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This IEG evaluation, requested by the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, represents the first independent evaluation of the PSIA experience. The evaluation finds that:. • The PSIA approach has appropriately emphasized the importance of assessing the distributional impact of policy actions, understanding institutional and political constraints to development, and building domestic ownership for reforms. • PSIAs have not always explicitly stated their operational objectives (i.e., informing country policies, informing Bank operations, and/or contributing to country capacity). • PSIAs have had limited ownership by Bank staff and managers and have often not been effectively integrated into country assistance programs. • Quality assurance and Monitoring and Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of PSIAs have been weak. The evaluation recommends that the World Bank:. • Ensure that Bank staff understand what the PSIA approach is and when to use it. • Clarify the operational objectives of each PSIA and tailor the approach and timeline to those objectives. • Improve integration of the PSIA into the Bank’s country assistance program by requiring that all earmarked funding for PSIAs be matched by a substantial contribution from the country unit budgets. • Strengthen PSIA effectiveness through enhanced quality assurance.

While self-censorship is a necessary part of everyday social life, suppression of campus speech is inconsistent with academic freedom. Such suppression may take the form of speech disruptions and disinvitations, but it may also be the result of speech codes and bias response teams. These practices may lead to judical remedies. Campus self-censorship in the form of the refusal to sponsor campus public policy debates or forums with diverse viewpoints can only be remedied when higher education adopts models of civil disagreement about important public policy issues.

Strategic issues management (SIM) was conceptualized to help corporations participate in public policy clashes after World War II; activists examined every public policy nook and cranny. Public policy supports, shapes, and constrains what organizations, especially corporations, can do and say in their effort to acquire the resources they need to operate. Stakeholders’ policy positions challenged the moral and pragmatic conditions of legitimate operation. Legitimacy gaps resulted when corporate preferences and stakeholder expectations differed in ways that threatened strategic business planning. To be legitimate, corporations needed to change operations and engage in rhetorical exchanges to resolve gaps. These polyvocal contests have addressed issues of fact, value, policy, and identification. Because of tensions between expectations and legitimacy, SIM built four pillars: strategic management, issues monitoring, corporate social responsibility, and strategic issues communication. Navigating issue turbulence and uncertainty requires vigilant rhetorical attention to the meanings constructed to define, support, and constrain organizational legitimacy.

When initial estimates of the extinction risk from climate change appeared, there was immediate public and media interest. Authors of Thomas et al. appeared on CNN, BBC, and other major national and international television networks. Newspaper headlines, often front page, appeared on the day of the report’s release. Magazine, radio, and other media treatments of the subject followed for weeks after. But to what extent was this media interest driven by policy relevance, and to what extent were the implications of the extinction risk estimates taken up in policy dialogue?

For centuries, society has stigmatized homosexual men and women as sinners, criminals, and diseased because of their sexuality. Baths and bars were the first institutions in the United States that contradicted these stigmas and gave gay Americans a sense of pride in themselves and their sexuality. As such, gay bars and baths are an integral part of gay political history. Before there were any openly gay or lesbian leaders, political clubs, books, films, newspapers, businesses, neighborhoods, churches, or legally recognized gay rights, several generations of pioneers spontaneously created gay bathhouses and lesbian and gay bars. These men and women risked

This chapter contains sections titled: The Antinomies of Consumer Choice Theorizing Consumption Practices Problematizing Choice Articulating Background Conclusion