Book and Podcast Festival 2023
Two books edited by members of the NORRAG team were showcased at the first Geneva Graduate Institute Book and Podcast Festival on 16 May.
Gita Steiner-Khamsi (ex-Academic Director, KIX EAP PI and UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education Policy) co-edited the book Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policy: A Comparative Network Analysis with Berit Karseth, Kirsten Sivesind, which includes three co-authored chapters from our current Academic Director, Chanwoong Baek.
In an era of evidence-based policymaking, policymakers are often expected to use data, review “best practices,” and refer to different benchmarks and standards developed by international organizations to legitimize policy decisions. Even though many have scrutinized this trend, there has been a lack of exploration regarding what counts as evidence and how evidence is used in and across different policy contexts. In this volume, the authors demonstrate how governments in the Nordic region use evidence strategically for agenda-setting and policy decisions and that the selection of evidence is significantly shaped by the “system logic” in each policy context and changes over time.
Moira V. Faul (NORRAG Executive Director) co-edited the book Partnerships for Sustainability in Contemporary Global Governance: Pathways to Effectiveness with Liliana Adonova and Dario Piselli. While partnerships promise a great deal, there is little clarity as to what they actually deliver. The dual contribution of this Open Access volume, theoretical and empirical, holds promise for a more thorough and innovative understanding of the pathways to partnership effectiveness and the conditions that can shape their performance. The broad range of crosscutting analyses in this book suggest important practical implications for the design of new partnerships and the updating of existing initiatives.