Channelling Public Opinion into EU's Trade Policy Making Process: Case Study of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Yoo-Duk Kang
Author(s):  
Mowafa Househ ◽  
Andre W. Kushniruk ◽  
Malcolm Maclure ◽  
Bruce Carleton ◽  
Denise Cloutier-Fisher

Within Canada, there is a growing need in the area of drug policy to develop virtual communities to facilitate knowledge exchange between academics and policy-makers. Such collaborations are regarded as a way to make research relevant by influencing the policy-making process. This chapter presents an action case study of three drug policy groups participating in various virtual knowledge exchange activities. The experiences and lessons learned by each group participating in this study are provided. Recommendations and solutions to conduct successful virtual knowledge exchange meetings based on the findings of this research are also provided.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-237
Author(s):  
Benjamin Biard

Debates over the stripping of citizenship have been rekindled in many countries in recent years. Radical right populist parties (RRPPs) are often perceived to have played a significant role in these resurging debates, even when they do not possess executive power and are often marginalised by mainstream parties. Thus, RRPPs’ real influence on policy-making remains unclear and the way RRPPs intervene in the policy-making process to influence it has not yet been satisfactorily determined. By focusing on policy-making, this study asks the question: how do RRPPs influence resurging debates over the stripping of citizenship? Using process-tracing and evidence from archives, memoirs and 67 interviews with policy-makers and party leaders, this research aims to determine if and how RRPPs intervene in the process in France and Belgium. The results indicate that RRPPs matter but that their influence is strongly curtailed. Their influence is not exercised directly and through institutional arenas, but indirectly: based on a provocative style, in a specific context, and through public opinion and the media.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-200
Author(s):  
Jung Taek Han ◽  
Seo Yeon Kim

Despite increasing demands for the reform of oil subsidies, the United States government fails to enact substantial reform policies on the issue. The paper visits the biggest unresolved cleavage in the environmental policy literature where there have been no attempts to quantitatively assess the influence of lobbying and mass participation on the policy-making process. It thus attempts to quantify and examine various factors behind legislators’ votes, and the results are hard to square with a pure lobbying model. While the role of lobbying is certainly not ruled out of the explanatory model per se, this paper observed that congressional preferences may instead also be driven by the voter perception towards environmental regulation in each state. The thrust of the argument is that lobbying, while being a decisive factor, may not be the only one influencing legislators’ decisions for the oil subsidy reform bills. This study hypothesizes that the exchange model theory might not fully provide an explanation of why oil subsidies continuously fall through. It suggests that oil politics may instead follow the neo-pluralist model: While lobbying is an important factor in voting results, legislators are mindful of voters’ perspectives in spite of the fact that they are unorganized—and that they might in fact be even more powerful determinants than the lobby variable.


1991 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Risse-Kappen

The paper discusses the role of public opinion in the foreign policy-making process of liberal democracies. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, public opinion matters. However, the impact of public opinion is determined not so much by the specific issues involved or by the particular pattern of public attitudes as by the domestic structure and the coalition-building processes among the elites in the respective country. The paper analyzes the public impact on the foreign policy-making process in four liberal democracies with distinct domestic structures: the United States, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan. Under the same international conditions and despite similar patterns of public attitudes, variances in foreign policy outcomes nevertheless occur; these have to be explained by differences in political institutions, policy networks, and societal structures. Thus, the four countries responded differently to Soviet policies during the 1980s despite more or less comparable trends in mass public opinion.


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