Among the many reasons that may limit the adoption of promising reform ideas, policy capacity is the least recognized. The concept itself is not widely understood. Although policy capacity is concerned with the gathering of information and the formulation of options for public action in the initial phases of policy consultation and development, it also touches on all stages of the policy proces...

Sarah A. Roache and Lawrence O. Gostin’s recent editorial comprehensively presents soda taxation rationales from a public health perspective. While we essentially agree that soda taxes are gaining momentum, this commentary expands upon the need for a better understanding of the policy processes underlying their development and implementation. Indeed, the umbrella concept of soda taxation actual...

The article by Labonté, Schram, and Ruckert is a significant and timely analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) policy and the severe threats to public health that it implies for 12 Pacific Rim populations from the Americas and Asia (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam). With careful and analytic precision t...

Change and Implementation in a Social Services Department by Stuart Dennis Williams This work is an examination of contemporary public policy implementation. It seeks to isolate those features which need to be incorporated into implementation theory to assist in the analysis of the implementation of public policy The "new right" ideology requires that a particular organisational form be adopted...

Public administration scholars often associate increased public participation in policy implementation with the advancement of democratic values. Likewise, scholars engaged in the various forms of action research (AR) promote their efforts as a means to democratizing the research process or contributing to improved social outcomes. Despite these common interests in participation and democracy, ...

Many of the societal level factors that affect health – the ‘social determinants of health (SDH)’ – exist outside the health sector, across diverse portfolios of government, and other major institutions including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector. This has created growing interest in how to create and implement public policies which will drive better and fairer health...

This article aims to systematize and analyze social data that reveal the dimension of racial inequalities in Brazil. The point of departure is that racial inequalities affect the capacity for integration of Blacks into Brazilian society and jeopardize the proposal to build a democratic society with equal opportunities for all. Such inequalities are present at different moments in the individual...

This article argues that the Internet not only serves as a basis for public service delivery but features in public policy implementation, with the specific aim of supporting the individual’s decisions in educational policy, labor market policy, and pension policy. The present study is based on the actor-network theory and illustrates the process during which a decision support system (DSS), pr...

The variety of transport governance models in existence in the UK are the result of devolution and successive local government re-organisations which has had a significant impact on the form and content of regional transport strategies and local transport planning practice. A key policy challenge is the increasing need to manage transport demand and encourage the use of public transport; walkin...