Kris Hartley
Arizona State University, School of Sustainability, Faculty Member
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- Kris Hartley is Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Enterprise at Arizona State University, School of Sustainab... moreKris Hartley is Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Enterprise at Arizona State University, School of Sustainability. He researches global-to-local policy transfer in the application of technology to sustainability transitions, and has published books with Cambridge University Press and Routledge Press. Kris is also a Nonresident Fellow for Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Government Competitiveness at Seoul National University. Kris has previously held academic appointments at Cornell University, University of Melbourne, and Vietnam National University. Kris’s research and consulting projects are connected by the overarching theme of new public policy models for the 21st century. His 2014 book (Routledge) addresses administrative reform and policy adaptation in the context of national competitiveness and global systemic unpredictability. His research has been published in a variety of academic journals including Telecommunications Policy, Geoforum, Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Environmental Development, and City, Culture and Society. Additionally, Kris has pursued an active external engagement agenda, presenting at over 30 academic conferences, giving numerous broadcast interviews and invited lectures, and publishing over 100 commentaries in press venues including CNN International, China Daily, Huffington Post, and The Straits Times. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore and a Master of City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. More information at: http://www.krishartley.comedit
A survey of Hong Kong residents finds that public support for government technology, as understood through the concept of smart cities, is associated with concept-awareness and official communications. The statistical analysis identifies... more
A survey of Hong Kong residents finds that public support for government technology, as understood through the concept of smart cities, is associated with concept-awareness and official communications. The statistical analysis identifies moderating effects attributable to personal social media use and controls for personal ideological views about scope of government intervention and perceived political legitimacy of smart city policies. The study builds on a growing body of empirical scholarship about public support for government technology, while also addressing a practical trend in urban governance: the growing sophistication of technologies like artificial intelligence and their use in strengthening government capacities. The Hong Kong case exemplifies ambitious investments in technology by governments and, at the time of the survey, relatively high freedom of political expression. The study's findings help refine theories about state-society relations in the rapidly evolving context of technology for public sector use. Policy Significance Statement This study offers empirical evidence about factors that influence the political legitimacy of government technology, including the effect of concept-awareness and public communication. Findings imply that message credibility and comprehension are instrumental in crafting policy narratives and that participatory co-construction of these narratives can strengthen the political legitimacy of government technology.
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Economic growth and population migration have driven urban sprawl in the American Sunbelt for decades. Some cities have been particularly effective in parlaying windfall growth into visibility and unique urban identities. The ‘it’ status... more
Economic growth and population migration have driven urban sprawl in the American Sunbelt for decades. Some cities have been particularly effective in parlaying windfall growth into visibility and unique urban identities. The ‘it’ status that attracts national curiosity rests on a balance of growth, livability, and edginess – traits that cannot be engineered or purchased alone. Post-Covid economic recovery is an opportunity for cities to revitalize their urban cores in manifold ways, even amidst growing turbulence and uncertainty. This article examines these shifting dynamics and considers whether a modestly sized heartland American city – Waco, Texas – is poised to achieve transformational change in its urban core.
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This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s birth. It is also one year since Yunchan Lim became the youngest pianist ever to win the gold medal in the sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano... more
This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s birth. It is also one year since Yunchan Lim became the youngest pianist ever to win the gold medal in the sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held once every four years. Lim’s acclaimed performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop, clinched his victory and was by all accounts a rare moment.
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As sites of economic, political, and social convergence, cities absorb the earliest effects of global crises. These dynamics are observable also in environmental crises and resiliencelonger-running challenges to legacy models of urban... more
As sites of economic, political, and social convergence, cities absorb the earliest effects of global crises. These dynamics are observable also in environmental crises and resiliencelonger-running challenges to legacy models of urban governance. Shifting epistemic and practical contexts invite scholarship to more thoroughly examine the dynamics of urban policy with regard to the 'localization' of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the contribution of city governments to global environmental policy. This chapter examines urban sustainability as an ontologically complex or 'wicked' policy problem, a framing concept with a history in the urban planning and policy literatures but deserving fresh revisitation. The argument is that a 'complexity science' approach that avoids narrative capture is needed to better understand global environmental crisis and its manifestation in cities. This approach seeks to challenge the predominance of linear, atomistic, and reductionist perspectives that remain embedded in policy thinking.
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Emerging in scholarly discussions about political discourse over the past decade, the terms 'post-truth' and 'denialism' refer to disagreement not on public policy strategies but on the nature of truth itself. Policy facts are now... more
Emerging in scholarly discussions about political discourse over the past decade, the terms 'post-truth' and 'denialism' refer to disagreement not on public policy strategies but on the nature of truth itself. Policy facts are now contested in ways that disrupt mainstream political narratives and weaken institutional legitimacy. In turn, the technocratic response of doublingdown on facts is faltering as the 'burn it down' vacuity of post-truth declares equivalent political legitimacy. This strident, self-assured irrationality offers few substantive policy visions, seeking only to bewilder and 'own' its perceived enemies including progressive 'elites,' science experts, and academics trying to understand the phenomenon. This article discusses disruption in the political discourse about fact-informed policy issues, focusing on a looming period of epistemic instability and the futility of using systematic analysis and logic to understand post-truth.
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This report outlines how cities and the private sector can collaborate on and magnify sustainability efforts that enable broad systemic change. Sustainability efforts require not only public policy interventions and resources but also... more
This report outlines how cities and the private sector can collaborate on and magnify sustainability efforts that enable broad systemic change.
Sustainability efforts require not only public policy interventions and resources but also the initiative and innovation of the private sector. These are systematized through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for governments, including at the city level, and through environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles for companies. Bringing these two approaches into alignment is a crucial step for fostering multi-sectoral sustainability effort, but this alignment is largely unrealized.
Among the local-government sustainability documents examined for this report, mentions of corporate activity are minimal and often superficial, primarily addressing the participation of companies in multi-stakeholder discussions about policy issues. In turn, ESG reports center on the decisions and actions of corporations, with public governance referenced largely in the context of regulatory limitations and policy objectives that affect business operations.
Local governments and companies are undertaking sustainability efforts in their own ways. Merging the two through shared focus and strategy can magnify sustainability efforts in ways that enable the broad systemic change needed to avert climate crisis and societal disruption. This report outlines how a more collaborative approach can proceed, first by providing an overview of policy and corporate sustainability efforts and second by detailing examples of both. The report concludes with a discussion about how sustainability narratives can be harmonized between the two sectors.
Sustainability efforts require not only public policy interventions and resources but also the initiative and innovation of the private sector. These are systematized through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for governments, including at the city level, and through environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles for companies. Bringing these two approaches into alignment is a crucial step for fostering multi-sectoral sustainability effort, but this alignment is largely unrealized.
Among the local-government sustainability documents examined for this report, mentions of corporate activity are minimal and often superficial, primarily addressing the participation of companies in multi-stakeholder discussions about policy issues. In turn, ESG reports center on the decisions and actions of corporations, with public governance referenced largely in the context of regulatory limitations and policy objectives that affect business operations.
Local governments and companies are undertaking sustainability efforts in their own ways. Merging the two through shared focus and strategy can magnify sustainability efforts in ways that enable the broad systemic change needed to avert climate crisis and societal disruption. This report outlines how a more collaborative approach can proceed, first by providing an overview of policy and corporate sustainability efforts and second by detailing examples of both. The report concludes with a discussion about how sustainability narratives can be harmonized between the two sectors.
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In the past decade, use of the circular economy (CE) concept by scholars and practitioners has grown steadily. In a 2017 article, Kirchherr et al. found that the CE concept is interpreted and implemented in a variety of ways. While... more
In the past decade, use of the circular economy (CE) concept by scholars and practitioners has grown steadily. In a 2017 article, Kirchherr et al. found that the CE concept is interpreted and implemented in a variety of ways. While multiple interpretations of CE can enrich scholarly perspectives, differentiation and fragmentation can also impede consolidation of the concept. Some scholarship has discussed these trends in context-specific cases, but no large-scale, systematic study has analysed whether such consolidation has taken place across the field. This article fills this gap by analysing 221 recent CE definitions, making several notable findings. First, the concept has seen both consolidation and differentiation in the past five years. Second, definitional trends are emerging that potentially have more meaning for scholarship than for practice. Third, scholars increasingly recommend a fundamental systemic shift to enable CE, particularly within supply chains. Fourth, sustainable development is frequently considered the principal aim of CE, but questions linger about whether CE can mutually support environmental sustainability and economic development. Finally, recent studies argue that CE transition relies on a broad alliance of stakeholders, including producers, consumers, policymakers, and scholars. This study contributes an updated systematic analysis of CE definitions and conceptualizations that serves as an empirical snapshot of current scholarly thinking. It thereby provides a basis for further research on whether conceptual consolidation is needed and how it can be facilitated for practical purposes.
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Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) survey data and government economic data from Vietnam are used to examine the relationship between economic growth and two indicators of governance effectiveness: efficacy at working with central law... more
Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) survey data and government economic data from Vietnam are used to examine the relationship between economic growth and two indicators of governance effectiveness: efficacy at working with central law and creativity in solving business problems. Examining all of Vietnam's 63 provinces over 11 years (2007 to 2017), this study's fixed-effects regression analysis finds a significant association between economic growth and both measures of governance effectiveness, with a stronger magnitude for more industrialised provinces. This finding suggests that efforts to improve governance effectiveness and creativity in less industrialised provinces may fail to have desired economic impacts, pointing to deeper structural constraints. This article concludes by discussing implications for policy content and administrative reform.
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Policy models based on ‘big data’ and other ‘smart’ systems, including those for circular economy (CE) transition, are proliferating as technology enables deeper monitoring and analysis. At the same time, policymaking is occurring in... more
Policy models based on ‘big data’ and other ‘smart’ systems, including those for circular economy (CE) transition, are proliferating as technology enables deeper monitoring and analysis. At the same time, policymaking is occurring in increasingly contentious and politically fragmented settings, particularly as populism foregrounds anti-science and post-truth sentiments. More sophisticated models would appear to improve empirical understandings about policy problems and help resolve associated disputes, but a conclusive policy ‘truth’ remains elusive and politically contestable. This contention highlights the need to understand competing narratives and their influence on model designs and inputs.
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Asia's global rise highlights a host of policy opportunities and challenges. Historically, the region's developmentalist governments were single-minded of purpose, aiming principally for rapid economic growth. As growth... more
Asia's global rise highlights a host of policy opportunities and challenges. Historically, the region's developmentalist governments were single-minded of purpose, aiming principally for rapid economic growth. As growth stabilized and economies matured, a variety of other concernsenvironmental, social, and political, among othersbegan to warrant policy intervention. Public administrators in Asia now operate in a setting of increasing complexity amidst an array of conflicting policy mandates. Accordingly, policy education and training are as crucial to Asia's continued rise as they were in the early stages of emergence decades ago. This article and the special issue it introduces address several key elements characterizing the rise of policy education in Asia, including how policy educational practices have converged and diverged, how they have responded to situational mandates, and how they are now asserting a unique disciplinary identity.
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Evolutionary governance theory (EGT) provides a basis for holistically analyzing the shifting contexts and dynamics of policymaking in settings with functional differentiation and complex subsystems. Policy assemblages, as mixes of policy... more
Evolutionary governance theory (EGT) provides a basis for holistically analyzing the shifting contexts and dynamics of policymaking in settings with functional differentiation and complex subsystems. Policy assemblages, as mixes of policy tools and goals, are an appropriate unit of analysis for EGT because they embody the theory’s emphasis on co-evolving elements within policy systems. In rational practice, policymakers design policies within assemblages by establishing objectives, collecting information, comparing options, strategizing implementation, and selecting instruments. However, as EGT implies, this logical progression does not always materialize so tidily—some policies emerge from carefully considered blueprints while others evolve from muddled processes, laissez faire happenstance, or happy accident. Products of the latter often include loosely steered, unmoored, and ‘non-designed’ path dependencies that confound linear logic and are understudied in the policy literature....
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The chapter discusses the impact of social change on how society views governance quality in the era of complex and interconnected policy problems. This era presents a valuable opportunity to revisit tensions between the deepening... more
The chapter discusses the impact of social change on how society views governance quality in the era of complex and interconnected policy problems. This era presents a valuable opportunity to revisit tensions between the deepening technocratic logic of formal policymaking and the social change implied by and reflected in the rise of alternative policy epistemics. The chapter focuses on the technocratic exercise of smart governance, as embodied by the smart cities concept, in considering the confrontation between late-stage technocracy and an emerging anti-technocratic agitation that manifests itself in the ‘local knowledge’ movement on one hand and in ‘anti-science’ populism on the other. Recognizing a mature literature critical of the hegemonic narrative posture of governance ideas, we explore the epistemic foundations of governance reform movements to more deeply understand a mechanism of narrative power that deserves renewed attention in the ‘smart’ era: instrumental rationalism. Smart governance, from an epistemic perspective, marks a progression in a sequence of ideas serving the long-running project to validate and normalize instrumental rationalism in policymaking. To connect this argument to social change, our approach combines the critical perspective of poststructuralism with the political economy perspective of world-systems theory. We postulate that ‘good’ governance is a vessel into which momentarily salient global norms are loaded, and that each successive iteration (e.g., smart) is considered politically viable only if emerging from existing institutional architecture and bearing the ideational legacy of instrumental rationalism. This process of narrative auto-replication yields seemingly novel ideas that are mere variations on a failed theme. The type of social change that can unseat this epistemic lock-in emerges from a more robust valorization of alternative perspectives, which we conclude this chapter by describing as an epistemic awakening.
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COVID-19 decimated global tourism. As governments and firms strategize the sector’s recovery, insights from the sector’s prepandemic period of high growth offer useful policy lessons. This study examines the drivers of the tourism... more
COVID-19 decimated global tourism. As governments and firms strategize the sector’s recovery, insights from the sector’s prepandemic period of high growth offer useful policy lessons. This study examines the drivers of the tourism sector’s growth and catch-up performance in 13 industrialized economies over the period 2000–2015, using data from the EU-KLEMS database. The findings have three notable policy implications. First, the tourism sector in most countries experienced significant growth. However, value-added growth was driven largely by labor employment expansion while labor productivity declined in most countries. Second, weak investment in non–information and communications technology (ICT) capital and declining total factor productivity are the principal impediments to labor productivity growth. Third, all countries embraced digital transformation but many lagged on innovation and labor quality. These findings are analyzed to identify policy strategies for the tourism sector...
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Abstract The global reach of COVID-19 presents opportunities to compare policy responses to the pandemic and the role of knowledge across political contexts. This article examines the case of Vietnam’s COVID-19 response. Recognized for... more
Abstract The global reach of COVID-19 presents opportunities to compare policy responses to the pandemic and the role of knowledge across political contexts. This article examines the case of Vietnam’s COVID-19 response. Recognized for its early effectiveness, Vietnam exhibits the standard characteristics of unitary states but has also engaged communities, strengthening the legitimacy of and buy-in to response efforts. This article identifies six factors that shaped Vietnam’s response to the pandemic: (i) command-and-control governance, (ii) extensive preparation, (iii) fostering cooperative sentiment and solidarity, (iv) political readiness and communication, (v) policy coordination, and (vi) adaptation. The article contributes to practical discussions about country-specific responses to the pandemic, and to scholarship on policy effectiveness and success within the policy sciences and public management.
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This Element explores the uncertain future of public policy practice and scholarship in an age of radical disruption. Building on foundational ideas in policy sciences, we argue that an anachronistic instrumental rationalism underlies... more
This Element explores the uncertain future of public policy practice and scholarship in an age of radical disruption. Building on foundational ideas in policy sciences, we argue that an anachronistic instrumental rationalism underlies contemporary policy logic and limits efforts to understand new policy challenges. We consider whether the policy sciences framework can be reframed to facilitate deeper understandings of this anachronistic epistemic, in anticipation of a research agenda about epistemic destabilization and contestation. The Element applies this theoretical provocation to environmental policy and sustainability, issues about which policymaking proceeds amid unpredictable contexts and rising sociopolitical turbulence that portend a liminal state in the transition from one way of thinking to another. The Element concludes by contemplating the fate of policy's epistemic instability, anticipating what policy understandings will emerge in a new system, and questioning the...
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This study examines the state and development of public policy education in Thailand, including its dynamics over time, its institutional setting, and emerging forces acting upon it. It focuses on policy educational institutions, policy... more
This study examines the state and development of public policy education in Thailand, including its dynamics over time, its institutional setting, and emerging forces acting upon it. It focuses on policy educational institutions, policy courses offered in universities, and national socio-political contexts that shape the academic profession. Policy education has heavily been developed and taught as a subset of public administration with predetermined specifications. However, it has potential to be an independent field. This study fills a notable research gap, as the topic has been largely neglected in international publications, especially works concerning the internationalization of policy education.
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City diplomacy has a long history and has witnessed a clear sprawl over the last century. Successive “generations” of city diplomacy approaches have emerged over this period, with a heyday of networked urban governance in the last two... more
City diplomacy has a long history and has witnessed a clear sprawl over the last century. Successive “generations” of city diplomacy approaches have emerged over this period, with a heyday of networked urban governance in the last two decades. The covid-19 pandemic crisis presents a key opportunity to contemplate the direction of city diplomacy amid global systemic disruptions, raising questions about the effectiveness of differing diplomatic styles across cities but also the prospect of a new generational shift. This essay traces the history of generations in city diplomacy, examines prospects for novel ways of understanding city diplomacy, and contemplates how the pandemic’s impact heralds not the demise of internationalization in urban governance but an era in which city diplomacy is even more crucial amid fundamental limitations.
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The emergent paradigm of disaster risk reduction (DRR) invites scrutiny with reference to problem definition and epistemics. We argue that DRR is the next manifestation of the long-dominant 'development' paradigm. This... more
The emergent paradigm of disaster risk reduction (DRR) invites scrutiny with reference to problem definition and epistemics. We argue that DRR is the next manifestation of the long-dominant 'development' paradigm. This chapter first interrogates the epistemic foundations of public policy as a practiced and studied discipline, exploring how wicked problems like disaster risk are refracted though the kaleidoscope of socio-political context. We then argue that the flawed assumptions and perspectives of the development narrative are reproduced within DRR by a powerknowledge nexus that fortifies the status-quo while fashioning the image of progress through performative and quasi-participatory mechanisms. We conclude with a recommendation to reframe the epistemics of policymaking around a transmodern approach that sees nuance and fluidity in how problems are conceptualized. The study suggests a pathway for policy sciences scholarship that examines how dominant social or economic paradigms (e.g., capitalism) underlying policy thinking survive through multiple narrative reframings.
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The recent proliferation of degree and executive education programs in policy studies deserves closer examination. This chapter investigates this trend as a consequence of efforts to professionalize the civil service. While the practice... more
The recent proliferation of degree and executive education programs in policy studies deserves closer examination. This chapter investigates this trend as a consequence of efforts to professionalize the civil service. While the practice of professional civil service has existed for centuries, recognition of a politics-administration divide provided a basis to theorize a politically neutral and professional civil service. Into the late-20 th century, the academic and practitioner gaze was trained on operational efficiency and optimization, climaxing in new public management reforms. The inevitable hollowing-out of state capacity has led to a counter-movement aimed at reasserting the "public" in public servicesand an associated interest in broadening bureaucratic capacity. This chapter examines these trends through the perspective of two generations of civil service professionalization, its spread via institutional isomorphism, and implications for policy studies education. The chapter applies the structure-institutions-actors perspective to analyze the case of Brunei's Institute of Policy Studies.
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Iran’s policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how countries with pre-existing challenges manage acute crises. Already economically weakened by international sanctions, Iran’s governme...
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While the conceptualization of policy capacity and its application to governance performance have been addressed in the academic literature, existing governance indices appear not to consider policy capacity in its many nuanced forms.... more
While the conceptualization of policy capacity and its application to governance performance have been addressed in the academic literature, existing governance indices appear not to consider policy capacity in its many nuanced forms. This shortcoming may be perpetuating incomplete accounts of governance quality within a diverse and growing group of indices. This chapter surveys five commonly used indices to determine whether and how they measure policy capacity. Two of the indices, the Worldwide Governance Indicators and KPMG Change Readiness Index , address broad measures of governance in a globally comparative context. The remaining indices—the Sustainable Governance Indicators , Global Innovation Policy Index , and Bertelsmann Transformation Index —target particular dimensions of governance. This chapter argues that policy capacity is relevant across many types of indices, and therefore deserves closer attention. In particular, the chapter illustrates how a robust framework measuring policy capacity, proposed by Xun, Ramesh, and Howlett, can be used to identify areas in which governance indices inadequately account for capacity. This chapter is in three parts. After a brief introduction, the first part tabulates measures of capacity within selected indices using elements of the framework as an analytical template. The second part compares tabulation results across all five indices, and the final part advocates a more robust consideration of capacity based on the identified shortcomings of the observed indices.
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The 2020 introduction by China’s central government of a national security law (NSL) in Hong Kong marked a watershed moment in the social and political history of the semiautonomous city. The law emerged after months of street protests... more
The 2020 introduction by China’s central government of a national security law (NSL) in Hong Kong marked a watershed moment in the social and political history of the semiautonomous city. The law emerged after months of street protests that reflected declining public trust in Hong Kong’s government. Against this turbulent backdrop, Hong Kong’s policy projects moved forward, including smart city development. This article explores public trust in and political legitimacy of Hong Kong’s smart cities endeavors in the period leading up to the introduction of the NSL. At a theoretical level, the smart cities phenomenon invites critical reflection about tensions between technocracy and democracy, but this topic remains largely unexploited by empirical literature. Using survey data from 1,017 residents, this study identifies confidence in the benefits of smart cities but lesser trust in privacy and security and lesser satisfaction with participation opportunities in related policymaking. Pr...
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The COVID‐19 pandemic is a crisis with high complexity and should be understood as such by scholarship. A complexity science approach situates increasingly divergent ideological and epistemological perspectives about the crisis within the... more
The COVID‐19 pandemic is a crisis with high complexity and should be understood as such by scholarship. A complexity science approach situates increasingly divergent ideological and epistemological perspectives about the crisis within the practical exigencies of containment and mitigation measures. We ask which of the seven stages of soft systems methodology contributes to deeper understandings about COVID‐19 as a policy issue, beyond the contributions of current and conventional perspectives. The discussion outlines implications for practice and places them within broader debates about tensions between scientific facts and political values.
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The 21st century is a moment of reckoning for the field of public policy. Multiple convergent crises threaten ecological, economic and social stability while testing the planning and response capac...
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The academic literature offers some insights about lagging progress on circular economy (CE) transition, including cultural, regulatory, market, and technical barriers. There is also an increasing body of knowledge about barriers to CE... more
The academic literature offers some insights about lagging progress on circular economy (CE) transition, including cultural, regulatory, market, and technical barriers. There is also an increasing body of knowledge about barriers to CE adoption that takes a macro‐level perspective across industries. However, such studies have largely neglected the industry scale. This study fills that gap by examining barriers to CE transition in the Dutch technical and interior textiles industries. Using data from 27 interviews with manufacturers and retailers, the study finds that high costs for production and marketing, along with lack of consumer interest, are among the most substantial barriers. To provide a system‐wide perspective, the study conceptualizes relationships among barriers as a chain reaction: limited knowledge of CE design options raises the difficulty and cost of delivering high‐quality circular products at the firm level, while limited availability of circular supply streams combined with the orientation of existing production systems toward linear supply chains constrain CE transition at the industry level. These findings highlight the need for intervention at levels beyond the scale of individual firms, a key implication for public policy.
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China’s pursuit of global superpower status compels the country to make coordinated efforts across numerous sectors. Global leadership in higher education is one example and provides a case study i...
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With indiscriminate geographic and socio-economic reach, COVID-19 has visited destruction of life and livelihoods on a largely unprepared world and can arguably be declared the new millennium’s most trying test of state capacity.... more
With indiscriminate geographic and socio-economic reach, COVID-19 has visited destruction of life and livelihoods on a largely unprepared world and can arguably be declared the new millennium’s most trying test of state capacity. Governments are facing an urgent mandate to mobilize quickly and comprehensively in response, drawing not only on public resources and coordination capabilities but also on the cooperation and buy-in of civil society. Political and institutional legitimacy are crucial determinants of effective crisis management, and low-trust states lacking such legitimacy suffer a profound disadvantage. Social and economic crises attending the COVID-19 pandemic thus invite scholarly reflection about public attitudes, social leadership, and the role of social and institutional memory in the context of systemic disruption. This article examines Hong Kong as a case where failure to respond effectively could have been expected due to low levels of public trust and political le...
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Research Interests: Business, Groundwater, Environmental Management, Singapore, Wastewater Treatment, and 15 moreEnvironmental Planning, Water Reuse, Medicine, Multidisciplinary, Groundwater recharge, Desalination, Water Supply, Water Stress, Water resource management, Reuse, Population Growth, Namibian Archaeology, Reclaimed Water, Greywater, and Windhoek
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Introduction Part I: Institutions 1. Understanding Institutions 2. Institutions in Research and Practice 3. Institutions and Economic Development 4. Institutions and Political Power 5. Institutions and Global Urbanization Part II: Public... more
Introduction Part I: Institutions 1. Understanding Institutions 2. Institutions in Research and Practice 3. Institutions and Economic Development 4. Institutions and Political Power 5. Institutions and Global Urbanization Part II: Public Administration 6. Contrasting Paradigms: Traditional Bureaucracy and Collaborative Governance 7. Emergent Paradigms: From Neoclassical to Postmodern 8. Administration in Local and National Development Part III: Evidence-Based Policy 9. Foundational Thinkers in Epistemology 10. Research Methods and Empirical Validity 11. Use of Evidence in Environmental Regulation 12. Nationalizing Benefits and Localizing Costs in Industrial Development 13. Evidence-Based Intervention for Housing Markets Conclusion
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Research Interests: Computer Science, Development Economics, Economic policy, Political Economy of Development, Foreign Aid, and 7 moreMathematical Modelling, Applied Economics, Corruption, International Aid and Development, Official development assistance, Public Administration and Policy, and Official Development Assistance (ODA)
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This Element explores the uncertain future of public policy practice and scholarship in an age of radical disruption. Building on foundational ideas in policy sciences, we argue that an anachronistic instrumental rationalism underlies... more
This Element explores the uncertain future of public policy practice and scholarship in an age of radical disruption. Building on foundational ideas in policy sciences, we argue that an anachronistic instrumental rationalism underlies contemporary policy logic and limits efforts to understand new policy challenges. We consider whether the policy sciences framework can be reframed to facilitate deeper understandings of this anachronistic epistemic, in anticipation of a research agenda about epistemic destabilization and contestation. The Element applies this theoretical provocation to environmental policy and sustainability, issues about which policymaking proceeds amid unpredictable contexts and rising sociopolitical turbulence that portend a liminal state in the transition from one way of thinking to another. The Element concludes by contemplating the fate of policy's epistemic instability, anticipating what policy understandings will emerge in a new system, and questioning the degree to which either presages a seismic shift in the relationship between policy and society.
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Climate change, financial crises, and other issues of global scale no longer concern only the developed world. The binding power of globalization has placed these challenges at the doorstep of almost every country, testing the... more
Climate change, financial crises, and other issues of global scale no longer concern only the developed world. The binding power of globalization has placed these challenges at the doorstep of almost every country, testing the evolutionary capacity of monolithic governance systems bound by institutional legacy and administrative stagnation. This book locates the concept of adaptive governance, used primarily in environmental management, within the context of economic policy. Introducing flexible economic opportunism, it argues that a particular style of institutional and administrative versatility enables innovative, evidence-based policy development.
This book mines institutional economics, public administration, and research theory and practice for complementary elements that can inform an emerging governance paradigm based on flexible economic opportunism. Through an eclectic suite of cases from the developing and developed worlds including Asia and North America, this book reveals how patterns of institutional and administrative change impact the efficacy of public policy. Flexibility may be this century’s most critical dimension of global competitiveness, and systems configured to quickly and comprehensively capture economic opportunities will win the marketplace of development ideas. This book advances that discussion.
This book mines institutional economics, public administration, and research theory and practice for complementary elements that can inform an emerging governance paradigm based on flexible economic opportunism. Through an eclectic suite of cases from the developing and developed worlds including Asia and North America, this book reveals how patterns of institutional and administrative change impact the efficacy of public policy. Flexibility may be this century’s most critical dimension of global competitiveness, and systems configured to quickly and comprehensively capture economic opportunities will win the marketplace of development ideas. This book advances that discussion.
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While the conceptualization of policy capacity and its application to governance performance have been addressed in the academic literature, existing governance indices appear not to consider policy capacity in its many nuanced forms.... more
While the conceptualization of policy capacity and its application to governance performance have been addressed in the academic literature, existing governance indices appear not to consider policy capacity in its many nuanced forms. This shortcoming may be perpetuating incomplete accounts of governance quality within a diverse and growing group of indices. This chapter surveys five commonly used indices to determine whether and how they measure policy capacity. Two of the indices, the Worldwide Governance Indicators and KPMG Change Readiness Index, address broad measures of governance in a globally comparative context. The remaining indices—the Sustainable Governance Indicators, Global Innovation Policy Index, and Bertelsmann Transformation Index—target particular dimensions of governance. This chapter argues that policy capacity is relevant across many types of indices, and therefore deserves closer attention. In particular, the chapter illustrates how a robust framework measuring policy capacity, proposed by Xun, Ramesh, and Howlett, can be used to identify areas in which governance indices inadequately account for capacity. This chapter is in three parts. After a brief introduction, the first part tabulates measures of capacity within selected indices using elements of the framework as an analytical template. The second part compares tabulation results across all five indices, and the final part advocates a more robust consideration of capacity based on the identified shortcomings of the observed indices.
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Government efforts to confront complex crises, such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, have elicited populist antipathy toward scientific and technical input in policymaking. These affronts to expertise and knowledge... more
Government efforts to confront complex crises, such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, have elicited populist antipathy toward scientific and technical input in policymaking. These affronts to expertise and knowledge institutions have congealed into a ‘post-truth’ rhetoric that reflects deep political rifts concerning state-society relations. In his book Truth and Post-Truth in Public Policy: Interpreting the Arguments, Frank Fischer (2021) brings interpretive policy analysis to bear on the post-truth phenomenon and its manifestation in crisis denialism. According to Fischer, this interpretive analytical perspective “focuses attention on the processes of social explanation and argumentation which mediate the understandings of facts in public discourse” (p. 23). As existential crises befall society during this acutely partisan era, the complexities and consequences of post-truth politics – or dismissal of fact in policy discourse – call for fresh scholarly reflection. Fischer delivers convincingly in his engaging tour of the political and epistemological aspects of post-truth.