One of the leading theories for understanding the policy process is the theory of social construction and policy design developed by Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram. The theory incorporates the social construction and power of target populations to understand the development and implications of policy design. In order to better understand its empirical breadth, depth, and general utility, our analysis reviews all past publications of the theory, focusing specifically on empirical applications (N = 111), from 1993 to 2013. Based on this review, we find: a recent increase in the number of applications of this theory; that these applications appear across a wide range of outlets, relate to numerous policy domains, and are conducted by a diverse group of domestic and international scholars; that the target population proposition has been applied with greater frequency than the theory's feed-forward proposition; and that scholars have a notable interest in understanding causal mechanisms leading to changes in the positioning of target populations among advantaged, contender, dependent, and deviant target population categories. Following a descriptive review of past publications, we offer specific suggestions for theoretical development and future research.KEY WORDS: public policy, policy process, meta-analysis, literature review, social construction, policy design, feedback IntroductionIn 1999, Paul Sabatier edited a volume entitled Theories of the Policy Process (Sabatier, 1999a). Within this now near canonical tome are emergent theories of the policy process from the previous 15 years deemed by Sabatier to sufficiently adhere to scientific standards at the time. Through this effort, he charted a path forward for future policy process scholarship. Explicitly omitted from the edited volume was the work of what Sabatier termed constructivists. At the time, constructivists were a minority of policy process scholars (e.g., Fischer & Forrester, 1993) that focused on the socially constructed nature of policy as well as reality, in which perceptions and intersubjective meaning-making processes were considered central to understanding and explaining the policy process. Among his criticisms, Sabatier described constructivist methods as "nonfalsifiable" and their ideas as "free-floating and unconnected to specific individuals, institutions, or socio-economic conditions" bs_bs_banner The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 42, No. (Sabatier, 1999b, p. 11). Of course Sabatier was challenged for his decision to exclude this body of work, especially by European scholars (e.g., Parsons, 2000;Radaelli, 2000), but was unyielding in his position to exclude constructivist approaches in the edited volume.One of the most notable constructivist approaches included in Sabatier's "omitted frameworks" list was the theory of social construction and policy design that was first articulated by Schneider and Ingram in 1993 (Sabatier, 1999b, p. 11). However, by the second edition of Theories of the Policy Process, Sabatier (2007a) changed his mind. ...

SummaryCities are embedded within larger-scale engineered infrastructures (e.g., electric power, water supply, and transportation networks) that convey natural resources over large distances for use by people in cities. The sustainability of city systems therefore depends upon complex, cross-scale interactions between the natural system, the transboundary engineered infrastructures, and the multiple social actors and institutions that govern these infrastructures. These elements, we argue, are best studied in an integrated manner using a novel social-ecological-infrastructural systems (SEIS) framework. In the biophysical subsystem, the SEIS framework integrates urban metabolism with life cycle assessment to articulate transboundary infrastructure supply chain water, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of cities. These infrastructure footprints make visible multiple resources (water, energy, materials) used directly or indirectly (embodied) to support human activities in cities. They inform cross-scale and cross-infrastructure sector strategies for mitigating environmental pollution, public health risks and supply chain risks posed to cities. In the social subsystem, multiple theories drawn from the social sciences explore interactions between three actor categories-individual resource users, infrastructure designers and operators, and policy actors-who interact with each other and with infrastructures to shape cities toward sustainability outcomes. Linking of the two subsystems occurs by integrating concepts, theories, laws, and models across environmental sciences/climatology, infrastructure engineering, industrial ecology, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public health, and public affairs. Such integration identifies high-impact leverage points in the urban SEIS. An interdisciplinary SEIS-based curriculum on sustainable cities is described and evaluated for its efficacy in promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinary vocabulary development, both of which are measures of effective frameworks. Keywords:cities curricula industrial ecology infrastructure urban metabolism urban systems Supporting information is available on the JIE Web site Infrastructures and Sustainable CitiesA majority of the world's people now live in cities (UN 2008) The importance of transboundary infrastructures can be seen in the fact that fewer than 7% and 4% of U.S. counties have power plants and oil refineries, respectively, within their jurisdictions (DOE 2010;EPA 2007), thus these transboundary infrastructures provide essential energy for the vast majority of cities and counties in the United States. Indeed, while the spatial scale of cities is on the order of tens of miles, electricity transmission distances exceed 200 miles 1 (Hirst 2000), freight travels 600 miles (BTS 2009), and food travels an average of 1,200 miles in the United States (Weber and Matthews 2008). Studies of international cities, including megacities such as Delhi, India, reveal a similar reliance on transboundary infrastru...

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The concept of learning has long played a central role in the theories and frameworks used to understand policy processes. Findings described here aim to contribute to the theoretical and methodological understanding of individual learning in the policy process by explicitly examining belief change and belief reinforcement as products of policy learning, measuring both, as well as measuring the absence of either. The objective of this study is to use the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework to examine some of the factors that promote and shape policy learning, including policy actors' beliefs and the extent to which policy actors engage in various policy activities within and between belief coalitions. The results indicate that extreme beliefs are associated with belief reinforcement, relative to policy actors with more moderate beliefs, and that collaboration with individuals with differing policy views is associated with belief change.