Issue transfer and symbolic legislation: a case study of the Austrian Equal Treatment Act

Abstract. Three strategies which may emerge out of politicians' concepts of rationality (problems solving, agenda management, creation of consensus) are applied to one of the main features of Austrian politics, namely the differentation of policy sectors dominated either by political parties or interest groups. The Equal Treatment Act, which had been transferred from the corporatist arena to the arena of the party system, involved the rationalities of both political parties and interest groups. This paper analyses the 'extended' process of legislation of this law (including implementation). The empirical findings are then linked to the theoretical propositions about the rationalities of the respective political actors. Finally, hypotheses about the conditions of issue transfers from the corporatist arena into the arena of the party system are suggested.     

Activist knowledges in queer politics1

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism. It situates the development of LGBT activist research capacity within a broader shift towards evidence-based policy-making. The paper presents case studies of LGBT organizing from the US and Canada to demonstrate how LGBT activists utilize established social science methodologies such as statistics to claim legitimacy and render queer worlds visible in the policy process. The paper argues that this development in LGBT advocacy is marked by struggles over the kinds of queer realities that may be enacted through social scientific inquiry. The paper also explores the deployment of auditing and benchmarking in LGBT activist knowledge production. It demonstrates the way in which LGBT activists are using these privileged modes of knowledge production to produce truths regarding the nature, extent and effect of homophobia and heterosexism. The relationship between such calculative technologies and the emergence of LGBT active citizenship practices is considered. The paper concludes by emphasizing the decidedly mixed political implications of the increasing reliance on social science and calculative practices in queer activism.     

An Evaluation Crucible: Evaluating Policy Advice in Australian Central Agencies

Policy advice is a core function of government that until quite recently remained outside the formal processes of performance evaluation. Evaluation, by its very nature, is designed to question both the effectiveness and relevance of government activities; applying it to policy advice opens up a traditionally confidential and politically sensitive arena. This paper reports on an evaluation experiment in Australian government — policy management reviews (PMRs) — that sought to evaluate the quality of central agency policy advice. It traces the development of the PMR model around interdepartmental committee processes, the bureaucratic politics that diluted the focus on policy outcomes, and examines how central agencies steered evaluation away from questions of public accountability towards arrangements for achieving more effective control of the processes underpinning production of advice. By targeting the process rather than outcomes of policy advising, PMRs sought unsuccessfully to adhere to the divide between management and policy and, in doing so, marked out the limits to performance evaluation.     

The Role of Political Ideology in the Structural Design of New Governance Agencies

This paper employs theories of structural politics and delegation to develop a set of propositions about the legislative delegation of authority to quasi-governmental entities, known as "quangos." Legislators have incentives to condition their choice of structure for an organization charged with implementing policy on their own political attitudes toward "good government." The quasi-independence of quangos provides credibility for legislators to commit to a process that takes policy making out of their hands while creating a structure that increases the likelihood of achieving their policy goals. Theoretical implications are empirically examined using data on the financial autonomy of Dutch public bodies. The results support the argument that it is important to consider politicians' ideologies directly in governance studies because they form the key component of structural politics.     

The Comparative Historical Analysis of Public Management Policy Cycles in France,Italy, and Spain: Symposium Conclusion

This concluding article in the symposium develops generalizing arguments about the politics of public management reform in France, Italy, and Spain, by drawing out implications of the case studies presented in the three preceding articles. Some of these implications hold that established research arguments about politics of public management reform in the same cultural and geographical area require considerable qualification and reexamination. Some other implications of these case studies take the form of generalizing arguments about the process dynamics of public management policymaking. More specifically, an existing body of generalizing arguments is assessed and modified in the light of the research arguments crafted through the three case studies' dialogues between conceptual approaches and historical evidence. Together, these two discussions offer a contribution to the political science research literature on the politics of public management reform.     

公共科技政策分析的理论进路：评述与比较

公共科技政策分析是一个颇具多样性的领域。新古典经济学、演化经济学、科学技术与社会研究、政策科学4种理论进路各有特点。新古典经济学的政策分析非常清晰,可提供直接的政策工具;演化经济学给予科技发展一种系统的理解,可得到科技发展的结构性制度安排;STS以宽阔的视野,在政策导向、科技行为的规范、政策对科技的建构等方面具有丰富的思想和措施含义;政策科学的分析关注政策系统,为改进政策过程提供认识基础。基于对4种理论进路共性与差异的比较,提出了一个公共科技政策分析的整合的概念框架。     

AMERICAN STATES AND THE INDUSTRIAL POLICY DEBATE

The current popular debate over industrial policy tends to be Indifferent to the possible relevance of economic policies in American states. The states are not only very active in this arena through their Industrial and economic development efforts, but also have untapped potential for influencing business decisions. As an integral part of the Amerlcan economic policy arena, states cannot and should not be ignored by industrial policy advocates. Some constitutional, policy, and programmatlc implications of this point are briefly discussed.     

Foreign Policy Analysis: British and American Orientations and Methodologies

This paper is concerned with examining the extent to which there is a geographical divide in the academic study of foreign policy analysis. Accepting that there are diverse approaches to that study in the academic communities of the United States and the United Kingdom, this paper argues that it is possible to distinguish between two ideal-types, each exemplified in one of the two communities. This paper outlines these–an American approach based on a desire to construct general theories of foreign policy behaviour, and a British approach which stresses the need for casestudies and eschews the possibility of general theory. The reasons for the development of these two approaches are then discussed, linking the study of foreign policy to the wider political arena, and the general academic orientation of the two countries. Finally, it assesses the possibility of arriving at a synthesis of the two approaches.     

On the scenario approach to simulation modeling for complex policy assessment and design

This paper reviews the major issues posed by scenario-based simulation modeling in the policy process, using agricultural policy as an example of a complex decision arena. Policy is seen as a process by which decision makers use the instruments under their control to approach the general goals of society. Models can help to choose instrument settings, evaluate policy options, and assess their appropriateness to a particular situation. But they cannot design policy; the interactions between policy makers and models are critical if modeling is to be useful in the policy process. Policy models must be oriented to the factors that focus and constrain judgments in the real world, as well as toward the substantive problems motivating analyses. These include the actors within the system, as well as the geographic and disciplinary contexts of the problems. Scenario-writing provides a way of ordering understanding and judgment about different phenomena to help users interact most effectively with a model and to insure that the perspectives of the model are most appropriate to the needs of the decisionmaker. It is an iterative and evolutionary process which can provide a great deal of insight into the assessment phase of policy design.     

Where the twain meet: Reconciling science and politics in analysis

It is argued that the conceptual and practical differences of intent and application that characterize politics and science - as professions and processes - are so great as to render interaction between them problematic. In fact, analysis is postulated as a third distinct alternative, having its own imperatives, purposes, and uses; furthermore, the relationships between science, analysis, and politics are identified and found to be of potentially greater significance to those concerned with the policy process than is normally imagined.     

Europeanization and Institutional Change in Vocational Education and Training in Austria and Germany

This article analyzes how the EU's vocational education and training (VET) policy is reflected in domestic reforms in Germany and Austria. It perceives Europeanization as a heuristic concept to disentangle a twofold process of institutional change: The first process, the "Europeanized" arena of change, concerns change initiated by the reactions of domestic actors to EU initiatives; the second process of change—the "domestic" arena of change—concerns the ongoing incremental endogenous change in domestic institutions beneath and independent from the Europeanized arena of institutional change. This procedure allows us to differentiate between two modes of Europeanization: In Germany, Europeanization occurs as reform policies and politics; in Austria, Europeanization occurs more as institutional change by default, hence without strategically enacted reform initiatives shaped by the EU and as domestic institutional change that occurs anyway. The article combines the case-oriented method of difference with process tracing.     

Video election note: The UK General Election of 2010

This video election note is a very brief introduction to some of the main points of interest regarding the 2010 UK general election. It touches on events since the 2005 election, the course of the campaign, the salient issues, policy differences between the main parties, key features of the outcome for the major and minor parties, turnout, government formation and the implications for British politics. There are also preliminary observations on what the pattern of constituency results tell us about how the recession and the expenses crisis affected outcomes.     

Kooperative Politikberatung ohne machtpolitisches Kalkül?

The paper contributes to the discussion about policy advice, initiated by Falk et al. in PVS 2/2007. Based on a differentiation between output- and input oriented politics, several notions of advice and knowledge are discussed. This leads to the insight that the relevance of studies in political science does rely on the careful consideration of the strategic influence of knowledge in the political process. The fruitfulness of such a perspective is exemplified by a short view on some institutional developments in the field of political advice. A detailed analysis of the newly organised economic policy report “Gemeinschaftsdiagnose” then reveals that the diagnosis of new cooperative modes of governmental acting, as postulated by Falk et al., has to be modified. Particularly with regard to core fields of governmental acting, like economic and social policy, there is an unbroken continuity of hierarchical forms of governing.     

Federalizing energy? Agenda change and the politics of fracking

This paper focuses on agenda change affecting the politics of ??fracking operations?? in the US, a process of extracting natural gas from underground shale formations. We examine how the movement of this policy issue between the state and federal levels of government has become increasingly contentious because of rising public concern about pollution impacts. Using information obtained from documentary sources and media content analysis, we found that the natural gas policy coalition has largely focused on a political strategy based on maintaining fracking regulatory controls at the state level, while the environmental policy coalition has pushed for increased regulation of drilling practices in general, including a larger policy and oversight role for federal agencies such as EPA.     

NORMATIVE POLITICAL SCIENCE

The bad news is that critics of the quantitative movement in policy and political science are right (so far). Widely accepted quantitative models of politics promote cynicism and counter-productive uses of government power. Mainstream social science provides a perverse basis for policy analysis. The good news is that there is no sound scientific reason for the schism between so called "empirical" and "normative" theories of politics. Traditional theories of politics, which show how government power can be used to serve the public interest, can be quantified and tested as empirical theory. The resulting scientific normative theory provides a constructive foundation for policy analysis.     

试析我国软科学视域中的公共政策研究

我国公共政策研究的基本视域是两个,即政治学(包括行政学)视域和软科学视域.本文分析了我国软科学在公共政策研究中所处的位置、所取得的成绩及存在的问题,得出了这两个学科领域需要进行科际协作的结论并提出了几点具体建议.     

THE POLITICS OF MICROECONOMIC REFORM: STRUCTURING A GENERAL MODEL1

Abstract: This paper examines the current endeavours to render the Australian economy more economically efficient. While the case for microeconomic reform is clear in economic theory, Australian public policy analysts are less sanguine about the possibilities for its long-term success. This paper seeks to develop the parameters of a simple general model to explain both why microeconomic reform proposals are dominant today on the Australian policy agenda and, more importantly, what the conditions are for their success or failure. This general model provides a framework that will allow further elaboration in case studies of particular episodes of microeconomic reform.
The paper concludes pessimistically; micro-economic reform has been subsumed into the normal political agenda contests of Australian party politics. The pressures of such "politics" inclines Australian reforming towards incrementalism, rather than the Simon-style rationalism implicit from micro-economics. This mode of policy implementation will inhibit microeconomic reform in the longer term.     

Deadly divide: Malawi’s policy debate on HIV/AIDS and condoms

This paper examines the dynamics of condom policymaking in Malawi by analyzing debates, which took place in the Malawi National Assembly between the year 2000 and 2004. Using content analysis and key informant interviews, and situating the overall discussion within policy and science literature, we examine how scientific evidence is being applied in the policymaking process as it relates to the place of condoms within the context of HIV/AIDS prevention. The study not only shows the extent to which the policymaking process on condoms in Malawi largely embodies a tendency to blur the conventional divide between science and politics, but also demonstrates why controversy around condoms still persists at the highest level of government in a country with one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. It was found that even when people are dying, consensus in HIV/AIDS policymaking can be difficult to achieve in a policy climate characterized by a binary perspective to social problems, and where different actors compete for control over the policy terrain. The paper makes recommendations that may be helpful in facilitating a more inclusive HIV/AIDS policymaking process in Malawi.     

Problems,politics, and policy streams in policy implementation

We apply Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) to policy implementation to reflect a nested process separate from but interdependent with policymaking. Then, we generate a hypothesis concerning the conditional nature of problems, policies, and politics stream impacts on policy implementation. We test our hypotheses with state‐level implementation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, using a pooled data set of 10 years of toxic releases data. Findings suggest an important interaction occurs among problems, policies, and politics during the policy implementation process. More specifically, when any of the three is held at median levels, only marginal differences in outputs occur; however, when all three are increased to extreme levels, substantive differences emerge. Conclusions connect policy implementation to larger issues of MSF theoretical development and suggest implications for governance.