Showing papers in "Journal of Public Policy in 2000"

National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional Veto Points

Abstract: The repercussions of European integration on national policymaking have increasingly drawn scholarly attention, yet, the determinants of national adaptation to the European Union are still poorly understood. This article takes issue with evolving arguments which grant crucial importance to the "goodness of fit" between European provisions and national rules and practices for explaining the degree of national adjustment to European requirements. In the case of the implementation of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the country with the greatest misfit, the United Kingdom, adapted more successfully than the country which only needed incremental adjustments, Germany. The German record was also worse than the Dutch, despite the higher adaptation pressure of the latter. The case study suggests that the number of institutional veto points that central governments has to face when imposing European provisions on their constituencies, ultimately tend to shape the pace and quality of implementation, regardless of differential degrees in the goodness of fit.

Policy Regimes and Policy Change

Abstract: The evolution of public policies in the United States has been characterized as a process involving long periods of stability followed by abrupt episodes of substantial change. In this project, we identify strands in the literature and synthesize policy theories into a policy regime model useful in explaining both stability and change. This model focuses on power arrangements, policy paradigms and organization - factors that operate to maintain long periods of stability. We demonstrate how stressors - catastrophic events, economic crises, demographic changes, shifts in modes of production, and others - impact policy regimes and create pressures for change. We argue that the process of policy regime change - the abrupt episodes of substantial change - occurs with changes in the policy paradigm, alterations in patterns of power and shifts in organizational arrangements. The old policy regime disintegrates and the new one emerges with a new policy paradigm, new patterns of power and new organizational arrangements that operate to maintain long periods of stability.

Beyond Legalism? Policy Ideas, Implementation Styles and Emulation-Based Convergence in Canadian and U.S. Environmental Policy

Abstract: Past studies of the dynamics of U.S.-Canada environmental policy and policy-making have found little evidence of 'weak' convergence in this sector; that is, of Canadian policy moving towards the U.S. model of adversarial legalism, an implementation style based upon procedural policy instruments such as action-forcing statutes, citizen suits, and judicial activism. However, recent efforts at de-regulation and the reformation of government in the U.S., and moves towards multi-stakeholder policy-making in Canada, have altered the standard against which trends towards Canadian-American convergence must be assessed. These reforms have moved the U.S. environmental regulatory system closer to that existing in Canada, in which regulations and other elements of the environmental regime are developed through negotiation rather than litigation. Since Canadian environmental implementation has also been altered over the same period, however, it is argued that a form of 'strong' convergence is emerging, in which both countries are moving not towards each other but towards a third, common, style, that associated with the development of self-regulation and voluntary initiatives under the influence of New Public Management ideas and principles. i. Canadian and U.S. Environmental Policy Dynamics' Comparisons of Canadian and the U.S. policy-making provide good material for the study of policy convergence, as the two countries share similar languages, closely integrated economic and socio-cultural systems, broadly similar democratic political institutions, and other forms of policy-relevant interactions such as unrestricted travel and access of each others citizens to educational, media, and other policy forums. Prima facie, these linkages make a strong case for the expectation that

Framing Welfare Reform in Affluent Societies: Rendering Restructuring More Palatable?

Abstract: This paper investigates the conditions under which political framing can render welfare restructuring more palatable. I start by asking two research questions. What are the necessary (albeit perhaps insufficient) conditions that allow leaders successfully to frame welfare reform? To what extent are these conditions evident across welfare regimes? I identify four variables that affect leaders' opportunities for framing social policy: (1) extant frames, (ii) actors, (iii) institutions and (iv) policy arena. After examining the four dominant types of frames found across affluent societies, I review the discursive politics surrounding The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act as a case where all four conditions for framing welfare reform coalesced.

Regulatory Federalism: EU Environmental Regulation in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: This article analyzes the development of environmental regulation in the European Union from the perspective of comparative federalism. It presents a theory of regulatory federalism that explains how the basic institutional structures of federal-type polities shape the development of regulatory policy. The article assesses the theory by systematically comparing the development of environmental regulation in the EU, the US, Canada and Australia. The analysis suggests that the EU's institutional structure encourages the development of a US-style pattern of regulation, characterized by detailed, non-discretionary rules and a litigious approach to enforcement.

Divergence in Growth in Post-Communist Countries

Abstract: The paper analyzes the divergence of economic growth in post-communist countries along geographical lines. It examines the role of culture, manifested in the form of civil society, social capital, trust, religious and business ethics, and historical experience, in the economic growth. Multivariate regression, a path (structural equation) model, and sensitivity analysis are used to determine direct and indirect effects of culture, policy, corruption, war, initial economic conditions, and ethnicity on the economic growth in 28 post-communist countries in 1990-1998. The statistical analyses show that a cultural index, which reflects civil society strength, the proportion of Catholics and Protestants in the population and historical experience, has the strongest effect on growth, economic reform, macroeconomic stabilization policy and corruption. The former communist countries shared the same type of economic system before the collapse of communism. Communism rule in Eastern and Central Europe, Mongolia, and the former Soviet Union ended around the end of the 198os and the beginning of the l990s. Governments in these countries abandoned communist policies and initiated economic reforms. The scope of the reforms and decline of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have varied significantly among postcommunist countries. The economic reforms have been deeper and more comprehensive and economic decline less severe in Central European countries than in the former Soviet Republics, with the exception of the Baltic States. This paper analyzes the divergence of the growth levels in postcommunist countries in 1998 compared with 1989. The analysis covers * I would like to thank David Armor, Gary Becker, Peter Boettke, Francis Fukuyama, Don Lavoie, Seymour Martin Lipset, Richard Rose, Roger Stough, and the four anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on various stages of this project. However, responsibility for any remaining mistakes is my own.

Decision-making in the Swiss Energy Policy Elite

Abstract: This paper analyzes choices concerning the increase of energy efficiency made by the Swiss energy policy elite; it is based on interviews with 240 of its members. It starts from the assumption that choices depend on characteristics of the actors involved (their membership in policy coalitions, their core beliefs etc.), the characteristics of the instruments (in particular their familiarity and the extent to which they impose constraints upon the coalitions involved) and of the policy context (policy equilibrium vs. rapid change). Depending on these characteristics, actors are expected to make choices which are to a greater or lesser degree value-rational or instrumentally rational. The results of the present analysis indicate that, rather than being exclusive alternatives, the two types of rationality often complement each other in choices among policy instruments. We hope that they provide a promising opening in the often rather sterile debate between advocates of the rational choice approach and practitioners of more classical approaches of policy analysis.

Business and Political Dimensions in Disaster Management

Abstract: A considerable and growing body of crisis management literature seeks to help business managers address disasters. Notwithstanding, the business literature on crisis management fails fully to understand the policy and political aspects of business disasters, and concentrates on prescriptive, managerial issues that show disregard and sometimes disdain for plural democracy. We illustrate our argument with a review of the existing crisis management literature, and three case studies: the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Jack in the Box E. Coli outbreak, and the crash of Valujet flight 592. We find that the primary gap in the crisis management literature is its failure to understand the motivations of countervailing interest groups and the facts that mobilize them to take action. We argue that the lessons derived from these cases are equally applicable to North American, European and Asian business crises.

School Accountability – An Elusive Policy Solution: The Israeli Experience in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Politics of accountability theory contends that policymakers are unlikely to adopt external accountability policies. Contrary to the theory, many countries have adopted external school accountability policies, while Israel has not. The disequilibrium theory of policy selection is used to analyze differences among countries in school accountability policymaking. I find that the symbolic potency of policies helps to explain these differences. The symbolic potency of external school accountability depends on the extent to which school performance is perceived as a problem, the degree to which powerful stakeholders are affected by the problem and some broader political and administrative factors. Where client stakeholders are stirred out of their apathy, the education policy subsystem will adopt school accountability policies. However, preliminary evidence reveals implementation obstacles that may render these policies ineffective.

The European Union Budget, the Balanced Budget Rule and the Development of Common European Policies

Abstract: The European Union budget is subject to a strict annual balanced budget rule. Given different types of expenditure within the budget, this rule has most effect on - and is most threatened by - spending on the Common Agricultural Policy. This article examines the merits of applying a balanced budget rule to the EU budget and explores the links between the budget and the CAP. The presence of the rule also forced the EU to improve its financial management. The 1999 CAP reform is examined. The presence of a pre-agreed spending limit on the CAP forced changes to be made to the initial CAP reform agreement in order to comply with this limit, although political bargaining was critical in shaping the changes. The general perception is that the CAP drives the European budget. The budget, if not driving the CAP, imposes an increasingly tight constraint on its reform.

Can the State Create Cooperation?: Problems of Reforming the Labor Supply in France

Abstract: Governments in the advanced industrial countries increasingly rely on supply-side reforms to intervene in the economy. This article examines one such reform, that of vocational education and training in France, whose successful implementation required that private actors cooperate not with the state, but with each other. As demonstrated through an empirical analysis of two employment zones, theories of institutional design that underscore the necessity of sanctioning cannot explain the successful emergence of cooperation, because new sanctioning regimes lack credibility under the uncertain conditions of economic reform. The primary obstacle to successful implementation of these reforms is uncertainty about the consequences of reciprocal cooperation, and the article highlights the mutual roles of states and employers' associations in overcoming this uncertainty. Active collaboration between policymakers and employers' associations, which have uniquely good access to private information about firms, is necessary to enable state policies to target those firms which are the most likely potential cooperators. If the real world worked like Robert Axelrod's (1984) famous computer tournament, then the provision of public goods would be an easy thing: actors using cooperative strategies would jointly benefit from their interaction with other cooperators in the population, and the cooperative cluster would by evolution outpace its greedy, short-sighted competitors. For actual governments trying to convince real private actors to cooperate with each other in order to produce public goods, however, Axelrod's wisdom seems like one more bit of academic arcana with little relevance for public policy. For such governments, creating private cooperation is a frustrating object of policymaking, because they cannot merely pass a law to make it so: implementing these policies requires that they convince private actors to cooperate with one another. This article is an inquiry into the conditions that determine the success or failures of such policies.

The Changing Political Economy of Inflation

Abstract: A type of conventional wisdom has developed among many scholars that industrialized countries with independent central banks produce lower relative inflation rates than countries that do not have these institutions. We argue that the relative importance of central bank independence for fighting inflation changed fundamentally from the 1970s to the 198os as a result of experiences in the advanced industrialized democracies, which led both Right and Left governments to move toward more neo-liberal macroeconomic policies. As governments made price stability more of a priority, the anti-inflationary effects of independent central banks would become much less pronounced. This hypothesis is tested and confirmed in the study in a multi-variate regression analysis using data from eighteen industrialized democracies.