Methods and Frameworks – Policy Translation: Guide to Interpretive Approaches to Governance

How organisations learn: lessons from flood risk management in England

What is a learning organisation? It is one that adapts to challenges, that has an internal structure that allows communication and reflection, and that hosts individuals that trust each other enough to experiment and work together. A new open access article published in the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, one of the highest ranked […]

Scholar Activist or Activist Scholar? Can Scientists Keep Their Values Apart from Research?

A new chapter on the role of reflexivity, positionality and normativity in using ethnography to study policy translation as a process is now available in the form of proofs. The final version will be published in the book “Translation in World Politics” edited by Tobias Burger and Alejandro Esguerra.

Oxford Handbook on Water Policy and Politics. NEW PUBLICATION!

Finally the chapter “Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation, and Translation of Water Policy Models” in the Oxford Handbook on Water Politics and Policy is out online. The book itself will be printed next year.

“Out of Place: A Memoir” by Edward Said — Absolutely Fascinating

It is hard now for me to pinpoint the moment when I became aware of the work of Edward Said and when it entered my personal and intellectual radars so to speak. (If interested in other posts on Edward Said, please see the post on On Being an Academic and a Public Intellectual and on […]

Time for a Bioeconomy? NEW PUBLICATION!

Good news! “Away from fossil-fuels and toward a bioeconomy: Knowledge versatility for public policy?” is finally out

Political and Ethical Aspects of Fieldwork. NEW PUBLICATION!

A new article written by Martin de Jong, Robin Pierce and myself is now out in Environment and Planning A, “Political and ethical aspects in the ethnography of policy translation: Research experiences from Turkey and China”. You can download the author copy here. Abstract A currently burgeoning literature in planning and policy studies engages with […]

Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation and Translation of Water Policy Model. NEW PUBLICATION!

On Friday July 01, I am giving a talk at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS. The details are in the announcement. The paper is to appear later this year and will be found on Publications page. Synopsis: Intensive cross-border movement of policy models is ubiquitous in the water sector. Examples include Integrated […]

New Paper on Security in the Mekong River Basin. NEW PUBLICATION!

After three years of writing and revising, our paper on various ways of security being framed in the Mekong River Commission has come to light in International Relations journal Globalizations. Here one may read it. This is yet another wonderful collaboration with Andrea Gerlak with whom it is pure pleasure to work and write. The key […]

Public Policy Bits: Democracy in Crisis? What Role for Public Policy?

We live in the times of democracy in crisis. This is obvious not only in authoritarian countries, but also in traditionally democratic societies such as the US and The Netherlands. Those that are between the worlds, such as Hungary and other Eastern European countries, democracy is a patient in the emergency room. A prominent public […]

Public Policy Bits: What Happens When Policies Travel?

“Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come” (Victor Hugo) What happens when a policy idea becomes internationally popular? An idea that becomes a darling of international policy communities that propagate it and institute a system of reward and punishment around its application. And how then do we know […]

Public Policy Bits: Public Policy, Planning and Chess

Once a great Cuban world chess champion Jose Raul Capablanca was asked how many moves ahead he is able to see in a chess game. He famously responded: ‘one, the best one’. Karl Wittfogel, in 1957, published his seminal book “Oriental Despotism“, his claim that state-formation and organization of societies in hierarchies originated from large […]

Workshop on “Translation in World Politics” at Kate Hamburger Kolleg, Duisburg, Germany

Last week, on October 08-09, I took part in a workshop at the University of Duisburg’s Kate Hamburger Kolleg (Centre for Global Cooperation Research) named “Translation in World Politics”. It was very pleasing to see the ideas of policy translation making headway in other disciplines, and now also in International Relations and World Politics. I […]

Public Policy Bits: What Did you See in this Video?

One key advice I got from many columns for early-stage professors is not to be afraid to experiment in a class-room. So I went ahead with this last Friday, on session 2 of my undergraduate research methods class. I had to introduce students to the ideas of social constructivism and interpretation in order to sanction […]

Crafting or Designing Socio-Ecological Systems? NEW PUBLICATION!

Finally, our Special Issue of Environmental Science & Policy is online, and you can enjoy the articles. You can read our editorial about the issue here, and the article I wrote with colleagues on water user associations in the region here.

New Article! Ways of Knowing Water: Water Security and Integrated Water Management. NEW PUBLICATION!

After waiting for over a year, finally our article is online! This article is titled “‘Ways of knowing’ water: integrated water resources management and water security as complementary discourses“, Andrea Gerlak and I wrote it for International Negotiations and Environmental Agreements (INEA), a well-respected journal in the area of environmental policy and political science. The […]

Oxford Bibliographies: Great Resource for Students and Researchers!

Energy Security and Water Security Farhad Mukhtarov (ADA University, Azerbaijan) and Aleh Cherp (Central European University, Hungary; Lund University, Sweden), with essential assistance from a graduate ADAU student Richard Sarpong, published 2 articles in Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press. One article is about Energy Security — the concept that commands great policy attention nowadays, from […]

Weekend Reading: “Social Theory”

One day when I was a student in Oxford, I went to a student auction to buy a bicycle. Instead, I bought a book. It was only 3 GBP and it was second hand. It was called “Social Theory: a Historical Introduction” by Alex Callinicos, and this was a start of my passion for social […]

Global Governance of Biofuels. NEW PUBLICATION!

Farhad Mukhtarov co-authored a new paper (short communication) with Professor Patricia Osseweijer from Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and dr. Robin Pierce from Harvard Law School (US). It appeared in the last issue of 2014 of Bio-based and Applied Economics, a new journal devoted to the issues of energy transition and bio-economy as viewed […]

Institutional Design in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. NEW PUBLICATION!

The Journal of Environmental Science & Policy will feature in early 2015 an article co-authored by Farhad Mukhtarov, Svenja Fox, Nozila Mukhamedova and Kai Wegerich. This article is an attempt to resolve the tensions between the need for institutional reform and learning in this process and the paramount importance of the policy context in determining […]

New Book!!! “River Basin Management in the Twenty-first Century: Understanding People and Place”

Good news for those interested in water resources management and policy! A new book is published by CRC Press, part of Taylor & Francis Group, which is called “River Basin Management in the Twenty-first Century: Understanding People and Place” edited by Victor Squires, Hugh Milner, and Katherine Daniell. It has a rich collection of various […]

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Policy Translation: Guide to Interpretive Approaches to Governance

Category: Methods and Frameworks