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This chapter provides a comprehensive, yet, concise overview of the existing debates on policy networks. The aim of the chapter is to identify those mechanisms that encourage network collaboration among several stakeholders with different motivations, interests, and preferences throughout different stages of policy making from agenda setting to policy evaluation. A systematic review of previous studies on policy networks across various countries highlights the achievements and missing links in the literature, and at the same time, reveals three sets of causal mechanisms, which are crucial to understand Network Collaborative Capacity (NCC) along the structural, relational, and institutional dimensions. Structural and relational mechanisms explain the internal dynamics of a policy network; whereas institutional mechanisms consist of all those external factors in the broader political and economic environment within which the network is embedded. Structural, relational, and institutional mechanisms are further classified into constituting elements that serve as a blueprint for organizing and managing collaborative efforts at the network level. Ultimately this chapter contributes to the existing governance debates by offering an integrated framework for the study of NCC across country cases and policy sectors. Turkish health sector represents a case study to assess the applicability of this framework beyond the context of advanced industrialized economies and democracies with a tradition in collaborative policy making. Finally, the added value of comparative network analysis at the national and sub-national levels will be discussed.

Researchers continue to seek understanding of industrialization as a state managed process. How to create and implement new industries based on advanced knowledge is on the policy agenda of many advanced nations. Measures that promote these developments include national capacity building in science and technology, the formation of technology transfer systems, and the establishment of industrial clusters. What these templates often overlook is an analysis of use. This chapter aims to increase the understanding of the processes that embed new solutions in structures from an industrial network perspective. The chapter describes an empirical study of high-technology industrialization in Taiwan that the researcher conducts to this end. The study shows that the Taiwanese industrial model is oversimplified and omits several important factors in the development of new industries. This study bases its findings on the notions that resource combination occurs in different time and space, the new always builds on existing resource structures, and the users are important as active participants in development processes.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

A new High School Equivalency (HSE) policy was developed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in response to a shift toward a knowledge-based economy and a transformation toward STEM education. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand the stakeholders' perceptions and experiences in implementing the new HSE policy in a school that follows a US curriculum in the UAE. The study was conducted before the COVID-19 lockdown. The phenomenological approach was used to shed light on the implementation of the HSE policy in an active learning environment and the challenges facing the school's stakeholders. The study results reveal the challenges that stakeholders face in implementing the HSE policy and their experiences in offering students the courses they need. All stakeholders agreed that the transformation toward STEM education requires proper implementation of the high school equivalency policy in an active learning environment that help in developing students' twenty-first-century skills and prepare them to meet the job market needs.

This book is aimed at extending the study of network collaboration beyond the context of advanced democracies through the exploration of policy networks in Turkey – a country with statist policy style and authoritarian political culture. The focus here will be on cross-sectoral collaboration taking place within the Turkish health sector – a policy area that has been steadily improving with the initiation of the Health Transformation Programme (HTP) in 2003. To date, many scholars have studied the outcomes of the HTP reforms on the healthcare system including indicators such as healthcare access, health insurance coverage and healthcare services. However, despite the transformative nature of the program, a limited number of studies have assessed the impact of HTP reforms on changing policy and governance patterns in Turkey. Considering this gap in the literature, the aim of this book is to empirically examine the context, capacity and consequences of cross-sectoral collaboration within the health sector in Turkey through a micro- and meso-level investigation of policy networks developed in the sub-areas of public health, medical industry, and health tourism covering the years between 2011 and 2015. Furthermore, this book provides an account of those factors that impede cross-sectoral arrangements from turning into venues of policy collaboration. Such juxtaposition is designed to enhance the understanding of policy networks as conceptual devices and practical tools of collaboration in public policy.

Barbara M. Altman, a Sociologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, is currently a Special Assistant on Disability Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her previous position was Senior Research Fellow with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She is a past president of the Society for Disability Studies and served on the founding Board of Directors of that organization. Her disability research interests focus in three areas: operationalization of disability definitions/measures in survey data; access to, financing and utilization of health care services by persons with disabilities, particularly working age persons and women with disabilities; and disability among minority groups. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on disability topics, and has served as editor of special issues of Disability Studies Quarterly and Journal of Disability Policy Studies. She is co-editor of this series Research in Social Science and Disability.Deborah J. Anderson, Ph.D., has conducted policy research in the area of Aging and Developmental Disabilities at the University of Minnesota since 1985. Her studies have included analyses of the health status, health conditions and health-related limitations and needs of older adults with mental retardation living in a variety of residential settings as well as in their own homes. These studies have included a longitudinal study of a 10% sample of older adults living in residential facilities licensed by developmental disabilities agencies, the National Nursing Home Survey of 1985, the National Medical Expenditure Survey of 1987, and the National Health Interview Disability Supplement (NHIS-D) of 1994–1995. She has also studied careproviders of older adults with mental retardation, innovative programs serving aging adults with developmental disabilities/mental retardation, and state agencies’ preparation for serving adults with mental retardation as they aged. Most of this research has been conducted as part of the NIDRR-funded RRTC on Aging and Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Anderson is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN.Lynda L. Anderson, M.A., M.P.H., is a Resource Manager at No Place like Home in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Ms. Anderson earned a Master of Arts degree in Human Service Administration and a Master of Public Health degree in Community Health. Ms. Anderson is a doctoral candidate in Work, Community and Family Education at the University of Minnesota. She has more than eighteen years of experience working with people with disabilities as a Direct Support Professional, Program Director, and Researcher. She has participated in NHIS-D analysis activities for the last five years.Sharon N. Barnartt, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Gallaudet University. She has co-authored two books: Deaf President Now: The 1988 Revolution at Gallaudet University (1995) and Contentious Politics in the Disability and Deaf Communities (2001). She has also presented papers and published widely in the areas of socio-economic status and disability/deafness, legal and disability policy issues, and social movements in the deaf and disability communities. She is a former president of the Society for Disability Studies, co-editor of Research in Social Science and Disability and on the editorial board of Journal of Disability Policy Studies.Phillip W. Beatty, M.A., is a Senior Research Associate at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Center for Health & Disability Research in Washington, DC. His recent research focuses on predictors of access to health services among adults with disabilities. Mr. Beatty is also conducting research to determine the ways in which functional outcomes information is being used by stakeholders in the medical rehabilitation industry.Edward Brann, M.D., M.P.H., is Acting Director of the Division of Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The division conducts a number of research and program activities for people with disabilities.Hong Chen, M.S., is an Economist in RTI International’s Division of Health Economics Research. His work focuses primarily on the analysis of large claims and survey databases, with an emphasis on diabetes prevention, substance abuse, and competitive bidding for durable medical equipment.Lisa J. Colpe, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a Clinical Epidemiologist Specializing in Survey Design and Research. At the time the work on this chapter was done, she was an Epidemiology Training Program Fellow in the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics.Roger B. Davis, Sc.D., is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Davis has overseen the statistical design of numerous clinical trials, especially involving cancer and AIDS therapies. An expert in survival analysis, he also participates in health services research and clinical epidemiology studies with colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he serves as Biostatistician in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care.John Drabek, is an Economist in Office of Disability, Aging, and Long-Term Care Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He received his B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the federal government, he performed research at the University of Southern California, and at the University of California, Los Angeles.Laura J. Dunlap, M.A., is a Health Economist in RTI International’s Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research. Since joining RTI in 1994, she has worked on studies analyzing the costs and benefits of substance abuse treatment, the effect of treatment services on post-treatment outcomes, and the costs and cost-effectiveness of public health and treatment interventions aimed at special populations such as drug users and low-income women.Holly J. Fedeyko is a former employee of the Disability and Health Branch, CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. While at the CDC she focused her efforts on Research in disability issues as related to questions from the National Health Interview Survey. She received her M.P.H. in Epidemiology and Environmental Health from Emory and her B.S. in Biology from McGill. She is currently employed as an analytical consultant for a private company and now resides in the San Francisco Bay area.Frances K. Goldscheider, University Professor and Professor of Sociology, began her Brown career in 1974. Since obtaining her Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, Goldscheider has focused her research on census and survey data to address questions related to family structure and coresidential relationships, examining causes and consequences of change. Goldscheider pioneered research on the single-person household, and on home leaving and return to the nest of young adults, and has examined issues of labor force and family decisions of 20th century American women. She is an expert on family structure and relationships, fertility, parenthood, household economy, and marriage. Her intergenerational focus (on the living arrangements of young adults and the elderly) has expanded to include gender issues, particularly marriage and divorce, with a strong concern with the consequences of family structure for investments in childhood and young adulthood. Recent research interests include men’s roles in parenting and in the family.Scott D. Grosse, Ph.D., is a Health Economist at the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He conducts applied research on the costs associated with various childhood conditions and economic evaluations of screening programs and interventions intended to improve health and developmental outcomes in children.Gerry E. Hendershot, Ph.D., is a Consultant on Disability and Health Statistics. From 1985 to 2001, he held various positions on the staff of the National Health Interview Survey, including Assistant to the Director for Data Analysis and Dissemination. He had a lead role in promoting, designing, and analyzing the National Health Interview Survey on Disability. He is the author of many published statistical reports on disability and other health-related topics.Dennis P. Hogan, Professor of Sociology, joined the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University in 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. He has taught at both the University of Chicago, where he acted as associate director of the Population Research Center, and Pennsylvania State University, where he served as director of the Population Research Institute. In 1997, Hogan was named to an endowed professorship as the Robert E. Turner Distinguished Professor of Population Studies. Some of his research interests include the interrelationships of the family lives of individuals and their social environments, the measurement of disability, family consequences of disability, and the transition to adulthood. Hogan’s current research focuses on child disability. He is the principal investigator on grants supporting this program from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics Subcommittee on Disability and the Spencer Foundation.Ghada al Homsi, M.S., is an Economist in RTI International’s Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research. Her work focuses on the analysis of large surveys and the design and maintenance of databases of program costs.Amanda A. Honeycutt, Ph.D., is an Economist in RTI International’s Division of Health Economics Research. Since joining RTI in 1998, she has led a number of studies on the cost-of-illness, the cost of intervention programs, and the cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment interventions that focus primarily on diabetes, HIV/AIDS prevention, and children’s health, disability, and development.Peter C. Hunt, M.P.H., was an Association of Schools of Public Health Fellow in the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, at the time work on this chapter was done. He subsequently served as a Special Assistant to the Director of the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. He is currently a Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh Model Center on Spinal Cord Injury.Lisa I. Iezzoni, M.D., M.Sc., is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of Research in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Her primary research interest is risk adjustment for assessing health care quality and improving the fairness of payments. A 1996 recipient of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, she also studies health policy issues relating to mobility impairments. Dr. Iezzoni is a member of the Institute of Medicine.Gwyn C. Jones, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.Ed., is a Senior Research Associate at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Center for Health & Disability Research in Washington, DC. She is a former ATPM/CDC Fellow and current grantee. Her research and publications have focused on health risks, chronic conditions, and use of preventive services among working-age adults with disabilities, prescription drug use among non-elderly adults with disabilities, and rural Medicaid managed care for adults with disabilities.Judith D. Kasper, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Health Services Research, at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include health policy in long-term care, aging and disability, access to health care for vulnerable populations, and the development and application of data sources for health policy and health services research. Dr. Kasper holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.K. Charlie Lakin, Ph.D., is the Director of the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Lakin has had extensive experience in gathering, analyzing, and using statistics from many primary and secondary data sources with the products of this work included in more than 200 publications in developmental disabilities and related services. Mr. Lakin was a member of the six-person external technical advisory panel on the instrumentation for the Disability Supplement. Mr. Lakin serves as Associate Editor of Mental Retardation, and consulting editor of The Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps (JASH), the Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disability and Social Science and Disability.Sheryl A. Larson, Ph.D., is a Research Associate at the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She has 20 years of experience in services to persons with DD as a residential counselor, behavior analyst, social worker, and program evaluator and has worked for the RTC for the last 14 years. Ms. Larson was the Co-Principal Investigator for a two-year NIDRR Field Initiated Project which used the National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement to examine the characteristics and service needs of persons with intellectual or developmental disabilities. She directed a supplement to the Research and Training Center on Community Living’s core grant that funded an international user’s conference in June 2000 for researchers analyzing NHIS-D topics. She has co-authored several papers using NHIS-D data. Dr. Larson has also co-authored several books, book chapters, journal articles and technical reports on workforce development issues, residential services, and community integration for persons with developmental disabilities and is a consulting editor of Mental Retardation.Donald J. Lollar, Ed.D., Senior Research Scientist, Division for Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His advanced degrees are from Indiana University, and his most recent writings include co-editing an Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation supplement on the Science of Disability Outcomes, and articles for the 2003 Annual Review of Public Health and 2002 Public Health Reports outlining public health strategies to improve the health and well-being of people with disabilities. He has spent the past seven years developing public health science and programs to improve the health of people with disabilities, prevent secondary conditions, and increase participation in society. He currently serves as the co-lead of the Healthy People 2010 workgroup on Disability and Secondary Conditions (Chap. 6 of HP 2010). Dr. Lollar began involvement with the WHO classification ICIDH in 1994 while still in private practice, assessing potential utility of ICIDH-2 for clinical records. He is currently a part of the team to adapt the ICF to improve its utility for children and youth.Pamela Loprest is a Labor Economist and Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on low-wage labor markets and how government policies can help to reduce and remove barriers to work among disadvantaged populations. Dr. Loprest has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been at the Urban Institute since 1991.Elaine Maag is a Research Associate in the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. Her research focuses on policies affecting youth with disabilities and employment opportunities for adults. She also conducts research on how tax policy affects low-income families. Ms. Maag holds an M.S. in Public Policy from the University of Rochester.Jennifer M. Park is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current research is funded by a grant she holds from the American Education Research Association to examine cognitive development among first grade youth with and without emotional impairment. Her dissertation explored cognitive growth among kindergarteners with and without perceptual impairment. Dr. Park holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University, where her research examined the diverse effects of child disability on family outcomes.Elizabeth K. Rasch, M.S., P.T., is an Associate Service Fellow at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, working in the area of disability statistics. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, with a concentration in Epidemiology. Her research interests include the health of persons with disabilities, factors that contribute to disability, as well as the use of and access to healthcare services by persons with disabilities. She has been actively involved in research since 1985 and has published articles and book chapters on topics related to disability and rehabilitation.Anne W. Riley, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, in the division of Health Services Research, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Riley has expertise in the assessment of mental health and health, especially of children and adolescents, methods development, and evaluation systems for monitoring the outcomes of care for youth.Diana E. Schendel, Ph.D., is a Lead Health Scientist at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She directs both intramural and extramural epidemiologic studies of reproductive and developmental outcomes, with a primary focus on cerebral palsy, autism, and other neurodevelopmental problems.Hilary Siebens, M.D., is Lecturer in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director, PMR Service, at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She received clinical training in internal medicine, geriatrics, and PMR. Her publications address exercise among older adults, models of rehabilitation, and quality improvement initiatives.Lois M. Verbrugge, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Distinguished Senior Research Scientist in the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan. She has contributed to disability theory and has conducted analyses of arthritis disability, gender differences in morbidity and mortality, and co-morbidity, using large-scale data sets. Her recent publications have emphasized the relative benefits of equipment and personal assistance for disability, the interleaving of aging and disability, and global indicators of disability. She was awarded the American Psychological Association Distinguished Contribution to Women’s Health Award in 1994.Whitney P. Witt, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Center for Healthcare Studies at the Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Witt’s prior work focuses predominately on people living with HIV/AIDS, including children and their families. Over the last five years, she has applied her experience in advocacy, policy, and research on vulnerable and high-cost, chronically ill populations to the field of maternal and child health services research. Dr. Witt’s research emphasizes the importance of family adaptation in ensuring the mental health of children with disabilities and for helping these children obtain access to mental health services. Most recently, her work has focused on the impact of maternal depression on familial health and mental health, preventive care practices, and use of health and mental healthcare services. She holds a Ph.D. in health services research and a M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a B.A. in women’s studies and law from Hampshire College.Li-shou Yang, Ph.D., is Research Investigator in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Trained in social demography, her research focuses on the family, the life course, and social change.

This chapter provides an overview of the explanations and factors affecting dividend policy. This study employs a systematic literature review approach to review a large sample of studies related to the dividend puzzle. Although the analysis reveals mixed evidence involving the theories and determinants of dividend policy, some determinants appear in numerous studies. However, no consensus exists on an optimal dividend to resolve the dividend puzzle, and the authors propose a model to deal with the same. When examining dividend policy, researchers should consider the firm, market, behavior, and other determinants. When making significant dividend or stock decisions, managers and shareholders should also contemplate the factors, interactions, inadequacies, and consequences. Future researchers should strive to take a more comprehensive view when resolving the dividend puzzle. This study provides a current and complete picture of dividend policy's available theories and empirical determinants. Its significant contribution is identifying some of the more consistently essential determinants of dividend policy while proposing a holistic model to address the prevailing dividend dilemma.

This chapter develops a theoretical account of higher education policy creation and the relationship between universities and the state. Through this process, it demonstrates the relevance of theories from political science – including policy analysis and parliamentary/legislative studies – to higher education policy analysis. The chapter outlines the enduring relevance of political factors in shaping higher education around the world and the different ways in which political and policy analysis can be positioned within higher education research. A series of theoretical frameworks are introduced including policy networks, neo-institutionalism and principal-agent theory. These theories account for how policy is made, the behaviour of universities and policy makers, and the dynamics within the relationship between universities and the state. The chapter explains how these approaches can be adapted and applied to higher education policy research, and how frameworks from political science can inform and enrich studies of higher education.

Building on the proposition that Bernstein's ideas are due for a revival in higher education research, the call for studies in which theory is put to use and for policy studies to engage in textual analysis, this chapter argues for the affordances of the theoretical underpinnings of Bernstein's pedagogic device and critical discourse studies in investigating connections between policy and practice. Drawing on the sociology of pedagogy and applied linguistics, this chapter aims to explore the theoretical complementarities of the chosen approaches for exploring how policy ideas move through time and space. A focus on the notion of recontextualisation enables an understanding of how influences beyond the discipline itself, including policy discourses, can shape learning, teaching and assessment practices. The illustrating case examines policy on learning and teaching and how these ideas are recontextualised from national policy through to institutional policy and individual practices. The critical or questioning angle of both approaches in seeing ideas, including policy, as never value-free but as situated within their sociopolitical context can shed light on how policy ideas make their way into universities and in whose interests.

Public administration as an aspect of governmental activity has existed as long as political systems have been functioning and trying to achieve program objectives set by the political decision-makers. Public administration as a field of systematic study is much more recent. Advisers to rulers and commentators on the workings of government have recorded their observations from time to time in sources as varied as Kautilya's Arthasastra in ancient India, the Bible, Aristotle's Politics, and Machiavelli's The Prince, but it was not until the eighteenth century that cameralism, concerned with the systematic management of governmental affairs, became a specialty of German scholars in Western Europe. In the United States, such a development did not take place until the latter part of the nineteenth century, with the publication in 1887 of Woodrow Wilson's famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” generally considered the starting point. Since that time, public administration has become a well-recognized area of specialized interest, either as a subfield of political science or as an academic discipline in its own right.