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Abstract: Abstract Scientific evidence has become increasingly important for the decision-making processes in contemporary democracies. On the one hand, research dealing with the utilization of scientific knowledge in the political process has pointed out that decision-makers learn from evidence to improve policies to solve problems. On the other, scholars have underlined that actors learn from evidence to support their political interests regardless of how it affects the policy problem. One conventional insight from the policy learning literature is that higher salience of a policy issue makes it much less likely that decision-makers use evidence in an “unpolitical” way. Nevertheless, only few studies have investigated systematically how differences regarding issue salience between policy fields impact on how decision-makers learn from evaluations at the individual level. Using multilevel regression models on data from a legislative survey in Switzerland, this paper shows that salience and technical complexity of policy issues do not automatically lead to less policy learning and to more political learning from policy evaluations. Nevertheless, this article’s empirical analysis also points out that issue salience increases policy learning from evaluations if the policy issue is technically complex. Our findings contribute to research on policy learning and evidence-based policy making by linking the literature on policy evaluation and learning, which helps analyzing the micro-foundations of learning in public policy and administration. PubDate: 2022-05-21
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Abstract: Abstract Regions around the world employ cluster-based policies as part of their industrial, innovation and development policy mixes. They have become a key tool in smart specialisation strategies and are increasingly used to address societal challenges. Given their popularity and longevity, there is significant demand to better measure and understand the impacts of cluster policies. Yet the diversity of cluster policies employed in different regional competitiveness policy mixes, a complex effect logic and a variety of (mostly intangible) outcomes, and few recognised norms for guiding cluster policy evaluation all hamper a more holistic understanding of their patterns of effects and broader impacts. There lacks a common frame to guide cluster policy evaluation. This paper reviews international evidence on the effects of cluster policy programmes from academic and policy literature, which is then used as an input into a co-creation process with groups of cluster policymakers, practitioners and researchers. The result is a proposal for a generalised framework of effects for cluster policies to support the structuring of cluster policy evaluations and strengthen international policy learning possibilities. PubDate: 2022-05-21
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Abstract: Abstract This article proposes rethinking democratic conflict management by acknowledging the increasingly important role policy plays in it. As the debate on the health of democracy intensifies, research on how democracies manage and absorb political and societal conflicts becomes broadly relevant. Existing theories and perspectives view conflict management through the lens of elections and other institutional mechanisms, or they examine the social and economic preconditions for successful conflict management while inadequately understanding how policies contribute to conflict management. The article develops a theoretical framework that allows for the analysis of how policies’ material and interpretive effects influence societal conflicts and thereby strengthen (or weaken) democracy. While the article focuses on hypothesis-generation rather than hypothesis-testing, it draws on a large variety of policy and case examples to corroborate and illustrate the theoretical expectations embodied in the framework. Insights into policy’s role in democratic conflict management expand our understanding of the challenges to democracy in the twenty-first century and create new possibilities for comparative, policy-focused research into what makes democracy work. PubDate: 2022-05-19
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Abstract: Abstract In June 2018, President Trump directed the development of a sixth branch of the US Armed Forces—the Space Force—whose primary mission is to enhance the space operations of the USA and its allies. In this paper, we utilize the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine legislative meso-level narratives surrounding the advocacy for and in opposition to the establishment of a US Space Force. After reviewing the literature on the NPF and US space-defense policy, we conduct a content analysis to discern the policy narratives within congressional testimonies encompassing the development of the Space Force. Included in this content analysis is a unique contribution to the NPF literature’s conceptualization of plot. Leveraging these data, we describe and analyze the policy narratives produced by Republicans and Democrats. Our main findings highlight significant partisan differences in the construction of narratives on the US Space Force, including contrasting viewpoints on the role of the Space Force, the setting of space as a domain of war, and military cooperation with commercial and international groups. We conclude with a discussion of the substantive implications of our findings, including the potential impacts of partisan narratives on the future role of the Space Force. Finally, we propose a new route to improve reliability in the study of NPF plots using a two-dimensional orientation to plot: policy outcome and time. PubDate: 2022-05-03
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Abstract: Abstract Policy conflict is gaining attention in policy studies. In this paper, we explore the relation between emotional storylines and policy conflict escalation in the case of the Dutch gasquakes in the north of the country. Based on a longitudinal analysis of emotional storylines in 1308 newspaper articles and additional empirical data we find that Dutch subnational governmental actors as well as citizen action groups discursively express emotional storylines about anxiety/fear, anger, and contempt in relation to discursive expressions of trustworthiness/distrust. Over time, specific combinations of these emotional storylines shape the interpretation of the problem and point toward responsible actors. Also the way in which specific sequences of emotional storylines develop (particularly from fear to anger) suggests a discursive escalation. In addition, discursive escalation can be found in the increased intensity of specific emotional storylines. We conclude that the combinations, sequencing and increasing intensity of the emotional storylines suggest a process of emotionally expressed escalation, which we have only just begun to explore. PubDate: 2022-04-22
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Abstract: Abstract The policy decision-making process in the aftermath of a crisis is a dynamic and iterative process involving circumstances that are emotionally convoluted rather than stable and rationally predictable. This research addresses the following question: To what extent do citizens’ fears and their perceptions of governmental responsiveness affect citizens’ confidence in the government’s disaster management capacity' By building a structural equation model, we also analyze the dual mediating effects of collective action by citizens. We find that citizens’ collective action mediates the effects of both these factors—citizen fear levels and governmental responsiveness—on citizens’ confidence in the government’s disaster management capacity. We test our hypotheses, using the 2014 Sewol Ferry accident case in South Korea, a striking disaster caused by human error resulting in the loss of 304 lives. This analysis offers practical lessons for governments on how best to engage citizens’ voices in the policy-making process. When citizens feel listened to and empathized with by their government, they become more supportive of the government’s recovery efforts. Collective action by citizens plays a critical role in channeling citizens’ feelings and communicating their feelings and opinions to the government while decreasing their fear level, which, in turn, increases citizens’ confidence in the government’s disaster management capacity. PubDate: 2022-04-09
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Abstract: Abstract The question of how scientists should engage in policymaking has spurred both pragmatic and philosophical debates for decades. Scant empirical research addressing how experts perceive the different roles scientists might play complicates efforts to resolve the debate. Further, these literatures focus on Western developed nations, largely ignoring the efforts of governments worldwide to build science advisory capacity. In a survey of global legislative experts, we investigate their preferences and rationales for how scientists can be helpful to policy processes in legislatures, testing for effects of expertise and national development on role choice. The majority (79.2%) of respondents—science advice researchers, providers of scientific information to government, and users of scientific information within government—said that scientists should work closely with policymakers and others to integrate scientific results in policy decisions. The next most preferred role was that of reporting and interpreting results (53.0%). The primary reasons the respondents gave for scientists’ engagement were to improve decision-making (40.5%) and communication of science, whether through (two-way) dialogues (34.2%) or (one-way) explanations (18.4%). Few said that scientists should advocate for specific policies (18.6%). Respondents from developing nations were more accepting of ‘advocacy’ roles and less supportive of scientists that solely publish in academic journals than experts in developed countries. These experts’ preference for highly integrative work by scientists in policy suggests a global re-envisioning of the relationship between the science and policy communities even within highly political contexts. Institutional support from government and academia will be required to support these shifts. PubDate: 2022-04-05
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Abstract: Abstract The effective conservation and promotion of biodiversity requires its integration into a wide range of sectoral policies. For this to happen, the issue must receive attention across policy sectors. Yet, we know little about how attention to the issue evolves over time and across sectors. Drawing from the literature on environmental policy integration/mainstreaming and policy process theories, we develop competing hypotheses, expecting either increasing or fluctuating attention to the biodiversity issue. We tested the hypotheses using the case of Swiss politics between 1999 and 2018. Applying a combination of computational methods, we analyze the content of a comprehensive collection of policy documents (n ≈ 440,000) attributed to 20 policy sectors. Comparing the sectors, we find that (1) a persistent increase in attention is the exception, (2) if there is an increase in attention, it is likely to be temporary, and (3) the most common pattern is that of invariant attention over time. Biodiversity integration—if it does happen at all—tends to occur in cycles rather than in steady long-term shifts. This implies that the conservation of biodiversity does not follow the cross-sectoral nature of the problem, but is subject to the dynamics of "politics," where actors, because of limited resources, engage with (aspects of) an issue only for a certain amount of time. PubDate: 2022-04-04
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Abstract: Abstract Much research within the punctuated equilibrium framework demonstrated that policy agendas are invariably punctuated, due in part to cognitive and institutional frictions that constitute barriers to change in attention. While the bulk of past scholarship explored the extent to which institutional friction varies by organizational design, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the empirical examination of the cognitive aspect of disproportionate information processing. In an attempt to close this gap, I utilize a newly available dataset that codes nearly a million Americans’ responses to the ‘most important problem’ question from 1939 to 2015 to analyze the distribution of annual changes in the policy priorities of the American public. Drawing on the punctuated equilibrium theory literature, I argue and show that punctuations in the public’s policy priorities are more severe and frequent than those in institutional agendas. These results emphasize the need for a more subtle treatment of disproportionate information processing within the public, calling for relaxing the implicit assumption that cognitive friction is constant within organizations and across issues. PubDate: 2022-04-01
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Abstract: Abstract Over the last two decades, the design practice has been expanding to the public sphere to generate solutions for public challenges. In particular, the reflections on the design practice of public sector innovation (PSI) units, working in or with governments, are increasingly contributing to a growing body of literature attempting to characterise the practice in policy making. Although scholars conclude that design’s significant contribution in policy refers to the implementation of public services and programs, there is also an urgent advocacy for a deeper study of the nature of design practices within earlier stages of policy processes addressing more specifically policy proposals and reforms. As part of a broader investigation, this paper seeks to shed light to this matter by identifying design-led activities and methods of PSI units in the policy making process and positioning them in the stages of the policy cycle. This research examines academic, grey literature and web content to uncover and position design activities of 46 PSI units from different continents in a policy cycle model based on Howlett, Ramesh and Perl (2009). Our work confirms that most design activities develop in the implementation stage rather than in early stages of the policy process. While design interventions are growing within policy formulation and agenda-setting stages, few of them were identified in the stage of policy evaluation. Decision-making stage remains purely political. This research may serve to a further understanding of the design practice and its potential contribution to policy making in the future. PubDate: 2022-03-08 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-022-09448-4
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Abstract: Abstract This paper explores political drivers and policy process of the reform of the framework for Artificial Intelligence regulation and governance in the European Union (EU). Since 2017, the EU has been developing an integrated policy to tighten control and to ensure consumer protection and fundamental rights. This policy reform is theoretically interesting, raising the question of which conceptual approaches better explain it, and it is also empirically relevant, addressing the link between risk regulation and digital market integration in Europe. This paper explores the policy reform mainly by using two case study methods—process tracing and congruence procedure—using a variety of primary and secondary sources. It evaluates the analytical leverage of three theoretical frameworks and a set of derived testable hypotheses concerning the co-evolution of global economic competition, institutional structure, and policy preferences of domestic actors in shaping incremental approach to AI regulation in the EU. It is argued that all three are key drivers shaping the reform and explain the various stages of the policymaking process, namely problem definition, agenda-setting, and decision-making, as well as the main features of the outcome. PubDate: 2022-03-03 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-022-09452-8
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Abstract: Abstract As academic and political interest in citizen participation and democratic innovations is growing, the question of their impact on public policy remains essential to assess their genuine contribution to the normative project of democratization. Impact assessments of consultative participatory mechanisms are commonly conducted with a congruency approach—a desk-based research method which assesses impact based on the textual correspondence between a citizen-created idea and public policy documents. This method, however, lacks reliability and uniformity, and this paper therefore seeks to standardize its application and ways to improve the accuracy of its results by proposing two methodological add-ons. First, a sequential impact matrix that considers the preferences of decision-makers before a consultative participatory mechanism to see the extent to which decision-makers take up citizen ideas that align with or diverge from their own agenda. Second, a mixed method that combines a congruency approach with interviews of actors involved in the follow-up of the participatory process to balance their experiences with the congruency approach’s main findings. The variants of the congruency approach are then applied to a deliberative minipublic—the citizen panel ‘Brussels—Make Your Mobility’. This analysis shows how these methodological strategies alter the impact assessment’s results, and its findings suggest that the use of a sequential impact matrix with a mixed method not only produces an accurate and reliable measurement but also generates valuable insights into the diffuse ways in which minipublics can exert substantial influences on the institutional structures and the political decision-making. PubDate: 2022-02-24 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-022-09450-w
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Abstract: Abstract As part of Harold D. Lasswell’s policy sciences, the decisions functions emerged to explore and understand comparative policy processes. The decision functions specified different categories of purposes, roles, and responsibilities performed, to various extents and ways, by all governments. These included intelligence, recommendation, prescription, invocation, application, appraisal, and termination. Additionally, the decision functions were not necessarily sequenced or in any government unit. Over time, the decision functions morphed in meaning and use, eventually supplanted by the policy cycle. This commentary digs up and polishes the decision functions and argues for their inclusion in contemporary policy process theories and research. We end with new questions and paths for advancing knowledge and contributing to Lasswell’s vision in realizing greater human dignity. PubDate: 2022-02-18 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-022-09451-9
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Abstract: Abstract This article questions the use of morality frames and gender stereotypes in discoursing about abortion. The morality policy literature puts abortion forward as the paradigmatic example of its object of investigation. Yet, as heated as abortion debates can get, the issue is not always manifest in the spotlight. We argue salience of the issue depends on active politicization through morality frames. This contribution aims to further the understanding of policy (de)moralization by starting from a gap in the morality policy literature. Morality itself, although fundamental, remains under-theorized in the morality policy literature and is hardly ever operationalized using evidence-based theory. Instead, the positivist school in the morality policy literature assumes morality policy derives its qualification from referring to substantive first-principles, that is, to innate characteristics of a policy. Although the constructivist school holds morality policy is better understood as morality frames, they tacitly build on the definition provided by the positivists. This definition erroneously assumes that morality remains stable for different issues across cultures and over time. We take up a structuralist constructivist approach that shifts focus from the content of morality policy onto the form in which it appears. Abolishing the binary distinction between morality and non-morality renders each political issue, theoretically, a latent morality policy. We demonstrate our proposed approach benefits both the literature on framing and on morality policy by investigating a key abortion debate. Our results suggest (conservative) opponents use immorality frames, whereas (progressive) advocates deploy morality frames. We conclude by highlighting avenues for future research. PubDate: 2022-02-12 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-022-09449-3
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Abstract: Abstract The European Union’s 2030 climate and energy package introduced fundamental changes compared to its 2020 predecessor. These changes included a stronger focus on the internal market and an increased emphasis on technology-neutral decarbonization while simultaneously de-emphasizing the renewables target. This article investigates whether changes in domestic policy strategies of leading member states in European climate policy preceded the observed changes in EU policy. Disaggregating strategic change into changes in different elements (goals, objectives, instrumental logic), allows us to go beyond analyzing the relative prioritization of different goals, and to analyze how policy requirements for reaching those goals were dynamically redefined over time. To this end, we introduce a new method, which based on insights from social network analysis, enables us to systematically trace those strategic chances. We find that shifts in national strategies of the investigated member states preceded the shift in EU policy. In particular, countries reframed their understanding of supply security, and pushed for the internal electricity market also as a security measure to balance fluctuating renewables. Hence, the increasing focus on markets and market integration in the European 2030 package echoed the increasingly central role of the internal market for electricity supply security in national strategies. These findings also highlight that countries dynamically redefined their goals relative to the different phases of the energy transition. PubDate: 2022-02-05 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-022-09447-5
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Abstract: Abstract This article uses the concept of policy inaction to analyse data about the implementation of policy evaluations and public inquiries. Consequently, it produces outputs for two audiences. For those interested in policy learning and policy implementation the analysis identifies four ‘moments’ in which forms of inaction can influence the implementation of learned lessons in positive and negative ways. For those interested in policy inaction, these moments speak to a series of calls for further research about this emerging concept, which relate to the methodological challenges of knowing inaction, the need to explain how and why governments offload policy, and the need to explore the functional and dysfunctional effects of inaction. Taken together, these outputs contribute knowledge directly to three areas of the policy sciences: agenda management studies, policy implementation studies and, more broadly, efforts to understand policy learning. PubDate: 2022-01-13 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-021-09446-y
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Abstract: Abstract We know relatively little about the conditions that encourage people to jump into the political fray as policy entrepreneurs, advocates who devote substantial time, energy, and resources to campaigning for a policy goal. This paper aims to fill that gap by investigating the catalysts of policy entrepreneurship in municipalities across the State of New York, where between 2008 and 2012, hundreds of local jurisdictions passed measures opposing or supporting high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking). These local policy actions were often enthusiastically encouraged and, in some cases, vociferously opposed, by enterprising advocates. I propose a threat-centered theory of policy entrepreneurship, emphasizing the role of loss aversion in pushing actors toward advocacy. The empirical analysis shows that oppositional advocacy within a polity draws would-be policy entrepreneurs into battle. PubDate: 2021-12-11 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-021-09445-z
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Abstract: Abstract There is a rapidly developing literature on risks that threaten the whole of humanity, or a large part of it. Discussion is increasingly turning to how such risks can be governed. This paper arises from a study of those involved the governance of risks from emerging technologies, examining the perceptions of global catastrophic risk within the relevant global policymaking community. Those who took part were either civil servants working for the UK government, U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the European Commission, or cognate members of civil society groups and the private sector. Analysis of interviews identified four major themes: Scepticism; Realism; Influence; and Governance outside of Government. These themes provide evidence for the value of conceptualising the governance of global catastrophic risk as a unified challenge. Furthermore, they highlight the range of agents involved in governance of emerging technology and give reason to value reforms carried out sub-nationally. PubDate: 2021-12-02 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-021-09444-0
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Abstract: Abstract Digital technologies can be important to policy-makers and public servants, as these technologies can increase infrastructure performance and reduce environmental impacts. For example, utilizing data from sensors in sewer systems can improve their management, which in turn may result in better surface water quality. Whether such big data from sensors is utilized is, however, not only a technical issue, but also depends on different types of social and institutional conditions. Our article identifies individual, organizational, and institutional barriers at the level of sub-states that hinder the evaluation of data from sewer systems. We employ fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to compare 23 Swiss sub-states and find that two barriers at different levels can each hinder data evaluation on their own. More specifically, either a lack of vision at the individual level or a lack of resources at the organizational level hinder the evaluation of data. Findings suggest that taking into account different levels is crucial for understanding digital transformation in public organizations. PubDate: 2021-12-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11077-021-09438-y
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