National Styles and Policy Sectors: Explaining Structured Variation

1985 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary P. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
Policy Sector ◽  
Common Framework ◽  
National Styles ◽  
Cross National ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTA vigorous tradition in comparative politics argues that national policymakers develop characteristic and durable methods for dealing with public issues, that these can be linked to policy outcomes, and that they can be systematically compared. More recently, a number of scholars have suggested reversing the direction of causality, claiming that the nature of political issues themselves causes the politics associated with them. This policy sector approach implies that there should be cross-national similarities in the way issues are treated, whatever the styles particular nations adopt. The two approaches need to be integrated into a common framework built around a research strategy that investigates policymaking within specific sectors across multiple national cases. Such an approach can transcend the often sterile debate over whether the policies of nations are unique or are converging by seeking to explain how the nature of issues structures the variation among the policies of nations.

Who is in charge here? Legislators, bureaucrats and the policy making process

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 342-363
Author(s):  
Viktoryia Schnose
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Specific Policy ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Cross National ◽  
Policy Stability

Scholars in comparative politics often assume that political parties are the primary instruments for translating citizens’ preferences into specific policy outcomes. However, the crucial but often forgotten link between preferences, parties, and outcomes is the bureaucracy. Are bureaucrats able to affect policy outside of parties’ control? And, if so, how does this bureaucratic policy drift differ across institutional contexts? I argue that institutions that regulate the nomination process by which parties in government select bureaucrats (meritocratic versus partisan recruitment) determine the levels of bureaucratic influence on the policy making process, specifically in terms of policy change. I test my theoretical argument using two large cross-national datasets on budget allocations and policy stability. I find that bureaucratic professionalism partially explains changes in allocation to the “ideological” budgetary categories and is positively correlated with policy stability around the world.

Review Article: Dismantling the Health Care State? Political Institutions, Public Policies and the Comparative Politics of Health Reform

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-724 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACOB S. HACKER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Medical Systems ◽  
Cross National

This article examines the recent pattern and progress of health care reform in affluent democracies, focusing in particular on Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. Its main contention is that efforts to reform health care in advanced industrial states have been marked by a paradoxical pattern of ‘reform without change and change without reform’, in which large-scale structural reforms have had surprisingly modest effects yet major ground-level shifts have, nonetheless, frequently occurred as a result of decentralized adjustments to cost control. The main task of the article is to investigate the reasons for and effects of this puzzling pattern by plumbing the largely unexplored theoretical territory between comparative health policy analysis and cross-national research on the welfare state. Along the way, the article develops a simple model of the politics of reform that helps explain cross-national variation in legislative and policy outcomes – particularly outcomes that occur through decentralized processes of internal policy ‘conversion’ and policy ‘drift’, rather than through formal legislative reform. It also takes up a number of other intriguing issues raised by recent trends: why, for example, market reforms are clustered in centralized political and medical frameworks; why these reforms have generally enhanced state authority rather than market autonomy; why, despite fragmentation, decentralized political and medical systems shifted towards an expanded government role; and why significant retrenchment of the public-private structure of health benefits occurred in the United States.

scholarly journals Current Explanations for the Variation in Same-Sex Marriage Policies in Western Countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pettinicchio
Keyword(s):  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Heterosexual Couples ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Gay Couples ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Cross National

Abstract Over the last ten years, several western countries have recognized gay marriage either by providing gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, or by allowing civil unions. Other western countries have not. What accounts for this variation? This paper reviews and analyzes the key demographic, institutional and cultural arguments found in the literature on the legalization of gay marriage – especially as these pertain to cross-national comparison – and raises questions about assumptions regarding the extent to which there is variation on these variables across western countries. I argue that institutional and cultural explanations are only meaningful in explaining legalization when their combinations are specified in order to shed light on favorable (or unfavorable) circumstances for policy outcomes.

scholarly journals Learning from health care in other countries: the prospect of comparative research

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Van Teijlingen ◽  
Cecilia Benoit ◽  
Ivy Bourgeault ◽  
Raymond DeVries ◽  
Jane Sandall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Health Care Systems ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Reproductive Health Care ◽  
Care Systems ◽  
Cross National ◽  
The Way

It is widely accepted that policy-makers (in Nepal and elsewhere) can learn valuable lessons from the way other countries run their health and social services. We highlight some of the specific contributions the discipline of sociology can make to cross-national comparative research in the public health field. Sociologists call attention to often unnoticed social and cultural factors that influence the way national reproductive health care systems are created and operated. In this paper we address questions such as: ‘Why do these health services appear to be operating successfully in one country, but not another?’; ‘What is it in one country that makes a particular public health intervention successful and how is the cultural context different in a neighbouring country?’ The key examples in this paper focus on maternity care and sex education in the Netherlands and the UK, as examples to highlight the power of cross-national research. Our key messages are: a) Cross-national comparative research can help us to understand the design and running of health services in one country, say Nepal, by learning from a comparison with other countries, for example Sri Lanka or India. b) Cultural factors unique to a country affect the way that reproductive health care systems operate. c) Therefore,we need to understand why and how services work in a certain cultural context before we start trying to implement them in another cultural context.

Integrating Ideas into Policy-Making Analysis

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 1054-1076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Bleich
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Policy Frames ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Cross National

This article argues that systematically integrating ideas into policy-making analysis greatly enhances our understanding of policy outcomes. Variables emphasized by other schools of thought—such as power, interests, institutions, and problems—often provide an inadequate explanation of policy choices. To demonstrate the contribution of ideas to policy-making analysis, this article examines the impact of policy frames, showing how they help actors define their interests, generate interpretations of pressing problems, and constrain actions. Retracing the history of race policy development in Britain and France reveals that each country's frames influenced domestic policy outcomes and thus played a vital role in explaining cross-national race policy differences.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Sarah Sobieraj
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Substantive Issue ◽  
Women's Voice ◽  
The Way

Women who participate in public discussions about social and political issues are often confronted with a barrage of vicious digital attacks. The abuse is a form of patterned resistance to women’s voice and visibility, as evinced by the way gender is weaponized as the central grounds for condemnation. Attacks are riddled with gendered epithets and stereotypes, and they perseverate on women’s physical appearance and presumed sexual behavior; also, the generic nature of the abuse features nearly interchangeable misogyny rather than taking substantive issue with any particular woman. Women who challenge social hierarchies face the most intense pushback, particularly those speaking in or about male-dominated fields, those perceived as feminist or otherwise noncompliant to gender norms, and those with multiple marginalized identities (e.g., women of color, LBTQ women, etc.). This often-unrecognized form of gender inequality constrains women’s use of digital public spaces, much in the way the pervasive threat of sexual intimidation and violence constrains women’s use of physical public spaces.

When Moderate Voters Prefer Extreme Parties: Policy Balancingin Parliamentary Elections

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
ORIT KEDAR
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Voter Behavior ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
The Way

This work develops and tests a theory of voter choice in parliamentary elections. I demonstrate that voters are concerned with policy outcomes and hence incorporate the way institutions convert votes to policy into their choices. Since policy is often the result of institutionalized multiparty bargaining and thus votes are watered down by power-sharing, voters often compensate for this watering-down by supporting parties whose positions differ from (and are often more extreme than) their own. I use this insight to reinterpret an ongoing debate between proximity and directional theories of voting, showing that voters prefer parties whose positions differ from their own views insofar as these parties pull policy in a desired direction. Utilizing data from four parliamentary democracies that vary in their institutional design, I test my theory and show how institutional context affects voter behavior.

The EU's Use of the Internet

2011 ◽  
pp. 774-783
Author(s):  
J. Shahin
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Internet ◽  
European Level ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Use Of The Internet ◽  
The Eu ◽  
The Way

The European Union (EU) has been one of the leading lights concerning Internet use in dealing with other public administrations and citizens. This article will argue that e-government has meant that the European Commission has been able to promote a virtual arena for pan-European activity, which has promoted action at the national and local levels in the EU. In the first instance, this article will deal with how the European Commission uses the Internet to attempt to improve its own relationship with both national public administrations and citizens in terms of the European policy-making process. Although the Internet is perceived as aiding public administrations in information and service provision, which helps to deliver better governance from an institutional governance perspective, a focus on this would only tell one half of the story. Increasing democratic participation and regaining trust in the political system at large is also an important issue for public bodies such as the European Commission to address, and this is not merely a technical process. These technical (efficiency, etc.) and democratic stages are two key parts in the process of developing an information and communication technology (ICT)-based governance agenda in the EU. In order to outline the process, this article deals with four different aspects of the European Commission’s e-policies. It makes reference to the following: 1. The Commission’s information provision, through the EU’s Europa (II) Web server; 2. The way in which the Commission has tried to interact with citizens, using interactive policy making (IPM); 3. The e Commission initiative; and 4. The way in which the Commission links member-state public administrations together, through the IDA(BC) programme. This article reveals the increasing coherence of the European Commission’s approach to using the Internet in institutional affairs. Although the Commission’s approach to using the Internet for governance was initially unstable and ad hoc, by the turn of the century, all efforts had converged around the political issues of institutional reform and better governance. This has been further enhanced by the application of the open method of coordination as one of the tools of EU governance, which has enabled the Commission to take a more informal role in implementing e-government strategies at the pan-European level. This article does not attempt to define e-government at the European level nor does it go into policy areas concerning e-government (such as research, socioeconomic inclusion, improving competitiveness, or specific e-government policy developed by the European Commission), but will contribute to a greater understanding of how the EU itself has used the Internet to promote an e-government agenda that is affecting all public administrations.

Comparative authoritarian institutionalism, regime evolution, and stability in North Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McEachern
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
The One ◽  
Cross National

The cross-national comparative politics literature on authoritarian regimes has advanced rapidly in recent years, providing fresh insights into regime longevity, potential for successful democratization, and derivative policy choices. The study of North Korea’s politics has likewise advanced, albeit largely without reference to this budding literature. Given the paucity of data on North Korea, this article reviews and leverages the budding comparative literature to bring new perspectives on perennial debates on North Korean regime stability. The article argues the comparative literature fails to capture evolution in authoritarian regimes, including North Korea, suggesting areas for theoretical improvement. It documents political evolution in Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and draws upon cross-national findings to show how and why the one-party political structure, personalist elements, and hereditary succession identified in this analysis are stabilizing elements for the regime.

Political Opposition in the Contemporary World

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Blondel
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
General Picture ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Classical Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Framework ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Western Democracies

ALTHOUGH THE CLASSICAL WORK ON POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN Western Democracies, edited by Robert Dahl, was published decades ago, in 1966, the analysis of the characteristics of opposition, in democracies or elsewhere, has advanced rather less than other aspects of comparative politics. The word ‘opposition’ is used daily to account for a variety of developments; but its many meanings have not been systematically related to the differences among the political systems of the world. A number of comparative studies did appear after the 1966 seminal work, admittedly, including one by Dahl himself in 1973, as well as those by Ionescu and Madariaga in 1968, by Schapiro in 1972, by Tokes in 1979, by Kolinsky in 1988 and by Rodan in 1996; these volumes explore aspects of the concept which could not have been even referred to in the original study, since that study was confined to Western democracies and to the part played by political parties in the context of opposition. Yet the problem has still not been tackled truly comprehensively, as, with the exception of the 1973 Dahl volume, the works on the subject are comparative only in the sense that they deal with more than one country; but their scope remains limited to a region or to a particular type of political system. Meanwhile, many country analyses examine the nature of political opposition in each particular case, but the information which they provide has to be brought within a common framework before we can hope to obtain a general picture of the characteristics of opposition across the world.

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