Paper by Ringa Raudla, Külli Sarapuu, Johanna Vallistu, and Nastassia Harbuzova: “Although existing studies on experimental policymaking have acknowledged the importance of the political setting in which policy experiments take place, we lack systematic knowledge on how various political dimensions affect experimental policymaking. In this article, we address a specific gap in the existing understanding of the politics of experimentation: how political timeframes influence experimental policymaking. Drawing on theoretical discussions on experimental policymaking, public policy, electoral politics, and mediatization of politics, we outline expectations about how electoral and problem cycles may influence the timing, design, and learning from policy experiments. We argue electoral timeframes are likely to discourage politicians from undertaking large-scale policy experiments and if politicians decide to launch experiments, they prefer shorter designs. The electoral cycle may lead politicians to draw too hasty conclusions or ignore the experiment’s results altogether. We expect problem cycles to shorten politicians’ time horizons further as there is pressure to solve problems quickly. We probe the plausibility of our theoretical expectations using interview data from two different country contexts: Estonia and Finland…(More)“.
Discounting the Future: The Ascendency of a Political Technology
Book by Liliana Doganova: “Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent.
Discounting means valuing things through the flows of costs and benefits that they are likely to generate in the future, with these future flows being literally dis-counted as they are translated in the present. How have we come to think of the future, and of valuation, in such terms? Building on original empirical research in the historical sociology of discounting, Doganova takes us to some of the sites and moments in which discounting took shape and gained momentum: valuation of European forests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; economic theories devised in the early 1900s; debates over business strategies in the postwar era; investor-state disputes over the nationalization of natural resources; and drug development in the biopharmaceutical industry today. Weaving these threads together, the book pleads for an understanding of discounting as a political technology, and of the future as a contested domain…(More)”
We’ve Got a Big Problem
Blog by Daro: “There is a problem related to how we effectively help people receiving social services and public benefit programs. It’s a problem that we have been thinking, talking, and writing about for years. It’s a problem that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s also a problem that you’re likely familiar with, whether you have direct experience with the dynamics themselves, or you’ve been frustrated by how these dynamics impact your work. In February, we organized a convening at Georgetown University in collaboration with Georgetown’s Massive Data Institute to discuss how so many of us can be frustrated by the same problem but haven’t been able to really make any headway toward a solution.
For as long as social services have existed, people have been trying to understand how to manage and evaluate those services. How do we determine what to scale and what to change? How do we replicate successes and how do we minimize unsuccessful interventions? To answer these questions we have tried to create, use, and share evidence about these programs to inform our decision-making. However – and this is a big however – despite our collective efforts, we have difficulty determining whether there’s been an increase in using evidence, or most importantly, whether there’s actually been an improvement in the quality and impact of social services and public benefit programs…(More)”.
Behavioural science: could supermarket loyalty cards nudge us to make healthier choices?
Article by Magda Osman: “Ken Murphy, CEO of the British multinational supermarket chain Tesco, recently said at a conference that Tesco “could use Clubcard data to nudge customers towards healthier choices”.
So how would this work, and do we want it? Our recent study, published in the Scientific Journal of Research and Reviews, provides an answer.
Loyalty schemes have been around as far back as the 1980s, with the introduction of airlines’ frequent flyer programmes.
Advancements in loyalty schemes have been huge, with some even using gamified approaches, such as leaderboards, trophies and treasure hunts, to keep us engaged. The loyalty principle relies on a form of social exchange, namely reciprocity.
The ongoing reciprocal relationship means that we use a good or service regularly because we trust the service provider, we are satisfied with the service, and we deem the rewards we get as reasonable – be they discounts, vouchers or gifts.
In exchange, we accept that, in many cases, loyalty schemes collect data on us. Our purchasing history, often tied to our demographics, generates improvements in the delivery of the service.
If we accept this, then we continue to benefit from reward schemes, such as promotional offers or other discounts. The effectiveness depends not only on making attractive offers to us for things we are interested in purchasing, but also other discounted items that we hadn’t considered buying…(More)”
Social Systems Evidence
About: “…a continuously updated repository of syntheses of research evidence about the programs, services and products available in a broad range of government sectors and program areas (e.g., climate action, community and social services, economic development and growth, education, environmental conservation, education, housing and transportation) as well as the governance, financial and delivery arrangements within which these programs, services and products are provided, and the implementation strategies that can help to ensure that these programs, services and products get to those who need them.
The content covers the Sustainable Development Goals, with the exceptions of the health part of goal 3 (which is already well covered by existing databases).
The types of syntheses include evidence briefs for policy, overviews of evidence syntheses, evidence syntheses addressing questions about effectiveness, evidence syntheses addressing other types of questions, evidence syntheses in progress (i.e., protocols for evidence syntheses), and evidence syntheses being planned (i.e., registered titles for evidence syntheses). Social Systems Evidence also contains a continuously updated repository of economic evaluations in these same domains…(More)”
Artificial Intelligence for Social Innovation: Beyond the Noise of Algorithms and Datafication
Paper by Igor Calzada: “In an era of rapid technological advancement, decisions about the ownership and governance of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence will shape the future of both urban and rural environments in the Global North and South. This article explores how AI can move beyond the noise of algorithms by adopting a technological humanistic approach to enable Social Innovation, focusing on global inequalities and digital justice. Using a fieldwork Action Research methodology, based on the Smart Rural Communities project in Colombia and Mozambique, the study develops a framework for integrating AI with SI. Drawing on insights from the AI4SI International Summer School held in Donostia-San Sebastián in 2024, the article examines the role of decentralized Web3 technologies—such as Blockchain, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, and Data Cooperatives—in enhancing data sovereignty and fostering inclusive and participatory governance. The results demonstrate how decentralization can empower marginalized communities in the Global South by promoting digital justice and addressing the imbalance of power in digital ecosystems. The conclusion emphasizes the potential for AI and decentralized technologies to bridge the digital divide, offering practical recommendations for scaling these innovations to support equitable, community-driven governance and address systemic inequalities across the Global North and South…(More)”.
How Generative AI Content Could Influence the U.S. Election
Article by Valerie Wirtschafter: “…The contested nature of the presidential race means such efforts will undoubtedly continue, but they likely will remain discoverable, and their reach and ability to shape election outcomes will be minimal. Instead, the most meaningful uses of generative AI content could occur in highly targeted scenarios just prior to the election and/or in a contentious post-election environment where experience has demonstrated that potential “evidence” of malfeasance need not be true to mobilize a small subset of believers to act.
Because U.S. elections are managed at the state and county levels, low-level actors in some swing precincts or counties are catapulted to the national spotlight every four years. Since these actors are not well known to the public, targeted and personal AI-generated content can cause significant harm. Before the election, this type of fabricated content could take the form of a last-minute phone call by someone claiming to be election worker alerting voters to an issue at their polling place.
After the election, it could become harassment of election officials or “evidence” of foul play. Due to the localized and personalized nature of this type of effort, it could be less rapidly discoverable for unknown figures not regularly in the public eye, difficult to debunk or prevent with existing tools and guardrails, and damaging to reputations. This tailored approach need not be driven by domestic actors—in fact, in the lead up to the 2020 elections, Iranian actors pretended to be members of the Proud Boys and sent threatening emails to Democratic voters in select states demanding they vote for Donald Trump. Although election officials have worked tirelessly to brace for this possibility, they are correct to be on guard…(More)”
Buried Academic Treasures
Barrett and Greene: “…one of the presenters who said: “We have lots of research that leads to no results.”
As some of you know, we’ve written a book with Don Kettl to help academically trained researchers write in a way that would be understandable by decision makers who could make use of their findings. But the keys to writing well are only a small part of the picture. Elected and appointed officials have the capacity to ignore nearly anything, no matter how well written it is.
This is more than just a frustration to researchers, it’s a gigantic loss to the world of public administration. We spend lots of time reading through reports and frequently come across nuggets of insights that we believe could help make improvements in nearly every public sector endeavor from human resources to budgeting to performance management to procurement and on and on. We, and others, can do our best to get attention for this kind of information, but that doesn’t mean that the decision makers have the time or the inclination to take steps toward taking advantage of great ideas.
We don’t want to place the blame for the disconnect between academia and practitioners on either party. To one degree or the other they’re both at fault, with taxpayers and the people who rely on government services – and that’s pretty much everybody except for people who have gone off the grid – as the losers.
Following, from our experience, are six reasons we believe that it’s difficult to close the gap between the world of research and the realm of utility. The first three are aimed at government leaders, the last three have academics in mind…(More)”
Science Diplomacy and the Rise of Technopoles
Article by Vaughan Turekian and Peter Gluckman: “…Science diplomacy has an important, even existential imperative to help the world reconsider the necessity of working together toward big global goals. Climate change may be the most obvious example of where global action is needed, but many other issues have similar characteristics—deep ocean resources, space, and other ungoverned areas, to name a few.
However, taking up this mantle requires acknowledging why past efforts have failed to meet their goals. The global commitment to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an example. Weaknesses in the UN system, compounded by varied commitments from member states, will prevent the achievement of the SDGs by 2030. This year’s UN Summit of the Future is intended to reboot the global commitment to the sustainability agenda. Regardless of what type of agreement is signed at the summit, its impact may be limited.
Science diplomacy has an important, even existential imperative to help the world reconsider the necessity of working together toward big global goals.
The science community must play an active part in ensuring progress is in fact made, but that will require an expansion of the community’s current role. To understand what this might mean, consider that the Pact for the Future agreed in New York City in September 2024 places “science, technology, and innovation” as one of its five themes. But that becomes actionable either in the narrow sense that technology will provide “answers” to global problems or in the platitudinous sense that science provides advice that is not acted upon. This dichotomy of unacceptable approaches has long bedeviled science’s influence.
For the world to make better use of science, science must take on an expanded responsibility in solving problems at both global and local scales. And science itself must become part of a toolkit—both at the practical and the diplomatic level—to address the sorts of challenges the world will face in the future. To make this happen, more countries must make science diplomacy a core part of their agenda by embedding science advisors within foreign ministries, connecting diplomats to science communities.
As the pace of technological change generates both existential risk and economic, environmental, and social opportunities, science diplomacy has a vital task in balancing outcomes for the benefit of more people. It can also bring the science community (including the social sciences and humanities) to play a critical role alongside nation states. And, as new technological developments enable nonstate actors, and especially the private sector, science diplomacy has an important role to play in helping nation states develop policy that can identify common solutions and engage key partners…(More)”.
Harnessing the feed: social media for mental health information and support
Report by ReachOut: “…highlights how a social media ban could cut young people off from vital mental health support, including finding that 73 per cent of young people in Australia turn to social media when it comes to support for their mental health.
Based on research with over 2000 young people, the report found a range of benefits for young people seeking mental health support via social media (predominantly TikTok, YouTube and Instagram). 66 per cent of young people surveyed reported increased awareness about their mental health because of relevant content they accessed via social media, 47 per said they had looked for information about how to get professional mental health support on social media and 40 per cent said they sought professional support after viewing mental health information on social media.
Importantly, half of young people with a probable mental health condition said that they were searching for mental health information or support on social media because they don’t have access to professional support.
However, young people also highlighted a range of concerns about social media via the research. 38 per cent were deeply concerned about harmful mental health content they have come across on platforms and 43 per cent of the young people who sought support online were deeply concerned about the addictive nature of social media.
The report highlights young people’s calls for social media to be safer. They want: an end to addictive features like infinite scroll, more control over the content they see, better labelling of mental health information from credible sources, better education and more mental health information provided across platforms…(More)”.