Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Methods, Research, grade: 1,7, University of Potsdam (Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät), course: Theories of Public Policy, language: English, abstract: Politics and media announce that we need a major policy change regarding the forthcoming problems and challenges related to climate change. But what is policy change? Policy change in this paper is understood as a major change or reversal in attitude or principle or point of view. But when and how does such changes happen? This work aims to look at policy change from a theoretical point of view by contrasting three different theoretical approaches regarding their explanatory power for policy change. The paper deals with Lindblom's incrementalism (1959; 1979), Kingdon's policy windows (1995), as well as Baumgartner and Jones's theory of punctuated equilibrium (1991). The theories and concepts of agenda setting and policy change are closely related in the literature on policy making. Since Lindblom's "The Science of Muddling Through" (1959), patterns of policy change were analyzed regarding different elements such as policy entrepreneurship (Kingdon 1984; 1995) or issue expansion and venue shopping (Baumgartner and Jones 1991). Roughly spoken there are two competing views on changes in policy making in the literature: the stability in policy making and the incremental nature of policy change as introduced by Lindblom (1959), and episodes of abrupt changes elaborated by Baumgartner and Jones in their punctuated equilibrium theory (1991; 1993). Most studies of agenda setting focus only on a narrow set of theoretical principles, thus producing incomplete and sometimes conflicting explanations for policy change. The theoretical frameworks by Lindblom, Kingdon, and Baumgartner and Jones take different views concerning the type of policy change. The aim of this essay is to take a closer look in order to determine whether these three approaches are c

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Methods, Research, grade: 1,7, University of Potsdam (Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät), course: Theories of Public Policy, language: English, abstract: Politics and media announce that we need a major policy change regarding the forthcoming problems and challenges related to climate change. But what is policy change? Policy change in this paper is understood as a major change or reversal in attitude or principle or point of view. But when and how does such changes happen? This work aims to look at policy change from a theoretical point of view by contrasting three different theoretical approaches regarding their explanatory power for policy change. The paper deals with Lindblom’s incrementalism (1959; 1979), Kingdon’s policy windows (1995), as well as Baumgartner and Jones’s theory of punctuated equilibrium (1991). The theories and concepts of agenda setting and policy change are closely related in the literature on policy making. Since Lindblom’s "The Science of Muddling Through" (1959), patterns of policy change were analyzed regarding different elements such as policy entrepreneurship (Kingdon 1984; 1995) or issue expansion and venue shopping (Baumgartner and Jones 1991). Roughly spoken there are two competing views on changes in policy making in the literature: the stability in policy making and the incremental nature of policy change as introduced by Lindblom (1959), and episodes of abrupt changes elaborated by Baumgartner and Jones in their punctuated equilibrium theory (1991; 1993). Most studies of agenda setting focus only on a narrow set of theoretical principles, thus producing incomplete and sometimes conflicting explanations for policy change. The theoretical frameworks by Lindblom, Kingdon, and Baumgartner and Jones take different views concerning the type of policy change. The aim of this essay is to take a closer look in order to determine whether these three approaches are competing or rather complementary in identifying the causal mechanisms driving policy change. Therefore questions such as the following are discussed: What level of analysis do the three approaches focus on? What predictions do they offer? What factors do they exclude?

This absorbing book provides a broad introduction to the surprising nature of change, and explains how the Law of Unintended Consequences arises from the waves of change following one simple change. Change is a constant topic of discussion, whether be it on climate, politics, technology, or any of the many other changes in our lives. However, does anyone truly understand what change is? Over time, mankind has deliberately built social and technology based systems that are goal-directed there are goals to achieve and requirements to be met. Building such systems is man's way of planning for the future, and these plans are based on predicting the behavior of the system and its environment, at specified times in the future. Unfortunately, in a truly complex social or technical environment, this planned predictability can break down into a morass of surprising and unexpected consequences. Such unpredictability stems from the propagation of the effects of change through the influence of one event on another. The Nature of Change explains in detail the mechanism of change and will serve as an introduction to complex systems, or as complementary reading for systems engineering. This textbook will be especially useful to professionals in system building or business change management, and to students studying systems in a variety of fields such as information technology, business, law and society.

The critical implications that emerge from these stories about ecological activism are crucial to understanding the essential role that protecting the environment plays in sustaining the health of civil society.

This is the first book to offer a systematic account of feminist philosophy as a distinctive field of philosophy. The book introduces key issues and debates in feminist philosophy including: the nature of sex, gender, and the body; the relation between gender, sexuality, and sexual difference; whether there is anything that all women have in common; and the nature of birth and its centrality to human existence. An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy shows how feminist thinking on these and related topics has developed since the 1960s. The book also explains how feminist philosophy relates to the many forms of feminist politics. The book provides clear, succinct and readable accounts of key feminist thinkers including de Beauvoir, Butler, Gilligan, Irigaray, and MacKinnon. The book also introduces other thinkers who have influenced feminist philosophy including Arendt, Foucault, Freud, and Lacan. Accessible in approach, this book is ideal for students and researchers interested in feminist philosophy, feminist theory, women's studies, and political theory. It will also appeal to the general reader.

Updated in its 3rd edition, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning presents quickly applied methods for analyzing and resolving planning and policy issues at state, regional, and urban levels. Divided into two parts, Methods which presents quick methods in nine chapters and is organized around the steps in the policy analysis process, and Cases which presents seven policy cases, ranging in degree of complexity, the text provides readers with the resources they need for effective policy planning and analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are systematically combined to address policy dilemmas and urban planning problems. Readers and analysts utilizing this text gain comprehensive skills and background needed to impact public policy.

An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic