What's the grand story? A macro-narrative analytical model and the case of Swiss child and adult protection policy

This paper expands on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by adding a theoretical and empirical exploration into macrolevel narratives. Existing NPF research largely neglects macrolevel narratives, which prevents the NPF from developing its full power. The main contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) It provides a definition of macrolevel narratives by conceptualizing them as the “story form” of a policy paradigm. (2) It proposes a model and an empirical approach, which may lay the foundation for a standard macrolevel NPF approach. (3) It contributes to the NPF's aim of connecting the macro and meso level. The paper tests the model in a comparative multi-method design applied to the Swiss child and adult protection policy. The findings show that macrolevel NPF analysis helps understand where mesolevel policy debates come from, namely from an underlying paradigm and its effects on institutions and culture that enable and constrain macrolevel narratives.     

A good social work: women's clubs, libraries, and the construction of a secular society in Utah, 1890-1920

After the renunciation of polygamy, Mormon women formed secular women's clubs as a means of collaborating with non-Mormon women in the construction of a shared secular society. Their common goal was the establishment and maintenance of the mainstream American social order. Activity in these clubs extended women's sphere into the public realm through socially acceptable public activities such as the temperance cause, civic improvements, political reform movements, and child welfare. The women campaigned for public support of libraries as institutions that would construct, preserve, and transmit American culture, educate the young, strengthen the home and family, and reform society.     

THE HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY RESEARCH AGENDA

Substantial opportunities exist for social scientists, humanists practitioners, and other scholars to contribute to research on higher education policy. Not only is the university or college an interesting study objective itself but also with higher education in the United States and worldwide so immersed in public policy considerations, the relations between academe and government raise many political, economic and other Questions. Some issues currently on the research agenda are listed here. The consequences of higher education policy research are also considered.     

How police agency diversity,policies, and outcomes shape citizen trust and willingness to engage

While widespread agreement that policing in the United States needs to be reformed arose in the summer of 2020, little consensus about specific reforms was reached. A common theme that arose, however, is a general lack of trust in the police. One response has been to increase agency diversity in terms of both officer race and officer gender. However, important questions exist about when – and what type(s) of – diversity shape citizen trust in and willingness to cooperate with the police – especially when considered in conjunction with agency performance and policies. To answer these questions, we use two conjoint experiments to evaluate whether citizens consider diversity when evaluating police agencies. We find that while both racial and gender diversity can influence public evaluations sometimes, these effects tend to emerge in the context of only the most (least) diverse institutions and are muted compared to the effects of agency policies and performance.     

The Postmodern Problem

Abstract

Mormon political theology must reconcile two distinct projects: the care for the Church's concrete, temporal existence in the World, and the welcoming of the future Kingdom of God on earth. Because of this duality, political theology finds itself highlighting the distinction between the World and the Kingdom of God and at the same time pointing out common ground and attempting to establish peace between the Church and the World. The alleged contradictions of Mormon political thought are, according to this conception, to be understood not as confrontations between idealism and brute reality (or “utopianism” and “assimilation”), but rather as the bringing together of the two goals of Mormon political reflection, pursued by two sides of political theology. These two sides, apologetic and prophetic political theology, are distinguished not by their political content, but rather by their particular kinds of political rhetoric.     

Policy dimension: A new concept to distinguish substance from process in the Narrative Policy Framework

This article introduces the distinction between substance (questions of policy design) and process (questions of power in the policy process) to the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). While both occur in existing NPF research, so far, they are not separated analytically. We conceptualize them as categories of the “policy dimension,” a new aspect of narrative content. Applying this dimension to an exploratory case, we show that such an analysis leads to useful insights for NPF scholars. Substance policy narrative elements show a debate about a policy's implementation model, whereas process policy narrative elements reveal that this debate is permeated by power conflicts. Furthermore, we find that the two categories' occurrence in narratives is influenced by the debate venue, whereas political parties as narrators do not seem to be relevant. The policy dimension allows for new research avenues and provides practitioners with a new tool to understand and intervene in policy debates.