Debating technologies: A methodological contribution to the design and evaluation of participatory policy analysis

✍ Scribed by Dan Durning

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 146 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0276-8739
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6688(199921)18:2<339::aid-pam9>3.0.co;2-m

✦ Synopsis

Dorothy Parker, when she was reviewing for The New Yorker magazine some decades ago, would generally address her audience as the "constant reader." In glancing at the titles in this particular review, the JPAM constant reader might very well wonder what the prevailing theme is of these four seemingly dissimilar books that binds the four into an integrated review, for on the surface they are rather different. Iain Begg and S. G. B. Henry have assembled a collection of essays covering advances and modifications of "applied economics," or what many in the United States (the authors in this volume are almost all British) would refer to as "econometrics." Ralph Ellis poses a means by which ethical analysis could be more discussed and included in policy analysis, while Walter Williams insistently asks "How can American democracy survive without honest numbers and analyses to inform the choices of citizens and policymakers?" Finally, Sanford Schram, Philip Neisser, and their colleagues assert that policy analysis in the United States is usually misguided because it often examines the wrong (or at least incomplete) "stories."

To all appearances, then, these books represent a very disparate collection of authors (even more so since two of the volumes are edited). Let me first briefly describe