European Policy Analysis最新文献

This paper leverages the resource regime concept to systematically analyze the shape of data governance established by European Union (EU) digital policy. It highlights what gives shape and coherence to this data governance across different policies and how this governance structures relations between actors in the data economy. The analysis shows a common thrust in the EU's digital policies since its 2010 Digital Agenda. Overall, EU data governance is market-creating not only through rules that directly aim at strengthening market integration and limiting anti-competitive behavior but also through regulation that works to protect and promote EU-based industries and to bolster their competitiveness in a global economy. EU digital policies complement each other in establishing more favorable conditions for EU businesses in relation to non-EU competitors, and this market-creating neo-mercantilist orientation is rooted even in data and consumer protection policies that also have a market-correcting dimension.

In this article, we draw from qualitative interviews with political parties' representatives and a content analysis of party programs to identify how political parties frame animal welfare policies in Norway. In analyzing the framing of animal welfare and its significance for understanding agricultural post-exceptionalism, we found that though they frame animal welfare issues in conflicting ways, most see Norwegian animal welfare as reasonably good but perceive potential for improvement. They also generally understand societal claims as lacking or having an unclear factual basis, which has legitimized their nonaction as political parties. Even so, because of active new actors such as animal welfare organizations and retailers, the parties do not believe that public pressure will wane. Although introducing new farm animal welfare policies can represent a move towards post-exceptionalism in Europe's agri-food sector, the discourse on animal welfare policies amongst political parties implies that such is not the case in Norway.

In this article, we statistically examine the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the national governments of Greece and Cyprus during 2020 to (a) limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and (b) mitigate the economic fallout brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. Applying a modified health belief model, we hypothesize that behavioral outcomes at the policy level are a function of NPIs, perceived severity, and social context. We employ a Prais-Winsten estimation in 2-week averages and report panel-corrected standard errors to find that NPIs have clear, yet differential, effects on public health and the economy in terms of statistical significance and time lags. The study provides a critical framework to inform future interventions during emerging pandemics.

Our analysis asks whether the pandemic situation affects welfare state support in Germany. The pandemic has increased the health and income risks calling for welfare state intervention. While increased needs, more deservingness, and higher state responsibility during such a crisis would suggest augmented support generally and among those at risk, this might be a short-term effect and cost considerations could reverse this trend. We study public attitudes towards four key social policy areas based on the German Internet Panel (GIP). We use three waves prior and further three waves since the pandemic had been declared in March 2020. The analysis shows both continuity in the popularity of social policies, in particular health and pensions, and some short-term increase in support for unemployment and family policies. The results after nearly 2 years suggest rather continuation with some thermostatic short-term boosts in support instead of any long-lasting change.

The Swedish response to the pandemic at the national level has attracted considerable international attention, but little focus has been placed on the way municipalities dealt with the crisis. Using Hay's dimensions of politicization, namely the capacity for human agency, deliberation in the public domain, and social context, we analyze the politicization of the municipal response to the pandemic in Sweden. We do this based on the analysis of the decision making process to activate (or not) an extraordinary crisis management committee. We find inter alia, that (i) only a quarter of the municipalities activated the committee while a majority of them had an alternate special organization in place; (ii) support to the existing organizational structure was more salient than creating an extraordinary organization, and (iii) a robust municipal structure was deemed to be one able to withstand shocks without resorting to extraordinary governance arrangements. We find a ‘conditioned politicization’ of the response, privileging administration over politics.

The paper analyses the determinants of mortality during the Corona pandemic. In a first step, possible causes are subjected to a global comparison.The focus is on political, institutional, economic, demographic and health policy factors. It is shown that, contrary to the assumption, democratic countries have a higher Covid-19 mortality. In a second step, the developed democracies are then analysed to explain this puzzle. Here, more detailed information is used than in the global comparison. It turns out that, measured by the Oxford Stringency Index, government action has been largely unsuccessful. Also, the party-political composition of the government does not play a role.The most important factors are a country's governance structures, the level of corona incidence, a country's burden of high-risk patients and its health system. In addition, cultural factors and the vaccination rate seem to have an influence on mortality.

Although the policy performance field acknowledges the importance of adopting a long-term decision making perspective to attain more sustainable policy outcomes, it overlooks the way in which sustainable governance conditions and policy performance relate to each other. We address this gap by investigating why some countries succeed in terms of policy performance while others do not. Applying a fuzzy-set QCA to 41 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and European Union countries of the Sustainable Governance Indicators data, we find out that successful economic and social policy performance is mainly driven by executive accountability conditions combined with effective implementation, while the high-quality of media plays a key role in successful environmental policy performance. Considering the multiple paths that practitioners can follow toward sustainable development benefits, they can also learn how to shift from short-term to long-term thinking by identifying “what works and why,” formulating good practices and guidelines for better policy performance in the respective national contexts.

This paper provides a critical assessment of the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) and compares it with other prominent indices that address specific components of governance: V-Dem, WGI, and BTI. We offer a comparative assessment of content validity of these governance measures, their data generation processes, and their convergent validity. We conclude that the SGI’s most important contribution is the conceptualization of policy performance as a discrete index. Other relative strengths are the theoretical embeddedness and the exclusion of irrelevant meanings of governance, and the conceptualization of three governance components (Governance, Policy Performance, and Democracy). However, in terms of geographic and temporal coverage, the SGI is clearly inferior to WGI and V-Dem. The handling of third-party statistical data, the absence of uncertainty scores, and the (a-theoretical) aggregation of different indicators are additional shortcomings of the SGI. Finally, the SGI’s iterative process of expert deliberation has merits but is prone to biases.

The concept of national policy styles differs between states in respect of whether their governments react to policy changes in an anticipatory or reactive fashion and whether they seek to achieve consensus with societal actors or impose decisions on them. To date, this conceptualization has been applied to a limited number of states and produced only a small set of case studies due to the absence of large-n data. We assess whether the dimensions on strategic planning and public consultation of the Bertelsmann Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) provide conceptually sound and empirically insightful indicators of national policy styles. Our explorative analysis reveals that the SGI are useful for operationalizing the concept of national policy styles and could advance the debate on it. Our analysis shows that differences exist between countries in terms of their policy styles, and that the policy styles remained stable in most countries between 2014 and 2020.