Paths of an Evolving City: Alternatives and Relevance in Local Policy

This paper builds on some previous results concerning: (1) a view of the industrial district as a learning region, and (2) a typology of features of local development and industrial policies. The aim here is to apply these results to a 'non-district' case study, that is the understanding of the inner logic of the economy and the framing of the local economic policy in an Italian dynamic city (Florence, and its urban system). The interest of such case is two-fold. Firstly, we see how the conceptual framework developed for the analysis of industrial districts can be applied, at least partially, to different types of local systems, and in particular to the important case of complex and dynamic urban systems. Secondly, the complexity itself makes easier, or not avoidable, the consideration of a trade-off in the inputs of local policy's relevance.     

Comparing Policy Networks: Marine Protected Areas in California

While most of the network literature focuses on information and advice networks, there is increasing interest—particularly among Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) scholars—on ally networks and coordination networks. This article asks two basic questions: First, do information, ally, and coordination networks overlap with each other? Second, and drawing from the ACF, do policy core beliefs structure the interactions in ally, coordination, and advice/information networks? We pursue these research questions in the context of the California Marine Life Protection Act process. We find that ally and coordination networks overlap slightly more than information/advice networks and that policy core beliefs do a better job of predicting ally and coordination networks than advice/information networks. Thus, we show that ally networks can provide a useful proxy for coordination networks to identify advocacy coalitions.     

Pivoting toward Asia: Comparing the Canadian and American Policy Shifts

Both Canada and the United States have “pivoted” toward Asia in their foreign policy over the past decade, although emphases in those pivots differed between the two countries. The former focuses on an economic pivot initially, the latter on a security one. What factors explain these shifts? What was the magnitude of policy change by both? Utilizing some important theoretical works by Charles Hermann, we discuss the factors that appear to have brought about this policy change toward Asia, outline the actions and activities that both countries have initiated toward Asia in the past decade to illustrate the type and magnitude of policy change that has occurred, and compare some areas of political, economic, and military similarities between Canada and the United States toward this region. Finally, we assess the likely future of these pivots to Asia in light of the change in political leadership within both nations.     

Comparing Climate Change Policy Adoption and Its Extension across Areas of City Policymaking

Public policies increasingly address complex problems such as climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation that require forging connections across existing areas of policy activity. Despite the emerging prominence of these types of policymaking challenges, more research is needed to understand policy responses to them. In this paper, I use survey responses from 287 cities and a hurdle model to comparatively examine the factors that underlie the adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation as issues influencing city policymaking and their extension across areas of city policymaking. I find evidence that while social change, crisis, and conditions supporting nascent coalitions were associated with adoption, extension across areas of policymaking was associated with the city?s prevailing political economy as well as the resources for expanding communities of interest. In the process, I offer empirical evidence for existing similarities and differences in cities? considerations about climate change mitigation and adaptation; particularly that the number of policymaking areas influenced by mitigation was associated with financial factors while the number influenced by adaptation was associated with socioeconomic ones.     

Coalitions, Science, and Belief Change: Comparing Adversarial and Collaborative Policy Subsystems

Arguments for collaborative rather than adversarial approaches to governance rest partly on two axioms: first, that collaborative approaches mitigate conflict to intermediate levels and second, that collaborative approaches help integrate science and values through various joint fact-finding strategies. Using questionnaire data in 1984 and 2001 of policy participants involved in Lake Tahoe water quality policy, this article investigates whether a shift from an adversarial to a collaborative policy subsystem is associated with (i) convergence in beliefs regarding water quality problems and policy proposals; and (ii) an increase in the use of science-based empirical beliefs and a decrease in the use of normative beliefs in supporting policy proposals. The findings send a mixed message to policymakers and researchers about science and collaboration. The analysis suggests that collaborative policy subsystems are associated with convergence in some beliefs between rival coalitions, but it also suggests that policy participants are no more likely to rely on science-based, empirical beliefs in collaborative than in adversarial policy subsystems.     

Policy Change and Policy Stasis: Comparing Swiss Foreign Policy toward South Africa (1968–94) and Iraq (1990–91)

This article investigates how concepts from the field of public policy, in particular the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) initially introduced by Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith, can be applied to the study of foreign policy analysis. Using a most similar comparative case studies design, we examine Switzerland's foreign policy toward South Africa under apartheid for the period from 1968 to 1994 and compare it with the Swiss position toward Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when the Swiss government imposed—for the first time—comprehensive economic sanctions against another state. The application of the ACF shows that a dominant advocacy coalition in Swiss foreign policy toward South Africa prevented a major policy change in Swiss–South African relations despite external pressure from the international and national political levels. Actually, quite the opposite could be observed: Swiss foreign policy increased its persistence in not taking economic sanctions against the racist regime in South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s. The ACF, with its analytical focus on policy subsystems and the role of external shocks as potential triggers for change, provided a useful framework for analyzing the factors for policy change and stasis in Swiss foreign relations toward the selected two countries.     

Policy Networks in Complex Governance Subsystems: Observing and Comparing Hyperlink,Media, and Partnership Networks

Methods for observing policy networks have not kept up with the development of new network analytic techniques required to understand governance in complex settings. We compare three unobtrusive methods for observing policy networks based on hyperlinks between policy actor web sites, on media reports, and on public policy partnerships. Observations of one complex local water policy arena with all three methods provide a comparison of the general as well as actor‐specific network characteristics in the three observed networks. The core network of actors observed by all methods has similar network level statistics, highly correlated relationships measured by Quadratic Assignment Procedures models, and the same significant network microstructures as measured by Exponential Random Graph Models. The full networks including actors observed by any method also exhibit similar actor‐level characteristics, although the correlations across networks are stronger for bridging capital measures than for bonding capital measures, and each method has different apparent biases. Once biases are accounted for, similarities suggest that these methods may provide useful proxies for each other and for other relationships that are more difficult or impossible to measure, particularly when combined to offset each method's biases. If so, they can extend the range of policy networks observable with limited resources across space and time.