Advocacy Coalitions,Policy Stability,and Policy Change in China: The Case of Birth Control Policy, 1980–2015

This study used the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain stability and change in China's national birth control policy from 1980 to 2015. We found that policy remained stable, despite internal and external changes to the relevant subsystem, from 1980 to 2013. The stability was explained by the dominant advocacy coalition's mobilization of considerable resources to defend its policy core beliefs. Policy changes in 2013 and 2015 were caused by a combination of external and internal perturbations, in addition to policy-oriented learning and advocacy by two expert-led minority advocacy coalitions. The case showed that the openness and plurality of China's policy processes had increased over time but were still limited in comparison with those in Western democracies. The case analysis confirmed two policy change hypotheses and suggested a mechanism for policy change: a hierarchically superior jurisdiction is more likely to impose a major policy change when it learns that the change is an adaptation to internal and external perturbations and that adopting the change will serve the jurisdiction's political interests.     

Is There Life After Policy Streams,Advocacy Coalitions,and Punctuations: Using Evolutionary Theory to Explain Policy Change?

This article reviews the current state of public policy theory to find out if researchers are ready to readdress the research agenda set by the classic works of Baumgartner and Jones (1993 ), Kingdon (1984 ) and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993 ). After reviewing the influences of institutional, rational choice, network, socio-economic and ideational approaches, the article pays tribute to the policy streams, punctuated equilibrium and policy advocacy coalition frameworks whilst also suggesting that future theory and research could identify more precisely the causal mechanisms driving policy change. The article argues that evolutionary theory may usefully uncover the micro-level processes at work, particularly as some the three frameworks refer to dymamic models and methods. After reviewing some evolutionary game theory and the study of memes, the article suggests that the benefits of evolutionary theory in extending policy theories need to be balanced by its limitations.     

Orme Sargent,Ernest Bevin and British Policy Towards Europe, 1946–1949

Upon his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, it was widely expected that Ernest Bevin would make a clean sweep of the permanent officials in the Foreign Office. However, Bevin decided against staffing changes and eventually came to trust and even like these officials. This paper explores the relationship between Bevin and his Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office between 1946 and 1949, Sir Orme Sargent. Despite their initial concerns about one another in 1945, this relationship turned into one of mutual friendship by the time of Sargent's retirement in 1949. Both were driven by similar motivations in their conception of British foreign policy. They both believed that Britain was a Great Power and had a place in Europe. The congruence of views between them is clear in the examination of Anglo-French relations (culminating in the Anglo-French Treaty of 1947) and in the signature of the Brussels Treaty. This paper will show that while Bevin had a policy, so did his most senior advisor, and that the Foreign Secretary was not adverse to taking advice either. Beyond high policy, a close working and personal relationship developed between the two men.     

Whose Mandate? Policy Promises,Strong Bicameralism and Polled Opinion

The political theory of Australian politics has been dominated, since the election of a Liberal-National Party government in 1996, by claims and counterclaims about electoral mandates. The government has privileged its position in the House of Representatives; opposition parties have pointed to their support in the Senate. This paper provides a historical re-examination of the meanings and merits of mandate theories; it outlines the difficulties posed by strong bicameralism for any mandate theory; and it shows how the rise of survey research has strengthened some claims to a mandate, especially in bicameral systems, while weakening others.     

Political Power and Policy Design: Why Are Policy Alternatives Constrained?

Little research examines the stage of the policy process during which policy alternatives are formulated. Using quantitative and qualitative data from Swedish local politics, we address this deficiency by analyzing the process by which the number of specific policy alternatives is reduced. The findings suggest that, in approximately 20 percent of issues, more than one alternative will reach all politicians making the binding decisions. Most local politicians, in both the majority and opposition factions, think that they lack sufficient information on alternative policy designs. We also find a “political bias,” that is, alternatives are discarded at an early stage because they are deemed not politically feasible. Politicians outside the inner circles, especially those with higher education, would like to see more policy alternatives to discuss and from which they can make choices.     

Policy Analysis for What? The Effectiveness of Nonpartisan Policy Research Organizations

For the past several decades, scholars have studied the role of policy research in decision making. Depending how "use" is measured, the results have indicated only modest or indirect impacts. This study takes another direction to studying knowledge utilization, comparing the influence of nonpartisan policy research organizations in 19 states on their principal clients: state legislators. Nonpartisan research agencies represent a particularly rigorous test since the literature on knowledge utilization questions whether nonpartisan policy analysis organizations (NPROs) can remain neutral and contribute meaningfully to policymaking. Further, this analysis is comparative across states, studies institutions rather than specific reports or policy domains, and examines multiple types of "use." Using the results of surveys of both agencies and legislators, the results indicate a strong association between the size and type of policy research organizations and legislators' assessments of use, even controlling for political and ideological factors. This suggests that policy analysis organizations—even those in a highly politicized environment—have a significant impact on policymaking, mainly by providing information and analysis to decision makers but also in influencing public policy outcomes.     

Does Policy Diffusion Need Space? Spatializing the Dynamics of Policy Diffusion

For decades, scholars in multiple disciplines have examined spatial diffusion, or the spatiotemporal properties associated with the diffusion of innovations. These properties include contagious, hierarchical, and relocation diffusion. Each of these refers to a spatial model that epitomizes how innovations spread among geographic locations. Policy diffusion, a separate but homologous research tradition, had its theoretical underpinnings in spatial diffusion. However, contemporary policy diffusion has focused largely on mechanism‐based diffusion. This article demonstrates how exploratory spatial data analysis can be used to uncover spatial policy diffusion properties. In this study, municipal smoking regulation adoptions, religious‐based initiatives, and bag ban and bag fees are examined. This study finds evidence that for each policy more than one property is occurring; therefore, this study proposes that a hybrid model best explains diffusion. This article demonstrates how examining spatial diffusion properties, in addition to diffusion mechanisms, can improve the conceptualization of diffusion theories, enhance mechanism or theory‐based specification of diffusion models, and unravel the specific regional or neighboring causal pathways linking policies between adopting jurisdictions.     

Is Morality Policy Different? Testing Sectoral and Institutional Explanations of Policy Change

We analyze morality policy change from the perspective of punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) to test whether reform dynamics in this policy sector follow a distinct pattern. First, we propose a new measurement scheme capturing changes in the intensity of morality policy output. Second, we demonstrate that morality policy change is strongly punctuated. Finally, and most importantly, we show that the degree of policy punctuations varies between different domains of morality policy, but not according to institutional features operating on the country level, supporting existing PET research, which has discovered similar domain‐specific dynamics in changes of public spending. Specifically, punctuations are particularly pronounced in areas of manifest morality policy, that is, policies characterized by strong value conflicts, whereas punctuations are less pronounced for latent morality policies, that is, policies in which other dimensions of conflict are present next to the value dimension. Significant differences in reform dynamics are neither discerned for countries belonging to the religious or the secular world, nor for countries with majoritarian or consensual democracies. The analysis relies on an original dataset capturing legislative changes in five manifest (abortion, euthanasia, prostitution, pornography, and homosexuality), and three latent morality policies (drugs, gambling, and handguns) in 19 European countries (1960–2010).     

Policy Agendas in Australian Politics: The Governor-General's Speeches, 1945–2008

The Policy Agendas Project collects and organises data from official documents to trace changes in the policy agenda and outputs of national, sub-national and supranational governments. In this paper we use the policy agendas method to analyse the changing contents of those Australian Governor-General's speeches delivered on behalf of incoming governments between 1945 and 2008. We suggest that these speeches provide an important insight into how the executive wishes to portray its policy agenda as it starts a new term of government. In mapping the changing agenda in this way we address four questions: which issues have risen or fallen in importance? When and in relation to what issues have there been policy ‘punctuations’? How stable is the Australian policy agenda? How fragmented is the policy agenda? We find evidence of a number of policy punctuations and one turning-point: the election of the Whitlam government.     

Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice

Despite the enormous energy devoted to generating the right policy models in development, strangely little attention is given to the relationship between these models and the practices and events that they are expected to generate or legitimize. Focusing on the unfolding activities of a development project over more than ten years as it falls under different policy regimes, this article challenges the assumption that development practice is driven by policy, suggesting that the things that make for ‘good policy’— policy which legitimizes and mobilizes political support — in reality make it rather unimplementable within its chosen institutions and regions. But although development practice is driven by a multi‐layered complex of relationships and the culture of organizations rather than policy, development actors work hardest of all to maintain coherent representations of their actions as instances of authorized policy, because it is always in their interest to do so. The article places these observations within the wider context of the anthropology of development and reflects on the place, method and contribution of development ethnography.     

Ostpolitik or Westpolitik? British Foreign Policy, 1968–75

Works reviewed:
Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series III, Volume I: Britain and the Soviet Union, 1968–1972
Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series III, Volume II: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1972–1975