Commentary on Erik Amnå: Democracy and Civil Society

Abstract

This article seeks to provide insight into the formulation of non-governmental organization (NGO) and transnational advocacy network (TAN) campaign strategy. We argue that the history of previous campaigns comprises an important aspect of the political opportunity structure faced by NGOs and TANs. We also argue that when formulating campaign strategy, campaigners should not only consider the legacies of previous campaigns, but also how their current strategies could impact on political opportunity structure and thereby influence future campaigns. This article uses the case study of the movement against seal hunting in Atlantic and Northern Canada and considers the potential for collaboration between previous opponents on other environmental issues. We examine the history of the anti-sealing campaigns looking at the various actors involved, and the impact that these campaigns had on these actors and their current relations with one another. The case study demonstrates that the history of previous campaigns matters and that history is a vital component of political opportunity structure.     

Introduction: Regulation and Oversight of Digital Campaigning—Problems and Solutions

The regulation of digital technology is gaining increased attention within policy making circles. With growing recognition of the power held by digital media companies and the need to enforce democratic values online, policy makers are reviewing opportunities for oversight. Introducing a special section looking at the regulation of digital election campaigning, this article reviews the case for regulatory reform, the proposed type of regulatory change, and the practice of regulatory innovation. Noting the pace of digital change, it argues that there is a need to think more extensively about the design of any regulatory response in order to prevent systems of oversight becoming obsolete.     

Agenda control in EU referendum campaigns: The power of the anti‐EU side

European Union (EU) referendums provide unique opportunities to study voters’ attitudes toward a distant level of governance. Scholars have long tried to understand whether EU referendum results reflect domestic (dis‐)satisfaction with the incumbent governments or actual attitudes toward the Union. Finding evidence supporting both domestic and European factors, the recent focus has thus turned to referendum campaigns. Recent studies emphasise the importance of the information provided to voters during these campaigns in order to analyse how domestic or European issues become salient in the minds of voters. These studies nonetheless overlook the asymmetrical political advantage in such campaigns. The broader literature on referendums and public opinion suggest that in a referendum, the ‘No’ side typically has the advantage since it can boost the public's fears by linking the proposal to unpopular issues. This article explores whether this dynamic applies to EU treaty ratification referendums. Does the anti‐EU treaty campaign have more advantage than the pro‐EU treaty campaign in these referendums? Campaign strategies in 11 EU treaty ratification referendums are analysed, providing a clear juxtaposition between pro‐treaty (‘Yes’) and anti‐treaty (‘No’) campaigns. Based on 140 interviews with campaigners in 11 referendums, a series of indicators on political setting and campaign characteristics, as well as an in‐depth case study of the 2012 Irish Fiscal Compact referendum, it is found that the anti‐treaty side indeed holds the advantage if it engages the debate. Nonetheless, the findings also show that this advantage is not unconditional. The underlying mechanism rests on the multidimensionality of the issue. The extent to which the referendum debate includes a large variety of ‘No’ campaign arguments correlates strongly with the campaigners’ perceived advantage/disadvantage, and the referendum results. When the ‘No’ side's arguments are limited (either through a single‐issue treaty or guarantees from the EU), this provides the ‘Yes’ side with a ‘cleaner’ agenda with which to work. Importantly, the detailed data demonstrate that the availability of arguments is important for the ‘Yes’ side as well. They tend to have the most advantage when they can tap into the economic costs of an anti‐EU vote. This analysis has implications for other kinds of EU referendums such as Brexit, non‐EU referendums such as independence referendums, and the future of European integration.     

Caught in quicksand? Compliance and legitimacy challenges in using regulatory sandboxes to manage emerging technologies

Regulatory sandboxes have become the latest development in regulatory reform, starting first in financial regulation and now expanding to other sectors. While sandboxes offer notable potential benefits for managing emerging technologies, achieving desirable policy outcomes with this novel regulatory instrument also comes with technical and political challenges. This article offers a framework to characterize regulatory sandboxes in any sector, involving a blend of (1) approval regulation with broad-based standards, (2) restricted discretion by the regulator for specific norms, (3) process-oriented regulation, (4) an outcomes-orientation, and (5) structured regulator–regulatee information sharing or dialogue. Using this model, the article outlines issues in compliance and legitimacy, including in trust and accountability, responsive enforcement, the politics of participation, and post-sandbox oversight. The article concludes by calling for greater scrutiny when considering implementing a sandbox instrument, with attention to sector-specific concerns, and offering directions for empirical evaluation of regulatory sandboxes.     

Concepts,Crises and Campaigns

SUMMARY

This article enhances understanding of congressional campaigns by exploring how political professionals define campaign crises. Existing academic literature uses binary measures of candidate scandals as a proxy for campaign crises. However, in-depth interviews with senior political consultants and other experienced campaigners demonstrate that political professionals view crises as complex, interactive events. While scandals are one kind of campaign crisis, a variety of other factors account for most crises. After categorizing the different kinds of crises political professionals describe, a typology is developed to analyze the internal, external, expected and/or unexpected dimensions of campaign crises. This article focuses on crises in U.S. House and Senate campaigns, although general lessons apply to campaigns at other levels.     

Uber Über regulation? Regulatory change following the emergence of new technologies in the taxi market

Can emerging technologies transform not only markets, but also foster new regulatory change mechanisms? In the context of prevailing theories of regulatory change, this article explores the extent to which an interest‐based explanation can account for the regulatory responses toward emerging Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). Based on a primary cross‐city analysis of the 40 largest cities in the United States, the study found that although the existence of ex ante interest groups indeed somewhat limited the extent of ex post regulatory acceptance of TNCs, regulators seemed to prefer the newcomers over existing incumbents and approved TNCs in 77.5 percent of the examined cities, rarely pursuing harsh enforcement even when TNCs operated illegally. The research attempts to explain this intriguing phenomenon by extending the interest‐based approach to account for the key role played by “technological regulatory entrepreneurs.” The entrepreneurs bridged collective action barriers by becoming the central agent that managed, and reaped the benefits of, the collective action, by lowering the organizational costs and by disseminating information effectively and turning consumers into political campaigners, thus successfully promoting regulatory change.     

Institutional shifts and punctuated patterns in digital policy

While digital policies provide significant value within contemporary governance, not many governments' digital policies are adapted to rapidly changing technologies and associated expectations. The limited adaptability can be explained by governments' focus on institutional shifts as an instrument to generate policy changes. Therefore, this article examines the impact of institutional shifts on digital policy by leveraging the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) as a lens to explore the Belgian federal government between 2000 and 2020. This is done through performing a distributional application of the PET and an explaining-outcome congruence case study. The results highlight the role of institutional shifts in directing digital policy, but also underscore the importance of other factors (i.e., policy image, attention allocation and/or structure of the political system) and the presence of policy entrepreneurs to explain the (in)stability of digital policy.     

Assessing Public Procurement of Innovation as a Cross‐Domain Policy: A Framework and Application to the Chinese Context

Despite the fact that public procurement of innovation (PPI) has become an increasingly popular policy tool, there has been a lack of holistic approaches to assessing policies promoting PPI. This article attempts to address this gap by proposing a framework which links the multiple levels and aspects related to the design and implementation of PPI policies. By adopting a systemic understanding of “public procurement” as well as “innovation policies,” this article positions PPI as a cross‐domain policy which is inherently a mix of procurement and innovation‐related interventions. The article develops an assessment framework using “vertical coherence” and “horizontal coherence” as criteria. It then illustrates the use of the framework by applying it to PPI policies in China. The framework can aid the conduct of ex ante as well as ex post assessment of PPI policies, which can further inform policy design, implementation, and learning.     

The political economy of Australian regulatory reform

The problem of regulatory accumulation has increasingly been recognised as a policy problem in its own right. Governments have then devised and implemented regulatory reform policies that directly seek to ameliorate the burdens of regulatory accumulation (e.g. red tape reduction targets). In this paper we examine regulatory reform approaches in Australia through the lens of policy innovation. Our contributions are twofold. We first examine the evolutionary discovery process of regulatory reform policies in Australia (at the federal, intergovernmental, and state levels). This demonstrates a process of policy innovation in regulatory mechanisms and measurements. We then analyse a new measurement of regulatory burden based on text analytics, RegData: Australia. RegData: Australia uses textual analysis to count ‘restrictiveness clauses' in regulation – such as ‘must’, ‘cannot’ and ‘shall’ – thereby developing a new database (RDAU1.0). We place this ‘restrictiveness clauses’ measurement within the context of regulatory policy innovation, and examine the potential for further innovation in regulatory reform mechanisms.     

‘Policies that Fail – Words that Succeed’: The Politics of Accessible Housing in Australia

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate over the efficacy of voluntary agreements versus regulation, and uses a study of the Livable Housing Design initiative to deliver voluntarily new‐built accessible housing in Australia. We first probe why regulation has become such a significant component of government policy making, and then ask why political campaigns focus on this issue as a strategy for reform. We refer to research by disability activists, which claims that the voluntary approach has failed and regulation is necessary. Amongst our conclusions are: (1) that the disjuncture between policy rhetoric and outcome can be attributed to the power of lobbyists, reliance on the private market to address inequality, and antipathy to regulatory enforcement; and (2) that there is a need for greater interrogation of the language deployed in policy texts to identify whether they are crafted to maintain the government's legitimacy or to deliver purposeful change.     

A Regulatory Analysis of Australia's Anti-dumping Law and Policy: Statutory Failure or Regulatory Capture?

Anti-dumping and countervailing (AD/CVD) law and policy permits nations to impose corrective duties against unfairly traded imports found to have injured domestic industries. However, administrators of AD/CVD policy around the world are criticised for misusing the remedy as an elaborate and complex protectionist mechanism.
A problem with many critical reviews is that explanations as to how misuse occurs, or at what point in the administrative process regulatory authorities are able to exercise bias, are rarely provided. In the Australian context, the task of identifying a source and opportunity for misuse is made complicated by three major forces affecting the decision-making processes of the Australian regulatory authorities, the Australian Customs Service and Australian Anti-Dumping Authority (ACS and ADA). This article examines the influence which Australia's international obligations, government and public policy processes and the Federal Court have upon the administration of AD/CVD law and policy in order to determine the degree of autonomy afforded to the ACS and ADA.     

The Regulation of Third Party Campaigning in UK Elections

This article looks at the regulation of third parties in UK election law. During the 2019 general election campaign, media reports noted an increase in non-party organisations spending money on electoral advertisements on social media. Such advertisements raised a number of ethical questions, related to spending, transparency, and the content of the messages. Despite such recent concerns, third party electoral activity in the UK is not new, and the existing legal framework regulates campaign spending. That framework has its roots in Victorian-era election law and has been periodically updated. This article will look at the challenges in designing laws to regulate third party electoral activity, as a difficult line has to be drawn to ensure the laws are effective, while at the same time not imposing too many burdens on independent political activity. Moreover, the move to digital campaigning poses some further challenges, such as monitoring compliance by third party campaigners. While there are no simple solutions to some of the issues raised by third party electoral activity, this article will note some of the measures that could at least improve the transparency of such campaigning.     

Policy Innovation of Local Officials in China: the Administrative Choice

Local policy innovation is considered one of the major drives for China’s rapid economic development, especially during the first 35 years of reform in China. Given the new central policies and constant anti-corruption campaigns under the Xi administration, this article examines a timely question of why and how local officials continue to develop new innovative policies and projects. Based on previous theoretical building, the article analyzes such key institutional factors as new rules of game and their impact on local officials’ competition for survival and career advancement. Selecting cases across all the districts from a typical city in China, this article compares and identifies the changing patterns in local policy innovation. Policy innovations are administrative choices made by local officials in response to new and changing institutional opportunities and constraints. The discussion in this article makes significant contributions both theoretically and empirically to the China studies.

     

The Divergent Worlds of New Media: How Policy Shapes Work in the Creative Economy1

“New media” workers have joined the creative economy as digital designers, web page designers, and producers of entertainment products. Like many creative commodity producers, their work lies at the intersection of the technical (in this case code writing) and the expressive (through design). It reflects the tensions inherent in this intersection and the conflicts common to many creative workers who produce commodities but whose work also reflects some element of personal expression or authorship. The ways in which these tensions are resolved is central to the formation of new occupational and professional identities. Cultural economy perspectives offer us insights into the subjective experience of the tensions associated with creative work. They become more powerful, however, when combined with an understanding of the policy context in which new media has evolved. Drawing on both cultural economy and policy analysis approaches, I argue that while new media work emerged in conjunction with new technologies and reflects the tensions between technical applications and design, it also is a product of changes in broader regulatory frameworks that have shaped the work-world of new media. The “regulatory difference” has produced considerable variation in the occupational identities of new media workers among advanced economies. In some economies, new media work is evolving in a form that is closer to that of the professional, whereas in the United States it is better described as an entrepreneurial activity in which new media workers sell skills and services in a market. To make this argument I examine findings from the growing body of international work on new media but focus on the particularities of the United States case. What this evidence indicates is that the character of new media occupations is defined as much by the policy context within which it emerges as by the technology it uses.     

Comparing regulatory processes in genome editing and autonomous vehicles: How institutional environments shape sociotechnical imaginaries

This study compares the regulation of two emerging technologies, the CRISPR genome-editing system and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) in the United States. The study draws on 33 in-depth interviews with innovation and governance experts to study the relationship between their regulatory environments and developing beliefs about these technologies. Using sociotechnical imaginaries as a framework, we explore how social actors envision technologically driven futures and the social order that enables them. These imaginaries are essential to emerging technologies, where experts build a framework of potentialities for innovation still underway. While scholarship has documented how sociotechnical imaginaries arise among policymakers, groups of scientists, state and local stakeholders, and public actors in different countries, less has been said about how regulatory organizations and their actors shape expectations around technologies that are in the early and middle stages of development. This article finds that regulatory institutions shape emerging imaginaries along three related axes: the distribution of authority, technological novelty, and risk. Interviewees negotiate these three contingencies differently based on relevant extant regulatory structures and ideologies, resulting in distinct imaginaries around each technology. CRISPR actors envision genome editing as largely diminishing biomedical harm and eventually suitable for health markets, while CAV actors diverge on whether self-driving cars alleviate or exacerbate risk and how they may enter roads. That organizational structures and practices of regulation inform broadly held sociotechnical imaginaries bears significance for studies of innovation trajectories, suggesting regulators can take an active role in shaping how risks and benefits of emerging technology are defined.     

The Power of Smears in Two American Presidential Campaigns

This article compares the two main cases of deceitful negative campaigning that characterized the American presidential campaigns of 2004 and 2008. These are, respectively, the attacks led by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against the military career and the subsequent pacifist turn of John Kerry and the smear, initially spread around the web, that claimed that Barack Obama was Muslim. This research describes the origins, developments, and outcomes of the two smear campaigns, focusing on the differences and similarities between them in terms of their content and their communication strategies. It then investigates the role played by the different media platforms employed by the negative campaigners, the importance of a prompt answer by the recipients of the accusations, and the response of public opinion. Finally, the comparison of the cases allows pointing out some conditions for the success or failure of mudslinging in contemporary American political communication.     

Discretion and Politicization in EU Competition Policy: The Case of Merger Control

In a world where goods and services (but also people, capital and ideas) are increasingly ignoring national borders, competition policy has emerged as a highly salient issue at the heart of international trade discussions. Aspects of competition policy, from cartels and monopolies to state aids and the liberalization of the utilities, have become a regular feature in the pages of the financial and legal press and have become identified as a central element in any government's policy towards industry and its drive for competitiveness. This article focuses on European Union merger control and although appreciative of the dominance of economics and law in competition policy, stresses the political dimension to competition policy. A government and public administration perspective is essential. This is in evidence in the type of regime, the commitment to enforcing the law, the role of discretion and issues such as transparency and democracy. The example of merger control is used to illustrate how the European Commission (EC) has emerged and operates as a genuinely federal actor in determining and shaping merger policy throughout the EU. In short, this article accounts for policy development, the decision making process and in particular the degree to which discretion and politicization underpin one of the most crucial aspects of economic regulation.     

Stimulating ‘green’ technological innovation: An analysis of alternative policy mechanisms

As our understanding of human impacts on the environment has increased, it has become clear that we need to move toward a closed-loop industrial society in order to avoid undesirable health and ecosystem consequences. Achievement of this goal depends on radical technological innovation in both products and processes. This paper explores how to design public policy mechanisms to stimulate rather than impede pollution-preventing technological innovation. It begins with a discussion of the role of government in civilian technology development and diffusion. It then sets out six design criteria for policy to promote green technology innovation. Based on this set of design criteria, the article assesses the potential and limitations of current U.S. policy approaches to stimulate technological innovation that moves us toward a minimal waste society. The main conclusions of this assessment are as follows. Over the past decade, the U.S. environmental policy system has experienced a variety of reforms and new initiatives, many aimed directly at promoting environmentally-friendly technological change. The strengths of these reforms are to increase the information that the private sector has about the magnitude and cost of their environmental impacts and to allow greater flexibility in the technologies that firms choose to meet environmental regulations and goals. Because of these reforms, firms are likely to undertake technological innovation for the environment in situations with clear short-term economic benefits, i.e. to capture the much heralded win-win potential of environmental regulation. However, these reforms have significant weaknesses as well. Unless policy provides stronger political or economic incentives and clearer signals about future environmental performance requirements, we are unlikely to be able to drive technological innovation in industries where the pay-off is more longterm or uncertain, and thus will make only limited progress toward the goal of a minimal waste society.     

Digital Election Observation: Regulatory Challenges around Legal Online Content

Between public debates about ‘hacking’ elections, so-called ‘fake news’ and online disinformation campaigns, it has become hard to imagine what free and fair elections in a digital environment could look like. This challenge is particularly pronounced for election observers who monitor free and fair elections. How should election observers fulfil this task when reliable data in online media campaigns are often not even available to media regulators? The following article provides a brief overview of existing challenges around online content regulation and how these apply to elections and election observation. It then considers where resources for digital electoral observation exist and how most effectively to build on these before, in conclusion, discussing next steps and potential opportunities to develop digital election observation further.     

HAVA and the States

Two major events—the 2000 vote counting crisis in Floridaand passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in October 2002—spawneda wave of federal, state, and local policy innovation and policyimplementation. The major effect of the Florida crisis was anationwide effort to analyze information on elections and todebate policy solutions. Subsequently, HAVA, the first majorelection law in U.S. history that includes federal funds forelection equipment and operations, had a more substantial effecton policy innovation and implementation. Both before and afterHAVA, election law changes have been affected by partisan considerations,policy analyses, and entrepreneurial leadership. Thus far, HAVAhas positively affected election administration, though administrativepractices and their effectiveness vary across and within thestates.