EXPLAINING RADICAL POLICY CHANGE: THE CASE OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY POLICY UNDER THE BRITISH LABOUR GOVERNMENT 2006–10

An innovative framework combining the ‘multiple streams’ (MS) and ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (PE) models of agenda‐setting is used to explain the transformation of UK climate change and energy policy under the Labour Government between 2006 and 2010. The coupling of the problem, politics and policy streams by policy entrepreneurs (MS), and changes in policy image and institutional venues (PE), were critical in opening a policy window, disrupting the existing policy monopoly and enabling radical policy initiatives. The case study suggests two revisions to the models: (1) policy windows can remain open far longer than either model typically predicts; and (2) party politics, especially where party competition generates a ‘competitive consensus’, can be important for both initiating and prolonging policy change in parliamentary systems. An important factor typically overlooked by both models is the significant policy entrepreneurship role that government ministers can play, particularly when an issue becomes part of their ‘narrative identity’.     

Higher Education Policies in Central and Eastern Europe: Convergence toward a Common Model?

Contrary to many other areas, international and, in particular, European influences on national policymaking in higher education (HE) have remained limited. This picture, however, changed fundamentally from the late 1990s onward. In 1999, 29 countries signed the Bologna Declaration, denoting the start of the so-called Bologna Process. Thus, a collective supranational platform was developed to confront problem pressure, which has in turn fostered considerable domestic reforms. However, we still have limited knowledge on whether the Bologna Process has actually led to the convergence of national HE policies toward a common model. This article analyzes these questions by focusing on Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Because of its tumultuous and inconsistent path of development and the sheer magnitude of the current reform processes, CEE HE stands out as a particularly worthwhile object of analysis for scholars interested in policy convergence as well as policy legacies and path dependencies.     

School Vouchers and the New Politics of the Welfare State

School vouchers might seem a natural feature of the liberal welfare model of the U.S. and American society generally. However, for social democratic welfare states in Scandinavia, school vouchers would seem to be a contradiction. Nevertheless, school vouchers have faced severe resistance in the USA, and the program has so far not been adopted as a national educational reform, although sporadic and limited state‐level developments can be observed. In Sweden, however, the social democratic welfare state adopted a national, universal public voucher scheme in the early 1990s. The goal of this article is to explain this counter‐theoretical empirical puzzle. It is argued that the varying output from political processes on school vouchers in the USA and Sweden is to be explained by the different ways in which political institutions affect political decision making in the two countries.     

Minority Status,Ideology, or Opportunity: Explaining the Greater Retirement of House Republicans

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives tend to retire at a higher rate than Democrats—a fact with potentially important electoral and policy ramifications—but research on the possible explanations for this partisan disparity has been scarce. I test various explanatory hypotheses using multilevel statistical analyses and find that Republicans are more likely to retire—not because they have been the predominant minority party, had more political opportunities, or had different private‐sector experiences, but because they harbor more conservative ideologies than their Democratic colleagues.     

Hung Parliaments and the Challenges for Westminster and Whitehall: How to Make Minority and Multiparty Governance Work (with Commentaries by Turnbull,Beith, Evans and Crick)

The return of a hung parliament at the 2010 general election is a serious possibility. But due to Westminster's limited recent experience of parliaments under ‘no overall control’ there is little institutional memory in Whitehall or Westminster, and even less public understanding, of what the implications would be. This article sets out to analyse the principal challenges that would be faced by government, opposition, parliament and the media in the event of a hung parliament. Drawing on experience from Canada, New Zealand and Scotland, we discuss the difficulties that may arise during the immediate government formation process and in the course of making minority or multiparty governance work on an ongoing basis. We conclude that a hung parliament need not undermine political stability or effective governance, but that all actors would need to adapt their behaviour and should therefore prepare carefully for this eventuality.     

Much ado about money and how to spend it! Analysing 40 years of annulment cases against the European Union Commission

This article analyses four decades of annulment cases against the European Commission brought before the European Court of Justice by dissatisfied Member States. Annulment cases are interpreted as incidents of a struggle between Member State governments and the Commission about policy decisions. Studying annulment cases for the first time in comparative perspective, three important patterns of variation are identified: with respect to the evolution of annulment cases over time, as regards the Member States as plaintiffs and in view of policy fields. Subsequently the data are interpreted on the basis of structure, agency and policy field specific explanatory mechanisms. Leaving the aggregate level, the two policy areas that account for more than 80 per cent of annulments are analysed: EU agriculture and competition policy. In the vast majority of cases, the dominant rationale behind annulments is not national objections to the supranational exercise of delegated powers per se or in specific policies (as most structural theories would expect) but to the way the Commission uses these competences to restrict how national governments may allocate European or national funding.     

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

In recent studies of public management reform in France, Italy, and Spain inspired by historical institutionalism, the Napoleonic tradition is cast as a causal factor whose overwhelming strength explains how these countries' reforms proceed and finish. This symposium pursues the same research interest in the politics of public management reform and goal of understanding how reforms begin, proceed, and finish in these countries. However, the features of this research project include (1) a focus on instances of public management policymaking, (2) original research on public management reform episodes in each country, and (3) explanatory research arguments that place causation within events. Based on a comparison of explanatory research arguments developed in each case study, the symposium's conclusion extends earlier institutional processualist accounts of causal tendencies of public management policymaking and offers a critique of the historical institutionalist studies mentioned earlier.