European Policy Analysis最新文献

Agri-food policies are in the midst of far-reaching transitions, including the transformation towards sustainable production and food consumption. The European Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy prioritize food safety and animal welfare issues, aiming to transform food systems towards more sustainability. Despite existing EU legislation, little is known about how EU agri-food policies are implemented across member states. Our analysis addresses this gap by examining the conditions that shape how EU requirements are implemented in 16 EU member states in two policy areas: food safety and farm animal welfare. Through our qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), we identify distinct pathways to differentiated implementation in both sectors, with a shared emphasis on political engagement, green party influence, and public advocacy, while also highlighting domain-specific governance dynamics. Understanding variations in the implementation of EU demands among member states is crucial to identify gaps, assess governance effectiveness, and promote harmonization within the EU.

Many US policy process theories have been applied as much in Europe as in the US. We assess this journey in three ways. First, we use published reviews of the field to identify the high quantity of applications and their concentration in Western European liberal democracies. Second, we identify the absence of a typical European country experience and our expectation of finding variability across European countries when applying US theories. Third, we survey policy scholars in Europe on how and why they apply US theories to European contexts. Our survey establishes what theories they applied, why, and to what effect. It takes forward a new research agenda on the international application of mainstream policy theories.

This study introduces a translation perspective to analyze the policy harmonization process, highlighting imitation, brokering, and editing in shaping policy dynamics at EU and national levels. The translation perspective emphasizes that while policy development is ongoing, the protracted process signals a shift in EU-wide coordination of skilled labor migration. We show how ongoing translation efforts have transformed the coordination of skilled labor migration across the EU, as labor migration policies have translated into each other, resulting in mutual transformation. The study provides insights into the complex processes of policy harmonization via the Blue Card, enhancing understanding of EU labor migration policy. The findings demonstrate the continuous nature of policy translation between multiple contexts. The article traces developments surrounding the EU Blue Card Directive, including a parallel scheme in Austria, offering insights into skilled migration policy dynamics beyond linear diffusion models.

The fifth edition of “Theories of the Policy Process” represents a further step in consolidating these theories. However, four of them—Advocacy Coalition Framework, Multiple Streams Framework, Narrative Policy Framework, and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory—exhibit a few limitations in light of the characteristics of implementation and policy instruments due to their founding principles, the central role of pluralism and the will to abandon the original normativism of the policy sciences. Thus, these four theories seem to be framed to capture the politics of policy-making in a dynamic way rather than to understand how policies are able to deliver results to society. This affects the relevance and applicability of these theories from a Western European perspective but probably also from other cultural and geopolitical perspectives. After a discussion of these limitations, the paper outlines a number of suggestions for overcoming them.

Most policy process frameworks were developed in the US but are also applied to (Western) Europe. However, policy processes, the relevant actors, and the institutional setting differ substantially. Hence, the question arises if certain concepts that are important in the European context are missing from the frameworks and if the frameworks have been adapted to take these concepts into account. We discuss the three frameworks most widely applied to Europe, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Multiple Streams Framework, and the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and focus on three concepts that seem particularly relevant in shaping European policy processes, namely political parties, macro-level institutions, and Europeanization. It turns out that all three frameworks have something to say about all three concepts, although some voids remain. Nonetheless, the adaptations that have been suggested make all three frameworks applicable to European countries and promise substantial explanatory capacity also in these contexts.

European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) engender European Union (EU) support in generating economic growth, but their effect is conditional on individual European identity and educational background. This study investigates whether the positive impact of ESIF spending on EU attitudes also depends on the alignment of funding with the economic needs of recipient regions. We examine this issue with the Spanish case (1990–2019), employing a unique combined data set of Eurobarometer waves and regional NUTS-2 economic indicators. Our findings indicate that EU funds manage to decrease Euroscepticism only in laggard regions, which receive the lion's share of funds and allocate them to public goods easily perceived and communicated to the local population. Conversely, the effect of ESIF on transforming attitudes is absent in middle and high-income regions. The findings suggest a more complicated relationship between ESIF and EU support, which necessitates taking both individual and contextual factors into account.

This paper presents a methodological framework to study situated and relational policy practices in the context of the policy transaction perspective. Building on policy ethnography, it addresses the entanglements of researching policy transactions through triangulation of methods to explore how practices emerge, and how they are “seen,” “talked about,” and “read.” The paper aims to contribute to the policy transaction framework in three ways. First, it discusses how the policy transaction framework furthers the shifting of focus from policy systems to policy worlds, to address the complexities enclosed in policy processes. Second, it advances the framework along the discussion of relationality and situatedness, to highlight the reciprocal mode of transactions. Third, it proposes a methodological exemplar for the analysis of policy transactions, by looking at transactions as practices. With these steps, the paper aims to contribute to a methodological framework for undertaking research in the context of the policy transaction perspective.

In Europe, and specifically in countries bordering the Baltic Sea, preparedness issues have moved up the policy agenda since Russia's 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine. “Ordinary people” are encouraged to prepare for crises—be it through stockpiling food at home, fact-checking information, or signing up for military training. This article unpacks the process through which individual subjects are “responsibilized.” More specifically, it analyses how the risk of war is communicated to make targets act responsibly, drawing on empirical evidence from Finland, Latvia, and Germany. A main tenet is that policy actors appeal to nationally distinct sets of moral codes to responsibilize publics. The Finnish war experience attests to the value of being united, willing and capable of fighting back. Latvia's defence is framed as an integrative force—with the ultimate aim to deter aggressors and ensure national survival. In Germany, inconsistent messaging prevails, simultaneously reassuring and alerting the public.

This article applies the concept of transaction to the process of policy transfer, through the case of conflict of interest regulation in France, using archives, documentary sources, and interviews with stakeholders. It contributes to the literature on policy translation by clarifying the role of contingency, which remains underspecified. It shows that timing matters in two ways: it affects actors' ability to open a policy window, and it ultimately affects problem definition and future implementation instruments and practices. It explores the construction of the situation as a scandal, making it necessary to adapt transferred ideas to the political context, where a “shock of moralization” was seen as necessary. It also offers an opportunity to enrich the scholarship on policy transaction with an application to transnational policymaking, where problem definitions and policy solutions are imported from elsewhere and where foreign or transnational actors contribute to the co-construction of actors and issues.