Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Policy Learning for the Age of Neo-Globalization and Rapid Changes: Approaches, Technologies, and Innovation

(Emergent New Technologies and Innovation)

Policy learning, like organizational learning, has a long cyclical life-span that is not new. Modern/contemporary literature on policy learning, whether from path-dependency, broken policy cycles, or other innovative streams of thoughts, has become much more significant now in the age of rapid changes as a result of: (1) technological innovations); (2) knowledge explosion and atomization; (3)  globalization as a "hallmark" of rupturing if not rapturing changes, global integration, and the resulting quests and counter-quests for total domination and global world order; (4) rise of multiple streams of Neo-globalization with far reaching implications and consequences; and (5) policy innovation and implications in theory and practice. What deductions can be drawn as a result of these global changes affecting the entire planet earth? What do we mean by globalization, old, and Neo? What policy learning theories would help us understand and explain these and other related changes at macro global and micro national or regional levels, for knowledge advancement in policy learning? What are the rapid changes that affect Health, Employment, Education, Economic Development, and Environmental Policies? How can technological innovations be scoped and tamed to serve specific public policy areas noted above? Will there be new theories emerging, as a result, to guide research and analysis of public policy? This Panel addresses these and similar questions. Specific policy areas of Health, Old Age Social Security Systems, Environment, Public-Private Partnerships, Employment and Work, and Economic Development are focused for analysis and policy learning implications.