Policy and Society最新文献

The divide in the EU green taxonomy: how conflict impacts the quality of policy advisory systems 欧盟绿色分类法的分歧：冲突如何影响政策咨询系统的质量

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-04-17 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puaf007

Edoardo Esposto, Tiziana Nupieri

{"title":"The divide in the EU green taxonomy: how conflict impacts the quality of policy advisory systems","authors":"Edoardo Esposto, Tiziana Nupieri","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf007","url":null,"abstract":"The second wave of research on Policy Advisory Systems (PAS) dynamics has induced scholars to rethink the received knowledge about the insider–outsider and technical–political divides in policy advice, leading to more nuanced descriptions of PAS configurations. The long-term structural change of PAS has been the focus of this research agenda. In contrast, a research gap exists in analyzing the role of disagreement and conflict in shaping the configuration of advisory systems and their interactions with policymakers. We analyze a case of conflict in the policy advisory system supporting the European Commission in defining the EU Green Taxonomy, i.e., the classification of economic activities that underpins the new EU regulation of public and private sustainable investments. The dynamic effect of conflict is particularly evident in the case of the EU Green Taxonomy, where opposing values and interests have shaped the advisory process, raising questions about how policymakers navigate and utilize contested advice. Our findings contribute to understanding the relationship between pluralistic and conflictual advisory systems and government management of PAS.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"74 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143841242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Environmental impact assessments as a mechanism of regulatory intermediation: the case of Israeli wind energy 环境影响评价作为管制中介机制：以色列风能案例

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-04-12 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puaf006

Avri Eitan, David Levi-Faur

{"title":"Environmental impact assessments as a mechanism of regulatory intermediation: the case of Israeli wind energy","authors":"Avri Eitan, David Levi-Faur","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf006","url":null,"abstract":"The environmental impacts of infrastructure projects are widely assessed through a procedure known as environmental impact assessments (EIAs). In many regulatory systems, EIAs are carried out by third-party intermediaries. However, their roles and effectiveness within public policy and regulatory governance remain understudied. This study addresses this gap by examining 24 wind energy projects deliberated in Israeli planning committees between 2003 and 2024. Specifically, we ask: (1) What intermediary roles do EIAs and those responsible for their implementation play? (2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of EIAs as an intermediation mechanism? (3) How do these strengths and weaknesses shape their effectiveness? Our analysis identifies five key intermediary roles: two formal roles, which are legally defined—providing advisory services and facilitating enforcement and compliance—and three informal roles, which extend beyond strict regulatory mandates—interpretation, dialogue facilitation, and advocacy. The formal roles ensure compliance with regulatory guidelines and advance environmental expertise, thereby meeting regulatory requirements and contributing to high procedural effectiveness. However, challenges persist, particularly regarding informal roles, which are often influenced by intermediaries’ alignment with developers’ interests. These challenges contribute to relatively low substantive effectiveness, as planning committees frequently find EIAs insufficient for informed decision-making, leading them to seek external consultants for validation. The gap between EIAs meeting regulatory requirements and planning committees’ inability to fully rely on them highlights weaknesses in EIA governance as a mechanism of regulatory intermediation. We argue that formalizing informal intermediary roles with clearer guidelines could improve EIA effectiveness, enhance objectivity, and strengthen decision-making in the EIA framework.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143824876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Deep core advocacy coalitions 深层核心倡导联盟

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-03-04 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puaf003

Christopher M Weible, Anna M Crawford, Allegra H Fullerton, Kayla M Gabehart, Katherine E Imhoff, Giulia Mariani

引用次数: 0

Governance of Generative AI 生成式人工智能的治理

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-02-03 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puaf001

Araz Taeihagh

{"title":"Governance of Generative AI","authors":"Araz Taeihagh","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf001","url":null,"abstract":"The rapid and widespread diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has unlocked new capabilities and changed how content and services are created, shared, and consumed. This special issue builds on the 2021 Policy and Society special issue on the governance of AI by focusing on the legal, organizational, political, regulatory, and social challenges of governing generative AI. This introductory article lays the foundation for understanding generative AI and underscores its key risks, including hallucination, jailbreaking, data training and validation issues, sensitive information leakage, opacity, control challenges, and design and implementation risks. It then examines the governance challenges of generative AI, such as data governance, intellectual property concerns, bias amplification, privacy violations, misinformation, fraud, societal impacts, power imbalances, limited public engagement, public sector challenges, and the need for international cooperation. The article then highlights a comprehensive framework to govern generative AI, emphasizing the need for adaptive, participatory, and proactive approaches. The articles in this special issue stress the urgency of developing innovative and inclusive approaches to ensure that generative AI development is aligned with societal values. They explore the need for adaptation of data governance and intellectual property laws, propose a complexity-based approach for responsible governance, analyze how the dominance of Big Tech is exacerbated by generative AI developments and how this affects policy processes, highlight the shortcomings of technocratic governance and the need for broader stakeholder participation, propose new regulatory frameworks informed by AI safety research and learning from other industries, and highlight the societal impacts of generative AI.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143084081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

From benign to malign: unintended consequences and the growth of Zombie policies 从良性到恶性：意想不到的后果和僵尸政策的增长

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-01-21 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puae039

B. Guy Peters, Maximilian L Nagel

{"title":"From benign to malign: unintended consequences and the growth of Zombie policies","authors":"B. Guy Peters, Maximilian L Nagel","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puae039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae039","url":null,"abstract":"Few policymakers initiate policies that they know are malign, and are contrary to the public interest. Well-intentioned policies may, however, have unintended consequences that over time do make them, at least in part, malign. These policies may continue to produce some positive results for society, but they may also have significant negative consequences. Further, given that the malign nature of the policy tends to benefit powerful political and economic interests, once the malign aspects of the policy begin to manifest themselves, they tend to persist. This paper will use four mini-cases to understand better the transition from benign to malign policies. Two of the cases come from the United States and two come from Germany. Two cases will be in health policy, one in infrastructure, and one in crisis management policies. In all four cases policies that have over time began to demonstrate negative features continue to be implemented because of the benefits that they create for some interests in society–interests other than the original targets of the programs. In addition to the emerging literature on malign policies, this paper will have relevance for the large literature on unintended consequences (beginning with Merton in 1936), as well as the literature on Zombie ideas and failed policy ideas.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Policy knowledge production in de-democratizing contexts 非民主化背景下的政策知识生产

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-01-21 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puae037

Andrea Krizsán, Katarzyna Jezierska, Adrienne Sörbom

{"title":"Policy knowledge production in de-democratizing contexts","authors":"Andrea Krizsán, Katarzyna Jezierska, Adrienne Sörbom","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puae037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae037","url":null,"abstract":"In an era of post-truth, the legitimacy of policy knowledge is questioned, especially in de-democratizing contexts where governments purposefully engage in post-truth politics to support their regimes. In such contexts, technocratic evidence-based policymaking is undermined, and the role played by policy advice changes. Recognizing the significance of political contextual factors that might differ across de-democratizing contexts, we analyzed how changes in policymaking and public administration in de-democratization contexts impact policy advice, focusing on think tanks in two de-democratizing countries of the European Union: Hungary and Poland. We identify four aspects of policymaking that are particularly consequential for the role of think tanks and the knowledge they produce in policymaking processes: questioning and politicizing expertise, centralizing policymaking, politicizing public administration, and dismantling accountability mechanisms. We argue that changes in policymaking along these four aspects are conducive to a controlled policy advice system, favoring short-term policy advice aligned with government ideology, while marginalizing and excluding the actors and knowledge that do not align. Our research, along with other literature on knowledge regimes in consolidated autocracies, suggests that control in these European Union–based contexts is not complete, and the think tank field continues to be characterized by diversity, particularly contestation and polarization between those who are aligned with the regime and those who oppose it. We substantiate our claims using an original interview dataset on think tanks in Hungary and Poland.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Responsible governance of generative AI: conceptualizing GenAI as complex adaptive systems 生成式人工智能的负责任治理：将GenAI概念化为复杂的自适应系统

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-01-21 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puae040

Marijn Janssen

{"title":"Responsible governance of generative AI: conceptualizing GenAI as complex adaptive systems","authors":"Marijn Janssen","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puae040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae040","url":null,"abstract":"Organizations increasingly use Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create strategic documents, legislation, and recommendations to support decision-making. Many current AI initiatives are technology-deterministic, whereas technology co-evolves with the social environment, resulting in new applications and situations. This paper presents a novel view of AI governance by organizations from the perspective of complex adaptive systems (CASs). AI is conceptualized as a socio-technological and adaptive system in which people, policies, systems, data, AI, processes, and other elements co-evolve. The CAS lens draws attention to focusing AI governance on the entire organization, taking an outward perspective and considering public values and societal concerns. Although there is no shortage of AI governance instruments, they differ in their effectiveness, and combinations of appropriate mechanisms should be selected to deal with AI’s evolving nature and complexity. A major challenge is that no responsibility, and therefore accountability, is taken due to the lack of understanding of the full socio-technological CAS. As such, joint accountability is needed in which involved parties work together.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143020403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Steering the future: expert knowledge and stakeholder voices in autonomous vehicle policy reports 引导未来：自动驾驶汽车政策报告中的专家知识和利益相关者的声音

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-01-11 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puae041

Diana Hicks, Gordon Kingsley, Kimberley R Isett

{"title":"Steering the future: expert knowledge and stakeholder voices in autonomous vehicle policy reports","authors":"Diana Hicks, Gordon Kingsley, Kimberley R Isett","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puae041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae041","url":null,"abstract":"The anticipated arrival of autonomous vehicles has created considerable uncertainty for US states because they govern roads. In response, states activated their policy advisory systems. While policy advising at the national level has been studied, less is known about the sub-national level. Similarly, more is known about the use of scientific knowledge by policymakers than about the full range of knowledge deployed in policy advising. This study analyzes reports written for states to help them make sense of an emerging technology in preparation for governance. Committees, university researchers, staff at Department of Transportation, and legislative staff produced different types of reports, for example, more and less academic, focused more or less on topics associated with governance or engineering. Our analysis reveals that state policy advisory systems used two types of processes—convening and expert—and employed three types of expertise—academic, practical, and political—to help prepare to govern this emerging technology. The study provides insight into how states mobilized expertise to address uncertainty around an emerging technology, showing how different actors balanced the need for credible technical knowledge with legitimate stakeholder engagement.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142962797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Collaborative governance in politicized times: the battle over asylum policies in Italian cities 政治化时代的合作治理：意大利城市庇护政策之争

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2025-01-07 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puae038

Raffaele Bazurli, Francesca Campomori

{"title":"Collaborative governance in politicized times: the battle over asylum policies in Italian cities","authors":"Raffaele Bazurli, Francesca Campomori","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puae038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae038","url":null,"abstract":"Collaborative governance has gained momentum for its promise to deliver social inclusion, with municipalities viewed as ideal spaces for its success. However, little research critically examines the political conditions under which this is the case. This article theorizes why and how collaborative local governance succeeds or fails in today’s divided democracies. It argues that politicization manifests in three dimensions of local governance—among stakeholders, across government levels, and in the framing of policy target groups. These dynamics often incentivize the exclusion of marginalized populations. For collaboration to succeed, it must be anchored in an ideologically cohesive network of stakeholders, with civil society organizations acting as political advocates for disadvantaged groups. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2018–2022, we compare asylum policies in two Italian cities: Bologna and Venice. Despite rising far-right politics nationally, Bologna’s collaborative governance persisted thanks to the sustained commitment of local officials and civil society actors, all sharing ideological and strategic motivations in promoting refugee rights. In contrast, anti-migrant politics has increasingly informed the policy agenda of Venice elected officials. The politicization of immigration offered them powerful incentives to wipe out long-established collaborations and to frame refugees as undeserving policy targets, leading to their exclusion from public services. These findings extend to other geographical contexts and policy sectors, calling for a more political understanding of collaborative local governance.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142936166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A matter of culture? Conceptualizing and investigating “Evidence Cultures” within research on evidence-informed policymaking 文化问题？在循证决策研究中，对“证据文化”进行概念化和调查

IF 9.3 1区社会学

Policy and Society Pub Date : 2024-11-25 DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puae036

Justyna Bandola-Gill, Niklas A Andersen, Rhodri Leng, Valérie Pattyn, Katherine E Smith

引用次数: 0