SARS in Canada and China: Two Approaches to Emergency Health Policy

China and Canada addressed the transnational 2003 SARS outbreak within a common, multilevel network of public‐health expertise. The two countries deployed distinct public‐health strategies, and faced distinct levels of resistance. This article addresses this comparison. During this epidemic “state of exception,” both countries adopted emergency policy instruments and overall policy styles. However, Chinese emergency boundary policing corresponded better to everyday experience than did hospital‐based screening in Canada, and China's policing targeted collectivities where Canada emphasized individual case tracking. While Canadian efforts were smaller in scale and faced infrastructural deficiencies, prior campaigns to address endemic health problems formed a basis for compliant popular subject positions. Power/resistance relations and their cultivation during endemic conditions must become the center of analyzing effective approaches to emergency planning.     

Federalism,Physicians, and Public Policy: A Comparison of Health Care Reform in Canada and Brazil

Abstract

This article uses comparative historical analysis to explore physicians’ involvement in health care reform in Canada and Brazil. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the analysis stresses how, beyond partisanship, physicians build consensus around and promote specific policy ideas, and how federal institutions shape physicians’ mobilization. In both countries, physicians’ mobilization shaped the emergence of universal health care coverage, but in quite different ways, because of the differing federal institutions. Although the Brazilian medical lobby was far more heterogeneous than the Canadian profession, one faction was able to mobilize at the local level to pursue policy ideas favorable to universal health coverage.     

Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions,Timing and Choices in France and Spain

The influence of national administrative institutions on contemporary reforms has often been noted but insufficiently tested. This article enriches the comparative perspective of administrative reform policies by focusing on four interrelated dimensions: the choices of reformers, institutional constraints, timing and sequencing and long-term trajectories. This article tries to determine whether most similar administrative systems exhibit analogous contemporary reform trajectories in content, timing and sequence. By comparing the administrative reform policies of two ‘most similar’ Napoleonic countries, France and Spain, this article analyses the commonalities and divergences of decentralisation, territorial state reorganisation, civil service reforms and policies that focus on performance management and organisational design. The article identifies the ‘causal mechanisms’ that characterise the specific role of institutions and considers both the role of context and the importance of policy intersections.     

Economic Globalization and Policy Choices: Singapore

This article analyzes the effects of economic globalization on public policy in Singapore, which has the worlds most globalized economy. It finds that contrary to the assumption of muck of the literature on the subject, it is the state, rather than systemic imperatives, that has played the most decisive role in shaping the form and scope of the economy's globalization. Its examination of the effects of globalization on policy choices in three broad areas—economic development, national security, and social development—in Singapore shows that globalization has not only constrained policy choices, but expanded them as well. The case study suggests that we need to ascribe greater centrality to the agency of the state in the globalization process and develop a more nuanced conception of the opportunities it affords and the constraints it imposes.     

Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies

This article identifies for the first time systematic performance differences between younger and older democracies and argues that these are driven by the inability of political competitors to make broadly credible preelectoral promises to voters. Younger democracies are more corrupt; exhibit less rule of law, lower levels of bureaucratic quality and secondary school enrollment, and more restrictions on the media; and spend more on public investment and government workers. This pattern is exactly consistent with the predictions of Keefer and Vlaicu (n.d.) . The inability of political competitors to make credible promises to citizens leads them to prefer clientelist policies: to underprovide nontargeted goods, to overprovide targeted transfers to narrow groups of voters, and to engage in excessive rent seeking. Other differences that young democracies exhibit, including different political and electoral institutions, greater exposure to political violence, and greater social fragmentation, do not explain, either theoretically or empirically, these policy choices .     

Evolution and Devolution: Citizenship, Institutions, and Public Policy

The United Kingdom is a state of unions. It evolved througha series of diverse unions, each leaving an institutional legacy.Though the United Kingdom was highly centralized it was notuniform. Devolution is rooted in this legacy. Past institutionalarrangements, notably central government departments responsiblefor Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland affairs (collectivelyknown as "administrative devolution") remain central to howUK politics and policy should be understood today. Devolutioninvolved adding elected representative institutions to eachof the components of the state of unions apart from England.The powers, responsibilities, and funding arrangements of devolutionreflect the evolution of administrative devolution. Nonetheless,devolution marks a critical juncture that will accentuate differencesin citizenship rights within the United Kingdom.     

政策网络：流派、类型与价值

网络分析方法是西方社会科学界近几年兴起的一种理论分析工具,具体到政治学和行政学领域,形成了政策网络的理论体系。政策网络理论本身是庞大而复杂的,一般而言,可以划分为美国学派、英国学派和欧洲学派。政策网络既是一种治理模式,也是一种利益中介结构。由于政策网络理论的复杂性,学者们根据不同的标准对政策网络进行了分类,为其在政治科学中的进一步运用奠定了基础。     

政策网络：概念、类型及发展前景

随着传统政府治理模式的衰微,20世纪70年代末以来政策网络逐渐成为政策分析领域的主流话语和研究途径.政策网络是一群互赖行动者之间建立某种稳定程度的社会关系形态,以促成政策方案的形成或发展.学术界普遍认为可以将政策网络划分为作为分析工具的利益协调模式和作为实践创新的治理模式两种典范.尽管作为政策网络理论仍存在种种缺陷,但是它已经展现出巨大的生命力,对于理解公共政策以及国家与社会关系具有重要的意义.     

Institutions, Policy Innovation, and E-Government in the American States

Examining the rankings of American states in one fast‐growing policy area, e‐government, states with the most sophisticated and comprehensive policies varied over a five‐year period. What factors account for change in digital government policy innovation over time? Using time‐series analysis and 50‐state data, the authors find that state institutional capacity is important for continued innovation. They also find an association between reinvention in state governments and the institutionalization of information technology, suggesting a more general orientation toward government reform and modernization. Although state wealth and education were not significant in previous studies, they emerge as predictors of later innovation. The theoretical contribution of this study is to better understand the dynamic character of innovation over time and the role of institutions. The link between reinvention and e‐government raises the possibility that the modernization of state institutions generally facilitates innovation.     

Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance

This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political-bureaucratic relationships; discriminating because they suggest the presence of many communities and different types of networks. Yet if the concepts are going to continue to make a contribution, some problems must be resolved. The article suggests three that are particularly important: network and community concepts encounter obstacles in incorporating the influence of ma-cropolitical institutions and the power of political discourse; they have some difficulty in accommodating the internationalization of many policy domains; they have not addressed well the issues of policy innovation and policy change.     

Mapping Public Participation in Policy Choices

In an era of democratic discontent, more and better participation in policy making has become a standard expectation. Yet it is rarely clear what counts as participation, and how the many practices loosely bundled under the label should be understood. This paper has a modest undergrowth‐clearing objective: to examine assumptions behind competing typologies of participation, and to propose a classification framework less laden by idealist notions of democracy.     

Tax revolts,direct democracy and representation: populist politics in the US and Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper examines ideological foundations of the ‘tax revolt’ theme in American and Canadian conservative politics, through an examination of two of its most notable expressions. One was the use of direct democracy in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s to reduce property taxes. The other was the Reform Party of Canada’s blending of appeals for more extensive direct democracy and lower taxes from the late 1980s through 2000. Each of these relied on a critique of ‘representational failure’ in their respective political orders. The popularity of direct democracy across North America has been aided by the right-populist analogy between a market that enables consumer sovereignty and direct democratic instruments that facilitate end runs around legislatures – the sites of representational failure – to allow unmediated registration of the people’s low tax, anti-statist will. Employing analytical methods and theoretical perspectives developed by Michael Freeden and Michael Saward, I identify shared and distinctive conceptual and strategic/rhetorical elements in the two cases, and suggest ways of developing a ‘hybrid’ approach to the study of populisms.     

Civic Networks, Legitimacy and the Policy Process

In ethnically divided developing countries, avenues permitting popular participation in the policy process seem essential if the state is to be viewed as legitimate. Frequently, however, mechanisms intended to build legitimacy by providing for popular participation fail to achieve this target. This article analyzes the policy process in Mauritius, and argues that it combines characteristics of both policy networks and civil society. We term this form of popular consultation on policy a "civic network," and we present research which suggests that it has been successful in building legitimacy. By comparing this civic network with other forms of popular participation, we are able to identify the characteristics which seem to make it more effective. The effects of popular participation on the policy capacity of a state are more mixed, but in the case of Mauritius, we conclude that by increasing legitimacy, the civic network also increased state policy capacity.     

Institutions, Ideology, and the Tragedy of the Commons: West Texas Groundwater Policy

West Texas is the setting for an unintended experiment in commonsresource management. Dispersed, autonomous, local groundwaterdistricts use nonregulatory strategies to promote conservationand groundwater quality. The central force driving this organizationalform appears to be ideological. West Texans seek alternativesto state management of groundwater pumping. This study useskey-informant interviews to evaluate the strength of ideologyin explaining West Texas groundwater policy and to provide atheoretical framework for discussing the importance of the "localsolution.’ Time-series data substantiate the claim thatlocal groundwater districts succeed in slowing depletion rates.     

Political Institutions, Public Policy and Economic Growth

The argument of the Rise and Decline of Nulions (RADON) opens up a new area of important social science research: to understand the social and political setting of economic growth. The paper tests the argument that institutionalization leads fo the decline of nafions slowing down the rate of economic growth. Employing several indicators on economic growth and controlling for a number of factors the finding with regard to the OECD-nations is that the Olson emphasis on institutionalization is confirmed.     

Explaining Institutional Change: Policy Areas,Outside Options,and the Bretton Woods Institutions

I propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations. Like firms in markets, international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas. Some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition, limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change. In comparison, institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power. To test the theory empirically, I exploit common features of the Bretton Woods institutions—the International Monetary Fund and World Bank—to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics. The empirical tests show that, despite having identical membership and internal rules, bargaining outcomes in the Bretton Woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory.     

Building Consensual Institutions: Networks and the National Estuary Program

Currently, many approaches to solving policy problems seek to create community-based, less coercive solutions that are creating the conditions for the birth of new regional governmental institutions. We argue that networks form the core of these emergent structures and that federal programs can play a positive role in developing local networks. Our empirical work compares networks in estuaries included in National Estuary Program with networks in comparable estuaries that were not. We find that the networks in NEP areas span more levels of government, integrate more experts into policy discussions, nurture stronger interpersonal ties between stakeholders, and create greater faith in the procedural fairness of local policy, thus laying the foundation for a new form of cooperative governance.