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0. ID# 17110084 Name Pham Thi Lan Huong
Review Note for Classes of 180405&06
1.

What was discussed in the class

In the first class, we discussed about two worlds which are the virtual world and the real world and to
identify which world that policy, strategy belong to.
We also discussed the two aspects of strategy which are formal - logical aspect and substantive
aspect. The formal one is totally general and universal way of approach while the latter aspect focus
is more specific and focus on the issues, the substantive interest in the real world of the one who set
the strategy. The first class focused on the first aspect of strategy, the formal logical aspect, which
involve the end-means relationship and the cause-effect relationship.

In today class, we reviewed what we had learnt in Introduction to Public Policy course and discussed
about the different between learning and studying and what should be aware and pay attention to
when we want to make something we studied into our own knowledge.
2.

What have you learned? What was good for you?

In first two classes, I learn that:
i) Self-conscious, self-critical and strategic thinking is necessary in analysis. It is important to know
the true meaning of a word or a term when you using it, whether you truly understand it or not,
whether you make it clear in the sentences so that it is easy to understand. And one also need to
aware that the meaning of a term can be different in different context, with different purposes and by
different people.
ii) There are two worlds, virtual world or word world which often expressed by words and symbols
and the real world which involve actions. And it is crucial for one to distinguish these two worlds;

iii) Policy and strategy are belong to the virtual world because it is generated from idea and intention
and nothing more than word. Analysis of policy therefore also belong to the virtual world;
iv) The first step in the policy making process is identification of the policy issues (an issues become
a policy issues when it has negative impacts on citizens in a large scale on space and time, it violate


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the nation legal system and it is a universal concern of the citizens). From the class I learn that the
issues do not exist in the real world, only situations do, because some people might think a situation
is a problem while for others do not have the same opinion. Thus, the issues are identified in the
virtual world;
v) The arrow symbol in a model or diagram can has different meaning but it usually represent the
time sequence, the order of when the step in a process take place;
vi) One need to be aware of tautology in writing, try to make the sentences clear by make the words
self-explanatory and easy to understand; and
vii) citation is very important in writing.
These information are useful for me because there are things that I have never noticed before such
as the difference between virtual world and real world and the importance to be aware of the
meaning of a word when using it.
3.

What do you want more of?

I think it would be helpful if we can have an overview about what we will learn in the course and how
is the connection between the contents in this course with the Introduction with Public Policy and
Public Policy Formulation and Implementation course.
4.

Whatever else …

Review Note for Class of 180407
1.

What was discussed in the class

In today class, we discussed the model of formal-logical aspect of strategy that we learned yesterday
by answering these following questions:
i) What is the connection between end-means relationship and cause-effect relationship? (endmeans relationship is the relation between goal and idea for action while cause-effect relationship is
the relationship between real action and results);
ii) In the previous class, we learned that the implementation arrow (the arrow from idea for action to
real action) cut through the line between virtual world and real world. So what are there in each part
of the implementation that belong to the virtual world and the real world?;
iii) We learned that goal generated from situations in the real world, but is it the only source that goal
comes from?;
iv) What kinds of tools are often used to assess the situation in real world?;
v) When does the assessment take place?; and
vi) Do the real actions that we proposed always lead to the desired results?
2.

What have you learned? What was good for you?


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In today class, I learned that:
i) The cause-effect relationship is the logical support for the end-means relationship. To be more
specific, the action (in end-means relationship) is proposed to achieve the goals while the goal can
only be achieved in real world, thus, proposed action need to be implemented in real world in order
to achieve the goal by producing certain results. Therefore, the end-means relationship is not

valuable unless it have the logical support from the cause-effect relationship;
ii) The part of implementation that belong to the virtual world requires “specificity of expression”, by
which the idea for action need to be specific enough to be able to perform reality check. Usually, we
use 4W1H questions to check the specificity of the idea which are who, when, where, what and how
(to whom – question also used in some cases). In theory, the people that plan the idea for action
often be responsible for the specificity of expression. However, in reality, usually, the people that
implement the action in real world are the one take this responsibility.
The part of implementation that belong to the real world requires reality check, which means to see
whether the proposal for action are feasible to implemented in real world or not;
iii) In reality, goals are not only come from the situation in real world but also come from the order of
authorities;
iv) Indicators can be used to break the border between two worlds because it reflects the situations
in real world. We used indicators as the tool to reflect the real world, thus, if the indicators is not good
then we can get distorted view about the real world;
v) Assessment take place before the actions to make us aware of unintended results, and if bad
results might happen, is there any way to prevent, mitigate or compensate its effects; and
vi) The action that implemented is not always ensure desired resulted. It can induces intended and
unintended consequence (the side effects). So one need to aware of that when analyzing the effect
of an action.
From what I learned, the model can be revised as follow:


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3. What do you want more of?
4. Whatever else …
Regarding the exercise “write down a strategy that familiar for you”, I would like to describe a policy
that implemented in Myanmar, which is motorcycle ban policy in the case of Yangon, Myanmar.
Virtual world:
Goals: To solve the severe traffic congestion situation in Yangon, Myanmar which cause mostly by

the large number of motorcycle users.
Proposal action: Reduce motorcycle-use of citizens by implementing motorcycle demand
management in Yangon
Real world
Real action: banned motorcycle in central business districts of Yangon since 2003; provide public
transports to people as an alternative to motorcycle.
Results:
-

Intended consequence: local people adjust to the life with motorcycle, they accepted

motorcycle ban, the number of people using motorcycle in Yangon decreased, and the traffic
congestion also reduced
-

Unintended consequence: in the long-run, income of people increase, local people are able

to purchase car rather than motorcycle, thus the number of car increase which make the traffic
congestion increase. Therefore, the motorcycle ban policy is not really effective in the long run.
Review Note for Classes of 180409
1.
What was discussed in the class


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In today class, we discussed:
i) The meaning of the implementation arrow in the previous model;
ii) The management cycles for improved performance in effectiveness, efficiency and quality of public
policy, which focus on three types of cycles (PDS, PDCA and PDSA) and each step in these cycles.

2.
What have you learned? What was good for you?
In today class, I learned that:
i) In the model that we learned in the class, the arrow between the idea for action and the real action
is different from the two horizontal arrows in a way that this arrow illustrates the act and process of
somebody doing something while these two arrows only show logical relation. Phase 1 of
implementation (specification of expression) produces specific expression of idea of action. When
the expression is specific enough, it can be put into action.
ii) There are similarity between the three types of cycles in the class today and the policy cycle that
we had learned in public policy:
1. Identification - Plan
2. Formulation – Plan
3. Implementation – Do
4. Evaluation – Check
iii) After PDCA cycle is introduced, many people believe that the Check part is too trivial, in this part,
they can only check little of what happen. Therefore, Study part is introduced instead of Check, to
study what happen. In public area, PDCA cycle is prefer than PDSA because it fits the annual cycle
and the administrative cycle more.
iv) The concept of opportunity cost is somehow relevant to opportunity cost. By saying opportunity
cost, I means the cost (in term of physical value such as money and mentally value such as
satisfaction) that one has to give up to do something. Revealed cost is the preference of someone
that is revealed by the fact that they choose to do something instead of doing something else.
v) Double bind that involved in the checking step, include two burdens (or two bind) which are the
bad (the difference between document and reality) and the impossible task. To be more specific,
people usually based on the assumed theory on document to work so when the reality is so different
from what lied in paper, it induce difficulty to perform the task, thus, because the problem is bad, it
make it impossible to perform the task to solve the problem.
3.
What do you want more of?
4.

Whatever else …
Review Note for Classes of 180410
1.
What was discussed in the class
In the class, we discussed many things. Firstly, we discuss about the “Two world and three levels”, in
which the first two levels was mostly belong to the virtual world and the third level is in some cases
the “front line” because it is the border where the two worlds meet, and it is conducted more in the
real world. We also discussed more detail about the order of how thing work in Instruction,
Monitoring (or Reporting) and Evaluation at each level.
Secondly, we discussed the positive and normative economic. Positive view the world as how it is
while the normative view the world as how it should be.


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Thirdly, we discussed what should the arrow between the Real action and Result indicates.
According to Professor Toru, this arrow should be called “hypothesis” since the real action and result
is a cause – effect relationship and in real life it is difficult to observe or describe the result of
something, all what you thing is a result that generated from a cause is often based on your
“hypothesis”. This hypothesis arrow is supposed to take place in the future, so it is not similar to the
experience.
Finally, we also done some exercises related to text analysis and graph analysis. In those exercise
we focus on how to find actual meaning of a word in context of a sentence. How a same word used
in different sentence can imply different meanings.
2.
What have you learned? What was good for you?
Firstly, I learned that the PDCA cycle is supposed to be Plan – Do – Check, then after the checking
part, if there is no problems then there is no action required. However, if after the checking part,
some problem occurs that when the action needed to take place. Therefor in PDCA cycle, there is no
pre-supported actions.

Secondly, I learned that in the “Two world, three level”, the Evaluation part is usually operated with
the order from high level to lower level, but it can also include the outside evaluation can be
conducted at all level three levels. Meanwhile, for the other two, the Instruction is pass from the
upper level to the lower level, and the Monitoring is reported from the lower level to the upper level.
Thirdly, from the text analysis, I learned the meaning of these words in a sentence, which are “due
to”, “affect”, “prevent”, “impact” and “implication”. The first four words indicate the cause-effect
relationship, from that I can identify which part of the sentence is cause and which part is effect.
For example:
1. X happen due to Y. (X is the effect and Y is the cause)
2. X affect Y. (X is the cause, Y is the effect)
3. X prevent Y. (X is the cause, Y is the effect)
4. X has impact on Y. (X is the cause and Y is the effect).
For the word implication, for example “X implies Y” does not illustrate the end-means relation or the
cause – effect relation. This sentence means that whenever X happen Y always happens, but it does
not guarantee the otherwise.
From the graph analysis exercises, I learned the word “share” which carry a different meaning
compare to the meaning that I had learned in the past. To my recollection, share is equivalent to
proportion, which involve to the pie, X is a share of Y indicate that X is a part of Y. However, in this
example, the word “share” indicate that X is not a part of Y, and “share” here only means that it is
that ration of X to Y, that why the vertical axis is more than 100%.
I think the text analysis is quite useful for me because I learn a lot of new information related to how
to use a most appropriate word that can express my intention.
3.
What do you want more of?
I hope that Professor can clarify the difference between hypothesis and assumption because I find
that these two concepts are very similar to each other.
4.
Whatever else …