Sebastian Sewerin

Last Name

Sewerin

First Name

Sebastian

ORCID

0000-0002-0349-948X

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Publications 1 - 10 of 18

The role of policy design in policy continuation and ratcheting-up of policy ambition
Sewerin, Sebastian; Fesenfeld, Lukas P.; Schmidt, Tobias (2023)
Policy and Society
Effectively addressing grand societal challenges like climate change and environmental degradation requires policy intervention that is not only continuous but also increasing in ambition over time. However, negative feedback could lead to policies being weakened or even discontinued after a while. An important but unresolved policy question, therefore, is whether policies can be deliberately designed to survive (i.e., to '' stick '') and, ideally, be replaced with more ambitious ones over time (i.e., to '' ratchet up ''). We bridge policy feedback and policy design scholarship to derive hypotheses on the effects of two policy design features-'' intensity '' (i.e., a measure of policies ' overall design) and '' specificity '' (i.e., a measure of policies ' targeted focus)-on policy (dis-)continuation and ratcheting-up (-down) of ambition. Focusing on policy design, we contribute to the theorization and empirical understanding of endogenous factors behind policy change. We test our hypotheses with an event history dataset of 627 low-carbon energy policies in eight developed countries. Conducting a multilevel survival analysis, we find statistically significant evidence of more intense policies being replaced with less intense ones, i.e., more intense policies lead to ratcheting-down of ambition. We also find that more specific policies are more likely to be replaced with more intense policies, i.e., more specific policies lead to ratcheting-up of ambition. Based on these novel insights, we discuss how policy design can navigate these complex dynamics. In this sense, our approach also contributes to the discussion about the '' forward-looking '' potential of the policy sciences.
Understanding Complex Policy Mixes: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges
Sewerin, Sebastian (2020)
Elgar Modern Guides ~ A Modern Guide to Public Policy
A key insight of contemporary studies of public policy is that solving complex policy problems usually requires effective policy mixes, that is, bundles or portfolios of different policy instruments (Howlett and del Rio, 2015) that share a common target or goal (Kern and Howlett, 2009) and that are, ideally, complementary or synergetic (Howlett and Rayner, 2018). The interest in such policy mixes is flourishing (Capano and Howlett, 2020), also in new academic communities such as sustainability transition or environmental governance studies (Kern et al., 2019; Morrison et al., 2020) where it is acknowledged that policy mixes are needed in order to address complex policy challenges related to a combination of market and system failures (Schmidt and Sewerin, 2019). There is, however, a growing disconnect in the literature between the theoretical-conceptual underpinning of policy mix studies and limited success in the development of common empirical approaches to study real-world policy mixes systematically. This disconnect is not entirely surprising given the degree of abstraction of theoretical-conceptual policy mix work and the fundamental challenge in policy analysis to measure the dependent variable – that is, policy or policy change – in a comparable and meaningful way (Howlett and Cashore, 2009; Schaffrin et al., 2015). For applied research into policy mixes, this tension creates practical challenges, namely, how to apply abstract conceptualizations of policy mix characteristics in a way that avoids conceptual stretching and how to assess the constituent parts of a policy mix systematically. Overcoming these challenges is necessary in order to produce generalizable empirical findings that have a relevance beyond a case-specific context. Therefore, this chapter argues for a bottom-up approach for studying policy mixes, which means applying a unified and comparable understanding and assessment of design characteristics of the constituent parts of policy mixes, namely, individual policies. This chapter briefly reviews the state-of-the-art of the burgeoning theoretical and conceptual literature on policy mixes and highlights the persistent empirical challenges researchers and practitioners face when aiming to analyse and understand complex real-world policy mixes.
European Environmental Policy at a Time of Crisis
Burns, Charlotte; Tobin, Paul; Sewerin, Sebastian (2018)
The Impact of the Economic Crisis on European Environmental Policy
Understanding policy dynamics: Insights from policy design and policy feedback
Sewerin, Sebastian (2022)
Governing complex societal problems: The impact of private on public regulation through technological change
Schmid, Nicolas; Hälg, Léonore; Sewerin, Sebastian; et al. (2021)
Regulation & Governance
When addressing complex societal problems, public regulation is increasingly complemented by private regulation. Extant literature has provided valuable insights into the effectiveness of such complex governance structures, with most empirical studies focusing on how public regulation influences private regulation. Conversely, the impact of private on public regulation is less well studied. Here, we investigate this impact with a focus on technological change as possible mechanism. Based on a case study of energy efficiency in buildings in Switzerland, we find evidence of a symbiotic interaction between public and private regulation that leads to ratcheting-up of regulatory stringency. We identify technological change as the mechanism linking private and public regulation. We discuss the relevance of our findings for governance literature and regulators.
Designing policy for the long term: agency, policy feedback and policy change
Sewerin, Sebastian; Béland, Daniel; Cashore, Benjamin (2020)
Policy Sciences
The politics of phasing out fossil fuels: party positions and voter reactions in Norway
Egli, Florian Manuel; Knecht, Nielja; Sigurdsson, Fride; et al. (2025)
Climate Policy
To mitigate climate change, fossil fuels need to be phased out, but political parties may fear a voter backlash when implementing the required policies. We investigate whether such backlash occurred in Norway, a multi-party democracy reliant on a large petroleum sector. Specifically, we analyse whether the loss of jobs in the petroleum industry due to the 2014 crash of the international oil price has influenced political support for the petroleum sector. Using data from party manifestos, we find that party positions on the petroleum sector remained constant over time even during an industry downturn. Pro-petroleum parties capitalized on the oil price shock by increasing their vote shares. However, the reaction remained local and confined to parties whose voters are not overwhelmingly concerned with other subjects, such as immigration. The voter gains enjoyed by pro-petroleum parties did not arise at the expense of pro-fossil fuel phaseout parties; instead, it was parties with an ambiguous position on the issue that incurred losses. Hence, multi-party politics of fossil fuel phaseouts are complex and taking a pro-phaseout position may not be politically costly.
Measuring the Impact of the Crisis on European Environmental Policy
Burns, Charlotte; Tobin, Paul; Sewerin, Sebastian (2018)
The Impact of the Economic Crisis on European Environmental Policy
Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback
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.
Toward a Comparative Measure of Climate Policy Output
Schaffrin, André; Sewerin, Sebastian; Seubert, Sibylle (2015)
Policy Studies Journal

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