In an increasingly complex world of interrelated problems many governments have tried to modernise their institutional structures and the ways in which they go about making policy. In the UK and elsewhere this has been most apparent in the growing emphasis given to evidence-based policy making in contrast to faith-based approaches and the conviction politics of earlier periods. Much of the deba...

Health has moved up on the political agendas of most governments around the globe. The interdependence of economic, environmental and social conditions and health is increasingly understood. In turn, the experiences in health promotion with building healthy public policies become more important. Future "health in all policies" efforts, however, need to consider changing political contexts. Ther...

We analyse the size and potential determinants of governments' revenues windfall in the European Union. Using information about fiscal plans taken from the Stability and Convergence Programmes (SCP) submitted between 1998 and 2006, revenue windfalls are found to have represented on average 0.23% of GDP in the euro-area during the period 19992007, hiding substantial variations both across time (...

concern over the depletion of natural resources in general, and water scarcity in particular, has stimulated the development and implementation of some policies aimed at changing farmers' behavior in terms of conserving water. in this regard, government has recently begun to invest on researches supporting the technical solutions on conserving water in the agricultural sector as the bigges...

Foreign policy, especially trade policy, can have dramatic but rarely considered effects on public health. International human rights covenants oblige governments to scrutinise their foreign policy, including trade policy, for its impact on the progressive realisation of the right to health. Health is both a means and an end of development policy, but government investments in health are inadeq...

This chapter presents a comprehensive review of valuation of water. Though existing literature has a large number of papers on the significant attempts at valuing water, a number of publications only consider certain specific aspects of water pricing, rarely attempting a comprehensive review. Water pricing, whether by government mandate or in practice, has to take into consideration a host of c...

The Pacific island countries persist with tuna fishing policies that are significantly inferior to what appear to be the economically and environmentally sensible courses to follow. Economists have been offering advice over a fairly long period about better policy options without having any discernable favourable impact. This lack of success might be due, as Gordon Tullock once said, to the fac...

This study on farmers’ perception and management of natural hazards in production and security of farm investment was carried out in Isuikwuato Local Government Area of Abia State, Nigeria. The study was sought to identify farmers’ perceived natural hazards in food production; identify adopted measures used in mitigating impacts of the hazards and determined factors that influenced farmers from...

South African service delivery paradigms are undergoing a period of decentralisation. Local government/local municipalities are the preferred vehicles, selected by national government, to implement national policy, manage and deliver water services to local populations. Municipalities face a significant challenge of reducing apartheid backlogs, raising the level of service delivery and maintain...

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:  identify two types of policy briefs (advocacy and objective);  describe the characteristics of a policy brief;  describe the structure and contents of a policy brief; and  conceptualize a policy brief about a food security issue. Introduction In this lesson we will take a close look at policy briefs and learn how to produce them. A policy bri...