THE FIGHT OVER DANISH NATURE: EXPLAINING POLICY NETWORK CHANGE AND POLICY CHANGE

The policy network approach is widely recognized for its ability to describe different networks. Adding the concepts ‘policy image’ and ‘cleavage in the party system’ makes it possible to explain policy network change as well as policy change. This argument is supported by a comparison of the Danish decision in 1960 to straighten Denmark's largest river, the Skjern River, to gain farmland, and the 1987 decision to restore the river and recreate the wild nature of the river valley. The fight over Danish nature has historically been a fight between a land reclamation network and a nature protection network – two networks trying to promote different policy images. Coupled with a new (environmental) cleavage in the party system, new policy images connected to the Skjern River decisions led to radical policy changes.     

EXPLAINING UNINTENDED AND UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES OF POLICY DECISIONS: COMPARING THREE BRITISH GOVERNMENTS, 1959–74

The vulnerability of policymaking to unintended and unanticipated consequences has been documented since Thucydides. Yet we still lack integrated conceptual and explanatory accounts of their variety and aetiology. Adequate consideration of putatively unintended and unanticipated consequences requires evidence about policymakers' prior intentions and anticipations, the factors affecting their cognition, and the forces bearing upon responses to attempted execution of policies. This study uses archival evidence about three post‐war British governments to examine hypotheses derived from neo‐Durkheimian institutional theory. It compares relationships between policymakers' informal social organization and their biases in framing anticipations and intentions in three policy fields. It shows that, contrary to widely made claims about a ‘law’ of unintended consequences, neither unintended nor unexpected consequences are random, but reflect basic patterns in variation and aetiology which the neo‐Durkheimian theory explains well.     

EVALUATION UNDER CONTRACT: GOVERNMENT PRESSURE AND THE PRODUCTION OF POLICY RESEARCH

Do governments lean on researchers who evaluate their policies to try to get them to produce politically useful results? Do researchers buckle under such pressure? This article, based on a survey of 205 academics who have recently completed commissioned research for government, looks at the degree to which British government departments seek to produce research that is designed to provide ‘political ammunition’, above all making them ‘look good’ or minimizing criticism of their policies. Looking at different stages in the research process – from deciding which policies to evaluate, shaping the nature and conduct of inquiry, and writing the results – the article finds evidence of government sponsors making significant efforts to produce politically congenial results. For the most part, researchers appear to resist these efforts, though the evidence base (researchers' own accounts of their work) suggests that this conclusion be treated with some caution.     

POLITICS BY HEURISTICS: POLICY NETWORKS WITH A FOCUS ON ACTOR RESOURCES,AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE CASE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY POLICY UNDER NEW LABOUR

Policy network analysis is criticized for being a ‘heuristic’ device, yet ‘heuristic’ methods may be essential to achieve detailed understandings of specific policy outcomes. Rational choice modelling alone cannot perform a similar function. This paper develops a ‘heuristic’ policy network approach that focuses on the analysis of actor resources. Changing contexts can alter the resource distributions of actors within a policy community. This can lead to new policy outcomes. Policy networks can therefore be rescued from criticisms made by, for example, Dowding, by re‐visiting Rhodes's earlier emphasis on analysis of actor resources. This approach is illustrated in the case of UK renewable energy policy under the UK government of New Labour. Changing contexts have strengthened the resources of the main renewable energy interest groups to achieve higher targets and more technology‐specific means of financial incentives. The Renewable Energy Association has achieved legislation favouring feed‐in tariffs as is the practice elsewhere in Europe for small renewable generators.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE NHS AND GP UTILIZATION IN ENGLAND UNDER NEW LABOUR, 1997–2003

In this article we compare the pattern of service utilization in the period preceding the health‐care reforms introduced by New Labour with service utilization following the refoms. Data from the 1997 and 2003 waves of the British Household Panel Survey are used to estimate a series of utilization functions. These show that GP utilization overall fell, for women more than men and for the sick more than others. The results suggest that GPs responded to the changing context the reforms created but there are different interpretations of that response. They support the contention that GPs devoted greater attention to preventative services post‐reform than had previously been the case. They are also consistent with the contention that GPs responded less directly to the needs of their patients, either because they became more sophisticated in interpreting those needs or conscious of the increased opportunity costs of responding to them.     

POLICY ANALYSIS IN BRITISH CENTRAL GOVERNMENT: THE EXPERIENCE OF PAR

Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) was an approach to policy analysis introduced in 1970 by Edward Heaths administration as part of a systematic attempt to develop 'rational' government. In the early years some substantial reviews were completed, but from 1973 the exercise faded as less political commitment was devoted to it and institutional compromise and disillusion spread. This paper charts the life of PAR until its official demise in 1979 and analyses its experience, Above all, it suggests that PAR was unable to satisfy the technical, organizational and political preconditions for effective analysis.     

ADMINISTRATIVE REORGANIZATION AND POLICY CHANGE: THE CASE OF HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTORATE OF POLLUTION

Environmental protection nowadays is a major issue of policy and administration. It is well recognized that an effective approach to pollution control requires it to be integrated, but UK governments have been slow to respond to this need. The creation of a new unified pollution inspectorate in England and Wales must be set in the context of a general transition in British pollution control practice, where the incorporation of more formal procedures is taking place within a tradition of emitter self-policing, client-regulator mutual respect, and regulatory adaptability. This article examines the circumstances that led to the formation of the new pollution inspectorate and considers the challenges that it faces.     

CLUMSY SOLUTIONS FOR A COMPLEX WORLD: THE CASE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the others; (2) provides a clear expression of the way in which a significant portion of the populace feels we should live with one another and with nature; and (3) needs all of the others in order to be sustainable. ‘Clumsy solutions’– policies that creatively combine all opposing perspectives on what the problems are and how they should be resolved – are therefore called for. We illustrate these claims for the issue of global warming.     

CHANGING THE DECISION SPACE: EUROPEAN POLICY INFLUENCES ON ENERGY POLICY AND SYSTEMS CHANGE IN SWEDEN

The EU takes a growing interest in governing the energy sector in its member states. Competing with national institutions, policies and organizational structures, it is however not clear whether the EU exerts a strong influence compared to other factors, and if there is such an influence, the mechanisms are not well understood. This paper examines strategic reorientation towards electricity investment in the Swedish energy sector, a ‘frontrunner case’ of Europeanization, and discusses how this change can be attributed to EU policy change, national policy change and organizational field developments respectively. It finds that EU energy policy influence has been notable, and that governance mechanisms that shape beliefs and expectations are strongly at play. However, despite growing EU clout on energy policy, field level and national policy change remain key drivers of the changing decision space in the examined time period.     

NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOREST POLICY: INSTITUTIONAL,POLITICAL AND REGULATORY DIMENSIONS

This article investigates emerging governance arrangements at the intersection between forest management and climate policy. The authors deploy the symposium's three‐dimensional framework to describe and evaluate developments within two distinct policy sectors (forestry/climate change adaptation and mitigation) at several levels of governance (bi‐national, national, and sub‐national) to explore the nature and operation of the emerging governance arrangements, and assessing and measuring change within these arrangements over time. Drawing on four contemporary case studies from the US and Canada, New Zealand, British Columbia and Alaska, the authors discern little evidence of a generalized, linear trend from ‘government to governance’. Instead, they conclude, across institutional, political and regulatory dimensions of governance, a more variegated and diverse picture emerges. Their analysis also lends support for the Trubek and Trubek (2007) hypothesis that emerging governance arrangements typically interact with extant ones through modalities of rivalry, complementarity and transformation.     

THE DYNAMICS OF POLICY CHANGE: WBBYING AND WATER PRIVATIZATION

The privatization of the water industry was one of the most controversial and turbulent privatizations of the 1980s. The government undertook the project somewhat reluctantly, then the first plans had to be withdrawn, but eventually, the privatization of the industry was successfully completed in 1989. In this article, we first set out to provide a thorough account of the process of privatizing water, based on primary sources and exhaustive interviews. In doing so, we identity some major problems of established theories of British policy making: the process of water privatization clearly does not conform to any single model of policy making. Instead, individual 'episodes' of the policy process conform to different models. Arguing that existing theories of British policy making may have focused too narrowly on routine decision-making processes, we propose that a theory of the transformation of policy communities is required to understand the dynamics of radical policy change in Britain.     

GOVERNMENT LEGITIMACY AND THE LABOUR MARKET: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES

This article addresses the recent claim that cross-national policy variations reflect in part differences in institutional origins and state characteristics. It provides a detailed analysis of how states institutionalized public employment exchanges. The authors argue that public employment exchanges will shape the legitimacy of government intervention in the labour market, and thus affect the environment for subsequent labour market policy. Two measures of legitimacy are used. First, the attitude of employers and trades unionists toward exchanges. Second, the role of exchanges in administering unemployment benefits. Cross-national differences in exchanges' legitimacy contribute to an explanation of why different states have different labour market policies.     

INSTITUTIONS AND POLICY CHANGE IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES: THE CASE OF MERGER CONTROL1

The supranational regulation of merger and acquisition activity presents valuable evidence for examining the dynamics of policy change within the European Communities. Over the years four merger regimes can be seen to have existed. The first, restricted to the coal and steel industries, originated in the specific postwar wish to control (German) heavy industry and retains its separate character. Other industries were a matter for the later Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community (ECC). It was not until 1989 that a clear ECC regime was established after two 'false starts' arising from rulings by the European Court of Justice on specific mergers. Agreement eventually came once ministers and industrialists realized that clear rules were needed, if the necessary orderly corporate restructuring were to be facilitated in the run-up to completion of the single market.
A 'new institutionalist' approach is adopted in analysing the evolution of supranational merger regulation. Accordingly, the article examines how far the capacity of the two treaties, and the capacities of the individual institutions, can explain the resultant pattern of supranational merger regulation.     

THE LIMITS OF CHANGE: LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN

Women make up the majority of local government employees in Great Britain but are not, however, evenly represented throughout the employment structure. Rather, women are overwhelmingly concentrated in low paid, low status and often part-time jobs, and are under-represented as decision makers, either as managers or elected council members. The situation of black and ethnic minority women is one of even greater marginalization. From 1982–7 over 200 local authorities adopted equal opportunity (EO) policies, both for employment practice and service delivery, the aims of which included redressing this inequitable situation for women. The achievements of these EO policies have proved to be very limited. Most have been introduced with few resources and little managerial or political support and without mechanisms for implementation or management accountability. EO reforms have been contained within the existing relationships and structures of local authorities when by definition, successful EO policies will upset the status quo. Nevertheless important lessons have been learned from this first pioneering phase of EO policy development.     

HOW POLICY NETWORKS CAN DAMAGE DEMOCRATIC HEALTH: A CASE STUDY IN THE GOVERNMENT OF GOVERNANCE

This article examines a detailed case study of implementation networks in England using the example of the relocation of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, which became a flagship PFI project for the Labour government after 1997. The case study illustrates the workings of the new order of multi‐layered governance with both local and national networks from different policy areas interacting. However, it also sheds light on the governance debate and illustrates how in the world of new public management, powerful actors, or policy entrepreneurs, with their own agenda, still have the facility, by exercising power and authority, to shape and determine the policy outputs through implementation networks. It is argued that, whereas policy networks are normally portrayed as enriching and promoting pluralist democratic processes, implementation networks in multi‐layered government can also undermine democratic accountability. Four aspects here are pertinent: (1) the degree of central government power; (2) local elite domination; (3) the fragmentation of responsibility; and (4) the dynamics of decision making which facilitates the work of policy entrepreneurs. All these factors illustrate the importance of ‘the government of governance’ in the British state.     

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: THE CASE OF COMMUNITY CARE

This article explores the contention that the conventions of public expenditure accounting conceal, rather than reveal, the real nature and implications of resource trends. A benchmark — a constant level of service output — is established as a basis for examining the relationship between trends in expenditure inputs and service outputs. Changes in unit costs are identified as the major source of deviation between expenditure and output trends. The impact of resource constraint on policy and policy-implementation is then examined in relation to one, essentially stable, area of policy in the personal social services: community care.
The meaning of the term'policy' is far from straightforward and community care is best understood as the interaction of relatively independent streams of policy, towards service outputs and resource inputs, extant in both central and local government. Mechanisms by which policy streams could be reconciled are of particular interest and an innovative example — joint finance — is examined in some detail.     

INDIVIDUALS AND THE DYNAMICS OF POLICY LEARNING: THE CASE OF THE THIRD BATTLE OF NEWBURY

In recent years, the phenomenon whereby key individuals introduce effective ideas into policy processes has been identified as a vital agent in the redefinition of policy issues. In turn, this raises the basic question of how these individuals themselves undergo processes of learning and change. The article examines three models of policy learning in order to analyse what they may tell us about the dynamics of individual learning: the advocacy coalition framework; the process of learning by means of ‘development’; and issue redefinition through processes of punctuated equilibria. The models are examined in the context of the learning dynamics of three key individuals within the salient anti‐bypass group the ‘Third Battle of Newbury’. The article’s conclusion identifies three apparent paradoxes in individual learning dynamics and attempts to answer these with particular reference to the concepts of frame reflection and regulation by means of norm setting.