This book analyzes various important aspects of methodology and substance regarding economic, social, and political policy in Africa directed toward achieving more effective, efficient, and equitable societal institutions. The chapters are authored by experts from within Africa and also from Africa research institutes elsewhere. The book combines practical policy significance with insightful causal and prescriptive generalizations. The emphasis is on the role of governmental decision-making and the important (but secondary) role of the marketplace, social groups, and engineering.

This volume analyzes various important aspects of methodology and substance regarding economic, social and political policy in Africa directed toward achieving more effective, efficient and equitable societal institutions. The chapters are authored by experts from within Africa and also from Africa research institutes elsewhere. It combines practical policy significance with insightful casual and prescriptive generalizations. The emphasis is on the role of governmental decision-making and the important (but secondary) role of the marketplace, social groups and engineering.

This book analyzes various important aspects of methodology and substance regarding economic, social, and political policy in Asia directed toward achieving more effective, efficient, and equitable societal institutions. The chapters are authored by experts from within Asia and also from Asia research institutes elsewhere. The book combines practical policy significance with insightful causal and prescriptive generalizations. The emphasis is on the role of governmental decision-making and the important (but secondary) role of the marketplace, social groups, and engineering.

Handbook of Public Policy Evaluation is the only book of its kind to present aspects of public policy evaluation that relate to economic, technology, social, political, international, and legal problems. Rather than looking at specific narrowly focused programs, this book emphasizes broad-based evaluation theory, study, and application, providing a rich variety of exceptional insights and ideas.

Designed to facilitate integration and coherence, key features in this volume include:

• Systematic evaluation, measuring the policy alternatives available for achieving goals

• Win-win evaluation, processing policy alternatives that can enable conservatives, liberals, and other major viewpoints to all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously

• Policy evaluation, offering methods, examples, studies, professionalism, perspectives, concepts, trends, substance, theory, applications, dispute resolution, interdisciplinary interaction and bibliographies and applications

The book targets the need for improvement in the methods, processes, and substance of public policy and opens the gate of public policy to be more effective, efficient, and equitable. Policymakers, administrators, analysts, and practitioners alike will find the Handbook a necessary resource of alternative public policies that are placed in context with a direct course to positive results. 

Leading the problems most critical to government decision makers worldwide are those that derive from privatization, democratization, and decentralization. Dr. Nagel and a panel of academics and practitioners help clarify the ways in which problems traceable to these trends are being handled -- and how they might be handled better -- in light of the goals, experiences, constraints, and other factors affecting participants in world governance. Among the many important features of the book is its interdisciplinary approach and the way it offers African, Asian, Latin American, European and North American viewpoints. It also combines the perspectives of liberal and conservative ideologies. Cross-national with concrete examples and broad concepts and principles carefully detailed, the book is an important source of background and insight. Nagel and the contributors make clear that privatizing can involve shifting from government to private operations, with or without government ownership and with or without liberal contract provisions to protect consumers, workers, or the environment. They show that democratization can include the expansion of political participation and can give minorities the legal right to convert the majority to their positions, possibly the technological and economic facilitators as well. They also investigate ways in which national or state governments can be involved as "high units" in decentralization processes, but show that decentralization can involve local governments, neighborhoods, businesses, or even individuals as the lower or "decentral units." Throughout, the book offers alternative positions and discusses their consequences from a variety of cross-nationaland interdisciplinary perspectives.

This annual publication deals with how microcomputers and other computers can be applied to improving the explanatory and evaluative roles of modern social science. Each volume contains chapters by experts in political science, psychology, sociology, economics and computer science.

Among the most intractable problems in the public sector is how to train effective administrators. Nagel and the contributors to this wide-ranging investigation show how worldwide the training problem is, and how critical is the need to solve it. Included here are discussions of, among other issues, how to motivate, reward, promote, and sanction new and experienced hires, and also how to deal with them fairly and productively in other ways. They explore ways to provide training courses in colleges, government agencies, and private sector training facilities, how to teach specific subjects, such as financial administration (including taxation, spending, budgeting), and how to develop and implement public policies that are effective, efficient, and equitable.

Interdisciplinary as well as cross-national, the book provides viewpoints from both academics and practitioners - people from political science, public administration, public policy and related disciplines. It also offers a combination of liberal and conservative ideological viewpoints, and reaches into Africa, Asia, East and West Europe, Latin America and North America for its viewpoints. Among the book's features are its stress on the importance of well-trained public administrators, its coverage of the controversial aspects of public administration training, and its success at integrating the substance of public policy with administrative procedures. The result is a major source of information for public administrators and policy makers already in government service and for students in academic programs preparing them for it.

This book demonstrates the use of the personal computer as an integral component of legal decision making. Nagel begins with an overview of the use of microcomputers as a tool in the legal decision-making process. He reviews in detail the currently available decision-aiding software. Several important areas of decision-making are covered, including predicting the outcome of future cases in light of previous relevant cases and present facts; litigation choices such as whether to go to trial or to settle; allocating attorney resources; and negotiating and mediating. The book can help one's law practice more profitable, less time-consuming, and more competitive.

This first volume in the series examines such topics as improving public policy toward and within developing nations, economic development and decentralized government, policy evaluation methods for developing country energy issues, and the law of developing nations and super-optimum solutions.

This title was first published in 2000. Super-optimizing analysis deals with public policy problems by finding an alternative that enables conservatives, liberals and other viewpoints to come out ahead of their expectations simultaneously. This text explores the ideas and seeks to make super-optimum solutions a matter of routine.

The use of microcomputers as decision aids in law practice is increasing rapidly. Nagel here shows how developments in software over the last few years are making microcomputers practically indispensable to lawyers as decision aids. This is in contrast to his earlier book on "Microcomputers as Decision Aids in Law Practice." It dealt speculatively with ways in which decision-aiding software could be used by lawyers for judicial prediction, litigation strategy, allocating scarce resources, and negotiation-mediation.

The book is divided into three parts covering general developments, specific lawyer skills, and application to all fields of law. The first part previews various uses of decision-aiding software by practicing lawyers, including a general discussion of the potential and actual benefits of such software. How decision-aiding software enhances specific lawyer skills comprises the second and largest part of the work. Among the topics discussed are computer-aided counseling, computer-aided mediation, legal policy evaluation and computer-aided advocacy, law prediction, and legal administration. In the third part, Nagel assesses applications of decision-aiding software to all fields of law, with an emphasis on contracts, property, torts, family law, criminal law, constitutional law, economic regulation, international law, civil procedure, and criminal procedure. In a provocative concluding chapter, he deals with the thorny issues of individual ethics and professional responsibility in the context of microcomputers. Because decision-aiding software encourages decision makers to be much more explicit about their goals than they otherwise would be, its use raises questions as to whose goals should be pursued and to what degree. This is a nuts-and-bolts guidebook that will be a valuable tool for practicing attorneys with some knowledge of microcomputers and is recommended reading for legal scholars and law students.

This volume concentrates upon the theme of policy analysis concepts and methods, viewing it from an institutional and implementation focus. Environmental policy issues are emphasized with an analysis of low-level common pool Woodstock governance, Madagascar's national environmental action plan, agriculture policy assessment and forestry and irrigation policies. The text is international in its focus with case studies taken from Nepal, the Philippines, China and Africa. Emphasis is placed upon issues of policy reform and cutting the costs of corruption.

This book can improve the effectiveness of those working within the legal process and in legal policy. It seeks to clarify how the examination of risk levels, time allocation, and other legal policy situations can lead to optimum choices. The principles discussed are amplified by illustrative examples covering such important subjects as right to counsel, plea bargaining, client selection, pretrial release, jury size, crime prevention, delay reduction, and many other controversial and problematic issues of concern to the practicing attorney, the legal scholar, and the legal policymaker. Nagel offers the reader realistic applications of the theories provided, and is unique in his hands-on direct relation of those theories to the decision-making process.

Nagel draws on his experience as a practicing attorney and legal scholar to present a clear and concise discussion of the analytical methods in law which deal with causation and prediction. Within the legal arena, causal analysis explains the factors involved that cause legal policies/decisions to be adopted and the impact a legal policy is likely to have, and why. Predictive analysis is an attempt to forecast the outcome of a legal action and is especially useful for those involved in courtroom procedures. Causation, Prediction, and Legal Analysis is the only book available on this broadly focused subject, encompassing a thorough exposition of both the theory and application of causation and prediction.

The essence of decision-aiding software is that it consists of various forms of microcomputer programming designed to enable users to process a set of (1) goals to be achieved, (2) alternatives available for achieving them, and (3) relations between goals and alternatives in order to choose the best alternative, combination, allocation, or predictive decision-rule. Benefits from using decision-aiding software include (1) being more explicit about goals to be achieved, alternatives available for achieving them, and relations between goals and alternatives; (2) being stimulated to think of more goals, alternatives, and relations than one would otherwise be likely to do; (3) being prepared to handle multiple goals, alternatives, and relations without getting confused and without feeling the need to resort to a single composite goal or a single go/no-go alternative; (4) being encouraged to experiment with changes in the inputs into one's thinking to see how one's conclusions are affected; and (5) being better able to achieve or exceed one's goals when choosing among alternatives or allocating scarce resources.

There are five parts to the book covering: (1) a broad overview of decision-aiding packages, including criteria for evaluating them; (2) approaches that are based on management science and operations research, including linear programming and decision trees; (3) spreadsheet-based software, generally with goals on the columns, alternatives on the rows, relations in the cells, overall totals for each alternative at the far right, and a capability for indicating how the totals would be altered as a result of changes in the inputs; (4) expert systems software including rule-based and knowledge-based expert systems; and (5) general applications of decision-aiding software and a discussion of the increasing utilization of such software.

This series presents selected research papers dealing with important methodological and theoretical issues in the policy sciences, with research in policy-related disciplines, and applied research on issues in public policy analysis and public management. There is particular emphasis on research related to operations and design issues for governmental organizations.

Decision-aiding software, the underpinning of computer-aided judicial analysis, can facilitate the prediction of how cases are likely to be decided, prescribe decisions that should be reached in such cases, and help administrate more efficiently the court process. It can do so, says Nagel, by listing past cases on each row of a spreadsheet matrix, by listing predictive criteria in the columns, and in general by showing for each factual element the estimated probability of winning a case. The software aggregates the information available and deduces likely outcomes. But it can also prescribe judicial decisions by listing alternatives in the rows, the goals to be achieved in the columns, and by showing relations between alternatives in the cells. By similar means decision-aiding software can also help perform administrative tasks, such as rationally assigning judges or other personnel to cases, and by sequencing cases to reduce the time consumed by each case.

In Part I, Nagel provides an overview of computer-aided analysis and the role of decision-aiding software in the legal process. In the second part he deals with judicial prediction from prior cases and from present facts; and in the third part he emphasizes the prescribing role of judges, particularly in deciding the rules that ought to be applied in civil and criminal procedures. Nagel also covers computer-aided mediation and provides a new perspective on judicial decisions. Then, in Part IV, he treats at length the process of judicial administration and how to improve its efficiency. Of particular interest to court personnel will be the benefits to be derived from reducing delays and in the docketing and sequencing of cases.

First published in 1998, this volume examines how super-optimum decisions involve finding alternatives to controversies whereby Conservatives, Liberals, or other major groups can all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. This book is organised in terms of concepts, methods, causes, process, substance, and the policy studies profession. Concepts clarify that policy evaluation traditionally involves: (1) Goals to be achieved; (2) Alternatives available for achieving them; (3) Relations between goals and alternatives; (4) Drawing a conclusion as to the best alternative in light of the goals, alternatives, and relations; and (5) Analysing how the conclusion would change if there were changes in the goals, alternatives, or relations. Super-optimizing also involves five related steps, but with the following improvements: (1) Goals are designed as conservative, liberal, or neutral; (2) Alternatives get the same designations; (3) Relations are simplified to indicate which alternatives are relatively high or low on each goal; (4) The conclusion involves arriving at an alternative that does better on Goal A than Alternative A, and simultaneously better on Goal B than Alternative B; and (5) The fifth step involves analysing the super-optimum or win-win alternative in terms of its feasibility as to the economic, technological, psychological, political, administrative, and legal matters.

First published in 1998, policy WITHIN developing nations includes: (1) Economic policy, such as economic growth without inflation or sectors of unemployment; (2)Technology policy, such as encouraging the ad option of improved technologies for health, energy, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and the environment; (3) Social policy, such as education facilities, and merit treatment across ethnic groups, genders, age groups, economic classes, and geographical regions; (4) Political policy, such as multiple sources of ideas from different government levels, branches, interest groups, and parties; (5) Legal policy, such as compliance with the law by street people, business people, and government people. Policy ACROSS developing nations includes: (1) International economic policy, such as trade, tariffs exchange rates, and factory relocation; (2) International technology policy, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other aspects of technology transfer; (3) International social policy, such as immigration, refugees, and cross-border ethnic friction; (4) International political policy, such as human rights and the role of sanctions; (5) International legal policy, such as the drug trade, human rights, business transactions, torts, and property rights across national boundaries.

This series presents selected research papers dealing with important methodological and theoretical issues in the policy sciences, with research in policy-related disciplines, and applied research on issues in public policy analysis and public management.

This title was first published in 2000. Super-optimizing analysis deals with public policy problems by finding an alternative that enables conservatives, liberals and other viewpoints to come out ahead of their expectations simultaneously. This text explores the ideas and seeks to make super-optimum solutions a matter of routine.

This text addresses the concerns of human rights in developing nations, reviews research, and suggests solutions for the problems. It is divided into three parts. The first section of the book presents an overview, in terms of the history of political terror in the developing world in the years 1980-1991 and also in examining the very term "human rights." The papers in Part II present different ways of looking at, conceptualizing and measuring human rights policies, practices or conditions. This is followed by an assessment of exactly why there are differences in human rights policies, practices and conditions in developing countries. The final chapter in this section reports the results of a study showing that good human rights practices in developing countries are promoted by the presence of democratic institutions.

First published in 1998, policy WITHIN developing nations includes: (1) Economic policy, such as economic growth without inflation or sectors of unemployment; (2)Technology policy, such as encouraging the ad option of improved technologies for health, energy, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and the environment; (3) Social policy, such as education facilities, and merit treatment across ethnic groups, genders, age groups, economic classes, and geographical regions; (4) Political policy, such as multiple sources of ideas from different government levels, branches, interest groups, and parties; (5) Legal policy, such as compliance with the law by street people, business people, and government people. Policy ACROSS developing nations includes: (1) International economic policy, such as trade, tariffs exchange rates, and factory relocation; (2) International technology policy, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other aspects of technology transfer; (3) International social policy, such as immigration, refugees, and cross-border ethnic friction; (4) International political policy, such as human rights and the role of sanctions; (5) International legal policy, such as the drug trade, human rights, business transactions, torts, and property rights across national boundaries.

This title was forst published in 2000: An analysis of India's development and public policy from the perspectives of five major fields of public policy. 1. Economic policy, including public policy toward industrial development. 2. Social policy, including religion, education and women's rights. 3. Environmental policy, including possible conflict with economic development. 4. Science-technology policy, including agricultural development, information technology and administering the electronics industry. 5. Political reform, including local government and general elections.

An innovative contribution to the literature of political science, this five-part volume explores the four basic theoretical issues in public policy analysis: conceptual theory, theory of knowing, casual theory, and normative analysis. A fifth section addresses future aspects of policy theory. The editors' introduction, which includes specific definitions of relevant terms used throughout the text, provides the reader with a thorough grounding in the subject. An in-depth discussion of the five key elements of policy evaluation that adhere to the editor's basic definition of the subject and an examination of the fine-tuned distinctions among other concepts often used to mean the same thing as public policy analysis provide the reader with more precise understandings. Key characteristics of good policy analysis relating to validity, importance, originality, and feasibility are scrutinized along with other criteria; sources of the elements of policy analysis--goals, policies, and relations--are identified and studied. The five key methodological problems in decision making are explained and the role of decision-aiding software in resource allocation and in dealing with various constraints is considered. Ten chapters written by fourteen experts in the field expand upon various aspects of the four basic issues in such areas as relativity and quantum logic, the argumentation process, policy design, and normative and behavioral theory. This exhaustive study will be required reading for those who identify goals and formulate public policy and for those who assess the outcomes of these goals.