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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

7 'Pc' Ways To Make People-Centric Policies, David Chan Dec 2015

7 'Pc' Ways To Make People-Centric Policies, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

If asked to describe 2015 for Singapore, I would summarise it as "a people-centric year". For just about everyone - politicians, civil servants, community leaders, academics, journalists, social activists or the public itself - the attention was centred on issues that matter to the people. It may seem obvious that being people-centric should characterise how Singapore goes about things. But when people-centricity is driven by populist concerns or political correctness, the outcomes can be self-defeating at best and disastrous at worst. It is important that individuals, communities and the Government, who adopt the ideal of being people-centric, know what it …


Moocs And Crowdsourcing: Massive Courses And Massive Resources, John Prpić, James Melton, Araz Taeihagh, Terry Anderson Dec 2015

Moocs And Crowdsourcing: Massive Courses And Massive Resources, John Prpić, James Melton, Araz Taeihagh, Terry Anderson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Premised upon the observation that MOOC and crowdsourcing phenomena share several important characteristics, including IT mediation, large-scale human participation, and varying levels of openness to participants, this work systematizes a comparison of MOOC and crowdsourcing phenomena along these salient dimensions. In doing so, we learn that both domains share further common traits, including similarities in IT structures, knowledge generating capabilities, presence of intermediary service providers, and techniques designed to attract and maintain participant activity. Stemming directly from this analysis, we discuss new directions for future research in both fields and draw out actionable implications for practitioners and researchers in both …


An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett Sep 2015

An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Does Asia have a distinct policy style? If so, what does it look like, and why does it take the shape it does? This article argues that in the newly reinvigorated emphasis of policy studies on policy instruments and their design lies the basis of an analysis of a dominant policy style in the Asian region, with significant implications for understanding the roles played by specific kinds of policy capacities. There is a distinctly Asian policy style based on a specific pattern of policy capacities and governance modes. In this style, a failure to garner initial policy legitimacy in the …


An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett Sep 2015

An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Does Asia have a distinct policy style? If so, what does it look like, and why does it take the shape it does? This article argues that in the newly reinvigorated emphasis of policy studies on policy instruments and their design lies the basis of an analysis of a dominant policy style in the Asian region, with significant implications for understanding the roles played by specific kinds of policy capacities. There is a distinctly Asian policy style based on a specific pattern of policy capacities and governance modes. In this style, a failure to garner initial policy legitimacy in the …


The Fundamentals Of Policy Crowdsourcing, John Prpic, Araz Taeihagh, James Melton Sep 2015

The Fundamentals Of Policy Crowdsourcing, John Prpic, Araz Taeihagh, James Melton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative trade-offs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research …


Who Is A Stream? Epistemic Communities, Instrument Constituencies And Advocacy Coalitions In Public Policy-Making, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett Aug 2015

Who Is A Stream? Epistemic Communities, Instrument Constituencies And Advocacy Coalitions In Public Policy-Making, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

John Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was articulated in order to better understand how issues entered onto policy agendas, using the concept of policy actors interacting over the course of sequences of events in what he referred to as the "problem", "policy" and "politics" "streams". However, it is not a priori certain who the agents are in this process and how they interact with each other. As was common at the time, in his study Kingdon used an undifferentiated concept of a ``policy subsystem{''} to group together and capture the activities of various policy actors involved in this process. However, …


The Eu's Evolving Response To Nuclear Proliferation Crises: From Incentives To Sanctions, Clara Portela Jul 2015

The Eu's Evolving Response To Nuclear Proliferation Crises: From Incentives To Sanctions, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The European Union (EU) has evolved a role in the management of crises provoked by states perceived to be in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. At the outset of these non-proliferation efforts, the EU was criticized for the timidity of its reactions. More than 11 years after the adoption in 2003 of its Strategy against the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, has the EU managed to improve its performance in responding to nuclear proliferation crises? This policy brief examines how the EU has used the tools in its foreign policy toolbox to address nuclear proliferation crises and discovers …


Eu Sanctions In Context: Three Types, Thomas Biersteker, Clara Portela Jul 2015

Eu Sanctions In Context: Three Types, Thomas Biersteker, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

All international sanctions are embedded in larger contexts of overlapping policy instruments and other sanctions regimes. Yet we tend to look at sanctions and evaluate their effectiveness from the vantage point of a single sender of sanctions – whether it is the UN, the EU, or an individual country like the United States – rather than consider the combined and interactive effects of different, co-existing sanctions regimes. EU sanctions tend to be imposed in conjunction with measures by other actors: their interplay deserves closer analysis in terms of sequencing, objectives, complexity and legitimacy. The latter is particularly important, given recent …


Pockets Of Participation: Bureaucratic Incentives And Participatory Irrigation Management In Thailand, Jacob Ricks Jun 2015

Pockets Of Participation: Bureaucratic Incentives And Participatory Irrigation Management In Thailand, Jacob Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite a history of participatory policies, Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department (RID) has had little success in developing water user organisations (WUOs) capable of facilitating cooperation between farmers and the irrigation agency. Even so, pockets of participation exist. What can explain these rare successes? What policy lessons can they provide? Comparing nine WUOs, I identify factors that contribute to the emergence of relatively successful groups. Most importantly, I show that successful WUOs are contingent on the actions of local irrigation officials. These findings emphasise the important role of street-level bureaucrats in implementing participatory policies. The incentive structures provided by the RID, …


Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito Apr 2015

Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the 1990s, the so-called 'history problem' began to escalate in East Asia as the result of mutually reinforcing nationalist commemorations in Japan, South Korea and China. In response, historians from the three countries organized joint historical research and textbook projects. In this article, I examine the extent to which these joint projects succeeded in promoting the cosmopolitan logic of historiography that challenged nationalist commemorations. Specifically, I compare governmental and non-governmental projects and illustrate structural and dispositional mechanisms that facilitated the cosmopolitan logic of historiography. However, at the same time, I show that the joint projects have had only a …


From Tools To Toolkits In Policy Design Studies: The New Design Orientation Towards Policy Formulation Research, Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee, Jun Jie Woo Apr 2015

From Tools To Toolkits In Policy Design Studies: The New Design Orientation Towards Policy Formulation Research, Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee, Jun Jie Woo

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A roadmap for `new policy design' studies now exists in the orientation which has emerged in recent years towards the formulation of complex policy mixes.The new design orientation focuses on bundles or portfolios of tools and the interactive effects which occur when multiple tools are used over time in policy packages designed to address multiple goals, and upon more complex multi-policy and multi-level design contexts.This review article examines the differences between the `old' instrument orientation and the `new' design one, setting out the current research agenda in this field and its rationale.


Decentralization And Collaborative Disaster Governance, Yooil Bae, Yu-Min Joo, Soh-Yeon Won Mar 2015

Decentralization And Collaborative Disaster Governance, Yooil Bae, Yu-Min Joo, Soh-Yeon Won

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Decentralized disaster governance has been gaining much attention with the rising global urbanization rate and the complex nature of the disasters occurring in densely urbanized areas today. This paper studies the case of South Korea, a highly urbanized country with relatively recent decentralization reforms, in order to analyze the evolution of its disaster management system and to draw out implications from its experience. Specifically, it traces the national-level institutional changes in its disaster management, and then closely examines a hydrofluoric gas leakage in the industrial city of Gumi. The finding is that South Korea simultaneously carried out both centralization and …


Norms And Military Interventions, Guest Post By Jacob I. Ricks, Jacob Ricks Feb 2015

Norms And Military Interventions, Guest Post By Jacob I. Ricks, Jacob Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

On 10 February 2015, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, with his usual candor, told reporters that “Thailand is different from other countries. If something cannot be solved [by the government], the military will solve it.”[1] This statement embodies a number of assumptions, but perhaps most important for Thailand today is the idea that military intervention is a perfectly legitimate method of overcoming political challenges.


Moderating Role Of Social Support In The Stressor-Satisfaction Relationship: Evidence From Police Officers In Korea, Seulki Lee, Taesik Yun, Soo-Young Lee Feb 2015

Moderating Role Of Social Support In The Stressor-Satisfaction Relationship: Evidence From Police Officers In Korea, Seulki Lee, Taesik Yun, Soo-Young Lee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between job stress and job satisfaction, and analyze the effect of social support on this relationship. In particular, this study analyzes the effects of three types of job stress – role overload, role ambiguity and bad physical environment – and two sources of social support – supervisor and coworker support. Regression analysis was performed using data from a survey of 619 police officers in Korea. The findings from the analysis are as follows. First, role ambiguity and bad physical environment are negatively related to job satisfaction. Second, social support …


The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito Jan 2015

The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper critically revisits the A-bomb victims' plea for cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. To this end, I first elaborate the nature of cosmopolitan commemoration espoused by A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in comparison with another form of cosmopolitan commemoration pertaining to the Holocaust victims. I then analyze limitations in these cosmopolitan commemorations and explore how they can be transcended. In light of my critical analysis, I argue that genuinely cosmopolitan commemoration, a prerequisite for reconciliation and world peace, will appear on the horizon if the commemorations of the two …