Cognitive and Normative Determinants of State Policymaking Behavior: Lessons from the Sociological Institutionalism

Although comparative state policy frameworks consider the roleof societal norms, few account for cognitive and normative imperativesthat originate outside a state's boundaries and are specificto promoting or impeding the adoption of particular policies.One approach that does so is the new institutionalism in sociology,which emphasizes legitimacy-seeking actors who face pressuresto conform to cultural rules, norms, and expectations, regardlessof outcomes. This article introduces comparative state policyresearchers to the sociological institutionalism, emphasizingbasic concepts and arguments and suggesting how reliance onthis framework can enable researchers to better integrate rational-actorand cultural-based views for understanding why states chooseparticular public policies. Interviews with national and stateexperts in Medicaid nursing-facility reimbursement illustratethe utility of the sociological institutionalism for comparativestate policy research.     

Explaining national environmental performance: approaches,evidence, and implications

Since environmental problems rose to prominence in the last third of the twentieth century, they have been a major area of policy for national governments. A large body of research has explored the explanations for different levels of environmental policy performance among countries. This article begins with a discussion of approaches to measuring national performance before reviewing and assessing four categories of explanations in the literature, which may be summarized in four questions: (1) What are the relationships between economic growth and environmental protection? (2) Do democratic regimes have advantages over more authoritarian ones in adopting effective policies and reducing harm? (3) Do such institutional characteristics as pluralism or neo-corporatism and federalism affect a nation’s ability to deal with environmental problems? (4) Are there institutional or societal capacities or relationships within or among nations that may explain policy success? By adopting a broad perspective on the literature on national environmental performance, the article is able to explore and compare the principal findings of these categories of research and assess the relationships among them.     

Comparative Local Economic Development: A Framework for Further Research

Recent research on local economic development does not provide an adequate framework for anticipating the consequences of cross national policy transfer and emulation. The research focuses on case specific analysis of one or another program within specific national or economic situations, but such analyses are not structured by a common understanding of the forces which shape policy formation or implementation. This article argues that we must rethink how we understand local policy by combining state-centered and class-centered theories of local policy outcomes. It suggests that such an approach would provide a better basis for both anticipating policy outcomes and predicting transferability.     

Public Policy and Behavior Change

Changing behavior is often necessary to tackle societal problems, such as obesity, alcohol abuse, and debt problems. This article has two goals. First, it aims to highlight how governments can try to change the behavior of citizens. Government can use policy instruments to do so, including incentives, bans and mandates, information campaigns, and nudges. However, the government should not be a manipulator that applies policy instruments without societal support. Therefore, the second goal of the article is to provide a conceptual framework that helps analyze whether public policies to stimulate behavior change are effective and supported by key stakeholders. This conceptual framework has five criteria indicating the extent to which there is effective and supported behavior change: the policy is (1) effective and (2) efficient, and there is support for the policy among (3) politicians, (4) implementing organizations, and (5) citizens. The article ends with suggestions to study public policy aimed at behavior change.     

Institutional Linkages and Policy Networks in the Federal System of West Germany

West German federalism can be understood as a system of interlocking,but distinct and autonomous, "policy networks." Sectoral policynetworks are integrated into overarching networks. The traditionalpluri-centrism of state and societal institutions is contrastedwith an integrated (but not centralized) economic policy networkoriented toward national homogeneity. With the decline of Keynesianmacroeconomic policy, however, regional policy networks arebeing upgraded. At the same time, the political party systemand the politicization of administrative agencies have led tothe development of an overarching network in which bargainingand accommodation have precedence over hierarchical centralization.     

Agenda Setting in Emergent R&D Policy Subsystems: Examining Discourse Effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act

The literature on government responsiveness to societal issues is extensive but provides a mixed assessment of effectiveness. We examine this issue in the case of policy addressing effective and safe management of research and development in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Specifically, we examine the agenda setting effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (the Act), a piece of legislation designed to be implemented by a network of actors in the nanotechnology research and development policy subsystem. We adopt a public values lens in our examination of discourse related to societal concerns. Policy documents from Congress, an agency, and federal funding recipients are examined. Findings suggest a narrowing of public values discourse around more specific societal concerns in the documents crafted after the Act was passed.     

Elites and Regimes in Comparative Perspective: Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia

Because of the diversity that characterizes politics in Southeast Asia, area specialists hasve lacked a framework for comparative analysis. Drawing on some of the recent transitions literature, this article argues the worth of investigating political regime forms, the extent to which a country's politics are stable or unstable and democratic or authoritarian. It then focuses on three important Southeast Asian countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand — analyzing stabilitylinstability in terms of state elites and their rules of the game, while considering democracylauthoriturianism in terms of societal audiences and legitimating "mentalities." Briefly, Indonesia's authoritarian regime (and its strong appearance of stability) is attributed to astute personalist leadership, muted elite rivalries, and control over societal audiences. In contrast, Thailand's unstable democracy emerges from uneven national leadership, perennial elite disunity, and episodic surges in societal pressures. And Malaysia's semi-democratic regime — in some ways bordered by the outcomes in Indonesia and Thailand — is explained by skilful national leadership and sustained elite unity, offsetting the country's ftuctuating levels of societal tensions and claims.     

Kooperative Politikberatung. Ein neues Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen Politik und Politikberatung?

The institutional and societal framework of policy-advice-giving is changing and so are the worlds of political consultants and policy experts in Germany and other advanced democracies. While there are several new developments which are challenging established forms of policy-advice and political consulting, the present article focuses its attention on the impact of new governance structures on policy advice and political consulting. The main argument of the article is that when government becomes governance and the number of actors and venues involved in the decision-making process increase, a new cooperative and discursive mode of policy-advice giving complements or sometimes even replaces more established forms of policy-advice-giving. We review the evolution of the debate about the role of policy-advice-giving from different perspectives, and particularly explore possible consequences of the changing nature of the state as well as of newly emerging modes of cooperative policy-advice and political consulting — both for empirical as well as conceptual research in the field. Through this, we attempt to generate a debate on the future direction of different modes of policy-advice and political consulting within a changing framework of governance structures in advanced democracies.     

Ideas, innovations, and networks: a new policy model based on the evolution of knowledge

In this paper, we argue that a new policy model for science and technology is needed and must be evolutionary in nature. The paper proposes utilizing the idea innovation network theory as a framework for assessing sectoral innovation patterns and identifies six types, or “arenas,” of research that are linked to innovation within these networks. Following the idea innovation network theory, the paper argues that two societal trends, the fragmentation of markets and the growth of knowledge, are driving organizations toward greater functional differentiation. Successful innovation will occur when these differentiated organizations become closely linked within innovation networks that integrate the arenas of research. The paper argues that this framework has predictive power, in that it allows the identification of path-dependent blockages or gaps within idea innovation chains that prevent the emergence of effective innovation networks in different countries. Policy makers can play an important role by fostering the development of tightly coupled networks that include organizations involved in each of the types of research. The paper provides empirical support for the framework using a cross-national European study of the telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries.     

Transition Management for Sustainable Development: A Prescriptive,Complexity‐Based Governance Framework

This article introduces transition management as a new governance approach for sustainable development. Sustainable development is used here as a common notion referring to those persistent problems in (Western industrialized) societies that can only be dealt with on the very long term (decades or more) through specific types of network and decision‐making processes. Based on interdisciplinary research into complex processes of long term, structural change in society, basic tenets for complexity‐based governance are formulated. These tenets are translated into a framework that distinguishes between four different types of governance activities and their respective roles in societal transitions. This framework can be used for implementation of governance strategies and instruments. The approach and framework have been developed deductively and inductively in the Netherlands since 2000. This article presents the theoretical basis of transition management and will be illustrated by examples from transition management practice, especially the Dutch national energy transition program.     

A REGIME FRAMEWORK FOR IMPLEMENTATION ANALYSIS: COOPERATION AND RECONCILIATION OF FEDERALIST IMPERATIVES

The diffusion of authority characteristic of federal governance challenges national leadership and complicates even the implementation of policy that promises mutual gains. To explore the problems of implementing national policy in a federalist context, this paper proposes a new approach to analysis, t h e implementation regime framework. From the regime perspective, the essential task of the implementation process is to create a context in which implementors are likely to cooperate to achieve policy goals despite the absence of dominating authority. Drawing upon the literature on international cooperation, the regime framework outlines the contextual conditions and elements of policy design that are likely to lead to cooperation in collective decision making.     

Policy analysis: A conceptual base for a theory of improvement

The purpose of reason or rationality in the analysis of resource allocation decisions is to provide decision makers with guidance on policy decisions which result in improvement, i.e. a net increment in social welfare. The difficulty with what might be called the microrationality of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis as conventionally practised is that unless the context of such rationality is established in the larger framework of what might in turn be called the macrorationality which reflects an awareness of the properties of the whole system, the policy analyst cannot know whether his recommendation will upgrade (constitute an improvement in) or degrade (constitute a deterioration in) the system as a whole. The paper attempts to suggest a first conceptual approach, and an implied research agenda, addressed to developing a more effective general context for policy analysis. The suggested approach has four major components; first, the establishment of the basis for policy analysis in the explicit specification of a general weighted objective function for national policy and a corresponding set of functions for particular programs and projects; second, the development and incorporation in cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis of a set of analytical parameters which establish the basis for policy analyses which are in the first instance comparable, and in the second instance consistent with the national objective function; third, the development of a general analytical framework for cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis which recognizes the essential interdependency of policy decisions, including the financing implications of expenditure policies; and, finally, the explicit recognition of the need for a criterion of overall system improvement in the development of an analytical framework for the measurement of the trades-off or opportunity costs between alternative policy mixes.     

Decoupling practical and legal compliance: Analysis of member states’ implementation of EU policy

Despite the vast literature on policy implementation, systematic cross‐national research focusing on implementers’ performance regarding different policy issues is still in its infancy. The European Union policies are conducive to examining this relationship in a comparative setting, as the EU member states need to implement various EU directives both legally and in practice. In this study, a first attempt is made to analyse the relationship between legal conformity and practical implementation and the conditions for practical deviations in 27 member states across issues from four policy areas (Internal Market, Environment, Justice and Home Affairs and Social Policy). In line with existing approaches to EU compliance, it is expected that the policy preferences of domestic political elites (‘enforcement’) affect their incentives to ‘decouple’ practical from legal compliance. Instead, administrative and institutional capacities (‘management’) and societal constraints (‘legitimacy’) are likely to limit the ability of policy makers to exert control over the implementation process. The findings suggest that practical deviations arise from policy makers’ inability to steer the implementation process, regardless of their predispositions towards internationally agreed policies. The results have strong implications for the effective application of international rules in domestic settings, as they illustrate that political support for the implementation of ‘external’ policy does not ensure effective implementation in practice.     

Explaining cross‐national variation in the relationship between priority congruence and satisfaction with democracy

Previous research has shown that citizens tend to be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy when their ideological positions are more proximate to representatives'. This article argues that congruence in policy priorities between citizens and political elites should have a similar effect: citizens whose concerns are shared by elites should perceive them to be more attentive and responsive to public concerns and societal needs. Yet, the relationship might vary with differences in expectations towards democracy and representation. Specifically, it should be stronger in more democratic countries and older democracies. The hypotheses are empirically tested in a multilevel regression framework, where voter survey data from the 2009 European Election Study is linked with candidate survey data. The results indicate that citizens are indeed more satisfied with democracy if elites share their concerns, and the effect increases with democratic experience.     

Uneven local implementation of federal policy after disaster: Policy conflict and goal ambiguity

As climate change continues to increase both the frequency and intensity of environmental hazards and disasters, the need for a cohesive national mitigation policy grows. As the environmental federalism scholarship indicates, the inherent tension in federal, state, and local policy implementation highlights that despite a national need, environmental quality is a local public good. To complicate matters, there is disagreement about the optimal level of decision-making regarding the adoption and implementation of environmental policy. This study addresses this gap by considering the role of policy ambiguity and conflict in policy implementation. The analysis relies on primary qualitative data collected from open-ended interviews with 22 local government officials in 12 municipalities following Hurricane Harvey. Through the lens of policy ambiguity and conflict, we find confirmatory support for the idea that policies with less ambiguous goals are more likely to be implemented. Furthermore, we find that policy conflict arises when local governments perceive there is little for the community to gain by implementing the federal program. Thus, the level of protection afforded to citizens varies greatly between communities and is influenced heavily by politics. This research supports the Ambiguity-Conflict Model of policy implementation, an oft-cited but rarely tested theoretical framework for assessing the intergovernmental politics of policy implementation. It also demonstrates the barriers to local implementation of federal environmental policy in a nested system of government.     

Diffusion Research Traditions and the Spread of Policy Innovations in a Federal System

This essay summarizes the state of research on policy diffusionamong the American states. Recognizing that this policy diffusionliterature largely exhibits a geographic focus rather than theclient focus predominant in most other diffusion research, theargument is nevertheless made that this field of diffusion studieshas not yet become welded into a distinctive college of mutuallyaware scholars. Still, following Everett Rogers' model of thediffusion process, American state policy diffusion studies arereviewed so as to present emerging generalizations, currentblindspots suggested by Rogers' model, and departures from otherdiffusion research findings. Diffusion of judicial innovationsis reviewed separately as a special subset of policy diffusionresearch. Finally, policy diffusion research is related to largerconcerns with societal development and change and with democraticpolitics.     

FEDERAL POLICY IN LOCAL CONTEXT: The Influence of Local State-Societal Relations on Endangered Species Act Implementation

Current debates regarding the degree to which centralization or decentralization of environmental bureaucracies promotes more effective management of natural resources suggest the need for employing new methodologies to empirical analysis, in a variety of political and ecological settings. In this paper, recent state synergy scholarship is adopted to an analysis of the impact of state‐societal relations on the implementation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in the coastal redwoods region of California. This study suggests that certain state‐societal relations at the peripheries of bureaucratic state systems pose potential sources of both state autonomy and capacity. Effective utilization of such sources may be hampered, however, by policy actions that reflect national‐level political pressure, leading to management decisions that are not necessarily designed to improve either the ecological or social welfare of the region. In conclusion, the author argues that decentralization may be beneficial to bureaucratic effectiveness, however such efforts will be contingent on the ability of states to develop dense connecting networks with social actors that can contribute to policy goals.     

Chartering Territories in Outer Space: Obligating the Need for a National Legal Framework in India

Space research is heralded as the harbinger of the next level of advancement in science and technology. The fact that countries are spending millions of dollars in this regard is testament to its potential. India is making inroads in the field and, in the last 15 years, has established itself as a dominant player. According to Antrix, the commercial wing of the Indian Space Research Organization, India commercially launched 209 foreign satellites of other countries into space. Apart from this, Antrix is applying its success in other commercial activities, like remote sensing, selling of space objects (parts of satellites and launching vehicles), and mission support. In keeping with this development, the Indian legal position and policy framework with respect to commercial space activities are reviewed. The article also surveys India’s commitment to international space law and its reflection in national legislation. Finally, the existing policy related to commercial space in India is examined and measures are suggested to create national legislation for the country to deal with issues of commercial space activities.     

FIELD NETWORK RESEARCH IN POLICY EVALUATION

The field-network evaluation studies (FNES) approach to policy evaluation research seeks to overcome deficiencies of small-sample case study method and of the large-sample survey research approach. Methodologically, FNES uses many of the familiar techniques of both these approaches interviews, data collection and analysis, limited sampling, field observation, and document analysis. The crucial difference is sample size. The FNES approach using a middle-range sample of 50 to 60 research sites has the advantages of the case study method in being able to provide an in depth account of a program and how it operates, and is sufficiently flexible to permit a shift in the analytical framework as the research proceeds thus overcoming the inflexibility of the instruments of survey research.
Seven major studies employing the FNES approach have been carried out or are underway in the United States of America. The principal components of the methodology are a network of university-based field associates and a central management group. The field associates collect the information and the data using a uniform analytical framework and reporting form. The central staff aggregates these analyses into a single report that cuts across the sample. This approach and the use of a middle-range sample make it possible to draw generalizable conclusions based on the national experience, and also provide sufficient detail to differentiate policy impacts among the sample jurisdictions.     

Programmatic action in Chinese health policy—The making and design of “Healthy China 2030”

The Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) is a powerful analytical perspective to advance our understanding of policy change by stressing the role of programmatic groups and how they promote their preferred policy programs. While the PAF has been applied successfully to European countries and the US, a considerable research gap remains regarding its explanatory power in other regions and political settings. To step into this research gap, we apply the PAF to authoritarian China through a qualitative case study of the making of “Healthy China 2030”, a national health policy program. We explore two research questions: firstly, to what extent can the PAF be operationalized in a nondemocracy to identify programmatic groups and evaluate policy design, and second, what are the limitations and challenges facing the application of the PAF to nondemocracies? Our empirical analysis shows that the design of this policy program involves actors from different policy areas, despite the top-down political structure. With regards to the transfer of PAF hypotheses, we show that the framework is a helpful lens to identify programmatic groups and to evaluate policy programs' potential for success based on coherence, responsiveness, and program fit. Meanwhile, the research process of our study revealed the challenges of applying policy process theories to China, including hard-to-reach political actors for data collection, lack of transparency regarding collaboration processes between actors, and a lack of publicly available program-related information.