What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Una perspectiva que despierta cada vez mayor interés por parte de administradores públicos, políticos y analistas es el de las llamadas políticas públicas. Se trata de un camino relativamente nuevo, que permite, por una parte, observar y analizar los asuntos públicos desde un ángulo singular vinculado a la transformación de la acción gubernamental y, por otra, idear mecanismos para atender o dar respuesta a lo que se percibe como problemas de orden público. Como es sabido, los problemas públicos son complejos y multideterminados. Su análisis requiere de herramientas que van más allá de lo que comúnmente ofrecen disciplinas como la sociología, la economía, la ciencia política, la administración pública o la psicología por sí solas. De hecho, lo que busca la “ciencia de las políticas”, como la bautizó uno de sus padres fundadores, Harold Laswell (1992: 105), es integrar los conocimientos provenientes de diversas disciplinas bajo un enfoque cuyo objetivo es advertir y “solucionar” problemas. Recientemente, el académico británico Wayne Parsons se ha dado a la tarea de reunir en una sola publicación los aspectos más relevantes del conocimiento que se ha producido alrededor de las políticas públicas. Bajo el título Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis, Parsons da cuenta de los temas y debates teóricos centrales de este enfoque, además de aportar múltiples referentes bibliográficos y detalles sobre estudios de caso que ilustran la riqueza de las políticas públicas, pues muestran no sólo cómo se aplican sino, sobre todo, qué explicaciones y respuestas pueden brindar. A ello se suma uno de los rasgos más valiosos del libro: poner en claro los dos ángulos de las políticas públicas que, con frecuencia, son ignorados en la bibliografía sobre la materia, a saber: el análisis del proceso de las políticas, por una parte y, por la otra, el análisis en y para el proceso de políticas, o, lo que es lo mismo, el uso del conocimiento y técnicas analíticas para el diseño, implementación y evaluación de las políticas públicas. Aunque ambos están intrínsecamente ligados, su especificidad determina su naturaleza y fin. Mientras el análisis del proceso de las políticas tiene fines

Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis

The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent research area that has grown strongly since the early 2000s. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context of the EU’s eastern enlargement. A small number of theoretically informed book-length studies of the EU’s influence on the Central and Eastern European candidate countries have provided a generalisable conceptual framework for this research area, drawing on the debate between rationalist institutionalist and constructivist institutionalist approaches in International Relations and Comparative Politics. This framework makes these studies highly compatible with analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, with which they also share one key empirical finding, namely that the impact of the EU on candidate countries is differential across countries and issue areas. At the same time, the theoretical implications of these findings appear more clear-cut than in the case of the Europeanisation of member states: rationalist institutionalism, with its focus on the external incentives underpinning EU conditionality and the material costs incurred by domestic veto players, appears well-suited to explaining variation in the patterns of Europeanisation in candidate countries. A very recent development within this research agenda is the focus on the Europeanisation of new member states. While the study of the EU’s impact during the early years of membership was hitherto primarily a subfield of analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, it has now become an extension of studies of candidate countries by analysing the impact of accession on the dynamics of pre-accession Europeanisation and how durable and distinctive the patterns of candidate Europeanisation are in the post-accession stage.

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Europeanisation in new member and candidate states

This paper sets out a framework for extending the study of Europeanisation in the existing European Union to the effects of the EU in central and eastern Europe. It starts with the prima facie case that the effects on public policy are similar in nature to those observed in the current EU-15, but broader and deeper in scope. The applicants are taking on all the obligations of EU membership, so the domestic effects of transferring policies and institutions to them are likely to be comparable with the effects of the EU on its current member-states, even though the political relationship is different. Europeanisation mechanisms identified in the literature on the EU also operate in the applicant countries, given that they are subject to substantially the same pressures for adaptation. However, there are two major differences: the first is the wider scope of the EU’s agenda in the candidate countries, which goes far beyond the requirements of membership for the existing member states. The second is the political context of a power relationship between the EU and the candidates that is based on conditionality for accession. The asymmetry of power between the applicants and the Union gives the EU more coercive routes of influence in the applicants’ domestic policy-making processes than in the existing EU because the applicants face additional conditions that current members do not. But there are also constraints on how the EU uses its potential influence in the applicant countries, in particular the multiple dimensions of uncertainty built into the accession process. Heather Grabbe Centre for European Reform 29 Tufton Street London, SW1P 3QL United Kingdom Tel: 020-7233-1199 Fax: 020-7233-1117 heather@cer.org.uk

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Europeanisation Goes East: Power and Uncertainty in the EU Accession Process

What does ‘Europeanization’ mean? How does it affect domestic politics and policies? More particularly, how is it evident in the ideas, interests, behaviour, and settings of domestic politics? Is ‘Europeanization’ an irreversible process? Does it mean convergence across Europe? How and why do differences remain? These questions are at the heart of this volume. ‘Europeanization’ has gained widespread currency amongst scholars as a newly fashionable term to denote a variety of changes within European politics and international relations. Interestingly, other branches of the social sciences use the term much less often. Yet, the faddish use of ‘Europeanization’ in different contexts can easily obscure its substantive meaning. The purpose of this volume is to bring recognized experts in the field together to distinguish the conceptual meaning of ‘Europeanization’ and to analyse its empirical implications. In order to set the context, this chapter seeks to chart the uses of the term ‘Europeanization’ and to clarify how it will be used in the rest of the volume. The aim is to provide some structure to the potential confusion of the uninitiated reader, whilst also mapping out key research areas. ‘Europeanization’—like ‘globalization’—can be a useful entry-point for greater understanding of important changes occurring in our politics and society. The obligation of the researcher is to give it a precise meaning. ‘Europeanization’ has little value if it merely repeats an existing notion. It is not a simple synonym for European regional integration or even convergence, though it does overlap with aspects of both. As a term for the social sciences, it can range over history, culture, politics, society, and economics. It is a process of structural change, variously affecting actors and institutions, ideas and interests. In a maximalist sense, the structural change that it entails must fundamentally be of a phenomenon exhibiting similar attributes to those that predominate in, or are closely identified with, ‘Europe’. Minimally, ‘Europeanization’ involves a response to the policies of the European Union (EU).1 Significantly, even in the latter context, the

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Introduction: in the name of "Europe"

This article outlines both the overall structure of the INTEREURO Project (Comparative Research on Interest Group Politics in Europe) and the theoretical foci, research activities and data sets generated by its several modules. We provide this description for two purposes. First, it provides a necessary backdrop for understanding the remaining essays in this special issue. Importantly, we do not believe that the methodological challenges we faced are unique to the INTEREURO Project. Rather, they characterize any large-N research project on interest representation. Thus, we hope that these articles based on the INTEREURO Project are useful to a broad range of scholars. Our second purpose is to describe for the wider community of interest organization scholars the INTEREURO Project and the data generated thereby.

The INTEREURO Project: Logic and structure

The article describes the emergence of a modern civil society in the context of democratic transition in Slovenia. Empirical research has shown that modern interest groups are developing and gaining sway in the policy-making process and, moreover, that some institutionalized forms of consultative politics are becoming part of the new political system. Political parties still dominate in interest intermediation. The role of interest groups in policy-making and the types of emerging policy network vary considerably among policy fields. European networking helps to strengthen the visibility and influence of interest groups in the policy-making process.

Organized interests in the policy-making process in Slovenia

The paper presents the Delphi method and tests its usefulness when searching for a consensus on definitions, especially in a particular social science field. Based on an overview of the characteristics and uses of the Delphi method, a special Delphi design for searching for minimal common definitions of globalisation, Europeanisation and internationalisation in higher education and their mutual relationships is presented in detail. While the method proved valuable, its strengths and weaknesses are also discussed. Finally, ideas for adjusting the Delphi method are proposed.

Delphi Method: Strengths and Weaknesses

This article addresses two key questions about the convergence of education policies in the European Union (EU). How does the open method of coordination (OMC), a new governance instrument for the ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/eerj.2010.9.3.345

Education Policy Convergence through the Open Method of Coordination: Theoretical Reflections and Implementation in ‘old’ and ‘new’ National Contexts

Scholarly research into Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia has shown that the idiosyncrasies of the new EU countries (especially with respect to institutionalizing and centralizing the co-ordination of core executives in managing EU affairs at home) persist. They are complemented by trends toward convergence (such as growing co-ordination efforts and a common tendency: that of the prime minister to be the centre of co-ordination). In this article external Europeanization pressures, national administrative traditions (the legacies of both pre-communist and communist systems), and the patterns of party competition that cause variations in politico-administrative relations, are tested as possible explanatory variables of differences seen in the three countries when managing EU affairs. While national administrative traditions play similar roles to those seen in old(er) member states by filtering the EU‘s impacts, the effect of patterns of party competition on politico-administrative relations when managing EU affairs has been filtered by the accession states’ national priorities of integrating with the EU.

Danica Fink-Hafner

Papers

The INTEREURO Project: Logic and structure

Organized interests in the policy-making process in Slovenia

Delphi Method: Strengths and Weaknesses

Education Policy Convergence through the Open Method of Coordination: Theoretical Reflections and Implementation in ‘old’ and ‘new’ National Contexts

Europeanization in managing eu affairs: between divergence and convergence, a comparative study of estonia, hungary and slovenia