Introduction: Disability Policy as an Emerging Field of Mainstream Public Policy Research and Pedagogy

The purpose of this two-part symposium of the Policy Studies Journal is to broaden theconcept of disability policy from one that has relevance onlyforpeople interested in that substantive area to that of a major field of social policy having ramifications for the study and teaching of public policy broadly construed. The goal is for experiences in disability policy to be regarded in the same way that experiences in Other substantive areas, such as environmental policy, other social services, and civil rights, illustrate broader themes in areas such as public management, policy analysis, or ethics.     

Four ministries,four spatial planning perspectives? Dutch evidence on the persistent problem of horizontal coordination

The formulation of spatial policy at the national level is fraught with coordination problems, mainly owing to competition among ministries. This paper considers ways to improve horizontal coordination. It is based on a review of current Dutch policy documents and the political debate they have spawned in the Netherlands. To set the stage, the paper discusses the spatial policy now in force, which derives from the Fourth Report on Spatial Planning Extra (VINEX). After presenting the views espoused by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, the paper highlights key spatial concepts proposed by three other ministries. The inherent contradictions come into play when allocating strategic spatial investments, which are drawn from the Economic Structure Enhancing Fund. The defensive position that government bodies take regarding their own spatial concepts may be understood in terms of the competition for billions of Euros in public money. In our opinion, the recipe for success is a blend of ingredients from each of the sectoral approaches, combined in an integrated spatial policy. We are pleased to say that since the time of writing, this approach has actually been adopted in the Netherlands. In January 1999, the government published what it calls a Starting Memorandum on Spatial Planning. That document seeks to realign national spatial policy by combining diverse sectoral views and introducing new spatial concepts such as ‘corridor’ and ‘network city’. The ideals of ‘spatial vision’ and ‘spatial quality’ are combined with criteria like ‘sustainability’ as well as with the flexibility and responsiveness that is needed in a market setting, whereby households and firms operate increasingly in a European context. The associated style of governance would be to alternate a loose rein—a strategy of divergence and competition—with a tight rein—the implementation of policy that is both horizontally coordinated and integrated. This approach is bound to fan the flames of public debate on national spatial planning. In this sense, other countries might do well to keep an eye on it.     

European Union Competition Policy and the European Territorial Cohesion Agenda: An Impossible Reconciliation? State Aid Rules and Public Service Liberalization through the European Spatial Planning Lens

The territorial and spatial planning impacts of European Union (EU) economic and competition policies have remained under-researched in the field of European spatial planning, in contrast to other EU policy fields. This briefing explores how two elements of the EU competition policy, the regulation of “state aid” and the liberalization of “services of general interest (SGI)”, have significant implications for the pursuit of the objective of territorial cohesion through spatial planning and territorial development policies at different scales. The paper first reviews the development of the concept of territorial cohesion in the EU discourse and policy agenda since the mid-1990s, as well as the contribution of public services (Services of General Interest, or SGI in EU jargon) to it. It, then, reviews how the EU state aid rules and liberalization policies affect the state's ability to intervene (i) in support of sub-national territories which are lagging behind or suffering decline, and (ii) in the provision of public services across the national territory, specifically in peripheral regions or areas where the provision is not catered for by the market. The conclusion of the paper outlines the additional challenges to the pursuit of territorial cohesion in the EU posed by the post-2008 economic crisis and suggests avenues for future research.     

Governance,public policy and boundary-making

This symposium draws attention to innovative and emerging research in Australian public policy exploring the interplay of governance, public policy and boundary-making. Conceptually and substantively, boundaries are fundamental to understanding policy outcomes, yet remain overlooked and undertheorised. We aim to contribute to public policy debates, in Australia and beyond, by provoking further reflection on this theme, in particular, the distributive effects of boundaries in policy-making; the blurring of boundaries implicit to governance frameworks; the crossing of boundaries, especially by policy-officials within and between institutions; the construction of boundaries to separate and marginalise; and the existence of temporal–spatial boundaries that demarcate jurisdiction and authority. In short, the study of governance and public policy-making is marked by multiple different types of boundaries but the way in which boundaries get drawn and redrawn is also suffuse with political contestation meaning they raise crucial questions about the exercise of power.     

AN OVERVIEW OF BIOMEDICAL POLICY: LIFE AND DEATH ISSUES

This article attempts to encourage discussion and analysis of the policy implications of biomedical technology and proposes a framework for studying life and death issues arising out of this technology. It summarizes the status of research on a wide variety of specific policy areas, including those in human genetic inter-vention as well as the non-genetic biomedical issues at various life stages. It suggests that no set of issues has more serious implications for humanity and urges policy scientists to examine these technologies more fully. While the technical and ethical aspects of these issues are important, at the center of these con-cerns is the extent to which decision should be public–the degree to which the government should direct, limit, or facilitate applica-tion of the various technologies that affect life and death. This overview article concludes with a call for a PSJ symposium on this area of critical policy importance.     

Bureaucratic Competition in the Policy Process

Recent scholarship has emphasized the important role that strategic bureaucratic actors play in the formulation of public policy. This study builds on that research by exploring the ways in which agencies strategically compete with one another over the content and character of public policy. Using insights from the literature that explicitly models bureaucratic competition, the study adapts an existing model of policymaking in subsystems to generate expectations about the causes and consequences of bureaucratic competition in the policy process. Finally, the article explores the utility of these propositions through a case study of a protracted policy battle over the management of natural resources in the western United States.     

Going It Alone: Belarus as the Non-European European State

In the second paper of a symposium devoted to the contemporary status of Belarus, a noted American specialist on the electoral geography of the states of the former Soviet Union challenges assertions in the preceding article (Ioffe and Yarashevich, 2011) that only Russia and Ukraine are valid comparators against which to gauge the success of the Lukashenka model. Expanding the scope of comparison to include the three other countries neighboring Belarus (Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland), he demonstrates that a broader range of policy changes can be considered by its leadership in efforts to limit damage from the economic crisis in Belarus and position the country for renewed growth within a global economic frame-work. Examination of a wide range of social and economic indicators and government policies reveals, however, that in many ways an unreformed Belarus is poorly positioned for competition in an increasingly interconnected world, in which the elements for successful development are quite different from those providing economic stability in the past. A closing section of the paper revisits the debate on whether most Belarusian citizens actually aspire to a more "European" way of life or instead prefer the "Eastern" alignment and reliance on a Russian benefactor whose own economic future looks increasingly uncertain.     

European Union External Trade Policy: Multilevel Principal–Agent Relationships

This article examines the potential political influences on European Union (EU) external trade policymaking. Given the EU's volume of international trade and its extensive involvement in bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements, a better understanding of how the EU makes external trade policy is increasingly important. It is an extremely complex process—involving the EU public, the 25 member states' parliaments and governments, and the institutions of the EU, including the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Commission. It is a system of multilevel governance with overlapping jurisdictions with numerous potential access points for societal interests to influence European external trade policy. In this article, we evaluate the probable political channels that societal interests could use to influence EU external trade policy. We employ the principal–agent (P–A) framework to examine five of the more important P–A relationships that are likely to influence EU external trade policymaking. We conclude that EU policymaking as it pertains to external trade is quite insulated from general public pressures. The primary institutions involved in external trade policymaking are the EU Council of Ministers and the Commission—both of which are largely insulated from the public. Future empirical work should focus on this relationship between the Council of Ministers and the Commission.     

Who should pay for pollution? The OECD,the European Communities and the emergence of environmental policy in the early 1970s

Abstract

Environmental policy emerged as a new European and global policy field within a very brief period of time during the early 1970s. Notably in Europe, international organizations played a central role in defining core principles for this new policy domain. This article argues that inter-organizational connections were crucial in this context: the exchange and transfer of policy ideas facilitated the rise of environmental policy across different international organizations. Focusing on the co-evolution of the polluter-pays principle enshrined almost simultaneously both at the OECD and the European Communities, the article assesses the multiple routes along which policy ideas travelled, the role inter-organizational competition played and the selective nature of transfers. While expertise played a key role in determining which policy concepts were selected, institutional conditions and the politics of the recipient institution determined how they were adapted to the respective new context.     

Explaining State Budget Punctuations: Policy Transparency,Political Institutions,and Electoral Incentives

What factors cause policies experiencing long periods of stability to be interrupted occationally by a short period of large changes? This study argues that electoral incentives might influence the search, supply, and processing of information on constituency issues, as well as the associated cognitive or institutional frictions, and thus determine the presence and variation of punctuated policies. This article develops and evaluates this claim within a systemic framework consisting of policy transparency, political institutions, and electoral incentives. For the purpose of identifying policy punctuations, this research uses the Generalized Pareto Distribution in the Extreme Value Theory. This study analyzes budget spending data collected from FY 1988 to FY 2008 for all 50 American states. This study finds that greater policy transparency is associated with larger spending stability. By contrast, greater gubernatorial competition is more likely to produce extreme spending changes. Electoral incentives shaped by public preference and political term limits have a profound impact on nonincremental policy changes. The impact of policy transparency is conditional on public preference, while that of electoral competition and legislative professionalism is moderated by political term limits. Particularly, a transparent policy consistent with public preference and legislative professionalism with term limits are more likely to give rise to punctuated policies, while gubernatorial (legislative) competition leads to less punctuated changes when governors (legislators) are subject to term limits.     

Studies in Mental Health Policy

It is intended that the publication of this symposium will result in the involvement of more political scientists and policy analysts in the intriguing, challenging, and important area of mental health policy. The articles in this symposium serve as examples of a few of the areas in mental health that offer both the opportunity for and that would benefit from, more studies of policy issues and processes. Many others exist as well.     

European Policy and the Regions: A Review and Analysis of Tensions

This article explores a series of tensions inherent in the series of European policies that are designed to improve the competitiveness of regions in the face of globalization. Its focus is the co-existence of interventionist policies intended to overcome problems of lagging regions such as cohesion policies and those, for example competition policy which are designed to remove barriers to market integration and that are anti-interventionist. Moreover, the changing relationship between the European Union (EU), member states and the regions and problems of how regions are defined complicate policy implementation. To review these issues, the article adopts an agent-centred approach to understanding economic behaviour in the face of globalization in particular geographical and sectoral contexts. This methodology is used to highlight five sources of tension relating to the reality of the experience of globalization. These are illustrated by evidence from a recently completed EU Fifth Framework Programme study of regional adjustment strategies and technological change in five European countries.     

The Determination of Policy and Politics in the American States, 1948–1974*

The picture of the American state policy-making process which emerges from this analysis is one of a system where politics as well as economics matter a great deal. Partisanship and legislative competition are shown to have demonstrable effect on policy output. The control partisan preference exerts over policy decisions is severely constrained in taxing and spending areas, however, and is conditional on forces external to the model presented here. Surpassing the control over policy output exhibited by partisanship is the extent to which the electorate, or the electoral process, holds the parties responsible for policy performance. Apparently the public doesn't believe that “politics doesn't matter.”     

Towards a European spatial planning policy: Theoretical dilemmas and institutional implications

This article examines the emergence, the present configuration and the perspectives of a spatial planning policy at a European level in the light of the institutional and economic properties embodied in the nature of the European integration process. First, it recapitulates the main historical steps through which the idea of a European view about spatial questions has been developed as a combined result of cohesion and solidarity objectives and liberal market constraints. On the basis of these complementary and competitive principles, the article explores the conceptual identity of the emerging policy and discusses especially the reorientations of the spatial justice concept under a market integration paradigm. Finally, it presents the fundamental traits for the institutional design of the new policy, which lead to the reshaping of the traditional hierarchical, substantialist and normative profile of welfare spatial intervention towards an horizontal, procedural and pluralist model of collective spatial coordination. The article comes to the conclusion that the conceptual and institutional innovations to which the emergence of a European spatial planning policy is submitted constitute a part of a more general rearrangement in the legitimation basis of public policies in a post‐national and post‐welfare Europe. Recognition of these transformations could be seen both as a search for new forms of governance beyond the state and as a chance for rethinking traditional concepts of social theory in a time of change.     

Is public participation an added value for river basin management?

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) represents one of the most advanced pieces of water policy developed during the last decades. Since its introduction in 2000, several technical and political issues arose regarding this Directive and its implementation, and have to be managed by European Member States at the national level, but in strict collaboration with local authorities and stakeholders. Whilst several studies have analysed the WFD from a technical point of view, a few are available that assess and compare the quality of public participation processes in river basin management at the European level. The present paper shows the outcomes of an own-developed questionnaire sent to European water and environmental authorities during 2015, which highlights the variable situation in terms of stakeholders’ involvement and methods adopted to interact with them, and also points out the scarce results that the consultation has obtained in terms of innovative measures to fulfil the requirements of the WFD. In light of the present situation, a better consideration of public consultation and associated methodologies is necessary for future management cycles, as well as a better coordination between Member States sharing river basins.     

From Cohesion to Territorial Policy Integration (TPI): Exploring the Governance Challenges in the European Union

The European Union (EU) is searching for new approaches to manage problems that span different policy sectors. In the regional policy field, incompatibilities between the EU's territorial development objectives and its transport, agricultural, competition and environmental policies, are well known. The need to integrate territorial policy concerns into these sectoral policies (territorial policy integration or “TPI”) has recently emerged as a key policy priority. This article examines the EU's capacity to implement TPI. It does so in relation to two member states (Germany and the Netherlands) and the European Commission. It finds that the administrative implications of implementing TPI are far more demanding than any of these actors are currently able to handle. Moreover, some EU-level networks are potentially relevant to TPI, but these are mostly focused on regional policy matters (i.e. they are relatively inward looking). If these administrative issues are not taken more seriously, “integration” will struggle to make headway in an EU which is notoriously sectorized.     

A Behavioral Theory of Policy Feedback in Tobacco Control: Evidence From a Difference‐In‐Difference‐In‐Difference Study

Public policy scholars argue that in highly tangible policies, such as tobacco control, the public learns from the direct experience of the beneficial effects of the policy. Empirical evidence supports this argument, suggesting that in the United States the introduction of tobacco control measures makes people more inclined to further regulation. By relying on a set of cases which allows testing the effects of the introduction of tobacco control measures across European countries on a series of relevant variables, this study confirms that the introduction of tobacco control measures makes the public more inclined to further regulation. Yet, when the effects of these policies are disaggregated between smokers and nonsmokers, results show that these positive effects are driven by smokers. This puzzle suggests that different effects than mass attitudinal policy feedback effects, driven by learning from direct experience, might explain the positive reaction to tobacco control. This study puts forward a behavioral theory of policy feedback, which suggests that smokers react positively to the introduction of tobacco control measures because they see these measures as commitment devices, which can help them quit smoking. Evidence for this argument is found by demonstrating that the introduction of tobacco control measures increases smokers’ welfare.     

International competition,urban governance and planning projects: Malmö, Birmingham and Lille

In recent years competition between European cities has increased. This article looks at the implications for planning projects in the context of changes in urban governance. Growth machine and urban regime theories are introduced and three case studies explored in detail. Plans and development projects resulting from the arrival of the Oresund bridge in Malmö are examined. In Malmö, public planning is being bypassed in favour of local corporatist objectives and this experience is compared to the approaches developed in the strongly competitive cities of Birmingham and Lille. International comparison reveals the national distinctiveness of the responses to competition. In Birmingham there has been a local political reaction to the economic development‐led city centre strategy, but British central‐local relations restrict the ability of the city to change course. Developments in Lille reflect an integrated public sector approach to the development and marketing of the city and its region. In the three cases social and environmental issues have been raised but the imperatives of competition remain dominant.     

Constructing the European Spatial Development Perspective—For Whom?

This article discusses the provenance and potential significance of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), considering questions of whose policy is it, who had an input into its preparation, who is the client and/or audience, and the significance of its preparation by the Committee on Spatial Development (CSD). The preparation phase from 1993, and the more public phase from the Noordwijk draft of 1997 to completion of the Potsdam text in 1999 are reviewed in order to consider whether the overall time-scale is reasonable and whether the transnational seminars can be regarded as a form of public participation. The paper goes on to discuss what follows after adoption, threats to its role in EU policy-making, and concludes that there are some benefits from the process of preparation by the CSD, and from the form of élite participation that took place, but that the ESDP must become a Commission policy if it is to play a significance role in achieving territorial and social cohesion at the EU level.     

An analysis of technological potential and regional development processes in Rhône — Alpes

A region's technology potential can be developed in three ways: public finding; private investment (by business); and an intermediate area which ensures coherence between the public and private sectors, and which is mainly to be seen in interface structures between universities and business. After presenting these ways for Rhône‐Alpes, the paper introduces the regional policy to promote science and technology. According to French centralized political structure, the regional government acts as a lever. The region's innovation‐oriented policy, which should not be confused with a research‐oriented policy, has the impact of aiming all action at improving the technological environment of business, and at facilitating their economic development by integrating new technologies. Similarities between Rhône‐Alpes and Baden‐Würtemberg have led these two regions to cooperate increasingly in the fields of science and technology. The ‘four motor‐regions for Europe’ (with Lombardia and Catalonia) experiment in the field of new‐material investment cooperation could be useful if we think of the process aimed at strengthening integration in the European Community.