- Table View
- List View
What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs
by Lynne Elizabeth Stephen A. GoldsmithA timely revisitation of renowned urbanist-activist Jane Jacobs' lifework, What We See invites thirty pundits and practitioners across fields to refresh Jacobs' economic, social and urban planning theories for the present day. Combining personal and professional observations with meditations on Jacobs' insights, essayists bring their diverse experience to bear to sketch the blueprints for the living city. The book models itself after Jacobs' collaborative approach to city and community building, asking community members and niche specialists to share their knowledge with a broader community, to work together toward a common goal of building the 21st-century city. The resulting collection of original essays expounds and expands Jacobs' ideas on the qualities of a vibrant, robust urban area. It offers the generalist, the activist, and the urban planner practical examples of the benefits of planning that encourages community participation, pedestrianism, diversity, environmental responsibility, and self-sufficiency. Bob Sirman, director of the Canada Council for the Arts, describes how built form should be an embodiment of a community narrative. Daniel Kemmis, former Mayor of Missoula, shares an imagined dialog with Jacobs, discussing the delicate interconnection between cities and their surrounding rural areas. And Roberta Brandes Gratz?urban critic, author, and former head of Public Policy of the New York State Preservation League?asserts the importance of architectural preservation to environmentally sound urban planning practices. What We See asks us all to join the conversation about next steps for shaping socially just, environmentally friendly, and economically prosperous urban communities.
What We Stand For: A Program for Progressive Patriotism
by Mark GreenEach contributor is a leading progressive author, scholar, or advocate in her or his field. Each has written an original essay answering a basic question-what kind of America do we want? What are new directions for this new era? Writers both discuss the state-of-the- play in their areas and propose solutions--from the practical to the visionary-that a sympathetic President and Congress could pursue in 2005 and accomplish by 2010.
What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming
by Jorgen Randers Per Espen StoknesWhy does knowing more mean believing--and doing--less? A prescription for change The more facts that pile up about global warming, the greater the resistance to them grows, making it harder to enact measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for the inevitable change ahead. It is a catch-22 that starts, says psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes, from an inadequate understanding of the way most humans think, act, and live in the world around them. With dozens of examples--from the private sector to government agencies--Stoknes shows how to retell the story of climate change and, at the same time, create positive, meaningful actions that can be supported even by deniers. In What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, Stoknes not only masterfully identifies the five main psychological barriers to climate action, but addresses them with five strategies for how to talk about global warming in a way that creates action and solutions, not further inaction and despair. These strategies work with, rather than against, human nature. They are social, positive, and simple--making climate-friendly behaviors easy and convenient. They are also story-based, to help add meaning and create community, and include the use of signals, or indicators, to gauge feedback and be constantly responsive. Whether you are working on the front lines of the climate issue, immersed in the science, trying to make policy or educate the public, or just an average person trying to make sense of the cognitive dissonance or grapple with frustration over this looming issue, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming moves beyond the psychological barriers that block progress and opens new doorways to social and personal transformation.
What We Won
by Bruce RiedelIn February 1989, the CIA's chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple message: "We Won." It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history.In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question-why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly?Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise.Many books have been written about intelligence failures-from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States.Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war-the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans-in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train.In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan-and what is likely yet to come.
What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-89
by Bruce RiedelIn February 1989, the CIA's chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquartersa simple message: "We Won. " It was an understated coda to the most successfulcovert intelligence operation in American history. In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question #151;why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly? Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise. Many books have been written about intelligence failures #151;from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States. Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war #151;the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans #151;in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train. In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan #151;and what is likely yet to come.
What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . and What Other Countries Got Right
by George R. TylerSomething has gone seriously wrong with the American economy.The American economy has experienced considerable growth in the last 30 years. But virtually none of this growth has trickled down to the average American. Incomes have been flat since 1985. Inequality has grown, and social mobility has dropped dramatically. Equally troubling, these policies have been devastating to both American productivity and our long-term competitiveness.Many reasons for these failures have been proposed. Globalization. Union greed. Outsourcing.But none of these explanations can address the harsh truth that many countries around the world are dramatically outperforming the U.S. in delivering broad middle-class prosperity. And this is despite the fact that these countries are more exposed than America to outsourcing and globalization and have much higher levels of union membership.In What Went Wrong, George R. Tyler, a veteran of the World Bank and the Treasury Department, takes the reader through an objective and data-rich examination of the American experience over the last 30 years. He provides a fascinating comparison between the America and the experience of the "family capitalism" countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.Over the last 30 years, they have outperformed the U.S. economy by the only metric that really matters-delivering better lives for their citizens. The policies adopted by the family capitalist countries aren't socialist or foreign. They are the same policies that made the U.S. economy of the 1950s and 1960s the strongest in the world.What Went Wrong describes exactly what went wrong with the American economy, how countries around the world have avoided these problems, and what we need to do to get back on the right track.
What Went Wrong with Capitalism
by Ruchir SharmaA century of expanding government has distorted financial markets, stoked massive inequality, and soaked America in debt.Capitalism didn&’t fail, it was ruined... What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma&’s account is not like any you will have heard before. He says progressives are right, in part, when they mock modern capitalism as &“socialism for the rich.&” For a century, governments have expanded in just about every measurable dimension, from spending to regulation and the scale of financial rescues when the economy wobbles. The result is expensive state guarantees for everyone—bailouts for the rich, entitlements for the middle class, welfare for the poor. Taking you back to the 19th century, Sharma shows how completely the reflexes of government have changed: from hands-off to hands-on, from doing too little to help anyone in hard times to today trying to prevent anyone suffering any economic pain, ever. Trading sins of omission and indifference for excesses of spending and meddling, governments from the United States to Europe and Japan have pumped so much money into their economies that financial markets can no longer invest all that capital efficiently. Inadvertently, they have fueled the rise of monopolies, &“zombie&” firms, and billionaires. They have made capitalism less fair and less efficient, which is slowing economic growth and fueling popular anger. The first step to a cure is a correct diagnose of the problem. Capitalism has been badly distorted by constant government intervention and the relentless spread of a bailout culture. Building an even bigger state will only double down on what ruined capitalism in the first place.
What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other
by Wen StephensonAn urgent, on-the-ground look at some of the "new American radicals" who have laid everything on the line to build a stronger climate justice movementThe science is clear: catastrophic climate change, by any humane definition, is upon us. At the same time, the fossil-fuel industry has doubled down, economically and politically, on business as usual. We face an unprecedented situation--a radical situation. As an individual of conscience, how will you respond?In 2010, journalist Wen Stephenson woke up to the true scale and urgency of the catastrophe bearing down on humanity, starting with the poorest and most vulnerable everywhere, and confronted what he calls "the spiritual crisis at the heart of the climate crisis." Inspired by others who refused to retreat into various forms of denial and fatalism, he walked away from his career in mainstream media and became an activist, joining those working to build a transformative movement for climate justice in America.In What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other, Stephenson tells his own story and offers an up-close, on-the-ground look at some of the remarkable and courageous people--those he calls "new American radicals"--who have laid everything on the line to build and inspire this fast-growing movement: old-school environmentalists and young climate-justice organizers, frontline community leaders and Texas tar-sands blockaders, Quakers and college students, evangelicals and Occupiers. Most important, Stephenson pushes beyond easy labels to understand who these people really are, what drives them, and what they're ultimately fighting for. He argues that the movement is less like environmentalism as we know it and more like the great human-rights and social-justice struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from abolitionism to civil rights. It's a movement for human solidarity.This is a fiercely urgent and profoundly spiritual journey into the climate-justice movement at a critical moment--in search of what climate justice, at this late hour, might yet mean.From the Hardcover edition.
What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era
by Carlos LozadaIn this &“crisp, engaging, and very smart&” (The New York Times Book Review) work, The Washington Post&’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic digs into books of the Trump era and finds that our response to this presidency often reflects the same polarization, contradictions, and resentments that made it possible.It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself. As a book critic for The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada has read just about all of them. In What Were We Thinking, he draws on some 150 recent volumes to explore how we understand ourselves in the Trump era. Lozada&’s characters are not the president, his advisers, or his antagonists but the political and cultural ideas at play—and at stake—in America. Just as Trump&’s election upended the country&’s political establishment, it shocked its intellectual class. Though some of the books of the Trump era skillfully illuminate the challenges and transformations the nation faces, too many works are more defensive than incisive, more righteous than right. Lozada offers a provocative argument: Whether written by liberals or conservatives, activists or academics, true believers or harsh critics, the books of Trump&’s America are vulnerable to the same failures of imagination that gave us this presidency in the first place. In What Were We Thinking, Lozada&’s selections range from bestselling titles to little-known works, from thoroughly reported accounts of the administration to partisan polemics, from meditations on the fate of truth to memoirs about enduring—or enabling—the Trump presidency. He also identifies books that challenge entrenched assumptions and shift our vantage points, the books that best help us make sense of this era. The result is an &“elegant yet lacerating&” (The Guardian) intellectual history of our time, a work that transcends daily headlines to discern how we got here and how we thought here. What Were We Thinking will help today&’s readers understand America, and will help tomorrow&’s readers look back and understand us.
What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms
by Jonathan M. MetzlA searing reflection on the broken promise of safety in America. When a naked, mentally ill white man with an AR-15 killed four young adults of color at a Waffle House, Nashville-based physician and gun policy scholar Dr. Jonathan M. Metzl once again advocated for commonsense gun reform. But as he peeled back evidence surrounding the racially charged mass shooting, a shocking question emerged: Did the public health approach he had championed for years have it all wrong? Long at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, Metzl has been on constant media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings. But the 2018 Nashville killings led him on a path toward recognizing the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics. As he came to understand it, public health is a harder sell in a nation that fundamentally disagrees about what it means to be safe, healthy, or free. In What We’ve Become, Metzl reckons both with the long history of distrust of public health and the larger forces—social, ideological, historical, racial, and political—that allow mass shootings to occur on a near daily basis in America. Looking closely at the cycle in which mass shootings lead to shock, horror, calls for action, and, ultimately, political gridlock, he explores what happens to the soul of a nation—and the meanings of safety and community—when we normalize violence as an acceptable trade-off for freedom. Mass shootings and our inability to stop them have become more than horrific crimes: they are an American national autobiography. This brilliant, piercing analysis points to mass shootings as a symptom of our most unresolved national conflicts. What We’ve Become ultimately sets us on the path of alliance forging, racial reckoning, and political power brokering we must take to put things right.
What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power
by Marianne SchnallPrompted by a question from her eight-year-old daughter during the 2008 election of Barack Obama-"Why haven't we ever had a woman president?"-Marianne Schnall set out on a journey to find the answer. A widely published writer, author, and interviewer, and the Executive Director of Feminist.com, Schnall began looking at the issues from various angles and perspectives. <P><P>What Will It Take to Make A Woman President? features interviews with politicians, public officials, thought leaders, writers, artists, and activists in an attempt to discover the obstacles that have held women back and what needs to change in order to elect a woman into the White House. <P><P>With insights and personal anecdotes from Sheryl Sandberg, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Nancy Pelosi, Nicholas Kristof, Melissa Etheridge, and many more, this book addresses timely, provocative issues involving women, politics, and power. With a broader goal of encouraging women and girls to be leaders, Schnall and her interviewees explore the changing paradigms occurring in politics and in our culture with the hope of moving toward meaningful and effective solutions-and a world where a woman can be president.
What Women Represent: The Impact of Women in Parliament
by Erica RaymentPolitical equity advocates and academics often argue that we must elect more women, but what difference does it make if we do? What Women Represent shows that women can and do influence the issues raised and the decisions made in parliamentary debate and decision-making.Using a new framework for thinking about what it means for legislators to represent women and drawing on a database that encompasses five decades of debate in the House of Commons, Erica Rayment investigates which members of Parliament represent women and what issues they address. She then examines the role women parliamentarians played in two instances where governments threatened to curtail previous gender equality gains: the Mulroney government’s attempted recriminalization of abortion and the Harper government’s plans to cut funding and weaken the mandate of Status of Women Canada. Rayment’s analysis decisively shows that parliamentary presence matters for the representation of women’s interests; women MPs, regardless of party, are more likely to act for women and play a critical role when the rights of women are at stake.What Women Represent is the first large-scale analysis of the substantive representation of women in Canadian politics, adding depth and nuance to our understanding of issues of gender in parliamentary institutions.
What Women Want: Gender and Voting in Britain, Japan and the United States
by Gill SteelWhat Women Want analyzes decades of voting preferences, values, and policy preferences to debunk some of the media and academic myths about gender gaps in voting and policy preferences. Findings show that no single theory explains when differences in women’s and men’s voting preferences emerge, when they do not, or when changes—or the lack thereof—occur over time. Steel extends existing theories to create a broader framework for thinking about gender and voting behavior to provide more analytical purchase in understanding gender and its varying effects on individual voters’ preferences. She incorporates the long-term effects of party identification and class politics on political decision-making, particularly in how they influence preferences on social provision and on expectations of the state. She also points to the importance of symbolic politics
What Work Is (Working Class in American History)
by Robert BrunoA distinctive exploration of how workers see work For more than twenty years, Robert Bruno has taught labor history and labor studies to union members from a wide range of occupations and demographic groups. In the class, he asked his students to finish the question “Work is—?” in six words or less. The thousands of responses he collected provide some of the rich source material behind What Work Is. Bruno draws on the thoughts and feelings experienced by workers in the present day to analyze how we might design a future of work. He breaks down perceptions of work into five categories: work and time; the space workers occupy; the impact of work on our lives; the sense of purpose that motivates workers; and the people we work for, in all senses of the term. Far-seeing and sympathetic, What Work Is merges personal experiences with research, poetry, and other diverse sources to illuminate workers’ lives in the present and envision what work could be in the future.
What Workers Say: Decades of Struggle and How to Make Real Opportunity Now
by Roberta IversenWhat have jobs really been like for the past 40 years and what do the workers themselves say about them? In What Workers Say, Roberta Iversen shows that for employees in labor market industries—like manufacturing, construction, printing—as well as those in service-producing jobs, like clerical work, healthcare, food service, retail, and automotive—jobs are often discriminatory, are sometimes dangerous and exploitive, and seldom utilize people’s full range of capabilities. Most importantly, they fail to provide any real opportunity for advancement. What Workers Say takes its cue from Studs Terkel’s Working, as Iversen interviewed more than 1,200 workers to present stories about their labor market jobs since 1980. She puts a human face on the experiences of a broad range of workers indicating what their jobs were and are truly like. Iversen reveals how transformations in the political economy of waged work have shrunk or eliminated opportunity for workers, families, communities, and productivity. What Workers Say also offers an innovative proposal for compensated civil labor that could enable workers, their communities, labor market organizations, and the national infrastructure to actually flourish.
What Works: A New Approach To Program And Policy Analysis
by Kenneth MeierWhat Works is a concise methods text that represents a new approach for policy program analysis. The authors, Meier and Gill, combine statistics with normative concerns. They consider how things might be, and they focus on subsets of cases that differ from the norm. Their approach uses regression and methods in a qualitative, yet rigorous manner.In What Works, the authors address questions such as the following: why do some agencies learn to perform missions faster than others? What factors influence this learning? In which states do criminal justice policies based on deterrence work? What do excellent school districts do differently from those that are simply better than average? Why do some firms comply with public policy quickly while others wait?The case examples the authors employ and evaluate are especially helpful. What Works will appeal to anyone seriously interested in policy analysis, and in learning about--and understanding--new approaches for policy program analysis.
What Works: Common Sense Solutions for a Stronger America
by Cal Thomas Sean HannitySolutions … not theories. Political progress … not political posturing. Instead of the constant jockeying for political advantage, in What Works, author and columnist Cal Thomas focuses on what promotes the general welfare, regardless of which party or ideology gets the credit. Thomas probes and provides answers to questions like, Why must we constantly fight the same battles over and over? Why don’t we consult the past and use common sense in order to see that what others discovered long ago still works today? And why does present-day Washington too often look like the film Groundhog Day, with our elected officials waking up each day only to repeat identical talking points from previous days, months, and years? Without letting politics, or ignorance, get in the way, Thomas urges readers to pay attention so that politicians can no longer pick their pockets—literally or intellectually. What Works is about solutions, not theories. It’s about pressuring political leadership to forget about the next election and start focusing on the needs of the people who work hard to provide for themselves, send their tax dollars to Washington, and want to see the country achieve something of value … like it has always done.
What Works (and Doesn't) in Reducing Recidivism
by Edward J. Latessa Shelley L. Johnson Deborah KoetzleWhat Works (and Doesn’t) in Reducing Recidivism offers criminologists and students an evidence-based discussion of the latest trends in corrections. Experts Latessa, Johnson, and Koetzle translate the research and findings about what works and doesn’t work in reducing recidivism into understandable concepts and terms, presenting them in a way that illustrates the value of research to practice. Over the last several decades, research has clearly shown that rehabilitation efforts can be effective in reducing recidivism among criminal offenders, but it is clear that treatment is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Offenders vary by gender, age, crime type, and/or addictions, to name but a few ways, and these individual needs must be addressed by providers. Finally, issues such as leadership, quality of staff, and evaluation efforts affect the quality and delivery of treatment services. While other texts have addressed issues regarding treatment in corrections, this text is unique in that it not only discusses the research on "what works" but also addresses the implementation issues faced as practitioners move from theory to practice, as well as the importance of staff, leadership, and evaluation efforts. This book synthesizes the vast research for the student interested in correctional rehabilitation as well as for the practitioner working with offenders.
What Works (and Doesn’t) in Reducing Recidivism
by Edward J. Latessa Deborah Koetzle Shelley L. ListwanThis book offers criminologists and students an evidence-based discussion of the latest trends in corrections. Over the last several decades, research has clearly shown that rehabilitation efforts can be effective at reducing recidivism among criminal offenders. However, researchers also recognize that treatment is not a "one size fits all" approach. Offenders vary by gender, age, crime type, and/or addictions, to name but a few, and these individual needs must be addressed by providers. Finally, issues such as leadership, quality of staff, and evaluation efforts affect the quality and delivery of treatment services. This book synthesizes the vast research for the student interested in correctional rehabilitation as well as for the practitioner working with offenders. While other texts have addressed issues regarding treatment in corrections, this text is unique in that it not only discusses the research on "what works" but also addresses implementation issues as practitioners move from theory to practice, as well as the importance of staff, leadership and evaluation efforts.
The What Works Centres: Lessons and Insights from an Evidence Movement
by Michael Sanders, Jonathan Breckon and David HalpernThe last decade has seen a growing focus on producing evidence-based policy and practice in governments around the world – with a specific focus on causal evidence of the impacts of a particular policy on outcomes for citizens. The UK is a key example of this, with the establishment of 14 What Works Centres which collate, create and translate evidence in different policy and practice domains. In this book, leaders, researchers and practitioners from these institutions share insights to help understand what has worked so far in the Centres, and what could be done better in future. It offers guidance to policy makers and funders looking to establish new centres, and for academics looking to create similar institutions that can have a practical impact on the improvement of the world around us.
What Works for Workers?: Public Policies and Innovative Strategies for Low-Wage Workers
by Jennifer Luff Joseph A. Mccartin Ruth Milkman Stephanie LuceThe majority of new jobs created in the United States today are low-wage jobs, and a fourth of the labor force earns no more than poverty-level wages. Policymakers and citizens alike agree that declining real wages and constrained spending among such a large segment of workers imperil economic prosperity and living standards for all Americans. Though many policies to assist low-wage workers have been proposed, there is little agreement across the political spectrum about which policies actually reduce poverty and raise income among the working poor. What Works for Workers provides a comprehensive analysis of policy measures designed to address the widening income gap in the United States. Featuring contributions from an eminent group of social scientists, What Works for Workers evaluates the most high-profile strategies for poverty reduction, including innovative “living wage” ordinances, education programs for African American youth, and better regulation of labor laws pertaining to immigrants. The contributors delve into an extensive body of scholarship on low-wage work to reveal a number of surprising findings. Richard Freeman suggests that labor unions, long assumed to be moribund, have a fighting chance to reclaim their historic redistributive role if they move beyond traditional collective bargaining and establish new ties with other community actors. John Schmitt predicts that the Affordable Care Act will substantially increase insurance coverage for low-wage workers, 38 percent of whom currently lack any kind of health insurance. Other contributors explore the shortcomings of popular solutions: Stephanie Luce shows that while living wage ordinances rarely lead to job losses, they have not yet covered most low-wage workers. And Jennifer Gordon corrects the notion that a path to legalization alone will fix the plight of immigrant workers. Without energetic regulatory enforcement, she argues, legalization may have limited impact on the exploitation of undocumented workers. Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum conclude with an analysis of California’s paid family leave program, a policy designed to benefit the working poor, who have few resources that allow them to take time off work to care for children or ill family members. Despite initial opposition, the paid leave program proved more acceptable than expected among employers and provided a much-needed system of wage replacement for low-income workers. In the wake of its success, the initiative has emerged as a useful blueprint for paid leave programs in other states. Alleviating the low-wage crisis will require a comprehensive set of programs rather than piecemeal interventions. With its rigorous analysis of what works and what doesn’t, What Works for Workers points the way toward effective reform. For social scientists, policymakers, and activists grappling with the practical realities of low-wage work, this book provides a valuable guide for narrowing the gap separating rich and poor.
What Works in Improving Gender Equality: International Best Practice in Childcare and Long-term Care Policy
by Kirstein Rummery Craig McAngusEPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Drawing on comparative research from five countries, What Works in Improving Gender Equality provides an accessible analysis of what gender equality means and how we can achieve it by adapting best practices in care policies from other countries. Realistic policy solutions are reached by examining the contexts in which childcare and longterm care policies are developed, and what difficulties might need to be overcome in applying the lessons from different international models.
What Works in Nordic School Policies?: Mapping Approaches to Evidence, Social Technologies and Transnational Influences (Educational Governance Research #15)
by John Benedicto Krejsler Lejf MoosThis book offers an original contribution to the area of international research on comparative education policies and the influence of transnational agencies on national school policy and reform. With a focus on grasping what the Nordic model or the Nordic dimension means in school and educational policy, the book explores in depth the school policy contexts of the five Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It demonstrates how these particular national contexts engage with and contextualize transnational collaboration on issues like school reform, accountability, evidence and what works, and digitalization. The book situates these policy issues over a long period of time while integrating the latest developments and reforms. It demonstrates how context matters. It shows how the often elusive, but pervasive Nordic dimension can only be fully understood by painstaking scrutiny of the five national contexts, their particular trajectories and mutual interactions in formal and informal education.
What Works Now?: Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice
by Annette Boaz, Huw Davies, Alec Fraser and Sandra NutleyBuilding substantially on the earlier, landmark text, What Works? (Policy Press, 2000), this book brings together key thinkers and researchers to provide a contemporary review of the aspirations and realities of evidence-informed policy and practice. The text is clearly structured and provides sector-by-sector analysis of evidence use in policy-making and service delivery. It considers some cross-cutting themes, including a section of international commentaries, and concludes by looking at lessons from the past and prospects for the future. This book will be of interest to a wide range of social science researchers, students and practitioners as well as those interested in supporting more evidence-informed policy and practice.
What Works, What Doesn’t: Case Studies in Applied Behavioral Science (Behaviorally Informed Organizations)
by Dilip SomanHow well do behavioral science interventions translate and scale in the real world? Consider a practitioner who is looking to create behavior change through an intervention – perhaps it involves getting people to conserve energy, increase compliance with a medication regime, reduce misinformation, or improve tax collection. The behavioral science practitioner will typically draw inspiration from a previous study or intervention to translate into their own intervention. The latest book in the Behaviourally Informed Organizations series, What Works, What Doesn’t (and When) presents a collection of studies in applied behavioral research with a behind-the-scenes look at how the project actually unfolded. Using seventeen case studies of such translation and scaling projects in diverse domains such as financial decisions, health, energy conservation, development, reducing absenteeism, diversity and inclusion, and reducing fare evasion, the book outlines the processes, the potential pitfalls, as well as some prescriptions on how to enhance the success of behavioral interventions. The cases show how behavioral science research is done – from getting inspiration to adapting research into context, designing tailored interventions, and comparing and reconciling results. With contributions from leading academics and seasoned practitioners, What Works, What Doesn’t (and When) provides prescriptive advice on how to make behavior change projects happen and what pitfalls to watch out for.