IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v44y2012i1p13-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reverb: Policy Making in Wave Form

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Freeman

    (School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, 21 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, Scotland)

Abstract

When we think of policy as mobile, what is it we think is moving? Asking after the mobility of policy is important not least for the ontological questions it raises: what is policy such that it moves? Ordinarily, we might think of policy as existing in time and space while, given certain conditions, some policies move from one time and/or space to another. This paper, by contrast, begins by describing policy as resulting from movement, setting out a model or heuristic which takes its mobility as prior to its existence. For policy is made in communicative interaction, both oral (in meetings) and textual (in documents). We might think of it in wave form, which helps to explain both its mobility and its mutability. The paper illustrates this conception in a study of WHO activity in respect of mental health in Europe, exploring aspects of translation—understood as the generation of messages in interaction—and of iteration, as those messages are reformulated and repeated in different contexts. The policy concept reverberates, and it is in this way that collective sense is consolidated and reproduced.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Freeman, 2012. "Reverb: Policy Making in Wave Form," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(1), pages 13-20, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:1:p:13-20
    DOI: 10.1068/a44177
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a44177
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a44177?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peabody, John W., 1995. "An organizational analysis of the World Health Organization: Narrowing the gap between promise and performance," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 731-742, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Evelien de Hoop & Saurabh Arora, 2017. "Policy Democracy? Social and Material Participation in Biodiesel Policy-Making Processes in India," SPRU Working Paper Series 2017-02, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    2. Jane M. Jacobs & Loretta Lees, 2013. "Defensible Space on the Move: Revisiting the Urban Geography of Alice Coleman," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 1559-1583, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Viola, Lora Anne, 2008. "WHO says competition is healthy: How civil society can change IGOs [Die WHO sagt: Wettbewerb ist gesund. Wie Zivilgesellschaft IGOs verändern kann]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2008-307, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    2. Mariano Rabassa & Emmanuel Skoufias & Hanan Jacoby, 2014. "Weather and Child Health in Rural Nigeria," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 23(4), pages 464-492.
    3. M. Ortuño & G. Tirado & B. Vitoriano, 2011. "A lexicographical goal programming based decision support system for logistics of Humanitarian Aid," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 19(2), pages 464-479, December.
    4. Hanrieder, Tine, 2014. "Local orders in international organisations: the World Health Organization's global programme on AIDS," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106692, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Hanrieder, Tine, 2015. "The path-dependent design of international organizations: Federalism in the World Health Organization," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 215-239.
    6. Flessa, Steffen, 2003. "Priorities and allocation of health care resources in developing countries: A case-study from the Mtwara region, Tanzania," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 67-80, October.
    7. Ari Samsky, 2011. "'Since We Are Taking The Drugs':," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 27-43, February.
    8. Sonja Kahlmeier & Nino Künzli & Charlotte Braun-Fahrländer, 2002. "The first years of implementation of the Swiss National Environment and Health Action Plan (NEHAP): Lessons for environmental health promotion," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 47(2), pages 67-73, March.
    9. Gebremeskel Berhane Tesfay & Babatunde Abidoye, 2019. "Shocks in food availability and intra-household resources allocation: evidence on children nutrition outcomes in Ethiopia," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, December.
    10. Anaka Aiyar & Joseph Cummins, 2020. "An Age Profile Perspective on Two Puzzles in Global Child Health: the Indian Enigma and Economic Growth," Working Papers 202019, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    11. Joseph Cummins & Anaka Aiyar, 2017. "Age-Profile Estimates of the Relationship Between Economic Growth and Child Health," Working Papers 201710, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    12. Bilal Avan & Syed Raza & Betty Kirkwood, 2014. "A community-based study of early childhood sensory stimulation in home environment associated with growth and psychomotor development in Pakistan," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 59(5), pages 779-788, October.
    13. Pauli Rintala & Viviene A. Temple & Meghann Lloyd & Chris Faro & John T. Foley, 2017. "Association of poverty and social exclusion with body mass index among Special Olympics athletes in Europe," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 62(8), pages 921-928, November.
    14. Vaughan, J. Patrick & Mogedal, Sigrun & Kruse, Stein-Erik & Lee, Kelley & Walt, Gill & de Wilde, Koen, 1996. "Financing the World Health Organisation: global importance of extrabudgetary funds," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 229-245, March.
    15. Andreea ŞERBAN & Stefan Razvan TATARU, 2018. "The Influence of General Data Protection Regulation on Patient Engagement," Logos Universalitate Mentalitate Educatie Noutate - Sectiunea Drept/ Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty - Section: Law, Editura Lumen, Department of Economics, vol. 6(1), pages 56-72, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:1:p:13-20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.