Adding Value to Policy Analysis and Advice

Adding Value to Policy Analysis and Advice

Author: Claudia Scott

Publisher: UNSW Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 086840859X

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High-quality policy analysis and advice is crucial for governments as they wrestle with complex and intractable issues that they can neither manage nor solve on their own. This book explores ways of adding value to policy analysis and advice in Australia and New Zealand, drawing on contributions from individuals and organisations both inside and outside the formal policymaking system. The authors critique and expand upon the available models, methods and approaches to policy analysis and advising, and propose a systems perspective and a crafting approach to policy design. They examine strategies for improving the quality, capability and performance of the policy advisory system, and the complementary roles of advisers, analysts, managers and others.


Policy Analysis in Australia

Policy Analysis in Australia

Author: Head, Brian

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2018-03-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1447347498

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Policy Analysis in Australia offers a distinctly Australian interpretation of policy scholarship with eighteen chapters strongly reflecting the outstanding contributions of Australian scholars to the field of public policy. It provides a coherent overview of the strengths and opportunities for policy analysis in Australia. It recognises that government agencies are no longer regarded as the sole source of sound policy analysis, and takes a broad view of policy analysis capacity, both within institutions at all levels of government, and beyond government in the media, political parties, business, and non-government associations. It provides a valuable contribution to Australian scholarship about policy analysis in academic, professional, teaching and learning contexts, and is a key addition to research and teaching in comparative policy analysis and policy studies more generally.


The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy

The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy

Author: GLENN C. SAVAGE

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780367691318

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This book seeks to critically examine the impacts of 'grand designs' in public policy through a detailed historical analysis of Australian schooling reforms since the 'education revolution' agenda was introduced by the federal government in the late 2000s. Combining policy analyses and interviews with senior policy makers and ministerial advisors centrally involved in the reforms, it offers a detailed interpretive analysis of the complexities of policy evolution and assemblage. The book argues that the education revolution sought to impose a new order on Australian schooling by aligning state and territory systems to common policies and processes in areas including curriculum, assessment, funding, reporting and teaching. Using a theory and critique of 'alignment thinking' in public policy, Savage shows how the education revolution and subsequent reforms have been underpinned by uncritical faith in the power of nationally aligned data, evidence and standards to improve policies and unite systems around practices 'proven to work'. The result is a new national policy assemblage that has deeply reshaped the making and doing of schooling policy in the nation, generating complex questions about who is steering the ship of education into the future. The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy is a must read for education policy researchers, policy makers, education ministers and school leaders, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in the complex power dynamics that underpin schooling reforms.


Poststructural Policy Analysis

Poststructural Policy Analysis

Author: Carol Bacchi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-10-24

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1137525460

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This book offers a novel, refreshing and politically engaged way to think about public policy. Instead of treating policy as simply the government’s best efforts to address problems, it offers a way to question critically how policies produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems, with important political implications. Governing, it is argued, takes place through these problematizations. According to the authors, interrogating policies and policy proposals as problematizations involves asking questions about the assumptions they rely upon, how they have been made, what their effects are, as well as how they could be unmade. To enable this form of critical analysis, this book introduces an analytic strategy, the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach. It features examples of applications of the approach with topics as diverse as obesity, economic policy, migration, drug and alcohol policy, and gender equality to illustrate the growing popularity of this way of thinking and to provide clear and useful examples of poststructural policy analysis in practice.


Australia

Australia

Author: Marian Sawer

Publisher: Federation Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9781862877252

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On many criteria, Australia has been a pioneering democracy. As one of the oldest continuing democracies, however, a health check has long been overdue. Since 2002 the Democratic Audit of Australia, a major democracy assessment project, has been applying an internationally tested set of indicators to Australian political institutions and practices.The indicators derive from four basic principles--political equality, popular control of government, civil liberties and human rights and the quality of public deliberation. Comparative data are taken from Australia's nine jurisdictions, as well as from three comparator democracies, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for reform.Some of the findings are disturbing. For example, Australia has fallen well behind in the regulation of private money in elections and in controlling the use of government or parliamentary resources for partisan benefit. Transparency and accountability have suffered from relatively weak FOI regimes and from executive dominance of parliaments.For those studying democracy or wanting to reform Australian politics, The State of Democracy provides a wealth of evidence in a well-illustrated and highly accessible format. Internationally, it is an important contribution to the democracy assessment literature and pushes into new areas such as the intergovernmental decision-making of federalism.


Public Policy Analysis

Public Policy Analysis

Author: Peter Knoepfel

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1847429041

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This is an English version of a text on public policy analysis originally written for practitioners in Switzerland and France. It presents a model for the analysis of public policy and includes examples of its application in everyday situations. This English version introduces supplementary illustrations and examples from the United Kingdom.


Successful Public Policy

Successful Public Policy

Author: Joannah Luetjens

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 551

ISBN-13: 1760462799

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In Australia and New Zealand, many public projects, programs and services perform well. But these cases are consistently underexposed and understudied. We cannot properly ‘see’—let alone recognise and explain—variations in government performance when media, political and academic discourses are saturated with accounts of their shortcomings and failures, but are next to silent on their achievements. Successful Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand helps to turn that tide. It aims to reset the agenda for teaching, research and dialogue on public policy performance. This is done through a series of close-up, in-depth and carefully chosen case study accounts of the genesis and evolution of stand-out public policy achievements, across a range of sectors within Australia and New Zealand. Through these accounts, written by experts from both countries, we engage with the conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges that have plagued extant research seeking to evaluate, explain and design successful public policy. Studies of public policy successes are rare—not just in Australia and New Zealand, but the world over. This book is embedded in a broader project exploring policy successes globally; its companion volume, Great Policy Successes (edited by Paul ‘t Hart and Mallory Compton), is published by Oxford University Press (2019).


Australian Public Opinion, Defence and Foreign Policy

Australian Public Opinion, Defence and Foreign Policy

Author: Danielle Chubb

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-28

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 9811573972

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This book examines the impact of Australian public opinion towards defence and foreign policy from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. For most of this period, the public showed little interest in defence and security policy and possessed limited knowledge about the strategic options available. The principal post-war exception to this pattern is, of course, the Vietnam War, when political divisions over Australia’s support for the U.S.-led action eventually resulted in the withdrawal of troops in 1972. The period since 2001 has seen a fundamental change both in the public’s views of defence and foreign affairs, and in how these issues are debated by political elites. This has come about as a result of major changes in the strategic environment such as a heightened public awareness of terrorism, party political divisions over Australia’s military commitment to the 2003-11 Iraq War and the increasing overlap of economic and trade considerations with defence and foreign policies, which has increased the public’s interest in these issues. Combining the expertise of one of Australia's foremost scholars of public opinion with that of an expert of international relations, particularly as pertains to Australia in Asia, this book will be a critical read for those wishing to understand Australia's alliance with the U.S., interactions with Asia and China, and the distinctive challenges posed to Australia by its geographic position.