=== Useful nuggets for PubPol Comp ===

* Be sure to define key terms from the questions

* At the outset, make it clear that you understand the question and lay out the boundaries of what you will do with your response

* Not a bad idea to list some alternative answers, and describe why yours is more convincing

* Use terminology from the other questions - it's indicative of what the examiners see as important

* Aim for at least 3 single-spaced pages per answer, with at least 6-8 citations

* Axes of disagreement: which explanatory factors are most important, what sort of methodology is most powerful, and how do normative issues integrate into the study of public policy?

* Popper - importance of falsifiability in defining a scientific theory

* Kuhn - anomalies build up, people adapt theory to try to accommodate them, eventually

* Lakatos - competing research programs succeed when they can explain a broader range of phenomena than the ones that were previously dominant

* One nice illustration of different sources and timescales of change could be climate change (long-term structural explanation) and the Fukushima disaster (immediate crises) as prompts for changes in nuclear energy policy in various jurisdictions.

* The policy cycle may not be an accurate description of what really happens, but it can be useful for categorizing the different kinds of activities involved in policy-making. It may also have normative utility, as a guide to how policy problems can be rationally and effectively tackled.

* Peter John: "Examples of technical terms, which perhaps promise more than they can deliver, are issue networks, guidance mechanisms, front-end policy making, epistemic community, feedback, policy style, and policy-action framework" (8)

* "Elinor Ostrom shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her lifetime of scholarly work investigating how communities succeed or fail at managing common pool (finite) resources such as grazing land, forests and irrigation waters." Privatization is not the only way to address the TOTC - communities have found ways to govern them in places from Switzerland to Kenya, Guatemala, and Nepal.

* Institutional cultures illustrate how institutions are more than just aggregations of utility-maximizing individuals - think of the self-perception of the IMF, or the FBI, or the Canadian civil service.

* John2012, (175): "the formation of policy as a dynamic process involving the interaction of ideas and interests in a socioeconomic and institutional context"

* There is a spectrum of radicalism regarding the importance of ideas: their importance can be recognized in relation to individual preferences, they can define institutions, and they can define reality itself

* Types of micro theory: (a) rational utilitarian individuals make welfare-maximizing choices that get aggregated (b) ideas/memes evolve and spread within policy communities

* Stephen Krasner is most strongly associated with the idea of regimes internationally

* Hall's three orders of change: (a) first, instrument settings (b) second, instrument choice (c) goals

* Scientists have been largely unable to replicate key results in areas like cancer research and psychology. There are many methodological challenges involved (publication bias, the file drawer problem, etc). These problems are likely to be even more acute for phenomena that are more challenging to isolate and pin down, in the social sciences.

* Majone (discursive institutionalism) - We miss a lot if we focus only on power, influence, and bargaining. Debate and argument also matter.