Process Sequencing Policy Dynamics: Beyond Homeostasis and Path Dependency

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Process Sequencing ◽  
Equilibrium Processes ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
Positive Return ◽  
Over Time

AbstractStudies of policy change have advanced to the point where the basic contours and factors driving policy sequences are now reasonably well identified and understood with a great deal of empirical evidence pointing to the prevalence of punctuated equilibrium processes in many policy fields. However the reasons why such processes occur is less well understood. Most attention to date has focused upon homeostatic models in which exogenously-driven shocks undermine institutionally entrenched policy equilibria. This article addresses the difficulties this account faces and the conceptual challenges which must be overcome to provide a solid grounding for the understanding and analysis of long-term policy dynamics. It focuses on the merits and demerits of alternative explanations featuring either random junctures and ‘positive-return’ sequences – path dependency – or embedded junctures and ‘reactive’ sequences – process sequencing. Models of policy-making over time using the latter two concepts, it is argued, are more likely to account for the large majority of policy dynamic than the former.

Wage Differences between Polish and Romanian Intra-EU Migrants in a Flexi-Secure Labour Market: An Over-Time Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110562
Author(s):  
Jonas Felbo-Kolding ◽  
Janine Leschke
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Further Training ◽  
Wage Differences ◽  
Positive Return ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Eu

By merging longitudinal register data and a customised survey, this article explores whether sectoral segmentation, migrants’ pre- and post-migration human capital and social structures, shape wages of Polish and Romanian long-term migrants to Denmark. Pronounced wage differences in favour of Polish migrants are evident in the first two years in Denmark, notwithstanding the same regulatory context under the free movement of labour in the EU. Wage differences persist – albeit at a considerably lower level – throughout the eight-year period, mainly because of significant sectoral segmentation. Sectoral segmentation not explained by demographics, pre-migration human capital or crisis effects, might indicate categorical stereotyping by employers. Regarding (co-ethnic) social networks, at least for the early stages of migration, the study does not find significant effects on wages. While the evidence shows a positive return on wages of formal higher education taken post migration, this is not the case for further training and Danish language education.

Movement Legacies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Massimiliano Andretta ◽  
Tiago Fernandes ◽  
Eduardo Romanos ◽  
Markos Vogiatzoglou
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Long Term Evolution ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Term Evolution ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 4 analyzes movements’ legacies. Transitions to democracy create new cultural assumptions that shape the development of social movements: the ways in which activists identify social problems, organize, and protest over time. After conceptualizing the main models of social movement families, it examines their long-term evolution in each of the four countries, with a focus on the path dependency of the transition time but also on turning points in the movements’ post-transition histories. Building upon main concepts in social movement studies, it covers movements’ traditions as organizational structures (unions, parties, new social movements, anarchists, and so on), repertoires of action (strikes, demonstrations, innovations), and framing (left, libertarian).

Policy myopia as a source of policy failure: adaptation and policy learning under deep uncertainty

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-154
Author(s):  
Sreeja Nair ◽  
Michael Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Deep Uncertainty ◽  
Learning Capacity ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
Radical Uncertainty ◽  
Amount Of Knowledge ◽  
Over Time

This chapter introduces the idea of ‘policy myopia’ as a pressing source of failure in policy making and explores the possibility of developing policies that learn to help mitigate its impacts. It notes that while the problem of bounded rationality and short-term uncertainty is widely acknowledged as the central existential condition for all policy making, the long-term problem of an uncertain, and sometimes unknowable, future is rarely acknowledged. As uncertainty deepens, so too does the probability of policy failure. In these circumstances, actors need to design policies with flexibility and adaptation built in. Where policy solutions are robust over a range of possible scenarios and over time, one can say policies have learning capacity organised into them. Yet, in cases of radical uncertainty, learning may not be possible (or indeed preferable) at all. This reminder of the limits of learning is important. Updating one's belief systems assumes that a certain amount of knowledge exists in the first place.

scholarly journals Making big decisions for the future

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin James
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Fiscal Implications ◽  
Over Time

The Treasury’s long-term fiscal projections are designed to inform present-day policy. They draw attention to existing trends and potential future global and national developments in society, demography, politics, technology and the economy, and the fiscal implications of continuing existing policy unchanged through those changes over the next 40 years and beyond. They highlight that the later action is taken to offset an anticipated impact, the greater the policy change may have to be and also potentially the cost, not just in money but also in social cohesion if unusual intergenerational tensions develop as a consequence. But if large adjustments have to be made, even if over time, how might that be done in a representative democracy in which the ultimate decisionmakers, the politicians, are subject to frequent elections in which political folklore tells us the determinant issues are proximate and ‘courageous’ leaders are sacrificed to short-term voter self-interest? 

Reconsidering policy change

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-184
Author(s):  
Kate Crowley ◽  
Jenny Stewart ◽  
Adrian Kay ◽  
Brian W. Head
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Policy Framing ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Over Time

Explaining how policies may be changed over time is a fundamental theme common to the study of public policy and governance. Scholars have developed several competing perspectives on how and why policy change occurs; while policy practitioners are largely focused on the successful negotiation and implementation of policy improvement and occasional major policy reforms. This chapter focuses on frameworks for explaining how policy agendas shift, how policy change occurs, and how some proposals for change are constrained. In the real world of complexity, wicked problems and mediatised debate, the authority and capacity of the state are subjected to many countervailing pressures. The explanation of policy change must take account not only of how Ministers are involved in setting priorities and mobilising political support, but also how public agencies manage the policy process – including their contributions to policy framing, policy design, engagement, evaluation, and managing conflicting views within civil society. In the governance era, policy change has become a complex and nuanced enterprise. This chapter reconsiders the utility of classic accounts of policy dynamics concerning evidence-based policy, ideology, and populist partisanship in addressing complex policy challenges.

Do Networks Matter? Linking Policy Network Structure to Policy Outcomes: Evidence from Four Canadian Policy Sectors 1990-2000

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Network Approach ◽  
Policy Sector ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Policy Subsystems ◽  
The Impact

Relatively recent contributions to the policy literature have called into question the utility of the "network" approach to the study of public policy making, including a challenge to long-held views concerning the impact of the structure of policy subsystems on policy change. This article uses empirical evidence accumulated from case studies of four prominent Canadian federal policy sectors over the period 1990-2000 to address this issue. It sets out a model that explains policy change as dependent upon the effects of the articulation of ideas and interests in public policy processes, and generates several hypotheses relating different subsystem configurations to propensities for paradigmatic and intra-paradigmatic policy dynamics. It suggests that the identification of the nature of the policy subsystem in a given policy sector reveals a great deal about its propensity to respond to changes in ideas and interests.

Temporality and the Analysis of Policy Processes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Stochastic Models ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Policy Sciences ◽  
Process Sequencing ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Dependency Model

This chapter discusses the “historical turn” in the policy sciences and why it has occurred. It evaluates four general models of historical change processes that are commonly applied in policy analyses: stochastic, historical narrative, path dependency, and process sequencing. The chapter sets out the origins and elements of each model and assesses the merits and evidence for each in the analysis of public policymaking. The chapter suggests more work needs to be done examining the assumptions and presuppositions of each model before it can be concluded that any represents the general case for all policy processes. Neither the irreversible linear reality assumed by narrative models, nor the random and chaotic world assumed by stochastic models, nor the contingent turning points and irreversible trajectories required of the path dependency model are found very often in policymaking. Hence, the chapter agues these models are likely to be less significant than process-sequencing ones in describing the overall pattern of policy dynamics and temporality.

Comparative Studies of Policy Dynamics

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 947-972 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank R. Baumgartner ◽  
Bryan D. Jones ◽  
John Wilkerson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Classification System ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Comparative Analyses ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Over Time ◽  
New Infrastructure

Major new understandings of policy change are emerging from a program to measure attention to policies across nations using the same instrument. Participants in this special issue have created new indicators of government activities in 11 countries over several decades. Each database is comprehensive in that it includes information about every activity of its type (e.g., laws, bills, parliamentary questions, prime ministerial speeches) for the time period covered, typically several decades. These databases are linked by a common policy topic classification system, which allows new types of analyses of public policy dynamics over time. The authors introduce the theoretical and practical questions addressed in the volume, explain the nature of the work completed, and suggest some of the ways that this new infrastructure may allow new types of comparative analyses of public policy, institutions, and outcomes. In particular, the authors challenge political scientists to incorporate policy variability into their analyses and to move far beyond the search for partisan and electoral explanations of policy change.

scholarly journals Transforming Rehabilitation as ‘policy disaster’: Unbalanced policy-making and probation reform

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Annison
Keyword(s):  
Steady State ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
Internal Component ◽  
Departmental Budget

This paper utilizes the notion of ‘policy disasters’ to examine the policy developments that led to the part-privatization and marketization of probation services in England and Wales – Transforming Rehabilitation. Specifically, it examines the ‘internal’ component of policy disasters, drawing on semi-structured interviews with senior policymakers and other relevant sources. The findings presented demonstrate that the policy dynamics relating to Transforming Rehabilitation specifically, and the departmental budget as an important underlying component, were both distinctly ‘unbalanced’. This is argued to be an important explanatory factor in its damagingly swift implementation and operationalization. In closing, the paper reflects on the policy studies notion of ‘policy equilibrium’ to consider whether the policy landscape relating to probation in England and Wales has reached a ‘steady state’, or whether the ongoing apparent failings of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms may result in a further round of considerable policy change.

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