The target audience consists of policy practitioners, inside and outside of government, and scholars of the policy process.
I am going to give a reply from the point of view of a “policy practitioner”, one of the intended groups of audiences for this book. I’m not familiar with “scholars of the policy process” so can’t comment on the usefulness for them”. I work very much in this space – promoting long-term policy making in the UK parliament.
Let us know your thoughts, questions and feedback in the comments
In short my immediate intuition is that this is medium-low value to policymakers and to me. Although this I would likely read this I doubt I would find it very useful to me.
As others have mentioned chapters 1 & 4-5 and chapters 2-3 seem like a different topics to be read for different reasons.
Chapters 2-3
I think to someone in policy the content of chapters 2-3 seems quite basic. It is stuff that I know (or at least like to think I know). This matches my experience of the EA Geneva research I have read to date: of accurate descriptions of the policy process but quite basic and not very insightful to someone who has worked in policy for a while.
I personally think I would find it interesting to explore an academics’ take on policy and see how it compares to my own knowledge. However I wouldn’t expect to gain much if anything from reading this. Might be more useful to policy makers more junior in their career as introductory material.
Chapters 1 & 4-5
Chapters 1 & 4-5 seems of mixed usefulness. Chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 4 seems useful but the rest of chapter 4 and chapter 5 seems to be written very much for academics trying to study the field.
Chapter 4. Parts 1 and 2. Good. If done well, an analysis, literature review and exploration of these 4 diverse strategies would be very interesting.
Chapter 4. Parts 3 and 4. I understand this would be details of an experiment trying to compare these four strategies. These are not like for like things and decisions between them would be rare and based on many factors. I would be interested in maybe 1-2 pages of a book summarising this work but a detailed description of how someone has tried to compare them in this way seems like an intellectual academic exercise I would not be interested in. Somewhat judging this on your EA global talk.
Chapter 5. This looks like suggestions for academic research. This is not at all the research agenda I would take if I was trying to develop policy in this space within the next few years as a policy maker or think tank etc. It is very very theoretical based (computational models, fundamentals of policy making).
I hope that breakdown helps you refine this work. Just some initial thoughts. Happy to chat through and be constructive, especially if August works.
EDIT. Also if for a wider audience worth remembering that there are popular books on this or tangential to this. Like “The Precipice”, “The Good Ancestor”, “FutureGen”, Will’s next book, and a few others.
I also want to clarify my statement that this was “low-medium value” was based on the current plan – I think there is valuable stuff here that could be teased out to make this useful to people in policy.
A good book summarising the academic work on how policy is made, how change happens, how external influences work, mapping out the whole space and giving an overview and different perspectives could be really really useful.
I wouldn’t give up on this idea – just maybe develop it further – can talk more if useful.
Hi Maxime and Konrad,
I am going to give a reply from the point of view of a “policy practitioner”, one of the intended groups of audiences for this book. I’m not familiar with “scholars of the policy process” so can’t comment on the usefulness for them”. I work very much in this space – promoting long-term policy making in the UK parliament.
In short my immediate intuition is that this is medium-low value to policymakers and to me. Although this I would likely read this I doubt I would find it very useful to me.
As others have mentioned chapters 1 & 4-5 and chapters 2-3 seem like a different topics to be read for different reasons.
Chapters 2-3
I think to someone in policy the content of chapters 2-3 seems quite basic. It is stuff that I know (or at least like to think I know). This matches my experience of the EA Geneva research I have read to date: of accurate descriptions of the policy process but quite basic and not very insightful to someone who has worked in policy for a while.
I personally think I would find it interesting to explore an academics’ take on policy and see how it compares to my own knowledge. However I wouldn’t expect to gain much if anything from reading this. Might be more useful to policy makers more junior in their career as introductory material.
Chapters 1 & 4-5
Chapters 1 & 4-5 seems of mixed usefulness. Chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 4 seems useful but the rest of chapter 4 and chapter 5 seems to be written very much for academics trying to study the field.
Chapter 1. Seems good and interesting and I think policy makers would find this useful. That said this is all content covered elsewhere that I have read already (eg here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ra42MbUkvIjZPn-MJxVxUdpjK_5VLZ7lxUxBAmp3Ook/edit or https://www.appgfuturegenerations.com/research)
Chapter 4. Parts 1 and 2. Good. If done well, an analysis, literature review and exploration of these 4 diverse strategies would be very interesting.
Chapter 4. Parts 3 and 4. I understand this would be details of an experiment trying to compare these four strategies. These are not like for like things and decisions between them would be rare and based on many factors. I would be interested in maybe 1-2 pages of a book summarising this work but a detailed description of how someone has tried to compare them in this way seems like an intellectual academic exercise I would not be interested in. Somewhat judging this on your EA global talk.
Chapter 5. This looks like suggestions for academic research. This is not at all the research agenda I would take if I was trying to develop policy in this space within the next few years as a policy maker or think tank etc. It is very very theoretical based (computational models, fundamentals of policy making).
I hope that breakdown helps you refine this work. Just some initial thoughts. Happy to chat through and be constructive, especially if August works.
EDIT. Also if for a wider audience worth remembering that there are popular books on this or tangential to this. Like “The Precipice”, “The Good Ancestor”, “FutureGen”, Will’s next book, and a few others.
I also want to clarify my statement that this was “low-medium value” was based on the current plan – I think there is valuable stuff here that could be teased out to make this useful to people in policy.
A good book summarising the academic work on how policy is made, how change happens, how external influences work, mapping out the whole space and giving an overview and different perspectives could be really really useful.
I wouldn’t give up on this idea – just maybe develop it further – can talk more if useful.