Policies on the move: Translation, assemblages and ethnography
本文探讨政策模型在时空中的流动及其不可预测的后果，并倡导用民族志方法揭示政策制定中的人性维度，超越理性选择假设。
Two issues have been hotly debated in public policy in the recent years.The first is the intensive movement of policy models across space and time with often-unpredictable consequences on the ground.Nationally, policy moves from the rooms of legislators and executive officials to the offices of implementation agencies, and onto the people such policy seeks to regulate.Transnationally, it moves from one country and context to another with the help of international organizations, think tanks, independent experts, and academics (e.g.Stone, 2012).Examples of policies on the move, among many, include neo-liberal reforms in education, healthcare, and public service provision.The second issue that increasingly gains attention is in the opening up of public policy to an ethnographic inquiry.For example, through their ethnographies, Maybin (2014) and Pachirat (2009) lift the lid on the micro-politics of policy and illustrate the human dimensions of policy-making away from the rational choice assumptions or theories of institutionalism.Instead, ethnographies allow revealing the political, cultural, traditional, emotional, ethical, and other features of complex decision-making.This is a significant methodological innovation.Four notable new books speak to these very issues.