Development Policies and Policy Processes in Africa : Modeling and Evaluation
Examines the methodological challenges in analyzing the effectiveness of development policies. It presents a selection of tools and methodologies that can help tackle the complexities of which policies work best and why, and how they can be implemented effectively given the political and economic framework conditions of a country. The contributions in this book offer a continuation of the ongoing evidence-based debate on the role of agriculture and participatory policy processes in reducing poverty. They develop and apply quantitative political economy approaches by integrating quantitative models of political decision-making into existing economic modeling tools, allowing a more comprehensive growth-poverty analysis.
Democratization of Expertise? : Exploring Novel Forms of Scientific Advice in Political Decision-Making
Scientific knowledge and the ‘experts’ that represent it no longer command the unquestioned authority and public trust that was once bestowed upon them, and yet, policy makers are more dependent on them than ever before. This collection of essays explores the relations between science and politics with the instruments of social studies of science, thereby providing new insights into their re-alignment under a new régime of governance.
Communicative figurations : Transforming communications in times of deep mediatization
This open access volume is about how to research the influence of our changing media environment. Today, there is not one single medium that is the driving force of change. With the spreading of various technical communication media such as mobile phone and internet platforms, we are confronted with a media manifold of deep mediatization. But how can we investigate its transformative capability? This book answers this question by taking a non-media-centric perspective, researching the various figurations of collectivities and organizations humans are involved in. The first part of the book outlines a fundamental understanding of the changing media environment of deep mediatization and its transformative capacity. The second part focuses on collectivities and movements: communities in the city, critical social movements, maker, online gaming groups and networked groups of young people. The third part moves institutions and organizations into the foreground, discussing the transformation of journalism, religion, politics, and education, whilst the fourth and final part is dedicated to methodologies and perspectives.


