Policy Transfer and Policy Learning: A Study of the 1991 NewZealand Health Services Taskforce

Research into policy transfer and lesson drawing has been criticized asfew authors have convincingly shown how cross-national policy learning actually influences policy formation in a particular jurisdiction. This article addresses this gap by presenting a study of the development of the 1991 health policy in New Zealand. By studying the process of policy development, rather than just a policy document, it was possible to disaggregate different aspects of the policy and to identify sources and influences. This article finds that the 'conspiracy' model of policy formation does not fit this case as it presents an overly simplistic view, which allows little space for policy learning. This case illustrates the subtle and multifaceted influence of different jurisdictions, different institutions, and different individuals on a given policy.     

The Social Psychology of Policy Analysis

This article illustrates how some of the core concepts of social psychology can increase understanding of the practice of policy analysis. Policy analysis is shown to be a form of rhetoric subject to social psychological principles of attitude change. The article argues that policy analysts are primarily concerned with changing policymakers' beliefs about the consequences of alternative policies, but that preferences for alternative policies are largely the result of values. Values are formed and modified primarily by social comparison processes, conformity pressures, and the dynamics of group decision making rather than by rational argument. As a result, policy analysts could become more effective by addressing issues of values in their analyses or by mediating the social processes that might interfere with good policy choices.     

Patterns of Policy Instrument Choice: Policy Styles, Policy Learning and the Privatization Experience

The spread of privatization in almost every country over the last decade reflects a rapid and fundamental change in patterns of policy instrument usage. Yet the literature on policy instruments has almost nothing to say on this perhaps most significant development in public policy in recent times. This paper's objective is to aid in the development of a theory of policy instrument choice which is capable of dealing with instances of long-term, cross-national changes in policy instrument usage. It will be argued that reconceptualization of instrument choices in terms of policy learning can aid in this theoretical project.     

The Use of Hypothetical Household Data for Policy Learning: Comparative Tax‒Benefit Indicators Using EUROMOD HHoT

Abstract

Tax?benefit microsimulation models are typically used to quantify the effect of specific policy changes on the income distribution based on representative microdata. Such analysis evaluates policies by considering how different tax?benefit elements interact given personal, household and labour market characteristics. Using hypothetical household data instead helps address broader questions of policy design and systemic (cross-national) differences. This article introduces the Hypothetical Household Tool (HHoT) in combination with the microsimulation model EUROMOD to analyse European tax?benefit policies from a comparative perspective. It presents a series of applications from social welfare analysis illustrating how hypothetical data can benefit comparative academic and policy research.     

A Load of Old Garbage: Applying Garbage–Can Theory to Contemporary Housing Policy

This article reviews the applicability of Kingdon's garbage–can model of agenda setting and alternative specification for understanding the complexities of policy–making in the housing policy context. Garbage–can theories reject conventional 'policy cycle' models which envisage policy development processes as rational and underpinned by the logic of problem solving. They posit a loose relationship between problems and the policy solutions offered by national governments. Using an Australian housing policy case study, this article demonstrates the usefulness of Kingdon's garbage–can theory. A modified framework is used to explain how the policy agenda has become narrowed to focus on safety–net assistance for the most disadvantaged, while housing problems have continued to worsen.     

Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Government Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark

The ability of a political system to respond to the preferences of its citizens is central to democratic theory and practice; yet most empirical research on government responsiveness has concentrated on the United States. As a result, we know very little about the nature of government policy responsiveness in Europe and we have a poor understanding of the conditions that affect cross-national variations. This comparative study examines the relationship between public opinion and policy preferences in the United Kingdom and Denmark during the past three decades. We address two key questions: First, are the government's policy intentions driven by public opinion or vice versa? Second, do political institutions influence the level of government responsiveness? We suggest that public opinion tends to drive the government's policy intentions due to the threat of electoral sanction, and that this is more pronounced in proportional systems than in majoritarian democracies.     

The Public Salience of Foreign and Security Policy in Britain,Germany and France

The salience of foreign affairs to general publics is an important but often neglected parameter for the role of public opinion in foreign and security policy. This article explores the determinants of foreign affairs' public salience and probes into the respective patterns in Germany, Britain and France. Building on the theory of news values, the article proposes to distinguish between issue-specific and country-specific influences on the public salience of foreign and security policy. The data suggest that broad international crises on the scale of 9/11 or the Iraq war go along with distinct cross-national peaks in the salience of foreign affairs to general publics. At the same time, the effects of constant issue logics are refracted by country-specific factors: most notably, the latter account for the much higher overall salience of foreign affairs to the British public than to the German and French publics since late 2002.     

Explaining Petroleum Policy in Britain and Norway, 1962-90

Petroleum policy in Britain and Norway provides comparativists with an opportunity to study policy formation, stability, and transformation on a cross-national basis. This study explains why British and Norwegian officials decided to intervene in the North Sea, why offshore policy in the two countries went through periods of stability and change, and why they adopted similar offshore systems in the 1960s and 1970s but diverged markedly in the 1980s. We develop an explanatory framework using insights from state-centric, group politics, rational choice, and institutional models of policy-making. The framework identifies three decision-making contexts in which petroleum policy-makers operate simultaneously: an oil context, a domestic political context, and an international context, Each context establishes objectives for policy-makers, indicates an acceptable degree of government intervention, and narrows policy options. Rational decision-making within each context, however, may yield conflicting results. These must be worked out through intrastate and/or state-society bargaining. The decision-making contexts in Britain and Norway produced similar policies in the 1960s and 1970s, but the similarities hid deeper differences. Norwegian officials consistently favored state intervention offshore, and Norwegian interest groups successfully lobbied the state for offshore favors, while British officials intervened more reluctantly and paid less attention to societal interests. Differences in decision-making contexts finally produced a major divergence in offshore policies in the 1980s when the Thatcher government dismantled the state's offshore participation policy.     

Improvisation in Public Administration and Policy Making in Israel

Although improvisation stands outside of conventional models for rational policy making and Weberian administration, it is nonetheless prevalent in public life. This article argues that improvisation is both a natural consequence of bounded rationality as well as a product of cultural and personal predilections and environmental circumstances. Drawing on a number of instances of improvisation in public administration and policy making in Israel, it attempts to shed light on its uses, motives, and implications, as well as on the issues involved in considering its utility.     

国家间公共政策的转移——概念、研究态势和理论

公共政策的制定者在决策过程中往往通过某种方式来参考其它国家的决策者在相似情况下的做法,包括正面经验和负面教训。这种政策转移(Policy Transfer)现象是公共政策制定和制度创新在现实中的一种主要途径和方式。论述分三个部分:首先,简述了政策转移的概念化过程,辨别了和其它相近概念的异同;其次,勾勒了本课题研究的多学科、多方法和多层次的态势,列举和介绍了一些代表性的研究实例;最后,探讨了相关的理论生成的问题。通过对有关政策转移问题研究的回顾、分析和总结,强调了我国政策转移中大量转移实践和理论研究缺失之间的矛盾现象;提出了开展我国政策转移研究的必要性和关注点;旨在引起我国公共政策的制定者和学者对这一课题的重视,为公共政策有关的决策实践和理论研究提供一个观察、分析和决策的角度。     

Policy Bubbles: Policy Overreaction and Positive Feedback

Drawing on insights from economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and policy sciences, this article proposes a definition and measurement strategies for policy bubbles. A policy bubble is a real and/or perceived policy overreaction that is reinforced by positive feedback over an extended period of time. Positive feedback is here integrated in a model of human herding as the key factor that propels this process but also as a key generator of change. The process is conceptualized in terms of the formation, growth, and burst of policy bubbles. This causal‐explanatory understanding of the term allows for the possibility that different modes of policy overreaction lead to different types of human herding, thereby resulting in different types of policy bubbles.     

Chinese Foreign Policy Making 2010–2011: Using the Cultural Approach to Explain Complexity

The rising economic strength of China over the past decade has aroused concern over the imbalance of global power. Research on Chinese foreign policy has again become of critical importance to the study of international relations and comparative politics. This article will begin with an overview of pertinent studies, categorizing them into cultural and non-cultural approaches, then it will re-examine the methodological problems associated with studying Chinese foreign policy making. Essentially, this article argues that that any research approach can generate methodological mistakes if undertaken without due care and attention. Rather, a multi-approach with emphasis on cultural factors will be a good model for future study. In other words, we have advocated an improved synergy of rational choice, structural, and cultural approaches. In the case study of Chinese foreign policy making between 2010 and 2011, the multi-approach provided a comprehensive picture of the Chinese thinking process behind seemingly irrational or illogical policy choices. It was the rising sense of frustration, the combination of over-confidence and self-doubt, which made foreign policy choices reflect the national interests at certain times and not at other times.     

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.     

Understanding Policy Networks: towards a Dialectical Approach

This article has two aims. First, we develop a dialectical model of the role that policy networks play in any explanation of policy outcomes. Our model is based upon a critique of existing approaches and emphasizes that the relationship between networks and outcomes is not a simple, unidimensional one. Rather, we argue that there are three interactive or dialectical relationships involved between: the structure of the network and the agents operating within them; the network and the context within which it operates; and the network and the policy outcome. Second, we use this model to help analyse and understand continuity and change in British agricultural policy since the 1930s. Obviously, one case is not sufficient to establish the utility of the model, but the case does illustrate both that policy networks can, and do, affect policy outcomes and that, in order to understand how that happens, we need to appreciate the role played by the three dialectical relationships highlighted in our model.     

Policy analysis,policy practice and political science

Bridgman and Davis have responded to criticism of their widely‐used model of the policy process as a cycle, ‘a series of interlocking steps’ by describing it as ‘pragmatic’, a ‘toolkit’, ‘not a theory’. This article asks what makes for ‘practical knowledge’ of the policy process. It identifies the theoretical basis for the ‘policy cycle’ model, and asks how this model relates to research on policy and to policy practitioners' own knowledge. It argues that we need to recognise the way that underlying theory about policy forms part of policy practice, and to give more attention to the relationship between research, experiential knowledge, and formal maps like the ‘policy cycle’.     

The Policy Effects of Internationalization: A Subsystem Adjustment Analysis of Policy Change

This article contributes to a better understanding of contemporary policy analysis and management by setting out the parameters for analyzing policy change induced by internationalization. It first maps the dynamics of policy change in domestic settings and then explores how internationalization has affected the dynamics identified. The central proposition of the article is that internationalization promotes the restructuring of policy subsystems in such as way as to form hospitable circumstances for swifter and deeper policy changes than would otherwise be the case. However, the analysis suggests that this is a two-stage process in that once its initial impact is felt, internationalization serves to entrench and stabilize reconstructed policy systems, thus constraining the scope for further change.     

Negotiating climate legislation: Policy path dependence and coalition stabilization

This article investigates the nature of policy path dependence through analysis of climate policy formation in the United States. In 2008 the US Congress attempted to pass the Lieberman–Warner bill, a comprehensive climate and energy package that would have capped greenhouse emissions and established a nationwide cap and trade program. In the same year, California successfully enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act. This article explores the circumstances of both cases and raises the question of why legislation at the state level was successful and took such a divergent form from legislation at the federal level. The divergence of these cases is used to highlight the nature of coalition formation and policy path dependence in the legislative process. Explanations of policy tend to gravitate toward either the generalizability of game theoretic approaches or the empirical depth of case studies. This article suggests a combined approach that uses case studies to analyze the positions and motivations of actors and to then model policy development over time. The approach examines policy through the formation and negotiation of policy coalitions. Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and omnibus analysis, the approach expands these coalition theories first by analysing legislative development at the interface of legislators and constituent interest groups, and second by adding temporal dimension to the analysis. The findings suggest that policy is path dependent in that it is negotiated between coalitions that in turn create stability in the policy process and insulate policy fields from external shocks. Policy path dependence suggests that theory alone is insufficient to predict policy outcomes; policy results depend strongly on prior policy efforts, historically and socially contingent coalitions, and the resulting framing of policy possibilities.     

Understanding Cross National Policy Transfers: The Case of Britain and the US

Policy transfer across countries is occurring with increasing frequency. Yet, despite the fact that the importance of such policy learning is often cited as one of the primary rationales for comparative policy analysis, policy transfer is an under-researched area of political science. This article examines and analyzes the actual process of policy transfer between the US and Britain and considers the relationship between policy transfer and the policymaking process.     

Branding and Franchising a Public Policy: The Case of the Gateway Review Process 2001–2010

One of the more interesting features of contemporary policy‐making is the way in which certain policies and administrative processes have been branded. While this is not yet a common feature, it does appear to be one that is increasing in importance. This article looks at the phenomenon through a consideration of one particularly interesting case; the Gateway Review Process (subsequently Gateway), a policy with a related set of administrative processes which is both branded and franchised. Gateway also seems a successful example of a much more common feature of contemporary policy making: policy transfer. It has been transferred from the UK to five Australian jurisdictions, New Zealand and Holland. This article examines the extent to which the branding, and indeed the franchising, of Gateway is responsible for the putative success of that transfer. We begin with a very brief consideration of the literature on branding and franchising to situate our discussion, before outlining the ways in which branding and politics intersect. In the main part of the article we focus on the branding of public policy and on the Gateway case.     

Managing Value Conflict in Public Policy

Policy issues are often characterized by conflicting values. Conventionally, students of public policy have conceptualized government's response to value conflicts as a matter of "balancing" competing goals, or striking trade-offs among values. In this paper we argue that this way of managing value conflicts represents only one possibility from a larger and more varied repertoire of strategies that draw from more complex models of practical reasoning. Policy actors do sometimes try to strike a "balance" among conflicting values, but they often avail themselves of other strategies as well: they cycle between values by emphasizing one value and then the other; they assign responsibilities for each value to different institutional structures; or they gather and consult a taxonomy of specific cases where similar conflicts arose. We argue that each of these strategies can be rational in some institutional contexts, and that conclusion challenges the view that policy values must always be treated as commensurable for rational policy choices to be made. Government responds to value conflict in ways that are more varied and changing than existing views of public policy imply.