization», 91: 602-611. Savedoff, W.D. et al. (2012), Political and economic aspects of the transition to universal health coverage, in «The Lancet», 380: 924-932. Stuckler, D. et al. (2010), The political economy of universal health coverage, Geneva: WHO. WHO (2010), Health systems financing: the path to universal coverage, Geneva: World Health Organization.

Tobacco control policies provide many examples of successful agenda setting, policy learning and, above all, substantial policy change. Driven by a cross-national epistemic network of public health researchers and advocates, governments across the world have acted collectively and individually to protect public health by limiting the availability of tobacco products. This emerging international political consensus in favor of tobacco control is represented by the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which places binding policy commitments upon its signatories and is one of the most widely applied treaties of all time. Despite these achievements, there remain many substantial obstacles to passing, implementing and enforcing tobacco control policies. Tobacco control advocates face strong opposition and lobbying from the well-resourced and highly-globalized tobacco industry. Some governments pass tobacco control regulations, yet struggle to fully implement them. Even when tobacco control measures are implemented, they are frequently beset by legal challenges. In short, the international consensus in support of tobacco control is fragile, and subject to national and subnational politics. In many ways, therefore, understanding both the success of tobacco control policies and the significant challenges to passing and implementing tobacco regulation requires researchers to take a comparative perspective. Yet truly comparative studies of tobacco control policy are few, and far between. This panel aims to expand the network of scholars who study tobacco control in order to further understanding of comparative public policy.

Since the declaration of the Ottawa-Charter (1986), policy-makers are commissioned to promote health trough public policy by ‘making healthier choices easier’. Challenged by a steep increase of non-communicable diseases (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or obesity), the charter’s crucial dictum attracts new attention. Policy-makers are eager to develop, test and implement behavioural policy approaches emanating from the theory of libertarian paternalism. The most prominent example for in this regard are ‘nudges’ (Sunstein/Thaler 2009) which intend to guide people towards healthier lifestyles and are broadly promoted across policy fields. For instance, so-called ‘nudge units’, working at arm’s length of governments, explore strategies on how to influence people’s behaviour without diminishing their overall set of lifestyle choices. Criticized as ‘governance by stealth’ nudge-based policies differ much from former health promotion strategies based on individuals’ empowerment and participation. This panel aims to investigate theoretical and political implications of behavioural policy-making in the field of disease prevention and health promotion. In this respect, three research-guiding questions are from particular interest: What are the underlying assumptions when it comes to behavioural policy-making with regard to ‘healthy lifestyles’ and risk avoidance? The panel seeks to debate, both, explicit and implicit norms and values of current behavioural health policies. Moreover, it will be asked who is seen as being responsible when it comes to risk avoidance and health promotion (the state or the individual?). While ‘health nudges’ are neutral policy instruments in general, they are based on rather strong assumptions on what makes up a healthy lifestyle. By analysing these assumptions the nature of behavioural health policies and its implications for policy-makers and individuals shall be revealed. Are there cross-sectorial overlappings and intersections between approaches of behavioural health promotion and adjacent policy fields? Behavioural health policies have different repercussions for neighbouring fields and impacts on them, especially with regard to environmental policies, food and agriculture policies, consumer policies and labour market policies. For instance, a policy to extend bicycle paths in the public space, initiated by the department of traffic in order to improve inner-city mobility, may also be effective as a measure of behavioural health promotion. Based on international examples of behavioural policy-making, preconditions and challenges of cross-sectorial collaboration shall be analysed in the panel. Who are the policy-makers of behavioural health promotion and what are their interests? Several state and non-state actors are involved in the process of behavioural policy-making. It is intended to analyse policy-makers agendas, instruments and strategies and discusses them in a broader view on health promotion and prevention. Likewise, conflicting interests and trade-offs of policy-makers constantly balancing health-promoting measures (e.g. rewarding healthy behaviour) with those that are potentially hazardous to health (e.g. allowing an industrial usage of the environment) should be critically reflected. Ideally, the panel will bring together ‘behavioural insights’ from political scientists and public health experts from Asia, Australia, Europe and the US. Selected contributions to the panel shall be published within an edited volume or a special issue of an international journal of public policy.

The four pillars of deliberation – legitimacy, representation, communication and consensus – serve to build trust, create social capital and create greater civic engagement which increase public confidence in government and governance processes (Dryzek 2012, Weymouth 2015). Since the 1990s, the so-called “deliberative turn” has not only altered democratic theory (Habermas and Rawls), but significantly changed the way people think about and conduct public policy. Underpinning ideas of deliberation is that ultimately a democratic consensus will prevail, through reasoned and informed processes of informed debate. Deliberation is thus thought to provide the most justifiable conception for dealing with moral disagreement in politics and policy, thus serving four main goals: to promote the legitimacy of collective decisions; to encourage public-spirited perspectives on public issues; to promote mutually respectful processes of decision-making; and to provide an opportunity for advancing both individual and collective understanding and mitigate information asymmetries and disagreement (Gutmann 2004). As such, deliberative methods are of increasing interest to both researchers and policymakers. The aim of this panel is understand how an increased focus on democratisation is impacting on the processes, outcomes and quality of health and social policy making. It will further explore how this impacts on the study of health and social policy.

Over the last four decades most low and middle income countries in Asia have introduced a range of reforms in public health institutions, especially hospitals at the secondary and tertiary levels of care. The motivations for reforms in diverse socio-political contexts share some common features with the objective of rationalizing cost and improving efficiency and effectiveness of public hospitals. Some of these shared features include the introduction of user fees; contracting out and in of clinical and non clinical services; casualization of workers to include medical, paramedical and support staff; introduction of paying clinics; autonomisation of public hospitals leading to the redefinition of the ‘public’ in public hospitals. The main objective of this panel is to invite papers that address the a) the motivation for reforms: fiscal and budgetary pressures prompting governments everywhere to search for ways to improve efficiency and rein in healthcare costs; b) the different ways of pursuing those goals by a mix of strategies and instruments (not just market principles); and c) the consequences of those reforms on hospital workers, patients, management and others.A number of interesting questions that the papers could address are: (a) whether these reforms have given rise to multiple structures of authority within public hospitals? (b) What are the consequences of fragmentation of authority for the functioning of the hospital? (c) What does contracting in and out of services imply for governance and quality of services? (d) What are the implications of casualization of health workers for governance? (e) Who is responsible and accountable for these workers- the contracting agents or hospital administrators? (d) Is there a potential role conflict between permanent and casualised workers? (e) How do the differential working conditions and wages affect motivation and morale of workers? (f) How does this affect the organizational culture and behavior of health workers towards patients? (g) What are the challenges for governance in the context of fragmented roles, authority and power within a hospital? (h) What are the consequences of these reforms for patient care?

This panel seeks to find effective methodologies to capture improvement in the health systems for Japan and ASEAN by considering new indicators. Traditionally, health systems have been evaluated by three components: access cost and quality. Then, we are finding additional specific indicators to evaluate health systems. However, indicators are not formatted to developing state of health systems. They are designed mainly for policy makers who are responsible in healthcare as well, and the other stakeholders including health professionals as well as manufacturers cannot use directly such indicators for their investments. The health sector is one of the promising business areas for sustainable growth and fundamentally important for human lives. Indicators are generally useful to seek and introduce the best practice in the sectors. For further sustainable development in ASEAN, to find supportive new indicators will be definitely desirable. This panel is targeting on mainly ASEAN member states, and Japan is a benchmarking and comparative country. This benchmarking and comparative country works to evaluate new indicators in light of broader applicability to other country which have established systems. To use Japan as a benchmarking and comparator also gives us additional benefit. The system of Japan has been facing emerging issues such as aging, budgetary restraint, and dementia (additional social care needs). The possible new indicators can cover emerging issues developing health systems will face in the end. The new indicators this panel will detect must be useful for relative long time line in public policy making for ASEAN member states. This panel composes of three parts: finance, delivery scheme and technology for considering new indicators. These components are not so unique, but this panel most touches on technology part. Conventionally, technology has been dealt as a whole, and specific differences are not so focused. In this panel, different features between pharmaceuticals and medical devices will be considered seriously. At the other two components, indicators will be timely influenced by present best practices including pay for performance, care coordination and health IT. To introduce patient satisfaction as a surrogate outcome indicator will also be important issue.

Ageing populations pose serious challenges for the long-term care (LTC) systems in Asia. Financing and provision of LTC is an increasingly important concern for many Asian countries experiencing rapid population ageing. Generally, LTC systems adopt one of the broad financing models of tax-based systems, social insurance, means-tested method, although hybrid or mixed financing models are also common. In the face of a potential rise in LTC expenditure representing an increasing share in health budgets, some countries with an existing social health insurance system have considered LTC as a new risk and established a stand-alone LTC insurance system. Japan and South Korea introduced their respective LTC insurance systems in the 2000s, Taiwan is also moving towards this direction. Other models, such as means-tested method and taxation, are being adopted in other countries to finance the LTC system, such as China. The objectives of the panel are listed as follows:1. Improve the understanding of different options for designing a financing system for LTC in Asia2. Foster thinking in innovative methods in LTC financing3. Promote the sharing of evidence on LTC financing policy 4. Promote international comparative policy analysis to encourage evidence-based policy making

Across the globe, nations and the sub-national jurisdictions are facing growing challenges in fostering the health and well-being of their populations. Medical advances yield both improved health care opportunities and upward pressures on health costs. The transformation of an increasing number of human conditions into treatable diseases (Conrad, 2008) has also contributed to these rising costs. Resource limitations and several decades of decentralizing new public management reforms yield challenges for government efforts to address population health problems and concerns. There have been multiple efforts to study health policies and outcomes from cross-national perspectives, and they have often focused on healthcare policies and efforts to reform them (Miaoni and Marmor, 2015; Schoen et al, 2010; Reid, 2009). While these studies contribute to our understanding of how nations manage illness, they are arguably focused disproportionately on treating illnesses that have already developed, rather than preventing disease and enhancing the long term health and well-being of populations. This is notable, for example, in social services and in interventions with older adults where biomedical interventions are frequently encouraged and privileged over social ones (Estes and Binney, 1989; Binney, Estes and Ingram, 1990; Kaufman, Shim and Russ, 2004). This panel seeks to instigate additional comparative research and analysis on the long term health and well-being of populations and the policies that affect it. The focus is on ways in which governments seek to improve the health and well-being of their populations, as well as on the policy impacts and outcomes that flow from these efforts. While healthcare policy reform efforts are included in this focus, the hope and intent is that the papers contributed to this panel will focus as much or more on preventively-oriented health and social policies an as on healthcare. In this context, we draw attention to policies relating to the “public health system” (Institute of Medicine, 2003), a phrase which generally refers to multi-organizational efforts that seek to enhance the health status and well-being of broad groups of people and populations. Within this “public health system” lie efforts in a host of different specific policy areas. These include clinically oriented policies and services providing for vaccinations and immunizations, as well as policies targeted toward specific populations (low income persons, women, older adults, etc.). Behavioral health policies are also included, as they seek to enable and encourage individuals and populations to make behavioral choices that enhance long term health and well-being (quit smoking, safe sex, good nutrition, etc.). Human service and income redistribution policies may also seek to pursue broader public health and well-being related goals, as they seek to address underlying social conditions of health and well-being. Additionally, environmental health policies seek to protect ecosystems and reduce health threats associated with environmental degradation, poor sanitation, and environmental pollutants. Taken together, policies in these and other areas comprise national and sub-national “public health systems” that may be characterized by variable levels of effectiveness and success in enhancing the health and well-being of the populations they serve.

The objective of this panel is to promote the importance of policy evaluation, monitoring and research that explores unintended consequences of policies, both positive and negative, and the causal mechanisms that underpin their development and effects. Unintended consequences of health policies can come in many forms, and like the title of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western – can consist of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’. The 'good' unintended consequences can be a bonus to any desirable policy outcome, while the 'bad' consequences could, depending on their seriousness, override any potential or existing policy benefits. Knowing to what extent policies contribute to unintended consequences and the context and mechanism supporting these events, can inform the development of related and unrelated policies for which similar behavioral or system drivers are at play. Merton, in his 1936 publication on the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action argued the need for greater systematic analysis of the process of unintended consequences (Merton 1936). Sherrill (1984) argued for more to be done by evaluators in uncovering the unintended outcomes of government actions. Research by Ringold (2002) highlighted the need to increase attention to the study of unintended consequences of policies. Not much has changed despite these calls. Most of evaluative efforts of policies and programs still focus on intended policy outcomes. This panel hopes to encourage a greater focus on unintended outcomes - types, mechanisms and methods used to identify and explore them. In addition, the panel aims to examine how and under what conditions, the lessons learned from these evaluations feedback into policies, transforming the policy cycle into a recursive learning cycle and thereby contributing to our collective problem-solving capacities. Merton RK. 1936. The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action. Am Sociol Rev 1: 894-904. Ringold DJ. 2002. Boomerang Effect: In Response to Public Health Interventions: Some Unintended Consequences in the Alcoholic Beverage Market. Journal of Consumer Policy 25: 27-63. Sherrill S. 1984. Identifying and measuring unintended outcomes. Eval Program Plann 7: 27-34.

Public policy continues to be an important determinant of economic growth so long as institutions and policy-makers interfere to shape the market economy. During the last few decades all levels of government at the federal, regional and municipal level have become key players in the promotion of the entrepreneurial economy. This panel intends to examine different aspects of entrepreneurship and its relation to public policy to help us reach a better understanding of the economic role of entrepreneurs. The panelists are expected to provide a national or cross-national perspective about what policies effectively encourage entrepreneurship, while discussing a possible role for government. Public policy and entrepreneurship nexus is a vital realm in both developed and developing world. The re-emergence of entrepreneurship and the shift from a market economy to an entrepreneurial economy accelerated due to an increased globalization and has lead to the development of new entrepreneurship policies at all levels of government. Policy-makers in developed countries face the challenge of having to develop new entrepreneurship policies to ensure economic growth within their regions and nations. Policy-makers in developing/underdeveloped countries meanwhile acknowledge the importance of entrepreneurship for sustainable, bottom-up development. In the literature, there has been attempts offering a rigorous economic examination of entrepreneurship, to foster better public policies that encourage and support entrepreneurial activity. In particular, this panel brings together studies concerning the links between entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth that shed light on implications for public policy (Acz et al, 2013). These implications are crucial as they illustrate public policy decisions involving entrepreneurship that can be guided and utilized. Entrepreneurship is a primary catalyst for economic growth and regional development (Hall and Sobel, 2006). Policymakers at various scales devote significant resources to foster entrepreneurship, however the frameworks for thinking about government’s role in the entrepreneurial process are still understudied. What role public policy plays in encouraging the development and growth of entrepreneurial enterprises remains a crucial one (RAND, 2009). Therefore, understanding entrepreneurial motivation is important for researchers and policy-makers. The panel, overall, attempts to provide answers on types of policies that could national, state and local governments enact in order to generate more entrepreneurial opportunities?

The promoting of entrepreneurship has become a wide-used economic development tool in urban policy around the world. Innovation is considered a fundamental component of entrepreneurship and a key element of business success, and also is a means to create and maintain sustainable competitive advantages. Innovative entrepreneurship has made significant contribution to the employment opportunities and the creation of new products, business models and markets. According to the World Bank, formal SMEs account for 45% of total employment and 33% of GDP in emerging economies. It has become a central theme in government policy in many countries to stimulate technology driven economic development via the application of innovation and entrepreneurship. But how government should act to best support innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem still remains debatable. This panel calls for the discussion of the overarching innovation policies and entrepreneurship policies from around the world, including but not limited to public spending on technology and innovation, the development and training of human resource, other policy programs for innovation such as incubators and science parks, and the institutional framework for innovation and entrepreneurship. We invite both promising scholars and established researchers to share their ideas, reflections, and cutting-edge research related to innovation and entrepreneurship policy. We welcome submissions from different disciplinary frameworks, analytical methods, and world regions.

There are growing concerns that the world economy is heading towards another protracted economic slowdown. On the one hand, the advanced economies are grappling with concerns of secular stagnation. On the other hand, several emerging market economies, especially those in Asia, are facing challenging growth circumstances in the aftermath of a sharp deceleration in global commodity prices and further compounded by domestic structural factors. In light of the growing uncertainties yet again, there is renewed academic and policy interest in understanding the various dimensions of the recent bout of growth slowdown episodes and the way forward. Factoring in the heterogeneous composition of Asia, what should policy makers do to reignite growth in the region? How can the region successfully overcome their structural bottlenecks? Is there sufficient dynamism left in the Asian region to decouple themselves from the advanced world and be an independent growth engine? How will China’s ongoing rebalancing efforts affect the growth prospects in Asia? This panel invites papers that explore causes of economic growth slowdowns, policies that were adopted to address them, outcomes of such policies, and the interplay between causes and responses. Priority shall be given to papers that utilize quantitative approaches on the topic of growth slowdown in Asia. The panel is open to a variety of approaches and topics, including the use of a wide range of units of analysis (countries, provinces, states, cities, sectors, etc.), and the application of measures to increase Foreign Direct Investment, expand infrastructure and financing options, and improvements to the ease of doing business, among others, as policy responses.

Central banks and unconventional monetary policy measures have been hailed for avoiding another depression in the world economy in the immediate aftermath of Global Financial Crisis (GFC). However, eight years after the onset of GFC policy- makers around the world are now being challenged with over-reliance on monetary policy measures in different contexts. Moreover, unintended consequences of over-reliance on monetary policy has started to emerge. Relatedly, recently there have been calls for more fiscal stimulus but these calls yet to materialize. The debates on appropriate policy responses to the crisis have stirred rethinking of macroeconomic policy in terms of goals, means, instruments to be utilized and how to use these instruments in different contexts (Blanchard et al. 2010). This panel aims to contribute to the debates on rethinking macroeconomic policy with a specific focus on policy design principles and how to achieve a coherent set of policy goals and means in different contexts (Howlett, 2009). In this respect, the panel puts particular emphasis on the design of and relationship between fiscal and monetary policy measures and their interaction with other policy domains. In line with the advances in the policy design literature, it is critical to acknowledge the policy mixes, policy advisory systems, political interests and ideas involved in the design of macroeconomic policies and how design evolves through time (Howlett, 2014). Moreover, with a focus on the policy stages (i.e., agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation), single or comparative case studies would be more informing due to their in- depth treatment of the case(s) under investigation, which are considered to examine context-specific particularities. Therefore, the panel aims to contribute to policy design studies with a focus on macroeconomic policy design with multiple theoretical, methodological considerations; while emphasising policy implications. This panel calls for papers examining different dimensions of fiscal and monetary policy design, their interaction with each other and other policy domains in various jurisdictions. Single or comparative case studies covering both advanced and emerging economies are invited. Interdisciplinary approaches including but not limited to institutional, organizational, social, political, economic and financial dimensions of macroeconomic policy design are encouraged. References Blanchard, O., Dell’Ariccia, G., & Mauro, P. (2010). Rethinking macroeconomic policy. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 42(s1), 199-215. Howlett, M. (2009). Governance modes, policy regimes and operational plans: A multi-level nested model of policy instrument choice and policy design. Policy Sciences, 42(1), 73-89. Howlett, M. (2014). From the ‘old’to the ‘new’policy design: design thinking beyond markets and collaborative governance. Policy Sciences, 47(3), 187-207.

Public financial management policies play an important role in nowadays economies and operation of governments. They include the definition of objectives and of procedural requirements for the use of financial resources that may orient the design and implementation of public policies more generally. Public financial management policies, for example, set the modalities for raising public revenues through taxation, intergovernmental transfers, exploitation of natural resources, and so on. They also, for instance, define the ways in which public sector entities are to held accountable to the public for the use of monetary and financial resources. Yet, despite the centrality of the ‘treasure’ tool in the design and implementation of public policies, the study of public financial management policies has been relatively circumscribed within a specialised circle of accounting and finance-oriented scholars. The aim of this panel is to draw broader attention to the public policies that are specifically intended to orient the management of financial resources in the public sector. Contributions to this panel may focus on the making, implementation and evaluation of public policies that are specifically focused on the management of public monies. Alternatively, they may focus on how public financial management policies relate to the design and execution of public policies in any particular policy domain. Other works may place a specific attention to issues of public financial management policies in developing countries. Other works may also be attentive to issues of public financial management policies at the international and transnational level.

The energy issue is a transversal topic which crosscuts several public policy fields and addresses several challenges (e.g. climate change, energy security, economic development, social inequalities). Taking action in this sector is therefore a priority for central governments for domestic reasons but also to tackle global challenges and build sustainable futures. In particular, the energy sector entails opportunities for climate co-benefits through the development of renewable energies, improvement of energy efficiency and the reduction of greenhouse-gases emissions. Yet, policy-makers and the scientific community have early recognised the role of local governments, and in particular cities, in the development of sustainable environmental policies and climate governance. Traditional centralised energy systems seem outdated and a decentralized, new model of governance seems, for many actors, more adequate. In fact, scholars have shown that energy transition cannot be based only on a technical shift. Therefore a redistribution of powers and competencies across scales, as well as new patterns of intergovernmental relations, are keys to the efficiency of low-carbon policies. Depending on the domestic institutional context, local governments may have important competencies in energy production and/or supply, planning and energy demand management. The aim of this panel is to examine experiences of decentralization in the energy sector or any reforms introduced to foster the phasing out of fossil (or fissile) energy based systems. Potential topics for the panel might include the following (indicative): Process and institutional steps which led to the decentralization of an energy “activity” (motivations, legislative steps, territorial levels to strengthen) National debates about the new balance of powers to promote between central States and local authorities (is decentralization a common consensual solution?) Powers, tools and financial support provided by central governments to local governments to foster low-carbon policies Impacts on local governance and environmental outcomes Barriers and drivers for local action Institutional and legal innovation Local autonomy in energy activities This list is indicative and other pertinent paper proposals may be selected.

Since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was signed in 2015, the international community has been busy working out how to measure progress and impact against the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a complex set of 169 targets. Governments, the donor community, NGOs, private sector players and the UN agencies have launched awareness campaigns, assessed their statistical systems, localised the specifics of the SDGs by aligning them with National Planning documents, etc.. Generally speaking, Governments are still at the beginning of adjusting to this new global framework and in most places a targeted pursuit of the SDGs is yet to materialise. While the statistics community is trying to sort out the international framework to monitor progress, countries are looking at their means of implementation, including measurement, but also institutional capacity, financing and partnerships. The 2030 Agenda provides a large platform on which researchers can generate evidence and produce insights which could have a direct impact on policy decisions. Decision-makers are looking for actionable insights on how to transform institutions, how to find process accelerators that have multiplying effects, how they can hit several targets simultaneously with a public investment, and how to form effective coalitions for change with non-Government partners. These are just some of the possible entry points for the academic community to join forces in realising the 2030 Agenda.

Objectives Innovation is a frequent catch-cry of governments (Obama 2016, Lee Hsien Loong 2016, Turnbull 2015). Encouraging entrepreneurship has even been viewed as a solution to counter extremism, (Obama, 2016) yet when raised political attention is most often directed to private firms where it is assumed most innovation occurs. This panel proposes to shift the focus from the private sector to exploring public policy innovation in federal settings. There is an extensive scholarship predicated on the idea that subnational units within federations can act as policy laboratories. This panel provides an opportunity to discuss and examine whether this is so and if there are areas of public policy where this is more likely to occur. While there is some scepticism that states can be truly innovative and overcome their predisposition to rational conservatism (Rose-Ackerman, 1980) public policy scholars know empirically that experimentation occurs. The fact that subnational, national and supranational governments do experiment and do copy from each other raises important questions: including when do they engage in policy experimentation and further under what circumstances and in what ways do they seek to benefit from the experiments of others? Galle and Leahy (2009) attempt to answer these questions from a theoretical perspective. They suggest that advantages can accrue to first movers and point to several factors which contribute to the spread of policy ideas including similarities in context, the availability of policy information and the costs and incentives of copying. The question of interstate learning has an extensive public policy literature which spans a host of policy areas including health (Weissert and Scheller 2008), gaming (Boehmke and Witmer 2004), business regulation (Kerber and Eckard 2007, welfare (Volden 2006) and the environment (Rabe 2007). Despite considerable differences in methodology, object of study and conceptual framing, this work identifies a range of circumstances and conditions which stimulate federations to act as policy laboratories. The role of local government should not be overlooked. While the literature on the role of local government is less extensive, the study of how local conditions shape policy further supports the value that federalism can provide in developing public policy which suits local circumstances. This panel provides an opportunity for scholars to discuss the policy innovation success stories, to learn from what was done well (or less well) across different federations and jurisdictions and to contribute to the discussion on how innovation and public policy experimentation can be further developed.

Trust lies at the heart of contemporary debates regarding governance and democracy (Rothstein, 2005; van Deth et al., 2007; Cook, 2001). Key debates focus on whether the level of trust in democracy is rising or falling over time, the extent to which citizen trust is a prerequisite for good democratic government and more fundamentally how trust can be conceptualised (Fisher et al., 2010; van Deth et al., 1991). Problems of democratic deficit, of the misfit between politics and policy, of political corruption apparently undermine trust in politicians and underpin the emergence in most EU polities of forms of national Populist Party responses (Schmidt, 2006). A recent study by the Herbert Quandt Stiftung foundation (2013) indicates that, while the public has confidence in democracy as a concept, many do not trust government and the way democracy is currently being implemented. Transparency, defined by Grimmelikhuijsen & Welch in terms of ‘the availability of information about an organisation or actor that allows external actors to monitor the internal workings of performance of that organisation’, is sometimes offered as a remedy to tackle the problems that ostensibly produce such distrust, but understandings of transparency are deeply ambivalent (Cole, 1999). The panel is intended both to further reflection on a major new project funded by the UK (ESRC) and French (ANR) funding agencies, and to invite general communications on theoretical, empirical and methodological dimensions of trust, transparency, trust profiles and trust-transparency matrices. The trust profile is conceptualised as a mainly heuristic tool to capture macro- and meso level receptions of trust and mistrust, mainly via quantitative survey evidence at the national and European levels (ESS, EVA, Eurobarometer, Transparency international). The trust-transparency matrix is intended to capture the trade-off within policy communities between trusting relationships and formal mechanisms of transparency. Is trust a prerequisite for enhanced transparency? Does transparency produce (mis) trust? Is transparency simply a policy instrument designed to disrupt the operation of the ‘private governments’ that, following regime theory, govern cities and regions? As a starting point, our case selection rests in part upon a most different logic, based on distinctive positions on the trust-transparency matrix. The UK is presented as being high on transparency, low on trust; France is traditionally lower on transparency, but higher on trust (within policy communities, if not public opinipon); Germany occupies a median position in relation to territory, transparency and trust. Beyond the specific project, the panel is designed to explore more generic questions germane to the functioning of multi-layered democracies. Are certain types of democratic polity/national systems of multi-level governance better equipped to retain trust than others? Are trusting relationships related to national systems of multi-level governance, and the emphasis they place on the scale of governance or the proximity of decision-making? Does Europeanisation engender more distant relationships across the policy spectrum? Or are these sentiments played out differentially according to the field of policy intervention. Thus framed, the panel engages with broad questions of public policy, democracy and post-sovereignty.

Mass media can influence health policy in myriad ways, through influencing the political agenda (e.g. McCombs and Shaw 1972; Sato 2003), framing particular health issues for public and policy consumption (e.g. Entman, 1993; Feeley & Vincent 2009; Hawkins & Linvill 2010) and shaping public preferences for particular policy options (e.g. Dixon et al. 2014; Son and Weaver 2000). Therefore, we cannot fully understand the policy-making process, or the policy implementation environment, without understanding the role of mass media in it. The purpose of this panel is to contribute to our understanding of how mass media (including social media) can impact public health policy communication, creation and successful implementation.

The accelerated universalization process of new information and communication technologies and, more recently, of social media has altered, definitely, social and political relations in all of their moments -- from the public debate to the private sphere. Several studies are trying to measure the impact of this phenomenon in politics and in social collectives; or the capacity of organization of social groups from many kinds. Researches enlighten, by this reflection, the influence of social media on a "macro" level (politics, network societies, social mobilization) and on a "micro" level as well (intersubjective relations). However, there is not a wide exploration of the transformations provoked by social media in processes of an "intermediary" level, such as public policies conceived to intervene, swiftly, on the distribution of resources in a society. If the proliferation of "voices" and platforms to the public speech is a consolidated reality, even in developing countries, the same cannot be said about the "influence" exerted by social media over all the public policies cycle, since the initial sketch of the action, its application analysis and posterior evaluation. But, more than exerting influence, social media open an entirely new field of possibilities to officials in charge of public policies, who can acquire means to optimize the process from the beginning through the conclusion, reducing drastically the length of policy feedback and allowing an improvement of government actions and the accurate measurement of its impact on society's perception. The panel “From voice to influence: how social media help shape public policy?” has, therefore, the purpose of discussing the impact and the possibilities opened by social media on public policies over all stages of its cycle -- encompassing the development of the policy, based on data and information collected on social networks, until the evaluation about the perception of the sectors affected by the policy on near-real time, contemplating, as well, the improvement methods that could be embraced by public officials. This panel intents to contribute for the consolidation of the debate about the place of internet and social media on the academic field related to public policies, giving the necessary emphasis to the transformations whose impacts tend to grow, very fast, in a nearby future, changing in a decisive way the public administration and the modern State's governance.

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Public policies are usually discussed one by one, but they can be more effective if they are coordinated with other policies. That may be obvious to the analyst, but it is often extremely to achieve in practice. This course will discuss the reasons for promoting greater coordination, the barriers to that coordination, and the mechanisms for achieving more effective governance through policy coordination. We will also discuss the importance of specialization and the limits to coordination.

This workshop will be a kind of collective discussion about how policy instruments are chosen and how their effects are really drivers of policy change. The focus will be on the real content of policy design in terms of set of adopted instruments confronted with the different theories of policy (and institutional) change. Thus the main questions to be debated will be: what really is an incremental/radical change in terms of instruments choice? Is Layering really a mode of weak/incremental change? Does the real effects of policy change depends either on the consistency and coherence of policy instruments adopted or on other factors like context, chance, political will? Hopefully, young scholars working in different policy fields are expected to attend towards having a broad empirical landscape to support the theoretical discussion.

This course is proposed by Philippe Zittoun based on his book. The main idea is to learn and to discuss how to grasp the political dimension of the policy process through the observation of the definition struggles of the problem but also of the solution with a specific attention to the building of coalition, the powerfull dimension and the different tests that the solution met during its career. Why some solution arrive to emerge on the decision making process and why some solution fails? At what condition and at what price a solution emerged on the solution agenda and how some actors arrived to domesticate some wicked problem?

This Pre-conference course will examine the rise policy analysis as an applied empirical discipline, focusing on its strengths and weaknesses. The discussion will then turn to the "argumentative turn" and deliberative policy analysis as an alternative approach designed to address specific weaknesses and limitations that have plagued the conventional empirical orientation. The key theme guiding this exploration will be the search for a socially relevant form of "usable policy knowledge." The course will conclude by looking for ways to integrate the two perspectives in a more comprehensive policy-analytic framework.