Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

Health Insurance in Transition: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)of 1996 (PL. 104–191) brings the federal government fullyinto insurance regulation for the first time. Despite the Republicanmajority's rhetoric about state control, election-year politicstrumped federalism. HIPAA's immediate impact oncoverage maybe modest, but its ultimate significance is great because itcreates a template for more farreaching federal involvementin regulating insurance. HIPAA amends the Employee RetirementIncome Security Act (ERISA), the Public Health Service Act,and the Internal Revenue Code, creating a complicatedstructuredictated by efforts to avoid an unfunded mandate. The historyof insurance regulation and the activity surrounding the enactmentof PL. 104–191 suggest that HIPAA continues an incrementalprocess of transition between state insurance regulation andfederal oversight driven by recent and accelerating changesin the structure of the health-care marketplace.     

Agenda Setting in Emergent R&D Policy Subsystems: Examining Discourse Effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act

The literature on government responsiveness to societal issues is extensive but provides a mixed assessment of effectiveness. We examine this issue in the case of policy addressing effective and safe management of research and development in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Specifically, we examine the agenda setting effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (the Act), a piece of legislation designed to be implemented by a network of actors in the nanotechnology research and development policy subsystem. We adopt a public values lens in our examination of discourse related to societal concerns. Policy documents from Congress, an agency, and federal funding recipients are examined. Findings suggest a narrowing of public values discourse around more specific societal concerns in the documents crafted after the Act was passed.     

A Bridge in Flux: Narratives and the Policy Process in the Pacific Northwest

Policy narratives play an important role in the policy process. Often policy narratives originate from advocacy coalitions seeking increased support from the public for their policy stance. Although most Narrative Policy Framework studies have focused on national policy issues, this study examines a state and local economic development project by exploring the policy narratives from competing coalitions in favor and opposed to the project. Specifically, in the Portland–Vancouver area of Oregon and Washington, local policy discussions have been dominated by a proposal for a new mega bridge on Interstate‐5 connecting the two cities across the Columbia River. A new government agency (CRC—Columbia River Crossing) was formed for the implementation of this project. Upon approval of a proposal, CRC experienced heavy backlash from citizens, local businesses, community leaders, and other stakeholders leading to the formation of two competing coalitions in opposition and support of the bridge. This study, using content analysis of 370 public documents, finds that competing coalitions utilize policy narratives in strategic ways to characterize the opposing coalition, themselves, and other actors in the policy subsystem. This study also suggests that the strength and cohesion of a coalition's narrative contributes to its policy success and the winning/losing status of a coalition potentially determines the types of strategies they will use. Last, this study introduces and tests a new narrative strategy called the impotent shift testing a coalition's strategic use of the victim character.     

Pre-electoral coalitions in comparative perspective: A test of existing hypotheses

Despite the vast coalition literature, pre-electoral coalitions have never been at the center of any systematic, cross-national research. Given their prevalence and potential impact on government composition and policies, this represents a serious omission in our knowledge of coalitions. I begin to remedy this situation by testing two hypotheses found in the literature on party coalitions. The first is that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form in disproportional systems if there are a sufficiently large number of parties. The second is that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form if voters face high uncertainty about the identity of future governments. These hypotheses are tested using a new dataset comprising legislative elections in 22 advanced industrialized countries between 1946 and 1998. The results of the statistical analysis support the first hypothesis, but not the second.     

Offices and policies – Why do oppositional parties form pre-electoral coalitions in competitive authoritarian regimes?

Although previous research has suggested that the opposition’s ability to form pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) in authoritarian elections is crucial for the electoral outcome, little has been written about why and when such coalitions are formed. The aim of this article is to fill this empirical and theoretical gap. A theory that combines oppositional parties’ office- and policy-gaining potential when creating such coalitions is proposed. The article utilizes a unique database of 111 competitive authoritarian elections and provides a representative sample of strategically chosen cases. It is shown that, coalitions are more likely when structural conditions favor oppositional victories and when oppositional parties have a distinctive policy agenda in relation to the incumbent government. These factors are shown to be more important than electoral institutions.     

Rise and Decline of Nations: Sweden

The development of the Swedish political economy is interesting in the perspective of the Mancur Olson theory about the rise and decline of nations. It is shown that the general argument of RADON is not in agreement with facts about the growth of the affluent society in Sweden between 1870 and 1970. The strong growth in the overall economic output took place in a society where a number of distributional coalitions were strongly organized. Also the special argument in RADON about the reversed consequences of broad interest organizations meets with little support. Whatever is meant by an encompassing interest organisation, what was crucial in the Swedish case was the strong position of party government and the broad participatory nature of the political process. Directly contradicting the RADON argument is the fact that the structure of distributional coalitions has in general become even more encompassing since 1970. yet the economic situation of Sweden has deteriorated considerably. The predicament of party government mest be emphasized, as the period since 1970 has witnessed a decline in the capacity of political leadership to govern the country.     

Theories of coalition formation: An empirical test using data from Danish local government

Abstract.  Theories of coalition formation represent a diverse set of arguments about why some government coalitions form while others do not. In this article, the authors present a systematic empirical test of the relative importance of the various arguments. The test is designed to avoid a circularity problem present in many coalition studies – namely that the theories are tested on data of national government coalitions in postwar Europe: the very data that gave rise to the theories in the first place. Instead, the authors focus on government coalitions at the municipal level. They base their analysis on an expert survey of almost 3,000 local councillors from all municipalities in Denmark. They use conditional logit analysis to model government formation as a discrete choice between all potential governments. The analysis confirms some, but far from all, traditional explanations such as those based on office and policy motives. At the same time, the analysis raises the question of whether actors really seek minimal coalitions.     

Ideas and Coordination in Policymaking: The Financial Crisis of 2007–2009

Policy change occurs because coalitions of actors are able to take advantage of political conditions to translate their strong beliefs about policy into ideas, which are turned into policy. A coalition's ability to define a problem helps to keep policies in place, but it can also cause coalitions to develop blind spots. For example, policy subsystem actors will often neglect the need for coordination between governmental actors. We examine the financial crisis of 2007–2009 to show how entrenched policy ideas can cause subsystem actors to overlook the need for policy coordination. We first analyze the prevalent idea that policymakers should aim to keep inflation low and stable while employing light touch regulation to financial markets. We then demonstrate how this philosophy led to a lack of coordination between monetary and regulatory policy in the subprime mortgage market. We conclude with thoughts about the need for coordination in future economic policy.     

Linking coalition attitudes and split-ticket voting: The Scottish Parliament elections of 2007

The Scottish Parliament elections of 2007 were the third to be held under the country’s mixed-member proportional system. As voters continue to adapt to the new system, we explore two aspects of its use: i) preferences for coalitions as opposed to single-party government, and ii) ticket-splitting. The two are considered together for two reasons. First, both can be seen as manifestations of a preference for multiple parties, and as a result they share a number of likely predictors in common. In empirical practice, however, we find that rather different factors predict the two variables: ticket-splitting looks to be based on strategic partisan or ideological calculation, whereas coalition attitudes are less about partisan interests and more about an overall view of the kind of policies and politics delivered by coalitions. Second, there is potential for a causal connection between our two dependent variables, and indeed we do find clear evidence of such an attitude–behaviour link: some voters appear to split their ticket precisely because they would prefer a coalition.     

From Coercion to Partnership in Federal Partial Preemption: SMCRA, RCRA, and OSH Act

This article examines the experiences of three important partial-preemptionprograms—the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Actof 1977 (SMCRA), the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970(OSH Act), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of1976 (RCRA)—over the last two decades to improve our understandingof how federal-state interactions have shaped the regulatorypartnership. The evidence we gather suggests that the controlof regulatory programs has shifted over time back and forthbetween the federal government and the states. In the initialyears of these programs, what the Congress intended to be aregulatory partnership was, in effect, almost total federalpreemption of state authority. Under the Ronald Reagan administration,the opposite occurred; federal regulation in many cases becamede facto state regulation as federal officials essentially abdicatedtheir oversight responsibility. By the end of the 1980s, thefederal government began again to assert greater control overintergovernmental regulatory programs. The regulatory relationshipthat emerged is one in which the federal government and thestates share responsibility and authority for the implementationof these programs.     

Coalition formation and polarisation

Party ideology plays an important role in determining which government coalitions form. Research on coalition formation tends to focus on the ideological distance between coalition parties. However, the distribution of preferences within the coalition, and the legislature, also has implications for which government coalition forms – that is, a party's willingness to join a coalition depends not only on its prospective coalition partners, but also on the alternative coalitions it could form. Several hypotheses about the effects of legislative polarisation are offered and tested using data on coalition formation in 17 parliamentary democracies in the postwar period. This article also demonstrates how the traditional measure of ideological divisions within coalitions fails to capture certain aspects of ideological heterogeneity within the cabinet (and the opposition) and how Esteban and Ray's polarisation index helps in addressing these deficiencies.     

Decentralization and district development planning in Zimbabwe

One of the most important dimensions of rural development policy in Zimbabwe since independence has been rural local government reform, in particular decentralization policy. Evidence from a number of recent studies is used to present a comprehensive review of Zimbabwe's experience of local government decentralization during the first eight years of independence, 1980 to 1988. Section 2 presents a brief outline of some basic concepts on decentralization which have guided the discussion. Section 3 contains a short account of the local government system inherited from the colonial era. Section 4 outlines the major post-independence reforms, that is: the 1980 District Councils Act; the 1984-85 Prime Minister's Directive on Decentralization; the 1985 Provincial Councils and Administration Act; and the 1988 Rural District Councils Act. Section 5 presents an assessment of these reforms, paying particular attention to organizational, financial and planning issues. While some important improvements have been achieved in rural Communal Areas-in particular the extension of services and increases in local revenues and popular participation-the system of local government and administration remains a dual one. Other problems include the gap between the planning and budgeting processes, continued financial dependence of district councils on central government, and a lack of serious effort by central government to make use of provincial and district development plans.     

Shaping the Scope of Conflict in Scotland’s Fracking Debate: Conflict Management and the Narrative Policy Framework

This study applies a narrative lens to policy actors’ discursive strategies in the Scottish debate over fracking. Based on a sample of 226 newspaper articles (2011–2017) and drawing on key elements of the narrative policy framework (NPF), the research examines how policy coalitions have characterized their supporters, their opponents, and the main regulator (Scottish government). It also explores how actors have sought to expand or contain the scope of conflict to favor their policy objectives. Empirically, only the government strives for conflict containment, whereas both pro‐ and anti‐fracking groups prioritize conflict expansion through characterization contests and the diffusion and concentration of the costs/risks and benefits of fracking. In theoretical terms, the study proposes that Sarah Pralle’s conflict management model, which emphasizes symmetrical strategies of conflict expansion by both coalitions, is a potential tool to revise extant NPF expectations about the different narrative strategies of winning and losing coalitions. Moreover, the fact that policy actors mostly employ negatively rather than positively framed characters in their narratives may be a valid expectation for similar policy conflicts, particularly under conditions of regulatory uncertainty.     

The liberalization and (re)regulation of Dutch gambling markets: National consequences of the changing European context

This paper deals with the liberalization of Dutch gambling markets, in particular the (re)regulation of these markets after 2002. It is argued that during the 1990s a neo‐liberal “risk regime” of gambling regulation replaced the traditional moralizing and restrictive gambling policies. However, this risk regime has recently been challenged by the development of Internet gambling, the discussions about the “Services Directive” in the European Parliament and cases brought to the European Court of Justice. These circumstances are redefining the European context for national gambling policies and gambling organizations. Together with a growing risk awareness, this has caused the Dutch government to reconsider its gambling policies. This paper outlines the basic features of the risk regime of gambling regulation, and makes clear that after a decade of great leniency and tremendous market growth, the Dutch gambling markets, including casinos, lotteries and slot machines, were confronted with serious backwashes.     

The Regulatory Gift: Politics,regulation and governance

This article introduces the “regulatory gift” as a conceptual framework for understanding a particular form of government‐led deregulation that is presented as central to the public interest. Contra to theories of regulatory capture, government corruption, “insider” personal interest, or profit‐seeking theories of regulation, the regulatory gift describes reform that is overtly designed by government to reduce or reorient regulators’ functions to the advantage of the regulated and in line with market objectives on a potentially macro (rather than industry‐specific) scale. As a conceptual framework, the regulatory gift is intended to be applicable across regulated sectors of democratic states and in this article the empirical sections evidence the practice of regulatory gifting in contemporary United Kingdom (UK) politics. Specifically, this article analyses the 2011 UK Public Bodies Act, affecting some 900 regulatory public bodies and its correlative legislation, the 2014 Regulator's Code, the 2015 Deregulation Act, and the 2016 Enterprise Bill. The article concludes that while in some cases the regulatory gift may be aligned with the public interest – delivering on cost reduction, enhancing efficiency, and stimulating innovation – this will not always be the case. As the case study of the regulatory body, the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, demonstrates, despite the explicit claims made by legislators, the regulatory gift has the potential to significantly undermine the public interest.     

Intergovernmental relations in Nigeria: Local government and the 1979 Nigerian Constitution

This paper examines the intergovernmental relations prescribed by the Nigerian Constitution of 1979. In particular it discusses the elevated constitutional status of local government, tracing the origins of this to the 1976 local government reform. The question of how to interpret the provisions of the Constitution on the restructuring of local government and whether this is solely a State responsibility or a joint State/Federal responsibility is analysed. The article argues that the States have political and administrative responsibility for local government whereas the Federal responsibility concerns the regulation of the amount of money to be distributed to local government from the Federal Account. The Lagos State High Court judgement which supports the view that States have political and administrative responsibility for local government, but nullified the State's legislation, is extensively reported and analysed. Also discussed is the Allocation of Revenue (Federation Account, etc.) Act 1981 which both reflects and supports the view that the federal relationship to local government is defined by finance. The paper also probes the intention of the Constituent Assembly by analysing its report. The paper complements that by Smith and Owojaiye in the previous number.     

Representation,agendas and institutions

Dynamic agenda representation can be understood through the transmission of the priorities of the public onto the policy priorities of government. The pattern of representation in policy agendas is mediated through institutions due to friction (i.e., organisational and cognitive costs imposed on change) in decision making and variation in the scarcity of policy makers' attention. This article builds on extant studies of the correspondence between public priorities and the policy activities of government, undertaking time‐series analyses using data for the United States and the United Kingdom, from 1951 to 2003, relating to executive speeches, laws and budgets in combination with data on public opinion about the ‘most important problem’. The results show that the responsiveness of policy agendas to public priorities is greater when institutions are subject to less friction (i.e., executive speeches subject to few formal rules and involving a limited number of actors) and declines as friction against policy change increases (i.e., laws and budgets subject to a greater number of veto points and political interests/coalitions).     

Regierungsbildung im deutschen Fünf-Parteiensystem

Since 2005 all five parliamentary parties in the German Bundestag have coalition potential in the sense that they are able to enter at least one minimal winning coalition, that is a coalition without parties which are not necessary for a majority. Given the number of each party’s members of parliament, the strategic coalition situation is fixed as the set of possible minimal winning coalitions. With certain assumptions (no party will gain an absolute majority, the party system consists of two larger and three smaller parties etc.) two strategic coalition situations are possible as a consequence of the Bundestag election in September 2009: the same as the existing one where only CDU/CSU and SPD can form a two party majority government, and an alternative, predicted currently (February/March 2009) by pollsters, where the largest party, probably the CDU/CSU, can form a two party majority coalition also with the third largest party, probably the FDP. In addition, several three party coalitions are also possible. Which of these coalitions will actually be formed will be determined by the policy distances between the parties which are identified in a two dimensional policy space (economic and social issue positions of parties). The possible minimal winning coalitions are further constrained by the majority coalitions in the so-called cycle set as defined by Schofield.     

Formation rules and minority governments

Abstract. This research note focuses on the importance of rules for coalition formation in parliamentary democracies. Traditionally, coalition theorists have assumed that only majority coalitions can be winning. The more recent literature has shown that coalitions can be winning even if they do not control more than half of all legislators. However, the literature has continued to overlook the fact that there exist two different types of government formation rules. In this note, the two types—positive and negative rules—are presented and it is shown that minority governments are more frequent in the countries with negative rules.