LIST OF PANELS

Public policy research is mainly driven by approaches that seek to explain phenomena, and to try to establish causal links between factors that may thereafter improve the quality of policies, hence having an impact in our environment. However, in order to establish causal links, elaborate hypotheses and perform analysis, it is of utmost importance to have good indicators of the concepts and variables that we use. Measurement is a core substantive issue in science in general and it is often neglected in public policy research by either using proxies to the central ideas that we aim to capture, or by creating simple indices born from the aggregation of a list of more or less systematically collected data.

The panel is aimed at providing a discussion forum for better development of indicators, scores and variables used in public policy research. In this sense, then, it does not deal with concrete research questions or with specific areas, but aims at being a meta-panel dealing with challenges of measurement that are inherent and specific to public policy research.

The development of indices and scores is generally the result of a previous research necessity to establish some sort of comparisons between units of analysis, being either institutions (ministries, agencies, international organizations, etc...) or polities (countries, subnational entities). But the goal of the panel is not restricted to the comparative empirical perspective of producing more reliable indicators. Instead, it is aimed at establishing a dialogue with the theoretical implications of developing such indicators.

To sum up, the objectives are the following:

- To provide an forum for the discussion of how to advance, as a discipline, in generating better, more accurate measures of the concepts at hand.
- To overcome the challenges of comparative public policy analysis dealing with comparable scores across countries and over time.
- To elaborate systematic ways to link empirical developments on measurement with theoretical back-up and coverage.

Public policy research is mainly driven by approaches that seek to explain phenomena, and to try to establish causal links between factors that may thereafter improve the quality of policies, hence having an impact in our environment. However, in order to establish causal links, elaborate hypotheses and perform analysis, it is of utmost importance to have good indicators of the concepts and variables that we use. Measurement is a core substantive issue in science in general and it is often neglected in public policy research by either using proxies to the central ideas that we aim to capture, or by creating simple indices born from the aggregation of a list of more or less systematically collected data.

The panel is aimed at providing a discussion forum for better development of indicators, scores and variables used in public policy research.

The development of indices and scores is generally the result of a previous research necessity to establish some sort of comparisons between units of analysis, being either institutions (ministries, agencies, international organizations, etc...) or polities (countries, subnational entities). But the goal of the panel is not restricted to the comparative empirical perspective of producing more reliable indicators. Instead, it is aimed at establishing a dialogue with the theoretical implications of developing such indicators.

The panels expects contributions not only from an empirical and comparative point of view about developments of measures for public policy research, but also looks forward to theoretical papers that propose ways to move forward in the understanding of key concepts in public policy research:

- Policy portfolios structure
- Policy diversity
- Policy instruments
- Performance. Development of indicators of policy performance
- Accountability. Theoretical and empirical advances in assessing accountability