Joshua Newman
Biographic Data
| ID | 3591086 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joshua Newman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joshua |
| FAMILY NAME | Newman |
| SIGNATURE | NEWMAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6492-0194 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 240 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Cultural barriers to interdisciplinary research collaboration
Interdisciplinary research collaboration has been linked to improvements in innovation, creativity, and research impact. While differences between research cultures—especially between science and arts—are often cited as a barrier to interdisciplinary collaboration, there is actually little empirical evidence to confirm this phenomenon. In this study, responses to a survey of academics and interviews with senior university leaders at a large resea…
Promoting Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration
Interdisciplinary research has been a topic of interest for many decades – perhaps longer. And yet, even now, there is still much we do not understand about how to stimulate collaboration across research disciplines. This article reports the results of a systematic review of the academic literature on strategies for promoting new interdisciplinary research collaborations, which returned only a very small number of empirical studies. A broader rev…
Managing and Incentivising Research Impact
Views on the impact of academic research are divided, with some voices advocating for more impact and others calling attention to pathologies of the “impact agenda”. One point of interest to most observers is the degree of alignment between academics, who do the research, and university leaders, who control rules and resources relating to research. Using a survey of academics and interviews with university leaders at a large, representative, rese…
Incentivising interdisciplinary research collaboration
There is a popular perception that interdisciplinary research collaboration can yield benefits to knowledge production, from improvements to creativity to advances in addressing real-world problems. However, studies into interdisciplinarity frequently point to material obstacles, such as burdensome time and resource requirements, difficulties in publishing, and scarce opportunities for grant funding, which imply that incentives or rewards might b…
How should we interpret narratives of political strategy for climate policy? A response to Pearse and Jackson
In my article in this journal entitled ‘Narratives and counter-narratives of political strategy: revisiting Australia's carbon pollution reduction scheme’, I offered an alternative interpretation of the failure of the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, one in which the government's strategy of pursuing bipartisan agreement was not a miscalculation, but rather a reasonable course of action based on institutional norms and precede…
Mapping the discourse on evidence-based policy, artificial intelligence, and the ethical practice of policy analysis
Scholarship on evidence-based policy, a subset of the policy analysis literature, largely assumes information is produced and consumed by humans. However, due to the expansion of artificial intelligence in the public sector, debates no longer capture the full range concerns. Here, we derive a typology of arguments on evidence-based policy that performs two functions: taken separately, the categories serve as directions in which debates may procee…
Policy design, non-design, and anti-design
In this article, we propose a typology of policy design and non-design, with special attention to a category of policy making which we term, “anti-design”. We argue that contrary to the established literature, the opposite of design is not politics, but rather, a disconnect between problems, interventions, and outcomes. This disconnect can be caused by political forces but also by non-political factors such as incompetence, corruption, or global …
Policy analytical capacity and "Eastern" styles of policy analysis
An emerging body of scholarship suggests that "Western" notions of policy analysis may not be relevant in "Eastern" jurisdictions, and that non-Western countries, particularly in Asia, may have their own local policy analytical style or tradition. However, in many Asian countries, little is known about the work that public sector policy analysts do. Using data from a survey and focus groups, this article investigates policy analysis and analytica…
Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and bureaucratic transformation
Narratives and counter-narratives of political strategy
In 2009, the Australian Senate rejected the government's ambitious Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the prevailing narrative surrounding these events, the Labor government, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, made a series of strategic errors that led to the scheme's – and ultimately, Rudd's and the Labor Party's – downfall. However, by taking a closer look at of some aspects of Australia's parliamentary system, including the norms of partisan …
Sport and Physical Culture in Global Pandemic Times
The Role of Uncertainty in Regulating E‐Cigarettes
Increasingly, the regulation of public health hazards is subject to an appraisal of the risk of harm to various target populations. However, an expanding body of evidence suggests that when faced with a deficit of information concerning a particular public health risk, governments and regulators do very little to address the risk directly. By examining the case of the first ten years of the availability of electronic cigarettes (2005‐15), this ar…
The transition game
Following decades of significant economic and political reform, a once-closed China has emerged as the world's fastest growing and arguably most interconnected political economic system. In the context of what has been termed a 'post-socialist' transition, China's sport system has similarly undergone rapid marketization (bringing in market actors and action). In this article, we examine the changing state and function of football (soccer) within …
Policy capacity and evidence-based policy in the public service
Governments in many jurisdictions have called for an increase in ‘evidence-based’ policy-making. However, the international evidence-based policy movement has so far shown little progress in transforming the way that public policy is formulated and implemented. Much research on evidence-based policy has focused on political interference and contextual frames of reference as barriers to the uptake of research evidence. With the support of data fro…
Evidence-based policy or risk minimisation? The regulation of e-cigarettes in Australia
Theoretical discussions of evidence-based policy place primary importance on facts and values. However, there are situations in which policy must be made in the absence of facts and values. In this article, one such situation is investigated: the emergence of electronic cigarettes. This article reviews attempts to regulate e-cigarettes in Australia, a country with a history of international leadership on regulating tobacco cigarettes. The article…
Wicked tendencies in policy problems
Complex or intractable policy problems, often called ‘wicked’ problems, have been a feature of public policy research since the early 1970s. Observers have generally assumed that these wicked problems constitute a distinct category of policy problems, based on the notion that some problems – those characterised as substantially technical or scientific in nature – lend themselves to traditional linear problem-solving methods, whereas other problem…
Debating the politics of evidence‐based policy
British Columbia’s fast ferries and Sydney’s Airport Link
Policy learning, where experiences from other jurisdictions and time periods inform decision making, has been suggested as a way to improve policy outcomes. Failures can be important to the learning process as examples of instruments and ideas to avoid, but episodes in which failure did not lead to lessons learned or to improved public policy are abundant. In this article, we propose some conditions that can prevent governments from learning from…
Deconstructing the debate over evidence-based policy
The renewed interest in evidence-based policy has been accompanied by a debate on the nature and desirability of the use of evidence in policy-making. At its core, this debate pits rationalist supporters of increased use of information for reasoned decision-making against constructivist critics who argue that policy-making is not based on evidence and that an appeal to evidence is the first step toward a dangerous elimination of human judgment in…
The National Context of Wicked Problems
Scholars and practitioners have always been dogged by problems that are so complex that no practical solution appears to be possible. These have been referred to in the academic literature as “wicked” problems. However, it is possible that a problem’s “wickedness” depends in part on its context and on the vantage point of the observer, meaning that at least some aspects of wickedness can be thought of as being relative rather than absolute. In th…
Beyond the two communities
Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization
Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with…
Categories of failure in climate change mitigation policy in Australia
Discussions of failure in public policy have been hampered by a lack of consensus on a definition of the term ‘failure’. It can be shown that arguments relating to policy failure tend to conflate forms of failure that are actually discrete, such as failure to meet objectives, claims of negative distributional outcomes and negative electoral outcomes attributed to specific policy decisions. This article attempts to unify and clarify the discourse …
Measuring Policy Success
Regulation and time
Given the complex decision-making that goes into policy choices for regulatory regimes, it would seem intuitive that such regimes might develop under distinct national styles. By revisiting several historical models of regulatory development, including Bernstein's classic life-cycle model, and then by analyzing six case studies from the US and UK, for example, we explore the possibility that regulatory regimes vary more prominently along the temp…
Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization
Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with…
Policy analysis and policy work in federal systems
In most cases, policy scholars interested in the role of policy analysts in promoting and practicing evidence-based policy-making rely on very partial survey results, or on anecdotal case studies and interview research. Despite the existence of a large body of literature on policy analysis, large-scale empirical studies of the work of policy analysts are rare, and in the case of analysts working at the sub-national level, virtually non-existent. …
Deconstructing the debate over evidence-based policy
The renewed interest in evidence-based policy has been accompanied by a debate on the nature and desirability of the use of evidence in policy-making. At its core, this debate pits rationalist supporters of increased use of information for reasoned decision-making against constructivist critics who argue that policy-making is not based on evidence and that an appeal to evidence is the first step toward a dangerous elimination of human judgment in…
Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and bureaucratic transformation
Mapping the discourse on evidence-based policy, artificial intelligence, and the ethical practice of policy analysis
Scholarship on evidence-based policy, a subset of the policy analysis literature, largely assumes information is produced and consumed by humans. However, due to the expansion of artificial intelligence in the public sector, debates no longer capture the full range concerns. Here, we derive a typology of arguments on evidence-based policy that performs two functions: taken separately, the categories serve as directions in which debates may procee…
Beyond the two communities
Wicked tendencies in policy problems
Complex or intractable policy problems, often called ‘wicked’ problems, have been a feature of public policy research since the early 1970s. Observers have generally assumed that these wicked problems constitute a distinct category of policy problems, based on the notion that some problems – those characterised as substantially technical or scientific in nature – lend themselves to traditional linear problem-solving methods, whereas other problem…
Measuring Policy Success
After “the Regulatory Moment” in Comparative Regulatory Studies
Regulation has been the subject of a significant amount of scholarship, mostly debating the necessity of regulatory action or examining the phenomenon of capture. Less attention has been paid to the early stages of regulatory development, during which the structure of the regime is defined. By revisiting the life-cycle analogy of regulation first proposed by Bernstein in 1955, we offer a new model that explains the development of these early stag…
Policy analytical capacity and "Eastern" styles of policy analysis
An emerging body of scholarship suggests that "Western" notions of policy analysis may not be relevant in "Eastern" jurisdictions, and that non-Western countries, particularly in Asia, may have their own local policy analytical style or tradition. However, in many Asian countries, little is known about the work that public sector policy analysts do. Using data from a survey and focus groups, this article investigates policy analysis and analytica…
British Columbia’s fast ferries and Sydney’s Airport Link
Policy learning, where experiences from other jurisdictions and time periods inform decision making, has been suggested as a way to improve policy outcomes. Failures can be important to the learning process as examples of instruments and ideas to avoid, but episodes in which failure did not lead to lessons learned or to improved public policy are abundant. In this article, we propose some conditions that can prevent governments from learning from…
Categories of failure in climate change mitigation policy in Australia
Discussions of failure in public policy have been hampered by a lack of consensus on a definition of the term ‘failure’. It can be shown that arguments relating to policy failure tend to conflate forms of failure that are actually discrete, such as failure to meet objectives, claims of negative distributional outcomes and negative electoral outcomes attributed to specific policy decisions. This article attempts to unify and clarify the discourse …
Regulation and time
Given the complex decision-making that goes into policy choices for regulatory regimes, it would seem intuitive that such regimes might develop under distinct national styles. By revisiting several historical models of regulatory development, including Bernstein's classic life-cycle model, and then by analyzing six case studies from the US and UK, for example, we explore the possibility that regulatory regimes vary more prominently along the temp…
Policy design, non-design, and anti-design
In this article, we propose a typology of policy design and non-design, with special attention to a category of policy making which we term, “anti-design”. We argue that contrary to the established literature, the opposite of design is not politics, but rather, a disconnect between problems, interventions, and outcomes. This disconnect can be caused by political forces but also by non-political factors such as incompetence, corruption, or global …
Debating the politics of evidence‐based policy
The National Context of Wicked Problems
Scholars and practitioners have always been dogged by problems that are so complex that no practical solution appears to be possible. These have been referred to in the academic literature as “wicked” problems. However, it is possible that a problem’s “wickedness” depends in part on its context and on the vantage point of the observer, meaning that at least some aspects of wickedness can be thought of as being relative rather than absolute. In th…
Partners in clime
Governments are increasingly using public‐private partnerships ( P3s ) to draw the private sector into more active participation in infrastructure development. Climate action initiatives have not typically yielded profitable results for the private sector, and might therefore constrain the placing of conditions by governments on P3 arrangements. This article investigates a major P3 infrastructure project in British C olumbia – the C anada Line ex…
Incentivising interdisciplinary research collaboration
There is a popular perception that interdisciplinary research collaboration can yield benefits to knowledge production, from improvements to creativity to advances in addressing real-world problems. However, studies into interdisciplinarity frequently point to material obstacles, such as burdensome time and resource requirements, difficulties in publishing, and scarce opportunities for grant funding, which imply that incentives or rewards might b…
The transition game
Following decades of significant economic and political reform, a once-closed China has emerged as the world's fastest growing and arguably most interconnected political economic system. In the context of what has been termed a 'post-socialist' transition, China's sport system has similarly undergone rapid marketization (bringing in market actors and action). In this article, we examine the changing state and function of football (soccer) within …
Policy Capacity for Climate Change inCanada's Transportation Sector
When pursuing change, legacies of policy goals and instruments from an established paradigm often present constraints on fully embracing a newer paradigm, resulting in the layering of new policy goals and instruments on top of the existing base. In this article, we investigate the effect of layered paradigms on policy capacity at three different levels of policy making in theCanadian transportation sector. Using analysis of government publication…
Narratives and counter-narratives of political strategy
In 2009, the Australian Senate rejected the government's ambitious Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the prevailing narrative surrounding these events, the Labor government, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, made a series of strategic errors that led to the scheme's – and ultimately, Rudd's and the Labor Party's – downfall. However, by taking a closer look at of some aspects of Australia's parliamentary system, including the norms of partisan …
The Role of Uncertainty in Regulating E‐Cigarettes
Increasingly, the regulation of public health hazards is subject to an appraisal of the risk of harm to various target populations. However, an expanding body of evidence suggests that when faced with a deficit of information concerning a particular public health risk, governments and regulators do very little to address the risk directly. By examining the case of the first ten years of the availability of electronic cigarettes (2005‐15), this ar…
Policy analysis and policy work in federal systems
In most cases, policy scholars interested in the role of policy analysts in promoting and practicing evidence-based policy-making rely on very partial survey results, or on anecdotal case studies and interview research. Despite the existence of a large body of literature on policy analysis, large-scale empirical studies of the work of policy analysts are rare, and in the case of analysts working at the sub-national level, virtually non-existent. …
After “the Regulatory Moment” in Comparative Regulatory Studies
Regulation has been the subject of a significant amount of scholarship, mostly debating the necessity of regulatory action or examining the phenomenon of capture. Less attention has been paid to the early stages of regulatory development, during which the structure of the regime is defined. By revisiting the life-cycle analogy of regulation first proposed by Bernstein in 1955, we offer a new model that explains the development of these early stag…
Policy Capacity for Climate Change inCanada's Transportation Sector
When pursuing change, legacies of policy goals and instruments from an established paradigm often present constraints on fully embracing a newer paradigm, resulting in the layering of new policy goals and instruments on top of the existing base. In this article, we investigate the effect of layered paradigms on policy capacity at three different levels of policy making in theCanadian transportation sector. Using analysis of government publication…
Measuring Policy Success
Regulation and time
Given the complex decision-making that goes into policy choices for regulatory regimes, it would seem intuitive that such regimes might develop under distinct national styles. By revisiting several historical models of regulatory development, including Bernstein's classic life-cycle model, and then by analyzing six case studies from the US and UK, for example, we explore the possibility that regulatory regimes vary more prominently along the temp…
Partners in clime
Governments are increasingly using public‐private partnerships ( P3s ) to draw the private sector into more active participation in infrastructure development. Climate action initiatives have not typically yielded profitable results for the private sector, and might therefore constrain the placing of conditions by governments on P3 arrangements. This article investigates a major P3 infrastructure project in British C olumbia – the C anada Line ex…
The National Context of Wicked Problems
Scholars and practitioners have always been dogged by problems that are so complex that no practical solution appears to be possible. These have been referred to in the academic literature as “wicked” problems. However, it is possible that a problem’s “wickedness” depends in part on its context and on the vantage point of the observer, meaning that at least some aspects of wickedness can be thought of as being relative rather than absolute. In th…
Beyond the two communities
Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization
Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with…
Categories of failure in climate change mitigation policy in Australia
Discussions of failure in public policy have been hampered by a lack of consensus on a definition of the term ‘failure’. It can be shown that arguments relating to policy failure tend to conflate forms of failure that are actually discrete, such as failure to meet objectives, claims of negative distributional outcomes and negative electoral outcomes attributed to specific policy decisions. This article attempts to unify and clarify the discourse …
Deconstructing the debate over evidence-based policy
The renewed interest in evidence-based policy has been accompanied by a debate on the nature and desirability of the use of evidence in policy-making. At its core, this debate pits rationalist supporters of increased use of information for reasoned decision-making against constructivist critics who argue that policy-making is not based on evidence and that an appeal to evidence is the first step toward a dangerous elimination of human judgment in…
Policy capacity and evidence-based policy in the public service
Governments in many jurisdictions have called for an increase in ‘evidence-based’ policy-making. However, the international evidence-based policy movement has so far shown little progress in transforming the way that public policy is formulated and implemented. Much research on evidence-based policy has focused on political interference and contextual frames of reference as barriers to the uptake of research evidence. With the support of data fro…
Evidence-based policy or risk minimisation? The regulation of e-cigarettes in Australia
Theoretical discussions of evidence-based policy place primary importance on facts and values. However, there are situations in which policy must be made in the absence of facts and values. In this article, one such situation is investigated: the emergence of electronic cigarettes. This article reviews attempts to regulate e-cigarettes in Australia, a country with a history of international leadership on regulating tobacco cigarettes. The article…
Wicked tendencies in policy problems
Complex or intractable policy problems, often called ‘wicked’ problems, have been a feature of public policy research since the early 1970s. Observers have generally assumed that these wicked problems constitute a distinct category of policy problems, based on the notion that some problems – those characterised as substantially technical or scientific in nature – lend themselves to traditional linear problem-solving methods, whereas other problem…
Debating the politics of evidence‐based policy
British Columbia’s fast ferries and Sydney’s Airport Link
Policy learning, where experiences from other jurisdictions and time periods inform decision making, has been suggested as a way to improve policy outcomes. Failures can be important to the learning process as examples of instruments and ideas to avoid, but episodes in which failure did not lead to lessons learned or to improved public policy are abundant. In this article, we propose some conditions that can prevent governments from learning from…
The Role of Uncertainty in Regulating E‐Cigarettes
Increasingly, the regulation of public health hazards is subject to an appraisal of the risk of harm to various target populations. However, an expanding body of evidence suggests that when faced with a deficit of information concerning a particular public health risk, governments and regulators do very little to address the risk directly. By examining the case of the first ten years of the availability of electronic cigarettes (2005‐15), this ar…
The transition game
Following decades of significant economic and political reform, a once-closed China has emerged as the world's fastest growing and arguably most interconnected political economic system. In the context of what has been termed a 'post-socialist' transition, China's sport system has similarly undergone rapid marketization (bringing in market actors and action). In this article, we examine the changing state and function of football (soccer) within …
Policy design, non-design, and anti-design
In this article, we propose a typology of policy design and non-design, with special attention to a category of policy making which we term, “anti-design”. We argue that contrary to the established literature, the opposite of design is not politics, but rather, a disconnect between problems, interventions, and outcomes. This disconnect can be caused by political forces but also by non-political factors such as incompetence, corruption, or global …
Policy analytical capacity and "Eastern" styles of policy analysis
An emerging body of scholarship suggests that "Western" notions of policy analysis may not be relevant in "Eastern" jurisdictions, and that non-Western countries, particularly in Asia, may have their own local policy analytical style or tradition. However, in many Asian countries, little is known about the work that public sector policy analysts do. Using data from a survey and focus groups, this article investigates policy analysis and analytica…
Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and bureaucratic transformation
Narratives and counter-narratives of political strategy
In 2009, the Australian Senate rejected the government's ambitious Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the prevailing narrative surrounding these events, the Labor government, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, made a series of strategic errors that led to the scheme's – and ultimately, Rudd's and the Labor Party's – downfall. However, by taking a closer look at of some aspects of Australia's parliamentary system, including the norms of partisan …
Sport and Physical Culture in Global Pandemic Times
How should we interpret narratives of political strategy for climate policy? A response to Pearse and Jackson
In my article in this journal entitled ‘Narratives and counter-narratives of political strategy: revisiting Australia's carbon pollution reduction scheme’, I offered an alternative interpretation of the failure of the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, one in which the government's strategy of pursuing bipartisan agreement was not a miscalculation, but rather a reasonable course of action based on institutional norms and precede…
Mapping the discourse on evidence-based policy, artificial intelligence, and the ethical practice of policy analysis
Scholarship on evidence-based policy, a subset of the policy analysis literature, largely assumes information is produced and consumed by humans. However, due to the expansion of artificial intelligence in the public sector, debates no longer capture the full range concerns. Here, we derive a typology of arguments on evidence-based policy that performs two functions: taken separately, the categories serve as directions in which debates may procee…
Political science (26 works) · Economics (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Public Administration (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Public policy (14 works) · Public Administration (13 works) · Policy Transfer and Learning (9 works) · Government (linguistics (8 works)