The purpose of this paper is to stimulate a re-envisioning of gender politics in public policy making by applying a new approach to understanding them. Our approach is based on, and illustrated by, a study of gender dynamics in policy-making processes in the NSW public sector in Australia. The study draws on theoretical developments in the sociological study of gender arrangements in large orga...

This study addresses two questions: “What factors affect the adoption of research within educational policy making?” and “How might a better understanding of these factors improve research adoption and aid the development of policy?” In investigating the concept of research adoption, which I regard as vital to the successful creation of ‘evidence-informed’ policies/policy instruments, it is hop...

A technique called Time Hopping is proposed for speeding up reinforcement learning algorithms. It is applicable to continuous optimization problems running in computer simulations. Making shortcuts in time by hopping between distant states combined with off-policy reinforcement learning allows the technique to maintain higher learning rate. Experiments on a simulated biped crawling robot confir...

Libraries have been written about the theory and practice of public policy making. Yet, this enormous scholarship has proved insufficient to lift the veil of mystery and idiosyncrasy that shrouds the art of decision making. The heady ambition to turn both clinical practice and health policy into evidence-based bastions of rationalist decision making has been downgraded; the vocabulary is now “e...

This systematic review aimed to collect and synthesize information available on immunization policy making processes in countries across the globe. Twenty-nine published articles and five websites in either English or French provided varied information on the immunization policy making processes in 33 countries. The information retrieved varied from players involved to types of evidence used wh...

Two recent evaluation studies undertaken for the European Commission, related to the LEADER Community Initiative implemented throughout the 1990s, have provided the basis for the issues discussed in this article. This programme was set up to encourage pilot experiences in the promotion of rural development in the problem areas of Europe, by introducing a set of distinctive features emphasizing ...

Education policy in Pakistan, as in other developing countries, faces the challenge of poor implementation. The article explores the history of education policy in Pakistan and describes the conventional accounts of policy failures. It particularly highlights the issues of unclear goals, political commitment, governance, centralisation, resources and foreign aid. Generally, it is assumed that o...

Privacy policies are verbose, difficult to understand, take too long to read, and may be the leastread items on most websites even as users express growing concerns about information collection practices. For all their faults, though, privacy policies remain the single most important source of information for users to attempt to learn how companies collect, use, and share data. Likewise, these ...