Browsing by Subject "policy design"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Evidence of Environmental Justice: A Critical Perspective on the Practice of EJ Research and Lessons for Policy Design
    (2008-12) Noonan, Douglas S.
    Objective. This article gleans important lessons for environmental justice (EJ) policy from the empirical literature and demonstrates them using EJ analyses of Superfund sites. It constructively critiques the EJ literature and suggests some future directions for designing policy and framing the discourse. Methods. The research methods of many quantitative EJ studies are reviewed. To demonstrate sensitivity to researchers' choices, logit models are estimated to explain the nationwide distribution of Superfund sites (and deletions from the NPL) using various spatial scales, control variables, and definitions of proximity. Results. Most empirical EJ studies examine cross-sectional distributions for aggregated demographic measures, dwelling on the implied counterfactual or causal mechanism briefly, if ever. The EJ analysis for Superfund sites exhibits much sensitivity to modeling choices and to whether environmental conditions or policy impacts are modeled. Conclusions. The findings highlight the limitations of conventional EJ research designs. Several implications for the design of EJ policy are drawn, emphasizing the importance of clarity about counterfactuals and which sorts of impacts are relevant. Principles for a revised EJ policy framework are proposed.
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    Using the IAD's Institutional Grammar to Understand Policy Design: An Application to Colorado Aquaculture
    (2009) Siddiki, Saba; Weible, Christopher; Basurto, Xavier; Calanni, John
    This draft offers a preliminary analysis of an on-going project to develop guidelines for applying the IAD's Institutional Grammar to understand the content of policy design. We seek to understand the foundational elements of policy design by examining the individual institutional statements that constitute policies. The Institutional Grammar offered by the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is a valuable tool with which to systematically identify the institutions-in-form that govern behavior of people in collective action situations. Understanding how these statements are modified over time may be indicative of broader changes regarding how policy issues are framed, altered contextual factors, and new actors and sources of information entering the policy arena. In this study, we adapt the IAD's Institutional Grammar to code the major laws and regulations of Colorado State aquaculture, through which we identify the institutions-in-form that guide aquaculture activities in the State. We focus our discussion on offering insights regarding the applicability of the IAD's Institutional Grammar as it is currently presented, including theoretical limitations and suggestions for improved applications.