Ideas and actors in policy processes: where is the interaction?

Several influential frameworks in the field of policy analysis explicitly acknowledge that the role of ideas is as important as the role of actors in analyzing and understanding policy and policy change. An issue of principal interest in this body of literature concerns the interaction between ideas and actors. This article argues that, regardless of important contributions from previous research, the literature can be enriched by new analytical tools that further our understanding of the complex interplay between ideas and actors in policy-making. The article outlines a dynamic approach to policy analysis, which has proven fruitful in producing high quality empirical research in a Swedish case of policy on prostitution. Three new analytical dimensions are specified and operationalized: (1) the political institutionalization of frames, analyzing how the influence and content of ideas change over space and time in policy-making; (2) the mechanisms of institutionalization and assignment of jurisdiction through which ideas become part of the political context and work restricting and enabling for actors; and (3) risk-taking and limitation as unintended consequences of actors' involvement and strategic action in the construction of meaning.     

Policy Diffusion and Policy Transfer in Comparative Welfare State Research

For many years, comparative welfare state research has followed a ‘methodological nationalism’ in the sense that countries were treated as independent units. Yet the recent ‘spatial turn’ in comparative politics has also influenced welfare state research. For some years now, the field has been witnessing a growing interest in questions about interdependencies and policy diffusion between countries. In this article, we provide a structured overview of the state of the art in the policy diffusion and transfer literature that deals specifically with social policy. We present and critically evaluate existing theoretical concepts and quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches that enable the analysis of interdependencies between countries. Moreover, we summarize the empirical findings of quantitative and qualitative studies on the diffusion and transfer of social policy, from some pioneering studies to the latest findings. Against this background we point out what we believe to be promising avenues for future research. We focus on five areas: theoretical work on the mechanisms underlying diffusion and transfer; methodological approaches; the impact of domestic institutions and policy characteristics on social policy diffusion and transfer; programme‐specific dynamics; and the systematic combination of horizontal and vertical interdependencies.     

Global Research Integrity in Relation to the United States' Research-Integrity Infrastructure

Recent global attention to research integrity has led to international meetings and the development of international policies and guidelines. The United States's infrastructure for fostering research integrity (policy, instruction, oversight) has usefully supported these international initiatives. The United States cannot and should not, however, expect other national and global systems to match exactly its approach to research integrity.     

From New Labour to Rudd/Gillard – transferring social policy

ABSTRACT

From 2007 to 2010, there were national Labour governments in Britain and Australia, the longest and only third time this had occurred since the second World War. The period of New Labour was closing in the UK, and in Australia the Rudd government came to power after 11 years in opposition, directly influenced by the, at times, trailblazing UK Labour government. In the domain of social policy, New Labour was a source of policy inspiration and transfer. Specifically, the Rudd/Gillard governments borrowed heavily its ‘social exclusion’ agenda, and also the use of ‘compacts’ with the third sector. This article examines the policy diffusion and transfer between the UK and Australia, and in doing so offers critical insights into the policy transfer literature. The article examines the reasons for the Australian Labor Party's adoption of these policies, and links this to wider dilemmas and identity crisis that are afflicting centre-left governments across the globe.     

Understanding how globalisation and restructuring affect women's lives: implications for comparative policy analysis

Globalisation and neo–liberal restructuring have transformed social policy and social services in many countries over the past two decades. Among the various impacts on different societies, one commonality is that many of the costs of restructuring are being picked up by women. In the last decade, feminist scholars have developed a critique of the effects of restructuring on the public and private lives of women, effects which are conspicuously absent from many discussions of restructuring. This article presents several conceptual ingredients for a framework that can facilitate a comparative understanding of restructuring and its effects on women at both global and local levels. Canada and China are used to illustrate the utility of such an approach to comparative policy analysis. The article contributes to a growing body of feminist literature on changing regimes of citizenship. It adds to the scholarship on comparative policy analysis by developing a research approach that is grounded in the experiences of women and is attentive to global and local politics. We argue that understanding just how restructuring affects different groups of women is essential for developing analyses that can cross national boundaries and challenge policies that reproduce conditions that oppress women.     

Media coverage and issue visibility: State legislative responses to school bullying

Dealing with the schoolyard bully is an age-old problem; however, legislators have only recently tackled it at the state level. This study examines the adoption of anti-bullying policies from the policy diffusion and innovation perspective with an emphasis on the role of print media coverage. The study contributes to the policy diffusion literature by examining both national and local media coverage as conduits for diffusion and adds to the expanding views of the diffusion process beyond the traditional geographic proximity argument. Further, it provides the first examination of an emerging policy area important to education policy scholars. The findings show issue saliency via national media coverage drives policy adoption beyond any geographic proximity.     

Value orientations of social welfare policy structures

Substantial literature exists around the variation of welfare policy development in liberal democracies. The contrast of the American welfare state to those in Europe has sparked significant analytical literature about which factors are most significant in the variation. The literature extensively examines many of these factors but has neglected the significance of social values. This article discusses values and policy development as a foundation for further studies linking specific values to policy and institutional development. First, I discuss theorists who have identified value orientation as significant to welfare state variation; second, I review the major comparative welfare state literature. Finally, I discuss the major variation categories through the lens of social values by identifying the significant value orientation of sample policy structures. Comparative welfare state literature benefits from elucidating the values orientation of welfare policies that define the welfare state typological categories. Including the role of social values in welfare state comparisons promotes greater understanding of the origins and trajectory of current policy. Key Practitioner Message: ● Increase understanding of welfare state variation factors; ● Frame questions about social values reflected in social policy.     

How different forms of policy learning influence each other: case studies from Austrian innovation policy-making

This paper investigates the question whether different forms of policy learning influence each other. The focus is on relationships between different forms of policy learning, which are explored on the basis of case study research in the field of research, technology and innovation policy-making in Austria. Methods utilised are expert interviews and document analysis besides literature and media recherché. With the goal to better understand the mechanisms behind learning processes, different forms of knowledge utilisation are linked to organisation types. The analysis suggests that the introduction of radical policy innovations was possible because different forms of learning were mutually beneficial and enabled actors to reach their goals. Learning about how to obtain political goals provided opportunities to increase the leverage of learning on policy instruments and goals, whilst insights into policies from other countries were also utilised for political learning.     

International cooperation in stockpiles and tariffs for coping with oil supply disruptions

This paper provides a unified treatment of oil stockpiling and demand restraint as policy responses for enhancing energy security and examines the implications of recent changes in the structure and performance of the international oil market for the design of policies. These issues are addressed using a dynamic programming framework in which international policy actions of key oil-importing countries are modeled as a Nash dynamic game. Significant policy implications from the analysis include: (1) the result that, with realistic assumptions about disruption risks and inventory capacities, differences between noncooperative and coordinated stockpile policies appear to be minor and (2) significant mutual gains could be reaped from a modest degree of collective restraint on normal market oil demand. The broader role of international cooperation in enhancing energy security is also discussed.     

Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice

Parsell C, Jones A, Head B. Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice. Many welfare states throughout the industrialised world have recently implemented policies to achieve targeted reductions in homelessness. These policy and welfare initiatives differ across national contexts. They are similar, however, in moving away from social programmes that have essentially ‘managed homelessness’ towards interventions that seek to permanently end homelessness. Australia has recently adopted similar homelessness policy objectives. This article examines the manner in which Australian homelessness policy has been converging with international policy directions. More specifically, the article scrutinises Australian social programmes adopted from the UK and USA as a means to achieve strategic goals of reducing homelessness. It argues that although Australian homelessness policy objectives are converging with international policy, Australian programmes modelled on international successes do not have some of the elements shown elsewhere to be crucial for achieving sustainable reductions in homelessness. This may become central to explaining programme outcomes in future years. Key Practitioner Message: ?Strategies aimed at permanently ending homelessness represent a significant shift to contemporary professional practice;?Homelessness programmes internationally are now characterised by their branding or identification with evidence‐based models;?It is important to critically scrutinise these models, examining their core elements and the manner in which they are appropriated and incorporated across jurisdictions.     

Towards a Public Management Paradigm for Global Governance: An Analysis Based on an Issue-Actor-Mechanism Framework

The concept of global governance first appeared in research on international political governance in the early 1990s. At the time much of the theoretical research on global governance was to some extent isolated from the realities of world development, but since the beginning of the 21th century, global governance research has been turning to real world issues, We propose the construction, from a public management perspective, of a governance “i ssue-act or-mec ha ni sm” fram ework. T hi s sees postwar gl oba l governance practice as the old paradigm. The paper points out that the rapid global development after the end of the Cold War has had a crucial impact on the traditional governance paradigm, followed by the emergence of new global governance issues and changes in new governance actors resulting from the changing world of the last twenty or thirty years which have led to the failure of traditional governance mechanisms. These “issue-actor-mechanism” changes are closely interlocked, and hence require a new global governance paradigm that can reflect the complex interconnections of governance issues, actors and mechanisms. We thus need to reexamine and refresh our perceptions of the world and open up a new research agenda.     

Policy transfer,contagion effects and intra-party reform

ABSTRACT

This article examines the extent to which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) engaged in a process of policy transfer, learning from the UK Labour Party, when it reformed its federal leadership selection process in 2013. Bringing together insights from both the public policy and party organisations literature, the article develops an empirical framework for identifying instances of policy transfer (or contagion effects) that consists of three criteria: intention, motivation and implementation, which can examined through various types of empirical data (including interviews, documentary, and network analysis). Applying this framework to the ALP reforms, the article concludes that while it is possible to see evidence of a general shift to a similar, more inclusive selection process, policy transfer is more difficult to substantiate. There were clear differences in the specifics of how the process would work, and a temporal disjoint between when actors sought information about UK practices and when the reforms actually occurred.     

Housing disparities, caregiving, and their impact for older Puerto Ricans

The needs of older persons in historically oppressed racial and ethnic populations remain "invisible" in the public arena (Wallace & Villa, 1999). Understanding the ethnocultural factors that shape their housing needs is essential to effective, equitable policy formation and program planning. This article examines the impact of housing disparities, health status, and cultural patterns of caregiving in relation to older Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland. Following a literature review of the socio-economic, living arrangement, and cultural profiles of older Puerto Ricans, policy recommendations to advance adequate housing options for this population are provided. The article concludes with a discussion of Section 202 housing policies and how they can be adapted to the current and emerging population of older Puerto Ricans.     

In support of mothers’ employment: limits to policy convergence in the EU?

This article compares 11 Western European countries with respect to public policies that promote the employment of mothers: maternity and parental leave, childcare provisions and family-related tax credits and allowances. The goal of this analysis is to characterise trends in the development of these policies from the mid-1980s to the present and identify the degree of policy convergence in this area of social policy. The process of convergence is analysed along two sets of criteria: the amount and forms of provisions, and the coherence of policies (eligibility, funding mechanisms, locus of regulation and quality control). The analysis is informed by theories of welfare regimes that identify distinctive patterns in which national policies shape the employment of women: general family support, dual-earner families and market-oriented families. Findings of the study reveal limited development towards harmonisation of national social policies. Such resilience of national welfare regimes can be attributed to institutional path dependence, on the one hand, and to minimal EU efforts to harmonise social policies, on the other. The article suggests that integrating markets have so far had a limited effect on social policy development, but that there are positive signs that convergence is possible in the future.     

Major arms imports and the onset of civil and ethnic wars in the postcolonial world, 1956–1998: A preliminary reassessment

This study examines the effects of states’ major arms imports from major powers on the likelihood of civil and ethnic wars in the postcolonial world. Focusing on civil and ethnic wars, respectively, in postcolonial states from 1956 through 1998, this investigation reveals that major arms imports from major powers have no statistically significant effect on either civil or ethnic war onset, considering political, economic, demographic, and geographic factors. The results also demonstrate that there are some different causal mechanisms between the onset of civil and ethnic wars. Finally, this article discusses policy implications and suggests some directions of the further research.     

Economic liberalization in Egypt: A way to reduce the shadow economy?

This study examines the relationship between economic liberalization and the size of the shadow economy in Egypt. We use annual data from 1976 to 2013 and show that economic liberalization policies in Egypt have a statistically significant decreasing effect on the size of the shadow economy as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This effect is confirmed for both short- and long-term oriented economic liberalization policies. Based on our results, policies which promote trade and economic liberalization can reduce the extension of the shadow economy in Egypt. Therefore, we suggest conditioning international development assistance to Egypt on demonstrable policy actions with respect to economic liberalization.     

Success in agenda setting through failure in policymaking: Exploring a new policy venue in the Polish European Semester 2012–2022

The article presents the results of a case study based on participant observation of a policy venue which was established in Poland as part of the implementation of the European Semester (ES) in 2012. The long period (2012–2022) and the rich material collected by the insider in the studied venue (as a representative of over 30 civil society organisations affiliated to EAPN Poland) provide a unique opportunity to gain insight into the participation of social actors in the coordination of economic and social policy in the European Union after 2010. The main research question addressed in the article is: why did social actors gain influence on the agenda of the policy venue, but not on national social policy? Social actors participating in the European Semester in Poland, despite strong and competent representation in the policy venue under consideration, and despite their collaboration with other stakeholders, did not directly influence national poverty reduction policies. However, they strongly influenced the agenda of the policy venue, establishing poverty as a permanent item in the agenda of the subsequent ES cycles 2014–2019. The explanation of this course of action is the institutional framework of the policy venue studied in this article, the policy advocacy strategy adopted by the social actors within it in 2013–2015 and the institutional events triggered by the pandemic in 2020–2022.