Policy Controversies and Political Blame Games

Abstract

policy instruments relate to each other and whether it is at all possible for governments to attain policy coherence given the policy legacy officials inherit when they are elected into office. Such a discussion would provide a welcome contribution to the literature on policy coherence. These considerations result in a second perspective that appears fruitful for expanding the purview of this research and refers to explicit political attempts to change the way policies are made. The authors reflect on attempts by governments to push deregulation. However, there are also documented efforts to change the way policies are created. A case in point is the United Kingdom, where the government tends to present visions for how they want to modify the policymaking process with a view to make it more effective, efficient and/or transparent. Another example refers to the European Union (EU) and its commitment to “better regulation”, which the EU Commission found to have delivered on its promises to make EU law simpler while still achieving the intended policy goals. To put these observations in a question: How does this book relate to “better regulation” agendas? Third, the authors concentrate on responsive government, which corresponds to the standard perspective of comparative politics on the relationship between elected policy makers and their voters. However, in much of his work, the influential scholar Peter Mair, for example, contended that governments do not only have to be responsive, but also responsible regarding the longterm needs of the people they represent. From this perspective, policy makers need to balance short-term, explicitly articulated demands and long-term, only implicitly articulated or entirely unarticulated demands of those same people. Adding the notion of responsibility to the analysis could perhaps result in a different interpretation of the empirical patterns observed. To conclude, Christian Adam and coauthors offer a compelling analysis of a relevant empirical phenomenon, which is strong in both its theoretical and empirical components but requires good prior knowledge and an understanding of various literature streams. Advanced students and scholars of comparative public policy will appreciate this theory-led empirical research. Additionally, this book can offer doctoral students a point of departure for developing their own research agendas which may reflect on some of the avenues outlined above.