Policy makers,policy choices,and policy outcomes: The political economy of reform in developing countries

This article presents an analytic model for understanding the role of decision makers in bringing about significant policy and institutional changes and in understanding how processes of agenda setting, decision making, and implementation shape the content, timing, and sustainability of reform initiatives. Central to the model is the assertion that policy elites and the policy making process are important determinants of reform. The framework indicates that circumstances surrounding issue formation, the criteria that decision makers use to select among options, and the characteristics of specific policies are analytic categories that explain a considerable amount about reform outcomes. The model is based on cases developed by participants in twelve initiatives to bring about policy and institutional change in a variety of developing countries.     

Diffusion through Democracy

Many argue that international norms influence government behavior, and that policies diffuse from country to country, because of idea exchanges within elite networks. However, politicians are not free to follow their foreign counterparts, because domestic constituencies constrain them. This article examines how electoral concerns shape diffusion patterns and argues that foreign templates and international organization recommendations can shift voters’ policy positions and produce electoral incentives for politicians to mimic certain foreign models. Experimental individual‐level data from the field of family policy illustrates that even U.S. voters shift positions substantially when informed about UN recommendations and foreign countries’ choices. However, voters receive limited information about international developments, biased towards the policy choices of large and proximate countries. Aggregate data on the family policy choices of OECD countries show how voters’ limited information about international models shapes government decisions: governments are disproportionately likely to mimic countries whose news citizens follow, and international organizations are most influential in countries with internationally oriented citizens.     

The Policy Design Effect: Proximity as a Micro‐level Explanation of the Effect of Policy Designs on Social Benefit Attitudes

Public and individual support for a policy is affected by how it is designed – that is, how eligibility is determined. This results in universal policies being more popular than contributions‐based policies, which in turn enjoy more public support than the selective kind. The literature on welfare attitudes have argued that this ‘policy design effect’ can be explained by a combination of self‐interest patterns, public perceptions of the recipient group and whether eligibility under the policy is perceived as fair or arbitrary. The explanations, however, lack micro‐level theory and testing as to why the design of a policy affects individual and public support. This article seeks to explain this policy design effect by theoretically outlining and testing how being proximate to recipients of a social benefit affects attitudes towards the benefit. A survey of attitudes towards spending on five social benefits in Denmark shows a large impact on attitudes from being proximate to recipients under selective policies, little or no impact from universal policies and a pattern that falls in‐between for the contributions‐based policy. This article thus provides micro‐level evidence for the different impacts on attitudes depending on the design of a policy, and a possible explanation for why the design impacts attitudes differently.     

Varieties of accountability: How attributes of policy fields shape parliamentary oversight

This article demonstrates how attributes of policy fields shape parliamentary oversight across policy fields. Building on the accountability literature, the study develops the argument that parliamentarians will more likely oversee policy fields where cooperative forms of governance are more present, since these policies are more difficult to assess and have a higher need of legitimation. Using the example of policy evaluation demand by members of parliament in Switzerland, the study suggests that parliamentarians seek more control in a policy field, where public activities are more often delegated to nopublic actors or the need for legitimation is particularly high. Both effects increase with the policy field's closeness to science. These findings could be very relevant in order to understand how attributes of policy fields shape political institutions.     

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin against the Settlers: A Stakeholder Analysis

This case study considers how a minority stakeholder group of Israeli settlers blocked Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's peace initiatives. Drawing on interviews with those who served in Rabin's administration and with the settlers' leaders, this article contends that the prime minister's use of adversarial public rhetoric against the settlers denied the legitimacy of an influential stakeholder group, triggering a backlash of intense militancy from the right-wing minority. This, coupled with Rabin's failure to deal with opposing coalitions, diminished his capacity to implement "land for peace" initiatives. The case illustrates a leader's failure to maintain adequate forms of engagement with key stakeholders. The accompanying analysis demonstrates that stakeholder theories, though incomplete in their existing forms, can still illuminate the high risk and ineffectiveness of denying the legitimacy of stakeholder groups and the strategic importance of maintaining channels of flexible negotiation and cooperation with seemingly marginal groups when high-stakes rivalries are likely to ensue.     

The extent of dissent: The effect of group composition and size on Israeli decisions to confront low intensity conflict

Abstract. This article tests a number of hypotheses about foreign policy decision making within parliamentary democracies. First it explores the origins of debates among decision-makers. Are deliberations provoked by alternative organizational perspectives or by conflicting ideological orientations? Second, it asks how debates are resolved. On the one hand, it has been suggested that, because each minister has an equal vote, a compromise between decision-makers must be reached. On the other hand, it has been argued that the Prime Minister exerts considerable control and power in foreign policy matters in relation to other decision-makers. These questions were studied with the aid of data collected from a sample of 97 decision episodes between 1949 and 1982, where the Israeli government discussed how to respond to low-intensity aggression against Israeli citizens and soldiers. The results of this research demonstrate that internal debates are poorly associated with organizational or political diversity. Instead group size seems to be more important, although the relationship is not linear. In any case, the discussions usually concluded in a consensus around the Prime Minister's policy of choice, thus indicating that he or she is the paramount decision-maker.     

Different by Design? Analyzing How Governments Justify GMO Liberalization through the Lens of Strategic Communication

GMO liberalization can be seen as politically risky for policy actors; it confronts them with policy‐specific strategic challenges and incentives regarding their policy communication. This perspective has received much more attention in association with two other kinds of policies, welfare state retrenchment and foreign policy. The aim of this paper is thus to situate GMO liberalization within a larger framework and to examine how governments deal with this kind of policy through their communication. The analysis looks at the liberalization of GMOs in Norway and the UK to examine how their communication depends on policy characteristics as well as country‐specific conditions. The findings suggest that the communication of GMO liberalization differs markedly from the communication of welfare state retrenchment and foreign military interventions and that the typical features of GMO policies as well as the sociocultural context of the two countries mattered for how the governments have communicated GMO liberalization.     

Who cares about human rights? Public opinion about human rights foreign policy

Literature on foreign aid and human rights often presupposes that constituents favor using foreign policy to promote human rights abroad and lead elected policymakers to pursue such policies to retain electoral support. This assumption, although frequently asserted, has not been empirically evaluated. And there are reasons to be skeptical about whether public opinion supports human rights foreign policy compared to other policy objectives. This article explores US public opinion about human rights, by asking two questions: Does the public think human rights should factor in foreign aid decisions and does the context—the strategic or economic relationship between the donor and recipient—affect this? This article uses results from a nationwide experimental survey to evaluate these questions. I find that the majority of respondents support cutting aid to punish human rights violators and that this depends minimally on the importance of the recipient.     

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.     

Toward a stakeholder-based policy process: An application of the social marketing perspective to environmental policy development

This article suggests that the application of social marketing principles to the public policy process can facilitate the efforts of governmental policy-makers and non-governmental stakeholders to articulate their policy desires and to encourage the adoption and acceptance of particular environmental policies. A conceptual framework is presented, emphasizing both the influence of stakeholders on environmental policy development and the education of stakeholders as to the potential effects of the policy. The purpose of such a conceptualization is to show how social marketing principles can be applied to the public policy process in order to enhance the likelihood of successful policy development and implementation.     

The logic of ‘Policy’ and successful policies

Developed on the premise that how we conceive of ‘policy’ and ‘successful policy’ guides policy sciences' research and evaluation, this paper responds to the conceptual questions of “what is a policy?” and “when is a policy successful?” Formal or logical conditions are established to distinguish ‘policy’ from related concepts. The notion ‘relevant public’ is introduced to distinguish public policies from private policies and to identify fairly-declared policies. Further, conditions are developed that can be used as logical tests for three types of policy success: implementation success, instrumental success and success in normative justification.     

Policy Preferences and Political Distrust: A Comparison of Norway, Sweden and the United States

Many modern democracies have experienced a decrease in citizen support for government in recent decades. This article examines attitudes toward public policy as a plausible theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. The connection between public policy and support for the political regime has received considerable academic attention in the United States. Yet very little comparative work has examined whether citizens' policy preferences are related to a decline in diffuse support across different political systems. This article offers a clearer, more concise theoretical specification of the hypothesized relationship between public evaluations of policy outputs and support for the political regime. After specifying the theoretical concerns more succinctly, the article analyzes data from Norway, Sweden and the United States for the quarter century from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The analysis reveals that shifts in evaluations of foreign policy and race-related policies help explain change in political trust for all three countries despite differences in the political systems. Moral issues, such as abortion, however, have no impact on political trust in any of the countries.     

Refusing to be Sidelined: The Engagement of the Finnish Eduskunta in Foreign Affairs

It is often argued that foreign and security policy is dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding marginal influence. However, as legislative‐executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention, there is a demand for subjecting the alleged executive drift in foreign affairs to careful empirical scrutiny. There is also a need to examine whether and how parliamentary politics in foreign affairs differs from domestic or European matters, both regarding control mechanisms and party competition. The notions of ‘executive dominance’ and ‘politics stopping at the water's edge’ certainly point in the direction of less active control and casting aside public partisan differences in favour of providing domestic support for the government. A case study of the Finnish Eduskunta forces us to reconsider such arguments. This article examines the multiple instruments members of parliament (MPs) have for becoming involved in foreign affairs, from participating in the formulation of the national ‘grand strategy’ document to ministerial hearings in the committees. It also provides strong evidence of the Europeanization of national foreign policies, with matters relating to the foreign policy and external relations of the European Union (EU) in a central role in the Foreign Affairs Committee. Parliamentary culture is consensual, especially in security policy, but there is nonetheless greater room and willingness for party‐political contestation in foreign affairs.     

Public Policy Failure or Historical Debacle? A Study of Eritrea's Relations With Ethiopia Since 1991

Public policy transcends the domain of domestic policies and encompasses or even determines the type of relations that countries build with each other. It is well known that policies are nothing but decisions of governments as formal authorization on the given issue at hand. In other words, policy is a sum total of decisions made by the authority and hence it involves what governments actually do and not what they intend to do. Public opinion is a powerful criterion especially in democracies. It is provided in the constitutions and the people's role in policymaking is confirmed through this. Political parties, mass media, newspapers, and such others claim to represent public opinion. Rationality is another criteria in policymaking in which the leadership takes supposedly rational decisions on different issues of concern particularly those relating to foreign affairs. The criteria on political and economic situation depends on the actions of politicians, the legacy of the past, the nature of government organizations/institutions, and the constraints posed by domestic economic situations and conditions. Although policymakers enjoy complete independence from external control, unfortunately Third World countries such as those in Africa are not free to make their policies due to various reasons such as interdependence, and the domestic political and economic situations, compelling them to take a cue from external factors or power centers. The many conceptual models of public policy offer a wide variety of understanding on how they can be applied to different countries and to different situations. In fact, most policies are a combination of rational planning, instrumentalism, interest group activity, elite preferences, systemic forces, game planning, public choice, political processes and institutional influences. However, at times we find not all of these may be applicable to all countries. It in effect depends on the rational calculations of the countries in question how they would make or have their policies consonant with their national interests. The case of Eritrea and Ethiopia is a classic example that fits into the above paradigm and in which to enquire how their policies varied in spite of being friendly neighbors but later turning into hostile foes. What went wrong and how? Was it a product of their policy failures or was it due to historical debacles? This article therefore is an attempt to explore the current state of relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia in the light of the above‐mentioned conceptual framework by showing how their mutual policies were not compatible enough to solidify their initial cordiality and friendliness. In order to do this a brief sketch of historical background is provided to help understand and analyze the impact it had on contemporary policies between them. The internal political dynamics and ideological doctrines of Eritrea are the focus of next discussion. The period of cordiality and later the period of hostility are discussed next. Finally, recent trends and future prospects are put forward.     

Governance Arrangements for Transboundary Issues: Lessons from the Food Waste Programs of Italian Regions

Focusing on transboundary issues contributes to highlighting how new governance modes can emerge from increasing interdependence and complexity in public policies. This article analyzes food waste as a transboundary issue that cuts across different policy subsystems (PSs), intersects multiple levels of government, and calls into question consolidated policy making for new modes of governance. The analytical framework provides a multidimensional approach and a new typology of governance arrangements to be used in empirical research. Evidence from an Italian case study and an empirical investigation of 20 regional food waste programs shows that regions can adopt different driving ideas and can activate a variety of governance arrangements and differentiated, as well as viable, modes of integration between consolidated PSs. The article argues that different tool mixes combined with different levels of governance complexity may lead to a variety of governance arrangements and a differentiated likelihood of policy integration.     

Disentangling governance: a synoptic view of regulation by government, business and civil society

Governance became a catch-all concept for various forms of steering by state and non-state actors. While it pays tribute to the complexities of steering in poly-centred, globalised societies, its fuzziness makes it difficult to oversee who actually steers whom and with what means. By focussing mainly on actor constellations, the article disentangles governance into seven basic types of regulation, four of them representing public policies with varying degrees of government involvement and three depending solely on civil society (civil regulation), on businesses (industry or business self-regulation) or on both (civil co-regulation). Although each of the seven types is well known and extensively researched, they are rarely joined in a synoptic view, making it difficult to grasp the totality of contemporary governance. After introducing the seven basic types of regulation and co-regulation, the article addresses the interactions between them and it adds the widely used concepts of hybrid regulation and meta-governance in distinct ways. The synoptic view provided here helps to comprehend how governmental deregulation has been accompanied by soft governmental regulation as well as “societal re-regulation”. The concluding discussion emphasises that this “regulatory reconfiguration” is the cumulative product of countless, more or less spontaneous initiatives that coincide with forceful global trends. It also stresses that the various forms of regulation by civil society and business actors are not simply alternatives or complements to but often key prerequisites for effective public policies. Although the essentials of the typology developed here can be applied universally to a variety of policy issues, I focus it on how businesses are steered towards sustainable development and Corporate Social Responsibility.     

Do parties matter for local revenue policies? A comparison of Denmark and Norway

Abstract.  This article investigates the impact of party ideology on revenue politics. Theoretically, claims can be made that party ideology should matter for revenue policies. First, leftist governments are more favourable towards government intervention and a large public sector. To accomplish this, leftist governments need more revenue than bourgeois governments. Second, revenue policy is a redistributive policy area well suited for ideological positioning. However, the claim that party ideology does not matter can also be made since raising revenue is unpopular and politicians may shy away from new initiatives. Empirically, the question is unsettled. The article investigates the problem by looking at three revenue policy areas (income and property taxation, and user charges) in two countries (Denmark and Norway). The data used is from the municipal level, providing several hundreds of units to compare. The evidence favours the 'parties matter' argument, particularly in the Danish case.     

Between unity and plurality: the politicization and securitization of the discourse of immigration in Europe

The appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to the positions of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, respectively, represented a significant breakthrough in terms of the participation of black Americans in US foreign policy construction. Their appointments, for a number of publics, raised issues about the relationship between race and US foreign policy, and whether either Powell or Rice could or would represent at any level a black consensus on foreign policy. This tension was heightened by the events of September 11, which led to the most sweeping transformation of US foreign policy in perhaps half a century, a transformation in which Powell and Rice played decisive roles. This article argues that while race has played a symbolic role in how the black community and others have perceived Powell and Rice, it has played no role in their substantive participation in the Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives.     

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.     

Assessing Public Procurement of Innovation as a Cross‐Domain Policy: A Framework and Application to the Chinese Context

Despite the fact that public procurement of innovation (PPI) has become an increasingly popular policy tool, there has been a lack of holistic approaches to assessing policies promoting PPI. This article attempts to address this gap by proposing a framework which links the multiple levels and aspects related to the design and implementation of PPI policies. By adopting a systemic understanding of “public procurement” as well as “innovation policies,” this article positions PPI as a cross‐domain policy which is inherently a mix of procurement and innovation‐related interventions. The article develops an assessment framework using “vertical coherence” and “horizontal coherence” as criteria. It then illustrates the use of the framework by applying it to PPI policies in China. The framework can aid the conduct of ex ante as well as ex post assessment of PPI policies, which can further inform policy design, implementation, and learning.