European Policy Analysis最新文献

Free movement of goods within the EU is guaranteed via mutual recognition: any product lawfully produced in one member state must also be accepted in all other member states. While unleashing economic benefits from trade without regulatory barriers, mutual recognition potentially limits member states' ability to address societal concerns with regard to production conditions. This hypothesis is addressed via the case of farm animal welfare in Germany, combining a thorough policy analysis with 20 elite interviews. The results demonstrate how the discourse of inner-European competition has discouraged policymakers to adopt stricter legislation over the past three decades, exemplifying the impeding effect of mutual recognition on member states' policies. Understanding these mechanisms is vital for handling regulatory diversity within integrated markets and offers insights into similar policy areas. This research contributes to the broader issue of national sustainability standards in a globalized world, where collective preferences increasingly collide with economic goals.

While scholars have investigated how media frame human mobility and securitize irregular border crossings, little research has been dedicated to how European Union (EU) actors are portrayed in media coverage of migration across the Mediterranean. By integrating framing into narrative analysis through the Narrative Policy Framework, our article fills this gap. Specifically, we provide a content analysis of Italian, Maltese, and Spanish newspapers and identify the key narratives underlying the portrayal of specific EU actors. We show that, overall, lack of EU solidarity is the prevalent issue in Italian, Maltese, and Spanish newspapers alike, followed by the alleged inefficiency of EU actors. Accordingly, the EU and its key actors are regularly narrated as either villains, responsible for the crisis and deserting member states in need of solidarity, or as weaklings unable to take effective action. These narratives appear remarkably consistent across countries, over time, and newspapers with different ideological orientation.

Recent trends toward mechanistic approaches offer a new perspective in understanding policy change and stability. This paper analyzes causal mechanisms leading to unexpected policy change by using punctuated equilibrium theory. As empirical illustration, the paper presents a case study on the introduction of the German mandatory lobbying register in 2021 after a 16-year-long debate. Methodologically, the paper employs process tracing and qualitative content analysis to examine policy documents. We identify a combination of three mechanisms: end of a de-thematization of the policy issue, growing dominance of the issue network favoring stricter transparency regulations, and issue validation through the accumulation of scandals. Thus, policy change results from the descend of policy actors defending the status quo while those advocating for change ascend to an influential position, and actively exploit focusing events as fertile ground for reform. The paper contributes to a refined theoretical understanding of the causal mechanisms of policy change.

Policy networks can propose solutions (policy communities, and epistemic communities), defend specific instruments (instrument constituencies), and programmatically prioritize change or stability (programmatic groups). This paper focuses on two specific networks that have been present in 30 years of administrative reform in Italy, and it empirically assesses what type of network they are according to their origins, developments over time, membership and motivations to stay together, and role in the policymaking. This comparison, while improving the current understanding of the networking taking place in the Italian administrative reform, shows that if policy networks are very relevant in the policy process, it is analytically more fruitful and empirically more reliable to assess their characteristics empirically, rather than to assume their existence in advance (and make hypotheses on this basis) or to use the concept in a purely metaphorical manner.

Two years of the Covid-19 pandemic caused significantly different death tolls in European countries. Nine of the 30 countries with the highest accumulated fatalities belong to Central and Eastern Europe, although the solidarity of the European Union (EU) provided vaccines for all member states. Using correlation and cluster analysis, this paper identifies the demographic, social, and political factors which can explain the differences. As generally accepted in the literature, the death toll is measured by the number of excess deaths. The examination separates the prevaccination and vaccination periods. While the impact of other factors is also present, vaccination coverage has a salient explanatory role in the excess deaths of the second period. The experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic simultaneously highlight the importance and sociopolitical constraints of health policy at the European level. The analysis confirms that complementary competences between the European and national levels are adequate for the EU health policy.

Scholars agree that digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) pose a political challenge. In this article, we study empirically how different actors in the German political system define AI as a policy problem. We use an original data set of 6421 statements by representatives of political parties, interest groups, scientific experts, and public officials in parliamentary debates, government consultations, and quality newspapers. Through Discourse Network Analysis and quantitative text analyses we show that most actors define AI as technology (innovation) policy and link it to government operations, international cooperation, and macroeconomics. Although they are present, consumer protection, labor, and education seem to be less important policy issues concerning AI. The results imply that the capacity of the national government to reduce problem definition uncertainty and to steer the political agenda is difficult and that most actors focus on technological innovation rather than civil rights-related aspects.

This paper investigates variations in infringements of EU rules by substate authorities. The paper tests the effect of structure and actor level variables. First, we test structural factors in terms of the autonomy that substate authorities hold. Second, we test some actor level factors that may also increase transaction costs: autonomy of substate actors, public opinion on the EU and administrative capacity. The results indicate that there is a relationship between the increased autonomy of substate authorities and higher number of infringements. The results also provide support that preference to exercise this autonomy correlates with higher infringements. In addition, the results show that negative public opinion on the EU is strongly correlated to higher numbers of infringements. This suggests that transaction costs associated with multilevel policy implementation and attitudes to the EU are determinants of substate infringements.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic innovation that allows citizens to deliberate about a share of the public budget. Portugal was one of the most influent countries in this field in the last decade, as PB was implemented at multiple levels. However, few studies have made in-depth research on the financial dimensions of PB, which raises interest as to whether and how citizens' voice has had a significant impact on policy-making. To fill in this gap, this article considers the financial asset of local, regional, and national PBs in Portugal up to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our methodological approach relies on both quantitative data analyzed through Geographical Information Systems and descriptive statistics, and qualitative data retrieved from document analysis. Findings are discussed through four different stages of dissemination in the country, and show that despite significant advancements in this field, impacts in the financial dimensions lay behind expectations.