The paper aims at addressing the problem of what makes specific aiding to decide within public policy making problem situations. Under such a perspective it analyses some basic concepts such as “public policy”, “deliberation”, “legitimation”, “accountability” and shows the necessity to expand the concept of rationality which is expected to be behind the acceptability of a public policy. We then...

Policy capacity focuses on the managerial and organizational abilities to inform policy decisions with sound research and analysis, and facilitate policy implementation with operational efficiency. It stems from a view of the policy process that is rational and positivistic, in which optimal policy choices can be identified, selected, and implemented with objectivity. By itself, however, policy...

Legislation passed in 1996 changed the way the U.S. federal government acts to reduce risks faced by U.S. crop products. The authors compare the new, alternative forms of revenue insurance to the 1990 deficiency payment program and to a ''no-program'' alternative. They estimate the effects of the alternative polices on the acreage allocations of a representative farm, on the expected government...

The Content-Centric Networking (CCN) paradigm introduces a novel communication model where any node in the network can implement caching functionalities to directly serve incoming content requests. However, such a radical change in the protocol stack poses new security challenges since the content producer loses control over the data he provides to the network. Our contribution is to propose Co...

OBJECTIVE Factors influencing long-term viability of an intermediated regional food supply network (food hub) were modeled using agent-based modeling techniques informed by interview data gathered from food hub participants. BACKGROUND Previous analyses of food hub dynamics focused primarily on financial drivers rather than social factors and have not used mathematical models. METHOD Based ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the characteristics of health policy and systems research training globally and to identify recommendations for improvement and expansion. METHODS We identified institutions offering health policy and systems research training worldwide. In 2014, we recruited participants from identified institutions for an online survey on the characteristics of the institutions and ...

Within Nigeria and Ghana, pastoralists face increasing adversity from climate change marginalisation due to a complex combination of factors, further amplified by highly sensitive increasingly violent conflicts with farmers. While exacerbates the vulnerability pastoralists, this remains largely unaccounted for in current Nigerian Ghanaian pastoral livestock policy. Employing thematic analytical...

Making decisions informed by the best-available science is an objective for many organisations managing the environment or natural resources. Yet, available science is still not widely used in environmental policy and practice. We describe a '4S' hierarchy for organising relevant science to inform decisions. This hierarchy has already revolutionised clinical practice. It is beginning to emerge ...