Peter Deleon

Independent Researcher

Democracy is a wounded mammoth, looming large but mainly ignored by policy theorists. While serving democracy was a foundational goal of the policy sciences, few public policy scholars today mention democracy (or its absence), and they certainly do not use it as a criterion for evaluating policy. In this chapter, we probe why and how policy scholar...

Through the focus on social constructions, this chapter addresses a number of the enduring issues of democratic policy including public participation, policy implementation and effectiveness. What social constructions of target populations are and how they affect policy designs are explained and discussed.

This essay translates some of the underlying logic of existing research of policy processes into a set of strategies for shaping policy agendas and influencing policy development and change. The argument builds from a synthesized model of the individual and a simplified depiction of the political system. Three overarching strategies are introduced...

This essay revisits deLeon's argument describing the development of the policy sciences. The authors propose two “new” phenomena that have affected the mission and shape of the policy sciences, one—the rise in importance of the non-profit sector—being exogenous in nature, the second—the adoption of the concept of governance—being endogenous. It end...

One possible near-term application for solar thermal technologies is the production of steam which could be pumped underground te increase the amount of petroleum which could be recovered from an oil field. This article compares two types of solar thermal technologies—solar troughs and central receivers—with conventional means of enhanced oil recov...

Support for the “democratization of the policy sciences” has led to the development of a number of frameworks and theories to enhance the normative, multidisciplinary approach to policy analysis. However, this approach has been challenged for failing to produce the objective empirical and normative standards implied by its scientific aspirations. O...

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has traditionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves fro...

This article attempts to understand why the Lasswellian charge for the policy sciences has not been realized. It traces the cognitive and political evolutions of the policy sciences, and also gives some advice with regards to how policy sciences may achieve some of the earlier goals. A review of the development of the policy sciences's approach is...

In recent years industry representatives, policymakers, and scholars have argued that "command-and-control" regulations, although relatively effective, are costly policy instruments for promoting environmental protection. Accordingly, voluntary environmental programs (VEPs), generally understood as self-regulatory agreements that seek to promote en...

Policy scholars, for at least a generation now, have addressed the usefulness of public-mandated "command and control" environmental regulations as an effica- cious means to promote a cleaner environment. In the United States, these policies go back at least as far as the Clean Air Act of the late 1960s and are quite often designed, evaluated, and...

Why do an increasingly large number of firms choose to spend their own money and resources to protect the environment beyond the extant regulatory requirements? This article addresses this question by examining the EPA's Green Lights (GL) voluntary program in which a firm's policy makers made an early commitment to limiting greenhouse gases through...

Overview of the social constructions and policy design framework

Many policy scholars have noted that the policy termination literature has to date compiled an inadequate set of studies from which to posit theoretic propositions. Comparative policy analysis is in much the same position. This paper addresses both of these concerns by, first, offering a case study of a major policy initiative in Mexico, Pronasol,...

This study focuses on two basic questions: Are voluntary programs effective in promoting higher environmental performance by participant firms? If so, which distinct areas of environmental performance are more likely to be improved by firms joining a voluntary environmental program? We address these questions by assessing the environmental effectiv...

Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 4.1 (2006) 71-72 This paper emphasizes environmental technology transfer as a means to global sustainable development. It suggests global environmental governance regimes (GEGR) as a linkage between the two variables, including regional and international governmental regimes (international agreements and...

This manuscript contributes to the organizations and natural environment literature by combining the policy process model with neo-institutional theory to develop a framework of propositions predicting business political environmental management strategies. This framework advances neo-institutional work that has traditionally portrayed government r...

The policy sciences approach has recently came under sustained criticism for being insensitive to the values and preferences of the ordinary citizen. This paper attempts to address these problems by outlining a post-positivist approach, drawing upon the works of Jürgen Habermas. The paper proposes a “participatory policy analysis” that utilizes a s...

Technology transfer classically has been associated with the diffusion of technologies and processes across national boundaries. But in recent years, the term has been attached with equal significance to the flow of ideas and knowledge within and between organizations within the same economy or nation. When the organizations involved are business c...

This study evaluates whether the education, environmental expertise, and nationality of firms' chief executive officers (CEOs) are associated with greater participation and environmental performance in a voluntary environmental program implemented in a developing nation. Specifically, we collected data from the Certification for Sustainable Tourism...

The “capstone seminar”—that is, the culminating class in most masters of public affairs, administration, management or policy programs—reflects a developmental history going back at least to the geneses of graduate programs in public administration, law and business administration. Its near-universal appeal (especially important given a wide set of...

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has tradi- tionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves f...

This study analyzes the initial implementation of the Sustainable Slopes Program a voluntary environmental initiative established by the U.S. National Ski Areas Association in partnership with federal and state government agencies. Our findings indicate that participation of western ski areas in the Sustainable Slopes Program is related to institut...

One of the earliest topics addressed by policy analysts was public policy implementation. Starting with the seminal work of Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, policy implementation has burgeoned from a largely overlooked interest to perhaps the policy analysis growth industry over the last thirty years. However, even though an enormous set of bo...

One of the few issues on which public management scholars agree in theory is the centrality of the democratic ethos. Public policy has recently paid attention to more democratic forms of policy making (e.g., participatory policy analysis), and public administration has periodically studied and advocated increased citizen participation in the proces...

Given this condition, there is the possible emergence of a more laissez-faire style of government that would enable the civic "marketplace" to establish innovative and enthusiastic solutions to social problems and create institutions that serve the specific needs and concerns of their communities (Starobin, 1997). This instinct has an American line...

During the last decade, government reinvention along with the new public management (NPM) has driven a managerial reform wave toward market efficiency, entrepreneurship, and performance-based/benchmarking management in the public sector. Using an ICMA mailed survey of more than twelve hundred municipal governments in the United States, this study e...

Civil rights advocacy has long been a part of the U.S. tradition of nonprofit charity organizations. Even before the passage of federal, state, and local fair housing laws, groups of concerned citizens gathered together to improve opportunities for equal housing choice. Fair housing councils (FHCs) cropped up across the country as the Civil Rights...

During the 1970s and early 1980s, many policy analysts were engaged in comparative policy analysis. For a variety of reasons, the most important of which being a general neglect of the particular policy contexts, the use of comparative policy analysis fell largely into disuse. There are now a number of emerging reasons why a renaissance in comparat...

Policy researchers traditionally have adhered to the quantitative: (or positivist) approach. Recently, some policy analysts have emphasized a more qualitative (or postpositivist) approach. Little, if any, of the latter has been considered by proponents of the former as serious policy (i.e., “objective”) analysis. This tension has produced some conf...

This essay reviews the five articles in this symposium in light of termination research conducted over the past twenty years. The “underattention” of termination during the past two decades is discussed in the painted context of the attention paid to termination by the recent “Contract With America,” a plan by Congressional Republicans to eliminate...

The policy sciences and democracy are increasingly viewed as inseparable in both theory and practice. The "policy sciences of democracy" are disturbingly vague as to precisely what is meant by "democracy": is it an indirect, Madisonian democracy, one of representation and factions, or is it a more participatory, deTocquevillean democracy dependent...

This article examines the contemporary condition of the policy sciences in terms of its shortcomings, which can largely be attributed to an over reliance on instrumental rationality; the complexity of the problem contexts; and an increasingly technocratic orientation. These have combined to distance the policy sciences from their original multidisc...

Die Policy-Analyse, wie sie ursprünglich durch Harold Lasswell und Abraham Kaplan (Lasswell 1951; Lasswell/Kaplan 1950) konzipiert worden war, sprach sich direkt und eloquent für einen normativen Beitrag der Policy Sciences zum demokratischen politischen Gemeinwesen aus. In den Worten von Lasswell (1951: 15) sind die „Policy Sciences der Demokratie...

This article argues that many of the shortcomings generally ascribed to policy analysis can be attributed to the intractable nature of the problems being addressed. That is, public policy issues are inherently difficult, resistant to resolution and fully loaded with significant costs. Those costs can easily render a potential policy solution helple...

Can the work of policy analysts and program evaluators be made more relevant to the citizenry? Peter deLeon believes it is possible to reduce the isolation of analysts, who often produce assessments and recommendations that seem out of touch with the needs and wants of the public they serve. He calls for a "participatory policy analysis" that would...

This Note reports the final results of the first phase of a two part study, the purpose of which is to describe the spectrum of capabilities of individuals and groups that could be considered likely to attempt the takeover or theft and misuse of a nuclear weapon over the next 10-15 years. This Note first analyzes the motivations that might inspire...

Like our proverbial optimist, the innovator — whether an individual or an organization — is ever sanguine that this particular innovation is (or shortly will be) successful. The conditions which motivate the innovation — some sort of recognized and important shortcoming or opportunity — have spurred and formed the innovation activity, producing a p...

Much of the policy literature holds that rigorous policy analysis as practiced in the defense policymaking community has a much greater influence than analysis performed in the nondefense or ‘domestic’ sectors. This argument is examined by, first, offering several examples of quantitatively driven decisions in the U.S. Department of Defense and, se...

Part of the current evaluation of the work of the Swedish Secretariat for Futures Studies focuses on the practicality and legitimacy of futures studies in relation to the policy sciences. Two crucial issues are focused on, first the justification and relevance of futures studies methodological approaches and their rigorous application to areas of p...

One example of treating the policy process as an integrated process is the relationship between policy evaluation and policy termination. Policy and program terminations are seen as having three rationales: cost reductions, programmatic inefficiencies, and political ideology. The third appears to be the most important. Even so, formal program evalu...

In the United States the Reagan Administration has proposed a number of policy initiatives which have the effect of decentralizing governmental services. The services, until recently, had increasingly become the responsibility of the federal (i.e., centralized) government. This paper inquires as to the possible effects of such decentralization tend...

The development of new and advanced technologies, especially those with significant potential social effects, needs to be assessed as part of an on-going process. This paper proposes an evaluation agenda for technology R&D over the next decade with special emphasis on four issues: appropriate technology R&D standards and criteria; the institutional...

In the debates over nuclear nonproliferation, a close link is often ascribed between the development of nuclear power facilities and a nuclear weapons capability. This putative linkage appears to underlie much of U.S. nonproliferation policy through a number of Administrations. Yet the historical record does not substantiate this relationship. Nucl...

The United States currently imports close to half of its petroleum requirements. This report delineates the economic, social, and political costs of such a foreign oil dependency. These costs are often intangible, but combined they clearly constitute a greater price for imported petroleum than the strictly economic cost. If we can assume that impor...

Certainly no one can claim that the interaction of technology and public policy is a new issue, either in the United States or abroad. Ever since the scientific communities marshalled their expertise during the Second World War (radar and the atomic bomb being only the most pivotal examples), officials in the public arena have been quick to seek ou...

This essay proposes an analytic framework to compare the development and commercialization of a number of advanced civilian technologies. This framework emphasizes the multiple institutional actors and their objectives that such technology developments manifest and reflect. The construct is then illustrated in the context of the development and dif...

An overview of the practice and methodology of program evaluation is presented which defines more precisely the evaluation techniques and methodologies that are the most appropiate to government organizations which are actively involved in the research, development, and commercialization of solar energy systems. There are four basic types of evalut...

This book focuses on the political and technological institutions that developed and disseminated the nuclear power reactor in six nations: the United States, England, France, the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Canada. As such, it presents extensive case studies of these nations' developmental programs and, even more important,...

Focuses on the designing of scenarios (modeler's conception of whatever process or system he is attempting to represent) for a specific type of game-the political/military, free form game. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

As editors, we would be remiss to submit that insufficient comparative policy analysis has been done without making explicit suggestions for further research. One critical problem is that the lack of comparable data remains a major hindrance to comparative work. This, in turn leads into the need for a larger inventory of careful cross-national case...

This report is a case study of a successful R and D product--the laser guided bomb (LGB). The narrative begins with the work of the Army's Missile Command at the Redstone Arsenal (1962), continues with the initial LGB prototype competition between Texas Instruments (TI) and North American- Autonetics (1966), details the decisions within Hq USAF to...