Contested governance: The new repertoire of the Eurozone crisis

The austerity policies that EU policymakers adopted in response to the Eurozone crisis are often criticized as the product of institutionalized neoliberal ideas. This critique has merits, but tends to overlook institutional changes that do not neatly conform to well demarcated neoliberal ideas considered as “switchmen,” “paradigms,” or “blueprints.” This article offers an alternative reading of the Eurozone's institutional evolution that bridges pragmatist scholarship with cognitive and social psychology. The Eurozone crisis saw the emergence of a new and contested repertoire of governance. Policymakers agreed that “stronger governance” was necessary, but they struggled over how to perform that repertoire. This contest ultimately produced institutional changes that typically mixed austerity and unconventional policies. The advantage of thinking about ideas in terms of repertoires that actors perform is to afford a more granular view of institutions as sites of individual cognition, collective innovation, and political contestation.     

IMF flexibility or neoliberal adaptation: A discursive content analysis of Article IV policy biases in Argentina

At the turn of the century, the consensus among scholars was that the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) policy preferences, which centered on deflation via austerity, privatization, and deregulation, were indicative of its neoliberal bias. However, a subsequent wave of literature has challenged this view by suggesting that the IMF has demonstrated flexibility. While these accounts arrive at their conclusion via different analytical and empirical focuses, this article posits that the flexibility or breath of ideas found within the discourse itself is key to gauging policy biases (previous study). Herein, this article contributes to the question of whether the IMF can be considered a “flexible” institution via its analysis on Argentina (1989–2006; 2016–2017). Extending a previous study's methods, this one provides a “discursive content analysis,” on the IMF–Argentine Article IV consultations. Ultimately, the findings show that policy discourse remained neoliberal throughout.     

Reining in the Bureaucrats: Democratic Transition and Administrative Procedural Reform in Korea

How do civilian presidents control their bureaucracies after taking over from an authoritarian regime? To answer this question, I develop a “reining in” theory of delegation. I argue that presidents who faces intrabranch conflict over policy issues and cannot appoint—and dismiss—freely will solve their delegation problems through administrative procedure acts (APAs) and related laws. While some scholars argue that APAs are tools for preserving the status quo, I find that APAs help presidents change policy. Building on the delegation literature from economics, my theory represents a more general argument than prior theories for why presidents support APAs. I test the theory through a case study of South Korea's first civilian government (post‐1961), under President Kim Young Sam. Kim initiated an APA to rein in a professionalized civil service that opposed his policy preferences. Strict procedural requirements designed to keep tabs on bureaucratic activities enhanced Kim's control over his bureaucracy.     

Of paradigms and power: British economic policy making since Thatcher

How do ruling policy paradigms persist over time and why do they often undergo significant internal ideational changes? While the impact of Peter Hall's approach to policy paradigms on the study of governance has been immense, there is a burgeoning consensus that a “Kuhnian” understanding of paradigms makes punctuated equilibrium style shifts the only game in town. While Hall's approach can account for inter‐paradigm change with reference to exogenous shocks, it does not allow for significant ideational shifts to occur intra‐paradigm. To remedy this, we place ideational power dynamics at the heart of the study of policy paradigms. We demonstrate the general applicability of our approach by examining the evolution of British macroeconomic policy‐making since 1990. We show how key policy‐makers were able to employ their institutional and ideational power to reinterpret and redefine the dominant neoliberal understanding of the economy to match their own specific ideas and policy priorities.     

Measuring “Correct Voting” Using Comparative Manifestos Project Data

The extent to which citizens vote in accordance with their own principles and priorities has been proposed as an important measure of a democracy's health. This article introduces a new method of evaluating the ability of individuals to vote for the political party with policy positions closest to their own – to vote “correctly”. Following Lau and Redlawsk (1997), a “correct vote” is defined as the vote choice individuals would make under conditions of perfect information. In other words, a vote is “correct” if it is cast for the party that a voter should vote for, based upon a fully informed comparison of his or her policy positions with those of the parties contesting an election. Voters' policy preferences are estimated here using election study data, and the positions of parties are derived through data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. For illustrative purposes, this new method is applied to the 2004 Canadian federal election. Correct voting rates are calculated by comparing voter and party positions in seven dimensions of political competition, accounting for the relative importance of each dimension. While this study's data are exclusively Canadian, the approach introduced is applicable to other settings.     

Context and innovation in traditional bureaucracies: A Hong Kong study

Traditional bureaucracies, defined in Weberian terms, are almost invariably seen as antithetical to innovation. Yet, although the academic literature presents an array of formidable structural barriers to the emergence and implementation of new ideas, innovation does occur in traditional bureaucracies. How can the structural impediments be overcome? What are the processes that enable innovation to take place? Based on a longitudinal study of the Hong Kong government's innovation policies and practices, it is argued that political context is a critical variable explaining how, even in rigid traditional bureaucracies, barriers may be avoided or temporarily suspended. Two contrasting case studies are used to illustrate, first, the importance of political commitment in gaining acceptance for new ideas and, second, the failure of agencies dedicated to innovation to achieve their objectives. It is postulated that circumventing structural barriers or working through political channels to reduce their impact may be a more constructive strategy than creating dedicated agencies to develop innovative measures. The study is grounded in a literature review, documentary evidence from the Hong Kong government's innovative agencies, and interviews with senior staff from those agencies.     

Major Players: Bureaucracies In American Government

For more than 50 years, Herbert Kaufman has been an astute observer of public bureaucracies. In this essay, Kaufman draws on his extensive experience in explaining the role of public bureaucracies in the American political system. Kaufman was motivated to write the essay because of his concern that public bureaucracies are not given adequate attention in American government textbooks. We hope that PAR readers will use the essay to educate students and others about the important role of public bureaucracies in American government.—LDT     

The Tea Party and the Crisis of Neoliberalism: Mainstreaming New Right Populism in the Corporate News Media

Within months of Barack Obama's election, a putatively grass-roots conservative uprising emerged to challenge the Democratic Party's agenda. In this article, we analyze the role of cable news in the rise of the Tea Party during the current “crisis of neoliberalism”—a moment of political-economic volatility brought about by the Great Recession. We argue that the Tea Party's political purpose is to hold together the New Right coalition of business elites and white working- and middle-class Americans that undergirds the neoliberal political project. In the context of a deregulated corporate mass media, we show that both “right-wing” and “moderate” cable networks mainstreamed the Tea Party by framing it as a legitimate social movement, enabling the widespread projection of right-wing populist discourse in support of neoliberalism. In light of our study, we suggest that democratizing the mass media is crucial for a sustained progressive political response in the United States.     

Ideational Theorizing in the Social Sciences since “Policy Paradigms,Social Learning,and the State”

In the years since Peter Hall's seminal 1993 article “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State” appeared, the ideational research agenda has expanded enormously, to the point where it now includes everyone from constructivists to rational choice theorists. This article assesses what we have learned about the role of ideas in political life since “Policy Paradigms” appeared, analyzes how well social scientists have taken up the challenges and questions “Policy Paradigms” put forward, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of current ideational scholarship. Based on this, the article concludes that the way forward for ideational scholars must include coming up with clearer, more easily agreed upon definitions of ideational variables, more extensive study of the processes through which ideas become institutionalized and thus able to affect political outcomes over time, and more careful investigations of the ways in which ideas shape or form both actors' motivations and contexts.     

Scale,Security, and Political Economy: Debating the Biopolitics of the Global War on Terror1

Critical scholarship in Political Science and International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault's writings on governmentality and biopolitics to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between transnational governance and the War on Terror. Marxist critics have assailed this effort recently, however, for its premature assumption that the practices of governmental power can simply be “scaled” without the interventions of specific state-imperial powers. Yet both sides in this “debate about biopolitics” seem to rest their arguments on readings of Foucault which ignore his views on the importance of developments in the discourses of political economy for the emergence of modern governmental relations. Inspired by Foucault's recently published lectures on importance of the concept of “economic man” for neoliberal governmentality in particular, this article suggests that Foucault attributed to governmentality an explicit impulse toward economic globalization. Moreover, based on comments made in the same lectures concerning the emergence of contemporary “anarcho-liberalism” and its radically economic ontology of security, the article closes with an exploration of the crucial role played by economic knowledge in the integration of Iraq into a regime of global-governmental security.     

Customer-Oriented E-Government

Abstract

E-govemment's next phase-a seamless, customer-oriented Web presence-faces more formidable barriers to development than did earlier advances. Progress toward customer-focused e-government requires fundamental organizational changes to existing bureaucracies, so that the government's Web presence can be comprehensive, efficient, and easy for citizens to use. To compel individual “stovepipe” agencies to develop a combined Web presence, chief information officers must be able to focus political and bureaucratic resources on making government websites truly customer-centric. The rewards for success in this next stage of e-government are significantnot only will it benefit citizens directly, but integrated e-government can also make offline government more efficient and effective.     

Recasting German federalism? The politics of fiscal decentralization in post-unification Germany

Why did the ideas of fiscal decentralization gain such political currency in Germany in the late 1990s but meet such a relatively dismal political fate by the Summer of 2001? In answering this question, I propose a framework centered around the interaction of ideas and state institutions to study the politics of fiscal decentralization in advanced democratic nation-states. First, I show that the new set of politically-charged ideas of fiscal decentralization which gained political weight in Germany in the late 1990s were driven by economic problems associated with German unification, the increasing popularity of “fiscal federalism” in German policy circles, and a centerperiphery conflict within German political parties. Second, my analysis explains the political failure of these ideas despite their apparent popularity among political and policy elites. Here, I focus on the role of the upper house of the German parliament in order to explain why these ideas have had such little policy success. After demonstrating that the long-standing tradition of “cooperative” federalism has largely survived German unification, the paper concludes by discussing the potential impact of the European Union’s 1997 Growth and Stability Pact on German federalism.     

Quantum Change in the Fragmented Metropolis: Political Environment and Homeless Policy in New York City

The dominant paradigm for understanding urban policy change has long been that of “incrementalism.” The incrementalist argument is that institutional fragmentation reduces coordination, and thus discourages what might be called “nonincremental” or “quantum” change. This article seeks to test the incrementalist understanding of urban political change. Is it possible that under certain circumstances fragmentation can encourage quantum change? We will test this possibility with an analysis of homeless policy in New York City. Briefly put, over the last 25 years homeless policy in New York City has developed in a series of quantum jumps with dramatic, short‐term changes in funding, administration, and policy “philosophy.” Policy change followed this trajectory even though New York City's political environment is notoriously fragmented. This pattern contradicts what incrementalism would predict, and therefore suggests that that paradigm must be modified. Urban politics, this study suggests, can sometimes display the nonincremental, entrepreneurial, and “ideational” characteristics that have been identified as typical of the national “new politics of public policy.”     

Maurice Blanchot: Modernism,Dissidence and the Privilege of Writing

The article links Blanchot’s philosophical and political ideas. Embarking from his recurrent dialogue with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, it traces the development of Blanchot’s “dissident” version of modernism and his notion of “writing”, alongside his post-war political involvement and writing. I argue that Blanchot never relinquished the purist modernist idea of the privilege of writing and with it the privilege of his own self-identification primarily as a writer. It is my contention that this emphasis sometimes obfuscated his vision, both conceptually and politically. I exemplify my claim by appealing to Blanchot’s unconditional support of Israel and Zionism.     

The Pracademic and the Fed: The Leadership of Chairman Benjamin Bernanke

When President Barack Obama nominated Ben Bernanke for a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve Board in August 2009, he emphasized Bernanke's “bold action and outside‐the‐box thinking” in preventing the recent financial collapse from turning into another Great Depression. While many saw this renomination as providing monetary policy stability and necessary institutional continuity during the crisis, Bernanke's “bold action” has generated robust criticism, mainly because Bernanke initiated fundamental reforms of traditional Fed practices. How has Bernanke's leadership style at the Fed evolved as the financial crisis of 2008–2009 has unfolded? Did his prior academic experience influence his decisions? What are the long‐term implications of Bernanke's innovative strategies for the Federal Reserve as an independent, powerful, policy making institution, traditionally one that possesses tremendous financial and political autonomy? If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic subject‐object knowledge, although necessary, isn't enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of what's good. That is what carries you forward … It's not just “intuition,” or unexplainable “skill” or “talent.” It's the direct result of contact with basic reality … —Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises. —Benjamin Bernanke, 2009 ¹ 1 This statement was widely cited in media news outlets from NPR to Face the Nation and the New York Times. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21paulson.html .
     

The Communitarian Foreign Policy of Amitai Etzioni

Amitai Etzioni’s communitarian perspective offers a comprehensive approach to international affairs in addition to offering guidance for domestic policy. His argument that a focus on traditional “realist” concerns for a nation’s security and interests (“security first”), combined with a dialogue over competing moral imperatives, is more likely to lead to the emergence of an idealist end state--a sustainable international community. His emphasis on gradualism--of breaking apart complex policy goals into small, discrete steps--comes from his assessment that this is a better way of promoting lasting change in the international system. His perspective does not fit neatly into any of the dominant U.S. foreign policy approaches, but his ideas have formed part of the foreign policy debate for the last fifty years.     

How Do “Organizational Designs” Influence Welfare Politics? A Study of the Nordic Pension Systems

The interplay between organizational structure and political behaviour is one of the focal points of political science. How and to what extent do existing organizational structures constrain and channel future political decision-making? One specific hypothesis from the welfare literature provides the starting-point for this article: Korpi's argument that “institutional” welfare arrangements grant the poor better welfare provisions than “marginal” welfare arrangements. By confronting Korpi with his critics, I argue that the interplay between welfare designs and political decision-making is more complex than Korpi's thesis suggests. Implications for the broader welfare debate are discussed.     

Punctuated Equilibrium and Agenda‐Setting: Bringing Parties Back in: Policy Change after the Dutroux Crisis in Belgium

The article analyzes how focusing events affect the public and political agenda and translate into policy change. Empirically, the study focuses on the policy changes initiated by paedophile Marc Dutroux's arrest in 1996 in Belgium. Theoretically, the article tests whether Baumgartner and Jones's (1993 ) U.S. punctuated equilibrium approach applies to a most different system case, Belgium being a consociational democracy and a partitocracy. Their approach turns out to be useful to explain this “critical case”: Policy change happens when “policy images” and “policy venues” shift. Yet, the Dutroux case shows also that political parties, as key actors in the Belgian policy process, should be integrated more explicitly in the punctuated equilibrium theory. Finally, the article argues that the quantitative analysis of longitudinal data sets on several agendas should be supplemented with qualitative case study evidence (e.g., interviews with key decision makers) to unravel the complex case of issue attention and policy change.     

U.S. Tobacco Control: Public Health,Political Economy,or Morality Policy?

Tobacco control policy usually has been framed in terms of public health and political economy, but it also has been called a morality issue. Through a systematic historical analysis, this paper examines dimensions of morality policy and evaluates tobacco control in the United States for its fit with those characteristics. Moral concerns have been a part of tobacco control policy at certain times, first in the early twentieth century, and, more recently, since the mid‐1980s with the rise of “denormalization” of tobacco as a goal of some antitobacco organizations. Drawing from recent studies of other “morality” policy issues, it argues that tobacco control is a “blended” issue, one which can take on different dimensions depending on successful interest group framing. The adoption of Healthy Public Policy as a governmental goal has coincided with a movement toward a “secular morality” in the political culture, facilitating a broader appeal to the public.