Journal: Policy Studies Journal

Abbreviation

Policy stud. j.

Publisher

Wiley

Journal Volumes

ISSN

0190-292X
1541-0072

Description

Filters

2019 - 201912020 - 20243
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Publications 1 - 4 of 4
  • Participation in multiple policy venues in governance of Chile's Santiago Metropolitan Region: When institutional attributes can make the difference
    Item type: Journal Article
    Arias‐Yurisch, Karina; Retamal‐Soto, Karina; Ramos‐Fuenzalida, Camila; et al. (2024)
    Policy Studies Journal
    The complexity of metropolitan polycentric governance is still challenging scholars and practitioners, who have mostly been engaged in a normative debate in which scant attention has been paid to the coexistence and interdependence of institutional solutions. The ecology of games framework (EGF) can be used to remedy this gap. By incorporating the analysis of institutional variation into EGF propositions about venues' interdependence, this article examines the mechanisms of metropolitan governance configuration resulting from institutional complexity at the inter-municipal level. Provincial forums, municipal associations, and inter-municipal agreements are the policy venues studied in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile. Official documents reporting formal agreements in 2017–2021 help to capture the inter-municipal governance network to which we apply exponential random graph models (ERGMs). The results show the positive effects of mandated provincial venues on inter-municipal ties and the absence of the effect of self-organized municipal associations, tendencies that prevail even when incorporating other relevant covariates into the models. These results nourish the EGF debate about interdependencies between coexisting policy venues, emphasizing the role of the different institutional attributes framing the policy venues and the effects of these differences on governance formation.
  • Boundary Spanning Through Engagement of Policy Actors in Multiple Issues
    Item type: Journal Article
    Brandenberger, Laurence; Ingold, Karin; Fischer, Manuel; et al. (2022)
    Policy Studies Journal
    Prominent current policy problems such as climate change, migration, or the financial crisis embrace a multitude of issues that are tackled within single- or multiple-policy subsystems. However, interdependencies among actors that arise due to their multi-issue engagement are often discounted when studying policy processes, including learning dynamics and alliance or trust formation among actors engaged in multiple issues. Various issues compete for actors' attention, and actors need to choose an appropriate set of issues to deal with given their scarce resources. In this, why do actors engage in multiple issues? We present an innovative inductive approach that identifies policy issues related to Swiss water politics and actors involved therein. We use a two-mode exponential random graph model to estimate actors' multi-issue activity. Results show that 39% of actors engage in more than one water-related issue and that cross-subsystem and homophily clustering and clustered issue popularity drive this issue engagement.
  • Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback
    Item type: Journal Article
    Schmid, Nicolas; Sewerin, Sebastian; Schmidt, Tobias (2019)
    Policy Studies Journal
    Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory‐building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy‐induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed‐methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal‐typical trajectories of policy change.
  • Policy change through negotiated agreements: The case of greening Swiss agricultural policy
    Item type: Journal Article
    Metz, Florence; Lieberherr, Eva; Schmucki, Aline; et al. (2021)
    Policy Studies Journal
    Negotiated agreements are a promising pathway for policy change. This paper revisits and extends characteristics of negotiated agreements using the Advocacy Coalition Framework. We focus on two characteristics of negotiated agreements that previous literature has not explicitly addressed. First, we scrutinize the role of policy core and secondary policy beliefs in actor constellations. Secondly, we address partial success, that is, the notion that actors concede on some points, but in return succeed in others. We investigate these two characteristics in the 2014 reform of Swiss agricultural policy. Based on cluster and social network analysis, we exemplify how negotiated agreements embedded in a participatory policy process lead to a surprising level of policy change by promoting agricultural production practices with an intended positive effect on the environment. We show that rather than coalitions based on policy core beliefs, the formation of groups of actors based on secondary beliefs who span across the coalitions formed the basis for a negotiated agreement. Green and conservative groups were both able to achieve partial success. We conclude that insights from this exemplary case study should revive the concept and initialize a research agenda on negotiated agreements as a pathway for change in domestic policymaking.
Publications 1 - 4 of 4