I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My former PhD advisor is a very wise man and I owe a great deal of what I have accomplished to the formidable PhD training I had under his supervision. He shaped my thinking, enhanced my research skills by encouraging me and demanding from me to undertake empirical analyses. Even though my memorization capabilities and speed-reading skills have enabled me to master a broad variety of theoretical frameworks, my former PhD supervisor always wanted me to empirically test theories. Doing so gave me the best of both worlds (theory and empirics).

Throughout the course of my teaching, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, I have refined my instructional skills and summarized in a few sentences what I demand from my students: I want my students’ research to be evidence-based, empirically-grounded and theoretically sound.

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s quote has indicated above, it is foolish to theorize before one has data. Even though much of my comparative environmental policy work has focused in the development of better theories that allow us to understand why governments at various scales choose different policy options, I have years of training in empirical research methods, both qualitative and quantitative. I have undertaken in-depth qualitative studies (interviews and institutional ethnographies) and built massive datasets that have been explored through a variety of quantitative methods (including firm demographics and multivariate analysis).

Much as my students may think I’m too demanding, I strongly believe in providing them with a strong foundation in research methods. Even if I do not teach a methods course per se, I showcase examples of studies that have both sound theoretical grounding and robust empirical research methodologies. I think that the best long-lasting learning experience I can give any student is the self-confidence of knowing how to tackle a problem using empirical research methods.

Teaching public policy has always been a delight for me. Exploring the challenges of creating and implementing policies that are effective, efficient and equitable along with my students has been one of the highlights of my academic career. Previously, I taught POLI 350A Public Policy, with a focus on Canadian public policy (urban, social, health and environmental). This year, I am teaching POLI 352A The Comparative Politics of Public Policy. I was thrilled to be offered to teach comparative public policy, given that my research is focussed primarily in understanding cross-national environmental policy puzzles.

I have spent the better part of the past decade exploring the cross-regional dynamics of industrial restructuring in Mexican cities. My research has examined patterns of water governance across 5 different states in a Mexican watershed. Current projects include an investigation of how environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in Canada, the United States and Mexico, use the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC)’s Citizen Submission on Enforcement Matters Mechanism (CSEM) to pressure national governments to remedy failures to comply with their domestic environmental regulations.

photo credit: Carlos Sánchez Pimienta

Throughout this semester, I’ve found teaching this course particularly challenging. Given that the course has no prerequisites, students can take this class without any previous coursework in public policy. While not unsurmountable, the challenge I faced was to ingrain the comparative method in my students’ thinking process. Thinking about how other nations design and implement policy and various factors influencing policy process and outcomes becomes challenging.

When one is required to detach oneself from his/her own national and cultural biases, and undertake a cross-national, or cross-regional policy comparison, recognizing those biases and going beyond our accumulated knowledge about a particular country’s policy style becomes part and parcel of the challenges in undertaking the analysis. I noticed this particular challenge in an article I recently assigned to my undergraduate students by Jacob Hacker:

Hacker, Jacob (2004) “Dismantling the Health Care State? Political Institutions, Public Policies and the Comparative Politics of Health Reform” British Journal of Political Science (2004), 34:4:693-724

In this article, Hacker undertakes a challenging cross-national comparison of public health reform in affluent democracies (Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States), focusing primarily on the politics of reform, and attempting to explain cross-national variations in legislative and policy outcomes. Hacker’s article offered my students a really good example of comparative analysis of health policy across five different nations.

When I asked my students to think critically about Hacker’s analysis, I requested that they indicate any shortcomings that they may have perceived in Hacker’s methodological approach, his theoretical framework and his case selection. For me, the main goal of this exercise was to test to what extent I had been successful in inculcating my students with an evidence-based, theoretically-grounded, comparative policy analytical framework.

I find comparative public policy analysis incredibly exciting, rewarding and challenging at the same time. Exploring causes of cross-national policy outcomes’ variations and offering empirically-grounded explanations for these is a highly exciting process. Throughout the semester, I did a lot of in-class analysis and application of various analytical frameworks, including the Bardach 8 step model.

Moreover, in teaching this course (The Comparative Politics of Public Policy), I have perceived that my students’ main challenge has been to think comparatively from the start. I wonder why this is the case, and I prepared this blog entry with two goals in mind: First, to ask my colleagues who have experience teaching comparative public policy, what their experience has been and what the main challenges have been in teaching this course. Second, to ask my own students to provide in here (on this blog) a written response to the main challenges they have faced throughout the course, and to test whether my perception is accurate.

Global warming protest outside Washington Park (Photo: Pembleton/Flickr)

Citizen participation in North American environmental policy-making has had some ebbs and flows, with an increase in participation in some of the CEC’s strategies and programs. Two mechanisms were specifically designed to allow for citizen participation within the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC or CEC for short). The first mechanism is the Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), a tri-national advisory board comprised by citizens from all three countries, and from varied backgrounds (industry, academia, non-governmental organizations).

The second one is the Citizen Submission on Enforcement Matters programme (CSEM), based on Articles 14 and 15 of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). This mechanism provides civil society organizations with the opportunity to play a “whistleblower” role. Any concerned citizen from any of the three countries can prepare and present a submission to the CEC Secretariat denouncing a country for failing to comply with its own environmental laws (NACEC 2001). The CEC Secretariat’s Office of Submissions on Enforcement Matters reviews the submission and assesses whether the submission actually warrants a response from the concerned country.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of a tri-national, collaborative project that examines CSEM. Our objective in this research project is to develop an empirical basis on which to explore the theoretical and applied aspects of civil society involvement on environmental policy-making. We focus on (amongst other aspects), how ENGOs use a trinational policy reform (CSEM). The CSEM is a mechanism built into the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, designed to avoid “races to the bottom” and “pollution havens”. In theory, this type of institutional reform should empower civil society organizations to hold nation-states accountable.

We were particularly interested in undertaking an independent assessment on three key aspects. First, are citizen claims an effective mechanism to influence domestic environmental policy enforcement? Second, does this mechanism provide an opportunity for ENGOs to come together and form transnational advocacy networks? And third, what (if any) are the tangible impacts of the CSEM mechanism? As we have conducted our research, these objectives have had to be adapted and modified. I will offer preliminary results of our collaborative effort and suggest the direction that our project will take in the foreseeable future.