1,721,131 research outputs found
Don’t think it’s a good idea! Four building sites of the ‘ideas school’
Full text linkIdeational explanations of policy change are popular in the fields of political economy, comparative politics and policy analysis. And yet, to make the case for ideational explanations, we must make further progress on the nature of ideas, where they come from, what they consist of, and how they change over time. We highlight four critical building sites concerning the definitional aspects of ideational explanations, micro-foundations, mechanisms and the difference between ideational and cognitive analysis. We make recommendations on how to carry out work in the building sites and describe the range of suggestions and ways forward found in the articles of this Symposium. We also suggest cross-fertilising political science with the findings of neighbouring disciplines that have developed empirically robust models of ideation and cognition
Research Design in European Studies. Establishing Causality in Europeanization
Full text linkExadaktylos, Theofanis y Radaelli, Claudio M. (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan:Basingstoke, 2012, 273 pp
The Hard Case for Learning: Explaining the Diversity of Swiss Tobacco Advertisement Bans
No full textTobacco prevention is a hard case for policy learning. Despite clear evidence about the damaging effects on health since the 1930s, smoking prevalence remains high. Thus, what are the conditions under which we can observe diffusion of tobacco bans? The subnational units of Switzerland constitute an ideal-typical representation of the patchwork we see in global tobacco prevention. In the absence of national guidelines, some cantons have started introducing their own instruments, while others have remained largely passive. To explain this process, I combine the learning approach with the Multiple Streams Framework to examine tobacco advertising bans. The merging of these theories allows for a deeper understanding of different mechanisms promoting or hindering learning, while controlling for the role of context. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a suitable method to put this theoretical approach into practice. While a variety of factor-combinations account for the adoption or rejection of the tobacco advertisement bans, the decisive roles of private interest groups and the specific form of the proposed bans stand out. Even though a generalization of the findings may be difficult due to the peculiarities of the Swiss system, in the conclusion I reflect on how policy-makers, activists and lobbyists can use the findings about different macro-level characteristics and possible interaction-effects when they want to introduce new legislation in a political system against resilient and vested interests
The puzzle of regulatory competition
No full textOur understanding of international competition in regulatory policies has not progressed much because conventional theories lead to a bewildering range of conclusions. Empirical evidence has shown the limitations of simplistic models. Fresh work should overcome the obsession with ‘races’ and ‘final outcomes’ of conventional theoretical approaches and start modelling real-world mechanisms of regulatory competition. The first part of the article shows the limitations of conventional theories. The second introduces eight problems that explanations of international regulatory competition should address. It also discusses how the articles presented here contribute to the solution to problematic aspects of the puzzle. The conclusion reports results achieved in terms of key concepts of regulatory competition, sequences of cooperation and competition, the role of non-unitary actors in networked regulatory action, and why regulatory competition is still limited, both in the EU and in transatlantic relations
Impact assessment in the European Union: innovations, quality, and good regulatory governance. Conference background report
No full textBackground report written for the conference 'Impact Assessment in the European Union: Innovations, Quality, and Good Regulatory Governance', held in Brussels, 3 December 2003Report for European Commission, December 200
The open method of coordination: a new governance architecture for the European Union?
No full textCommissioned by the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Measuring design diversity: A new application of Ostrom's rule types
Full text linkWe draw on the Institutional Grammar Tool's rule types to empiricallyanalyze the design of four major procedural regulatoryinstruments in the 27 member states of the European Union andthe UK. They are: consultation, regulatory impact assessment,freedom of information, and the Ombudsman. By adopting theInstitutional Grammar Tool as conceptual lens we end up witha single measurement template applicable to a variety of actionsituations. We derive measures that are conceptually robust andsuitable for comparative analysis. With original data gathered onthe official legal base in the 28 cases, we carry out principal componentsanalysis. We identify design patterns across countriesand instruments; the specialization of each instrument in termsof rule type; and the components that best explain cross-countryvariation. In the conclusions we argue that to reframe the designfeatures of the four instruments in conceptual, theoreticalcategories is not simply a taxonomical exercise but it extends tothe territory of comparative policy analysis, practice and reform
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