Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform

Recent studies on institutional theory and the public policy field called for efforts to pry open the black box of institutional and policy change. This article offers a response to this call. It demonstrates that historical and discursive institutionalist approaches are complementary to explain how and why institutional change occurs. In addition, it shows how these approaches can add value to and benefit from the public policy and administration fields that seek to explain policy change and success. In particular, it emphasizes the interactions between structure and agency that contribute to the change. The empirical finding is based on qualitative analysis of central banking reform in Turkey. It suggests that institutional and policy change is more likely to occur when policy entrepreneurs, with joint membership in domestic and transnational policy communities, mediate various ideas and discourse within and among these communities in a punctuated institutional equilibrium.     

THE GOVERNANCE OF FINANCIAL REGULATORY REFORM: THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

The dominant perspective in the literature linking governance, globalization and public policy argues that globalization undercuts state capacity, weakening a government's ability to effectively regulate its domestic affairs. This paper shows otherwise with special reference to the Australian experience in financial regulation. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the Australian state is weak and cannot adopt anticipatory industrial policies. This paper argues that the adoption of the ‘twin peaks' model of financial regulatory arrangements is an example of the existence of government‐led steering in Australia which can adopt a proactive approach to financial regulation by steering and coordinating policy networks. ‘Governance through hierarchy’ in the financial services industry may be a function of the government's political entrepreneurship; its skill in setting and implementing an agenda; and an ability to create new policy communities and networks.