European Policy Analysis最新文献

This article studies how the prolonged pandemic situation impacted crisis governance in the federalized governance system of Switzerland. It examines how in this acute crisis situation, the responsibility for decision-making fluctuated among governance levels, placing subnational states in a situation of uncertainty that caused a fragmented crisis management, and therefore suboptimal policy learning processes. The study is based on the case of COVID-19 governance in Switzerland, where, as in many other European countries, the management of the first pandemic wave was very centralized. However, the federal government avoided taking a strong lead during the subsequent waves. Consequently, pandemic management was marked by numerous fluctuations regarding who was in charge of the main COVID-19 decisions between the federal and subnational governance levels. A media analysis (February 2020–March 2022) and an analysis of the gray literature show that crisis governance and policy learning processes were scattered across levels of governance, which impeded the accumulation of knowledge and know-how. The article analyses how crises can give way to blame games between the levels of governance, thus hampering a coordinated crisis management and policy learning processes across the different stages of the pandemic.

Laws are only as good as their enforcement. International treaties are no exception. We investigate how Germany implements international wildlife protection treaties, namely the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the Bern Convention. We find that Germany's federal system allows for uneven enforcement of national legislation across the 16 federal states. We utilize Policy Feedback Theory as a theoretical lens to examine how federalism (re-)produces different enforcement regimes. We rely on qualitative analysis of interviews of German street-level bureaucrats, government officials, and NGO representatives. We find that macrolevel context impacts how institutions enforce wildlife protection policies. Particularly, Germany's federal structure permits either centralized, decentralized, or cooperative arrangements that result in differences in resources, affecting the ways bureaucrats view their roles and responsibilities. These resource and interpretive effects further feedback into the contextual structure of the federal enforcement system.

This article examines the paradigm shifts in the European Union's (EU's) climate policy from 2009 to 2022 looking closer at the main policy instrument of EU's climate policy, the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). The paradigm shifts of the EU ETS are linked to the climate policy paradigms prometheanism/growth unlimited (PGU), ecological modernization (EM), and sufficiency. The question of how ideas have shaped EU climate policy and the EU ETS in the past decade is answered, with the establishment of the EM paradigm and moving toward the sufficiency paradigm. There is a need for more research looking closer at how this paradigm shift impacts legislation for climate policy going forward.

The Council of Ministers is still the European Union's decision-making center in migration policy. However, we know little about the determinants of member state's policy positions. This article tests three hypotheses: member state positions might be influenced by socioeconomic conditions, by public opinion, or by partisan preferences. We conduct a quantitative analysis of two legislative proposals at the intersection of migration and welfare policy (the returns directive, COD/2005/167 and the social security regulation, 2016/0397/COD) using member state positions as the dependent variable. The result is that different factors are important for positioning on the two proposals: member state positions on the returns directive are correlated with public opinion, while their positions on the social security regulation are correlated with party positions, especially the position of the economically rightmost coalition partner. Thus, our study takes issue with the argument that migration politics in the Council are disconnected from the domestic arena.

Who makes policy change happen, and how? Public policy scholars now take more seriously the role of agency in the policy process, and in particular the role of policy entrepreneurship, a contested term built mostly from classical, economic conceptions of entrepreneurship from the mid-20th century. In this study, we introduce policy scholars to modern theories of entrepreneurship from sociology and management scholarship, including cultural entrepreneurship, effectuation, bricolage, and entrepreneurial assembly. We show that theories connect more easily with major theories of the policy process more easily than classical theories do and argue policy scholars should make room for multiple policy entrepreneurship archetypes. We also give three examples—organizational imprinting, the small firm effect, and survivorship bias—of the readymade research agenda modern entrepreneurship theories offer to policy entrepreneurship scholars. Finally, we show how these theories help policy scholars build bridges to other political science subfields.

促使政策变革发生的是谁，变革又是如何发生的？公共政策学者如今更加重视能动性(agency)在政策过程中的作用，特别是政策创业的作用。政策创业是一个有争议的术语，其主要源自20世纪中叶关于创业的经典经济概念。本文中，我们向政策学者介绍来自社会学和管理学学术的现代创业理论，包括文化创业、效果逻辑、拼凑、创业组装。我们表明，理论更容易与政策过程的主要理论相联系（而不是与经典理论），并且政策学者应该为多种政策创业原型留出空间。我们还给出了现代创业理论为政策创业学者提供的现成研究议程的三个例子——组织印记、小企业效应和幸存者偏差。最后，我们展示了这些理论如何帮助政策学者建立通向其他政治学子领域的桥梁。

¿Quién hace que se produzca el cambio de políticas y cómo? Los académicos en políticas públicas ahora toman más en serio el papel de la agencia en el proceso de políticas y, en particular, el papel del emprendimiento político, un término controvertido construido principalmente a partir de concepciones económicas clásicas del emprendimiento de mediados del siglo XX. En este artículo presentamos a los académicos de políticas las teorías modernas del emprendimiento desde la sociología y los estudios de gestión, incluido el emprendimiento cultural, la efectuación, el bricolaje y el ensamblaje empresarial. Mostramos que las teorías se conectan más fácilmente con las principales teorías del proceso político que las teorías clásicas y argumentamos que los académicos de políticas deberían dejar espacio para múltiples arquetipos de emprendimiento político. También damos tres ejemplos (la impronta organizacional, el efecto de la pequeña empresa y el sesgo de supervivencia) de la agenda de investigación ya preparada que las teorías empresariales modernas ofrecen a los estudiosos de las políticas empresariales. Finalmente, mostramos cómo estas teorías ayudan a los académicos de políticas a tender puentes hacia otros subcampos de la ciencia política.

How do external macrolevel factors encourage bureaucrats to become policy entrepreneurs? And what are their organizational goals in pursuing entrepreneurship? Contrary to traditional public choice literature on bureaucracy that sees the latter as change-resistant, this study stresses that bureaucracies can and do change; they are not as insulated from reformist pressure. In this study, we lay the conditions under which change occurs, making bureaucrats—policy entrepreneurs. We argue that: (1) bureaucratic inefficiency, leading to (2) societal pressure as expressed by public opinion, and consequently to (3) pressure from potential new providers offering bottom-up competition, will encourage bureaucrats to turn to policy entrepreneurship strategies. In addition, we assert that their goals in doing so are to modify and design efficient services, while protecting their monopoly on service provision. We test these claims by analyzing the state-religion dynamics in Israel, and specifically the case of the 2021 kosher food inspection reform.

What are the differences between policy entrepreneurship and street-level policy entrepreneurship? The research on street-level policy entrepreneurship is still in its infancy, yet in the past few years, it has received greater research attention. This article systematically reviews the current research published on this topic and compares it to previous findings on policy entrepreneurs. Our findings provide an analysis of street-level policy entrepreneurs' characteristics, motivations, traits, and strategies, differentiating types of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). We also find three new strategies unique to SLBs: consistency over time, learning from others, and seeking legitimacy. We conclude by identifying the main differences between traditional entrepreneurs and street-level entrepreneurs and providing suggestions for further research.

The article discusses the role of parliamentary oversight of emergency measures and policies in increasing democratic resilience and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The study on the Finnish Parliament is conducted by analyzing the statements of the Constitutional Law Committee, whose role is to conduct a parliamentary constitutional review of governmental bills. The main focus of the analysis is on the Committee's reviews of the constitutionality of the emergency measures and the procedures of law drafting. The research indicates that the committee considered the restrictions and exceptions of fundamental rights as proportional and necessary to prevent the overburdening of the healthcare system in most cases. However, the justifications for the emergency measures were often lacking, and the parliament's right to receive information was compromised. These deficits undermined the Parliament's capacity to oversee emergency measures and policies. The parliamentary constitutional review during the pandemic could still serve a critical complementary function by protecting fundamental rights and democratic values.

The understanding of resilience, and how the ability to respond or adjust to new situations can be implemented and evaluated, gained prominence in public policy. This study examines how European Union (EU) member states plan to support cultural and creative sectors (CCSs) within the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) of the NextGenerationEU Program and how they plan the CCSs to contribute to the grand challenges of our time. Using mixed methods, it is found that the understanding of how structural deficiencies in CCSs can be addressed is not systematic and not all countries invest to make the cultural infrastructure more future-proof. Neither the budgets nor the mode of resilience (absorption, adaptation, and transformation) exposed in the plans consistently correlates with how countries intend to address key impact pillars. Countries with larger CCSs are more prone to transformation. The theoretical contribution lies in the elaboration of the concept of “ex ante resilience.”