The Exoteric Politics of Bank Mergers in Australia

The Australian government's 1997 policy ban on in-market mergers among the largest four domestic banks has been a key intervention shaping the direction of bank consolidation in Australia as such mergers significantly accelerated from 1997 through 1999 in developed economies. This paper will show that the knowledge about the social and economic impacts of the bank mergers and the Treasurer's merger veto power made the policy debate exoteric (political and public) by including interests outside the banking policy community (i.e., interest organisations of employees, customers, and farmers, as well as political parties, and the broad public). Thus, the merger policy discussions were not esoteric, technical and limited to a small number of influential public and private sector institutions leaving policy discussions vulnerable to be structured to favour the interests of large, financial firms over other interests. This, in turn, created significant pressure on government for to retain the policy. The paper also outlines the significance of the domestic political conflicts and electoral politics in a world of global finance.     

How can interactions among interdependent structures,institutions, and agents inform financial stability? What we have still to learn from global financial crisis

How national financial systems can avoid costly banking crises is a persistent and intriguing question for institutional scholars and policymakers worldwide. In this context, although considerable research has recently focused on structural, institutional, and agency-level factors in explaining the global financial crisis, it mostly offered each of these explanatory factors in isolation, thus leaving interactions among these interrelated factors incomplete. Building on a deviant case study on Australian exceptionalism examined in a comparative perspective, this paper introduces an integrative framework that views financial stability as a function of these interactions that reinforce prudent financial behavior. In doing so, it offers an insight into the previous research on institutional complementarity and how to guard against similar crises in the future. It suggests that financial stability (instability) is more likely when interactions among structural and institutional complementarities and agents reinforce conservative (opportunistic) banking.     

The importance of policy entrepreneurs in developing countries: A systematic review and future research agenda

How and with what effect policy entrepreneurship occurs is a persistent and intriguing question for scholars of public policy and administration and political science. So far, the main interest has been on policy entrepreneurship in developed countries rather than developing countries, which largely remains a black box. Adopting a systematic approach to reviewing the literature, this article aims to fill this void. It investigates when, why, and how policy and institutional reforms in developing countries take place, with special reference to the role of policy entrepreneurs. It reviews selected articles published in the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Social Science Citation Index database from 1984 to 2018. It aims to show the current state of empirical and theoretical knowledge about policy entrepreneurship in developing countries and persistent knowledge gaps. The present review contributes to the body of knowledge on this topic in three main ways. First, we provide a comprehensive review of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. Second, we consolidate existing research in the political science, public policy and administration, and politicial economy disciplines. Third, we establish connections between fragmented literatures, identify gaps between different research streams, and suggest promising paths for future research on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries.     

Policy learning and policy change: learning from research citations

Although the seminal article by Bennett and Howlett (Policy Sciences 25: 275–294, 1992) on policy learning and change has been one of the top five most cited articles in Policy Sciences, no attempt has yet been made to provide a citation analysis showing how its impact has evolved over time. This paper reports the findings of a study that provides a systematic analysis of the citing articles published in academic journals during the period 1992–2017.