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This collection of readings examines the tools used by today's government to achieve legitimacy, effectiveness, and accountability. The contributors examine the "instrument choice" perspective on government and public policy over the past two decades, moving beyond the preoccupation with deregulation and efficiency to trace the complex relationships between instrument choices and governance. Readers are encouraged to consider factors in the design of complex mixes, such as issues of redundancy, context, the rule of law and accountability. These latter factors are especially central in today's world to the design and implementation of effective instrument choices by governments and, ultimately, to good governance. The authors conclude that instrument choice itself is integral to government and governance.
Recent developments in policy evaluation have focused on new notions of process and use or, notably, "influence." But this debate among evaluators on how evaluations are used has been essentially a closed one—evaluators talking only among themselves. The debate has gone on seemingly oblivious to fundamental changes in the intellectual landscape of public management, organizational theory, information technology, and knowledge management. New realities demand a different approach toward evaluation. The current era is characterized by the emergence of an increasingly global set of pressures for governments to perform effectively, not just efficiently, and to demonstrate that their performanc...
Canadians like to see themselves as champions of human rights in the international community. Closer to home, however, the human rights system in Canada - particularly its public institutions such as commissions and tribunals - has been the object of sustained debate and vehement criticism, based largely on widespread myths about how it works. In Speaking Out on Human Rights, Pearl Eliadis explodes these myths, analysing the pervasive distortions and errors on which they depend. Canada's human rights system, a unique legal tradition operating within a powerful modern constitution, is a fundamental mechanism for ensuring the practical application of our national commitment to tolerance and in...
Did evaluation meet the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis? How were evaluation practices, architectures, and values affected? Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19 is the first to offer a broad canvas that explores government responses and ideas to tackle the challenges that evaluation practice faces in preparing for the next global crisis. Practitioners and established academic experts in the field of policy evaluation present a sophisticated synthesis of institutional, national, and disciplinary perspectives, with insights drawn from developments in Australia, Canada and the UK, as well as the UN. Contributors examine the impacts of evaluation on socioeconomic recovery planning, governm...
Media. By James Finn.
In 2004, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act was passed by the Parliament of Canada. Fully in force by 2007, the act was intended to safeguard and promote the health, safety, dignity, and rights of Canadians. However, a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada decision ruled that key parts of the act were invalid. Regulating Creation is a collection of essays built around the 2010 ruling. Featuring contributions by Canadian and international scholars, it offers a variety of perspectives on the role of law in dealing with the legal, ethical, and policy issues surrounding changing reproductive technologies. In addition to the in-depth analysis of the Canadian case the volume reflects on how other countries, particularly the U.S., U.K. and New Zealand regulate these same issues. Combining a detailed discussion of legal approaches with an in-depth exploration of societal implications, Regulating Creation deftly navigates the obstacles of legal policy amidst the rapid current of reproductive technological innovation.
In the economic atmosphere following the crisis of 2008, not only have governments reacted by creating more complex policy initiatives, but they have also promised that all of these initiatives will be evaluated. Due to the complexity of many of the initiatives, the ways of evaluating are becoming equally complex. The book begins with a theoretical and conceptual explanation of the process and shows how this translates into the practice of evaluation. The chapters cover a wide variety of subjects, such as poverty, homelessness, smoking prevention, HIV/AIDS, and child labor. The use of case studies sheds light on the conceptual ideas at work in organizations addressing some of the world's lar...
This Handbook uses methodologies and cases to discover how and when to evaluate social policy, and looks at the possible impacts of evaluation on social policy decisions. The contributors present a detailed analysis on how to conduct social policy evaluation, how to be aware of pitfalls and dilemmas and how to use evidence effectively.
COVID-19 sparked the largest global crisis of the 21st century, extending well beyond public health. For some, the impact was swift and dramatic, with the pandemic pushing tens of millions into poverty and creating extreme food insecurity; for others, the transformations are still bubbling under the surface. Efforts to arrest the spread of COVID-19 entailed far-reaching forms of government intervention and the extensive use of new technologies. Questions thus remain as to whether the societal changes brought about by COVID-19 will endure in the post-pandemic period. The return of geopolitics, along with the war in Ukraine and tensions in Asia, have further complexified an already complex glo...
Essays in honour of one of Canada's finest scholars of public policy.