How policy agendas change when autocracies liberalize: The case of Hong Kong, 1975–2016

This article considers how autocrats decide to expand or narrow the issue diversity of their policy agenda during a period of political liberalization. Prior studies have two competing perspectives. First, political liberalization increases the social and political freedom that enhances information exchange, and thus expands issue diversity. Second, political liberalization decreases government's control of the legislature and thus narrows the issue diversity. This article offers a novel theoretical perspective by combining these two countervailing theories. Specifically, it predicts a diminishing marginal benefit of information exchange and an increasing marginal bargaining cost. As such, this article argues that issue diversity follows a negative quadratic (inverted‐U) relationship as the regimes liberalize. The analysis of a new and unique dataset of Hong Kong's legislative agenda (1975 to 2016) offers support for this theory. This study sheds light on policy‐making in authoritarian regimes and democracies, and advances the theory of information processing.     

Advocacy coalitions,beliefs and climate change policy in the United States

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) asserts that disagreement over policy core beliefs divides organizations into competing coalitions. We apply Discourse Network Analysis to 1,410 statements in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today to investigate what kinds of beliefs contribute to coalition formation in the climate change policy debate in the news media in the United States. We find that the beliefs concerning the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the importance of ecology over economy and desirability of governmental regulation divide organizations into three advocacy coalitions: the economy, ecology and science coalitions. Policy preferences such as cap and trade do not; they find support across coalition lines. Based on these findings, we suggest that ACF theory could be clarified to better account for how beliefs concerning policy instruments contribute to coalition formation. In some policy domains, policy instruments are where opposing coalitions find agreement. In others, they are more divisive.     

Winning the Battle of Ideas: Propaganda,Ideology, and Terror

Propaganda is at the heart of the struggle between Al Qaeda's strain of militant Islamism and the governments of the United States and United Kingdom. In an ideological struggle, propaganda is critical in shaping outcomes. Both Al Qaeda and the U.S. and U.K. governments recognize this, and have devised propaganda strategies to construct and disseminate messages for key audiences. This article considers the key elements in the Al Qaeda propaganda narrative, and the means through which it is disseminated. On the other side, it assesses the U.S. and U.K. governments’ response, focusing particularly on the British effort to define and propagate a narrative centered on British values.     

Policy networks and policy change in organic agriculture: a comparative analysis of the UK and Ireland

This paper takes a comparative case–study approach, located within the literature on policy networks, to organic agriculture policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland since the late 1980s. An examination of policy development for the organic sector focuses primarily on regulatory arrangements. The core of the analysis applies some prominent themes in the policy network literature to the organic sector: the debate about sectoral and sub–sectoral networks, the relationship between networks, context and outcomes, and the role of the state and ideas in promoting policy change.     

Agile small state agency: heuristic plays and flexible national identity markers in Finnish foreign policy

Studies of small state foreign policy tend to draw relatively bleak conclusions when it comes to small state agency. However, I will examine alternative and more positive modalities of small state agency. One such modality is agility, the strategic maneuverability to take advantage of a chancy environment. Besides leading to dangerous rigidities and biases, particular types of foreign policy imageries and heuristics may also facilitate experimental and agile agency. In studying this possibility, Finland is chosen as an illustrative case because historically Finland has faced a particularly constraining geopolitical context and because it has managed to adapt to multiple upheavals and to different geopolitical contexts. The emphasis is on the heuristic dynamics inherent in Finnish foreign policy culture that have allowed it to actively meet the emerging challenges. Instead of taking a detailed historical approach, I seek to understand the role of the relatively flexible and combinable embodied cultural models, i.e. thick images. They allow for agency-related experimentation that may bring added value that allows Finland to exceed the constraints of the brute geopolitical position. After reviewing multiple embodied foreign policy images, I will use them to analyse New Year's speeches by the Finnish Presidents Ahtisaari and Halonen in order to see how the fickle present is made to resonate innovatively with the known, commonplace, and mythical.     

Analysing policy delivery in the United Kingdom: the case of street crime and anti-social behaviour

For all governments, the principle of how and whether policies are implemented as intended is fundamental. The aim of this paper is to examine the difficulties for governments in delivering policy goals when they do not directly control the processes of implementation. This paper examines two case studies – anti-social behaviour and street crime – and demonstrates the difficulties faced by policy-makers in translating policy into practice when the policy problems are complex and implementation involves many actors.     

Transforming Islam among Roma communities in the Balkans: a case of popular religiosity

In recent decades, numerous popular shrines devoted to saints have emerged in Romani settlements, usually in urban areas. At first sight, these shrines and the veneration of saints are reminiscent of the cult of saints and tombs common in regional Muslim traditions and beyond, and possess particular local features. A detailed analysis of this local case shows new meanings and forms the “wider” tradition gains under new conditions. This paper explores the way the regional Muslim tradition of worshiping holy sites is localized and elaborated within popular religious practice of certain Romani communities in the Balkans. Specifically, it focuses on the contestation of the issues of authenticity and marginality of this vernacular practice in order to reveal the peculiarity of images and meanings Islam gains at the intra-confessional level in a quite heterogeneous social and cultural environment. The material discussed in this paper was collected during ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2014 in Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo.     

No miracles here: Trade policy,fiscal policy and economic growth

In this paper we consider whether the rate of growth following trade liberalisation differs significantly from growth in other developing countries. We find that it does not. Given this result we explore whether these growth effects are offset by changes in other policy variables, namely changes in fiscal policy. Governments increase welfare spending as a response to greater exposure to international trade. We find evidence that countries that liberalise their trade regimes increase their spending on welfare but not other forms of expenditure. However, once we control for the effects of fiscal policy, trade liberalisation still has no growth effects.     

Social policy as nation-building: identity formation,policy feedback,and social citizenship in Ghana

Beyond economics-centric discourses about issues like “social investment,” in recent years scholars have argued that social programs, like education, healthcare, and income support arrangements, can be instrumental in the construction and reconstruction of national identities and solidarities at both the ideational and the institutional level. Drawing on this scholarship, this article makes a direct contribution to the comparative politics and policy literature by examining the trajectories of nation-building and social policy development in Ghana. It extends existing scholarship by providing an in-depth study of Ghana while using that case to further explore the understudied connection between social citizenship, identity formation, and policy feedbacks from existing social programs.     

The rise of biofuels in IR: the case of Brazilian foreign policy towards the EU

Biofuels are a growing alternative energy source. In a context of their growing global consumption, Brazil has shown particular interest in the European market. This paper analyses Brazilian foreign policy on biofuels towards the EU during Lula da Silva’s administration (2003–10). It examines the emergence of biofuels at a global level, the main guidelines of Brazilian foreign policy, Brazilian environmental foreign policy and, finally, the Brazilian political response to changes in European law.