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Democratic theorists often place deliberative innovations such as Citizen's Juries, Consensus Conferences, Planning Cells, and Deliberative Polls at the centre of their hopes for deliberative democratization. This chapter charts the ways in which such mini-publics can impact on the ‘macro’ world of politics. Impact may come in the form of actually making policy, being taken up in the policy process, informing public debates, market-testing of proposals, legitimation of public policies, building confidence and constituencies for policies, popular oversight, and resisting co-option. Exposing problems and failures is all too easy; the chapter highlights instead cases of success along each of these dimensions.

Analyses the impact of changes in tax and social security policy since the New Labour government came into office in the UK in May 1997. Looks at the challenges the Blair government faced in 1997 and at what has been new about ‘New’ Labour policies since then. Outlines the key features of these policies, looking in turn at those connected with labour markets, incomes, social exclusion, and public spending. Examines what we know so far about the outcomes of these policies in terms of recent trends in poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, and at what modelling evidence suggests their impact will be, particularly on rates of poverty.

This chapter revisits the empirical findings of the volume, seeking to discern common themes regarding each facet of representation. Susan Franceschet, Mona Lena Krook, and Jennifer M. Piscopo consider possible connections between methodology and conclusions. They then delve into variations, comparing insights across sections to explore how features beyond the presence of a quota may shape the effects observed, including (1) quota design, adoption, and implementation, (2) political institutions and context, and (3) learning over time. Putting these elements together, the final part draws on the case study evidence to theorize and illustrate how patterns with regard to one facet of representation may shape outcomes related to another facet of representation. Based on this collective theory-building exercise, the volume concludes with some thoughts on avenues for future research, emphasizing the importance of generating both cumulative and comparative frameworks for studying the impact of gender quota policies.

This chapter reviews the current state of affairs on this intersection between the older health inequalities tradition and the evolving health impact assessment (HIA) field. It then summarizes the available evidence on health inequalities. It outlines the next possible approaches for assessing the impact of policies on health inequalities, and a few HIA examples are discussed in which health inequalities have been explicitly considered. Finally, a research agenda is laid out to develop the tools that will in the future help us to assess reliably and validly the impact of policies on health inequalities.

The chapter begins by establishing a definition for this market and discussing the main contexts and trends that can be observed shaping its development. A section on key characteristics follows that covers such issues as geographical spread and diversity, sectoral spread, financial instruments, and risk and return profiles. It then discusses the emerging market structure of impact investing and give an account of the important role of policy in shaping and supporting the field. The chapter then moves on to consider future directions, opportunities, and challenges. The arguments and analyses of the chapter as a whole are finally summed up in a conclusion. Throughout the chapter short case examples provide important real world grounding to the analysis and commentary.

This chapter examines the challenges of attributing responsibility for the cross-border impacts of tax and financial secrecy policies through “spillover assessments.” Integrating human rights guiding principles into the practice of tax spillover assessments can provide value. Yet a number of tough methodological and political obstacles remain, many of which are inherent to the act of policy impact evaluation more generally. Together, these remaining challenges provide for a fertile future research agenda. Methodologically, the empirical accuracy of tax spillover assessments continues to be thwarted by the failure of governments to ensure access to relevant data, made more complex by the right to privacy concerns of many companies in accessing the microdata which would be so useful in determining the impact of changes in tax policy. Alongside these tough methodological challenges, various political question marks continue to frustrate effective tax spillover assessments.

Irish child abuse inquiries of the last few decades have been hugely significant in revealing the tragic circumstances under which some children lived and died. The main focus here is on what these inquiries reveal about errors and mistakes in child protection and the changing relations between a number of key institutions, particularly the Catholic Church, the state and the media, not on what they reveal about abuse. Through the ‘lens’ of the child abuse inquiry the chapter considers a number of issues, including: the exposure of historic child abuse of children in Irish society, the emergence of campaigning groups, the growing power of the media in exposing a culture of secrecy, and the development of childcare policy. The chapter then explores the wider context (political, cultural, and historical) in which discourses of child protection are framed and conducted. The chapter addresses discrete meta-themes that enable the reader to contextualise the debate about child abuse and theorise it from a critical social perspective. This offers a uniquely original analysis of discourses of child protection, incorporating policy development and messages for the future.

The chapter provides an overview of how policy analysis takes place in Mexican Think Tanks. It focuses on two of the few organisations of this kind that currently exist in the country: the Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo (CIDAC, or Centre for Research for Development) and the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (CEEY, or Centre of Studies Espinosa Yglesias). The chapter is divided into four sections. The first discusses the main features of think tanks, with a particular focus on the Mexican ones. The second presents the origins and general objectives of CIDAC and CEEY, and describes how these two organizations conduct policy analysis. The third compares both cases, paying particular attention to how they define their topics of interest, how they gather relevant information, what kind of policy products they generate, what kind of communication channels they use, and how they assess the impact that their analyses may have had. The chapter closes with some conclusions and general remarks about the future challenges of policy analysis in Mexican think tanks.

This chapter discusses the IS-LM and AS-AD models developed for developing countries, as discussed for the developed countries in Chapter 3. However, while the basic components of such models are similar to those used for the industrialized countries, their analytical specification is markedly different, as they rely on the behavioural equations discussed in Chapter 13 that reflect the structural differences of developing countries. As a result, the effects of exogenous shocks and government macroeconomic policies often differ from those derived on the basis of the conventional IS-LM and AS-AD models obtained for the advanced economies.

For social sciences to play their emancipatory as well as instrumental role in public policymaking, it is imperative that the social science research ecosystem is dynamic and vibrant, institutions governing the research ecosystem are robust and effective, and those producing good quality research and researchers are strong and well governed. Underlying these is a serious issue about funding and availability of data on social science research (SSR) to facilitate informed decision-making and enable design of program policies and strategies. In collaboration with the Think Tank Initiative (TTI) Program of IDRC, ICSSR led this work to examine the present status of social science in the country. This Volume examines the status of SSR with respect to its multiple dimensions and recommends the need for a comprehensive national social science policy in India that is adequately resourced and delivered through well-governed national institutions in order to create a credible research culture in social sciences.

This chapter explores the barriers and facilitators that operate within a number of human-services professions in relation to disabled people's access to those occupational groups. It draws attention to the overly homogenized perception of employment by looking at the policy implications of professional change. The chapter notes that professional-level work rarely receives explicit attention in policy terms, itself a noteworthy phenomenon which requires further research. It explores the changing nature of professional accreditation and the often awkward fit between these codes, requirements, and stipulations, as well as the opening-up of professional work to more disabled people. The chapter begs questions about the future of policy and policy impact in these employments.

While some sociological careers are mapped out rigorously, others are framed by opportunities that present themselves to the researcher, which often help the novice researcher identify a career path and the type of research they want to undertake later on. This chapter draws on the author’s experiences as a novice researcher on short-term projects which involved children and young people and the reflections on how these have shaped her career as an academic later on. Different approaches to research with children and young people are based on fundamental assumptions and beliefs about their position in society and their ability to contribute to research on their lives. This chapter aims to reflect on experiences of working with children and young people across a range of research contexts and research topics. It hopes to encourage future sociologists to reflect on research as a powerful tool for informing and supporting social change, while giving young people a voice in the process. Finally, it identifies some future research areas on children and youth, but also some challenges, for example in terms of ensuring research has an impact and benefits for the wider community and the difficulties of securing research funding.

The relationship between the separate education system for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and the perpetuation of the conflict continues to be subject of considerable debate. There is broad agreement, however, that schools have an important role to play in healing division. This chapter examines and evaluates a recently established non-statutory initiative, the Sharing Education Programme, which aims to provide an effective contact model between the two systems. Our analysis suggests that the success of the Programme is clearly related to helping schools meet statutory obligations and that, in the long run, there are important lessons to be learned regarding how the programme can contribute towards improving relations between the communities.

Do unequal levels of participation across social groups correspond to unequal policy preferences in the political voices of the active citizenry? Across the established democracies, the politically active lean toward the Left at each level of social status. The end result is that the political biases of upper-social-status individuals are moderated by those who are politically active. However, this pattern varies. For traditional economic issues, there is a conservative bias among activists controlling for their social status. For cultural issues such as gay rights and protection of immigrants, political activists are more liberal than their social-status peers. This asymmetry in political voice across different issues is an under-recognized aspect of democratic participation.