Policy sciences perspectives on implementation processes

Implementation, from which flows operational policy, is an integral part of the policymaking process. This phenomenon is examined briefly as a socio-political process, an administrative task, a follow-on from systematic analysis, a problem in the diffusion and utilization of knowledge, and a basic capacity which is differentially distributed among organizations and subject to deliberate change. A three-dimensional framework for assessing the nature of implementation tasks and for making strategic choices in planning implementation is proposed and illustrated. Finally, implementation processes in a federalistic system are described as requiring multi-level participation of four classes of participants: administrative-bureaucratic, political leadership, rational-analytic and constituent elites. A variety of functions must be performed at federal, regional, and local levels to assure policy execution consistent with both policy designs and local contingencies.Revision of a paper delivered to American Association for the Advancement of Science, 138th Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, December 27, 1970.     

Actively Cultivating Policy Similarity. A Regional Strategy in Education Policy in France and Germany

Regionalization processes across Western Europe have triggered analyses of regional policy divergence. Yet, in a number of cases, regional governments appear to have deliberately strived to achieve policy conformity. Previous research tends to emphasize exogenous explanations of regional policy convergence. In contrast, this paper addresses the issue of regional policy convergence by focusing on endogenous explanatory factors. Its objective is to carry out an investigation of when, how, and with what effect a ‘desire for conformity’ arises, and contends that regional governments may actively cultivate policy similarity as a strategy to develop or secure their policy capacity. Specifically, the paper argues that the adoption of this strategy is contingent upon two requirements that may or may not be met, and that its outcome is the convergence on targeted dimensions of regional policies. The two requirements are: (i) a countrywide public preference for policy uniformity in the policy area of concern, and (ii) the presence of a threat posed to regional policy capacity by various political entrepreneurs, including the central state, who blame regions for providing divergent policies on particular dimensions. This paper is based on the comparison of two case studies where regional governments deliberately pursued policy conformity on targeted dimensions of their education policy: school-building policy in France and curricula policy in Germany. The two case studies also present dissimilar features that make it possible to investigate the effects of institutional setting and policy distribution on the adoption and operation of the active-cultivation-of-policy-similarity strategy.     

Explaining Public Management Policy Change: Germany in Comparative Perspective

Public management policies have changed significantly in numerous countries in recent times. Policy entrepreneurs remain active in this policy domain, which encompasses government-wide rules and routines in the areas of expenditure planning and financial management, civil service and labor relations, procurement, organization and methods, and audit and evaluation. Case-oriented comparative research provides policy entrepreneurs with historically and theoretically informed knowledge useful in designing or improvising change strategies in this domain. This article focuses on the case of public management policymaking in the German federal government during the 1980s and 1990s. A coherent explanation of the careers of the overbureaucratization issue in the 1980s and the lean state issue in the 1990s is provided, along with an explanation for marked changes in selected public management policies in the 1990s. Analysis of this case is also harmonized with findings about public management policy change in the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. Limited generalizations about the process of public management policy change are proposed. Policy entrepreneurs can factor these generalizations, plus analysis of the Germany case, into their prospective, situational analysis of the process of public management policy change.     

Party Systems and Social Policy: A Historical Comparison of Italy and Germany

The article shows how the development of social policy in Italy and Germany was influenced by their respective party systems. Its focus is on the differences between systems of unemployment protection in the two countries after World War II. Due to many similarities between the two states, in particular the dominant presence of Christian democratic parties in both national governments at the time, this divergence cannot be adequately explained by standard theories. The article shows that it is crucial to take the widely different party systems into account: seven parties and ideological polarisation in Italy as opposed to three parties and moderate ideological differences in Germany. These generated different political dynamics and, consequently, different policy output.     

Policy feedback and institutional context in energy transitions

Policy Sciences - Interest in policy feedback processes in energy transitions has grown rapidly in recent years. However, while it has provided interesting accounts of the mechanisms of stability...     

Equal Employment Policy in Germany: Limited Results and Prospects for Reform

This article contributes to feminist debates on equal employment policy in Germany by pointing out the shortcomings of current German equal employment policy in the private sector and by suggesting a new approach to shore‐up the gaps of current policy. The first section of the article critically assesses existing legislation and the voluntary regulation of gender equality in the private sector by the social partners. The second section addresses prospects for reform and discusses a new approach to gender equality in the workplace. The article concludes with suggestions for a more effective equal opportunity law as a crucial part of a labor policy that includes issues of gender equality.     

Power Resources of Parliamentary Executives: Policy Advice in the UK and Germany

This article compares the institutionalisation of policy advice inside offices which service chief executives in the UK and Germany. It focuses on the institutionalisation of ‘policy units’ during the early 1970s and late 1990s which reveals different patterns. Whereas British policy units are allowed to interfere in any departmental business and address a variety of issues, German policy units are narrowed to provide administrative support and avoid partisan issues. Applying a new institutionalist perspective and the veto approach, this article argues that institutionalisation processes as strategic interactions of organisational actors are affected by institutional features at the macro-level of parliamentary systems. These features include principles of cabinet decision-making and the electoral system with its effects on parliament and cabinet composition which both set veto positions in the executive and legislative decision arena. Next to these institutional features, the empirical evidence shows how organisational legacies account for the influential role of British policy units as power resource for the PM and the nearly irrelevance of German policy units as power resource for the Chancellor.     

Policy signals and strategic voting for minor parties: Evidence from Germany

How does executive power-sharing in multiparty democracies influence voter decision-making? The current scholarship has identified two strategies that voters use to target coalitions and that involve voting for a minor party: Coalition insurance voting and compensatory voting. Yet these strategies are not differentiated conceptually, and empirically, are observationally equivalent. By foregrounding the role of policy signals in strategic voting for minor parties, the present study disentangles these strategies at the theoretical and empirical levels. It also proposes a new, hybrid, strategy. To do so, it uses data on the 2013 and 2017 German federal elections from campaign-period surveys, polls and an original dataset of the candidates’ tweets about policy issues. The results show evidence of policy-driven voters using a hybrid strategy in 2013 and a compensatory strategy in 2017. There is no evidence of coalition insurance voting in these elections.     

Schools with a Difference: Policy Discourses and Education Reform in Britain and Germany

Throughout the 1990s, corruption cases, policy failure and scandals tarnished Belgium's international reputation. In this article, we analyse the effect of federalism and political culture on corruption and policy failures and their impact on the likelihood of such occurrences becoming scandals. Survey material suggests that there are few differences between French- and Dutch-speakers in the perception and tolerance of corruption. We then list a number of variables that can explain corruption in Belgium and argue that the independent effect of federalism is very limited. Next we demonstrate that federalism has played a much more significant role in lowering the risk of policy failure, while at the same time creating a few new vulnerabilities. Finally, we argue that the regional political elites do not often engage in policy learning and frequently put forward federalism as the main solution to the avoidance of policy failure and scandal. In this sense, regional political elites do not seize the opportunity for policy experimentation and transfer that is generally seen as one of the main virtues of a federal system of government.     

A milestone in the policy sciences

Conclusion What stands in the way of inquiry to help communities clarify and secure theircommon interests? The problem is not the theories and procedures available,as many scholars presume. The framework presented in Jurisprudence for aFree Society is quite adequate even if it is provisional. The problem is professionalism(Torgerson, 1985), or more precisely, the decline of professionalismas it was understood in the Law, Science, and Policy seminar over severaldecades. As McDougal recalls in the Preface:A profession, we insisted, is best regarded as a group with both a specialskill and a sense of responsibility for the consequences upon the communityof the exercise of that skill. The special skill of the lawyer is in the managementof authority and control in the making of decisions, and the genuineprofessional must seek to synthesize all relevant knowledge and pro-cedures toward decisions that serve common interests' (p. xxiii; emphasisadded).The decline of professionalism is all around us. It reflects and reinforces thesame specializing and fragmenting factors that call into question the sustainabilityof late modem or post-modern society. The question for this generationof policy scientists is whether the policy sciences, subject to the samepressures as other skill groups, can maintain the professional standards exemplifiedby Lasswell and McDougal and stay the course they have set in Jurisprudencefor a Free Society.