When New Policies Fail to Create a New Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-67
Author(s):  
Leah Cardamore Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
New Model ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
New Policies

Chapter 2 provides the book’s theory and core argument. The chapter reviews models of policy change that emerged from debates over social policy in advanced democracies at the national level. It defines the book’s key concepts, including interest groups, policy expansion, and retrenchment. It then develops a new model of policy change focused on the fog of enactment and organized combat, outlining both direct and indirect pathways that advocate and opponent interest groups exploit to influence policy post-implementation. Drawing on original survey data from US state legislators and their staff, it provides additional evidence for the book’s theory, supplementing the historical institutionalist case studies in the rest of the book.

After the Punctuation: Competition, Uncertainty, and Convergent State Policy Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas T. Holyoke ◽  
Heath Brown
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Punctuated Equilibrium ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Rational Decision Making ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
New Policies

What happens after longstanding policies are overthrown in fierce political battles, events scholars refer to as punctuated equilibrium? Do these new policies remain static and unchanging until the next big punctuation, or do they continue to change in explainable and predictable ways? In this article, we develop a model of postpunctuation policy change grounded in theories of boundedly rational decision-making by policymakers. Uncertain about how well the new policy will perform, policymakers learn to rely on competing interest groups for information or, under certain circumstances, look to other political jurisdictions for cues on how their policies ought to be further refined. We test our predictions by studying changes in state charter school laws from 1996 to 2014. We find evidence of policy change, and even convergence, across states suggesting that policies after punctuation do change in ways explained as reactions to political pressures in an environment fraught with uncertainty.

AVAILABILITY OF PRE-SCHOOLING AS AN EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL INDICATOR

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 531
Author(s):  
Gediminas Merkys ◽  
Daiva Bubeliene ◽  
Nijole Čiučiulkienė
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Education System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
National Level ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Original Survey

The research paper presents the results of a large-scale longitudinal study which aims to highlight pre-schooling social problems with the help of social indicators. For over a decade, the authors of the research paper have been developing a survey inventory aiming to determine the population’s satisfaction with the public service index. The tool includes 190 original survey indicators that represent all public services. 20 indicators are devoted to education; two of them represent pre-school education. These are: 1) assessment of the quality of pre-school services; and 2) the availability of a child's place in a kindergarten in a residential area (availability). The existing statistical norming base (not older than 2 years) includes 12 municipalities in Lithuania and 88 subdistricts. The total number of respondents is 16202 (n=16202). It has been cleared out that the residents consider the quality of the service "high", but its "availability" is considered to be poor. The statistical regularity found is common to all surveyed municipalities. There is a significant dispersion of measured indicators in separate municipalities and in the subdistricts. Facing the negative evaluation tendency of the “availability“ service some municipalities are more able to handle the problem. For this reason their experience is worth to analyze and to disseminate in a broader way. It is also worth to mention that the results of this study have much in common with EUROSTAT data. In Lithuania, the inclusion of 2-3 years old children in the education system is extremely poor, whereas the inclusion of preschoolers is largely universal. It is possible to state that poor situation of 2-3 years old children inclusion in the Lithuanian education system is related to the problems of Lithuanian social policy. In Lithuania, mother (or father) receives financial benefits for two years after the birth of a child. It is also possible to save one‘s job without receiving a payment for one year more. From the point of view of women's employment and equal opportunities policies, our discovered regularity testifies social policy dysfunctions at the macro national level which, on their turn, indicate a deep-seated demographic crisis in an EU country.  

The impact of state fire safe cigarette policies on fire fatalities, injuries, and incidents

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 379 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Folz, PhD ◽  
Chris Shults, PhD
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
National Level ◽  
Fire Service ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Tobacco Products ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Fire Injuries

Cigarettes are a leading cause of civilian deaths in home fires. Over the last decade, state fire service leaders and allied interest groups succeeded in persuading state lawmakers to require manufacturers to sell only low-ignition strength or “fire safe” cigarettes as a strategy to reduce these fatalities and the injuries and losses that stem from them. This article examines whether the states’ fire safe cigarette laws actually helped to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce the incidence of home fires ignited by cigarettes left unattended by smokers. Controlling for the effects of key demographic, social, economic, and housing variables, this study finds that the states’ fire-safe cigarette policies had significant impacts on reducing the rate of smoking-related civilian fire deaths and the incidence of fires started by tobacco products. The findings also suggest that the states’ fire safe cigarette policies may have helped to reduce the rate of smoking-related fire injuries. The study shows that collective actions by leaders in the fire service across the states can result in meaningful policy change that protects lives and advances public safety even when a political consensus for action is absent at the national level.

scholarly journals Policy Entrepreneurship and Policy Transfer: Flood Risk Governance in Northern Sweden

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evangelia Petridou ◽  
Pär M. Olausson
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
National Level ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Risk Governance ◽  
Policy Entrepreneur ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurship ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Political Actors

AbstractCentral to policies relating to risk governance at the regional and local levels is the interaction between the public and private sectors also referred to as networked governance. At the same time, the role of political actors in general and policy entrepreneurs in particular, in terms of policy change, has gained considerable traction in recent policy scholarship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in governance arrangements resulting in the formation of a coordination network in regional flood risk management-the first of its kind in Sweden. Our research is guided by the following questions: first, would the policy change (the establishment of the networks)have taken place if a policy entrepreneur were not part of the policy transfer process? Second, what is the role of policy entrepreneurship in the implementation of the policy after its nationwide adoption? Third, what other factors played a role in the variation of the results in the implemented policy that is, the enforced networks? We find the role of a policy entrepreneur key in the policy transfer from the regional to the national level. In order to investigate the resultant networks, we draw from B. Guy Peters (1998) and his conceptualization of factors which affect the politics of coordination. In addition to the presence of a policy entrepreneur, we compare: (i) pluriformity of network members;(ii) member interdependence; (iii) redundancy of structures, and (iv) degree of formality (in terms of meetings). Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs contribute to the variation in the functionality of the enforced river groups, though other factors play a significant role as well.Most importantly, perhaps, we did not identify entrepreneurs in any of the river groups which were not functional.

scholarly journals Silent Non-Exit and Broken Voice. Early Postcommunist Social Policies as Protest-Preempting Strategies

Südosteuropa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-174
Author(s):  
Pieter Vanhuysse
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Political Sociology ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
Distributive Conflict

Abstract This essay contributes to the development of an analytical political sociology examination of postcommunist policy pathways and applies such an analysis in a reinterpretation of the social policy pathways taken by Hungary and Poland. During the critical historical juncture of the early 1990s, governments in these new democracies used social policies to proactively create new labor market outsiders (rather than merely accommodate or deal with existing outsiders) in an effort to stifle disruptive repertoires of political voice. Microcollective action theory helps to elucidate how the break-up of hitherto relatively homogeneous clusters of threatened workers into newly competing interest groups shaped the nature of distributive conflict in the formative first decade of these new democracies. In this light, we see how the analytical political sociology of postcommunist social policy can advance and modify current, predominantly Western-oriented theories of insider/outsider conflict and welfare retrenchment policy, and can inform future debates about emerging social policy biases in Eastern Europe.

Democracy and new ideas in Latin American social policy: the origins of conditional cash transfers in Brazil and Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Velázquez Leyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
National Level ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Main Instrument

ABSTRACTConditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become the main instrument to combat poverty in Latin America, they have been exported around the globe and are one of the most popular social policies of the twenty-first century. CCTs deliver cash transfers to poor families with conditionalities like attendance to school and health appointments. This article aims to explain the creation of CCTs. The research applies arguments from theories of social policy development to explain the formulation of the first two CCTs introduced in Brazil at the sub-national level and in Mexico at the national level during the mid-1990s. Findings show that the original formulation of CCTs can be explained by the emergence of a new policy paradigm based on a conceptualisation of the nature of poverty as lack of human capital among poor population, enabled by critical junctures created by the transitions to democratic regimes.

scholarly journals A study about the sustainable challenges of extended areas in Taiwan and lessons for Ho Chi Minh, Dong Nai and Binh Duong regions

2020 ◽  
pp. 413-421
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Agricultural Regions ◽  
Urban Activities

This paper examines the main challenges of the processes of space and social policy change present to current urbanization trends of Taiwan. The chapter argues that one of the main challenges is economic growth, increasing integration into the global economy and making Taiwan competitive in the global economy. This process leads to the growth of large urban regions that present many challenges to the urban development in the future. In particular, the paper focuses on the most fragile areas of the extended urban spaces are the rural and urban margins, where urban activities are expanding into densely populated agricultural regions. It is argued that in these areas, local policies should be developed that adapt to local ecosystems. The paper presents lessons of interventions in this field for Ho Chi Minh, Dong Nai and Binh Duong Region for urban expansion.

scholarly journals Mujeres y hombres. Desigualdades de género en el contexto mexicanoWomen and men. Gender inequalities in the Mexican context

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (44) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco José Zamudio Sánchez ◽  
María Del Rosario Ayala Carrillo ◽  
Roxana Ivette Arana Ovalle
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Human Life ◽  
National Level ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Harmonic Mean ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Las construcciones socioculturales sobre género permean todas las esferas de la vida humana generando diversas inequidades. Es necesario medirlas y proponer alternativas de solución o modificación de políticas que las atiendan. Usando una media harmónica sobre las condiciones en las que viven mujeres y hombres, se midieron atributos de once factores sociales disponibles a escala nacional. Los atributos fueron jerarquizados para cuantificar el diferencial en el cual estos factores se encuentran. No únicamente las mujeres están en condiciones de inequidad, aunque son más frecuentes y graves. Políticas públicas en seis factores deben atender, prioritariamente, a las mujeres y en cinco a los hombres. En cada factor identificamos los atributos más inequitativos para hacer posible la instrumentación de acciones pertinentes. Así, el diseño de las políticas, desde la planeación, cuenta con posibilidades de actuar en congruencia con las necesidades. Abstract Cultural constructions of gender permeate all areas of human life, generating diverse inequities. This requires knowledge of the situations in which men and women are in a particular one and, accordingly, propose solutions or policy change that pay attention to such inequities. Using a harmonic mean on the living conditions in which women and men are, attributes of eleven social factors were measured, available at national level. Such attributes were analytically nested to quantify the differential in which these factors are. Not only women are in inequity conditions, although they are more frequent and severe. Public policies in six factors should attend, mainly, to women and in five to men. We identified, inside each factor, the attributes with more inequity to make possible the implementation of appropriate actions. The corresponding design of policies has, from planning, possibilities of acting in line with the needs.

New policies, new words — the service concept in Scandinavian social policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Lennart Nygren ◽  
Margit Andersson ◽  
Guđný Eydal ◽  
Sten-Erik Hammarqvist ◽  
Pirkko-Liisa Rauhala ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Service Concept ◽  
New Words ◽  
New Policies
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