Catalysts and barriers: Explaining electoral reform in Western Europe

Most accounts of electoral system change tend to consider it as being driven by purely partisan interests. Political parties are expected to change the electoral rules as a way to maximise gains or minimise losses. However, little work has been done on the question of why electoral reforms are so scarce in spite of these potential benefits. In this study, a wide range of both factors that may foster (‘catalysts’) and ones that may hinder (‘barriers’) the change of electoral institutions are investigated. A statistical analysis is performed of 16 West European countries from 1975 to 2005, covering 23 reforms of the proportionality of their electoral systems. It is found that procedural barriers are more effective for explaining the likelihood of electoral reforms than (most of) the catalysts. Additionally, there are indications that courts may play a more active role in triggering reform than previously thought.     

Making words count: Coalition agreements and cabinet management

The cabinet is a central actor in policy making in parliamentary systems. Yet, relatively little is known about how coalition cabinets operate. The delegation of decision‐making authority to ministers invites policy drift, which threatens the cohesiveness of the cabinet's policy programme. Cabinets employ a variety of methods to contain policy drift. The writing of coalition agreements is among the major tools, but there are others, including limiting ministerial autonomy and the use of junior ministers to shadow ministers. The present study demonstrates that coalition agreements are written to contain policy drift and that it is directly related to the degree of hierarchy in the cabinet. It studies the factors that affect the likelihood of a coalition agreement being written and how extensive they are, if written. Among these are the ideological diversity found in the cabinet, the use of alternative methods for controlling ministers and the complexity of the bargaining situation.     

Negotiated agreements in the Dutch context and its inspirations for Chinese environmental management

Covenants have become a widely used policy instrument in European countries. Covenants are negotiated agreements between government and industry in which industry obliges to take ＇voluntary＇ action to help realizing policy objectives. This paper describes and analyses the evolution and development of the use of such covenant model in European environmental policy practice. After an extensive evaluation of the effect of the covenants in the European context, the paper conducts a comparable study of the Chinese environmental policy context with that in European countries, expose that Chinese environmental policy and environmental practice is still in the first stage of Europe environmental policy and practice evolution. As a conclusion, the paper explores the possible application of covenants as a ＂third strategy＂ in Chinese environmental policy.     

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.     

Reputational leadership and preference similarity: Explaining organisational collaboration in bank policy networks

This article contributes to our understanding of the formation of policy networks. Research suggests that organisations collaborate with those that are perceived to be influential in order to access scarce political resources. Other studies show that organisations prefer to interact with those that share core policy beliefs on the basis of trust. This article seeks to develop new analytical tools for testing these alternative hypotheses. First, it measures whether perceptions of reputational leadership affect the likelihood of an organisation being the target or instigator of collaboration with others. Second, it tests whether the degree of preference similarity between two organisations makes them more or less likely to collaborate. The article adopts a mixed‐methods approach, combining exponential random graph models (ERGM) with qualitative interviews, to analyse and explain organisational collaboration around United Kingdom banking reform. It is found that reputational leadership and preference similarity exert a strong, positive and complementary effect on network formation. In particular, leadership is significant whether this is measured as an organisational attribute or as an individually held perception. Evidence is also found of closed or clique‐like network structures, and heterophily effects based on organisational type. These results offer significant new insights into the formation of policy networks in the banking sector and the drivers of collaboration between financial organisations.     

Contextual variation in interdependent policy making: The case of tax competition

Many studies show that policy makers react to the policy choices made in other jurisdictions, but we still know relatively little about the factors driving interdependent policy making, especially about how context shapes interdependence. Theoretical arguments suggest that contextual factors, such as stable institutions and geographic location, explain variation in interdependence. However, there is a lack of empirical research investigating contextual heterogeneity in interdependent policy making, mainly because it cannot be analysed with standard spatial econometric methods. This article introduces multilevel modeling that allows the study of contextual variation in interdependence and illustrates the method with the analysis of uneven tax competition in Switzerland. The findings of fine‐grained data show that cantonal governments compete more strongly with their competitors the closer a unit is located to a metropolis with comprehensive public good provision. The analysis demonstrates that we can better understand the mechanisms of interdependent policy making by studying its contextual drivers.     

The rise and fall of a policy: policy succession and the attempted termination of ecological corridors policy in the Netherlands

In policy analysis, studies on policy termination are rare. This article offers such a study. It presents the story of how, despite attempts by the government to terminate it, Dutch nature policy on ecological corridors continued to be implemented by regional governments and in the field. A case analysis is presented that integrates theories and insights not only from the termination literature but also from the literature on implementation. The different factors identified in the literature that enable or constrain implementation and termination have served as a basis for developing possible explanations of the case study. They cannot, however, serve as generic theories with predictive power. Policy termination as well as policy implementation are highly contextual processes and the question which factors will enable or constrain policy termination and implementation can only be answered on a case by case basis.

The Power of Policy Regimes: Explaining Shale Gas Policy Divergence in Bulgaria and Poland

Shale gas policies vary significantly across Europe, notably in Russia‐dependent Central Eastern Europe. Most strikingly, Bulgaria banned shale gas, whereas Poland remains firmly committed to fostering it despite its drawbacks. This article uses a policy regime approach to explain the shale gas puzzle. Drawing on a large set of interviews, the piece investigates regime strength as the causal factor that explains the adoption of specific shale gas laws (Poland) or a fracking ban (Bulgaria). It finds that the Polish shale gas policy regime was strong, based on a powerful political narrative and characterized by an institutional process ensuring the buy‐in of actors from relevant policy levels and subsystems. In Bulgaria the policy regime was weak, failed to co–opt key stakeholders, and was institutionally ill‐designed. The findings show how different degrees of policy regime strength translate into diverging policy trajectories in two countries that otherwise operate in similar environments.     

The understanding of the laws and bylaws and the methodology for drafting in the socialist regime

The methodology for drafting is one of the most important concepts in drafting of a policy paper and translating this policy into legislation. Regarding this, it is necessary to know how the legislative drafting developed in the past during the socialist regime, and how it has changed with time after the beginning of the democratic processes of the country. Due to the correct methodology of drafting, we enable a good correct legislation as an important element of good governance, where the concept of law lays on its foundations and the democratic system is the major goal.     

Individual and contextual variation in EU issue voting: The role of political information

Increasing politicization in EU member states about European issues can be expected to strengthen the impact of attitudes towards Europe on vote choice in European Parliament (EP) elections. At the same time this impact is likely to vary between voters and contexts as a function of political information. This study explores the role of political information in explaining individual and contextual heterogeneity in the degree of EU issue voting. Using a two-step hierarchical estimation procedure to explore both individual and contextual variation, we show that while EU issue voting in the 2009 EP elections is only slightly more pronounced among the politically sophisticated, it is clearly more extensive in contexts that provide higher levels of political information on European matters.     

The Defining Elements of Advocacy Coalitions: Continuing the Search for Explanations for Coordination and Coalition Structures

As the theoretical and practical interest in policy networks increases, so does the need for further research into how, and based on what rationales, actors within a policy subsystem engage in interorganizational collective action and form political coalitions. The aim of this paper is to continue the search for explanations for coordination and coalition structures in the setting of Swedish carnivore policy. Based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and a previous case study within the same policy subsystem, the study investigates a set of hypotheses regarding actors' coordinating behavior and the defining elements of coalitions. The empirical analysis indicates, in support of the ACF, that perceived belief correspondence is a better predictor of coordination than perceived influence. Moreover, the explanatory power of empirical policy core beliefs in general, and normative policy core beliefs in particular, is further reinforced, while deep core beliefs seemingly do not influence coalition structure. The relevance of more shallow beliefs for coalition formation cannot be dismissed and therefore calls for additional research.     

The ‘third way’ and the politics of law and order: Explaining differences in law and order policies between Blair's New Labour and Schröder's SPD

Advocating more repressive law and order policies along the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ in their election manifesto, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Gerhard Schröder in Germany were elected in the late 1990s. Once in power, however, only New Labour substantially toughened law and order policies, whereas the German Social Democrats did not change the legal status quo, to a similar extent, during their mandate. This article tackles this puzzle, arguing that the preferences of the ministers and the formal and informal rules shaping the balance of power in government are crucial to understanding why two governments that initially advocated similar policies adopted a rather different policy stance. The results are based on meticulous process tracing and a series of elite interviews concerning two major topics in the realm of law and order during the 1990s: policies directed at sexual offenders, and policies responding to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.     

The structure of foreign policy attitudes in transatlantic perspective: Comparing the United States,United Kingdom,France and Germany

While public opinion about foreign policy has been studied extensively in the United States, there is less systematic research of foreign policy opinions in other countries. Given that public opinion about international affairs affects who gets elected in democracies and then constrains the foreign policies available to leaders once elected, both comparative politics and international relations scholarship benefit from more systematic investigation of foreign policy attitudes outside the United States. Using new data, this article presents a common set of core constructs structuring both American and European attitudes about foreign policy. Surveys conducted in four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) provide an expanded set of foreign policy‐related survey items that are analysed using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Measurement equivalence is specifically tested and a common four‐factor structure that fits the data in all four countries is found. Consequently, valid, direct comparisons of the foreign policy preferences of four world powers are made. In the process, the four‐factor model confirms and expands previous work on the structure of foreign policy attitudes. The article also demonstrates the capability of ESEM in testing the dimensionality and cross‐national equivalence of social science concepts.     

The adult worker model family,gender equality and care: the search for new policy principles and the possibilities and problems of a capabilities approach

There is evidence that policy-makers in most Western welfare states are moving towards a new set of assumptions about the contributions that men and women make to families, based on an adult worker model. This paper first examines this shift in policy assumptions at the EU level and goes on to argue that there are real limits to the pursuit of a full adult worker model based on the commodification of care. In respect of gender equality, this in turn raises the issue of the terms and conditions on which such a shift in policy assumptions are made, particularly about the valuing and sharing of the unpaid work of care. The final part of the paper examines the possibilities offered by the capabilities approach of addressing these issues.     

The role of independent regulators in policy making: Venue‐shopping and framing strategies in the EU regulation of old wives cures

This article addresses debates on the formulation of public policy, building upon a body of literature which has focused on the interconnectedness between the venues of policy action and the way issues are defined. It does so by focusing on the strategic role of policy actors in a policy subfield and their attempts at manipulating either frames or venues in order to shape policy. The novelty here consists in pointing to the involvement of regulators in such strategic action. An emerging body of research has indeed shown that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies and that they are increasingly engaged in policy‐making activities. Thus, by resorting to the agenda‐setting and framing literature, the article sheds light on novel pathways through which regulators intervene in policy‐making activities, making a claim that they have very good ‘tools’ at their disposal in order to shape policy. These dynamics are examined in the case of the last piece of the EU's pharmaceutical framework – the 2004 Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicines – which provoked intense debate among manufacturers of herbals, retailers, consumers, and both EU‐level and domestic‐level regulatory authorities.