The Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles 2020044785, 2020044786, 9780367251437, 9780429286322, 9780367713690

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‘Howlett and Tosun have brought together a leading collection of internationally renowned scholars to produce the definitive compendium on comparative policy styles. The volume provides a rich series of case studies and contrasting approaches to the way governments around the world identify policy options, articulate policy pathways and enact public policy to address vexed and complex policy problems.’ –Darryl S.L. Jarvis, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ‘The concept of policy styles is an important approach to understanding public policies, especially from a comparative perspective. The concept has been used primarily to understand differences among countries, but this book extends the use of the concept to policy domains and to the policy process. This Handbook makes a major contribution to understanding how and why policies differ across countries and across policy areas.’ –B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, USA

The Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles

This Handbook provides a systematic overview of the study of policy styles provided by leading experts in the field. The book unites theoretical bases and advancements in practice, ranging from the fundamentals of policy styles to its place in greater policy studies, and responds to new questions regarding policy style dynamics across a range of government levels and activities, including contemporary trends affecting styles such as the use of digital tools and big data in government. It is a comprehensive reference for students and scholars of public policy. Key features: • •

• •

consolidates and advances the contemporary body of knowledge on policy styles and defines its distinctiveness within broader policy studies; provides a detailed picture of national policy styles in a wide range of countries as well as insights concerning sectoral and other kinds of styles within countries, including executive styles and styles of policy advice; systematically explores questions dealing with how policy styles impact policy goals, and the realization of policies, including how styles affect instrument choices and impact; provides a guide to future comparative research pathways and cross-sectoral dialogue on the concept and practice of policy styles.

The Routledge Handbook Policy Styles is essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners of public policy, public administration, and public management as well as for comparative politics and government, public organizations, and individual policy areas such as health policy, welfare policy, industrial policy, and environmental policy, among others. Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Jale Tosun is Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany.

The Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles

Edited by Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Howlett, Michael, 1955- editor. | Tosun, Jale, editor. Title: The Routledge handbook of policy styles / edited by Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun. Other titles: Handbook of policy styles Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge international handbooks | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020044785 (print) | LCCN 2020044786 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367251437 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780429286322 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Political planning—Case studies. | Policy sciences—Case studies. | Public administration—Decision making—Case studies. Classification: LCC JF1525.P6 R68 2021 (print) | LCC JF1525.P6 (ebook) | DDC 320.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044785 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044786 ISBN: 978-0-367-25143-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-71369-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28632-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of tables List of figures Notes on contributors   1 Introduction: studying policy styles at the national level and beyond Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

xi xii xiii

1

SECTION 1

Institutional styles

11

PART 1

National policy styles: concepts and cases

13

  2 National policy styles in theory and practice Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

15

  3 Adversarial legalism and the American style of policymaking Jeb Barnes

25

  4 Experimentalism as a policy style: the case of China Jiwei Qian

38

  5 From the ‘rationalist consensus’ to ‘exclusive incrementalism’: the ‘new’ German policy style Reimut Zohlnhöfer and Jale Tosun   6 Authoritarian policy styles: post-Soviet Central Asia Aziz Burkhanov

50 63

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Contents

PART 2

Sectoral policy styles: concepts and cases

75

  7 The concept of a sectoral policy style Paul Cairney

77

  8 Three worlds of social policy styles: lasting legacies or a thing of the past? Alexander Horn and Jennifer Shore

89

  9 Policy styles in healthcare: understanding variations in health systems Azad Singh Bali and Adam Hannah

105

10 Operationalising and explaining environmental policy styles Jale Tosun and Marc Debus

123

11 Finance and monetary policy styles Caner Bakir and M. Kerem Coban

135

PART 3

Administrative and governance styles

151

12 The concept of administrative styles Louisa Bayerlein, Christoph Knill, and Dionys Zink

153

13 The styles of civil service systems John Halligan

165

14 Empirically assessing administrative styles as bureaucratic routines Louisa Bayerlein, Christoph Knill, Yves Steinebach, and Dionys Zink

176

15 Convergence in administrative implementation styles in the European Union? Mark Wiering and Tetty Havinga

188

16 Governance styles: re-thinking governance and public policy Michael Howlett, Giliberto Capano, and M. Ramesh

204

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Contents

SECTION 2

Process styles

215

PART 4

Agenda-setting styles

217

17 Media-driven agenda-setting styles Max Grömping

219

18 Interest groups and agenda-setting styles Darren R. Halpin and Bert Fraussen

233

19 The politics of parliamentary agenda-setting styles Shaun Bevan, Enrico Borghetto, and Henrik Seeberg

244

PART 5

Formulation, advisory, and design styles 20 Policy formulation styles: policy design and non-design Michael Howlett and Ishani Mukherjee 21 Policy over- and underreaction as policy styles Moshe Maor 22 Styles of policy advice: a typology for comparing the standard operating procedures for the provision of policy advice David Aubin and Marleen Brans

257 259 273

286

PART 6

Executive and leadership decision-making styles

301

23 Executive policy styles Christopher A. Cooper and Patrik Marier

303

24 Leaders’ and managers’ decision-making styles Maria Tullia Galanti

315

25 Varieties of executive styles Kai Wegrich

328

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Contents

PART 7

Implementation styles

341

26 Instruments and implementation styles Michael Howlett, Anthony Perl, and M. Ramesh

343

27 Regulatory styles and their implications Christian Adam and Steffen Hurka

355

28 Implementation style dynamics: changing patterns of instrument choice over time? Michael Howlett

366

PART 8

Evaluation styles

379

29 When policy learning meets policy styles Claire A. Dunlop and Claudio M. Radaelli

381

30 Participatory vs expert evaluation styles Fritz Sager and Céline Mavrot

395

31 Policy evaluation styles Fabrizio De Francesco and Valérie Pattyn

408

32 Institutional and process dimensions of policy styles: key insights Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

422

Index433

x

Tables

2.1 3.1 4.1 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 11.1 12.1 15.1 18.1 18.2 18.3 19.1 19.2 20.1 22.1 23.1 24.1 24.2 26.1 27.1 28.1 29.1 30.1 31.1 31.2 31.3

An early model of national policy styles Four modes of policy-making Policy instruments in the Chongqing pilot Nested levels of health policy styles Core health system goals and policy processes Health financing tools Types of payment tools Three modes of finance and monetary styles Four ideal-typical administrative styles and their determinants Convergence in administrative implementation styles in the European Union? Components of interest group policy agenda structures Ideal-type interest group agenda-setting styles Drivers of issue prioritization Available country data sets Mixed negative binomial mixed model Types of policy formulation spaces: situating design and non-design processes Styles of policy advice Executive style characteristics Leadership styles in decision-making: an institutional perspective Policy outcomes of the leadership styles in decision-making: stability, incremental and radical change Hood’s 1986 taxonomy of policy instruments Four styles of regulation Propensity for tool use by governance mode and resource category Associating policy styles and learning modes Respective strengths of expert and participative evaluation styles The five generations of evaluation Features of regulatory evaluation branches in Europe The extent of sedimentation of regulatory evaluation practices

18 27 45 107 111 114 117 143 161 198 234 237 238 248 250 266 293 304 322 323 346 358 368 391 404 410 411 417

xi

Figures



2.1 5.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 9.1

9.2 9.3 10.1 14.1 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 18.1 19.1 20.1 23.1 23.2 26.1 28.1 29.1 30.1 30.2

xii

Dimensions of the generalized model Average scores for strategic planning and expert advice Welfare ideology Market ideology Replacement rates ALMP expenditures (% of GDP) Unemployment replacement rates by income group Enabling and punitive workfare Public-private mix in provision and financing of healthcare in select health systems Health expenditure by type of financing tool, 2017 Out of pocket payments for healthcare, 2017 Distances in the environmental policy positions of governing parties Indicators of administrative styles Hypothesized prevalence of media-driven agenda-setting Cumulative distribution of media attention to human rights NGOs across countries Cumulative distribution of media attention to human rights NGOs within countries Explaining media attention to human rights NGOs Predicting media attention to human rights NGOs Ideal-type interest group agenda-setting structures Number of questions and issues submitted by the average party across cabinets A spectrum on design and non-design processes Average annual level of senior public service turnover, 1990–2013 Average number of years senior public servant has headed their department, 1990–2013 The Doern continuum Overall trends in implementation tool use in policy designs Four modes of policy learning The causal model of public policy The linear model of policy evaluation

21 58 94 94 96 97 98 99 112 115 116 128 180 224 225 226 227 228 235 251 265 310 310 347 373 382 397 398

Contributors

Christian Adam is Assistant Professor at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science

at the LMU Munich. He studies comparative public policy and public administration, has coauthored “Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap” (Cambridge University Press 2019), and co-edited “On the Road to Permissiveness: Change and Convergence of Moral Regulation in Europe” (Oxford University Press 2015). His research articles appeared, among other places, in the Journal of European Public Policy, Public Administration Review, Policy Sciences, Policy Studies Journal, and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice. David Aubin is Associate Professor of Political Science at UCLouvain, where he teaches policy analysis and evaluation as well as environmental governance. He is conducting comparative research on policy advice, environmental management, and collaborative governance. He published in journals such as Policy Sciences, Journal of Public Policy, and European Policy Analysis and also edited Policy Analysis in Belgium (Bristol University Press). Caner Bakir is Professor of Political Science at the College of Administrative Sciences and Eco-

nomics at Koç University, with particular emphasis on international and comparative political economy and public policy and administration. He is the director of the Center for Globalization, Peace and Democratic Governance (GLODEM). Caner is the recipient of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) Incentive Award 2010 and TUBITAK Early Career Researcher Award 2008. He is an associate editor of Policy Sciences, and editorial board member of Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, Journal of Economic Policy Reform, and International Journal of Emerging Markets. Caner has authored and co-edited nine books and published in leading journals, including Policy Sciences, Public Administration, and Governance. Azad Singh Bali is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Australian National University. Bali’s research interests include comparative public policy and social policy in Asia. Some of this research has been published in Social Policy & Administration, Public Policy & Administration, and Policy & Society. His most recent book is Health Policy in Asia: A Policy Design Approach (with M. Ramesh; CUP, 2021). Jeb Barnes is Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California where he teaches courses on law, politics, and public policy. He has authored and co-edited six books and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on such topics as asbestos litigation, disability policy, institutional change, and mixed-method research strategies. He is currently working on

xiii

Contributors

a project that compares media coverage of different injury compensation policy regimes, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. Louisa Bayerlein is Research Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and a

doctoral researcher at the European University Institute in Florence. Working on the intersection of organizational theory, public administration, and comparative policy analysis, her main research focus lies on (bureaucratic) agency in bringing about policy change and stability. She recently co-authored the book A Matter of Style? Organizational Agency in Global Public Policy (Cambridge University Press 2020). Shaun Bevan is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. He is also Director of the Master Codebook for the Comparative Agendas Project (www.comparativeagendas.net). Shaun’s interests focus on agenda setting, interest groups, representation, time series methods, and measurement. His work has appeared in such journals as Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of European Public Policy, Policy Studies Journal, and Public Administration. Enrico Borghetto is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florence (Italy).

His research has appeared in various refereed journals and edited books and has mainly focused on compliance with EU policies, the Europeanization of national legislation, agenda setting, and legislative studies. He is currently one of the principal investigators for the Italian and Portuguese policy agendas projects, which are part of the Comparative Agendas Project network. Marleen Brans holds a PhD from the European University Institute and is Full Professor of Public Policy at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute, Belgium. Her research interests include policy work, policy advisory systems, ministerial advisers, and the production and use of policy advice. She has published in such journals as Public Administration, West-European Politics, Governance, Halduskultuur, Policy and Society, and Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. She has co-edited books on Policy Analysis in Belgium (Bristol University Press) and the Routledge Handbook of Comparative Policy Analysis. She was founding Vice-President and is current Treasurer of the International Public Policy Association. Aziz Burkhanov is Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy at Nazarbayev

University in Astana, Kazakhstan. His research interests include nationalism, identity theories, and national identity politics, policies, and practices, with a special focus on identity issues and their perceptions in the public narratives of the former Soviet area. He has worked in policy analysis and consulting as a research fellow at the IWEP, a think tank advising the Kazakh government on policies, and as a senior associate at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). He is the author of “Kazakhstan’s National Identity-Building Policy: Soviet Legacy, State Efforts, and Societal Reactions” (Cornell International Law Journal 2017), “The Determinants of Civic and Ethnic Nationalisms in Kazakhstan: Evidence from the Grass-Roots Level” (Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 2017), and “Kazakh Perspective on China, the Chinese, and Chinese Migration” (Ethnic and Racial Studies 2016), among other contributions. Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling. His research interests lie in comparative public policy, and his single or co-authored work has spanned comparisons of policy theories (Understanding Public Policy, 2nd ed, 2020), methods associated with key theories (Handbook of Complexity and Public Policy 2015), international policy processes (Global Tobacco xiv

Contributors

Control 2012), and comparisons of UK and devolved policymaking (Why Isn’t Government Policy More Preventive? 2020). He uses these insights to explain the use of evidence in policymaking (The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making 2016) and policy analysis (The Politics of Policy Analysis 2021) and introduce students to these concepts: https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/policy-analysis-in-750-words/. Giliberto Capano is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy. He has been the editor

of the Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche (Italian Journal of Public Policy) and is co-editor of Policy & Society. He has been a member of the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association (2009–2014) and the co-founder of the International Public Policy Association. Currently he is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Consortium of Political Research. He has published his research in several books and in journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy and Regulation and Governance. M. Kerem Coban is Research Associate at the Center for Globalization, Peace and Democratic Governance (GLODEM), Koç University. His research interest lies at the intersection of comparative public policy, regulatory governance, and international political economy. His singleand co-authored work has appeared in Business and Politics, Interest Groups & Advocacy, and New Perspectives on Turkey, among several others. Christopher A. Cooper is Associate Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa and the author of At the Pleasure of the Crown  – The Politics of Bureaucratic Appointments (UBC Press 2020). His research examining the politics of public administration has been published in various journals, including Parliamentary Affairs, Public Administration, and International Review of Administrative Sciences. Marc Debus is Professor of Comparative Government at the University of Mannheim, Germany. He studied Political Science, Sociology, History, and Methods of Empirical Social Research at the Universities of Marburg and Mannheim and received his PhD from the University of Konstanz in 2006. His research interests include political institutions, in particular in multilevel systems, and their effects on the political behavior of voters and legislators, as well as party competition, coalition politics, and decision making within parliaments and governments. His publications appeared, amongst others, in Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Public Choice, West European Politics, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. Fabrizio De Francesco is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His research on regulatory institutions, the diffusion of administrative reform, and transnational governance has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Journal of European Public Policy, Public Administration, and Socio-Economic Review. Claire A. Dunlop is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Exeter, UK.

A public policy and administration scholar, Claire’s main fields of interest include the politics of expertise and knowledge utilization; epistemic communities and advisory politics; risk governance; policy learning and analysis; impact assessment; and policy narratives. She explores these conceptual interests at the UK and EU levels principally, and most frequently in relation to agricultural, environmental, and LGBT issues. Claire has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters – most recently in Policy and Politics, Policy Sciences, International xv

Contributors

Public Management Journal, Regulation and Governance, and Journal of European Public Policy. She is the vice chair of the UK Political Studies Association and editor of Public Policy and Administration. Bert Fraussen is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University.

His research agenda focuses on interest representation and lobbying. Specifically, he focuses on the internal organization and development of interest groups and think tanks, and the different ways in which these organizations engage with policymakers in order to shape public policy. His work has been published in journals such as Public Administration, Governance, Journal of Public Policy, and Policy Sciences. Maria Tullia Galanti is Assistant Professor with tenure track at the Department of Social and

Political Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy. She obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Florence, Italy. Her research recently revolves around leadership, entrepreneurship, and policy advice and was published in outlets such as Policy and Society and Policy and Politics. Max Grömping is Lecturer at the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University. His research interests concern the interface between interest organizations, the media, and the policy process in autocracies and democracies. Previously, he worked as a lecturer at Heidelberg University and a research associate with the Electoral Integrity Project (University of Sydney). He has also been a visiting research fellow at the Department of Democracy and Democratization of the Social Science Center Berlin (WZB). Max’s work is published in Political Communication, Governance, Party Politics, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, and others. Twitter: @maxgroemping John Halligan is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration and Governance at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. His research interests are comparative public administration and governance, specifically executive politics, policy advice, and public sector performance and reform. He specializes in the Anglophone countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. His most recent book is Reforming Public Management and Governance: Impacts and Lessons from Anglophone Countries (Edward Elgar 2020). His latest book, with Jonathan Craft, is Advising Governments in the Westminster Tradition: Policy Advisory Systems in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Darren R. Halpin is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He researches and writes about organized interests in politics (interest groups, think tanks, corporations, and lobbyists) and political representation, and the connections between the two. He has authored several books, including Groups, Democracy and Representation: Between Promise and Practice (Manchester University Press 2010), and The Organization of Political Interest Groups: Designing Advocacy (Routledge 2014). His latest book, with Anthony J. Nownes, The New Entrepreneurial Advocacy: Silicon Valley Elites in American Politics, will be out with Oxford University Press in 2021. His work has appeared in journals such as British Journal of Political Science, Governance, Policy Sciences, Public Administration, and Journal of Public Policy. Adam Hannah is Lecturer in Public Policy in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. His research interests are focused on the role of political ideas in reshaping health care and welfare systems, and he has recently published on this topic in journals such as Policy Sciences, Public Administration, Policy and Politics, and the Journal of European Social Policy. Twitter: @adamjhannah xvi

Contributors

Tetty Havinga is Fellow at the Institute for the Sociology of Law of the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She has extensive experience with empirical socio-legal research projects and has published on the regulation of food safety, policy implementation and law enforcement, experiences of large companies with Dutch special courts, equal opportunities law, asylum migration, and migrant workers. The central theme in her research is the relations between industry and law with a view to the public interest. Her recent research projects deal with the development and effects of private regulation of food safety, oversight and official controls on the food industry, and the initiatives to align public and private forms of food safety governance. She co-edited Hybridization of Food Governance: Trends, Types and Results (Elgar 2017), Patterns of Interplay between Public and Private Food Regulation (EJRR 2015), and The Changing Landscape of Food Governance, Public and Private Encounters (Elgar 2015). Alexander Horn leads the Emmy Noether Research Group “Varieties of Egalitarianism: Map-

ping the Politics of Inequality with Online Crowdcoding”, funded by the German Research Foundation. Before starting this project at the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” at the University of Konstanz, he was John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard and Assistant Professor in Aarhus. His previous work on the determinants of policy preferences and policies, parties’ group and policy appeals, and retrenchment as a losing game for the Left has been published in, among others, the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Social Policy, and Party Politics. He is the author of “Government Ideology, Economic Pressure and Risk Privatization: How Economic Worldviews Shape Social Policy Choices in Times of Crisis” (AUP’s “Changing Welfare States” Series 2017). Twitter: @_Alex_Horn Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the

Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. He specializes in public policy analysis, political economy, and resource and environmental policy. His most recent books are Designing Public Policies (2011 and 2019); Policy Consultancy in Comparative Perspective (2019); The Public Policy Primer (2010 and 2018); Routledge Handbook of Policy Design (2019); Elgar Handbook of Policy Formulation (2017); Routledge Handbook of Comparative Policy Analysis (2017); Policy Work in Canada (2017); Varieties of Governance (2015); and Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice (2015). His articles have been published in numerous professional journals in Canada, the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia and New Zealand. Steffen Hurka is Assistant Professor at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science at

the LMU Munich. His research focuses on comparative public policy, legislative politics, and ­ uropean integration. He currently leads the Emmy Noether Research Group “EUPLEX – E Coping with Policy Complexity in the European Union”, funded by the German Research Foundation. His research has been published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, Policy Studies Journal, and European Union Politics. Steffen also co-edited the volume On the Road to Permissiveness? Change and Convergence of Moral Regulation in Europe (Oxford University Press 2015) and co-authored Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap (Cambridge University Press 2019). Christoph Knill is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the LudwigMaximilians-University of Munich. His research interests lie in the areas of comparative policy analysis and comparative public administration. In this context, his main focus is on policy-making in the European Union, the analysis of processes of international policy xvii

Contributors

convergence and policy accumulation, as well as research on policy implementation in the fields of environmental, education, social, and morality policies. His most recent co-authored books include A Matter of Style? Organizational Agency in Global Public Policy (Cambridge University Press 2020), the second edition of Public Policy: A  New Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), and Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap (Cambridge University Press 2019). Moshe Maor is Professor of Political Science and Wolfson Family Chair Professor of Public

Administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on bureaucratic reputations and disproportionate policy responses. In particular, his recent studies draw on a behavioral perspective to explore policy underdesign and overdesign, policy overreaction and underreaction, policy bubbles, the interaction between policy bubbles, and the role of emotions in policy processes. His research has been widely published in leading journals such as Governance, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Policy Sciences. His current projects look at interagency collaboration by the US Food and Drug Administration and at government responses to suspected policy bubbles. Patrik Marier is Professor of Political Science at Concordia University and the Scientific

Director of the Center for Research and Expertise in Social Gerontology (CREGÉS) of the West-Central Montreal CIUSSS. He is also lead researcher at the public policy axis of the Vieillissements, exclusions sociales et solidarités (VIES) partnership research team. Patrik’s research focuses on the impact of aging populations on a number of public policy fields including pensions, labor, and social services and programs across comparative cases. He has published in leading international journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Governance, Policy Sciences, and the Journal of European Public Policy. His forthcoming book, The Four Lenses of Population Aging: Planning for the Future in Canada’s Provinces (University of Toronto Press), explores the multiple challenges of planning for an aging population. Céline Mavrot is Postdoctoral Fellow at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of

California – Los Angeles (UCLA). She is leading a research project titled Public Health Controversies in Switzerland and the United States: Federal State Decision-Making in a Contentious Climate. She is also a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Public Management, University of Bern. Her research focuses on the history of public administration, state theory, comparative policy analysis, politicization processes, and the sociology of public problems. Her work has been published in, among others, the American Review of Public Administration, Public Administration, Research Policy, the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Climate Policy, Public Management Review, and Policy & Politics. She also specializes in policy evaluation and policy advice for governmental agencies and NGOs in the field of public health. Ishani Mukherjee is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Singapore Management University.

Her research interests combine policy design and formulation with a thematic focus on policy instruments for environmental sustainability, renewable energy, and energy efficiency, particularly in Southeast Asia. Widely published, her most recent project comparatively examines how behavioral insights and expertise are used by governments in the design of policy instruments of the environment and energy sector. This project includes creating a preliminary data set on behavioral experts and their contribution towards designing sustainability considerations into public policy instruments. She has published in leading journals of public policy and environmental studies such as Policy and Politics, Administration and Society, Policy and Society, Journal xviii

Contributors

of Comparative Policy Analysis (JCPA), Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (RSER), and Energy Policy. Her recent authorship on books include Designing Policy Effectiveness: Defining and Understanding a Concept (Cambridge University Press 2018), Routledge Handbook of Policy Design (2019), and Elgar Handbook of Policy Formulation (2017). Valérie Pattyn is Assistant Professor in Public Policy at the Institute of Public Administration of Leiden University, The Netherlands, and is partially affiliated to the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute. Her research program examines the demands for knowledge and advice of policy makers under conditions of uncertainty, the conditions fostering and impeding evidenceinformed policy making, and the politics of policy evaluation. In addition, she is involved in research projects about policy advice production and use within and outside the civil service (such as parliaments, think tanks, consultants, and political party study centers). She has published in leading policy and evaluation journals on these topics, for instance in Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Journal of European Public Policy, Policy & Society, American Journal of Evaluation, Evaluation, and Public Management Review. Anthony Perl is Professor of Urban Studies and Political Science at Simon Fraser University in

Vancouver, Canada. Anthony previously worked at the University of Calgary, the City University of New York, and Universite Lumiere in Lyon, France. He obtained an undergraduate honors degree in government from Harvard University, followed by an MA and a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. His research crosses disciplinary and national boundaries to explore policy decisions made about transportation, cities, and the environment. He has published seven books and 52 articles in scholarly journals. Anthony received outstanding paper prizes at the World Conference on Transport Research and the Canadian Transportation Research Forum. Jiwei Qian is Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. He is also a co-editor of the book series Social Policy and Development Studies in East Asia (Palgrave Macmillan). He obtained his BSc in computer science from Fudan University, China, and PhD in economics from the National University of Singapore. His research on health economics, health policy, and social policy has been published in publications such as The China Quarterly, Health Economics, Policy and Law, Health Policy and Planning, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Education and Work, Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics, Journal of Social Policy, Land Use Policy, Public Administration and Development, Public Choice, Singapore Economic Review, and Social Policy & Administration. He is also on the editorial board of China: An International Journal and East Asian Policy. His recent co-authored paper on the informal sector in China was awarded the best conference paper 2019 at the 32nd Annual Meeting of Association of Chinese Political Studies (ACPS). His recent co-edited book Development and Poverty Reduction: A Global Comparative Perspective (with Zheng Yongnian) has been published by Routledge in 2019. His current research interests include political economy, development economics, and health economics. Claudio M. Radaelli is Chair of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, School of Transnational Governance and on long leave of absence for University College London. A comparative public policy researcher, Claudio’s main fields of interest include Europeanization, impact assessment, policy learning, regulation, policy narratives, and research design. He has published 85 peer-reviewed journal articles and 55 book chapters and is chief editor of the International Review of Public Policy. He is a member of the College of the International Public xix

Contributors

Policy Association and a member of the steering committee of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulation & Governance. He was awarded two advanced grants by the European Research Council: Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance (ALREG) and most recently Procedural Tools for Effective Governance (PROTEGO, with Claire Dunlop as co-PI). www. protego-erc.eu/project/; Twitter: @ProfCRadaelli M. Ramesh is Professor and UNESCO Chair on Social Policy Design in Asia at the Lee Kuan

Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. His recent research has focused on social policy in Asia. He has co-authored (together with Michael Howlett and Anthony Perl) the textbook Studying Public Policy: Principles and Processes, which was published as the fourth edition in 2020 by Oxford University Press, and has published his research in numerous international journals such as the Policy Studies Journal and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. Fritz Sager, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at the KPM Center for Public Management

at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His research focuses broadly on public policy, program evaluation, and public administration. Recent publications regarded utilization-focused policy advice, the politics of blame avoidance, the use of scientific evidence in direct democracy, the governance and policies of secondary capital city regions, policy mix design in smoking prevention, the transatlantic history of administrative ideas, popular acceptance of land use policy, multilevel implementation in the EU, and pressure on policy evaluators. His research has won several awards. Besides basic research, he engages in policy advice to government agencies. He has done policy-relevant research in the areas of public health, veterinary drugs, food, environment, peace, research, transport, land use, and energy. Henrik Seeberg is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University. His research interests include political agenda setting, party competition, and public policy, and his research has been published in European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, and Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, among many others. Jennifer Shore is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research at the University of Mannheim. Her research interests include comparative social policy, policy feedback, inequality, and political attitudes and behaviors. She recently authored the book The Welfare State and the Democratic Citizen: How Social Policies Shape Political Equality (Palgrave 2019). Yves Steinebach is Assistant Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU). His main research interests are analyses of the effectiveness of public policies and governing institutions. In 2018, Yves won the best paper awards of the internationally renowned peerreviewed journals Journal of European Public Policy and Policy Sciences. He has recently co-authored the books A Matter of Style? Organizational Agency in Global Public Policy (Cambridge University Press 2020) and Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap (Cambridge University Press 2019). Jale Tosun is Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University. Her research interests comprise a wide range of topics in comparative public policy, international and comparative political economy, European integration, public administration, and risk governance. She has published widely on these issues, for instance in the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy. She has authored xx

Contributors

the books Environmental Policy Change in Emerging Market Democracies: Eastern Europe and Latin America Compared, Risk Regulation in Europe: Assessing the Application of the Precautionary Principle, and with Christoph Knill co-authored Public Policy: A New Introduction. Kai Wegrich is Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at the Hertie School, Berlin (Germany). He is a political scientist with research interests in executive politics, regulation, public sector reform, and innovations in policy-making. He has recently co-edited a book with Tobias Bach titled The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination (Palgrave, 2019). Mark Wiering is Associate Professor at the chair group of Environmental Governance and

Politics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He is interested in social and political transformations towards a sustainable society and the role of environmental governance, mostly related to water management and renewable energy. He coordinated several international research projects, for example concerning flood risk governance and adaptation to climate change (as part of STAR-FLOOD and Knowledge for Climate), water quality management (the implementation of the Water Framework Directive), and grassroots initiatives in renewable energy (JPI-CC Mobilising Grassroots). His work has been published in leading journals such as Global Environmental Change, Environmental Science and Policy, Ecology and Society, Environmental Management, Climate Policy, and Journal of Flood Risk Management. He co-edited books on cross-border cooperation, implementation of the Water Framework Directive, and enforcement of environmental policy. Dionys Zink is Doctoral Researcher at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU). Prior to formally joining the team of Professors Christoph Knill in his research project “ACCUPOL – Unlimited Growth? A Comparative Analysis of Causes and Consequences of Policy Accumulation”, he studied in Munich and Stockholm. His research interests include organizational theory, public administration, comparative policy analysis, and security studies. Reimut Zohlnhöfer is Professor at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University.

His research focuses on comparative public policy, theories of the policy process, and German politics. He has published in many leading political science journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of European Public Policy, Socio-Economic Review, the Policy Studies Journal, and West European Politics. He has authored and edited several books, including Decision-Making under Ambiguity and Time Constraints: Assessing the Multiple-Streams Framework (ECPR Press 2016, co-edited with Friedbert W. Rüb) and Developments in German Politics 4 (Palgrave Macmillan 2014, co-edited with Stephen Padgett and William E. Paterson).

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1 Introduction Studying policy styles at the national level and beyond Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

Introduction: studying policy styles at the national level and beyond This book follows up on the 2019 Routledge edited volume Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages, which pursued the goal to expand the empirical applicability of the notion of national policy styles to states beyond (Western) Europe where the concept had first been developed (Howlett and Tosun 2019a).1 This volume was written to further this area of study by consolidating and advancing the contemporary body of knowledge on policy styles and to define their distinctiveness in all areas of policy-making within broader policy studies. Consequently, the main goal of the book is to unite different conceptualizations and enhance the theoretical basis of studies of policy styles in order to better understand them in all their appearances and variations. More precisely, this book addresses the question to what extent the notion of policy styles first developed at the national level travels to other policy-making environments and how it helps capture and explain phenomena often hidden in other kinds of policy studies. In an attempt to expand the applicability of the concept, we introduce the notions of institutional and process styles and organize the book around these two ideas. The concept of a style or a distinct way of “doing” some aspect of policy-making represents a revival of a somewhat older research interest in comparative public policy, which first noted and grappled with the idea of nation’s having developed characteristic and relatively long-lasting ways of making policies. But the idea of such styles has also continued to provide a compelling analytical lens for understanding current developments in real-life politics; for example, in the health sector helping to explain different government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic (Capano et al. 2020). Or, at a larger, national level, showing how countries that have experienced a transformation from autocracy to democracy and vice versa adopt and implement public policy differently (Burkhanov 2019). We are only at the beginning of this revival, however, and there are many open questions around the concept and its application that are examined and answered in this Handbook.

1

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Elements of the concept of a policy style Policy-making represents one of the key functions of any political system, irrespective of the nature of the political regime in place. Policy-makers address societal problems by means of policy-making and in so doing influence important activities such as the level of economic growth, environmental degradation, and the extent of social inequality and social cohesion. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that, for decades, scholarship in comparative public policy has been interested in identifying and explaining any characteristic patterns of policy-making that might be found in different countries and sectors of policy-making activity. Some of this work has focused on “outputs”, that is, the nature of the efforts made by different governments, how (in)consistent they have been, and how effective. However, another classic theme in the policy sciences has been whether policy-making processes in the different jurisdictions follow a certain tradition, trajectory, and history. Whether, and to what extent, governments develop a “distinctive style” (Simmons et al. 1974) in taking decisions and choosing which policy alternatives to adopt and where such styles can be found have been outstanding questions in the field since the first major study of the subject by Richardson et al. in 1982. The essence of any such “style” resides in the manner in which governments around the world enact their policies, who they interact with in order to do so, and in what fashion. Of course, not all policies are formulated or implemented in the same way, and governments also differ in terms of how they make decisions and how they interact with their civil services and the public at the issue or sectoral level as well as the national one. This suggests that more than just “national” styles might exist and can be located, for example, in the manner in which an administration implements a decision, or how a leader does or does not influence policy content and outcomes. Identifying such styles where they exist is an important issue for comparative policy analysis for more than purely curiosity. Styles affect the shape and character of policy outcomes in important ways and help determine aspects such as their effectiveness or content. Some policy choices and solutions, for example, may commonly emerge from carefully crafted formulation processes, while others may be more heavily influenced by other processes such as political or electoral bargaining. The extent to which evidence and information informs such choices can have an important impact on their character and effectiveness and are often directly related to the manner or style of their development and adoption. Why and under what conditions governmental policy-making styles develop and what is their impact are the subject of studies of policy styles. To date, studies examining styles have tended to focus on the national level and to contend that policy-making processes vary depending on the institutional make-up of a government which in turn generates the routines and standard operating procedures that constitute its decision-making structure and processes. From this perspective, the concept of policy styles is one that aligns well with the logic of actor-centered institutionalism (Scharpf 1997). That is, the analytical focus lies on the relationships between actors which occur in the policy-making process and how these relationships are shaped or moderated by institutional arrangements, with the latter creating “historically rooted trajectories” (Zysman 1994) of policy-making arrangements and procedures; namely, a policy style. Such studies of policy styles thus place a great deal of emphasis on how different routines involve different types of actors and affect how they interact with each other in policy-making. How these routines and frameworks are created and how they influence the kinds of interactions which occur and the kinds of decisions which are made are thus key subjects of investigation. 2

Introduction

Two of the most important questions in classifying policy styles and moving this discussion forward are those related to the relationship existing between structure and behavior in policy-making, and the question of the appropriate unit and level of analysis to use in developing and applying the concepts (Howlett and Tosun 2019b). Starting with the unit of analysis, the concept of a policy style refers to the behavior of policy agents, but it has also a heavily structural or institutional component, as it is assumed that these agents are not free-floating and unencumbered but rather operate within an institutional context that at least in part determines their behavior. The working assumption in studies of national policy styles, for example, is that similar kinds of political or institutional regimes develop roughly similar styles. This is the sense in which the notion of a national policy style can be situated within neo-institutional approaches to the study of social and political life. While the exact contours of neo-institutionalism are an item of some disagreement across disciplines, with different variations existing within political science, economics, and (historical) sociology (Hall and Taylor 1996), these approaches all share the common idea that rules, norms, and symbols affect political behavior, and thus that the organization of governmental institutions affect what the state does; and, moreover, that unique patterns of historical development accompanying the development of policy-making institutions direct and constrain future choices (Ostrom 1991; Williamson 1993). The neo-institutional argument is not that institutions cause an action, but rather that they affect actions by shaping actors’ interpretation of problems and possible solutions, by both constraining and facilitating the choice of solutions available or considered feasible by policy-makers and their publics and by affecting the way and extent to which they can be implemented (Clemens and Cook 1999). In the political and policy realms, institutions are significant because they help in constituting and legitimizing individual and collective political actors as well as offer consistent rules which affect policy-making behavior in all its forms (March and Olsen 1989). Institutions include not only formal organizations such as bureaucratic hierarchies and marketlike exchange networks but also legal and cultural codes and rules which affect the kinds of calculations individuals and groups make concerning their optimal strategies and desired courses of action to follow. These assumptions focus this approach on the effects of structure and rules on policy actors. Very significant sets of rules and structures include macro-level ones such as the constitutional order establishing and empowering certain kinds of administrators and decision-makers to do certain things, but not others, as well as more meso- and micro-level ones affecting the patterns and methods of recruiting civil servants and the nature of their interactions with each other and with members of the public. That is, not only are factors such as the nature of the political regime in which a system is located crucial to understanding an administrative style but so, too, are more mundane items such as the open or closed nature of recruitment, the basis of selection as a career or program orientation, the nature of job evaluations and rank and pay considerations, as well as the presence or absence of opportunities for training and development (Bekke et al. 1996). As policy interventions in democratic systems originate in electoral systems, it is one of the most essential formal institutions which needs to be scrutinized in identifying types of national policy styles. The relationship between legislative and executive is also of crucial importance. In parliamentary systems, the executive is a group of ministers elected from the very parliament, while in pure presidential systems the two branches of government are separate. In this context, as Lijphart (2012) noted, despite strong variations among countries, democratic systems tend to fall into two categories: majoritarian and consensus democracies. Which kind they are affects many aspects of policy-making in predictable long-term ways, such as determining what level 3

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of autonomy from legislative action a bureaucracy enjoys or what role is played by the judiciary in over-turning or amending legislative or administrative actions. Ultimately, the idea is that structure and behavior are joined together in a distinct policy style: a typical way of doing business which is both institutionally and psychologically rooted (Peters 1990; Pierre 1995). The link between structure and behavior means, among other things, that such styles will be relatively long-lasting, quasi-permanent arrangements establishing a trajectory of activity which is not simple to change. Together, these arrangements have an impact on the ideas that actors hold, as well as their assessments of what is feasible in a given situation, determining many aspects of their policy-making behavior and choices (Majone 1975).

The key literature on the subject An excellent and path-breaking attempt to conceptualize and empirically test such “distinctive styles” of policy-making (Simmons et al. 1974) can be found in the classic volume Policy Styles in Western Europe, edited by Jeremy Richardson and published in 1982. The book looked at the similarities and differences that existed among the countries of Western Europe at the time in terms of their propensity to take anticipatory or reactive decisions and, in either case, whether they tended to do so by seeking to reach consensus with organized groups or by imposing decisions notwithstanding opposition from such groups. In light of the fundamental changes modern states have experienced in the half-century since 1982, Howlett and Tosun (2019a) revisited the idea of a national policy style and provided an updated and expanded version of it culled from a broader set of countries located around the globe. The studies in the 2019 book found great merit and analytical purchase to exist in the idea of national policy styles but identified them differently than did Richardson et al., focusing on whether key actors in policy processes were bureaucrats or politicians and how open or closed those systems were in terms of the presence or absence of democratic institutions injecting some aspects of public opinion and partisanship into policy-making (Howlett and Tosun 2019b). This Handbook builds on this 2019 study but pursues the more ambitious goal of examining the concept of policy styles beyond the level of the nation-state, applying it to different levels of institutions, and the decision-making found within countries and to different stages of the policy cycle beyond just formulation and implementation (see Howlett et al. 2020). As concerns the first, the “institutional” dimension identified above, the volume examines national policy styles, sectoral policy styles, and administrative and governance styles, and the contributors to the volume draw out the key factors and dimensions which lead to the development of such styles and their implications for policy-making. The key feature of this section is that it offers the first broad systematic overview of discussions that have taken place in different and even unrelated strands of the literature on these subjects. Despite the intriguing conceptual ideas and interest in such institutional variations, these styles have not heretofore been presented in as integrated a fashion as is done in this volume. The second “process” dimension used to organize the essays in the volume refers to the individual phases or stages of the policy cycle (Lasswell 1956), including agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation. Applying the concept of a policy style to these different phases of the policy cycle is a particularly innovative aspect of this volume, again taking the analysis far beyond that of Richardson et al.’s (1982) pioneering work. The overarching finding of this Handbook is that the concept of policy styles travels well beyond its original scope of application to policy formulation and decision-making. The contributors to this volume offer innovative approaches to the conceptualization and empirical illustration of 4

Introduction

policy styles at each stage of the policy process; again, in a fashion which has hitherto not been done. Uniting theoretical bases and advancements in practice, this Handbook is thus a pioneering effort in combining leading experts in the academic field of policy styles. Ranging from the fundamentals of policy styles to its place in greater policy studies, to new questions regarding policy style dynamics across a range of government levels and activities, and examining such contemporary trends affecting styles such as the use of digital tools and big data in government, the Handbook is intended as a comprehensive reference for students and scholars of public policy alike.

Resolving the ontological nature of a policy style: a central methodological problematic in the study of policy styles One of the major conceptual problems concerning policy styles, which these essays also help resolve, concerns less their location and character than a lack of understanding of whether policy styles should be rather thought of as an independent or a dependent variable in explaining public policies. This ambiguity results from the original formulation of the notion of policy styles in the work of Richardson et al. (1982) which juxtaposes a description of the process of policy-making together (“consensus” or “impositional”) with the output or outcome of this process (“anticipatory” or “reactive”). As Knill and Tosun (2020) argue, however, policy styles can be discussed as both an independent and a dependent variable as well as an intervening variable in order to explain political phenomena. Importantly, though, regardless of how they are treated, the concept of a policy style relates to the process of policy-making. Some studies, however, treat a style as a “dependent” variable; that is, one kind of policy output driven by other forces, such as governmental intentions or the strength of interest groups. This is different from, for example, Adam et al. (2017) who identify four ideal-typical styles of regulation that correspond to authority, lenient authority, punitive permissiveness, and permissiveness within regulatory policy outcomes. With this particular operationalization approach, the potential of different types of regulation concerning how the behavior of individuals can be steered is said to constitute a “style”. However, as stated at the outset, it is more common to expect that styles affect outcomes and that changes in styles will affect changes in outcomes. In that sense, a “style” is typically viewed as an independent variable which combines with others, such as government capacity or ideology, to affect the character, composition, and impact of policy outcomes. Administrative traditions, as a concept related to policy styles, for example, have been discussed as a factor, which helps explain policy responses (or a lack of them) to complex problems such as climate change (e.g., Biesbroek et al. 2018). The causal argument then follows that policy styles and related concepts shape what policies are adopted and what their outcomes are rather than vice versa (e.g., Knill 1998; Knill and Lenschow 1998). More complicated causal arguments regard policy styles as intervening variables – and this is also a perspective that can be derived from the original formulation. For example, one could hypothesize that the effect of interest groups on policy outputs in countries is moderated by the relationships these have with policy-makers. The primary research interest would then lie in determining how interest groups affect policy-making, but any existing policy styles would constitute a secondary research interest in order to see whether and how these might strengthen or weaken the impact of interest groups on policy-makers and policy outcomes (e.g., Binderkrantz et al. 2015). 5

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Studies can therefore examine styles themselves, how styles affect outcomes and actor behavior or vice versa. And the various chapters in the book adopt one or the other approach, or both, but most commonly focus on styles as independent variables.

The purpose and plan of the book This volume strives to unite the collective global wisdom on policy styles and to systematically explore questions related to how policy styles help us better understand how governments devise their responses to various policy problems how they create and realize policies that can be expected to attain anticipated policy outcomes, and how their choices of policy instruments can impact individuals, communities, and all other targets at which they are directed. The essays in this Handbook consolidate and advance the contemporary body of knowledge on policy styles and define its distinctiveness within broader policy studies. The individual chapters show a remarkable range of approaches and empirical illustrations of the central concept of a policy style. Some chapters are heavy on the conceptualization of policy styles whereas others place more emphasis on offering empirical plausibility tests of aspects of the concept. The authors were encouraged to take an eclectic approach and to draw upon literatures that may not align at first glance with traditional discussions of policy styles such as research in communication studies. The book consists of two sections, one focusing on the institutional aspects of styles, which has three parts of five chapters each, while the second section deals with process styles and has five parts of three chapters each. These correspond to the major research emphases of modern policy studies of policy styles. The first section is composed of one part which captures the principles of style thinking, including an historical overview of classic and modern studies of such styles, and two parts which deal with institutional styles, including national and sectoral styles as well as the impact of administrative traditions on policy making. These contents reflect an endeavor to expand the idea of policy styles well beyond the national level, integrate the concept into the broader literature in public policy and public administration, and encourage cross-fertilization between these different literatures. In Chapter 2, Howlett and Tosun examine the concept of a national policy style. And Jeb Barnes then discusses the notion of adversarial legalism in general and how much it constitutes the national policy-making style in the United States in the subsequent chapter. Chapter 4 by Jiwei Qian details the policy style in China by stressing the importance of policy experiments within it while in Chapter 5, Reimut Zohlnhöfer and Jale Tosun address the question to what extent the German policy style still corresponds to the “rationalist consensus” identified by Dyson (1982) in the original volume by Richardson (1982). Aziz Burkhanov then examines in Chapter 6 how well the notion of national policy styles travels to the authoritarian systems of Central Asia in the post-Soviet era. Five chapters elaborating on sectoral policy styles form the second part of the volume. Following an in-depth conceptual discussion of sectoral policy styles by Paul Cairney in Chapter 7, the subsequent four chapters shed light on how such policy styles become manifest in different well-known sectors. Alexander Horn and Jennifer Shore apply the notion of sectoral policy styles to social policy (Chapter  8), Azad Singh Bali and Adam Hannah to healthcare policy (Chapter 9), Jale Tosun and Marc Debus to environmental policy (Chapter 10), and Caner Bakir and M. Kerem Coban to finance and monetary policy (Chapter 11). Administrative and governance styles lie at the heart of Part 3, which starts with a conceptual discussion of administrative styles by Louisa Bayerlein, Christoph Knill, and Dionys Zink 6

Introduction

in Chapter 12. This is followed in Chapter 13 by John Halligan who introduces the notion of styles of civil service systems. Louisa Bayerlein, Christoph Knill, Yves Steinebach, and Dionys Zink then complement the two previous chapters with an empirical assessment of administrative styles and bureaucratic routines in Chapter 14. This is followed by Mark Wiering and Tetty Havinga who engage with a theme that has been addressed with Europeanization research, which concerns the potential convergence in administrative implementation styles due to membership in the European Union (Chapter 15). Governance styles are the focus of Chapter 16, in which Michael Howlett, Giliberto Capano, and M. Ramesh offer new thinking on how governance arrangements affect policy styles. The second main section of the book deals with process-related styles, looking at styles of agenda setting, policy formulation, leadership and decision-making styles, implementation styles, and styles of evaluation. By explicitly adopting this policy process perspective, we again move the study beyond the range of earlier studies which focused primarily on institutional styles and align the study of policy styles with the dominant mode of examining the policy process as a cycle of stages or steps, each of which can develop its own characteristic modus operandi (Howlett et al. 2020). Moving on to Section 2, Part 4 of the book is dedicated to agenda-setting styles. In Chapter 17, Max Grömping investigates the role of the media – including both traditional and new social media – in affecting agenda-setting styles. Darren R. Halpin and Bert Fraussen elaborate on interest group activities and their agenda-setting styles in Chapter 18. Chapter 19 by Shaun Bevan, Enrico Borghetto, and Henrik Seeberg complements this group of analyses by shifting the focus to agenda-setting styles as they take place in parliaments. Policy formulation, advisory systems, and policy design are then discussed in Part 5. Michael Howlett and Ishani Mukherjee elaborate on policy formulation styles in Chapter  20 distinguishing between those which favor evidence and technical analysis and those which are more political in nature. Moshe Maor provides a conceptualization of policy over- and underreactions as common policy formulation styles in Chapter 21. Styles of policy advice are then discussed in detail by David Aubin and Marleen Brans in Chapter 22 with a view to develop a typology for comparing how policy advice typically takes place in different government approaches to problem-solving. Part 6 takes a narrower interest in decision-making and especially the role of executives in this process. In Chapter  23, Christopher A. Cooper and Patrik Marier give an overview of different executive policy styles, while Maria Tullia Galanti zooms into decision-making styles themselves in Chapter 24, and in Chapter 25, Kai Wegrich then offers a treatise on these varieties of executive styles and their impact on policy outcomes. Part 7 deals with implementation styles. It begins with an overview of implementation styles by Michael Howlett, Anthony Perl, and M. Ramesh (Chapter  26), followed in Chapter  27 by Christian Adam and Steffen Hurka who discuss the implications of what regulatory style exists for implementation. Responding to criticism of the original notion of policy styles, in Chapter 28, Michael Howlett then puts forth a dynamic perspective on implementation styles by linking policy implementation styles directly to long-term preferences in policy instrument choices. The chapters forming Part 8 are tied together by their common interest in the evaluation stage of policy-making and how it can be linked up with the notion of a policy style. Claire A. Dunlop and Claudio M. Radaelli elaborate on different styles or patterns of policy learning in Chapter 29, and in Chapter 30, Fritz Sager and Céline Mavrot contrast participatory with expert evaluation styles. Chapter 31 by Fabrizio De Francesco and Valérie Pattyn then sets out a general model of policy evaluation styles. 7

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The book closes with a reflection on the contributions of the volume by Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun in Chapter 32. The main objective of this concluding chapter is to revisit the research question guiding this volume, namely to show to what extent the chapters in the book have demonstrated that the concept of policy styles can be applied to different institutional arrangements and to different stages of the policy cycle. By drawing together the main insights provided by the individual contributions, the concluding chapter seeks to stimulate further research on policy styles.

Conclusion In light of the above discussion, we contend that future research and scholarly efforts to advance the concept and understanding of policy styles should focus on three dimensions. The first dimension refers to the question whether it is analytically reasonable to expect policy styles to be distinctive to states, sectors, or both. A related perspective is how policy styles relate to the notion of governance and what is the relationship is between administrative and policy styles. While we already discussed the different views in the literature on national vs. sectoral policy styles as well as the roots of the notion of policy styles in the literature on administrative styles, the relationship between policy styles and governance is important but remains murky. While being defined in many different ways, governance is in essence about the transformation of the role of the government in making and implementing policy decisions (Peters and Pierre 2016). This aspect is inherent to the second dimension of the original conceptualization of a policy style by Richardson et al. (1982), which refers to the relationship between policy-makers and interest groups but is under-developed there. It is also inherent to the modified notion put forth by Howlett and Tosun (2019b), which stresses the degree to which societal actors are included or excluded from the policy-making process. Given this proximity between the notions of policy styles and governance, it will be rewarding to further include the governance perspective into an expanded approach to policy styles. It is also important to reflect on the fact that the aforementioned themes all either implicitly or explicitly build on the assumption that institutional arrangements matter for bringing about distinctive policy styles. With national policy styles, the role of the corresponding national political systems is particularly straightforward, but how it is that sectoral policy styles emerge in response to the features of the respective policy subsystems and how these change remains unclear (see Chapter 6). Public administrations are “institutions” by definition, and governance styles also depend on institutional arrangements but other aspects of policy-making behavior are less rule-bound. Consequently, we contend that this group of themes can be labelled as institutional styles and remain a subject of interest for future studies. The second process dimension that animates the studies in the book refers to the individual stages of the policy process and is inspired by the conceptualization of Howlett et al. (2020) which is based on a “stagist” reading of policy-making. This dimension has received less attention in the literature on policy styles but is particularly promising, since it bridges the gap existing between comparative public policy and other subdisciplines in political sciences such as comparative politics, legislative studies, political communication, and public administration. The expansion of the policy analytical lens to policy styles related to agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation has the potential to offer two types of insights of benefit to policy scholars and practitioners. First, it helps determine whether the notion of policy styles travels to these more specific processes of policy-making. Second, by improving our understanding of whether policy processes can be assigned certain styles, scholars 8

Introduction

are then in a better position to judge how institutional policy styles come about. Likewise, we will also be able to see how process styles influence institutional styles. Cutting across both dimensions is the question about the (in)stability and persistence of policy styles over time. Both institutional and process styles vary over time, and the changes observed in styles need to be explained. Policy styles are a concept open to a dynamic modelling, which, however, requires an explicit discussion of what factors have brought about both their stability and any changes observed. This research agenda remains open, and we look forward to future work examining this aspect of the question of “policy styles” and their impact on policy-making.

Note 1 The editors thank Frederik Bachmann and Nora El-Awdan for editorial assistance.

References Adam, Christian, Hurka, Steffen and Knill, Christoph, 2017. Four Styles of Regulation and Their Implications for Comparative Policy Analysis. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 19 (4), 327–344. Bekke, A.J.G.M., Perry, James L. and Toonen, Th.A.J., 1996. Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Biesbroek, Robbert, Peters, B. Guy and Tosun, Jale, 2018. Public Bureaucracy and Climate Change Adaptation. Review of Policy Research, 35 (6), 776–791. Binderkrantz, Anne S., Christiansen, Peter M. and Pedersen, Helene H., 2015. Interest Group Access to the Bureaucracy, Parliament, and the Media. Governance, 28 (1), 95–112. Burkhanov, Aziz, 2019. Policy-Making Styles in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy and New Institutions. In: Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge, 222–241. Capano, Giliberto, Howlett, Michael, Jarvis, Darryl S. L., Ramesh, M. and Goyal, Nihit, 2020. Mobilizing Policy (In)Capacity to Fight COVID-19: Understanding Variations in State Responses. Policy and Society, 39 (2), 285–308. Clemens, Elisabeth S. and Cook, James M., 1999. Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change. Annual Review of Sociology, 25 (1), 441–466. Dyson, Kenneth, 1982. West Germany: The Search for a Rationalist Consensus. In: J. Richardson, ed. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin, 17–46. Hall, Peter A. and Taylor, Rosemary C.R., 1996. Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms. Political Studies, 44 (5), 936–957. Howlett, Michael, Ramesh, M. and Perl, Anthony, 2020. Studying Public Policy: Principles and processes. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howlett, Michael and Tosun, Jale, eds., 2019a. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge. Howlett, Michael and Tosun, Jale, eds., 2019b. Policy Styles: A New Approach. In: Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge, 1–19. Knill, Christoph, 1998. European Policies: The Impact of National Administrative Traditions. Journal of Public Policy, 1–28. Knill, Christoph and Lenschow, Andrea, 1998. Coping with Europe: The Impact of British and German Administrations on the Implementation of EU Environmental Policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 5 (4), 595–614. Knill, Christoph and Tosun, Jale, 2020. Public Policy: A New Introduction. 2nd ed. London: Red Globe Press. Lasswell, Harold D., 1956. The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis. University Park: University of Maryland Press. 9

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Lijphart, Arend, 2012. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Majone, Giandomenico, 1975. On the Notion of Political Feasibility. European Journal of Political Research, 3 (3), 259–274. March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., 1989. Rediscovering Institutions. New York, NY: The Free Press. Ostrom, Elinor, 1991. Rational Choice Theory and Institutional Analysis: Toward Complementarity. The American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 237–243. Peters, B.G., 1990. Administrative Culture and Analysis of Public Organisations. Indian Journal of Public Administration, 36 (3), 420–428. Peters, B.G. and Pierre, Jon, 2016. The Governance Problem. In: B.G. Peters and Jon Pierre, eds. Comparative Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–19. Pierre, Jon, 1995. Conclusions: A  Framework of Comparative Public Administration. In: Jon Pierre, ed. Bureaucracy in the Modern State: An Introduction to Comparative Public. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 205–218. Richardson, Jeremy, ed., 1982. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin. Richardson, Jeremy, Gustafsson, Gunnel and Jordan, Grant, 1982. The Concept of Policy Style. In: Jeremy Richardson, ed. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin, 1–16. Scharpf, Fritz W., 1997. Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research. Abingdon: Routledge. Simmons, Robert H., Davis, Bruce W., Chapman, Ralph J.K. and Sager, Daniel D., 1974. Policy Flow Analysis: A Conceptual Model for Comparative Public Policy Research. Western Political Quarterly, 27 (3), 457–468. Williamson, Oliver E., 1993. Transaction Cost Economics and Organization Theory. Industrial and Corporate Change, 2 (2), 107–156. Zysman, John, 1994. How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth. Industrial and Corporate Change, 3 (1), 243–283.

10

Section 1

Institutional styles

Part 1

National policy styles: concepts and cases

2 National policy styles in theory and practice Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

Introduction Numerous case studies over the last three decades have highlighted the manner in which ideological and institutional factors insulate policies from pressures for change. Pierson’s (2000) work on path dependence, Tsebelis’s (2002) theory on veto players, and Grossback et al.’s (2004) study on the role of ideology for policy diffusion are just a few examples of this strand of research. By the mid-1970s, it was apparent to many academic observers that actors in the policy-making process, as Simmons et al. (1974, p. 461) state, “develop tradition and history which constrains and refines their actions and concerns.” In this chapter, we investigate this “distinctive style” of policy-making at the national level and build on the volume Policy Styles in Western Europe (Richardson 1982), which first addressed this concept. Given the interest of comparative policy analysis in the patterns and sources of policy change, the concept of a national policy style helps furthering our understanding of the relationship between politics and policy. It not only helps to describe typical policy processes and deliberations that may or may not lead to policy change, but also helps capture an important aspect of policy dynamics, that is, the relatively enduring nature of these arrangements. An examination of the literature in these areas points to several key factors at work at the national level. As many observers have noted, the structure of administrative organizations affects politico-administrative decision-making by facilitating the interpretation and reconstruction of diverse situations into existing “frames”, making them amenable to standardized decisionmaking processes such as the establishment of standard operating procedures, bureaucratic routines, or operational codes (George 1969; Allison and Halperin 1972; Egeberg 1999). And the existence of institutionalized rules of behavior affect calculations of actor’s interests and selfinterests by defining the nature of the “win-sets” which exist in given decisional circumstances, as well as the “action channels” these decisions will follow (Hammond 1986; Hammond and Knott 1999). With respect to national structures, most of the literature points to the impact of large-scale geohistorical developments such as wars, conquests, and colonization which directly brought about changes in the institutional structures of administration in many countries, as well as the slower and less direct diffusion of administrative ideas from one tradition to another (Castles 15

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2001). Such studies tend to see, for example, significant differences between continental European and Anglo-American administrative traditions and institutions and focus on the processes of colonization and decolonization, which have seen these institutions disseminated through North America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America (Hanson 1974; Finer 1997), resulting in new and distinctly different styles among countries emerging from different colonial backgrounds. At the level of behavior, authors point to the significance of factors such as the social composition of administrative elites, perceptions of the legitimacy of governments and states held by their populations, self-perceptions of professionalism and engagement held by civil servants themselves, and the constitutional structure of government, many of which are practices and institutions inherited from earlier periods, as factors holding a national style in place (see, e.g., Biesbroek et al. 2018). Key change factors and processes affecting change, hence, include alterations in the secular or religious nature of the society in question, alterations in educational systems or political power underlying merit and patronage systems of appointment, alterations in levels of public sector unionism or professionalism, and any shift in fundamental governing arrangements arising from foreign war, revolution, civil war, or other means (Bekke 1999; Raadschelders et al. 2015). In some countries, foreign aid also brings about similar changes in bureaucratic and elite behavior (Rahman and Tosun 2018; Vink and Schouten 2018). Observers have also noted the manner in which adherence to new regional or transnational governance arrangements – such as the European Union (EU) in the case of the nations (Richardson 1982) first examined – can affect elements of previously existing national traditions (Windhoff-Héritier et al. 1996; Knill 1998; Knill and Lenschow 1998; Héritier 2001) and the manner in which propensities and capacities for learning at the national level affect the disposition to alter structures and behavior on the basis of lessons derived from other jurisdictions (Olsen and Peters 1996). This chapter locates the concept of policy styles in the broader topic of policy studies and details the analytical dimensions originally introduced by Richardson et al. (1982) to explain to what extent the approach to the study of policy styles needs be updated and expanded in order to remain relevant in the contemporary era.

Locating the concept of policy styles in policy studies Policy studies typically draw on notions such as “policy regimes” in order to signify the often long-lasting elements of policy-making. Such regimes include the following elements: a common set of policy ideas (policy paradigm), a long-lasting arrangement of policies that have accumulated over time (policy mix), a common or typical policy-making process (policy style), and a more or less fixed set of policy actors (policy subsystem or policy monopoly). From this perspective, a policy style can be thought of as existing as part of a larger policy regime that emerges over time as policy succession takes place and stabilizes many aspects of the policymaking process, including a standard manner in which policy choices are made and specific kinds of instruments utilized. Although not inclusive of all aspects of a regime, the manner in which policy deliberations take place and the kinds of actors and ideas present combine to create a policy style. Importantly for analytical purposes, this style is exercised within the constraints imposed by institutional arrangements, which shape its contours and structure its content, such as political and electoral conventions and institutions that determine which actors interact with others and in which ways when making policy (see Tsebelis 2002), as well as those policy paradigms that shape the

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ideas they bring to the table (see Hall and Taylor 1996). A “style” is an important part of a regime as it helps determine the range and type of alternatives, and final policy outputs, which occur as policy issues are processed within the regime. As such, it is a useful term for describing long-term patterns found in the policy process and eventually also in the substance of policy-making in a particular sector. The general idea is that policy-making tends to develop in such a way that the same actors, institutions, instruments, and governing ideas dominate policy-making at various levels of the policy process for extended periods of time, infusing a policy sector with both a consistent content and a set of typical policy processes or procedures and actors. Understanding how policy styles form, how they are maintained, and how they change, therefore, is an important aspect of the study of public policy and especially comparative policy-making. Writings in the field in the 1960s and 1970s were sometimes excellent empirically but were often idiosyncratic theoretically, failing to develop a set of systematically linked concepts and a body of accepted principles of policy-making behavior which accurately described, and predicted, policy outcomes (Peters 1988). The concept of a policy style is one which is useful not only for helping to describe typical policy processes and deliberations, but also for capturing an important aspect of policy dynamics, that is, the relatively enduring nature of these arrangements. But the concept and the empirical-analytical approaches to studying it needed to be developed further in order to aid comparative policy analysis.

Origins of the notion of a national policy style In conceptual terms, policy styles have clear links to the comparative administrative studies developed by Weber and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Weber 1978) and were discussed with reference to the notion of national administrative cultures after the Second World War (for an overview see Painter and Peters 2010). An interest in examining and better defining and understanding such administrative styles re-emerged in the late 1990s in the works of, for example, Windhoff-Héritier et al. (1996) and Knill (1998, 2001), who were interested in how membership with the EU affected national administrative styles and vice versa: that is, how the respective national administrative styles affected the implementation of EU policies. Studies examining styles have tended to focus on the national level and to contend that policy-making processes need to be studied through the lens of the manner in which the institutional make-up of a government generates the routines and standard operating procedures constituting its decision-making structure and processes. From this perspective, the concept of policy styles is one that aligns well with the logic of actor-centered institutionalism (Scharpf 1997). That is, the analytical focus lies on the relationships between actors which occur in the policy-making process and how these relationships are shaped or moderated by institutional arrangements, with the latter creating “historically rooted trajectories” (Zysman 1994) of policymaking arrangements and procedures; namely a policy style. Policy styles thus emphasize different types of actors and how they interact with each other in policy-making and how the routines and frameworks created for this purpose influence the kinds of interactions that occur and the kinds of decisions made. The first studies of policy styles conducted by authors such as Peters et al. (1978) hypothesized simply that the national political system affected policy outcomes and should be treated as one factor among many which shaped such outcomes. Soon, however, the understanding of policy styles shifted from the policy outcome dimension to that of the policy process found in a particular country. That is, each country or group of countries was said to have its own pattern

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of policy-making, which characterized its policy processes and resulting policy outputs in predictable ways.

The Richardson model A path-breaking attempt to conceptualize and empirically describe distinct national styles of policy-making was set out by Richardson et al. (1982) for countries in Western Europe. In that work, four different styles were mooted based on the propensity of a country to take anticipatory or reactive decisions and, in either case, to do so either by seeking to reach consensus with organized groups or by imposing decisions notwithstanding opposition from such groups. The study by Richardson et al. remains essential reading. However, in light of the fundamental changes modern states have experienced in the half-century since 1982, Howlett and Tosun (2019a) revisited the original concept in 2019 and provided an updated and expanded version of it. The analytical objective of that work was to examine states located all around the world, rather than just in Western Europe, and to modify the original formulation as needed. This later work identified national policy styles differently, focusing on whether key actors in policy processes were bureaucrats or politicians and how open or closed those systems were in terms of the presence or absence of democratic institutions injecting some aspects of public opinion and partisanship into policy-making processes (Howlett and Tosun 2019b). In this context, Richardson et al. (1982) did the most to develop the concept and, as stated earlier, defined a policy style in purely process terms: as the interaction between (a) the government’s approach to problem-solving and (b) the relationship between government and societal actors in the policy process. They mentioned anticipatory/active vs. reactive as the two general approaches to problem solving, while the relationships between governmental and nongovernmental actors were similarly divided into consensus vs. imposition relationships (see Table 2.1). According to this model, for example, the (West) German policy style corresponded to an anticipatory approach and was based on consensus (Dyson 1982), whereas the British style was characterized by reactiveness, though also based on consensus (Jordan and Richardson 1982). Similarly, the French policy style was regarded as an example of a policy which was anticipatory but effected through imposition rather than consensus (Hayward 1982), whereas the Dutch policy style was both reactive and impositional (van Putten 1982). The important corollary of this discussion was that “style influenced substance” insofar as, for example, German policies were typically anticipatory and consensus based, thus ruling out policy options

Table 2.1  An early model of national policy styles Dominant Approach to Problem-Solving

Relationship between government and society

Consensus Imposition

Anticipatory

Reactive

German “rationalist consensus” style French “concertation” style

British “negotiation” style Dutch “negotiation and conflict” style

Source: Adapted from Richardson et al. (1982), Knill and Tosun (2020) and Howlett and Tosun (2019b)

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a priori which did not embody these characteristics. And so on for each country examined in the book.

Critical reception and concerns with the Richardson model and concept Helping in this way to shed light on why similar countries, geographically and economically speaking, adopted different policy packages to achieve many of the same ends, upon its publication, the volume by Richardson (1982) received considerable attention from scholars in both comparative public policy and comparative politics. While the dimension related to the general approach to problem solving was especially welcomed by scholars in public policy, the second dimension on the relationships between governmental and nongovernmental actors resonated particularly well with research in comparative politics where interest groups and interest group politics represent a central explanatory variable and theme. The original volume thus deserves credit not only for pioneering the concept of policy styles but also in so doing for bridging the gap between comparative public policy and comparative politics. Despite its acclamation, however, the concept as put forth by Richardson et al. (1982) soon became the subject of critical empirical analysis and reflection. For example, Freeman (1985) argued that the differences found between policies in different countries were less apparent at the general national level than at the sectoral one, introducing the competing vision of sectoral rather than national-level policy styles. Atkinson and Coleman (1992) also challenged the original formulation and argued that few governments were consistently active or reactive, nor did any government always work through either consensus or imposition. Van Waarden (1992, 1995) defended the idea of national policy styles but suggested different dimensions from those put forward by Richardson et al. (1982). His typology concentrated less on the nature of policy responses than upon the degree to which public-private interactions were formalized or institutionalized and whether societal interest groups participated in the formulation and implementation of public policies. These two dimensions produced four types of policy styles: an étatist policy style (see, e.g., France), a pluralist policy style (see, e.g., the United States), a corporatist or meso-corporatist policy style (see, e.g., Germany), and clientelism and liberal corporatism (see, e.g., Switzerland). Knill and Tosun (2020) responded to this debate by offering a conceptualization of policy styles that included both a national and a sectoral dimension. The authors discussed in detail which factor would be decisive for the emergence of a national policy style and which for the development of a sectoral policy style, including the nature of the policy subsystems and institutions that were involved in which activity. The analytical goal was to explain which factors influenced the development of national policy styles, sectoral policy styles, or both (see also Knill and Tosun 2020). Howlett and Tosun (2019b) built on these foundations but extended the concept of a national style beyond the Western European democracies examined by all the other authors. As a result, the authors suggested modifying the concept to become more generic while capturing features that vary between democracies and autocracies as well as within these political regime types. They argued that the first dimension to problem solving should focus on the key actors involved in policy-making, while presuming that bureaucrats and experts are likely to facilitate anticipatory policy-making, whereas the involvement of both political and public actors is likely to increase a tendency for reactive policy-making. The contribution in this volume by Qian (2019) on the Chinese policy style and by Zohlnhöfer and Tosun (2019) support this reasoning.

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Howlett and Tosun (2019a) also, like van Waarden, replaced the second dimension of the original concept on the relationship between policy-makers and interest groups by state-society relationships, which can be either inclusive or exclusive. The broadening of the original dimension to state-society relationships facilitated the analysis of countries like the United States (see Peters 2019) and other non-European democracies as well as authoritarian countries such as Vietnam (see Croissant 2019). The chapters in this book continue this tradition and debate by examining in detail both the national level and other institutional arrangements around sectors, administrations, and governance. Another recent attempt to further develop the conceptualization of policy styles which has influenced the structure and content of this volume follows the proposal made by Howlett et al. (2020), who suggested that a better way to conceptualize such styles is to draw on the insights into the workings of each stage of the policy cycle rather than just decision-making or policy formulation as was done by Richardson et al. (1982). The authors did not provide a differentiated discussion of whether they expect their concept to apply to policy formulation in the same way as policy implementation or whether there are differences (Howlett and Tosun 2019a). Consequently, a reconceptualization that concentrates on the stages of the policy cycle is a natural expansion of the original concept and is the subject of the essays contained in the second half of this volume.

A new way of looking at national policy styles The main take-away message from the aforementioned considerations is that institutions matter for how individual behave and that national policy styles are intimately linked with governance contexts (Howlett 2002). That is, national policy styles can be seen as the offshoots of larger national governance and administrative traditions or cultures, such as parliamentary or republican forms of government and federal or unitary states, which lead to different concentrations of power in the central institutions of government, reliance on certain governing instruments, and types of policy behavior on the part of key actors (Bevir and Rhodes 2001). From the perspective of levels of analysis, a national policy style is best thought of as a set of political and administrative routines and behaviors heavily influenced by the rules and structures of the civil service and political system in which it is located. Patterns of national policy-making are strongly affected by institutional arrangements, which define the strategic opportunities and constraints that public and private actors face during the formulation and implementation of public policies (Kitschelt 1993). Therefore, a generalized model of policy styles needs to pay enhanced attention to institutional arrangements and the characteristics of political regimes, and the politico-administrative regimes in countries need to be brought to the forefront in order to understand how specific kind of institutional arrangements result in specific policy styles. More specifically, bureaucrats and experts are likely to facilitate anticipatory policy-making, whereas the involvement of both political and public actors is likely to increase a tendency for reactive policy-making. Similarly, a more impositional policy style exists with pluralist democracies and a consensus-seeking policy style with corporatist democracies. This generates the model of national policy styles highlighted in Figure 2.1. As depicted in Figure 2.1, compared to closed-centralist systems and competitive authoritarian systems, representative and consultative democracies possess a high degree of inclusiveness of societal actors in decision-making. Yet with the representative democracies, bureaucrats and experts are more likely to play a crucial role in policy-making (Radaelli 2005; Cairney 2016;

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Inclusiveness of decision-making

 

 

 

 

High

Low

Key policy actors

Bureaucrats and experts

Type 1 Representative democracies

Type 3 Closed-centralist systems

 

Politicians and public

Type 2 Participatory or consultative democracies

Type 4 Competitive electoral authorities

Figure 2.1  Dimensions of the generalized model Source: Adapted from Howlett and Tosun (2019b)

Veit et al. 2017) than they are in participatory or consultative democracies (Howlett 2009). Concerning the latter, politicians and the public are conceived to play a more active role in policy-making. In closed-centralist systems, on the other hand, bureaucrats and experts also play an important role in policy-making (Huque and Rahman 2003). Electoral authorities should also have an incentive to involve the public into policy-making along with politicians, even if the involvement is only a strategy for legitimizing authoritarian rule (Lorch and Bunk 2017). While policy styles will vary by and within regimes, these differences are less than those found across these categories.

Conclusion For decades, comparative public policy has been interested in identifying and explaining patterns of policy-making. Among the classic themes discussed in the corresponding literature is the notion of national policy styles. The essence of such styles resides in how governments around the world enact their policies, including articulating policy options or solutions to address complex policy problems. The concept of national policy styles contends that policy-making needs to be conceived as a combination of the institutional make-up of a government as well as its routines and standard operating procedures, both of which combine to affect not only how it makes policies but also what policies emerge from processual deliberations. Policy styles have received renewed scholarly interest in the last few years, as indicated in particular by attempts to develop further the notion of sectoral policy styles such as the conceptualization of morality policy styles by Adam et al. (2017) and agricultural and health policy by Candel et al. (2020). Various attempts to modify the original notion of national policy styles have occurred in order to expand its scope of application. The brief and non-exhaustive overview of reactions to the concept of policy styles set out previously allows us to draw three sets of conclusions. First, the conceptualization of national policy styles as put forth by Richardson et al. (1982) started an intellectual process out of which alternative conceptualizations emerged and have been critically appraised as the original model. Second, there is also a consensus that, at least under certain conditions, governments tend to react to policy problems in distinctive ways. Third, the attempts to reformulate the notion of policy styles made to date sit next to each other and have not yet constituted the elements of an integrated research agenda.

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While scholarship on the topic has been rejuvenated in the last decade or so, it has remained scattered within the academic literature and has been dealt with disjointedly and sometimes narrowly within sectors, governments, and civil service systems. There is a need to expand the original concept well beyond the national and process boundaries originally set by Richardson et al. (1982).

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Howlett, Michael, 2002. Policy Instruments and Implementation Styles: The Evolution of Instrument Choice in Canadian Environmental Policy. Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Cases, 25–45. Howlett, Michael, 2009. Policy Analytical Capacity and Evidence-Based Policy-Making: Lessons from Canada. Canadian Public Administration, 52 (2), 153–175. Howlett, Michael, Ramesh, M. and Perl, Anthony, 2020. Studying Public Policy: Principles and Processes. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howlett, Michael and Tosun, Jale, eds., 2019a. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge. Howlett, Michael and Tosun, Jale, 2019b. Policy Styles: A New Approach. In: Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge, 1–19. Huque, Ahmed S. and Rahman, M.T., 2003. From Domination to Alliance: Shifting Strategies and Accumulation of Power by the Bureaucracy in Bangladesh. Public Organization Review, 3 (4), 403–418. Jordan, Grant and Richardson, Jeremy, 1982. The British Policy Style or the Logic of Negotiation. In: Jeremy Richardson, ed. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin, 80–110. Kitschelt, Herbert, 1993. Class Structure and Social Democratic Party Strategy. British Journal of Political Science, 299–337. Knill, Christoph, 1998. European Policies: The Impact of National Administrative Traditions. Journal of Public Policy, 1–28. Knill, Christoph, 2001. The Europeanisation of National Administrations: Patterns of Institutional Change and Persistence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knill, Christoph and Lenschow, Andrea, 1998. Coping with Europe: The Impact of British and German Administrations on the Implementation of EU Environmental Policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 5 (4), 595–614. Knill, Christoph and Tosun, Jale, 2020. Public Policy: A  New Introduction. 2nd ed. London: Red Globe Press. Lorch, Jasmin and Bunk, Bettina, 2017. Using Civil Society as An Authoritarian Legitimation Strategy: Algeria and Mozambique in Comparative Perspective. Democratization, 24 (6), 987–1005. Olsen, Johan P. and Peters, B.G., 1996. Lessons from Experience: Experiential Learning in Administrative Reforms in Eight Democracies. Scandinavian University Press. Painter, Martin and Peters, B.G., 2010. The Analysis of Administrative Traditions. In: Tradition and Public Administration. London: Springer, 3–16. Peters, B.G., 1988. Comparing Public Bureaucracies: Problems of Theory and Method. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Peters, B. Guy, 2019. The American Policy Style(s). In: Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge, 180–198. Peters, B.G., Doughtie, John C. and McCulloch, M.K., 1978. Do Public Policies Vary in Different Types of Democratic System? In: The Practice of Comparative Politics. London: Longmans. Pierson, Paul, 2000. Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics. The American Political Science Review, 251–267. Qian, Jiwei, 2019. Policy Styles in China. In: M. Howlett and J. Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the National Dimension. Abingdon: Routledge, 201–221. Raadschelders, Jos C.N., Toonen, Theo A.J. and van der Meer, Frits M., 2015. Civil Service Systems and the Challenges of the 21st Century. In: Frits M. van der Meer, Jos C.N. Raadschelders and Theo A.J. Toonen, eds. Comparative Civil Service Systems in the 21st Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–14. Radaelli, Claudio M., 2005. Diffusion without Convergence: How Political Context Shapes the Adoption of Regulatory Impact Assessment. Journal of European Public Policy, 12 (5), 924–943. Rahman, Md S. and Tosun, Jale, 2018. State Bureaucracy and the Management of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh. Review of Policy Research, 35 (6), 835–858. Richardson, Jeremy, ed., 1982. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin. Richardson, Jeremy, 2018a. British Policy-Making and the Need for a Post-Brexit Policy Style. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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Richardson, Jeremy, 2018b. The Changing British Policy Style: From Governance to Government? British Politics, 13 (2), 215–233. Richardson, Jeremy, Gustafsson, Gunnel and Jordan, Grant, 1982. The Concept of Policy Style. In: Jeremy Richardson, ed. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin, 1–16. Scharpf, Fritz W., 1997. Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research. Abingdon: Routledge. Simmons, Robert H., Davis, Bruce W., Chapman, Ralph J.K. and Sager, Daniel D., 1974. Policy Flow Analysis: A Conceptual Model for Comparative Public Policy Research. Western Political Quarterly, 27 (3), 457–468. Tsebelis, George, 2002. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. New York, NY and Princeton, NJ: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press. van Putten, Jan, 1982. Policy Styles in the Netherlands: Negotiation and Conflict. Policy Styles in Western Europe, 168–196. van Waarden, Frans, 1992. Dimensions and Types of Policy Networks. European Journal of Political Research, 21 (1–2), 29–52. van Waarden, Frans, 1995. Persistence of National Policy Styles: A Study of Their Institutional Foundations. Convergence or Diversity, 333–372. Veit, Sylvia, Hustedt, Thurid and Bach, Tobias, 2017. Dynamics of Change in Internal Policy Advisory Systems: The Hybridization of Advisory Capacities in Germany. Policy Sciences, 50 (1), 85–103. Vink, Martinus and Schouten, Greetje, 2018. Foreign-Funded Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa: Mirroring Administrative Traditions or Traditions of Administrative Blueprinting? Review of Policy Research, 35 (6), 792–834. Weber, Max, 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Windhoff-Héritier, Adrienne, Knill, Christoph and Mingers, Susanne, 1996. Ringing the Changes in Europe: Regulatory Competition and the Transformation of the State: Britain, France, Germany. Dordrecht: Walter de Gruyter. Zohlnhöfer, Reimut and Tosun, Jale, 2019. Policy Styles in Germany: Still Searching for the Rationalist Consensus? In: Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge, 45–69. Zysman, John, 1994. How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth. Industrial and Corporate Change, 3 (1), 243–283.

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3 Adversarial legalism and the American style of policymaking Jeb Barnes

Introduction The Health and Human Services Department periodically releases statistics on the opioid epidemic in the United States. The numbers are staggering: as of January  2019, 11.4  million Americans had misused prescription opioids; 2.1 million had an opioid disorder; and 47,600 have died from opioid overdoses in 2017 alone. The tragedy continues, as more than 130 people die each day from an opioid-related overdose – that’s roughly one death every 10 minutes, every day of the year, 24 hours a day (Health and Human Services 2019). This public health crisis has produced waves of litigation (Gluck et al. 2018), including private individual and class action lawsuits and cases by state attorneys general seeking billions in compensation. In a closely watched case, Judge Thad Balkman ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million to the state of Oklahoma, about the cost of running its programs aimed at reducing opioid addiction for a year. Although an award of over half a billion dollars may seem astronomical, it was far less than the $17 billion sought by the state and only about two weeks of profit for the company. Indeed, Johnson & Johnson’s stock went up after the ruling, as markets seemed to believe that the judgment could have been much worse, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding the company’s liability (Hiltzik 2019). Nevertheless, Johnson & Johnson has vowed to appeal, arguing that the court’s legal reasoning is flawed. The significance of the ruling lies less in the amounts involved than the legal principles at stake, which have potential ripple effects on the thousands of pending opioid-related suits around the country. First, Johnson & Johnson only had about 1% of the opioid market in Oklahoma yet the judge found that it was culpable due to its aggressive marketing campaign and place in the supply chain. Specifically, Johnson & Johnson allegedly told doctors that opioids were being underprescribed while downplaying the risks of addiction and ignoring the emergence of “pill mills” that vastly overprescribed painkillers. Moreover, the state maintained that the company was a “kingpin” in the crisis despite its small market share because its subsidiaries were leading suppliers of raw materials for other opioid manufacturers, including an Australian firm, Tasmanian Alkaloids, which developed a highly potent strand of poppies in the 1990s in anticipation of soaring demand. Finding Johnson & Johnson liable under these circumstances

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signaled that all manufacturers in the supply chain might be vulnerable to these types of lawsuits, regardless of how much business they did in a given state. Second, attorneys have tried a variety of legal claims against opioid manufacturers, including strict products liability, negligence, breach of implied warranties, false advertising, conspiracy and violations of consumer protection laws. Judge Balkman recognized another theory: public nuisance. Public nuisance is an open-ended common law doctrine that provides a remedy for “unreasonable interference” with a “right common to the general public.” Traditionally, this has been applied to threats to public resources such as air, water or rights of way, such as blocking highways. While some trial courts have tried to apply the public nuisance doctrine to social ills related to lead paint and handguns, appellate courts have rejected these attempts. Some legal experts are dubious that it will be upheld in this case (Turley 2019). As is often typical in the United States, the court’s ruling did not resolve the controversy. Facing a flood of lawsuits, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin and the leading manufacturer of opioids, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a comprehensive settlement plan (Hoffman 2019); in effect, using one form of litigation to manage others (Barnes 2011). According to reports, the original company would be dissolved and replaced by a new one, which would use its profits to pay plaintiffs and donate drugs for the treatment of addiction and overdoses. The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, would reportedly contribute $3 billion over time. The company explained that the settlement would avoid the inevitable unpredictability, cost and delays of “mass tort” litigation (Nagareda 2007), allowing more money to go to victims and programs dealing with the crisis instead of lining lawyers’ pockets. The proposal has split plaintiffs groups with some signing on and others calling it a “slap in the face” (Thorbecke 2019). The only certainty going forward is more litigation. The current onslaught of opioid lawsuits illustrates what Kagan (2019) calls “adversarial legalism,” a distinctively American tendency to rely on litigation to address complex policy problems. In this example, we see some of its characteristic virtues and vices. At its best, adversarial legalism is innovative, flexible and fearless in taking on powerful interests, like big pharmaceutical companies and the Sackler family. At the same time, it is unpredictable, costly and slow as a means of compensation. More subtly, it tends to reduce multifaceted policy issues into a binary world of plaintiffs and defendants, victims and villains (Horowitz 1977; Fuller 1978; Barnes and Burke 2015). Its unpredictability can also unevenly distribute costs and benefits, which creates a pastiche of winners and losers. The resulting divisions within and across stakeholder interests can hinder the creation of broad, durable coalitions needed to enact national solutions through the fragmented lawmaking process in the United States (Barnes 2011; Barnes and Burke 2015). As the prospect of legislation dims, the appeal of litigation grows. This chapter explores adversarial legalism as a national policy-making style on several fronts. It starts by defining it and then summarizes its causes and consequences. It ends by exploring the path dependence of adversarial legalism: how it manages to withstand significant reforms aimed at replacing it, even when it becomes enormously costly and unpredictable in particular policy areas.

Adversarial legalism: a closer look In his widely cited book Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law (2019), now in its second edition, Robert Kagan takes on questions at the core of this volume, and, like this volume, his approach is inherently comparative, resting on the conviction that one cannot understand the policy-making style of any single country without placing it in cross-national context. The simple 2 × 2 table (Table 3.1) sets forth his comparative framework. 26

Adversarial legalism Table 3.1  Four modes of policy-making Decision-making style Organization of decisionmaking authority

Informal

Formal

Hierarchical to

Professional or political expertise Negotiation/mediation

Bureaucratic legalism

Participatory

Adversarial legalism

Source: Kagan (2019)

Each cell represents an ideal-type of policy-making, which entails a distinct approach and structure of authority. The horizontal axis is the level of formality in defining and determining the underlying claim, meaning the degree to which decision makers use preexisting rules and procedures in making and implementing policy. Formal policy-making features all the machinery of legal decision-making: precedents, records, documents and written procedures. Informal processes, by contrast, rely on case-by-case decision-making that rests on professional or political judgments. The vertical axis refers to the organization of decision-making authority, ranging from hierarchical structures that are controlled by a governmental official from the top down to participatory structures that are driven by the contending interests from the bottom up. Adversarial legalism is formal and participatory, meaning that the parties (and their representatives) make policy by arguing over the meaning of substantive standards and procedural rules, their bearing on the decision at hand, and even their intrinsic fairness. There are official decision makers, but they serve as referees and do not predominate. The classic example is American tort law in which parties bring actions under general legal principles. The parties and their lawyers have the primary responsibility to initiate the process, frame the dispute, collect and present evidence and argue over the procedural rules and the application of the law to the facts. Bureaucratic legalism is formal and hierarchical. It connotes an ideal Weberian bureaucracy in which civil servants implement policy according to rules, such as social insurance programs where government officials calculate compensation based on detailed payment schedules. Whereas adversarial legalism places a premium on particularized justice  – treating each case according to its individual merits – bureaucratic legalism emphasizes uniform justice – treating like cases alike. Informal modes of policy-making do not use preexisting rules to resolve disputes. Expert or political judgment is the hierarchical version and its ad hoc decision-making may rest primarily on scientific expertise, as when the National Transportation Safety Board investigates an airplane crash, or a mix of scientific knowledge and political judgment, as when the Environmental Protection Agency decides to regulate a pollutant. Negotiation/mediation is informal and participatory. It covers any situation in which decisions must be made among roughly equal parties. Depending on the details, QUANGOs  – quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organizations – might fall into this box, as stakeholder representatives are appointed to official forums to bargain over important policy issues. Keep in mind that the dimensions on Table 3.1 are continua. In practice, policies and institutions typically fall between the ideal types. Also, note that the United States features all four types of policy-making. There is even variation within the U.S. courts, as some areas of 27

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litigation, like car accident cases, have become so routinized that they more closely resemble bureaucratic legalism than full-blown adversarial legalism (Witt 2004). Other regimes were created to offer a bureaucratic alternative to the courts, such as workers’ compensation programs, but have grown litigious, edging towards adversarial legalism (Kagan 2019). Assessing the mode of policy-making requires both an institutional analysis of the structure of the regime and a finegrained analysis of how these structures are used in daily operations (Burke and Barnes 2018). Given the variation of policy-making approaches and institutional arrangements in any country, it is misleading to use these ideal types to describe a nation’s policy-making approach across the board. American policy-making is not wholly synonymous with adversarial legalism. Instead, national policy-making styles describe institutional tendencies within this complexity: namely, how different countries are likely to respond to similar policy issues. Based on dozens of studies that compare national policy responses to a wide range of issues – including coal mine safety, nursing home care, corporate insolvency, educational opportunity, labor relations, the introduction of new drugs, air pollution, educational equality, the use of polyvinyl chlorides, and others (Kagan 2019, Table 1 [collecting authority]) – Kagan argues that the United States is more likely to rely on adversarial legalism than do its counterparts abroad. From this vantage, assessing policy-making style is more about comparing the relative reliance on different modes of policy across national settings than claims about the absolute amounts of a particular policymaking approach in a specific country.

The causes of adversarial legalism Kagan argues that adversarial legalism has always been a feature of American politics, reflecting its long-standing distrust of centralized authority. From this perspective, empowering contending interests to make policy subject to preexisting rules is far preferable to giving governmental officials unfettered discretion. But reliance on adversarial legalism has surged in the post–World War II era, reflecting cultural developments that have been somewhat awkwardly grafted on traditional American distrust of government and fragmented political structures. Specifically, the 1960s and early 1970s culminated increasing demands for “total justice” in the United States: the idea that modern societies can and should address widespread social ills, like discrimination, environmental degradation and consumer safety (Friedman 1985). Of course, demands for total justice during this period were not limited to the United States. But, in other industrialized democracies, activists simply built on existing centralized governmental structures to meet these demands, resulting in the expansion of their welfare states. In the United States, there was little appetite for the creation of a powerful, centralized bureaucracy or the taxes needed to pay for it. Instead, reformers sought to provide total justice by creating a spate of programs and agencies while simultaneously establishing rights and procedures aimed at checking this new authority and ensuring groups a voice in the policy-making process. This institutional two-step was part legislative, part judicial (Melnick 1983, 1994, 2018). Legislatively, Congress created an alphabet soup of often overlapping federal agencies aimed at addressing pervasive social problems. Yet it feared that industries would eventually dominate the very agencies designed to regulate their conduct. To inoculate agencies from industry capture, Congress subjected these new agencies and programs to procedural checks, such as “private attorneys general” provisions, which allowed public interest groups to participate in administrative rulemaking and haul agencies into court for failure to meet their obligations, and enacted mechanisms for private enforcement of policy through the courts (Farhang 2010). At the same, federal judges extended their reach into administrative matters. For example, the landmark Supreme Court decision of Goldberg v. Kelly (1970) required hearings for those 28

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facing the loss of welfare benefits. This case, in turn, triggered the creation of myriad administrative reviews subject to judicial oversight under the “hard look” doctrine (Greater Boston Television Corp. v. FCC [1970]), which often served as a doctrine of judicial second-guessing (Melnick 2004). Meanwhile, federal judges relaxed the rules of justiciability, such as the standing doctrine, further widening the door to public interest group challenges to agency decisions and procedures (Stewart and Sunstein 1982). In addition to enhanced oversight, courts developed injunctive powers to build their administrative capacity and used these powers to take over local schools, mental hospitals and prisons (Feeley and Rubin 1998; Sandler and Schoenbrod 2003). After these changes, courts played a dual role of legal adjudicator, resolving cases arising from statutory, constitutional and common law, and administrative manager, overseeing agencies, deciding regulatory disputes and reforming local institutions. The result has been the creation of a “litigation state” (Farhang 2010; Burke 2002), which has empowered American courts to shape policies far beyond the scope of courts in other countries. Revved-up adversarial legalism in the 1960s and 1970s engendered backlash by conservatives in the courts and Congress beginning in the 1980s, as American politics turned to the ideological right. Reflecting on the Supreme Court’s decisions of the past few decades, legal scholars have documented a “conservative counterrevolution” against the progressive legislation of the 1960s and signature decisions of the Warren Court (Dodd 2015; see also Chemerinsky 2011; Freeman 2014). The cumulative effect, they contend, has been a “rollback” of civil rights (Morgan et al. 2006), a “dismantling” of the Voting Rights Act (Issacharoff 2015) and “judicial repeal” of the Civil Rights Act (Gertner 2015). Congress joined these substantive attacks by passing procedural laws intended to limit access to the courts and cut off rights before they can be asserted (see Jois 2010; Staszak 2015; Burbank and Farhang 2016; see also Barnes 2007, 2011; Daniels and Martin 2015). According to Ackerman (2014), the “sun is setting on the civil rights revolution” in the United States, and it is likely to continue to fade as conservatives will enjoy a majority on the Supreme Court for years to come. These developments, while significant, need perspective. Containing and even chipping away at adversarial legalism is one thing; returning it to pre-1960s levels is quite another. After all, more conservative policies do not necessarily translate to less law, as Vogel powerfully argues in his aptly titled book Freer Markets, More Rules (1996), and stories of backlash can be overstated (Keck 2009). Despite efforts to rein it in, adversarial legalism remains deeply ensconced in the American political and policy-making playbook, as groups on both the left and the right continue to look to the courts when pursuing policy (Keck 2014). The successful fight for marriage equality is a reminder that rights-based campaigns, even from the left, can still work (although it remains to be seen whether the new majority on the Supreme Court will maintain these gains) (Klarman 2012; see also Flores and Barclay 2016). Moreover, legal scholars tend to focus on high-profile Supreme Court cases, which overlook how groups successfully pursue policy through low-profile legal strategies that fly “under the radar,” as in the fight for adoption rights by same-sex couples in family courts (Gash 2015). The backlash literature also tends to tilt towards the left, which can obscure how elected officials and judges have extended adversarial legalism and recognized new rights favored by conservatives, such as the prosecution of a highly legalistic “war on drugs” and the expansion of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom and the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms (Keck 2014; Murakawa 2014). Meanwhile, the common law remains as pliable as ever, and new forms of adversarial legalism have emerged with help from entrepreneurial lawyers and judges. In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, states – especially southern states – resisted the creation of new rights and the expansion of adversarial legalism. Now, as Nolette (2015) argues, state attorneys general are on the vanguard of using litigation to drive national policy on issues including prescription drug prices, 29

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environmental protection, immigration and banking regulations. We see these trends converge in the shadow of the opioid crisis, as state attorneys general have fashioned creative tort claims in an attempt to make health policy and levy a “litigation tax” on unpopular corporations. So, it seems likely that adversarial legalism will remain a fixture in American policy-making, even if it may be channeled into different policy sectors and driven by different configurations of actors. Finally, it is worth noting some scholars believe adversarial legalism – or some variant of it – is on the march in other countries (Bignami and Keleman 2018). Keleman (2011), for example, contends the emergence of the European Union has encouraged the rise of “Eurolegalism,” a close cousin of adversarial legalism. The gist is policymakers in Brussels believed that national systems of regulation centered on closed networks of elites impeded integration. In response, they sought to deregulate and create freer markets, which have led to more rules and greater reliance on private enforcement through the courts (see also Vogel 1996). Meanwhile, the fragmented nature of the EU and its relatively limited administrative (versus judicial) capacities reinforced these trends. As in the United States, fragmentation of political authority created principal-agent problems that engendered distrust within and across levels of government, leading to policies that rely on judicial enforcement and encourage private actors to turn to the courts (see also Bignami and Keleman 2018). In a colloquy with Bignami, Keleman explains that the move towards Eurolegalism is less like a tidal wave than “an incoming tide,” which “flows into estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back, and it is transforming governance across a wide range of policy areas” (Bignami and Keleman 2118, p. 86). Kagan (1997) acknowledges these forces but remains dubious about their impact, arguing that entrenched legal systems, cultures and institutions in Europe will dampen the spread of adversarial legalism. Unlike the United States, he notes that Europe does not have contingency fees, massive damage awards and other factors that encourage litigation. Moreover, European elites have learned about the pathologies of American-style adversarial legalism and may guard against them. Bignami (2011) falls between, maintaining that “a cooperative legalism” is rising within Europe that is more formal and legalistic than traditional forms of European regulation, but its implementation reflects the more cooperative and corporatist forms of governance already in place (see also Bignami and Keleman 2018). The final story of European legalism remains to be written. However, while scholars disagree over the extent that adversarial legalism will take root, they seem to agree that many of the same structural ingredients for the American litigation state – fragmentation, political distrust among different centers and levels of government, and deregulation – may be creating pressure for greater legalism (in some form) across the Atlantic.

Consequences of adversarial legalism Any discussion of national policy-making styles naturally raises questions about its consequences. This seemingly straightforward issue is deceptively complex. Indeed, it is probably impossible to tally the net costs and benefits of adversarial legalism definitively. Part of the problem is that some of its characteristic features, especially its positive ones like flexibility and innovation, are not easily measured. It is hard to create a balance sheet for a policy-making style when its assets are hard to quantify to make less redundant. Even if we could measure its costs and benefits reliably, there is a problem of weighting. A case may be decided quickly at relatively low cost but introduce lots of uncertainty under the law. Another case might take a long time and lots of money to adjudicate but reduce legal uncertainty when decided. Are these equally “costly”? What about costly cases that are innovative? A related problem is that “good” cases can have negative effects beyond the outcomes of specific lawsuits, such as discrimination suits that unintentionally give rise to symbolic compliance 30

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strategies that circumvent the law’s policy goals, and “bad” lawsuits can have positive effects through, in Epp’s evocative phrase, the “fertile fear of litigation” (2009). Consider an admittedly mundane example from the area of wheelchair access laws (Barnes and Burke 2006, 2012). Under federal and some state laws, restaurants are required to make reasonable accommodations to wheelchair users. A small chain of restaurants, called “Johnnies,” faced a series of suits under these provisions. Management felt that these cases were frivolous (and, in fact, one of the plaintiffs was later found to be a vexatious litigant). However, given the cost and uncertainty of litigation, they settled. As part of the settlement, they agreed to significant modifications to their existing locations and a number of design features for their new restaurants aimed at enhancing wheelchair accessibility. The managers’ account of the litigation closely paralleled Kagan’s critiques of adversarial legalism, especially how its costs and uncertainty forced them into a type of expensive defensive medicine. Yet Johnnie’s facilities were significantly more wheelchair friendly than similar restaurants that had not been sued. Here, management saw litigation as costly and meritless, but it was effective at improving access, which is the law’s ultimate goal. Is this an example of the excesses of adversarial legalism or the benefits of the fertile fear of litigation? Similarly, litigation can begin as beneficial but become problematic, especially as the policy cycle moves from mobilization, agenda setting and information gathering to rulemaking and implementation (Barnes 2009, 2011). Is litigation a net positive because it provides victims a voice when other forums are either unwilling or unable to act or an overall negative because it tends to provide victims inefficient and unreliable compensation? Yet another problem concerns the baseline for assessment (McCann and Haltom 2018). Implicitly, Kagan seems to compare adversarial legalism with well-run bureaucratic schemes, which are predictable, efficient and cost-effective. But, in the United States, as elsewhere, the choice is often litigation or nothing, or systems that in many respects fall short of a fully rational Weberian bureaucracy (Rubin and Feeley 2003). From this perspective, slow and unpredictable lawsuits may be the only or best available option. How should the opportunity structure for making policy figure into adversarial legalism’s ledger of costs and benefits? Of course, this discussion has mostly focused on assessing the net costs and benefits of single instances of adversarial legalism; challenges compound as we seek to aggregate costs and benefits across cases. For these reasons, calculating the systemic costs and benefits of adversarial legalism is probably beyond our grasp. Instead, the best we can probably do is identify likely trade-offs and how these trade-offs play out in particular policy areas. On this score, Kagan (2019) finds that adversarial legalism is flexible, innovative and capable of holding powerful interest accountable, while being associated with a laundry list of potentially negative characteristics: (1) more complex body of rules; (2) more formal adversarial procedures; (3) more costly forms of contestation; (4) stronger, more punitive sanctions; (5) more frequent judicial review of and intervention into administrative decisions and processes; (6) more political controversy about legal rules and institutions; (7) more politically fragmented, less closely coordinated decision-making systems; and (8) more legal uncertainty and instability. Whether this trade-off is justified is, of course, highly context specific and is more likely to be palatable when the elected branches have failed to address pressing problems (Silverstein 2009).

The path dependence of adversarial legalism The real puzzle is why adversarial legalism is so hard to replace even when it becomes clear that its costs outweigh its benefits (Burke 2002; Barnes 2011). For example, experts agree that asbestos litigation, a paradigmatic use of the courts to make policy, has become a poster child 31

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of what ails adversarial legalism (Kagan 2019). Even the courts have acknowledged litigation is ill-suited to a problem that involves millions of Americans, thousands of businesses and billions of dollars (e.g., Ortiz v. Fibreboard 1999). Faced with surging caseloads and a growing number of expert reports on the woeful inadequacy of litigation as a means of compensation, the courts have repeatedly begged Congress to replace adversarial legalism with a comprehensive social benefit program for asbestos victims. Yet Congress has failed to act (Barnes 2011). Even in the rare instances when Congress replaces adversarial legalism with a bureaucratic alternative, the process is notable for the extraordinary political skill required to navigate the legislative process (Burke 2002). The question remains, why? What makes adversarial legalism so path dependent? The literature suggests three somewhat overlapping mechanisms that keep adversarial legalism in place long after it has served useful policy functions: (1) increasing returns, (2) framing effects and (3) policy feedbacks. Increasing returns refer to processes that become more appealing with repeated use (Pierson 2004). Litigation can be prone to this dynamic (see generally Stone Sweet 1999). “Repeat players” with each iteration theoretically gain over “one-shotters,” as Galanter posited in his classic “Why the Haves Come Out Ahead” (1974). Indeed, regardless of the parties’ inherent strategic advantages, litigation grows more attractive as lawyers win, set favorable precedents, and learn how to gather and present persuasive evidence. As the expected returns of litigation go up – literally, as the chances of getting paid increase – other modes of advocacy may become relatively less appealing, such as lobbying for new legislation, which is almost always a long shot on Capitol Hill anyway. In addition, as Silverstein (2009) argues, legal precedents not only bind future legal decisions under the doctrine of stare decisis but also set the terms of policy debates. Eventually, alternative approaches can be set aside as legal precedents become “givens” and place courts at the center of the policy-making process. Silverstein explains: When policy bounces from Congress to courts, to the administration, and back again . . . the influences [of legal precedents] become more complex and often more constraining. We might think of a game of Scrabble, a game in which players often end up where none had originally planned or imagined. In a game of Scrabble, players start with a blank board, and the first player can head off in any direction he or she chooses. But slowly, over the course of the game, the players often end in one corner of the board, whereas another part of the board is totally empty. . . . In theory, it is still possible to move the game off in a radically different direction, but it becomes increasingly difficult (and unlikely) for that to happen. (2009, p. 66) Silverstein uses campaign finance to illustrate how framing effects can ossify policy. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, liberals swept into Congress and enacted comprehensive campaign finance reform. The Supreme Court partially struck down the law in its milestone decision, Buckley v. Valeo (1976). At the time, the Court’s holding that “money is speech” and entitled to First Amendment protection was very controversial. Now, it is an article of faith, sharply delimiting the scope of any legislative reforms seriously considered in Congress and ensuring that any attempt to regulate campaign finance will be subject to close judicial scrutiny as involving fundamental constitutional rights. Finally, “policy feedbacks” can engender path dependence. The idea that policy shapes politics has been around for decades (e.g., Schattschneider 1935; Lowi 1964; Pierson 1993, 2004; Mettler and Soss 2004; Campbell 2003, 2012). In a widely cited review of these studies, Pierson (1993) argues that policies influence politics by providing resources to actors and framing the 32

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way social problems and actors are conceived. Both can lock in the status quo, as support coalitions for policies harden and existing practices and ideas become institutionalized. Some may argue that this literature, which focuses on the politics of social benefit programs, like Social Security, does not apply to adversarial legalism. After all, American-style adversarial legalism centers on litigation, which does not look like a “normal” policy or program. It is neither funded by taxes nor administered by executive agencies. It proceeds according to specialized legal rules and procedures and, when governmental entities do participate, they act as individual litigants subject to the same rules as private parties. On these dimensions, litigation seems a private remedy, not public initiative. Yet socio-legal scholars insist that litigation should be seen as a distinctive form of policymaking. In the 1960s, Shapiro (1968), a pioneer in the field, argued that courts and agencies serve parallel policy formulation and implementation functions by adapting general rules to specific cases. The main differences are structural. Judges tend to be generalists, while bureaucrats tend to be specialists; federal judges are protected under Article III and as a result enjoy greater protections from removal than do political appointees in agencies; and judges often strike down laws through judicial review as opposed to shaping policy directly through the promulgation of specific regulations (Shapiro 1968, see also Feeley and Rubin 1998). In my own research with Burke and Barnes (2018), we compared the politics of injury compensation policies within the United States and found that adversarial legalism shapes politics in at least two ways that dovetail with the broader policy feedbacks literature. First, adversarial legal policies created distinctive distributional effects, patterns of compensation that affected the material interests of the stakeholders. These distributional effects shaped the stakes of interest groups in preserving or reforming the policy as well as the ways in which groups mobilized and built coalitions. Second, injury policies affected the assignment of blame, the framing of fault for the injury. Blame assignment, in turn, influenced how policymakers argued about the appropriate scheme for compensating injury. Specifically, we found the distributional and blame effects of adversarial legal policies initially limited the scope of political conflict. Because adversarial legalism organizes injury compensation claims into discrete disputes, it tended to have a privatizing effect. When just a few lawsuits target a particular manufacturer who uses asbestos, or a particular vaccine producer, cost and blame for injury center on just a few actors. Under these circumstances, members of Congress were disinclined to act. Even other companies in the affected industry failed to mobilize, perhaps because mounting litigation against their competitors provided a market advantage. But as litigation expanded, more companies and groups became involved, and the stakes increased. At this stage, adversarial legalism’s distributional effects had a different effect. As some plaintiffs and defendants won and others lost, its uneven allocation of costs and benefits generated crosscutting interests within and across key groups. Plaintiffs with promising claims wanted to preserve their right to sue and the chance to win large jury verdicts, while those with harder to prove claims and groups representing future claimants preferred a system that would pool resources and rationalize payments across victims and over time. Meanwhile, defendants facing the brunt of litigation sought help from Congress, also preferring a program that would spread costs and risks more evenly and predictably. However, those with lower exposure disagreed and either stayed on the sidelines or fought against the creation of a comprehensive compensation program, sometimes vehemently. Why should they bail out their competitors and take on either greater taxes or regulatory burdens? Blame assignment also powerfully shaped injury politics. It forced reformers to reframe responsibility for injury. Where individual lawsuits framed the problem in terms of individual fault, would-be reformers had to recast the issue as a social problem to make the culpability of 33

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individual actors less relevant. This was often an uphill battle given judicial findings of corporate fault and, in some cases, deliberate hiding of the dangers of asbestos from workers and the public. In our cases, distributional effects and blame assignment combined to create a political trajectory of increasing intensity and fractionalization. The result contributed to path dependence, as the Balkanization of interests and finding of individual wrongdoing made it difficult to build successful reform coalitions. We can see a similar pattern emerging in the opioid crisis, as litigation is beginning to drive a wedge between different plaintiff groups which are publicly divided on the Purdue Pharma settlement plan. Of course, all of these path-dependent dynamics – increasing returns, framing effects and policy feedbacks – can reinforce each other, making any shift away from adversarial legalism hard, despite its costs, delays and uncertainty.

Conclusion The concept of national policy-making styles is tricky given the institutional complexity of modern administrative states, which inevitably encompass diverse approaches and institutional arrangements, each with their own operational logics, support coalitions and organizational attributes. Moreover, states shift over time. In the U.S., conservatives have pushed back against adversarial legalism, and Europe is arguably witnessing the rise of some variant of adversarial legalism as new forms of political fragmentation, market integration and deregulation may have created structural shifts that favor more rules and court-based modes of governance. This type of sectoral and temporal variation tends to defy single labels. Nevertheless, Robert Kagan argues that adversarial legalism  – a formal and participatory mode of policy-making that relies heavily on litigation to make and implement policy  – represents a distinctively American response to many policy challenges facing modern industrialized societies. In case after case during a crucial period of state building during the 1960s through the 1970s, while other countries turned to existing governmental structures to address policy challenges, the United States created a patchwork of new agencies and programs and made this tangle of authority subject to greater formal procedural checks and judicial review. The result has been a litigation state that features high levels of adversarial legalism, which has proven politically resilient despite its costs and efforts to roll it back. Given these underlying forces, adversarial legalism will likely remain a potent tool within the complex, layered American state. Just ask the drug companies that produced and sold opioids to millions of Americans.

References Ackerman, B., 2014. We the People, Vol. III: The Civil Rights Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Barnes, J., 2007. Rethinking the Landscape of Tort Reform: Lessons from the Asbestos Case. Justice Systems Journal, 28 (2), 157–181. Barnes, J., 2009. In Defense of Asbestos Litigation: Rethinking Legal Process Analysis in a World of Uncertainty, Second Bests, and Shared Policy-Making Responsibility. Law and Social Inquiry, 34 (1), 5–29. Barnes, J., 2011. Dust-Up: Asbestos Litigation and the Failure of Commonsense Policy Reform. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Barnes, J. and Burke, T.F., 2006. The Diffusion of Rights: From Law on the Books to Organization Rights Practices. Law and Society Review, 40 (3), 493–524. Barnes, J. and Burke, T.F., 2012. Making Way: Legal Mobilization, Organizational Response, and Wheelchair Access. Law and Society Review, 46 (1), 167–198. Barnes, J. and Burke, T.F., 2015. How Policy Makes Politics: Rights, Courts, Litigation and the Struggle Over Injury Compensation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 34

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Bignami, F., 2011. Cooperative Legalism and the Nin-Americanization of European Regulatory Styles: The Case of Data Privacy. American Journal of Comparative Law, 59 (2), 411–461. Bignami, F. and Keleman, R.D., 2018. Kagan’s Atlantic Crossing: Adversarial Legalism, Eurolegalism, Cooperative Legalism in European Regulatory Style. In: T.F. Burke and J. Barnes, eds. Varieties of Legal Order: The Politics of Adversarial and Bureaucratic Legalism. New York, NY: Routledge, 81–97. Burbank, S. and Farhang, S., 2016. Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Burke, T.F., 2002. Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, T.F. and Barnes, J., 2009. Is There an Empirical Literature on Rights? Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 48, 69–92. Burke, T.F. and Barnes, J., 2018. Varieties of Legal Order: The Politics of Adversarial and Bureaucratic Legalism. New York, NY: Routledge. Campbell, A.L., 2003. How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Campbell, A.L., 2012. Policy Makes Mass Politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 15, 333–351. Chemerinsky, E., 2011. The Conservative Assault on the Constitution. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Daniels, S. and Martin, J., 2015. Tort Reform, Plaintiffs’ Lawyers, and Access to Justice. Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press. Dodd, L., 2015. The Rights Revolution in the Age of Obama and Ferguson: Policing, the Rule of Law, and the Elusive Quest for Accountability. Perspectives on Politics, 13 (3), 1–25. Epp, C.R., 2009. Making Rights Real: Activists, Bureaucrats, and the Creation of the Legalistic State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fact Sheet: Combating the Opioid Crisis, 2019. Health and Human Services [online]. Available from: www. hhs.gov/about/news/2019/04/24/hhs-fact-sheet-combating-the-opioid-crisis.html [Accessed 28 May 2020]. Farhang, S., 2010. The Litigation State: Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Feeley, M.M. and Rubin, E., 1998. Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America’s Prisons. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Flores, A. and Barclay, S., 2016. Backlash, Consensus, Legitimacy, or Polarization: The Effects of Same Sex Marriage Policy on Mass Attitudes. Political Research Quarterly, 69 (1), 43–56. Freeman, D., 2014. The Civil Rights Act at Fifty: Past, Present, and Future. Stanford Law Review, 66 (6), 1195–1204. Friedman, L., 1985. A History of American Law. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Fuller, L., 1978. The Forms and Limits of Adjudication. Harvard Law Review, 92 (2), 353–409. Galanter, M., 1974. Why the Haves Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change. Law and Society Review, 9 (1), 95–160. Gash, A., 2015. Below the Radar: How Silence Can Save Civil Rights. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gertner, N., 2015. The Judicial Repeal of the Johnson/Kennedy Administration’s ‘Signature Achievement. In: S. Bagenstos and E. Katz, eds. A Nation of Widening Opportunities: The Civil Rights Act at Fifty. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 165–183. Gluck, A.R., Hall, A. and Curfman, G., 2018. Civil Litigation and the Opioid Epidemic: The Role of Courts in a National Health Crisis. Opioids, Law & Ethics, 46 (2), 351–366. Hiltzik, M., 2019. Johnson & Johnson Got Hot For a $572-Million Opioid Verdict. Why Did its Stock Go Up? Los Angeles Times, AP [online]. Available from: www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-27/ johnson-and-johnson-572-million-opioid-verdict [Accessed 27 August 2019]. Hoffman, J., 2019. Purdue Pharma Tentatively Settles Thousands of Opioid Cases. New York Times [online]. Available from: www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/health/purdue-pharma-opioids-settlement. html [Accessed 11 September 2019]. Horowitz, D., 1977. The Courts and Social Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Issacharoff, S., 2015. Voting Rights at 50. Alabama Law Review, 67 (2), 387–414. 35

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Jois, G.U., 2010. Pearson, Iqbal, and Procedural Activism. Florida State University Law Review, 37 (4), 901–44. Kagan, R.A., 1997. Should Europe Worry About Adversarial Legalism? Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 17 (2), 165–183. Kagan, R.A., 2019. Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keck, T.M., 2009. Beyond Backlash: Assessing the Impact of Judicial Decisions on LGBT Rights. Law and Society Review, 43 (1), 151–185. Keck, T.M., 2014. Judicialized Politics in Polarized Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Keleman, R.D., 2011. Eurolegalism: The Transformation of Law and Regulation in the European Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Klarman, M.J., 2012. From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lowi, T., 1964. American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies and Political Theory. World Politics, 61 (4), 677–715. McCann, M. and Haltom, W., 2018. Seeing Through the Smoke: Adversarial Legalism and U.S. Tobacco Politics. In: T.F. Burke and J. Barnes, eds. Varieties of Legal Order: The Politics of Adversarial and Bureaucratic Legalism. New York, NY: Routledge Press, 57–80. Melnick, R.S., 1983. Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act. Washington, DC: Brookings. Melnick, R.S., 1994. Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Melnick, R.S., 2004. Courts and Agencies. In: M. Miller and J. Barnes, eds. Making Policy, Making Law: An Interbranch Perspective. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 89–106. Melnick, R.S., 2018. Adversarial Legalism, Civil Rights and the American State. In: T.F. Burke and J. Barnes, eds. Varieties of Legal Order: The Politics of Adversarial and Bureaucratic Legalism. New York, NY: Routledge Press, 20–56. Mettler, S. and Soss, J., 2004. The Consequences of Public Policy for Democratic Citizenship: Bridging Policy Studies and Mass Politics. Perspectives on Politics, 2 (1), 55–73. Morgan, D., Godsil, R. and Moses, S., 2006. Awakening from the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Murakawa, N., 2014. The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Nagareda, R.A., 2007. Mass Torts in an Age of Settlement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nolette, P., 2015. Federalism on Trial: State Attorneys General and the National Policymaking in Contemporary America. Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press. Pierson, P., 1993. When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change. World Politics, 45 (4), 595–628. Pierson, P., 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rubin, E. and Feeley, M.M., 2003. Judicial Policy-Making and Litigation Against the Government. University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, 5 (3), 617–663. Sandler, R. and Schoenbrod, D., 2003. Democracy by Decree: What Happens when the Courts Run Government. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Schattschneider, E.E., 1935. Politics, Pressure, and the Tariff: A Study of Free Private Enterprise in Pressure Politics, as Shown in the 929–1930 Revision of the Tariff. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. Shapiro, M., 1968. The Supreme Court and Administrative Agencies. New York, NY: Free Press. Silverstein, G., 2009. Law’s Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Staszak, S., 2015. No Day in Court: Access to Justice and the Politics of Judicial Retrenchment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Stewart, R.B. and Sunstein, C., 1982. Public Programs and Private Rights. Harvard Law Review, 95 (6), 1193–1322.

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Stone Sweet, A., 1999. Judicialization and the Construction of Governance. Comparative Political Studies, 32 (2), 147–184. Thorbecke, C., 2019. Attorney General Call Purdue Pharma Settlement a ‘Slap in the Face’ for Victims of Opioid Crisis. ABC News [online]. Available from: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/state-attorneysgeneral-call-purdue-pharma-settlement-slap/story?id=65546325 [Accessed 11 September 2019]. Turley, J., 2019. Johnson & Johnson Opioid Lawsuit: A Victory Won on Shallow Legal Grounds, USA Today [online]. Available from: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/30/johnson-johnson-­ opioid-lawsuit-victory-won-shallow-legal-grounds-column/2144006001/ [Accessed 15 December 2019]. Vogel, S.K., 1996. Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reforms in Advanced Industrial Countries. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wiececk, W. and Hamilton, J.L., 2014. Beyond the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Confronting Structural Racism in the Workplace. Louisiana Law Review, 74 (4), 1095–1160. Witt, J.F., 2004. The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cases Cited [1976] Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 [1970] Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 [1970] Greater Boston Television Corp. v. FCC, 444 F.2d 841 (U.S. D. Ct. D.C.) [1999] Ortiz v. Fibreboard, 527 U.S. 815

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4 Experimentalism as a policy style The case of China Jiwei Qian1

Introduction Policy style is defined as “routines and choices of actors in the making and implementation of public policies” (Richardson et al. 1982). Richardson et al. (1982) also define two dimensions for policy styles: one is related to the intellectual style, which is the “government’s approach for problem solving”. In this dimension, the policy style could be anticipatory or reactive. Reactive style implies “passive and responsive character of government” while anticipatory style highlights “the importance of acquiring information and knowledge” to be “engaged and innovative” (Dyson 1982). The government’s approach of designing and implementing policies for economic and social development, reactive or anticipatory, is critical. Another important dimension of the policy style is that of “the relation between government and other actors in the policy process”. In this dimension, consensus and imposition (i.e., top-down, state-driven) are two major approaches. How government officials accommodate the demand from society and how bureaucrats negotiate and bargain with each other are important. In this context, policy experimentation is considered useful to test and improve policy design and implementation (Nair and Howlett 2015). Policy experimentation has been used in the United States, Europe, and developing countries (Volden 2006; Sabel and Zeitlin 2012; Malesky et al. 2014). Policy experiments can be used to implement economic and social policies in different contexts. Interestingly, policy experimentation is argued to be one of the major features in policy styles in China, the world’s second-largest economy and most populous country (Perry and Heilmann 2011). China has achieved dramatically in economic and social development in recent decades. Between 1978 and 2012, annual growth in real GDP per capita reached 8.4  percent. The Human Development Index in China has increased from 0.499 in 1990 to 0.727 in 2015.2 In particular, between 1990 and 2005, the number of people whose income was less than US$1.25 a day (in 2005 dollars) in China had been reduced from 683 million to 212 million. Internationally, this represented 76 percent of the world’s total.3 The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to reduce poverty has thus been achieved ten years in advance.4 Other MDG goals such as universal coverage of primary education, reduced child mortality, and improved maternal health have been also fulfilled on schedule in China.5 38

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Further, there is consistent evidence that the Chinese government’s policies, in particular those flexible and contextually based policies, play a significant role in the process of economic development. For example, Meng (2013) finds that per capita income in counties under a government poverty alleviation program is 38 percent higher than that in counties not covered by these programs between 1994 and 2000. Alder et al. (2016) and Lu et al. (2015) also find that the Special Economic Zone policy, which was initiated in China in the 1980s, has significant positive effects on all major economic indexes such as capital, employment, productivity, and wage level. Two institutional arrangements are critical in understanding policy styles in China. First, China is ruled by one of the longest-lived and most durable single-party regimes in the world. There is no significant competitive election mechanism (beyond village level) to enable political participation from the society. All major policy initiatives must be approved by top leaders, who can have substantial discretion to shape the policy process. Second, compared to bureaucrats in other countries, the role of bureaucrats in China is even more important. Bureaucrats in China are responsible for the enforcement and implementation of policies. In particular, bureaucrats in China are exempt from the political controls of the legislature. Given the weak electoral and legislative institutions as well as the pivotal role of bureaucracy, policy styles in China, therefore, are more likely to be reactive, since local information and knowledge should be in short supply for the bureaucracy given very limited political participation (e.g., Pei 2006). Also, policy styles in China should be top-down imposed given that the bureaucrats are only accountable to their immediate superiors in the bureaucracy (e.g., Yang 2017). Another implication of the institutional arrangements is that policy enforcement and governance may not be very effective. First, with departmental interests in the bureaucracy, the collective action problem is an issue in the policy process. Coordination among different government departments is not very effective in implementing policies, given every government department has its own interest (Gilli et al. 2018). Therefore, bargaining and negotiation among bureaucrats are observed as routine in policy implementation. Second, given the large size of the country and variations of local conditions, asymmetric information and conflicting incentive structure between upper-level governments (i.e., principals) and lower-level governments (i.e., agents) have to be taken into account in the policy-making process. Now we have a major puzzle that given the institutional arrangements and bureaucracy’s role in the policy process, policy styles in China should be reactive and imposition based. However, in this case, it is difficult to understand the empirical evidence that the governance in China is flexible and contextually based. In many times, the policy-making process is embedded with bottom-up inputs in local information and knowledge. Also, it could be proactive in anticipating demand from the perspective of long-term economic development. For example, it is observed that local officials in China are highly responsive to public complaints (Distelhorst and Hou 2014; Tang 2016). In this case, policy styles in China contrast with those in Russia, another transitional economy. Political styles in Russia are argued to be reactive and hierarchical (Zaytsev 2018). The Chinese government has a long tradition of experiment-based policy making (Millar et al. 2016; Zhu and Zhao 2018). In particular, “experiments under hierarchy”, which refer to decentralized experiments with ad hoc central intervention, is viewed as the key to understanding the policy-making process in China (Heilmann 2008a). In the last three decades, decentralized or “bottom-up” experiments initiated at the local level have been regularly employed in various policy areas (Xu 2011; Brandt et al. 2014). Local policy experiments in China are also considered in the literature of “experimentalist governance”. 39

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We argue that policy experimentation is important for addressing both the principal-agent and collective action problems. Since local government’s incentive and information structures are important, local policy experimentation grants large discretion to local government on designing and implementing policy initiatives. We argue that policy style in China is more likely to be anticipatory/active in economic policy areas but responsive in social policy areas. In this chapter, we use a case of a policy pilot in urban-rural integration to illustrate the policy styles in China. Some problems/issues that emerge for these policy instruments are also illustrated from this case. To address these problems in the policy process, China recently has initiated various forms of public participation in policy making, but progress is still limited (Stromseth et al. 2017). One caveat of this chapter is that while it has been acknowledged in the literature that the political culture in China also matters in the policy process (Zhao 2009; Pines 2012; Gore 2017). Political culture is related to regime legitimacy and how politicians and bureaucrats conceive themselves and their duties. Another caveat is related to the role of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Recently, the idea of a broadly defined government including both the party and the government has been highlighted in the official discourse and recent policy initiatives in China.6 While there is a growing literature on the role of the party (Zheng 2009; Gore 2017), we do not distinguish the party from the government in this chapter. The rest of the chapter is arranged as follows. After discussing the institutional context in China and how the policy style in China can be characterized by these institutions, we discuss the mechanisms of the contextually based policy-making and coordinating government departments. Next, we introduce how policy experimentation works with institutions such as the performance evaluation system and leading small group. We use a case of pilot reform on urban-rural integration to illustrate local policy experimentation. Issues of local policy experimentation in the policy process are discussed before we conclude the chapter.

Institutions and their implications for the policy style in China China’s political institutions are different from those of many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. There have been grassroots-level village elections in China but very few competitive elections beyond the township level (Zheng and Chen 2012). China remains a single-party regime. All major decisions must be approved by top leaders, who can have substantial discretion to shape the policy process. Also, the role of bureaucracy in China is different from many other countries. Compared to their counterparts in other countries, bureaucrats in China have broad discretion over policy implementation and are only accountable to bureaucrats directly above them. Bureaucrats in China are exempt from the political controls of the legislature. Indeed, in China “the executive branch has predominated in the formulation and implementation of regulatory laws and policies” (Tam and Yang 2005, p. 6). In this context, policy styles in China thus are more likely to be reactive and imposed from the top down. First, policy styles are more likely to be reactive rather than proactive, since incentives and local information to promote a policy is not strong because of the lack of political participation from society. Second, officials in the party-state are accountable to their upperlevel governments rather than to citizens. In this case, policy styles are likely to be based on imposition rather than consensus. However, two stylized facts suggest that policy styles in China may not be reactive and topdown imposed. First, it was observed that policymakers at the central level usually release policy initiatives with very high generality, and many policies made are based on local conditions 40

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(Chen and Naughton 2016; Ang 2016). Ang (2016) uses the term “directed improvisation” to illustrate the variation of local policy implementation. Second, large amounts of bargaining and negotiation occur among stakeholders within the bureaucracy. For example, before the 1990s, regarding the relationship between government and other actors, almost every household in urban China has family members associated with work units. In other words, the “entire society is bureaucratized” (Chan 2016; Walder 2015). For government problem-solving approaches, it was reported that while political power was highly centralized, the cadre personnel management was informal (Chan 2016). However, even in the central planning era, it is well recorded in the literature that public policy in China is a product of bureaucratic bargaining rather than imposition (Lieberthal and Oksenberg 1988, p.  4). Compared to bureaucrats in Mao-era China, present-day bureaucrats are even more influential and have incentives to pursue their goals strategically in the process of policy making (Huang 2013, p. 11). These two stylized facts are associated with the principal-agent and collective action problem within the bureaucracy. First, upper-level governments may have no capacity to impose policy targets in detail to lower-level governments (e.g., Yasuda 2015 discusses this issue in the context of the food safety regulation implementation in China). Upper- and lower-level governments usually have asymmetric information that conflicts with the incentive structure. Compared to upper-level governments, lower-level governments are likely to have better access to local information and knowledge. The lower government may also have a different agenda for policy implementation, compared to those of upper-level governments. The principal-agent problem between upper-level governments (i.e., principals) and lower-level governments (i.e., agents) can be very important for policy implementation. Second, at each level of government, policy coordination among government departments is not very effective in implementing policies. The Chinese political system is labeled as “fragmented authoritarianism”, as decision-making was fragmented and disjointed across various government departments (Lieberthal and Oksenberg 1988; Lieberthal 1992). Each government department has a strong incentive to maximize its own interests and marshal information accordingly (i.e., departmental interests – see Qian 2017a). Similar to bureaucrats in developed countries, bureaucrats in China are likely to maximize the resources they can control (e.g., budget, physical and human resources). In other words, the collective action problem among different government departments is very relevant for the Chinese bureaucracy.

How does policy experimentation work in China? How to make sure bureaucrats, especially local officials, make an effort to implement policy objectives set by politicians/upper-level governments should be addressed. Since the 1980s, some local governments have been given the discretion to coordinate and implement pilot reforms for local economic and social development (Xu 2011; Qian and Mok 2016). It turns out to be a regularly used policy instrument in China. Policy experimentation in China is believed to differ from that in other countries, as China may be more likely to try alternative institutional arrangements (Heilmann 2008b). Policy experimentation can be used to try and test alternative institutional arrangements that take the local context into account (Heilman 2008b; Li and Chan 2009). In other words, local information and knowledge can be better applied in the policy initiatives in the local experiment. The central government encourages local officials to support policy or institutional innovations (Heilmann 2008a). After enough experiences from local experiments have been accumulated, 41

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the central government then may select, revise, and spread the policy practices and lessons learned from those experiments (Heilmann 2008a; Ang 2016). For policy experimentation, it is essential to grant discretion to local authorities and regularly review policy outcomes (Sabel and Zetlin 2012). In China, local governments are granted high autonomy in economic and social issues, and therefore they are responsible for the performance. Since the mid-1990s, a performance evaluation system has been applied to make the incentives of local officials align with those of the upper-level governments (Gao 2009). Under this performance evaluation system, appointment, promotion, and demotion of local bureaucrats are decided according to whether they have fulfilled the upper-level government’s requirements for various quantifiable policy targets (Li and Zhou 2005; Shih et al. 2012). In Ang (2016), performance indexes to evaluate local officials in 2009 are listed. These indexes include economic development, social development, sustainable development, livelihood, social harmony, and party and cadre discipline. Also, it is well observed that economic growth and fiscal revenue growth are among the most important indexes for evaluating officials (Li and Zhou 2005; Shih et al. 2012). This system could be further developed by a package of performance indexes that could be reallocated to different government departments at the same level of government. One recent study (Yang and Yuan 2017) cites how an individual performance index is assigned to a department in a county-level government in 2014. For example, a tax revenue growth index was assigned to a local tax bureau and financial bureau. Investment growth was assigned to a countylevel development and reform bureau. In Ang (2016), it was shown that in a county-level government in Jiangxi in 2013, investment targets were disaggregated and assigned to many different bureaus. For example, the health bureau had to fulfill an investment target of RMB 50 million, while the technology bureau was assigned a target RMB 10 million for investment. Bureaus submit a deposit every year to the county treasurer. Bureaus which fail to meet the investment targets will be penalized and lose their deposit. Bureaus which meet the targets will be awarded some bonuses and get their deposit back. It is observed that the performance evaluation system highlights policy compliance with the results set by the upper-level governments (Gao 2009). Also, given that local officials’ careers are determined by their evaluation by the upper-level government, local competition based on selected policy targets can be motivated under this system (Xu 2011). For example, when the leader of a locality has a better performance in economic growth rate or attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) than others have, he or she is more likely to be promoted (Xu 2011; Ang 2016). This local competition is built upon the tasks set by the upper-level government. However, the cost-effectiveness of an implemented policy is not considered in the evaluation system as long as the policy targets have been met (Gao 2009; Zhou 2016). Another important requirement in policy experimentation is that players at the local level must be able to respond and adjust to the policy outcomes (Sabel and Zetlin 2012). In China, another institutional arrangement to coordinate various local government departments is to initiate “leading small group”, which can be interpreted as an institution addressing the coordination issues. The “leading small group” is a mechanism used since the 1950s and usually is taskoriented (Gore 2017). It could be established for a recurrent task or for a one-off task. Leading small groups can be established at all levels of government. A leading small group usually consists of representatives from various ministries/bureaus. A coordinator is granted the authority to set the policy agenda. For example, Yang and Yuan (2017) report that at the county level, “leading small group” can be a routine solution for short-term tasks. For example, a working group for the reconstruction of the old districts was established and led by a standing member of the county party 42

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committee. Members of the group are from lower-level governments (i.e., township level). After the project of redevelopment of the old districts closed, the working group dissolved (Yang and Yuan 2017). In the following section, we use the case of urban-rural integration to illustrate policy instruments, including policy experiment. We will see also how the performance evaluation system and leading small group are implemented in the policy experiment.

Case: pilot reform of Urban-rural integration in Chongqing7 One of the most important issues in economic and social policy reforms in China is the disparity between the rural and urban sectors. The income ratio between urban and rural residents increased from 2.1 in 1985 to 3.03 in 2013. More importantly, this disparity is discernible not only in economic terms, but also in the discrepancy of people’s accessibility to public services. For rural residents, both the quantity and quality of public service provision significantly lag behind that provided to their urban counterparts. In 2013, the infant mortality rate in rural areas was 11.3 per 1,000 compared to 5.2 per 1,000 in urban areas (National Health and Family Planning Commission 2014). Urbanization could be a solution for this disparity of accessing services. However, there are institutional constraints for farmers when they decide to move to urban areas. First, job seekers in urban areas are required to possess urban hukou for employment in the formal sector. In other words, a rural hukou is a constraint on rural residents’ employability in the cities. Second, land mobility is constrained by administrative requirements and institutional settings. The amount of arable land is strictly controlled, and a national quota (i.e., 1.8 billion mu of arable land) is set by the central government. Also, collectively owned rural land cannot be transferred for nonagricultural use without permission of the government, and neither rural collective construction land nor homesteads can be exchanged in the market (Yang 2012). Third, there are also constraints on credit access for rural residents. While urban residents can use their apartments as collateral to apply for bank loans, rural residents cannot use either the rural farmland use right or the homestead use right, which is defined as a collectively owned right. All these institutions, including hukou and institutional arrangements for land ownership, have nationwide implications. In 2007, China launched a pilot social policy reform to equalize access to public services between urban and rural residents (“urban-rural integration”). Chongqing, one of the most important and fastest-growing regions in western China, was selected as one of two national pilots for urban-rural integration.8 As of 2007, the share of urban residents in the total population in Chongqing increased to about 48.3 percent. Economic and social developments in rural Chongqing significantly lag behind that of the urban areas. In Chongqing, the ratio of urban per capita income to rural per capita income in 2007 was more than 3.9. Also, in Chongqing, there were 14 national-level poverty-stricken counties and 22 percent of the villages were defined as poverty-stricken villages. Via policy experimentation, Chongqing was granted the authority to initiate policies to have institutional reforms since 2007. First, urban hukous were granted to rural workers and their families to encourage them to migrate to urban areas. Rural residents could be granted urban hukou after giving up their use right of farmland and homesteads in their own villages.9 After being granted urban hukou, they could access public services such as employment, education, health care, housing, and social security in urban Chongqing (Huang 2011, 2012). Second, a land exchange system that issues “land development certificates” (dipiao) was established in 2008. This certificate is issued to rural residents in Chongqing after their rural collective construction land or homestead is converted to arable land. The certificate can be sold 43

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at the land exchange, where developers bid for farmland of the size as defined by the “land development certificate” for commercial and residential development. Since these plots of land are collectively owned, 15 percent of the net revenue of land transfer is allocated to the rural collective unit and 85 percent of the net revenue is given to the farmers.10 Farmers who voluntarily agree to give up the use right of their farmland and homesteads to obtain the Chongqing urban hukou are eligible to trade via the land exchange. In this case, the land development certificate for the homestead will be owned by the local government. A portion of the land transfer revenue for the individual farmer’s contracted homestead will be transferred to their social security account as the individual’s contribution to the pension scheme (i.e., basic urban pension plan or basic rural pension plan).11 These farmers are then entitled to claim pension after they reach retirement age. The rest of the land transfer revenue will be counted as revenue for the government-managed fund.12 Third, since 2010, rural households in Chongqing have been able to apply for bank loans after collateralizing their use right for farmland, homestead, and forest land.13 In Chongqing, there is more than 30 million mu of farmland, 60 million mu of forest, as well as 30 million mu of homestead, suggesting that many rural residents can exercise their use right of these properties as collateral. Credit in this case will be more likely to be allocated to more productive rural residents. For homesteads, the market value of the land development certificate is taken into account in a bank’s evaluation.14 The deregulation of hukou has achieved its goal of increasing the share of urban hukou holders to above 50 percent in 2016.15 In addition, over 172,900 mu of land have been transacted under the “land development certificate” system between 2008 and 2015.16 With more land available, the overall land transfer revenue has increased dramatically, reaching more than RMB 166 billion in 2014. Revenue for government-managed funds, the majority of which come from land transfer revenues, increased from RMB 21 billion in 2006 to RMB 184 billion in 2014, with an annual growth rate of 31 percent. The fiscal revenue during the same time period has increased by 25 percent annually, reaching RMB 192 billion in 2014. More public services, especially in the urban areas, have been provided. For example, by mid-2014, over 153,000 households had moved into public housing in the city district of Chongqing; 40 percent of these households were households of rural migrant workers.17 After the reform, Chongqing government invested heavily in public service provision and infrastructure building to achieve greater factor mobility between rural and urban areas. For example, to facilitate the mobility of labor, public housing with monthly rents of RMB 500–600 (or 60 percent of the market price) were built for both urban residents and rural migrant workers.18 In order to improve logistics and transportation capacity, the government has embarked on programs to upgrade transportation infrastructure. The mechanism of leading small group is important in the Chongqing pilot. A leading small group for urban and rural integration was established in 2007, with the mayor of Chongqing’s municipal government Huang Qifan appointed as the coordinator.19 All major local bureaus, including the municipal bureau of finance, the municipal bureau of labor and social security, and the municipal bureau of agriculture, were group members. The establishment of the leading small group aimed to make coordination among different local bureaus more effective. A performance evaluation system also works in the Chongqing pilot. Many major policy targets of the Chongqing pilot have been quantified and are therefore relatively easy to evaluate. For example, according to a 2014 Chongqing government action plan for urban-rural integration, the urbanization rate should reach 62 percent by 2017, and over 250,000 migrant workers and their family should be granted urban hukou annually between 2014 and 2017.20 Policy targets are explicitly assigned to local bureaus that are responsible for achieving these 44

Experimentalism as a policy style Table 4.1  Policy instruments in the Chongqing pilot Policy instruments

Policy targets

Initiatives

Policy experiments

Try variations of institutional arrangements

Leading small group

Coordination among different departments

Performance evaluation system

Coordination between upperand lower-level governments

1: Reforming hukou system 2: Land institution reform 3: Reforming rural credit system All major local bureaus were involved in the group coordinated by the mayor In published policy guidelines, policy targets were assigned to local bureaus responsible for achieving these policy targets

Source: Compiled by the author

policy targets in government guidelines. In particular, these policy targets have been included as indexes for local officials’ performance evaluations. For example, 14 policy targets were set for the urban-rural integration pilot in a government guideline released in 2009.21 Chongqing’s municipal bureau of land and resources, municipal bureau of agriculture, municipal bureau of forestry, municipal bureau of finance, and municipal bureau of local taxation are the local bureaus responsible for the land exchange reform. The mayor of Chongqing, Huang Qifan, was nominated as the official responsible for the land exchange reform. The 2009 guideline also declares that the performance evaluation system for local officials will include policy targets under the urban-rural integration.

Issues in policy experiments: implications from the Chongqing case In many local experiments, while local officials have to fulfill multiple tasks set by the upperlevel government, they are more likely to allocate resources for and make efforts on those tasks that are more rewarding. Recent studies show that local officials in China are more likely to be promoted if they have achieved better economic performance, such as higher gross domestic product (GDP) or fiscal revenue growth (Li and Zhou 2005; Shih et al. 2012). In this context, officials in the local pilots have incentives to allocate fiscal resources in infrastructure rather than in public service provision to residents (Wu et al. 2013). For example, between 2010 and 2013, the annual growth rate of the Chongqing government’s debt was higher than 10 percent. By June 2013, only about 3 percent of local government debt went into education, health, science, and cultural services. Six percent of local government debt was used to finance public housing. The majority of local government debt in Chongqing was raised for infrastructure building (e.g., 32 percent for urban infrastructure, and 18 percent for transportation infrastructure). This suggests that local officials are still more likely to spend on infrastructure than on public services (Qian 2017b; Hu and Qian 2017). The other issue is that there are significant information constraints for policy enforcement. In many cases, information is still in short supply for social policy making when the distribution of information is decentralized at the household level. For example, the information constraint is found in the public housing project’s apartment allocation in Chongqing pilot, where some tenants arbitrated to others who were not qualified for renting public housing.22 In addition, 45

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there are information constraints to match people’s demand and supply of public housing. The vacancy rate for public housing in some districts is as high as 40 percent.23 To sum up, the case of Chongqing pilot illustrates that policy styles in China could be proactive and anticipate the demand for social policy provision of residents. Also, local government has been given high discretion to implement institutional reforms. However, the incentive structure of local officials defined by the performance evaluation system may also have unintended consequences. For example, local officials may direct most of their efforts and resources to performance indexes which are more measurable and more rewarding and at the expense of other performance indexes. Also, even with decentralized policy making, information is still a constraint for the policy enforcement.

Discussion and conclusions Policy styles could be “standard operating procedures” of policy making and implementation (Richardson et al. 1982). Policy styles to solve problems can be either proactive or reactive. For the relation between government and society, policy styles can be either consensus building or top-down based. As argued in Howlett and Tosun (2018), policy styles can be also configured by institutions. China has achieved significantly in economic and social development with the huge regional variation of social and economic conditions as well as top-down political institutions. It is very intriguing, therefore, to study China’s policy styles in this context. To address the collective action and principal-agent problem within the bureaucracy, experimentalism as policy style has been used to promote institutional reforms to meet the local conditions in China. Consistent with some recent studies, the policy outcomes in this context are likely to be determined by the joint forces of upper-level government (i.e., “top-down”) and local conditions (i.e., “bottomup”) (Huang and Kim 2020). In this chapter, we use the urban-rural integration pilot in Chongqing as a case. This case was selected because the urban-rural disparity is one of the most important issues for the Chinese economy and society. Also, institutional issues in the Chongqing pilot such as hukou or land institutions are also very common in other regions in China. We find out that, in the urbanrural integration pilot, policy experimentation helps in creating proactive policies, particularly in the economic policy areas with measurable policy outcomes. However, for the social policy reforms, the information constraints for policymakers may not be able to be fully addressed in the local pilot. When the policy outcomes cannot be measured precisely, it is difficult to address the principal-agent problem given the informational constraint. Also, we show that the collective action problem could also be very serious in social policy areas when social policies are interdependent and the requirement for the information capacity of the policymakers is high. Our chapter is consistent with Perry and Heilmann (2011) in that policy styles in China may be traced to the early 20th century when the CPC adopted “mass line” and policy pilots. However, it could also be traced to an even earlier tradition of China’s in how the literati (or the bureaucrats) identify themselves as “guardians” to respond to ordinary people’s demand (Gore 2017). Also, policy styles are highly associated with how the CPC is organized and operated. These questions will be left for the future research.

Notes 1 This chapter is adapted and updated based on Qian (2018). 2 Available from http://hdr.undp.org/en/data [Accessed 19 Nov 2017]. 46

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3 UNDP, 2010. UNDP report on China’s progress on the Millennium Development Goal. 4 Ibid. 5 UNDP, 2015. UNDP report on China’s progress on the Millennium Development Goal. 6 For the recent discourse, see www.nfcmag.com/article/7134.html [Accessed on November 15, 2017]. Also see a major restructuring plan initiated by the Communist Party of China right after the first session of the 13th National People’s Congress in March  2018, downloadable from www.gov.cn/ zhengce/2018-03/21/content_5276191.htm#1 [Accessed on April 7, 2018]. 7 This section has drawn heavily from Qian (2017b). 8 Chengdu is another national pilot. 9 There is a three-year transition period for people formally giving up their user right, see http://theory. people.com.cn/GB/82288/217904/217905/15016322.html [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 10 Available from www.sic.gov.cn/News/461/6387.htm [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 11 Available from http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/82288/217904/217905/15016322.html, [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 12 Ibid. 13 Available from http://finance.ifeng.com/news/20101202/2987698.shtml [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 14 Available from http://m.companies.caixin.com/m/2011-03-07/100233456.html [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 15 Available from http://news.xinhuanet.com/city/2016-05/30/c_129027193.htm [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 16 Available from www.ccle.cn/xwzx/xwdt/tdxw/html-1747/10724.html [Accessed 11 July 2017]. 17 Available from http://cq.cqnews.net/html/2014-08/28/content_31821126.htm [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 18 Available from http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1026/13898715.html [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 19 Available from http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2008-04/30/content_48391734.htm [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 20 Available from www.gov.cn/xinwen/2014-08/16/content_2735337.htm [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 21 Available from www.cceg.cn/news_detail/newsId=c2514c17-24bc-40b3-ab96-129f87f6e74b.html [Accessed 15 November 2017]. 22 Chongqing Qingnian Bao (Chongqing Youth News) [Accessed 30 June 2014]. 23 Ibid.

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5 From the ‘rationalist consensus’ to ‘exclusive incrementalism’ The ‘new’ German policy style Reimut Zohlnhöfer and Jale Tosun

Introduction In the last two decades, the German government has been heralded as a role model for the governing of challenges such as the transition to renewable energy (Steinbacher 2019), the economic and financial crisis in Europe (Tosun et al. 2014; Zohlnhöfer 2011), and the migration crisis between autumn 2015 and summer 2016 (Reiners and Tekin 2020). Its efficient handling of different types of crises has granted the German government a reputation as the facilitator of swift and committed policy action, as it demonstrated again recently with the negotiation of a package to address the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the European Union. Despite this image of German policymaking, in this chapter, we contend that the overarching German policy style can more accurately be described as ‘exclusive incrementalism’. The main characteristic of this particular policy style is that German policymakers adopt only incremental changes to existing policies unless there is drastic demand for or need of large-scale changes. The reforms are reactions to exogenous events or public opinion rather than attempts to anticipate societal problems, and the policymaking is limited to partisan actors. Our characterisation stands in marked contrast to the chapter on the German policy style in the original volume on policy styles (Richardson 1982). Dyson (1982) described the German policy style as a ‘rationalist consensus’: anticipatory and inclusive of different societal interests. Since the publication of the original volume in 1982, the country’s political system has undergone fundamental changes that include, most prominently, the reunification in 1990 and changes to the party landscape in response to this and other events. The ‘new’ German policy style results from both short-term and long-term factors. The latter include the country’s federal polity and the need to form multi-party coalition governments, which has become increasingly difficult with the emergence of new political parties. The short-term factors include the competition between the individual parties and varying party constellations in government and parliament which have an impact on the feasible set of policy options (Zohlnhöfer and Tosun 2018). With this chapter, we seek to illustrate that policy styles are subject to changes and therefore can be understood as dynamic concepts rather than static – a criticism voiced repeatedly in the literature (e.g. Huitema and van Snellenberg 1999). We contend that policy styles are a function 50

From consensus to incrementalism

of the set of different actors and their (competing) interests in a given institutional context (Scharpf 1997). Consequently, policy styles can change if the institutional context and/or the actors and their respective interests change. If both parameters change, we can observe a drastic shift such as the one from ‘rationalist consensus’ to ‘exclusive incrementalism’. The institution that features prominently in this analysis is federalism and the actors of primary interest are political parties, which were similarly regarded as key actors in the chapter published in 1982. In the remainder of this chapter, we give an overview of the main developments in Germany’s policymaking context since the 1980s. Then we characterise German policymaking according to the two dimensions of the policy styles concept as put forth by Richardson et al. (1982). Finally, we summarise our main insights and conclude.

The context of policy styles: dynamic and stable elements To make sense of the shift in the dominant German policy style, we first have to give an overview of those institutional arrangements that have changed in the last forty years and of those that have remained stable. As we will show in this section, Germany has undergone significant changes, which have increased the complexity of the institutional arrangements.

Stable institutional arrangements Federalist polities are characterised by interdependent and overlapping jurisdictions associated with complex intergovernmental relations. The goal of such arrangements is to ensure power-sharing (shared rule) while protecting the sovereignty of regional governments from the authority of the national government (self-rule) (Elazar 1991; Hooghe et al. 2016). Research has shown that federalism provides an opportunity structure for policy experimentation which can result in subnational variations in policy responses (Schmidt 2016). It can also lead to policy-learning and to both horizontal diffusion (where other regional entities adopt it) and vertical diffusion (where the national government adopts it) of policy innovations (Shipan and Volden 2008). Germany represents a case of administrative federalism where the federal government holds the legislative competence in most policy areas, but the regional governments execute and administer national policies (Kaiser and Vogel 2019). In the German system, the Länder (more precisely the Länder governments) are formally involved in policymaking at the federal level through the Bundesrat (the second chamber of German parliament) (Hooghe et al. 2016). The partisan composition of Länder governments – and thus also the Bundesrat – can differ substantially from the partisan make-up of the federal government and the majority of the Bundestag (the federal parliament, or lower chamber). This situation has often impeded far-reaching policy changes (Lehmbruch 2000; Scharpf 2009). Another important pillar of the German constitution’s power-sharing system is the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). The FCC’s rather extensive competences have substantial impacts on German policymaking (Brouard and Hönnige 2017). This applies to those instances in which the FCC declares a law to be unconstitutional. For example, in July 2020, the FCC ruled that the police’s and intelligence agency’s access to personal data from phone and internet users was unconstitutional and requested policymakers to address this matter. In addition, the constitutionality of a bill often becomes an issue during the drafting phase and its parliamentary deliberation, and the opposition has more often than not been willing to take a case to the FCC in the hope of transforming a defeat in parliament into a victory before the FCC (Abromeit 1995). 51

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Dynamic institutional arrangements While the federal polity of Germany and its influential top court are institutional elements that have remained unchanged over the last four decades, the most important change refers to German reunification. The two formerly independent German states were united on October 3, 1990, with the deliberate choice of transferring all political institutions from West to East Germany (Lehmbruch 1991; Seibel 2011). As Zohlnhöfer and Tosun (2018) explain, reunification nonetheless entailed drastic institutional changes. The number of states grew from eleven (including West Berlin) to sixteen. The East German states are comparatively small, less wealthy, and somewhat overrepresented in the Bundesrat. The increase in the number of Länder has contributed to the increasing complexity of the legislative process within the Bundesrat as well as indirectly to that in the Bundestag, which organises its legislative activities in a manner so as to limit the likelihood of experiencing a veto. Manow and Burkhart (2007), for example, show that under divided government – that is, with differing majorities in the Bundestag and the Bundesrat – the members of Bundestag practice self-restraint and do not propose policies that might fail to clear the Bundesrat. Reunification also had a remarkable impact on the German party system (Hornsteiner and Saalfeld 2014). West Germany was well known for its ‘two-and-a-half ’ party system of the 1960s and 1970s. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), together with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) constituted the two large parties and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) the ‘half ’ party represented in parliament. In the 1980s, however, party system fragmentation began with the appearance of the Greens, who entered parliament in 1983. Then, after reunification, the successor to the Socialist Unity Party of (East) Germany (SED) – the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) – also entered the Bundestag, subsequently morphing, after a party merger, into ‘The Left’. In the meantime, the Pirate Party appeared and then swiftly disappeared after having obtained representation in some regional parliaments (Koschmieder and Niedermayer 2015), before finally, in 2017, the right-populist party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD) also cleared the 5  percent threshold of representation to enter parliament (Berbuir et al. 2015). Nonetheless, the party system in the eastern German states does not closely resemble its western counterpart. While The Left has been very strong in the East, winning up to 30 percent of the votes in some Länder elections, it was not represented in any western German regional parliament until 2007 and continues to be only weakly represented there. Similarly, the AfD is substantially weaker in West Germany than in the East, where it now competes with The Left for votes (Olsen 2018). Due to the electoral success of the AfD in the East, the basis for forming governing coalitions has changed completely, and in some states the ‘grand coalition’ of the CDU and the SPD even lacks the necessary number of seats to form a government. As a result, coalitions consisting of three parties have become common in the East German states. By contrast, the FDP and the Greens are significantly stronger in the West than in the East, where they are often not represented in the regional parliaments at all. The changes in the party system have made coalition formation increasingly difficult, not only at the level of the states but also at the federal level. More often than not, neither the bloc of bourgeois parties (CDU/CSU and FDP) nor the centre-left (SPD and Greens) have been able to secure a majority of seats in the Bundestag. This made it necessary to form cross-bloc coalitions like the grand coalition of the CDU/CSU and the SPD (formed in 2005, 2013, and 2017/2018, respectively). These new coalition constellations constrain the policymakers’ room for manoeuvre in at least two ways (Baumann et al. 2017; Egle and Zohlnhöfer 2010). First, cross-bloc coalitions 52

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make compromises more difficult due to the more substantial programmatic differences of the coalition partners. Second, while parties in programmatically more coherent coalitions have a long-term interest in the success of the coalition and usually campaign for its re-election, the partners of cross-bloc coalitions tend to regard their cooperation as limited to the current parliamentary term. Therefore, while in government, governing parties seek to orient policymaking towards themselves in electoral terms, even at the expense of the coalition partner. Thus, the limited time horizon and electoral competition play a more important role in these kinds of coalitions. The importance of electoral competition for policymaking in Germany is further triggered by additional factors. Due to the increased number of Länder after reunification, the number of state elections during one legislative period of the Bundestag has likewise increased. At the same time, these elections are highly important for policymaking at the federal level because they affect the composition of the Bundesrat (Burkhart 2008). Thus, a change of government in one of the German Länder can lead to changing majorities in the second chamber of parliament. Federal governments are therefore highly alert to how their policies affect their parties’ electoral fortunes in the Länder, particularly in those states with upcoming elections. Since Länder elections are spread over the entire federal legislative term, there are hardly any periods in which no important elections are looming. Under these conditions of permanent electioneering, policymakers at both the federal and the state levels have a hard time devising and adopting anticipatory policies tailored to the long term. Despite a federal government’s alertness to the importance of state elections, high volatility and frequent state elections have resulted in there rarely being the same partisan majorities in the two chambers of parliament since 1990. Since all established parties had faced this type of divided government at one point or another and thus been forced to make (sometimes serious) concessions to the opposition, the role of the Bundesrat in policymaking was somewhat reduced by a reform of German federalism in 2006 (Stecker 2016; Zohlnhöfer 2009). Thereafter, the share of legislative bills requiring the second chamber’s approval dropped from around 55 to below 40 percent of all bills adopted by the Bundestag. As this reduction also applies to key decisions (Reus and Zohlnhöfer 2015), the reform seems to have somewhat increased the federal government’s leeway – although 40 percent of all bills still need the approval of a body in which the government rarely holds a majority.

Towards a style of ‘exclusive incrementalism’ In this section, we review the policy styles of the various German governments as they have developed over time. We begin the analysis where the study carried out by Dyson (1982) ended – that is, in the year 1982 – and then proceed chronologically and review in a last step the policy style of the current coalition government.

The Christian–Liberal coalition government under Helmut Kohl (1982–1998) In the 1970s, when the first government led by the SPD held power, policymaking in Germany was characterised by an anticipatory policy style, as attested by Dyson (1982). However, since the 1980s, German governments have shifted towards an increasingly reactive policy style. When the CDU/CSU–FDP coalition of Chancellor Kohl came into power in 1982, it had to concentrate on budget consolidation and even implemented a number of welfare cuts (for the following, see Zohlnhöfer 2001). This reform agenda was deemed necessary in view of high 53

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unemployment and high public debt, which had resulted from the second oil crisis. Despite the far-reaching welfare cuts, the implementation of the reform agenda entailed little electoral risk to the incumbent government as it could shift the blame to the predecessor government and claim that the latter was responsible for the economic hardship and the state of public finances. However, once the crisis had abated, the government did not pursue its reform path further and even reversed some of its policies, for example, by increasing the levels of some welfare benefits. Moreover, the government was very slow to make decisions related to the further development of the reform agenda, especially concerning economic liberalisation. A commission to study the possibility of deregulating the Germany economy was appointed only after five years. Once installed, it took the commission a further three years to present its assessment and to inform policymaking. Evidently, the policy style at the time of reunification was a different one, as it demonstrated strong political leadership (for the following see Lehmbruch 1991; Zohlnhöfer 2001). Anticipatory policymaking had to take a backseat once again, though this is not particularly surprising given that the task of uniting two antithetical political, social, and economic systems was unprecedented. Consequently, the government responded to problems as they arose as well as to public opinion while mostly ignoring the long-term consequences of the unification path regarding government finances, employment, and the economy. The ‘long shadow of the beautiful illusion’ (Zohlnhöfer 2000) that the economic transition in East Germany would be fast and smooth loomed large and clouded most of the 1990s. Therefore, the reactive and hesitant policymaking pattern observed during the 1980s resurfaced after unification. Modest reforms prevailed until, in 1996, the number of unemployed rose to above 4 million. The government adopted a number of quite comprehensive measures aimed at improving the labour market situation, which had become so critical that it was perceived as a genuine electoral risk. While the government succeeded in adopting reforms such as the relaxation of dismissal protection, cuts to sick pay, a reduction of the pension level, and increases in co-payments in healthcare, an attempt to undertake a major tax reform failed to pass the Bundesrat, which was then controlled by the opposition.

The SPD–Green coalition government under Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005) The policymaking of the SPD–Green coalition government under Gerhard Schröder exhibited patterns similar to its predecessor. In its first months, the government revoked most of the farreaching, market-liberal reforms pushed through during the last years of the Kohl government, which had been quite unpopular. The new government failed to adopt significant legislation of its own, however, mostly because it expected that the problem of unemployment would decrease significantly due to positive economic development and demographic changes. Only when it became evident that the government would fail to attain its self-declared goal regarding unemployment did it began to take action that was more decisive. This resulted in a comprehensive set of labour market reforms (‘the Hartz reforms’), which were adopted in 2002 and 2003. The most far-reaching as well as controversial part of the policy package was a reform that included substantial cuts for many long-term unemployed persons, as well as stricter work requirements (‘Hartz IV’). At first glance, Hartz IV appears to be a response to the high and persistent rates of unemployment in Germany. Indeed, rising unemployment had been an issue for most of the period since the 1970s. This was particularly true after unification, when employment collapsed in

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East Germany. Nonetheless, when the government presented its plans for the reforms in 2002 and 2003, it had already spent a full parliamentary term in office without having initiated any substantial labour market reforms. What forced the government to finally take action was the deceleration in economic growth in 2001, making it evident that the government would be unable to achieve its most important election promise, namely to lower unemployment to below 3.5 million. This failure posed a real threat to the government’s re-election ambitions and incited substantial reform efforts. As illustrated in detail by Zohlnhöfer (2016) and Zohlnhöfer and Tosun (2018), the strategy by which the government initiated the reform and the mode of government are very intriguing. Chancellor Schröder used a minor scandal about mistaken placement statistics by the Federal Labour Office to appoint an expert commission under the chairmanship of Volkswagen manager Peter Hartz. By appointing the commission, the government could circumvent the traditional structures of Germany’s sectoral corporatism, as only three of the fifteen commission members represented the social partners, while most of them came from large businesses or business consultancies. Although the so-called Hartz Commission was officially asked to draft proposals for a reorganisation of the Federal Labour Office only, it went much further. Among the measures proposed were those that would later resurface in the Hartz IV legislation. Interestingly, these provisions had been set out by another small expert group working far away from the public spotlight and which had been put together by an official of the Ministry of Labour. Of particular note, for our purposes, is the fact that this expert group did not mirror German sectoral corporatism either (Fleckenstein 2008). This is an interesting observation as it shows that this major reform was designed with little involvement of the social partners. The mode of government, especially the exclusion of the labour unions, and the content of the reform package resulted in controversy between government and opposition as well as within the SPD itself and between the SPD and the trade unions.

The coalition governments led by Angela Merkel (2005–2021) The various governments led by Chancellor Angela Merkel also fit the aforementioned pattern (Zohlnhöfer and Saalfeld 2015, 2019). Although they campaigned for major policy reforms while part of the opposition, when elected into government Merkel and the CDU/CSU mostly refrained from adopting structural reforms. The positive economic developments made these policies seem redundant, at least after 2009, and even facilitated the expansion of the welfare state, including more generous benefits for parents, higher old-age pensions, and reductions to co-payments in healthcare. Furthermore, the government extended the coverage of day care facilities to children below the age of 3. All of these changes were quite popular among voters. Only the changes in family policy, however, can be regarded as a structural reform in the narrow sense. Moreover, the Merkel years were characterised by an unusual number of significant crises. While the first Merkel government had to deal with the financial crisis, its successor had to handle the Euro crisis. Furthermore, the Merkel III government was preoccupied with the migration crisis, while the current coalition (since 2018) has had to find answers to the many challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. Thus, the Merkel government has often had to respond in an ad hoc manner to huge and mostly unprecedented problems for which no tested solutions existed. Accordingly, the necessity to respond swiftly and often dramatically meant that anticipation of long-term effects rarely (if ever) figured prominently in the policymaking processes. Moreover, since the responses to crises have occupied the complete agenda for most of the

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Merkel years, there has been hardly any agenda space left for structural  – and more futureoriented – reforms that the government might have wanted to adopt. Therefore, anticipatory policymaking hardly ever occurred during Merkel’s time in office.

Explaining the changes in policy style In Germany, many policy changes require the approval of the Bundesrat, in which the government of the day rarely controls a majority. Because of the comparatively strong position of the Bundesrat, this situation has had significant consequences for policymaking and has often impeded comprehensive, let alone anticipatory, policies. In most cases, the programmatic differences between the veto players widened when the Bundesrat majority was controlled by the opposition. Moreover, strategic considerations also started to play a role in these situations. As governments usually considered comprehensive reforms only when the problems in question seemed to jeopardise their chances of re-election, opposition parties were tempted more than once to block a reform in the Bundesrat – even reforms they might have accepted in principle – in order to demonstrate to voters that the government was unable to solve the most pressing of challenges (a prime example is the failed tax reform in the last years of the Kohl administration; see Zohlnhöfer 2001). Although the complete obstruction of a reform by an oppositional Bundesrat majority has been the exception (Schmedes 2019), divided government had important consequences for all administrations that were confronted with it. This is because the opposition has often demanded – and won – concessions that have frequently reduced the scope of reforms substantially (Zohlnhöfer 2001). The governments led by Chancellor Merkel were less constrained by the Bundesrat, which to some extent was the result of a reform of German federalism (Reus and Zohlnhöfer 2015). Nonetheless, the Bundesrat still played a certain constraining role during the second Merkel government (2009–2013), which was made up of a CDU/CSU–FDP coalition, and prevented the passing of tax reforms (Rixen 2014). However, with the other three Merkel administrations (2005–2009, 2013–2017, since 2018) the reason why the government failed to adopt an anticipatory policy style must be seen in light of a different factor. These coalitions consisted of the CDU/CSU and the SPD. The partners in these ‘grand coalitions’ are programmatically quite distant in many issue areas, which makes agreement on substantial reforms difficult. Moreover, and partially as a consequence of the ideological incompatibility, none of the parties is interested in keeping up the coalition longer than necessary. Evidently, such a constellation results in conflicts and legislative projects that drag on for quite some time. Ruling by grand coalitions therefore does not only make major policy reforms more unlikely, it can even result in individual policy measures being contested between the different ministries, preventing anticipatory policymaking and in some cases any policymaking at all. To give an example, both the Ministry of the Environment (led by the SPD) and the Ministry of Agriculture (led by the CDU/CSU) are responsible for regulating the use of glyphosate. This herbicide has attracted considerable criticism not only in Germany but also in the European Union and other jurisdictions such as the United States, where several lawsuits were filed against it related to its alleged adverse effects on human health. After a lengthy and conflictive process, the European Union renewed the authorisation of glyphosate for a period of five years in 2017 (Tosun et al. 2019). Although Germany had cast the decisive vote in the relevant decision-making body, that voting behaviour had been highly controversial in the coalition: the Ministry of Agriculture had supported the renewal of the authorisation, while the Ministry of 56

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the Environment had been strictly against it. The Ministry of Agriculture’s decision to support the authorisation against the will of the Ministry of the Environment was a breach of the common rules of procedure for the federal ministries, and it makes a future compromise regarding this issue particularly difficult. The two ministries have presented very different policy proposals for how to regulate glyphosate after 2022, when the current authorisation ends. In brief, the Ministry of Agriculture wants to reduce the use of glyphosate, whereas the Ministry of the Environment wants glyphosate to be phased out (Tosun et al. 2019). A compromise does not seem to be forthcoming, which may lead to the German government abstaining from regulating the issue as they wait for the European Union to do so in 2022. Apart from blocking the domestic policy process regarding an important issue (glyphosate is a critical component in intensive farming), the lack of a common position also has negative consequences for Germany’s influence on the EU policy process. Being the politically most influential European Union member state, Germany could propose a regulatory approach that could guide the policymaking process. In the past, Germany was successful in ‘uploading’ its regulatory arrangements in environmental policy to the European level and thereby asking the other member states to implement standards that corresponded to the German ones (Knill and Liefferink 2013). By uploading regulatory standards to the European level, member states can benefit from a strategic advantage and reduce their adaptation costs. However, member states can only shape European regulatory standards if they themselves have such standards in place. Concerning the case of glyphosate, the German government is not in such a position and the country is therefore likely to forego the benefits of the regulatory standard setter. This empirical illustration resonates with other accounts of policymaking by the German government. One of these accounts refers to the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) that have been published by the Bertelsmann Foundation on a yearly basis, since 2014. The SGI build on expert reports on governance issues and identify needs for reform in forty-one advanced democracies. It has a category dedicated to ‘strategic capacity’, which consists of two dimensions: strategic planning and expert advice. Both dimensions can be regarded as preconditions of anticipatory policymaking. As Figure  5.1 shows, with regard to its capacity for strategic planning, Germany ranks lowest among the six countries covered in the original volume by Richardson (1982). The bar graph reports the scores for German strategic planning efforts and the integration of expert advice averaged over the years 2014–2020. Germany ranks twenty-third among the forty-one advanced democracies regarding strategic planning, according to the 2020 SGI. This rank suggests that short-term electoral considerations trump long-term considerations (Rüb et al. 2020). In this context, Zohlnhöfer and Tosun (2018) argued that the ‘portfolio principle’ which governs the interactions among sectoral ministries at the federal level can be regarded as one of the reasons for the lack of strategic planning. The individual ministries draft policy proposals within their respective subject areas, which gives them leeway to pursue their own or their party’s interests. And if two or more ministries must collaborate – as discussed previously – the process drags on and at best results in solutions reached through compromise that are likely to entail incremental policy change. While Germany ranks better with regard to policy advice according to the SGI data (see ­Figure 5.1), the role of permanent advisory bodies has decreased over time. Concerning economic policy, for example, the Council of Economic Experts presents reports to the government and the public annually. Although the government must respond to these reports, their policy impact is very small. Some governments, particularly Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s SPD-led government of the early 2000s, have employed ad hoc working groups of experts (see Howlett and Newman 2010) which have sometimes had an important impact on the development of government policy, such as in the case of the ‘Hartz reforms’. In many cases, however, 57

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Figure 5.1  Average scores for strategic planning and expert advice1

these commissions were used tactically to get reforms adopted and were not necessarily the source of a government’s long-term policy strategy (Dyson 2005). Concerning the inclusion of societal interests, the overall situation in Germany can be characterised as one in which specific societal interests become influential at certain points in time. The inclusion of these interests is selective and is limited and moderated by the individual political parties and their respective electoral successes. The increasingly exclusive or ‘selectively’ inclusive involvement of societal interests is an outcome of increased institutional pluralism, which necessitates negotiations between government and opposition as well as between the federal level and the states (Schmidt 1996). In this context, Zohlnhöfer and Tosun (2018) contend that partisan inclusiveness may have come at the expense of concertation with societal interests. The most important interest groups in economic policy, namely trade unions and business associations, have faced tremendous problems, particularly since German reunification (Schroeder and Greef 2019). At times, this has led both sides to pursue narrow organisational self-interests, which made them less attractive as partners in the policymaking process.

Broader implications of the German case In this chapter, we focussed on policy styles in Germany, but there are several conclusions we can draw from the analysis for the concept of policy styles. The most important one is that policy styles can change over time, depending on the dynamics of the institutional context and the number, type, and interests of the actors involved in the policymaking process. In the 58

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case of Germany, reunification and the dynamics of electoral competition represented a major perturbation or shock and changed the country’s polity together with its politics. In light of this modified institutional opportunity structure, a policy style emerged that is less anticipatory and less inclusive than what was in place until the end of the 1970s (see Dyson 1982). The second conclusion is that polities with many veto players (Tsebelis 2002) or veto points (Immergut 1990) are characterised by predominantly incremental policy change and a reactive policy style rather than an anticipatory one. As we argued earlier, major reforms took place in Germany but only when they could not be avoided or when public opinion was very favourable towards them. While partisan veto players are particularly important in the case of Germany, in other systems other types of veto players could be relevant. And the partisan differences become even more significant when considering the permanent need for consensus-building due to the frequency by which elections in the states take place and the role of the Bundesrat in adopting public policy. Interestingly, the second chamber of the German parliament does not only affect policymaking by actively vetoing legislative projects, but also by the perceived threat that it could do so, which has resulted in legislative self-restraint (Manow and Burkhart 2007). The third conclusion is that veto players and veto points do not only affect policymaking in terms of whether it is reactive or anticipatory, but also regarding the potential for including interest groups in the policy process. Evidently, interest groups are always to some extent involved in the policy process since they are affiliated with political parties (Gava et al. 2017). However, the greater the need is for reaching consensus among elected actors, the less room there is left for societal interests to be included in the process. If they are included, it is in a selective manner, and their influence on the eventual policy output is limited – this was illustrated by our discussion of how the ‘Hartz IV reform’ was designed and adopted. In fact, that particular reform did not only show the selective inclusion of societal groups, but also that some groups – in that case the labour unions – had to accept the stipulations of the reform package without being consulted in any meaningful way in advance.

Conclusion Germany is regarded as a country that is well positioned to address challenges by effective policymaking. While it is true that German policymakers can produce policy responses that address even complex policy issues, in this chapter we have learned that on average German policymakers tend to favour incremental policy reforms. However, this incremental pattern changes, and we can observe instances of major policy change if policy change is popular or if there is an evident need for reform due to considerable problems or electoral pressure. From this perspective, the pattern observed for Germany corresponds to what Baumgartner and Jones (1993) refer to as ‘periods of stability’ and ‘punctuations’. In terms of the mechanism underlying this pattern, the perceived electoral consequences have a significant impact on the governments’ willingness to embark on policy reforms. If policy change is popular, there is no electoral risk to act, whereas with pressing problems, such as high levels of unemployment, inaction entails an electoral risk. We interpret these features as indicators of a ‘reactive’ policy style, which is rather more exclusive than inclusive of societal groups. The German policy style is shaped by the country’s institutional arrangements and the characteristics of interparty competition as they manifest themselves in the interactions between the government and the Bundestag on the one hand and the government and the Bundesrat on the other. The interparty competition also becomes manifest within the ‘grand coalitions’, of which three had to be formed in the last fifteen years because no majority existed for ideologically compatible coalition governments. 59

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The continuation of the German policy style is the outcome of short-term, strategic considerations that, however, are reinforced by long-term, structural considerations. Party competition has become fiercer, due to the changes that have reshaped German politics over the preceding decades, and this has stressed the reactive dimension of the country’s policy style. Nevertheless, the specific institutional configurations in the political system have also strengthened the need for coordination and consensus.

Note 1 Notes: Own elaboration based on data retrieved from the following website: www.sgi-network. org/2019/Downloads (Accessed 27 July 2020).

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6 Authoritarian policy styles Post-Soviet Central Asia Aziz Burkhanov

Introduction In the progressively uncertain and complex global development, classification of political regimes depending on their freedom of political rights, civic liberties, policy-making style, institutions, political culture and so on has become even more blurry. Based on a rather more illustrative than definitive distinction between regimes, many political scientists have attempted to classify and categorize authoritarian political regimes on whether they are “façade democracy”, “competitive authoritarian” or “full authoritarian” regimes. This discussion around authoritarian regimes, their typology, peculiarities and policy-­making styles, has significantly expanded in the past three decades, perhaps due to the absence of hoped (perhaps, somewhat prematurely) rapid democratization in many parts of the world (Levitsky and Way 2002; McFaul 2002; Jones et al. 2019; Williamson and Magaloni 2020). Among the many issues in the focus of this discussion are questions about why these regimes take certain trajectories or are structured in certain ways, how successful these regimes are in terms of economic performance and what implications this brings to the political developments, regional security and stability. At the same time, less attention is paid to the policy-making under authoritarian regimes and what policy style these regimes embrace. This may be explained first by the often-observed secretive character of the decision-making process in the authoritarian environment and second by the difficulty of conducting in-depth research in these countries (Janenova 2019). This situation, in turn, often leads to a rather simplistic and one-way understanding of what is going on in the authoritarian countries in terms of policy-making – a perception that an autocratic leader fully dominates the decision-making process and makes all or most policy choices as they see fit, without any consultation or input from other actors (Williamson and Magaloni 2020). This interpretation, while surely having a certain explanatory power, leaves many important political dynamics of policy-making in the shadow, which I will discuss later. First, it is important to note that authoritarian regimes, while being centered on a leader, do not have just one actor in domestic policy-making. Instead, even tightly centralized regimes usually include a multitude of political actors, including various members of the intra-elite hierarchy, members of an autocrat’s close circles, oligarchs, the law enforcement community and so on, all of whom have may be involved in the politics of policy-making (Svolik 2012). Given the 63

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usual weakness of political institutions in an authoritarian regime, this diverse community of players may operate in the shadow, though they may indeed have various preferences and interests towards certain policies. This, in turn, leads to another important implication, which is that autocrats may not make all policy decisions themselves, especially when it comes to potentially unpopular decisions. In other cases, an autocratic leader may seek support and have to balance interests of the most powerful groups and, thus, give control over certain sectors of the economy or entire industries to some of those groups. Second, concerning the politics of policy choices, lack of public debates in a tightly controlled media environment may indeed not reflect the multitude of actors, their oftentimes conflicting interests and choices that need be made. Instead, these actors and players would rather try to get influence over the decision-making autocratic leader behind closed curtains, not in public space. Many of the intra-elite interest groups will compete with one another, create, change and leave alliances, and sometimes engage in a conflict over lucrative economic assets, media outlets and so on (Magaloni 2008). The arsenal of tools these groups may use in their struggles with competitors is indeed very broad – from controlling information supply to the autocrat to appointing loyal followers to the key government and especially law enforcement positions, organizing massive public defamation campaigns against competitors in the controlled/owned media outlets, and in certain cases, using violence, arrests and court cases against a competing group. The amount of power the autocrats possess do not necessarily imply a quick and efficient process of selecting policies. Instead, competing interest groups within the regime will try to influence policy decisions at different stages, and this may also lead to sudden changes in decision-making (Williamson and Magaloni 2020). Better understanding of these hidden dynamics would allow further knowledge of the challenges autocrats face in trying to keep the loyalty of both intra-elite groups and the general public. Third, there is an ongoing debate in the scholarship about sub-classes of the authoritarian regime types, such as “full” authoritarian regimes and the so-called hybrid regimes, which maintain key procedural characteristics of democracy, such as regular parliamentary and presidential elections, but often violate political freedoms and oppress opposition. These hybrid regimes and states may be more erratic in their policy-making than democratic regimes are but less so than fully authoritarian regimes. Levitsky and Way (2002) and Diamond (2002) also discuss the hybrid regimes and argue that despite being classified as hybrid, there may also be a significant variation within these regimes in terms of political freedoms, media control, law enforcement apparatus and so on. They state that there may be three potential trajectories for the emergence of competitive autocracies: gradual decline, a collapse of a pure autocratic regime or a gradual decline of a democracy. This hybridity lies in the fact that competitive authoritarian regimes formally possess all the democratic elements and may even formally declare or commit themselves to a democracy. In reality, however, opposition candidates are blocked from participating in the elections by formal excuses, controlled media only cover pro-regime candidates and electoral fraud is not uncommon. In a similar fashion, Diamond (2012) identifies most common sub-types of autocratic regimes, including electoral autocracy, closed autocracy, competitive autocracy, hegemonic autocracy and ambiguous regimes, and extends the Levitsky and Way (2002) discussion by comparing peculiarities of competitive authoritarianism versus hegemonic authoritarianism.

Post-Soviet Central Asia: (Un)competitive authoritarian regimes Following Richardson et al. (1982), I  will further extrapolate this discussion on the Central Asian policy makers’ response to issues on the policy agenda and whether their actions are more 64

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of a reaction to the moments of crisis. Another notion highlighted by Richardson et al. refers to the relative autonomy of the state vis-à-vis other actors involved. I argue that, contrary to the general assumption, controlled societal and media debates and autocratic political systems of Central Asia do not automatically presuppose an omnipotent government. As was seen on multiple occasions during the post-1991 history of the region, when designing a policy, the governments do indeed seek some sort of consensus with other actors involved, including various interest groups and financial-industrial groups, affiliated with various centers of power within the ruling elites of Central Asian countries (albeit with some differences across the region). On the top level are found strategic policy goals set by the presidents of Central Asia, yet within those goals and frameworks are substantial degrees of maneuvering by the executives, financial groups, political clans and so on. Central Asian autocratic policy style tends to be more reactive and driven by very centralized executive actors, who, at the same time, may also find themselves in a situation where they have to respond to societal demands. These demands, however, may not necessarily be expressed via traditional or constitutional tools due to the weakness of constitutional systems but rather through the discontent of powerful intra-elite groups, popular protests and social media discourse. The collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 was widely perceived as a victory of Westernstyle democratic governance, and many hopes were expressed that the new post-Soviet countries would soon embrace a new type of governance and policy-making, more open, transparent and decentralized. In the context of the general excitement surrounding the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union countries, the rejection of the Soviet system of rule in favor of Western-style political and economic institutions was expected and by many perceived as certain. Almost three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, however, the transitions across its successor states seem to have failed to produce institutional structures that would match these expectations. Except for the Baltic states, throughout the former Soviet Union policy styles widely remind one of Soviet practices. This transitional post-Soviet political culture has also channeled the post-Soviet authoritarian policy style, which is in the center of attention in this chapter. The discussion around the idea of policy style and political culture is in part due to the existing observations that political systems with similarly established and legally defined institutions and structures practice politics and policy-making in rather distinct ways. The proponents of the idea suggest that policy-making and policy style is shaped by deeply indoctrinated beliefs and political attitudes that are peculiar to certain nationalities, countries or even broader regions. An understanding of the policy-making styles in different countries and societies helps to predict the patterns of behavior observed and why some elements are more likely than others. Most of the early work on political culture took the state as the unit of analysis and was written at a time when many new political jurisdictions were being created through decolonization. For instance, Almond and Verba (1963) in their classical text provided the definition of political culture that has guided research in this field for decades. Their arguments were categorized into cognitive, affective and evaluational orientations – beliefs, feelings and values. Nevertheless, it is recognized that, even within the same state or conglomeration of states with similar historical trajectories, substantial differences may exist between diverse groups that reflect distinct historical and cultural experiences. Similarly, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) explain various institutional settings of Western Europe with the traditional cleavages in the respective societies caused by national and industrial revolutions. From the policy literature side, Richardson et al. (1982) define “policy style” as “routines and choices of actors in the making and implementation of public policies” (Richardson et al. 1982) and establish two major approaches for policy styles: the first is based on the government’s take on whether to anticipate and forecast policy issues or react post factum, 65

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and hence, can be anticipatory or reactive. Another important dimension of the policy style is the government’s relation vis-à-vis other policy actors and society, as well as the directionality of the government’s actions, that is, top-down imposition or seeking a compromise. The collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 was considered by many observers in both academic and political realms as a sign that Western-style democracy and the market economy had won its long and tough battle with the Communist ideology. Thus, many highlighted that after the collapse of the USSR, the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, as well as the countries of a broader post-Communist area, would be able to embark on a new path of political and economic development, based on the market economy and democratic institutions. As part of this excitement around the most recent “third wave” of democratization, many predicted the total rejection of the Soviet system and its elements in favor of Western-style political and economic institutions. However, almost three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the various transition paths taken by its successor states have led these new countries into very different directions and outcomes. These trajectories range from successful democratic transitions, innovative market economies and memberships in the European Union and NATO of the Baltic states to the oppressive strongman system of Turkmenistan. As Luong (2004) points out, throughout the former Soviet Union, but particularly so in Central Asia, there are countless examples of presidents who rule by decree; elections that fail to meet international standards of competitiveness and transparency; and privatized enterprises that continue to receive state subsidies as well as directives from government authorities. Similarly, in terms of policy style and political culture, the general assumption right after the collapse of the USSR appeared to be that these countries would make a quick and decisive break with the Soviet style of policy-making, which was tightly centralized and offered little public discussion or policy evaluation. Later, however, together with the aforementioned optimistic hopes for an adoption of democratic and market-oriented reforms, the scholarship also discussed other potential forms of political culture developments, including growing consolidation of the autocratic strongman regimes with weak to nonexistent democratic institutions, a re-emergence of pre-Soviet tribal and clan divisions, a rise in Islamic radicalism and fundamentalism and a violent outbreak of ethnic conflicts along the lines of radical and revengeful nationalist policies. From this perspective, hopes for the quick establishment of Western-style, open political systems in the former Soviet republics had little to do with the actual political developments. Other scholars demonstrate the decline of the old societal features and the emergence of the new “value cleavages” within the new class structure of a given society (Kriesi 1998). Zielenski (2002) argues that the politicization of the preexisting cleavages translates to the characteristics of political institutions, such as political parties; however, some of the new cleavages may remain dormant and not to be translated into politics (Zielenski 2002). Despite the growing body of scholarship developing the concept and empirical base of political culture and policy style, relatively few studies examine it in non-democratic systems, and even less so in transitional societies. Much of the new work plays down the element of trust towards the elite but reaffirms the centrality of faith in the political system itself (Norris 2011; Diamond 2012), which is particularly worthy to investigate in the transitional contexts when one set of institutions is replaced by a new set within a relatively short time period, as it was the case in the former Soviet Union. The transition paradigm described by Carothels (2002) is a theoretical approach that dominated in minds of Western policy makers and scholars about the political development pattern of post-dictatorial regimes. Inspired by the growing democratization process of the Huntington’s 66

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“third wave of democracy”, the transition paradigm was considered as a model of talking about the processes of political change around the world. The concept was based on the main umbrella assumption – that every single country that is moving away from dictatorial rule is considered as transitional. Another important consideration was a certain sequence of stages that should occur in the democratizing country – starting from the opening, a period of democratic liberalization through the breakthrough where the old regime collapsed, to the consolidation, a slow emergence of democratic institutional structure via regularization of elections and strengthening of civil society. The concept of transition also believed that elections play a determinative role in the emergence of democracy, while on the other hand the paradigm seemed to underestimate the underlying conditions in these societies, such as their cultural and historical background, level of economic development, institutions, and legacies. The transition paradigm faced many challenges on its way, including current political developments in some of the countries considered “transitional”. Some liberalization does not necessarily mean an immediate emergence of a liberal democracy. According to Carothels, from about one hundred countries considered transitional, only about twenty became democracies while the majority of them are neither dictatorial nor democratic and some even ended up by becoming repressive dictatorships. Carothels argues the transition paradigm is in serious doubt after the closer look on the political trajectories of the third-wave countries. The most common patterns of the transitional countries are some new alternatives to the liberal democracy. The sequence of stages is also a challenged issue, as the experience of Taiwan, Mexico and South Korea show that the offered sequence of stages is rather inappropriate and that the democracy there emerges from gradual increase of liberalization. Another disputed assumption is the importance of the underlying factors in the process of emergence of a democracy. In the most successful cases of democratic transition, the relative economic prosperity and the past historical and cultural background and experience of pluralism have contributed heavily, as it was especially the case in the Eastern Europe. However, some countries, like Mongolia, having no or little previous democratic experience managed to create a democratic system, so the success or failure might rather depend on specific factors in each individual case. All in all, Carothels points out that political analysts should have been more realistic in their expectations about growth of democracy in transitional societies as in many cases, external observers often had slightly overestimated expectations from the elections. As a result of these developments and premature hopes, the scholarship switched focus on the notion of “continuity and break” with the Soviet past. Cummings (2005) advocated that the new policy styles and practices of policy-making contained a great deal of institutional innovation and only minimally correspond to the preceding Soviet practices. Others, while agreeing on the appearance of new institutions, suggested that on a closer examination these institutions and policy-styles represent a much greater degree of continuity with the Soviet past than was expected and that the entire process by which the Central Asian states adopted new political institutions and policy-making practices indicates the enduring strength of the Soviet system. This school of thought highlights the role that elites’ perceptions of power shifts during the transition play in shaping both the degree of institutional change and the direction of regime change (Luong 2004). Still others took the “continuity and change” discussion further and focused more on the personalistic factors and the balance of power at the exact moment of transition between the retrogrades, mostly former Communist Party nomenklatura members, and newcomers, mostly coming from former dissidents and academic circles (McFaul 2002). The assumption (perhaps somewhat generous, as in the case of Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev) was that the newcomers will seek to design new institutions that redistribute goods and benefits 67

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accordingly, while the retrogrades will prefer institutions that retain as much of their previous distributional advantage as possible. In places, where the balance of power at the moment of transition was in the favor of proreformers and “challengers” (McFaul 2002), the transition is widely perceived as a dramatic break with the preexisting context and is a unilateral change in institutions, as the elites perceive that they can no longer depend on their former political support base, they will appeal to new constituencies. Thus, the destruction of the preceding basis for political power facilitates a greater degree of institutional innovation and increases the prospects for regime change. The best examples of such changes would be the East Central European countries of Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and others, which have moved in a challenging yet mostly successful direction towards democracy (Aslund 2007). In contrast, Central Asian states had a different balance of power, mostly (with the exception of Kyrgyzstan) in favor of the old rulers who managed to stay in power and to limit political participation from the society. All major policy initiatives must be approved by top leaders, and top leaders can have substantial discretion in shaping the policy process. Given the state of legislative and electoral institutions in Central Asia, policy styles are more likely to be reactive, given the lack of participation of society in policy-making, as well as top-down driven, due to the strong executive (Burkhanov 2019). The scholarship also focused much on the notion of balance of balance of power between the “retrogrades” and “reformers” at the moment of transition in order to explain the patterns and political developments. As Luong (2004) asserts, perceived shifts in power during the transition can contribute to the reordering of power within this system, such that institutional innovation is possible as long as it retains key elements of the preceding system. Institutional change measured in terms of outcomes alone, then, does not necessarily indicate a fundamental alteration in the institutional design process but rather a transformation of it in light of transitional circumstances.

The post-1991 institutions design and policy styles As discussed in Howlett and Tosun (2019), institutions are critical in understanding policy styles. To what extent it is possible to speak of similarities in terms of institutional design and policy styles in Central Asia remains the focus of scholarly discussions. Some observers pointed out that there is a great degree of the uniformity among these states and that the countries here share a number of common characteristics. Following this discourse, the scholarship also tried to explain specific reasons for the Central Asian type of strong and consolidated presidentalism and where Central Asian countries fit in terms of broader political types classification. At the same time, there are also noticeable differences between the countries in terms of governance and readiness for an extended reform agenda, welcoming and handling foreign investors and improving civil service reforms (Cummings 2005). The centralized political systems are dominating in post-1991 Central Asia and are considered by many as the main cause of their “poor governance and business climate, and their insecure property rights and rule-of-law deficit” (Cummings 2005). With the slight exception of Kyrgyzstan, which went through a series of political turmoil in 2005–2010, all other Central Asian countries turned to centralized and autocratic systems. As mentioned previously, some authors argue that in post-Communist societies the patterns of democracy, partial democracy and dictatorship are defined by the balance of power between the former Communist party functionaries and democratic challengers at the moment of the collapse of the USSR (McFaul 2002; Huskey 1995). In this framework, unlike some other postSoviet countries (especially the Baltic states), none of the five Central Asian countries engaged 68

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in a democratic transition with guaranteed media freedoms and free and competitive elections. Linz and Stepan (1996) have identified four types of nondemocratic regimes – authoritarian, totalitarian, posttotalitarian and sultanistic  – and noted, however, that political democratization is not a prerequisite to a successful economic liberalization. In Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have chosen the path to economic liberalization, albeit to a different degree and level of success, while at the same time maintaining strong consolidated political regimes. Kyrgyzstan was the only slight exception here with its relatively open political system, though the arrest of former president Atambayev and his allies in the fall of 2019 suggest that the country has rejoined the camp of autocratic systems. By contrast, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan avoided any political or economic liberalization and maintained a tight state control over the economy, despite some modest liberalization attempts after leadership change in Uzbekistan in 2016. Luong (2004) adds to the debate, saying that the lack of democratization and economic liberalization may not imply that these regimes are not stable or durable, as many other authoritarian and corporatist states around the world have demonstrated. Cummings (2005) argues that despite a certain continuity, Central Asian countries are not simply post-totalitarian states and have moved far from the traditional Marxist-Leninist model, as have all other former Soviet states. Despite the fact that some features of the old system remain, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union no longer has the monopoly of power, a guiding ideology no longer exists and political recruitment is no longer restricted to the official party ranks. Thus, the independent states of Central Asia are qualitatively new entities, with their new internal logics, that may not necessarily be corresponding to the previous institution building. One feature that is characteristic for policy style in all Central Asian countries is the focus on building and maintaining power by the presidency. The tools that have been employed were similar across the region and involved submitting and manipulating formal institutional mechanisms to strengthen the ruler’s position in office. All countries of Central Asia ended up building up a strong central executive, which controls and oversees other institutions and branches of power through constitutional means. In fact, Kazakhstan’s constitution of 1995 grants the president the status of being an arbiter above the three branches of power. The legislative and the judiciary have been deliberately kept in a subordinate position. The strong executive has also constrained the development of political parties and party formation. In this regard, an executive-legislative relationship becomes crucial as the multi-party presidentialism stimulates the weaker parliament; and the multipartism is more likely to produce ideological polarization (Mainwaring 1993). In the similar vein, Fish (2006) argues the impetus to build parties depends largely on the power of legislature, and within the strong presidential system there is less incentive to created parties because of the limited powers of legislature and the weak party system. In Kazakhstan, the trajectory of parliamentary development evolved from the relatively strong legislature of the early 1990s, where opposition voices could be heard, to a much more subsumed assembly of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The extreme case is Turkmenistan’s first president Niyazov, who simultaneously held the offices of head of state, prime minister and head of Constitutional Court (Gleason 2007). Nomenklatura is another interesting and important characteristic of the Soviet system that has reincarnated as a tool to control power by the new elites. As Cummings (2005) argues, the Soviet system created a self-perpetuating ruling elite, equipped with powerful instruments with which to protect its interests. Albeit with different trajectories, Central Asian countries managed to reestablish their new forms of the previous nomenklatura networks by exploiting their post-Soviet networks and have created new presidential parties. These parties have gradually monopolized the political spaces in these countries and serve as a source and a trampoline for 69

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cadres into the system. The extensive use of patronage powers renders informal powers critical in an overall assessment of the powers of these presidents. The less institutionalization and rule of law, the more informal presidential powers have come to bear on the system. Institutionalization of informal powers was also observed in the context of the social, political and economic change during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and particularly so within the context of discussions between proponents of the “shock therapy” economic reform policy versus gradual market implementation approach. Aslund (2007) argues that the rapid and ambitious economic transformation of the post-Communist space was eventually justified despite some harsh side effects endured by the population because of the negative consequences of a “shock therapy” policy, such as disappearance of savings, hyperinflation and sharp income drop. Aslund (2007) argues that there cannot be “too radical or too early market forms”, building up on the (mostly) successful experiences of Eastern European countries. In Central Asia, however, macroeconomic stabilization and market-oriented reforms were implemented with a different pace across the region. While Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan managed to introduce the basics of market economy, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (except for the very limited and abrupt privatization) were more reluctant to pursue large-scale market economic reforms. These countries are suffering from an underdeveloped entrepreneurial environment, having preserved many elements of a state-dominated economy. At the same time, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where the market reforms are relatively more advanced but legal and political institutions are still weak, there are additional challenges, such as rent-seeking behavior, uncertainty over property rights and numerous incidents of business seizures. This antagonism between the radical reformers and the gradualists is being played out within the Central Asian countries, which also provides an important background in how economic trajectories took place. The natural resources factor and the political elites’ control over these resources is another important element which enhanced the leaning towards gradualism in Central Asian countries, so that the window for rent-seeking is prolonged. In terms of specific countries’ paths, while Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan appeared to have initially taken similar political and economic trajectories in the post-1991 era, these paths have diverged later on. The most obvious similarity was the establishment of strong centralized and personalized political regimes in both countries, although the justification employed in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan was rather different. In case of Kazakhstan, a strong presidency was portrayed as a necessary tool to overcome difficulties of the transition period and to ensure the success of a large-scale modernization effort, inspired by the experience of the “Asian tigers” of Southeast Asia (Cummings (2005). In the case of Uzbekistan, Karimov’s regime attempted to frame its legitimacy in a long-term historical context, focusing on Tamerlane’s cult and connecting his empire to contemporary Uzbekistan (Kangas 2002). In terms of balance of power, however, in both countries parties and functionaries quickly reorganized themselves, assuming new titles and nationalistic rhetoric and symbols (Bohr 1998). Newly nascent and modest political opposition that slowly developed in the last decade of Soviet rule quickly found itself sidelined and replaced by the regime-controlled parties, existing as a façade “multi-party” political system. In this sense, scholars of comparative politics plausibly argue that strong presidency discourages development of political parties (Mainwaring 1993; Fish 2006). One of the important reasons is that candidates have little incentive to affiliate with political parties if the legislature is much weaker vis-à-vis the presidential branch. Furthermore, strong presidentialism emphasizes the politics of personality and discourages political parties from developing coherent programs and identities (Fish 2006). In terms of power transit, Uzbekistan has gone through the power transit in 2016, where the new leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev managed to succeed Islam Karimov in a mostly smooth 70

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transition, although many of Karimov’s family members have been taken out of power. In case of Kazakhstan, President Nazarbayev resigned unexpectedly in March  2019, though he managed to keep substantial tools to influence politics from behind the scenes. These tools include chairmanship of Nur-Otan, the ruling party of Kazakhstan, as well as chairmanship in the strengthened Security Council, which, after the recent constitutional amendments, has the power to issue mandatory national policy decisions. Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, career diplomat who became a handpicked successor and the second president of Kazakhstan, is yet to build his own network of support among the competing powerful political and financial groups in the country. Kyrgyzstan’s and Tajikistan’s post-1991 trajectories are at different ends of the spectrum. Kyrgyzstan was for a long time considered the most open political regime in Central Asia, labeled as “hyper-democracy” (Radnitz 2006) or as “island of democracy in the region” (Huskey 1995). The country also had experienced political turmoil in both 2005 and 2010, when the presidents Akayev and Bakiyev were overthrown by popular protests and ended up in exile in Moscow and Minsk respectively. These protests, sense of instability and economic losses might indeed have strengthened the argument for an authoritarian and oppressive but stable, predictable and potentially more prosperous political regime, both inside and outside of Central Asia. At a certain point, especially under Bakiyev’s tenure, Kyrgyzstan was notorious for the multiple months-long periods of popular protests and legal debates around constitutional amendments. Yet, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan provide interesting and perhaps outlying cases where there was a rupture with Communist-era rulers. Tajik president Emomali Rahmon was selected as a compromise figure between several powerful regional clans, and Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan came from an academic background, having worked in the Academy of Sciences. Because of their non-Communist Party apparatchik background, some have attributed the more democratic institutional development (at least initially) and presence of NGOs to Akayev’s avoidance of a more agency-driven institutional design. Yet, as argued by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), social cleavages were critical factors for the formation of political parties and party systems in Western Europe. This argument can be applied toward Kyrgyzstan as well in a sense for crystalizing regional cleavages and the geographical fragmentation, which also contribute to the instability and political violence in both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Regionalism is an important condition that exerts an influence on political processes of Kyrgyzstan, including the creation of political loyalties and alliances. The country is divided into the North and the South in terms of geography, tribes, and economic and social conditions. The northern part, including the capital of Bishkek, is more developed, industrialized and modern, while the South is more traditional and agricultural. Furthermore, the southern region contains a large portion of ethnic Uzbeks that feeds into a distinct southern identity, which in its own turn raises the question of informal networks and affiliations. Another common feature of Central Asian policy style is the existence of informal networks as the real source of influence, albeit with some specifics. In the case of Uzbekistan, Karimov has promoted officials from his own region and from ministries familiar to him, on the basis of personal loyalty (Kangas 2002); while in Kazakhstan the informal connections reflect a fusion of a deeply engrained nomenklatura system with the shift towards a more ethnocratic political regime (Kadyrzhanov 1999). Clans all over Central Asia have existed in pre-Soviet times and managed to retain their significance during the Soviet period. The individual’s clinic affiliation may largely determine their social status and political prospects. While there are different interpretations in terms of salience of clans in Central Asia (Schatz 2004; Collins 2004), it appears that their existence has been so deeply embedded in the institutions of most Central Asian states that any institutional reform cannot afford to ignore the role they play in their respective 71

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societies, particularly when they serve as an alternative to ineffective or deficient formal institutions or replace them altogether. Last, but certainly not the least, the implication for a post-1991 policy style in Central Asia is the lack of democratic changes. There have been several explanations for how institutional design in Central Asia ignored the needs for a democratic transition. The concept of “path dependency”, identified by Cummings and Luong, plays a major role in cementing authoritarian systems of rule. The Soviet Union’s political legacy, compounded by the geographical location of Central Asia between Russia and China with their own closed political systems, and the lack of an outside model of a democratic transition, exemplified by the European Union for post-Communist societies of Eastern Europe, all help to explain why the institutional development of the Central Asian states continues to enforce authoritarian regimes behind a democratic façade. As Cummings narrates, Central Asia is seeking a relegitimation, and while its authoritarian systems are not simply a continuation of the old systems, they provide an opportunity for the elites to assert a new administrative framework. For Central Asia, with its very personalistic regimes, whoever establishes themselves to the highest position of power greatly determines how the country develops. Here, the personality of the leader becomes crucial to making sense of the regime and its effect on institutional development, which has indeed varied dramatically because the personalities and perceptions of each leader are different. The Communist legacy and habits of the new nomenklatura certainly die hard. In the Soviet era regional administrations were targeted on to “make” the results sought by the center, and Kazakhstan’s (and other Central Asian countries’) existing system of presidential appointment of regional governors still encourages this behavior. Presidents appoint the regional governors for indefinite terms, who then appoint the local district governors. The governors report only to the presidents and, hence, have little interest in satisfying the societal demands in their respective jurisdictions. On top of that, the governors have the authority to oversee the local regional electoral commissions, since they include representatives of regional public-funded organizations, such as schoolteachers and doctors in public hospitals. This makes the representatives vulnerable to pressure by local authorities regarding elections results. Even if there was no such pressure from capitals, it could take a while for all elements of the entire state system to recognize that a 55 percent vote in free and fair elections could actually be a much stronger mandate than a 95+ percent vote in a rigid election. It seems unlikely that the presidential appointment of the regional governors will be changed any time soon, so therefore this way of falsification may still persist for a long time in Central Asia. The nominal presence of all formal democratic institutions does not guarantee that they would function as in a democratic system. Many post-Soviet societies are run under rule by law, in which the law is a weapon to be selectively applied against potential unwanted competitors, while many important decisions are still made behind the curtain. Indeed, main informal powers of Central Asian rulers come from the highly concentrated powers of the executive branch and selective law enforcement (or lack thereof). The concentration of power in the hands of the executive is the key to understanding politics in post-Soviet areas. Some observers partially explain this situation by the fact that no separation of powers had ever existed in the system, where the Communist Party held a total monopoly on any political activity. Similarly, the absence of a numerous and politically proactive middle class also remains a common feature across the Central Asian countries and may have also contributed to the low level of democratization in most of the Central Asian states. Central Asian political systems are commonly referred to as neopatrimonial regimes, in which the ruling elite use the bureaucratic structure of the state to cement their access to resources. As such, the policy styles would tend to lean to a more reactive and defensive policy 72

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style, as those in power would want to ensure a continuation of their access to resources and privileged position. That said, in most Central Asian countries (albeit with minor variations), various intra-elite groups seek to maximize the resources they can control; hence, the governments would need to accommodate these demands and to balance out the interests. This means that bargaining and negotiation are very important within the regimes.

Conclusion Understanding policy styles in post-Soviet Central Asia is ultimately much more nuanced and multifaceted than a simple discussion of a “continuity and break” or formal and informal powers would suggest. Indeed, the early discussions highlighted broad expectations that the Central Asian states would be quick to assume Western-style practices to make a decisive break with the Soviet past in terms of culture of governance and policy style. Later, many predicted a rupture with the Soviet political and societal institutions throughout Central Asia, either through the re-emergence of pre-Soviet identities, networks and practices, the violent outbreak of nationalism or the adoption of market economic reforms. The Soviet political legacy was a lot more difficult to erase, however, as many of the elements of the old system still exist. While the Central Asian countries are new political entities with new narratives, the composition of their post-independence political elites suggested a great degree of continuity with the Soviet past. Given the weak electoral and legislative institutions as well as the Soviet legacy, policy style in Central Asia, therefore, is more likely to be reactive and based on a top-down imposition, since lack of active civic engagement would lead to a lack of information regarding societal demands. At the same time, given the traditional paternalistic mentality, policy style in Central Asia would tend to lean towards a top-down imposed policy by the strongman rulers. This chapter further argued, however, that a top-down approach does not imply lack of compromise-driven policy style; in some instances, various actors take contrasting stances towards the government’s line. The difference would be that, unlike in a democratic context, the bulk of the compromise would happen between intra-elite groups, often behind closed doors. In the long run, the policy goals are defined with the idea to ensure continuity of the system and preservation of the president-dominated models, in which all major decisions must be approved by top leaders, who can have substantial discretion in shaping the policy process.

References Almond, G. and Verba, S., 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Aslund, A., 2007. How Capitalism Was Built: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bohr, A., 1998. The Central Asian States as Nationalizing Regimes. In: G. Smith et al., eds. Nation-Building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139–164. Burkhanov, A., 2019. Policy-Making Styles in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy and New Institutions. In: M. Howlett and J. Tosun, eds. Policy-Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. London: Routledge, 222–241. Carothels, T., 2002. The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy, 13 (1), 5–21. Collins, K., 2004. Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummings, S., 2005. Kazakhstan: Power and Elite. London: I.B. Tauris. Diamond, L., 2002. Thinking About Hybrid Regimes. Journal of Democracy, 13 (2), 21–35. Diamond, L., 2012. The Coming Wave. Journal of Democracy, 23 (1), 5–13. 73

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Fish, S., 2006. Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies. Journal of Democracy, 17 (1), 5–20. Gleason, G., 2007. Turkmenistan Under Niyazov and Berdymukhammedov. In: R. Rotberg, ed. Worst of the Worst. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 114–127. Howlett, M. and Tosun, J., 2019. Policy Styles: A New Approach. In: M. Howlett and J. Tosun, eds. PolicyStyles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. London: Routledge, 3–22. Huskey, E., 1995. The Rise of Contested Politics in Central Asia: Elections in Kyrgyzstan, 1989–1990. Europe-Asia Studies, 47 (5), 813–833. Janenova, S., 2019. The Boundaries of Research in an Authoritarian State. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1–8. Jones, B.D., Epp, A. and Baumgartner, F.R., 2019. Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Policy Punctuations. International Review of Public Policy, 1 (1), 7–26. Kadyrzhanov, R., 1999. The Ruling Elite of Kazakhstan in the Transition Period. In: V. Shlapentokh, C. Vanderpool and B. Doktorov, eds. The New Elite in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. College Station, TX: Texas A&M, 145–161. Kangas, R., 2002. The Karimov Presidency – Amir Timur Revisited. In: S. Cummings, ed. Power and Change in Central Asia. London: Routledge, 130–149. Kriesi, H., 1998. The Transformation of Cleavage Politics. European Journal of Political Research, 33 (2), 7–50. Levitsky, S. and Way, L.A., 2002. The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 13 (2), 51–65. Linz, J.J. and Stepan, A.C., 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipset, S. and Rokkan, S., 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments. New York, NY: Free Press. Luong, P.J., 2004. Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Magaloni, B., 2008. Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule. Comparative Political Studies, 41 (4–5), 715–741. Mainwaring, S., 1993. Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination, Comparative Political Studies, 26 (2), 198–228. McFaul, M., 2002. The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World. World Politics, 54 (2), 212–244. Norris, P., 2011. Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radnitz, S., 2006. What Really Happened in Kyrgyzstan? Journal of Democracy, 17 (2), 133–146. Richardson, J., Gustafsson, G. and Jordan, G., 1982. The Concept of Policy Style. In: J. Richardson, ed. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1–16. Schatz, E., 2004. Modern Clan Politics: The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond, Seattle: University of Washington Press. In: V. Shlapentokh, C. Vanderpool and B. Doktorov, eds. The New Elite in PostCommunist Eastern Europe. College Station, TX: Texas A&M, 145–161. Svolik, M., 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williamson, S. and Magaloni, B., 2020. Legislatures and Policy-Making in Authoritarian Regimes. Comparative Political Studies, 53 (9), 1525–1543. Zielenski, Jakub, 2002. Translating Social Cleavages into Party Systems: The Significance of New Democracies. World Politics, 54 (2), 184–211.

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Part 2

Sectoral policy styles Concepts and cases

7 The concept of a sectoral policy style Paul Cairney

Introduction Policy styles are the ways in which governments make and implement policy (Richardson 1982). Many studies analyse the extent to which national governments across the world have different policy styles that reflect their formal political institutions (Howlett and Tosun 2019). However, styles can also vary markedly within political systems. Indeed, a focus on the role of policymaking in different sectors helps us think about the non-uniform extent to which styles vary across systems. A focus on sectors begins by raising the possibility that national styles may be less radically different than they appear because all policymakers face the same basic problem: the need to address their own bounded rationality within a complex policymaking environment over which they have limited understanding and even less control (Cairney et al. 2019a). As such, the same basic pressures may help produce some convergence in styles when governments in many political systems try to make policymaking more manageable by breaking it down into sectors and subsectors. To do so, elected policymakers must assign high levels of responsibility to unelected bureaucrats who, in turn, form relationships with participants such as interest groups who trade information and advice for access and influence. The result may be a collection of policy styles in sectors that seem distant from the styles we associate with policymaking at the macropolitical level. Or, at least, we may find that (a) variations in policy styles across sector and subsector can be as important as (b) variation by formal political system. This chapter explores this focus on sectoral styles in five main ways. First, to show how a focus on sectoral styles relates initially to classic work on policy communities in the UK and Western Europe, but also has wider international implications. Second, to establish how to study sectoral policy styles systematically and identify the extent to which there are general patterns of sectoral policymaking across the world. It combines key concepts to produce a framework for comparison. A focus on bounded rationality helps us identify the logic of policy sectors and subsectors: elected policymakers have to ignore almost all decisions taken in their name, and they delegate the processing of policy to bureaucrats and specialists in many sectors spread across government. A focus on the constituent parts of policymaking environments then helps us compare policy styles across sectors. Policy processes contain a large number of policymakers 77

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and influencers spread across many levels and types of government, often described as multiple venues or ‘centres’ (Cairney et al. 2019a). Each venue has its own institutions, networks, ideas, and ways to respond to distinctive socioeconomic factors and events. Therefore, a key role for policy studies is to understand how these dynamics vary across policy sectors. Third, to establish what it means to identify sectoral policy styles. How do we define a discrete field of study such as a sector or a subsector within a political system? For example, a focus on national styles relates to physical borders between countries that appear to be well defined until we acknowledge the ways in which people socially construct political boundaries. Further, a focus on multi-level governance shows us that policy styles are actually a collection of styles of many levels of government responsible for different policy instruments. A sectoral focus expands this analytical problem by highlighting the competition to frame each sector and assign primary responsibility whenever policymaking is spread across levels of government. Fourth, to establish how policy theories can help us understand sectoral dynamics. Can we apply the same theories to different sectors? Many policy theories served initially to analyse processes in one country, and a common question is: do these theories travel well across many different countries? The same question applies to cross-sectoral travel, since many theories also began as case studies of specific sectors. Therefore, it is just as important to establish their international and cross-sectoral application. Finally, to explore the extent to which (a) the logic of sectoral policy styles undermines (b) the pursuit of intersectoral policymaking. Some of the most important policy problems – such as public health, climate change, and inequalities – require cooperation across multiple sectors. However, their lack of coherence demonstrates a truism in policy studies: these functional requirements provide a poor guide to actual practices.

The classic story of sectoral policy styles Classic studies of ‘policy communities’ suggest that a focus on sectoral policy styles provides one way to manage expectations about major differences in national styles. Part of the reason that many countries do not live up to their national reputations is that they are subject to the same basic logic of sectoral policymaking. Initially, Richardson and Jordan (1979) analysed the importance of ‘policy communities’ to a very specific concern in the UK: the worry in the 1970s that alternating parties of government were damaging UK politics. At the time, a common story was that a new government entered office every four years, with power alternating between Labour and Conservative and with a tendency to reinforce an adversarial and majoritarian tradition. Allegedly, the result would be a constant turnover, in which one party would impose a reversal of the policy of the other. In that context, Richardson and Jordan (1979) found that the UK did not live up to its reputation: most policies were not reversed in this way, and its ‘majoritarian’ top-down image was misleading. Rather, regardless of the party of government, most policy was processed out of the public spotlight and at a relatively low level of government, by ‘policy communities’ of civil servants and interest groups who maintained relatively long-term and stable relationships built on a common understanding of specialist policy problems. Although published four decades ago, this debate and argument has a timeless quality, since we can still find in current debates (such as on Brexit) the same kinds of contrast between the well-known image of centralist, majoritarian, top-down, and impositional Westminster politics and more accurate (but less well-known) academic studies of ‘decentred’ policymaking (Cairney 2020a, Box 8.2, 2020b).

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This academic approach has also extended to many more countries and types of study. In making their initial argument, Richardson and Jordan (1979) drew heavily on US studies of the ‘community power debate’, interest group and government relations, and policy ‘subsystems’ to suggest they were describing the UK brand of an international product. Then, Richardson’s (1982) edited comparison of policy styles found that the UK shared many features of Western European ‘consensus’ democracies (Jordan and Richardson 1982), while early work in Western Europe suggested that policy communities were pervasive and responsible for processing the bulk of public policy out of the spotlight. Kriesi et al.’s (2006, p. 345) study of key sectors in seven Western European countries reinforces the argument that the British policy style does not live up to its majoritarian image (compare with Richardson 2018), and that many other European systems are more top-down than their formal institutions would suggest. The main theme of these, and many other, accounts is that a focus on formal institutions and national character traits is incomplete without taking into account the role of policy subsystems (summarised by Jordan and Cairney 2013; Cairney 2019; see also Larsen et al. 2006; Atkinson and Coleman 1989; Bovens et al. 2001; John 1998, pp. 42–44; Freeman 1985; Barzelay and Gallego 2010, p. 298). While national styles may be important, their variation is tempered markedly by the same logic of sectoral policymaking. Clearly, the national context still matters to policymaking within sectors, so we would still expect policy styles to vary at this level of analysis. However, without continuous empirical study of policymaking in each sector, it is difficult to tell if the effect will be high or low. Indeed, if we begin by comparing policy styles in specific sectors (or subsectors), rather than focusing primarily on national politics, we find that the impact of the formal institutions of each political system is often remarkably subtle (Cairney et al. 2018, p. 137). Further, there is often good reason to expect that (a) variations in policy styles across sector and subsector can be as important as (b) variation by formal political system (Cairney 2019).

The general logic of sectoral policy styles At first, this discussion of policy communities may seem specific to historic and Europe-centred studies of policymaking. However, this section shows how to relate specific experiences to a more general and abstract logic with a more universal feel. The policy communities story, emphasising the pervasiveness of policymaking in sectors, is one variant of a more general focus on the limits to policymaking. Policymakers must respond to two general limits: 1 Bounded rationality (Simon 1957, 1976), which requires them to ignore most policyrelevant information in the absence of comprehensive cognition. Policymakers combine cognition and emotion to pay attention to some issues and delegate responsibility for the rest (Cairney and Kwiatkowski 2017). 2 Policymaking complexity, which requires them to share policymaking responsibility in the absence of complete centralisation. Policymakers operate within a complex policymaking environment over which they have limited knowledge and even less control. Their policymaking environment consists of many actors spread across many policymaking venues, each with their own institutions, networks, ways of seeing the world, and ways of responding to socioeconomic factors and events. A focus on sectoral styles allows us to assess the extent to which these general dynamics change in relation to the nature of the sector as much as the nature of the political system. For example,

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consider the concepts that we use to sum up the idea of a complex policymaking environment and the ways in which they help us emphasise sectoral dynamics: 1 2 3

4

5

Actors. Policymaking organisations tend to specialise along sectoral (such as health, education, crime) and subsectoral (primary, secondary, and tertiary health and education) lines. Institutions. Those organisations often produce formal and informal rules to reflect the nature of the policy problem or the actors most involved (Ostrom 2007). Networks. Policy influencers also tend to specialise, and they form relationships with specialist policymakers. Indeed, some groups can enjoy privileged access in some sectors but feel excluded in others. Ideas. This specialisation reflects and reinforces the maintenance of different ways of thinking about policymaking. For example, health and public health departments often use the language of ‘evidence-based’ policymaking in comparison to evidence-based medicine, while treasury and economic sectors are more likely to refer to concepts such as value for money (Cairney 2016). Socioeconomic factors. Social, economic, technological, and demographic drivers of policy often have distinctive dimensions in different sectors. Some are driven by social attitudes and behaviour, such as healthy and unhealthy behaviour. Some are more or less driven by technological changes, such as the rise of the motor car in transport or pharmacology in mental health. Some are driven more by natural and environmental factors, such as climate change or natural disasters.

Cairney (2019, 2020a) summarises the ways in which we can relate these inevitable limits to a general logic of sectoral policymaking: •

•

•

•

•

The size and scope of the state is so large that it is always in danger of becoming unmanageable. The same can be said of the crowded environment in which huge numbers of actors seek policy influence. Consequently, to all intents and purposes, policymakers manage complexity by breaking the state’s component parts into policy sectors and subsectors, with power spread across many parts of government. Elected policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of issues for which they are responsible. So, they pay attention to a small number and ignore the rest. In effect, they delegate policymaking responsibility to other actors such as bureaucrats, often at low levels of government. At this level of government and specialisation, bureaucrats rely on specialist organisations for information and advice. Those organisations trade that information/advice and other resources for access to, and influence within, the government (other resources may relate to whom groups represent – such as a large, paying membership, an important profession, or a high-status donor or corporation). Most public policy is conducted primarily through small and specialist policy communities that process issues at a level of government not particularly visible to the public and with minimal senior policymaker involvement. This description of policy communities suggests that senior elected politicians are less important than people think, their impact on policy is questionable, and elections and changes of national government may not provide the changes in policy that many expect.

Clearly, not all variants of the policy communities’ story are applicable to all political systems or even relevant to systems that do not maintain regular free-and-fair elections. Still, key aspects 80

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have a ‘universal’ feel: at a high level of abstraction, many insights can apply to all political systems at all times, and we can use this initial high-level viewpoint to identify and debate the importance of variations across systems and time. Think of this analytical approach as two sides of the same coin. On one side are abstract universal concepts such as bounded rationality and policymaking complexity, which contribute to sectoral policymaking. On the other side are the specific ways in which they relate to each political system and how policymakers respond to these limits (Cairney et al. 2019a).

Identifying sectors and sectoral boundaries How do we define a discrete field of study such as a national political system or a sector within that system? A focus on national styles is often based on physical borders between countries that appear to be well defined until we acknowledge the ways in which people socially construct political and organisational boundaries (O’Flynn 2014, 2016). A sectoral focus magnifies this analytical problem three-fold. First, it prompts us to focus on how people frame sectors and the issues that could become the responsibility of different sectors. Studies of agenda setting show that there is no natural way to define a policy issue as a policy problem and therefore no way to identify a natural jurisdiction in a single type of government or sector (Baumgartner and Jones 1993, pp. 32–33). Indeed, the example of tobacco policy shows that it can remain the responsibility of one sector for decades, only to be taken over by another (Cairney et al. 2012). The explanation comes largely from the power to define tobacco as a policy problem: from an economic problem to be solved with subsidy and trade agreements to a global pandemic or urgent public health problem to be solved by measures such as regulation and taxation. This framing matters in defining which sector is most relevant and which actors take primary responsibility to set the parameters of the policy agenda, gather and prioritise some evidence over others, maintain networks that include some participants and exclude others (tobacco companies are formally excluded at the WHO level and by any signatory to the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control), and interpret the implications of changes to social and economic conditions (Mamudu et al. 2015). Dudley and Richardson (1996) describe this dynamic in relation to ‘adversarial policy communities’: policy communities form in different sectors (or in different parts of the same sector), and policy change can be dramatic when one community exploits external events and unusually high policymaker attention outside of the dominant policy community to suddenly regain the upper hand. Second, a focus on multi-level governance (MLG) shows us that policy styles are actually a collection of styles of many levels of government responsible for different policy instruments. The intersection between levels and sectors and government raises the possibility of different governments assigning the problem to different sectors, who then cooperate or compete to produce a collection of policy instruments that contribute to ‘policy’. For example, Cairney et al. (2019b) describe the MLG of energy policy in relation to issues such as climate change, poverty, competition, and business. In such fields, the distribution of responsibilities is difficult to track, and the overall effect of the ‘policy mix’ is difficult to predict (Spyridaki and Flamos 2014, p. 1091). Third, policy communities are usually better described as operating at a subsectoral level, since they relate to specific issues such as the use of hormones in animal farming (Dunlop 2017) rather than (say) agricultural or rural policy as a whole (Jordan and Halpin 2006). This insight contributed to unresolved debates about the relationship between sectoral and subsectoral politics. Richardson and Jordan (1979) did not specify the exact size and nature of policy 81

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communities, and Jordan (2005, p.  318) later described them in relation to their ‘blurred edges’ and the analogy of a village bonfire in which one could only predict to some extent who would be there. In comparison, Marsh and Rhodes’ (1992) studies have a sectoral-level emphasis. Jordan et al. (1994, p. 524) reject a primary focus on policy communities at the sectoral level, arguing that the pervasiveness of internally fragmented bureaucracies necessitates viewing communities at the subsectoral level, while Cavanagh et al. (1995) argue that the overall policy agenda or context for subsectoral networks is likely to be constrained by decisions which are taken at the sectoral level. In other words, subsectoral networks follow the rules of the game set out by sectoral networks. Maloney (1996) likens the relationship between activity in subsectors and sectors as akin to Putnam’s (1988) two-level game, in which key players within sectoral-level networks may follow strategies representing the views of the subsector that they represent: “responding to, and to a degree articulating, the interests of their ‘home’ constituencies of groups. Each player, therefore, has particular obligations (often statutory) and objectives, and can mobilise the support of its own network of groups and organisations” (Maloney 1996, p. 964). The overall result is a widespread agreement that policy styles are likely to vary across sectors (and subsectors) but reduced agreement on how to conceptualise those dynamics or assign boundaries between them. The study of policy communities and networks comes with the heavy baggage of terminological confusion, and that confusion relates partly to semantics and partly to differences in empirical and theoretical focus (see Cairney 2020a, p. 152 on key terms).

Policy theories and sectoral styles Many policy theories served initially to analyse processes in one country, and a common question is: do these theories travel well across many different countries (Cairney 2020a, pp. 241– 245)? The same question applies to cross-sectoral travel, since many theories also began as case studies of specific sectors. It is common to expect policy theories to begin in specific regions of the world. Some of the highest profile – generally EU or US origin – theories tell a similar story of sectoral policymaking in different ways. For example, studies of ‘multi-level governance’ (MLG) connect strongly to the same focus on bounded rationality, in which No single actor has all knowledge and information required to solve complex, dynamic and diversified problems, no actor has sufficient overview to make the application of needed instruments effective, no single actor has sufficient action potential to dominate unilaterally in a particular governing model. (Kooiman 1993, p. 4) Further, studies of MLG and related approaches – on polycentric governance and complexity theory – combine this focus on bounded rationality and policymaking complexity to highlight ‘multi-centric policymaking’ and the absence of single central control in political systems (Cairney et al. 2019a). These studies demonstrate that the division of policymaking responsibilities across many levels and type of government is often a normative political choice but always a practical necessity (2019a, pp. 8–9). As a result, although these arrangements vary by political system, there is the same logic to process policy in multiple, often specialist, venues across political systems. Similarly, US-origin theories situate analysis within subsystems or networks organised along sectoral lines. For the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), the aim is to understand a complex policy process, containing many actors and levels of government, in which coalitions of 82

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like-minded people form to turn their beliefs into policy and generally operate within subsystems devoted to specific policy sectors (Sabatier and Weible 2007, pp. 192–196, Jenkins-Smith et al. 2018). For punctuated equilibrium theory (PET, and early work in particular), the aim is to explain a tendency for policy change in political systems to be mostly minor but sometimes profound. A key explanation is a tendency for attention to be disproportionate to policy problems. In other words, the macropolitical agenda can only process a small number of issues, leaving the rest to be processed in subsystems characterised by limited external attention and for involvement to relate to expertise and interests that relate to specific sectors (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; compare with Baumgartner et al. 2018). However, the general applicability of these theories and approaches remains an open question. Most ‘mainstream’ policy theories began with a focus on the US before their widespread application to Europe and growing  – but still limited  – application across the globe, while interpretive approaches are more likely to warn against the assumption that we can generalise so readily across diverse cases (Durnová and Weible 2020). This point is similarly applicable to general conclusions on sectoral policy dynamics and styles. The ACF began as a study of environmental and conservation policy, and the domain of ‘environment and energy’ remains by far the biggest object of ACF study (43% of 161 applications identified by Pierce et al. 2017, p. 22). Multiple streams analysis began as a US federal study of health and transportation, and health (28% of 311 applications) remains the most studied domain (Kingdon 1984; Jones et al. 2016). Social construction and policy design (SCPD) began as US studies of sectors such as social security, and ‘social welfare’ still accounts for 32% of 111 applications (Schneider and Ingram 1993; Pierce et al. 2014, p. 10). The main exception is PET, which focused initially on case studies (environmental issues, nuclear power, tobacco) in the US before the Comparative Agendas Project demonstrated similar patterns of policymaking in multiple countries and most policy sectors (Baumgartner et al. 2018).

The bleak prospects for intersectoral policymaking The logic of policy communities and sectoral policy styles presents a huge obstacle to intersectoral policymaking. Some of the most important policy problems – such as public health, climate change, and inequalities – require cooperation across multiple sectors. However, this obvious necessity contributes more to the apparent incoherence of policymaking than progress towards a ‘joined up’ approach (Jordan and Halpin 2006; May et al. 2006; Cairney et al. 2020). A key example is ‘health in all policies’ (HIAP), which describes a four-step normative argument: 1

2

3 4

We need to focus on the ‘social determinants’ of health to promote health equity (or reduce unfair health inequalities). Social determinants are defined by the WHO (2020) as “the unfair and avoidable differences in health status . . . shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources [and] the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age”. Major policy measures – to redistribute income, improve public services, reduce discrimination, and improve social, economic, and physical environments – are not in the gift of the health sector. An effective policymaking response requires collaboration across all sectors of government and with key stakeholders and citizens outside of government (Corburn et al. 2014). Long-term success requires high levels of political support for HIAP action (de Leeuw and Peters 2014). 83

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Advocates of HIAP try to identify the strategies that can support intersectoral action, such as a ‘win-win’ approach that demonstrates to non-health sectors that there can be a ‘shared vision across sectors’ (Guglielmin et al. 2018, p.  291) and ‘cross-cultural understanding and mutual respect’ (Kickbusch et al. 2014, pp. 187–192; Molnar et al. 2016, pp. 1, 8–12). However, most studies describe their lack of success. For example, intersectoral approaches can have unintended consequences, such as when the contributions of other sectors ‘corrupt’ a social determinants approach by focusing on more individualist approaches (Holt et al. 2017, pp. 881–822; Van Eyk et al. 2017, pp. 16–20). Or, more generally, there is vague political buy-in to intersectoral action, but it does not happen or does not contribute to its purpose (health equity). To some extent, this problem relates to a tendency in HIAP studies to focus on ‘programme logic’ to predict the process and outcomes of intersectoral action, rather than on actual studies of joined-up government (Carey et al. 2014, p. 9). However, it also relates to the necessarily political nature of such initiatives, in which there is competition across sectors to define problems, choose solutions, and control the resources to deliver outputs (de Leeuw and Clavier 2011). Consequently, multiple literatures (and reviews of the literature) are devoted to the lack of intersectoral action or joined-up government but without a clear sense that there is a solution to the logic of sectoral action. Ironically, Tosun and Lang (2017) identify the same tendency towards a lack of integration in the study of sectoral integration! They show that the focus on ‘policy integration’ (to create interdependencies and use policy instruments to foster integration) is not specific to one scholarly agenda. Rather, each approach tends to have its own descriptions, partly because they relate to the agendas of practitioners in specific sectors. As a result, there is a lot of potential for cross-sectoral learning but an ironically low tendency to do so, partly because it is difficult to identify and translate the idiosyncratic concepts. Relevant terms include: 1 Government-centred approaches, including comprehensive planning (to connect many policies relevant to the same region); policy coherence (initially used by the OECD then the EU on ‘synergies between aid and non-aid’ policies and now on the Sustainable Development Goals); joined-up government (to overcome silos associated with new public management or subsystems and use many parts of government to focus on issues like social inclusion); and whole of government (many public sector agencies generating shared goals, or inter-agency collaboration). 2 Governance-centred concepts like horizontal governance (policy coordination in many agencies without the need for hierarchy); holistic governance (modifying governance structures to foster connections); policy integration (to foster the awareness of spillover effects when developing policy); policy mainstreaming (akin to integration); and boundaryspanning policy regime (when actors gravitate towards organisations and policies on a dedicated topic) (2017, pp. 556–561).

Conclusion The study of policy communities provides an important way to understand sectoral policy styles. The logic of policy communities relates to bounded rationality and policymaking complexity. Policymakers do not have the ability to pay attention to, understand, or take control of all of their responsibilities. Rather, they pay attention to a few and delegate the rest, prompting most policy to be processed by bureaucrats at a relatively low level of government, who cooperate routinely with policy specialists such as interest groups. This cooperation is sectoral and subsectoral and reflects a tendency for policy actors to specialise and pay disproportionate 84

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attention to a small number of issues. Although initially a UK and Western European story, this approach highlights more universal drivers towards sectoral policymaking. Bounded rationality is inevitable, and policymakers must ignore and delegate responsibility for most issues. Policymaking complexity contributes to a tendency for multi-centric policymaking, in which many authoritative venues have their own agendas, rules, networks, and ways to interpret and respond to socioeconomic factors and events. While sectors and subsectors are pervasive, they are also difficult to define, identify, and study systematically. There is no natural jurisdiction for policy issues, and a competition to frame issues in different ways can prompt a shift of responsibility to another sector. Multi-level governance can contribute to the processing of the same issue in different sectors at different levels of government. Sectoral labels such as ‘health’ or ‘environment’ may be convenient to aid study but hide a tendency for political systems to produce a plethora of more specialist arrangements. Further, the extent to which mainstream policy theories can explain all activity in all sectors remains an open question. Nevertheless, the logic of sectoral policy styles is strong, and it undermines the necessary pursuit of intersectoral policymaking. The need for governments to tackle policy problems in a joined-up way does not guarantee its ability to do so. Further, the ability of academics to make sense of these dynamics is also limited, since they try to do so in very different ways and often without regard to the insights of each other. Just as it is commonplace for scholars to focus on specific countries or regions, policy sectors have their own scholars, particularly in fields such as health and public health, education, social and criminal justice, and foreign affairs and international relations. Indeed, this type of specialisation, in which there are well-established disciplines that focus primarily on policy studies in discrete sectors, can be more of a challenge because it takes place outside of political science. A variety of disciplinary approaches produces discipline-specific assumptions and questions that are difficult to transpose across sectors. If so, the material problem of sectoral dynamics runs parallel to an intellectual problem in which we recognise the need to specialise and to compare and integrate lessons systematically. Our current inability to do so suggests that the systematic study of sectoral policy styles demands far greater attention.

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8 Three worlds of social policy styles Lasting legacies or a thing of the past? Alexander Horn and Jennifer Shore

Introduction The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, published in 1990 by Gøsta Esping-Andersen, presented a typology of welfare state regimes that seminally shaped theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of social policy and comparative welfare states. While not immune to criticism, Esping-Andersen’s typology remains widely referenced in the social sciences three decades after publication, a trend which is likely to continue into the future as well (Emmenegger et al. 2015). Taking the typology of liberal, conservative, and social democratic welfare regimes as a starting point, we ask whether it is possible to identify analogous classifications of countries in terms of social policy styles. More specifically, do we find that contemporary labor market policies and policy-making still reflect the ideas underpinning Esping-Anderson’s typology? To examine these questions, we focus on three countries generally regarded as emblematic of the welfare regime types: Sweden as a social democratic case, Germany as a conservative case, and the United Kingdom as a liberal case, as well as an additional social democratic welfare state – Denmark – in order to examine intra-regime type variation in policy regimes and styles. We begin with an over-time look at government ideology and the worldviews expressed, that is, market vs. welfare ideology. We then provide a brief overview of the developments in income replacement in unemployment insurance, which is complemented by data on active labor market policies (ALMPs). In a final step, we draw on more nuanced data on punitive and enabling workfare reforms of governments (Horn et al. 2020). Before delving into the empirical material, in the section to follow we briefly discuss the Three Worlds regime types as related to the policy styles they may imply. Here we focus on the ideational foundations of the regime types to explain differences in policy-making styles and outputs. By looking at the patterns in labor market policies in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, we assess the long-term trends in this policy-making sector. We examine the processes they embody (Howlett and Tosun 2018, p. 5) and whether a focus on ideology can help identify a policy style in line with their welfare regime type classification. In terms of policy styles, the ideational foundations of the typology provide insights into the

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kinds of labor market policy-making and outcomes we might anticipate across the regime types. It must however be underscored that regime types are not synonymous with policy styles: While institutional generalizations about national models have done much to further our understanding of the welfare state, their claims about the logic of development are often only rather loosely connected with the political dynamics and specific choices involved in policy development. (Mätzke 2011, p. 2) Although we conceive of social policy styles mainly in terms of their effects on (typical) social policy outputs and their (in)stability over time, we consider the extent to which governments favor market or (welfare) state solutions to be a significant determinant of such styles. For Esping-Andersen’s regimes, despite their labels, ideology and ideas “only” matter insofar as the deep ideational roots of the institutional developments are concerned. In liberal welfare states, classic liberalism meant a “liberal obsession with market efficiency and commodification” (Esping-Andersen 1990, p. 27). Conservative social thought saw market forces as a threat to (an established) social order, favored the preservation of status differences, but also emphasized the subsidiarity principle (ibid., p. 39). In the social democratic regime, the legacy of Socialism and reformist Marxism led to a strong emphasis on equality of the highest standards (ibid., p. 27). We investigate whether such factors also affect policy processes as well as outcomes. Our findings, at least for certain policy approaches, reveal a limited degree of persistence in terms of the institutional legacies of the welfare states described in the Three Worlds. The labor market policy dynamics in the countries under comparison tend to be marked by processes of change and even deviation from their regime type classification. Following the analyses, we conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings in terms of the enduring legacies of the three worlds for contemporary social policy styles. Though also of crucial importance for policy-making, in this descriptive chapter we refrain from going into the details of policy trajectories and party politics; we do however conclude the analytical section with a discussion on the roles played by societal (e.g., unions) and political (parties) power resources.

Three worlds of policy styles? The Three Worlds typology addresses the questions why welfare states differ from one another, but also why we can observe similarities across groups of states. To answer these questions, Esping-Andersen presents three dimensions along which we can locate distinct welfare regimes: the degree of decommodification, the patterns of social stratification, and the public-private mix. Decommodification refers to the extent to which individuals’ livelihoods and welfare are reliant on market outcomes; social stratification to the role of the state in maintaining or moderating patterns of social stratification; and the public-private mix of welfare addresses the relative importance of the state, family, and voluntary organizations for welfare provision. The ideal types derived from the variation in decommodification, patterns of social stratification, and the mix of public-private welfare provision reflect different political ideologies in the three worlds. Contrary to functionalist accounts, which portrayed the welfare state as a reaction to various social and demographic pressures (Flora and Alber 1981; Wilensky 1975), Esping-Andersen argued for the importance of patterns of partisan strength and their impact on policy-making processes as key to understanding the development of the different regime types. Whereas liberal welfare states such as the United Kingdom and the United States were the result of a weak left, conservative welfare states emerged where conservative and Christian democratic 90

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parties held strongholds, such as in continental Europe. Relatively strong leftist parties enabled the development of the social democratic regime type found in the Nordic countries. The three regime types, as Esping-Andersen argues, thus resulted from distinctive historical-political pathways in policy styles and processes associated with these differences. The impact on outcomes is clear. Esping-Andersen’s liberal world of welfare is characterized by minimal welfare support. The receipt of social benefits is generally subject to strict eligibility requirements and means testing, thereby potentially stigmatizing users of social welfare. Three Worlds classified the conservative regime types as status differentiating: Welfare benefits tend to be earnings-related (i.e., contributory) and employer-administered. With their relatively modest redistributive capacity and emphasis on the family for welfare provision, these types of welfare states are generally said to preserve existing patterns of social stratification. Compared to the other two regime types, the social democratic type stands out in terms of its universal and generous welfare programs. In particular, the Nordic states’ welfare policies underlie a commitment to full employment and income protection. The high levels of decommodification in these states reflect a welfare culture which values egalitarianism and solidarity (Stjernø 2008). These differences between regime types have also been used to explain differences in other sectors (Eggers et al. 2019). Across different regimes, the role of the state and its relationship to the individual takes on different forms. This relationship, and how it is shaped by social policies, is referred to as social citizenship (Marshall 1950). A primary dimension of social citizenship includes social rights and responsibilities. Since the publication of Three Worlds, labor market policies in particular have undergone dramatic changes; changes which also have implications for social citizenship. The idea of active social citizenship guides many of the reforms in recent decades. Active social citizenship aims to increase self-responsibility and is connected to enabling welfare reforms that support individuals’ agency and activity, for example with regard to finding employment. Such reforms constitute a marked shift away from passive measures that simply replace income during unemployment. Activation policies, on the other hand, do more than transfer payments; rather, the unemployed individual should be (or is forced to be) active in his or her own job search and thus endeavors to become economically selfsufficient. While ALMPs are part and parcel of all welfare states’ labor market policy programs, their design varies across countries, particularly with regard to the rights and obligations they embody, as we discuss in the section on punitive and enabling workfare reforms. The question is thus whether the use and design of ALMPs reflect changes in the societal and cultural values which undergird the welfare regime and if and how such changes also involve changes in policy styles as well as outputs. How active social citizenship is reflected in public policies has been argued to vary across welfare regimes and the “dominant culture ideas on which they are based”, a factor which encompasses both policy regimes and styles (Eggers et al. 2019, p. 47; Lister et al. 2007). Though commonly assumed that neoliberal thought provides the basis of active social citizenship, that is, “the assumption that active citizens act as autonomous ‘rational men’ ” and that “the state is expected to force social citizens to be self-reliant in order to prevent ‘free riding’ ” (Eggers et al. 2019, p. 47), the welfare context itself, and thereby the cultural ideas embedded in it, shapes policy ideas and policy styles (Pfau-Effinger 2005). Process is important here. While labor market reforms bring about new legislation, these new policies may in fact reflect not so new ideas. “Policy entrepreneurs succeed in imposing certain policy ideas partly because they appeal to the public through the mobilization of political symbols ever-present in the shared ideological repertoires available in their society” (Béland 2005, p. 10). In other words, the cultural ideas about how the individual is to behave vis-àvis the welfare state affect policy styles as well as provide a legitimizing basis for social policy 91

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(Pfau-Effinger 2005; Schmidt 2008). Furthermore, a strong degree of path dependence has been documented in terms of styles. For example, in the reactive policy-making immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, at least in the three emblematic cases of Germany, the UK, and Sweden, –, “[the countries] seem to have fallen back on their old habits by using the tools they know best” (Chung and Thewissen 2011). We therefore expect that the foundations of the three welfare regimes put forth by Esping-Andersen in 1990 continue to impact present-day labor market policies and reforms. That is, we expect neoliberal, market-based values to shape labor market policies in the UK, while policies in Denmark and Sweden continue to be driven by a commitment to ideas of social equality and universalism. The conservative regime type, represented by the case of Germany, is expected to continue to feature a policy style that places an emphasis on status maintenance of privileged labor market insiders, thereby taking a mixed approach between neoliberal ideas and social democratic egalitarianism. Three Worlds is however not exempt from critique, both methodological and theoretical. While the book is arguably one of the most important reference points in the study of the welfare state, we must not take its findings for granted (Emmenegger et al. 2015). Various scholars have documented that European welfare states have undergone fundamental transformations that could not have been predicted by the regime type approach (Bonoli and Natali 2012; Emmenegger et al. 2012; Palier 2010; van Kersbergen and Vis 2014). Studies following its 1990 publication have been quick to point out that “the welfare state” is not an immovable force. It is far from a static, unmodifiable construction; rather, if there is a constant, it is permanent reform (van Kersbergen and Hemerijck 2012). Finally, while there are compelling arguments in favor of path-dependent three worlds whose legacies continue to be reflected in contemporary labor market styles and policies, there are also reasons why we might expect convergence of labor market policies despite differences in styles. In other words, rather than a distinctive three worlds approach where change tends to be bounded and incremental (Pierson 2000), perhaps due to the similarities in both the nature of the problems (e.g., low economic growth, demographic pressures) and the constraints countries face, we might expect converging patterns of labor market policy-making.1 This is clear in outcomes where there is some evidence that European welfare states seem to opt for similar policy approaches to permanent austerity: retrenchment and employment promotion. Moreover, we have witnessed near across-the-board lowering of replacement rates (Allan and Scruggs 2004; Korpi and Palme 2003) and a growing emphasis on activation and employability (Dinan 2018; Dingeldey 2007). Though we have not witnessed a race toward the bottom among European welfare states (Starke et al. 2008), we nevertheless take a critical approach to the durability of the regime type legacies for contemporary policy styles. In our empirical analyses, we therefore take a dynamic perspective of labor market policymaking in the three worlds represented by the four country cases. Social policies are of course not limited to employment and the labor market, though this policy area has been argued to be of critical relevance: “Of the many social institutions that are likely to be directly shaped and ordered by the welfare state, working life, employment and the labour market are perhaps the most important” (Esping-Andersen 1990, p. 141). Given the prominence of employment and unemployment in the Three Worlds, we therefore focus our analyses on this policy area.

Analysis To assess how persistent ideational and policy differences are in the realm of social policy, we present and discuss the trajectories of four sets of indicators. In addition to the three countries 92

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often seen as exemplary for the three worlds (Germany, Sweden, and the UK), we also draw on the Danish case. This allows us to go beyond inter-cluster comparisons and to complement these with intra-cluster comparisons between two universal welfare states featuring policymaking processes with strong social democratic parties and – at least historically – influential labor unions. In addition, we contrast these ideational and policy differences with the broad trends we find in OECD countries. As the first oil crisis in 1973 and the resulting stagflation marked the beginning of the end of the “golden age” of welfare capitalism and welfare state expansion, we start the time series in 1970. The over-time variation often exceeds the variation between countries. Because “the scores from the Three Worlds are based on characteristics values for a single year: circa 1980” (Scruggs 2014, p. 6), pronounced within-country changes and the fact that country differences observable in 1980 have faded, notions of persistent differences in countries’ social policy outputs and hence the significance of their different ideas and styles warrant further investigation. First, we look at the relative importance that governments in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the UK assigned to market allocation and (welfare) state intervention in their party manifestos. Second, we look at one of the most influential indicators in comparative welfare research and one of the main criteria used by Esping-Andersen (1990) to “locate” countries: the extent to which labor income is replaced during unemployment spells. Because it constitutes a reservation wage and is thus pivotal for the “democratic class struggle” (Korpi 1983), Esping-Andersen and other scholars in the power resources tradition (Korpi and Palme 2003) were particularly interested in unemployment insurance. Replacement rates, moreover, are the most important factor in the various measures of welfare state generosity. There is, however, a growing consensus that an exclusive focus on labor income replacement does not reflect the complexity of the multifaceted policy responses to the challenges of a globalized and post-industrialized (knowledge) economy. When we assess commonalities and differences in countries’ social policy outputs, welfare to workfare policies as well as professional training and qualification must also be considered when examining the extent to which countries have moved from reactive policies focused on compensation to more preventive social policies. In a third step, we therefore complement our discussion of the developments in passive income replacement in unemployment insurance with an assessment of the trajectories in active labor market policy (hereafter ALMP) spending. As a fourth bundle of indicators, we look at the different labor market policy strategies based on nuanced new data on punitive and enabling workfare reforms introduced by governments since 1980 (Horn et al. 2020).

Government ideology Power resources scholars such as Esping Andersen and Korpi have rightly stressed the effects of policy-making processes such as government partisanship and ideology for the variation in welfare state trajectories. To assess how much the worldviews that underlie welfare states (market based or welfare state based) differ and how persistent these differences are for policy-making, the solid line in Figures 8.1 and 8.2 indicates how much emphasis government parties place on market allocation versus welfare state intervention and egalitarianism (henceforth, we speak of market and welfare ideology). The first thing to note is that, at least on average, the popular contrast of the UK and Sweden seems justified. Swedish governments put, on average, twice as much emphasis on welfare ideology compared to British governments. Denmark and Germany lie between these extremes. The UK exhibits the highest average emphasis on market ideology, followed by Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. However, Figures 8.1 and 8.2 also suggest that the variation in these ideology 93

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Figure 8.2  Market ideology Notes: Y-axis values represent the share of manifestos cabinet parties devote to market ideology; calculated as in Horn (2017) using MARPOR (Volkens et al. 2019). Country means (and standard deviation): DK 7.16 (6.83), GER 6.35 (3.61), SWE 7.63 (4.73), UK 8.83 (6.94).

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scores is greater over time than between countries. This impression is confirmed when we turn to a comparison of standard deviations as a proxy for the dispersion. Ideology changes depend on the political coloring of governments rather than the country. For instance, the spikes in market ideology in Denmark match the breaks in the dominance of center-left governments. From 1968 until 1971, the government under Statsminister Hilmar Baunsgaard consisted of liberals, conservatives, and the social-liberals. Likewise, the high average market ideology value of the UK masks considerable differences between the Labour Party and the Conservatives and is driven by Thatcherism (from 1979 on). Similar partisanship effects are found in Sweden. Only in Germany are the differences between the parties somewhat muted. With the exception of the short-lived flirtation with neoliberalism by a coalition consisting of the Christian Democrats and the Liberals during Helmut Kohl’s first term in office, the ideological dispersion is comparatively low. The same can be said with regard to welfare ideology, though none of the German or British governments ever embraced the welfare state ideology to the same extent as governments led by social democrats in Sweden and Denmark in the 1970s. Finally, and although we believe the prevailing image here is one of variation over time and within country, we also find some indications of a cross-party welfare state consensus in the two universal welfare states, in particular after the 1990s. The center-right governments under Reinfeldt in Sweden (2006–2014) and Fogh Rasmussen in Denmark (2001–2009/2011) no longer openly challenged the welfare state, but rather pledged modernization in order to preserve it. The attempt of the center-right prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen to overbid the social democrats with a welfare campaign in the Danish general election 2019 is yet another example. Both of these center-right governments score higher on welfare ideology than either the UK Labour Party or the average OECD government.

Income replacement Esping-Andersen deemed the extent of income replacement so fundamental that he weighted this characteristic with the factor 2 in his influential decommodification index. Figure 8.3 shows how unemployment benefit replacement rates have changed since 1970 (based on Scruggs et al. 2017). These percentage scores factor in taxation (i.e., are net rates) and are modeled on workers with an average income and a long work history. As shown in Figure 8.3, the rates for a single and a head of a family (with a dependent spouse) follow a similar pattern in all countries and the OECD average. The levels of income replacement in the 1970s and the 1980s confirm the idea of egalitarian universal welfare states with high replacement rates, much less generous liberal welfare states, and conservative welfare states as being somewhere in the middle between these two poles. The rank order is also preserved for the average rates since 1970 until the end of the time series. In addition, if we calculate the between-country variation, it exceeds the variation we find within countries over time. Except for the German case, however, the visual inspection of Figure 8.3 makes it clear that the generosity changes over time are nonetheless crucial, as they call into question the idea that universal Nordic welfare states are still particularly generous regarding income replacement. While the sharp decline in generosity in the UK is the policy manifestation of the uptick in market ideology shown previously and cements the position of the UK as a residual welfare state, the net replacement rates in Denmark and Sweden are now on par with or lower than the ones in Germany. The German case is characterized by comparatively little change over time. The downward trend in Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom is a result of cutbacks and non-adjustments of nominal benefits and benefit maxima to increasing wage and price levels. This non-adjustment, whether strategic or not, is sometimes referred 95

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to as policy drift (Hacker 2004) and can result in even steeper declines in replacement rates than the ones we show for higher income groups (Jahn 2018; Horn 2019). For lower income groups, replacement rates are higher. We show how stark the differences can be depending on the respective income group in Figure 8.4. While Denmark, Sweden, and the UK all exhibit dramatic cutbacks for the middle- and high-income groups, low-income groups fare much better in the more egalitarian Nordic countries. For this group (50% of the mean income), the universal welfare states still stand out with near 100% replacement rates. However, this group is smaller than in countries like the UK due to the strong income compression achieved via sector-specific wage deals. For the broad Scandinavian middle class, the rates are (only) as generous as in Germany or most OECD countries. Yet, other differences we would anticipate based on the Three Worlds of welfare still exist. For instance, replacement rates across all income groups are very low in the UK, while the German focus on status preservation, as opposed to redistribution, means that even high-income groups receive a comparatively generous two-thirds of their previous incomes.

Active labor market policies Although the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating human and economic impacts make it painfully obvious that one should not underestimate the continued political, economic, and social importance of passive income replacement as a vital part of countries’ social policy profiles, scholars of the welfare state have long considered ALMPs equally important. Part of the new welfare policies that emerged in the 1990s, ALMPs aim to foster the labor market 96

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Figure 8.4  ALMP expenditures (% of GDP) Notes: Total public and mandatory private expenditure on active labor market programs as a percentage of GDP (OECD, 2017). Country means (and standard deviation) for: DK 1.49 (0.45), GER 1.00 (0.24), SWE 1.63 (0.55), UK 0.42 (0.18).

integration of low-skilled and unemployed individuals; in other words, these policies seek to prevent or end the use of passive unemployment benefits. ALMP is an extremely broad label (Bonoli 2010) and includes policy tools such as counselling and job-search assistance, subsidies to employers, direct employment and job-creation schemes, and various human capital investment approaches. In line with the social investment paradigm, ALMPs’ focus on employability and activation can be reactive – by bringing the unemployed back into employment – or anticipatory – by targeting groups at risk of unemployment, such as youth, the low-skilled, or single parents (Häusermann 2012). The effectiveness of ALMPs in promoting full employment appears to vary depending on the type of policy instrument, with “services and sanctions” found to be most effective in increasing the likelihood of employment (Kluve 2010). Critics of ALMPs are skeptical of their needs and not rights-based approach, which would seem to contradict the norms of universalism exemplified by the Nordic welfare regimes (Skevik 2005). ALMPs have become very popular tools, particularly for youth unemployment (Shore and Tosun 2019; Tosun et al. 2018), though they have by no means supplanted passive unemployment support, as we show later. As can be seen in Figure 8.5, ALMP has never become a prominent element in the labor market strategy of governments in the UK, irrespective of partisanship. Germany only experienced a moderate uptick in ALMP spending during the 1990s following German re-­unification, when unemployment was rising in eastern Germany due to the widespread liquidation of unproductive old state-owned enterprises. By contrast, both Denmark and Sweden reacted to the economic problems they faced in the early 1990s with an expansion of ALMP spending. Again, when looking only at averages, Sweden appears to be the polar opposite of the UK. However, from the 2000s onward, the trajectories of both Nordic universal welfare states diverge. While 97

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Income Replacement Rate 2010 (% of Income) Income Group Denmark Germany Sweden United Kingdom Average OECD

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Figure 8.5  Unemployment replacement rates by income group Note: Calculations based on Jahn (2018).

Sweden decreases its share of ALMP spending, Denmark maintained a strong focus on ALMP spending. This divergence of the policy trajectory becomes clearer once we move away from spending data to actual policy decisions. We would argue that these differences are much more dramatic than the differences between, for example, Germany and Sweden. If we think about labor market policy as a triangle that consists of (1) passive income insurance, (2) the mix of activation and sanctions, and (3) employment protection legislation, Germany and Sweden score similarly on these characteristics. ALMPs play a minor role and benefits are medium-high, but employment protection is high. Denmark, on the other hand, started to follow a strategy dubbed “flexicurity” (which originated in the Netherlands). To adapt faster to changing economic circumstances, the model combines low dismissal protection at the firm level (as in liberal countries such as the UK or the US; Madsen 2004) that leads to high turnover in the private sector with generous insurance and extensive efforts regarding retraining, requalification, and job placements. These enabling efforts are, however, frequently combined with punitive workfare measures. In tandem with decreasing benefit levels for most Danes, they could weaken the security aspect in flexicurity.

Enabling and punitive workfare While welfare state researchers agree that many welfare states have moved from welfare to workfare since the 1990s, they disagree as to whether punitive demands (e.g., stricter job search obligations with attached sanctions) or enabling demands (e.g., requirements to accept training to improve job qualifications) have come to dominate social protection against unemployment. Because new services and sanctions offered by public employment services are often relatively inexpensive (Kluve 2010) but nonetheless consequential, it is necessary to also look at the specific policies that governments implement and to assess whether they represent punitive or enabling workfare measures. In this section, we look at the punitive and enabling demands placed upon the jobless. Horn et al. (2020) have developed a measure to capture the balance between – and the occurrence and extent of – punitive (negative incentives) and enabling (positive incentives) workfare reforms. Both aspects are often bundled in the same laws, and both dimensions can be part of the so-called action or activation plans with which benefit claimants have to comply in order to receive benefits. In Figure 8.6, black dots indicate enabling measures and gray dots indicate punitive ones. We also show if reforms are aimed at specific subgroups (e.g., youth were often targeted in the UK) – with enabling policies in gray and punitive policies in black (the lines extend beyond the dots if more than one subgroup is targeted per reform). As Figure 8.5 shows, workfare reforms became more frequent since the early 1990s, when policy makers and academics discussed ways 98

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Figure 8.6  Enabling and punitive workfare Notes: Workfare balance database (Horn et al. 2020). A change of (−)1 indicates a reform; (−)2 indicates two reforms or one extensive reform. Country means (and standard deviation) for enabling workfare reforms: DK 0.34 (0.64), GER 0.06 (0.26), SWE 0.4 (0.7), UK 0.09 (0.28). Country means (and standard deviation) for punitive workfare reforms: DK −1.11 (1.30), GER −0.34 (0.76), SWE −0.17 (0.45), UK −0.83 (1.36). Lines indicate how many specific groups are targeted (e.g., −2 means that punitive reforms apply to two groups, e.g., the young, the old).

to react to rising unemployment in all four countries. The variation of punitive and enabling measures within countries over time clearly exceeds the variation between countries (in OECD countries, the standard deviation is 0.7 to 0.3 for enabling measures and 0.9 to 0.3 for punitive measures, ibid.). If we compare the frequencies of punitive and enabling reforms, the balance is tilted to the punitive side in all countries except Sweden. In the UK, which has been the most researched and discussed case of workfare, we find a one-sided focus on punitive measures. In that sense, Sweden and the UK seem to comply with the role of polar opposites assigned to them in our introduction. In between lie Denmark, with frequent enabling and punitive reforms, and Germany, which – with the exception of the “Hartz IV” reforms (Zohlnhöfer and Tosun 2018) – shows lower legislative activity on both aspects. If we turn to the intra-Scandinavian comparison, we find pronounced cross-country differences between the policy trajectories in Sweden and Denmark. In Denmark, the adjustment of the historically embedded “flexicurity model” (a mix of lax dismissal protection, high replacement rates in the event of job loss, and a strong qualification and requalification focus) since the early 1990s meant tighter eligibility criteria that contrast with previously (de facto) unconditional insurance benefits. The number of punitive reforms in Denmark is even higher than in the UK (though Figure 8.5 also shows that the Danish approach is far more balanced). In Sweden, by contrast, social democratic and bourgeois governments have also lowered replacement rates (as documented earlier) but focused on enabling rather than punitive workfare reforms. These different reactions are partly the result of the different causes attributed to the crises in both countries: The Swedish economic crisis of the early 1990s was rooted in a banking crisis 99

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and a credit crunch and not in labor market disincentives – a concern that was at the heart of the debate(s) in Denmark (Torfing 1999; Horn 2019). In sum, we find both evidence in favor of and against the idea of persistent country differences in social policy outputs along the lines of the liberal, conservative, and social democratic worlds of welfare. On the one hand, the UK and Sweden remain polar opposites on many of our labor-market related indicators throughout much of the time series – with the UK as the more market-based and less egalitarian case. We also see some commonalities between Sweden and Denmark that suggest common “legacies of universalism” (Horn and van Kersbergen 2020) – as manifested in the continued political support for low-income groups. On the other hand, some of the social policy differences between the conservative and the universal welfare states are not very robust over time. The generosity of income replacement for the broad middle class has declined sharply over time in both Nordic countries and is now on par with or lower than the generosity in Germany and many OECD countries. This could undermine the notion that “equality of the highest standards”, as opposed to the “equality of minimal needs as was pursued elsewhere”, helps to maintain the support of the middle class (Esping-Andersen 1990, p. 27). We also find considerable policy variation between Sweden and Denmark, as evidenced in their very different labor market policy responses to the economic crisis they experienced in the 1990s.

Unions in the three worlds While the causal forces behind the aforementioned changes and differences are beyond the scope of this chapter, they should be seen in light of the changing role of social partners, and unions more specifically. Social partners have various channels of influence in labor market policy-making and implementation. For example, they may exert a general political influence, such as in countries with strongly corporatist industrial relations. They can also influence policy implementation, such as the administration of employment services (Hugh et al. 1998). EspingAndersen’s (1990) typology also recognized the role of the social partners for the variation in welfare state arrangements, though the durability of these roles have been called into question (Crouch 2001; Ebbinghaus 2010). In all four countries, and in the OECD as a whole, unions have lost members and political influence, in particular over the social democratic parties with which they were once strongly aligned. The degree to which we continue to observe path-dependent historical legacies in the different regimes varies. For example, the social partners traditionally have not played a major role in social policy-making processes in the UK (McIlroy 2008), something which has remained more or less unchanged. In Germany, we have witnessed a dramatic decline in the strength of interest groups, with union membership having dropped nearly 50% since 1990. Due to their lowered coverage, German trade unions as well as business organizations have often pursued rather narrow and self-interested goals, thereby rendering them less attractive partners in the social policy-making process (Zohlnhöfer and Tosun 2018). Unions are often relegated to consultative roles, with government driving the reform process, for example in the German Hartz reforms (Ebbinghaus 2010). While German trade unions vehemently opposed the Hartz reforms, due to internal splits among the Social Democrats, they did not find a responsive government ally. The German policy style has therefore been described as having become less inclusive in terms of its representation of social interests (Zohlnhöfer and Tosun 2018). There are also differences in the foci of unions that help to explain the within-cluster variation between Denmark and Sweden regarding ALMP and workfare policies. While the LO, 100

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the major blue-collar union, in Sweden prioritizes wage solidarity, the LO in Denmark, which had to concede some of its previous power and influence regarding (consumptive) social policy and wage setting, has increasingly emphasized equal opportunities, education, and training in strategy papers since 1999 and started to push for training and qualification in centralized bargaining (Ibsen and Thelen 2017). By contrast, the Swedish LO pays less attention to worker qualification, upskilling, and training (ibid.). There are two complementary explanations for this development. First, during the labor conflict of 1998, the Danish union members rejected an agreement reached by their representatives, forcing the unions into a strike. The underlying sentiment was that the less-skilled workers started to feel abandoned by LO, which had consented to the (flexicurity) labor-market reforms that started around 1993. Thus, the LO increasingly factored in and focused on upskilling to sweeten the deal for these disenchanted low-skill workers. The second factor is flexicurity itself. Contrary to Sweden, Denmark always had less pronounced labor market protection rules – a difference that became even starker with the turn to flexicurity (Andersen 2019). In such a context of high job turnover, companies have fewer incentives to train and upskill employees, as they can adjust by firing and hiring. Unions therefore have to push for (public) investment. Both aspects help to understand why low-skill and vulnerable groups are a particularly important target of training in Denmark (Kvist 2015, p. 16). While Sweden’s unions have experienced a loss of influence, the policy style may still be characterized as consensus-oriented (Rathgeb 2018). The Danish case, on the other hand, has most dramatically veered off its historical pathway in terms of the role of unions in social policy-making processes. Denmark was long considered a model of corporatist policymaking (see e.g., Jørgensen and Schulze 2011), at least with regard to agricultural and labor market policy-making (Christiansen 2011). Union influence in Danish policy-making processes has been largely relegated to a weak lobbying role. The labor organizations that played a key role in the expansion of the Danish welfare state and its social rights were already on the decline in the late 1990s, with formal exclusion of unions in the decision-making process in 2007 (Jørgensen and Schulze 2011). The labor market policy reforms of the past two decades are indeed partly the result of the edging out of union influence in the policy-making process. Like the German case, we may perhaps speak of a less inclusive policy style than once observed.

Conclusion The main conclusion we can draw from our descriptive analyses of passive and active labor market policies and their ideational foundations is that one must exercise caution when applying the broad labels of the Three Worlds. In particular, when taking a dynamic view of labor market policies over the past half a century, we see not only a great deal of movement, but also important deviations from the expected patterns of the regime typology. In terms of policy styles and the ideational logics which underlie the three worlds of welfare which shape factors such as the political consensus on goals and their anticipatory or reactive dimensions (Richardson 1982), it is important to not overestimate their stability. Taking a long-term perspective, we do not find a great deal of evidence for continuity in labor market policy styles that inhabit specific worlds. While certain snapshots of the time series indicate a robust institutional legacy, when turning to the intra-regime comparison between Sweden and Denmark, we find that they are, at times, worlds apart. First, we find little evidence of static welfare values or ideas over time; rather, the worldviews expressed by policy makers vary more depending on the composition of government than 101

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according to regime type. In other words, we may find that a focus on parties helps us more in studying the evolution of policy outputs across the countries under consideration than static regime labels or styles (Zohlnhöfer and Tosun 2018). But deviations from the typologies can also be found depending on the type of labor market policy examined and do underscore the significance of continuity in ideas, styles, and regimes: While income replacement rates follow the expected regime pattern, there is a great deal of variation within cases. The priority of ALMPs has decreased in Sweden, while Denmark has sustained its focus on these policies. While nearly all countries examined tend to use sticks over carrots, Sweden stood out in that it showed a tendency toward enabling reforms. In other words, the comparison of the two Nordic countries furthermore underscored a departure from the regime type legacy. It should however be noted that the lack of consistent regime type differences can, to some extent, be explained by the variation in power resources, which is of course in line with Esping-Andersen’s (1990) argumentation. For example, the Danish social democrats were never as dominant as the Swedish social democrats (Horn 2019). What does this mean for the study of sectoral policy-making styles? There is ample indication that countries may “fall back on old habits” (Chung and Thewissen 2011) in times of crises, thereby implementing policies which reflect their institutional legacies (Jochem 2011), but our analyses highlighting the divergent policy trajectories in Denmark and Sweden indicate the need to examine the influence of such styles much more closely than has occurred in the regime-oriented research tradition.

Note 1 As Starke et al. (2008) explain, convergence might be expected due to increasing internationalization and globalization which constrains states’ room for maneuver (Chung and Thewissen 2011).

References Allan, J.P. and Scruggs, L., 2004. Political Partisanship and Welfare State Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies. American Journal of Political Science, 48 (3), 496–512. Andersen, T.M., 2019. The Danish Labor Market, 2000–2018. IZA World of Labor, 404. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.15185/izawol.404.v2. Béland, D., 2005. Ideas and Social Policy: An Institutionalist Perspective. Social Policy & Administration, 39 (1), 1–18. Bonoli, G., 2010. The Political Economy of Active Labor-Market Policy. Politics & Society, 38 (4), 435–457. Bonoli, G. and Natali, D., eds., 2012. The Politics of the New Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chung, H. and Thewissen, S., 2011. Falling Back on Old Habits? A  Comparison of the Social and Unemployment Crisis Reactive Policy Strategies in Germany, the UK and Sweden. Social Policy  & Administration, 45 (4), 354–370. Christiansen, P.M., 2011. The Usual Suspects: Interest Group Dynamics and Representation in Denmark. In: D. Halpin and G. Jordan, eds. The Scale of Interest Organization in Democratic Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 161–179. Crouch, C., 2001. Welfare State Regimes and Industrial Relations Systems: The Questionable Role of Path Dependency. In: B. Ebbinghaus and P. Manow, eds. Comparing Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy and Political Economy in Europe, Japan and the USA. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 105–124. Dinan, S., 2018. A Typology of Activation Incentives. Social Policy and Administration, 53 (1), 1–15. Dingeldey, I., 2007. Between Workfare and Enablement? The Different Paths to Transformation of the Welfare State: A Comparative Analysis of Activating Labour Market Policies. European Journal of Political Research, 46 (6), 823–851. 102

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Lister, R., Williams, F., Anttonen, A., et al., 2007. Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe: New Challenges for Citizenship Research in a Cross-National Context. Bristol: Policy Press. Madsen, P., 2004. The Danish Model of ‘Flexicurity’: Experiences and Lessons. Transfer, 2 (4), 187–204. Marshall, T.H., 1950. Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto. Mätzke, M., 2011. Political Competition and Unequal Social Rights. Journal of Public Policy, 31 (1), 1–24. McIlroy, J., 2008. Ten Years of New Labour: Workplace Learning, Social Partnership and Union Revitalization in Britain. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 46 (2), 283–313. OECD, 2017. Social Expenditure: Aggregated data, OECD Social Expenditure Statistics. Database. [Downloaded 11 July 2017]. Palier, B., ed., 2010. A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? The Politics of Welfare Reforms in Continental Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Pfau-Effinger, B., 2005. Culture and Welfare State Policies: Reflections on a Complex Interrelation. Journal of Social Policy, 34 (1), 3–20. Pierson, P., 2000. Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics. American Political Science Review, 94 (2), 251–267. Rathgeb, P., 2018. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers: Labor Market Policy in the Era of Liberalization. Ithaca: ILR Press an imprint of Cornell University Press. Richardson, J., 1982. Policy Styles in Western Europe. Winchester: Allen and Unwin. Schmidt, V.A., 2008. Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse. Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (1), 303–326. Scruggs, L., 2014. Social Welfare Generosity Scores in CWED 2: A Methodological Genealogy. CWED Working Paper Series 01. Scruggs, L., Jahn, D. and Kuitto, K., 2017. Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset 2. Version 2017–09. University of Connecticut and University of Greifswald. Shore, J. and Tosun, T., 2019. Assessing Youth Labour Market Services: Young People’s Perceptions and Evaluations of Service Delivery in Germany. Public Policy and Administration, 34 (1), 22–41. Skevik, A., 2005. Women’s Citizenship in the Time of Activation: The Case of Lone Mothers in “NeedsBased” Welfare States. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 12 (1), 42–66. Starke, P., Obinger, H. and Castles, F.G., 2008. Convergence Towards Where: In What Ways, if Any, Are Welfare States Becoming More Similar? Journal of European Public Policy, 15 (7), 975–1000. Stjernø, S., 2008. Social Democratic Values in European Welfare States. In: W. van Oorschot, M. Opielka and B. Pfau-Effinger, eds. Culture and Welfare State: Values and Social Policy in Comparative Perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 50–70. Torfing, J., 1999. Workfare with Welfare: Recent Reforms of the Danish Welfare State. Journal of European Social Policy, 9 (1), 5–28. Tosun, J., Treib, O. and De Francesco, F., 2018. The Impact of the European Youth Guarantee on Active Labour Market Policies: A Convergence Analysis. International Journal of Social Welfare, 28 (4), 358–368. van Kersbergen, K. and Hemerijck, A., 2012. Two Decades of Change in Europe: The Emergence of the Social Investment State. Journal of Social Policy, 41 (3), 475–492. van Kersbergen, K. and Vis, B., 2014. Comparative Welfare State Politics: Development, Opportunities, and Reform. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Volkens, A. et al., 2019. The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG/CMP/MARPOR). Version 2019b. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). Available from: https://doi. org/10.25522/manifesto.mpds.2019b [Accessed 9 June 2020]. Wilensky, H.L., 1975. The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press. Zohlnhöfer, R. and Tosun, J., 2018. Policy Styles in Germany: Still Searching for the Rationalist Consensus? In: M. Howlett and J. Tosun, eds. Policy Styles and Policy-Making: Exploring the Linkages. Abingdon: Routledge, 45–69.

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9 Policy styles in healthcare Understanding variations in health systems Azad Singh Bali and Adam Hannah

Introduction The current pandemic has renewed emphasis on the organisation of health systems, particularly in the context of responses to the global health crisis. A recurring theme in such analyses are variations in how health services are delivered and paid for and the types of state and non-state actors involved. In this chapter we seek to better understand how health systems are structured by revisiting the concept of ‘policy styles’. Policy styles are long-developed and routinised approaches of governments to problem-solving and policymaking (Richardson 1982; Howlett and Tosun 2018). Developed in the 1980s, the concept emphasises that in most sectors policymaking revolves around a similar set of actors, institutions, instruments and ideas for extended periods of time. This in turn contributes to a typical set of policy processes or procedures and actors. Policy styles have traditionally been conceptualised as a combination of how governments approach problem-solving and its relationship with actors involved in the policy process (Richardson 1982). There is an implicit argument in the earlier studies of policy styles that countries display distinctive national styles which are shaped by country-specific governance traditions, administrative and bureaucratic practices, and the types of institutions involved in the policy process (Howlett 2002; Bevir and Rhodes 2001; Castles 1998). More recently, Howlett and Tosun (2018) expand Richardson’s model of policy styles, focussing on the types of actors involved and how interests are intermediated in the policymaking process. Within the policy sciences, the concept of policy styles resonates with dynamics of incrementalism offered in punctuated equilibrium theory and with the dynamics of change associated in the advocacy coalition framework. However, despite the advances in the policy sciences of similar theoretical concepts such as regimes, paradigms, policy mixes, and subsystems, policy styles remain under-theorised (Howlett and Tosun 2018). Recent efforts to theorise policy styles have focussed on clarifying the unit of analysis, as well as the appropriate level of analysis. The former focusses on the behaviour of policy agents and how the institutional context within which they operate shapes their behaviour. The latter focusses on the level of government or jurisdictions. That is, are there distinct national, sectoral and agency-level policy styles?

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The focus of this chapter is on healthcare and identifying policy styles within the sector. It advances two substantive arguments. First, health systems are organised and structured to advance three principal goals: pooling of financial risks, delivering services and paying for healthcare. This brings together a finite set of actors, ideas and instruments that are involved in pursuing these goals, which in turn shapes long-term policy dynamics and processes within the sector. Thus, a sectoral health policy style is intricately linked with the need to satisfy functional prerequisites of the sector (namely provision, financing and payment). This is analogous to, for example, the way institutions and societal structures inform national policy styles. Second, despite some convergence in recent years, we observe variations within sectoral health policy styles across countries. That is, similar to national policy styles countries can also display distinctive sectoral health policy styles. Using Cashore and Howlett’s policy elements framework, this variation can be understood at the macro level in terms of ideas, actors and implementation preferences, at the meso level in terms of policy instruments and at the micro level in terms of characteristics of policy change. Here we see that sectoral styles can vary at the macro and meso levels but show remarkable similarity at the micro level. Our chapter thus offers two contributions to the literature. It conceptualises a sectoral policy style in healthcare and shows how this sectoral style can vary across countries.

Conceptualising policy styles in healthcare To better understand policy styles within the sector, we adapt the Cashore-Howlett model of policy composition (Cashore and Howlett 2007). Health policy styles can be understood across the three nested levels as illustrated in Table  9.1. At the macro level, health policy styles are shaped by the societal acceptance of risk pooling, universalism, and the types of actors involved in the health system. This in turn shapes the broad implementation preferences such as using market-based instruments like private insurance in the United States or tax-based instruments such as the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. The influence of macro-level ideas, actors and institutions is much the same as would be expected from the national policy styles literature. However, here we argue that much of the distinctiveness of sectoral styles in health policy actually comes from the selection and combination of policy instruments at the meso level. These include, for example, social health insurance in countries like Germany, Korea and Japan and tax-financed care in Hong Kong, Canada and Cuba. We suggest that the need to satisfy certain functional prerequisites in the health sector concerning provision, financing and payment tends to create a long-developed and lasting confluence of actors, ideas and institutions that shape policy processes within the sector. As Freeman (1985) reminds us, “each sector poses its own problems, sets its own constraints, and generates its own brand of conflict”. Specifically, certain types of health systems provide different opportunities and mechanisms for responding to public demands and problem pressures. For example, while the rising cost of care is a problem for almost all health systems, the ways in which this might be addressed, and whether governments tend towards inclusion or imposition, will largely be dependent on the mechanisms by which healthcare is paid for. At the micro level, this macro and meso stability tends to drive policymaking towards frequent recalibrations of how instruments are deployed rather than a systematic reconception of the settlements previously made between actors, such as professionals and providers, insurers, bureaucrats and government.

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Policy styles in healthcare Table 9.1  Nested levels of health policy styles Macro – ideas, actors and institutions

Meso – sectoral instruments and prerequisites

Micro – policy processes

Definition – similar to national styles, these are long-term actors, institutions and ideas that shape policymaking processes. What dominant ideas, actors and institutions are involved in the sector? What general norms guide implementation preferences?

Definition – stem from the need to respond to sector-specific functional prerequisite. What specific types of instruments are utilised to achieve provision, financing and payment functions? What consequences do instrument-level choices have for the relative influence of different actors (e.g. private providers and insurance, bureaucracy)?

Definition – the typical characteristics of sectoral policy change (such as path dependency, layering, bricolage). To what extent do policy processes allow/facilitate change? Are there frequent calibrations to provision, financing, payment?

Macro characteristics of sectoral styles At the macro level, there are broad values and ideas about the appropriate role of government in the health sector and the general acceptance of concepts such as risk pooling, the general scope of actors involved in health policy and the degree of existing private sector involvement, and the nature of political institutions. In general terms, we can conceive of the core characteristics of a health sector policy style – such as centralised decision-making about the rationing of care and remuneration for providers with little input from sectoral actors (what Burau and Blank 2006 call ‘command-and-control’ systems) – as being underpinned by these macro-level variables. At the same time, we recognise that the relationship between macro-level variables and policy style is not necessarily deterministic or necessarily downwards. As will be discussed, in many cases policy choices follow ‘accidental’ rather than paradigmatic logics (Tuohy 1999). What has come to look like a more or less coherent policy style may have been contingent on certain actors winning a power struggle at an opportune moment or the historical legacy of decisions made for much more narrow reasons.

Ideas The policy studies literature is replete with a variety of typologies and groupings of ideas. These generally include elements ranging from more specific ‘policy solutions’, ‘problem definitions’, ‘frames’ or ‘casual beliefs’ to broader ‘cognitive paradigms’, ‘core beliefs’ or ‘public philosophies’ (Mehta 2010; Goldstein and Keohan 1993; Campbell 2002; Béland and Waddan 2015). How should we negotiate these various conceptions when thinking about variations in health policy styles? First, regardless of how we choose to label them, it seems reasonable to begin from a point of recognising that ideas may exist in relation to macro-, meso- and micro-level questions about policy and politics. At a macro level, health policy is shaped by generally accepted values or orthodoxies that influence the development of social policy. These ideas may guide thinking on issues such as: • •

The need for decommodification. The merits of universalism.

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• •

The desirability of ‘choice’ and ‘efficiency’ as guiding principles. The legitimacy of certain actors or professions.

At the macro level, ideas may sometimes be difficult to identify explicitly. Instead, political and policy actors will often speak to meso-level ideas and frames that relate to the appropriate use of policy instruments in healthcare specifically. The issues may include: • • • •

The appropriateness of contracting out provision of health services or private ownership of hospitals. Localised decision-making. Creation of competitive markets between providers, including ‘patient choice’. Acceptance of rationing as against other methods of cost control, such as co-payments.

Where political actors can make persuasive links between salient problems in healthcare, such as increasing costs, widely accepted values and preferred policy instruments, they stand some chance of shaping policy outcomes. At the same time, it does not necessarily follow that policy styles are determined by overarching and stable sets of ideas, as in Hall’s (1993) conception of a ‘policy paradigm’. In some cases, there may be relative consistency between broad approaches to social policy. For example, given the dominance of its Social Democratic Party during the post-war era, Sweden’s welfare state was once seen as a reasonably unified ‘model’, deriving from principles such as folkhemmet (‘the people’s home’), consistently articulated by party leaders during this period (Tilton 1990). The publicly financed and operated national health service that emerged in the late 1960s can be seen as consistent with the broader model (see Immergut 1992, pp. 212–221). However, not all cases follow the Swedish example. While Esping-Andersen’s (1990) distinction between liberal, conservative and social democratic welfare states is well known, Bambra (2005) finds that, aside from the United States, even countries that do not apply principles of universal access or social insurance tend to do so in healthcare. It is important to recognise that, even though the purpose of the policy ‘style’ concept is to identify patterns of policymaking over time, the ideas that shape a nation’s health policy style are far from static or immune from contestation. New sets of ideas (or re-articulations of old ones), especially those that are able to speak to problems or frustrations in healthcare systems, can be used by those looking to reshape policy systems. For example, it is well known that the rise of neoliberalism has been associated with reforms aimed at introducing markets, consumer choice and private provision across the world (Dahlgren 2008; Gingric 2011; Homedes and Ugalde 2005; McGregor 2001). At the same time, while neoliberalism may be regarded as the set of policy ideas most dominant since the 1980s, it is also not the case that its rise has seen the wholesale replacement of existing policy styles. Rather, change has more closely resembled a more gradual process of layering, conversion, hybridisation or bricolage. The macro-level ideas that guide health policy thus demonstrate a degree of flexibility or ambiguity, characteristics variously described as ‘vehicular’, ‘polysemic’ or ‘chameleonic’ in the literature (McLennan 2004; Béland and Cox 2016; Smith 2013; Hannah and Baekkeskov 2020). In some cases, these gradual meso-level changes may be designed to protect the underlying values or characteristics of a health policy system. For example, some centre-left governments have embraced market-based reform not as a way of fundamentally attacking the basis of existing health systems but to ensure the ongoing viability of systems with universal access, under conditions of fiscal constraint (Gingrich 2011).

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Institutions and actors While ideas have influence over policy styles, the nature and scope of their influence is shaped and limited by the broader political and policy context that they exist in. In the first instance, ideas require believers and advocates with sufficient institutional power to embed them in the functioning of systems and institutions. Moreover, while these actors will advocate for particular substantive and procedural policy instruments, and in doing so may make use of particular ideational frames, the causes of their policy preference may be fundamentally based in perceptions of their own self-interest or institutional position. In this manner, the influence of the medical profession is often discussed in the literature. On the one hand, we can identify instances where medical professionals have had power through ideas: their institutional position is partly legitimised by the acceptance of certain ideas (Carstensen and Schmidt 2015). For example, Moran (1995) argues that the ‘meso-corporatism’, which characterised the first several decades of the function of Britain’s National Health Service, was supported by a ‘legitimising ideology’ that venerated medical professionalism above other forms of knowledge and authority. At the same time, Immergut (1992) notes the extent to which the power of doctors in shaping the development of healthcare systems has been mediated by the degree to which they have been able to make use of veto points in legislative systems. The US system is perhaps the classic example, with health policy being in many ways both shaped by and reflective of the broader institutional system. By using the veto-laden legislative process, interest groups have been able to push back against efforts to institute greater national government involvement in various aspects of the health system, thus buying time to further embed a fragmented system that is far more dependent on private provision and financing than is found in most other nations (Quadagno 2005). Other macro-level institutional elements relevant to the development of health policy styles may include state capacity and general administrative traditions. For example, the current Dutch system of a highly regulated health insurance market can be seen as an evolution of its existing corporatist tradition (Helderman et al. 2012). In other cases, health policy is shaped by the dynamics of a particular political regime, such as was the case for South Korea’s healthcare system, which initially served as legitimation for the country’s then authoritarian government (Kwon 2008).

International advocacy and the diffusion of ideas Another macro factor shaping health policy styles relates to the political economy of international advocacy and the diffusion of ideas. For example, the administrative and structural reforms in public service delivery through the 1990s encouraged by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund saw the liberalisation and decentralisation of many health systems in developing Asia. Similarly, dominant orthodoxy in the international health policy community around how healthcare providers should be paid has shaped policy choices of governments.

‘Accidental logics’: from the meso to the macro One danger in seeking to explain health policy styles is to assume that health systems are the consequence of deliberate or considered design. Of course, in some cases, policymaking may be dominated by a particular party or regime, which therefore has the opportunity to build a more or less coherent policy system. Singapore’s healthcare system provides such an example, where

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the six-decade rule of the People’s Action Party has fostered a policy system characterised by technocracy and the pursuit of efficiency (Barr 2008). Singapore is, however, far from the norm. More commonly, political actors, and the ideas that they carry, do not hold power in perpetuity. However, if they can take advantage of a policy window, even brief holds on power can shape a policy style well beyond the point where powerful actors sincerely ‘believe’ in the underlying logic. Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh politician who is often credited as the architect of Britain’s NHS, was particularly focussed on creating a system that valued equity above all. However, his tenure as health minister was as part of a six-year Labour government that was the only one in an almost thirty-year period otherwise dominated by the Conservatives, who held to rather different ideas about health policy (Klein 2019). In Australia, a mixed system of public and private insurance and hospitals has emerged as a ‘synthetic policy paradigm’, the result of parallel efforts by Liberal and Labor governments over several decades to embed their preferred forms of financing and provision (Kay 2007). In other cases, health systems logics may be even more ‘accidental’, with styles appearing as the collections of meso-level instruments and processes that have emerged over time (Tuohy 1999). Again, the United States provides a classic example. That approximately half of its citizens receive health insurance through an employer is not the consequence of any clear policy agenda but rather has its origins in World War II–era wage freezes and subsequent negotiations between business and labour (Starr 1982). The longer-term consequences can be seen in the reform effort of 2009/10, when the Obama administration felt it necessary to negotiate directly with the insurance industry to avoid the threat of backlash (Oberlander 2010). At the same time, we may also identify cases in which broad characteristics of health policy are the result of more functional concerns with meso-level policy choices. For example, the extent of state regulation of health insurance in South Korea may be seen as a partial consequence of the shift from a multiple-fund insurance model to a unified single scheme (Kwon 2008). Finally, as the scope of healthcare has expanded, so has the range of influential actors, organisations and structures at the meso level and the nature of their relationship to the state. For example, there is now a detailed literature on the role of ‘hybrid’ middle managers in healthcare organisations, those who straddle professional and organisational boundaries and thus act as ‘knowledge brokers’ (Burgess and Currie 2013). In other cases, ‘health technology assessment’ agencies have become popular tools in decision-making around the allocation of resources in healthcare (Garrido et al. 2008). Importantly, early studies of the spread of these instruments suggest a lack of clear relationship to a broader policy regime type (Löblová 2016). To reiterate, health systems are composed of complex policy ‘mixes’, with instruments often layered on top of one another by governments of diverse ideological background, while facing variable short-term conditions and various forms of path dependence and institutional constraint. While macro-level variables play an important role in understanding the dynamics of the policy styles that result, it is critical to recognise that the relationship between meso and macro is interactive rather than deterministic. With this in mind, in the next section we turn to a closer examination of the policy instruments that make up healthcare systems.

Meso characteristics of sectoral styles Most of the discussion in the preceding section has focussed on conceptualising a sectoral policy style and how macro-level variables shape policy styles within the sector. However, if we examine how health systems pursue the provision, financing and payment of services we observe distinctive choices in the types of instruments and tools deployed. These meso-level variables are typically ignored in comparative studies of health systems that tend to emphasise 110

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how actors, ideas and institutions shape policy choices (Esping-Andersen 1996; Moran 2000; Harris and Milkis 1989; Jochim and May 2010; Preker and Harding 2003). In this section we look at how three health policy goals of provision, financing and payment are given effect and the implications these have for policy processes within the health sector. Health systems have many objectives: improving the health of populations; improving the responsiveness to the population they serve; ensuring that everyone has access to quality healthcare; and ensuring that the burden of healthcare expenditure is equitably distributed in society (WHO 2010). In the aggregate, however, we may observe three overarching goals: (a) provision (how healthcare services are delivered); (b) financing (how the society pools resources to pay for healthcare); and (c) payment (how healthcare providers are paid). The policy processes in the health sector are intricately linked with how policy goals are given effect, because a finite set of actors, institutions and instruments are involved in the provision, financing and payment of health services (Table 9.2). Choices across these three dimensions have evolved gradually, reflecting domestic policy priorities, dominant ideas around the role of the governments in social policy and the interests of elites (Moran 1995; Tuohy 1999; Kwon 2008; Ramesh and Bali 2019).

Table 9.2  Core health system goals and policy processes Goal

Description

Implications for policy process

Provision

How are healthcare services delivered? Examples: Public or private hospitals, community hospitals, not-for-profit hospitals owned by charitable or religious organisations, health maintenance organisation

Financing

How are resources pooled to pay for healthcare? Tax-funded, social health insurance, private health insurance, voluntary private insurance, medical savings accounts, community and micro insurance programs

Payment

How are providers paid for healthcare services? Salaries, fee-for-service, capitation, case-based payments, diagnostic-related groups, grants

In hierarchical health systems, where state actors are actively involved in the provision of care, policy processes tend to be characterised by centralised decision-making. For example, it is easier for governments to introduce changes and react to problems and healthcare crises, as it can exercise its ownership of hospitals (Ramesh 2008) and impose decisions. Processes are expected to be more deliberative, participative and consultative in systems where non-state actors play a key role in the provision of healthcare. For example, India had to introduce regulations and protocols for private hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. Health systems in politically contestable societies or in countries that have higher electoral competition tend to have policy processes that seek to expand public risk pools (Ramesh and Asher 2000; Datta 2020; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). Policy processes in health systems that rely on tax financing and social insurance to pool risks are characterised by greater stability as the underlying actors, ideas and institutions involved and their interests are consistent. All payment tools involve policy processes that are steeped in bargaining, negotiations and consensus building as they directly affect the material interests of healthcare providers. This is particularly the case in health systems that rely on fees for services and fee schedules.

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The provision of healthcare The provision of healthcare largely refers to human resources (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc.) and physical capital (hospitals, pharmacies, diagnostic laboratories, etc.) that are involved in the delivery of services. A common distinction in the literature and in contemporary policy debates is the extent to which the government is involved in the provision of care. In many countries such as China, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, public hospitals (i.e. those that are owned by the government or a government agency) account for an overwhelming share. On the other extreme, private hospitals account for a majority of care provided in South Korea, Netherlands, the United States and India. Most health systems, however, have come to rely on a mix of public and private hospitals in delivering services (Figure 9.1). While it is common that public hospitals are mostly subsidised by the government (e.g. Hong Kong, Australia, Canada), in many countries such as Singapore, Thailand, China and Vietnam patients either pay out of pocket or their health plan pays for their treatment at public hospitals. Similarly, private hospitals also receive funding from government programs (including Medicare) when they treat patients enrolled in a government health plan, or through targeted subsidies, or through subsidies such as concessions on land in India. This gives rise to public-private mix in the provision and in financing of healthcare services as depicted in Figure 9.1. In countries that have an overwhelming majority of care provided at public hospitals (Singapore, Thailand, Sweden and China) or where most services are publicly financed (Australia, UK, Thailand, Japan), governments have greater leverage in steering the sector and in shaping policy processes. On the other hand, policy processes need to accommodate competing interests of private actors in health systems such as in the USA and India (Figure 9.1).

100% Public Provision

Singapore

Philippines

100% Private Financing

China

Hong Kong Australia

Indonesia

India

USA

Thailand

Sweden

UK

100% Public Financing

Japan

Korea

Netherlands

100% Private Provision

Figure 9.1  Public-private mix in provision and financing of healthcare in select health systems Source: Authors’ estimates from various sources

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The financing of healthcare This largely refers to how resources are collected or pooled in society to pay for healthcare (Blomqvist 2011). While provision of health services is relatively straightforward, multiple arrangements are used to organise healthcare financing and payment. Historically, there were no risk-pooling mechanisms to pay for healthcare. Healthcare providers were paid on a fee basis, the fee varying with what the patient could afford. Public financing and delivery of healthcare was limited to royal families and their appointed political officials (Chapman 1984). However, the 19th and 20th centuries witnessed the growing role of the state in all areas of service delivery, and governments started to play a more active role in the financing and delivery of healthcare services. In some cases, the design of financing schemes has arisen out of historical circumstances and subsequent path dependencies. For example, some countries, such as the Netherlands, have leveraged pre-existing voluntary sickness funds as a means of introducing a compulsory insurance program (Helderman et al. 2005). In other places, the choice of policy tools employed to pool revenue stem from ideological predilections. For instance, until very recently the Singapore government considered any tax-financed healthcare plan which was based on the principles of universalism as anathematic (Ramesh and Bali 2019), and efforts to increase the role governments play in the healthcare sector in the United States are often decried as ‘socialism by stealth’ (see for example Marmor et al. 2005; Beland et al. 2016). The most common health financing instruments are taxes, social health insurance, private or commercial health insurance, out of pocket payments, health savings accounts, surcharges on tobacco or levies on income, etc. as outlined in Table 9.3. The list of countries in the table is not exhaustive but representative of the different types of financing tools used. Certain financing tools are associated with policy processes that are more stable, as they are outcomes of extensive bargaining and previous political battles. For example, taxes and social insurance to pay for healthcare are anchored firmly in social contracts in society and negotiations with labour unions respectively. These are thus associated with more stable and consultative processes relative to private insurance or medical savings accounts. General taxation: this is the most commonly used instrument to pool revenue, and it accounts for a large share of total healthcare expenditure in most advanced economies (Figure 9.2). Taxfinanced healthcare is one of the most comprehensive means of risk pooling across a society, notwithstanding the regressivity in certain tax systems. Taxation is increasingly being used to pay for healthcare even in developing economies, which are assumed to have lower fiscal capacities. This is primarily because it eschews (to some extent) the challenges with contributory approaches (for example, covering the informal poor) to extend healthcare coverage. Social health insurance (SHI) is mandatory contributions levied on wage income that are earmarked to pay for healthcare expenditure. SHI is a common instrument used to pool revenue in most Western European societies but also plays a role in health systems in East and Southeast Asia. In most cases, the contribution is shared by the employer and employee, and in some instances the government also contributes to the social insurance fund. The accumulated funds are then used to purchase healthcare services for members of the SHI program. In some countries such as Philippines and India, the SHI provides healthcare services similar to an integrated healthcare program. SHI programs are earmarked to be spent only on healthcare and do not face the same competing pressures from other public expenditure priorities. It is also attractive to policymakers, as governments find it easier to raise revenue to pay for specific expenditures that are earmarked rather than raising the overall tax rates (Blomqvist 2011). Commercial insurance: commercially priced private insurance is another common instrument used to pay for healthcare expenditure. There are very few health systems (Switzerland, Netherlands, the United States, and Israel) which rely extensively on commercial insurance to finance 113

Azad Singh Bali and Adam Hannah Table 9.3  Health financing tools Tool

Degree of risk pooling

Definition

Countries where these are predominantly used

General taxation

Highest (pools taxes on all income and gains)

Revenues collected from all sources and paid to the general account of the government

Canada United Kingdom Hong Kong Thailand Mexico Ireland New Zealand Italy Spain Nordic Countries

Social health insurance

High (pooling Mandatory contributions charged as only based on a share of wages of employees and labour-income) paid to a social insurance fund

China Philippines Vietnam Japan Korea Taiwan Israel

Private health insurance

Moderate (pooling based on participation)

United States Netherlands Switzerland

Mandatory or voluntary payments made to a private commercial organisation to buy insurance

Medical savings Low accounts

Mandatory or voluntary individual Singapore savings accounts to pay for healthcare for individuals or families

Out of pocket payments

Payments made to healthcare provider India directly by an individual, without Vietnam any element of risk pooling

Nil

Source: Authors

healthcare. In the developing world, commercial insurance plays a small role, financing less than 20 percent of total healthcare spending. However, over the past decade it is increasingly used in large developing countries such as China and India to extend healthcare coverage. The premiums for these insurance products, however, are paid for by governments through tax revenues. Medical savings account (MSAs): these are individual savings accounts which may be voluntary (United States, South Africa) or mandatory (Singapore), where individuals save part of their monthly wages to defray future healthcare expenditure. Even in Singapore, where MSAs are compulsory, they account for less than 10 percent of total healthcare spending (Ramesh and Bali 2019). Out of pocket payments (OOP): as the name suggests these are payments made by individuals or households without any pre-payment or risk pooling. That is, medical care is purchased directly. OOP manifests itself in large measure when public and private risk-pooling arrangements fail to adequately defray healthcare expenditure or when it is required as a cost-sharing tool to moderate demand for care. In many countries in South Asia, OOP payments account for a majority of healthcare expenditure (Figure 9.3). 114

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Source: OECD (2019)

Figure 9.2  Health expenditure by type of financing tool, 2017

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Policy styles in healthcare

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Source: World Bank (2019)

Figure 9.3  Out of pocket payments for healthcare, 2017

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Policy styles in healthcare

The payment of healthcare This refers to how healthcare providers (doctors, hospitals, diagnostic laboratories) are paid for services provided (Table 9.4). Fee-for-service (FFS) is used to reimburse specific services provided by healthcare providers. Open-ended fees (without any caps or regulations) are what most healthcare providers traditionally charged patients and were based entirely on market conditions. In recent years, negotiated fees and regulated-fee schedules have become popular. Despite many challenges associated with FFS payments (perverse incentives, over-supply, high administrative costs – see Liu (2003) for a useful summary), many health systems continue to rely on FFS to reimburse care (Zuvekas et al. 2016). This partially stems from the powerful political influence of healthcare providers (Fuchs 2011; Pauly 2009). FFS payments were also central to the mainstream reform orthodoxy during the 1980s and early 1990s which encouraged governments (with limited fiscal capacity) to allow healthcare providers to generate some of their revenue from user charges instead of relying on government revenue. This reform prescription (at that time) had the imprimatur of the World Bank advice to governments, which argued that FFS was economically more efficient than other payment instruments. Capitation reimburses providers a periodic fixed amount per insured person in exchange for a defined package of services. It essentially transfers the risk from insurers to the healthcare provider. Many healthcare providers who are employed at hospitals are paid a fixed salary. While large hospitals find it easier to hire and negotiate contracts with doctors on a salary basis, they may still charge patients on a fee-for-service basis as is the practice in many Asian economies including Singapore, India, China and Sri Lanka. Case payment or diagnostic related groups (DRGs) pay healthcare providers a fixed amount regardless of the type or quantity of services they provide. It was first introduced in the United States and is widely used (at least in principle) in many Asian economies in their universal coverage reforms (e.g. Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines). The essential idea is that the cost for treating a patient within one diagnostic group should be as similar as possible. Each patient is assigned a diagnostic group when they are admitted based on several criteria. The provider is then paid according to relative weights assigned to that particular case (reflecting the relative costs of different diagnostic groups).

Table 9.4  Types of payment tools Individual practitioner

Medical institution

Time based

Salary

Fixed budget allocations

Service based

Fee-for-service, user charges, target payments

Fee-for-service, per diem, budget based on utilisation

Population based

Per capita payment, territorial payment

Block grant (based on population or historical budget)

Source: Ensor and Langenbrunner (2002)

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Discussion The previous discussion highlights wide variation in how health systems pursue three key goals: provision, financing and payment. These in turn are shaped by dominant ideas and a finite set of actors and institutions that are involved in pursuing these goals. These distinctive choices constrain the ‘degrees of freedom’ and circumscribe policy dynamics and processes within the sector. That is, health policymaking is anchored in the ideas that were institutionalised following earlier political battles and periods of development, around universalism, types of actors and instruments. For example, in systems where public hospitals deliver most services, such as Canada, Singapore and Thailand, it is hard to conceive of private hospitals coming to play more than an ancillary role while there is reasonable satisfaction with the status quo. Similarly, where private hospitals dominate, such as in South Korea and India, there is limited incentive for government to challenge entrenched interests and take on additional responsibility for their operation and management. In terms of financing, despite repeated policy efforts governments find it extremely challenging to move away from the dominant instruments used to pool revenue. For example, in the United States efforts to expand the scope of Medicare to cover the non-elderly have repeatedly failed; similarly despite the limited efficacy of Medisave in achieving its policy goals (see Ramesh and Bali 2019) the Singapore government has been unable to meaningfully change how healthcare is financed. Most health policy reforms end up layering the health system with newer financing tools (e.g. in Singapore with Medishield Life, in India with PM-JAY, in the United States with the Affordable Care Act). At the same time, in systems still undergoing a process of expansion, arrangements are often less firmly embedded. Across the developing world there is a convergence in the types of instruments used for pursuing financing and payment goals. There is a move to non-­ contributory approaches to financing, where citizens do not pay for healthcare. China and India are relying on insurance to expand health coverage with the government paying premiums. Similarly, in Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico tax-financed healthcare is central to current health policy reforms. In terms of payments, we observe a convergence towards using DRGs and capitation tools across most countries and away from FFS (with the exception of the United States).

Micro characteristics of policy styles The micro characteristics of policy styles focus on the typical characteristics of sectoral policy change. That is, to what extent policy processes allow or facilitate change. In the context of the discussion in the preceding section on provision, financing and payment, are there frequent changes in policy settings or calibrations? We observe a distinct sectoral style here that is shaped by inherent stability and an inertia to change. This is in part shaped by the inherently political nature of healthcare reform and that the functional prerequisites of the sector relating to provision, financing and payment involve navigating entrenched interests of a distinct set of actors and elites and a dominant orthodoxy that governs the sector. This results in dynamics within the sector that are entrenched and path-dependent. Therefore, policy processes within the sector are increasingly characterised by (a) calibrations (or introducing changes to existing policy settings – Capano and Howlett 2020); (b) patching (correcting flaws in existing programs and allowing them to adapt to changing circumstances – Howlett and Rayner 2013); and (c) layering (where new elements are added within existing regimes thus allowing policies to accrete) rather than by a significant change in the ideas, actors or institutions involved in the sector. For example, recent universal coverage reforms in Singapore expanded 118

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the membership criteria of its existing insurance-based program, Medishield Life (Ramesh and Bali 2019). Similarly, India’s current policy efforts are focussed on expanding benefits and membership of a smaller program, the RSBY (Maurya and Ramesh 2019). Collectively, stable institutions, dominant ideas and actors involved in the sector shape health policy processes and tend to limit scope of change (Sparkes et al. 2019; Fox and Reich 2015).

Conclusion Policy styles help analysts identify broad patterns of policymaking over time and how these involve a common set of stakeholders. Our goal in this chapter was to apply the concept to better understand dynamics within the healthcare sector. The arguments advanced in this chapter speak to the recent debates in the scholarship on sectoral policy styles (Howlett and Tosun 2018; Tosun and Debus 2021; Horn and Shore 2021). In the case of healthcare, we see a sectoral style emerge that is intricately linked with how health systems pursue three principal goals: provision, financing and payment of services. We conceive of a sectoral health policy style at three distinct levels. At the macro level, the sectoral style is shaped by the confluence of ideas, institutions and actors involved. At the meso level, the sectoral style is shaped by the specific instruments used. For example, hierarchical health systems operate through imposition rather than consensus. At the micro level, the sectoral health policy style is shaped by the degree to which processes allow for changes to existing policy settings. Here we see a process characterised by parametric calibrations, layering, patching and bricolage rather than frequent changes in the underlying ideas, actors and institutions involved. The arguments advanced in this chapter offer avenues to further advance scholarship on policy styles and comparative policy studies. First, does continuity in policy styles and processes within the sector impede cross-national diffusion and policy learning (Dunlop 2017)? That is, do policy styles prevent emulation of ‘best practices’ in how healthcare goals are pursued in different countries? Recognising their own distinctive ‘style’, policymakers may view learning as not particularly relevant (Marmor et al. 2005). Applying lessons from other ‘styles’ may be simply difficult, due to path dependency and that other instruments may not function the same way in a different context (Peters et al. 2018; Bali et al. 2019). This in turn reduces the efficacy of recent efforts in comparative policy studies to understand and learn from policy success (Compton and ‘t Hart 2019). Second, while most of the discussion in this chapter focussed on continuity at macro and meso levels, there is a need for better understanding of micro-level dynamics (i.e. of calibrations and changes to settings). This is analogous to existing design studies in the policy sciences that have placed inadequate attention on micro-level variables (Capano and Howlett 2020). Understanding the politics and ideas that govern micro-level changes can improve our understanding of policy styles. That is, are there distinctive patterns to micro-level changes such as in contribution rate for insurance programs or benefit conditions in public health programs? Moreover, echoing the arguments advanced by Cashore and Howlett (2007) on policy dynamics and change, to what extent are lasting policy styles undermined by frequent changes in policy calibrations?

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10 Operationalising and explaining environmental policy styles Jale Tosun and Marc Debus

Introduction Environmental policy is a comparatively young policy domain that emerged in the 1970s in response to growing emissions from industrial activities and traffic. The environmental degradation raised concern among citizens and resulted in the formation of environmental movements, which then culminated – especially in Western Europe – in the founding of green parties (van Haute 2016). The emergence of green parties entailed a fundamental change in the politics of environmental issues. While different political parties previously only addressed specific aspects of environmental policy, and usually in ways that corresponded to their respective ideologies (e.g. liberal parties tended to concentrate on international environmental cooperation; Tosun 2011), green parties hold stances on a wide range of environmental issues. Research has shown that the representation of green parties in governments or parliaments has had an impact on environmental policymaking (Knill et al. 2010; Jensen and Spoon 2011; Mühlböck and Tosun 2018). From the perspective of comparative politics, green parties ‘own’ environmental policy (Abou-Chadi 2016), and this issue ownership has been stable over time (Seeberg 2017). Issue ownership means that voters associate environmental issues with green parties, which makes it difficult for other parties to claim credit for environmental policy. The emergence of green parties and their electoral success have provoked reactions from the mainstream parties. In this regard, Carter (2013, p.  74) finds “that the major parties have mostly hovered between dismissive and accommodative strategies, with some recent evidence of adversarial strategies”, and Abou-Chadi (2016) contends that because of the green parties’ ownership of environmental issues, the other parties maintain their respective positions on environmental protection. While research in comparative politics has produced some intriguing insights into how national party systems and the dynamics of party competition change with the emergence of an electorally successful green party, in this chapter we take a different approach. We acknowledge the emergence of green parties and use this information to propose an explanation for why environmental policy styles differ. We expect ideological distances between the political parties forming a coalition government (which occasionally also includes a green party) to have an impact on environmental policy styles. We operationalise environmental policy styles to 123

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comprise four dimensions: (i) the duration of the policymaking process; (ii) whether decisionmaking occurs in a consensual or conflictive fashion; (iii) whether the environmental policy concerned anticipates a problem or reacts to it; and (iv) the level of ambition of an environmental policy. This chapter unfolds as follows. First, we review existing approaches in the literature that also fit with the notion of environmental policy styles in order to motivate our operationalisation of the concept. Then we turn to our conceptual argument and explain in detail how the focus on political parties and their representation in parliament and government facilitate the explanation of differing environmental policy styles. We then illustrate our argument by examining and explaining how environmental policy styles have varied over time in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The final section offers some concluding remarks.

Environmental policy styles: previous operationalisation attempts Environmental policy represents a policy area that has attracted considerable scholarly attention. A prolific line of research has discussed environmental policy instruments and whether and how they have changed over time (e.g. Bressers et al. 2009; Wurzel et al. 2013). More specifically, a scientific debate emerged over whether environmental policy instruments and the corresponding implementation styles had converged over time (Howlett 1994, 2000, 2002). This latter perspective in particular includes considerations that are relevant for conceptualising environmental policy styles. Within the extensive research literature on environmental policy, we can also find more direct attempts to operationalise environmental policy styles. An early and implicit approach to the operationalisation of environmental policy styles is based on the precautionary principle and its different interpretations and legal status in jurisdictions (O’Riordan and Jordan 1995). For example, Zander (2010) discusses the differences in how the precautionary principle is applied in the European Union, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While Zander and other scholars working on the precautionary principle do not explicitly speak of policy styles, their discussion aligns with that concept to the degree that they elaborate, for example, on the role of scientific evidence for policymaking as well as on the question of an anticipatory vs. reactive response to uncertain risks. This latter aspect aligns particularly well with the original concept of policy styles as put forth by Richardson et al. (1982). In short, jurisdictions that have embraced the precautionary principle (e.g. the European Union) can be expected to have an anticipatory policy style concerning the regulation of uncertain risks, whereas those that have not embraced the principle (e.g. the United States) would be considered to have a reactive policy style (Tosun 2013a, 2013b). In this regard, some authors have used the way in which the precautionary principle is applied to differentiate between permissive and restrictive policy regimes (e.g. Paarlberg 2001). Another relevant attempt to the operationalisation of environmental policy styles is provided by Duit (2016) and Duit et al. (2016) and their concept of the ‘environmental state’, which consists of four dimensions: a system of regulation, an administrative apparatus, a corpus of ideas and expert knowledge, and a site of contestation and decision. Duit (2016) examines 28 industrialised states with a view to comparing them along the four dimensions and to assigning them into one of the four categories: ‘established’, ‘emerging’, ‘partial’, or ‘weak’ environmental states. According to the author, the analysis provides answers to the following questions: how much does the environmental state use regulative powers to address environmental problems? How much does it invest in the development of environmental knowledge? How developed is the administrative capacity for dealing with environmental challenges? To what extent does the 124

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environmental state tax environmentally harmful activities? Similar to the first literature, this attempt aligns with the logic of national policy styles to the extent that Duit (2016) strives to identify country-group-specific environmental policy patterns. While the emergence of such patterns is the outcome of the political process, this attempt concentrates on the existing institutional arrangements and capacities – it does not identify the underlying process-related mechanisms. From this perspective, the approach of Duit (2016) and Duit et al. (2016) resembles that of Esping-Andersen (1990), as discussed by Horn and Shore (this volume). Another strand of literature that aligns with the notion of environmental policy styles elaborates on environmental ‘leaders’ and the strategies for influencing environmental policy in the European Union (Liefferink and Andersen 1998). In an updated conceptualisation of environmental leaders, Liefferink and Wurzel (2017) refer explicitly to ‘styles of leadership’. A more direct operationalisation in the existing literature is provided by Huitema and van Snellenberg (1999, p. 93), who, remarkably, begin their conceptual treatise by criticising the notion of policy styles as “theoretically not very credible”. What makes their approach particularly valuable is their focus on the interactions between individuals and organisations which are structured by the “broader institutional, societal and political context”. The authors conceive of environmental policy styles as deliberate decisions by competent authorities, such as environmental ministries or inspectorates, for example, to adopt an approach of flexible policy implementation. From this perspective, the policy style becomes the dependent variable of the analysis. This is an intriguing perspective to adopt, especially since it makes the concept of policy styles more dynamic and allows them to vary over time. The most direct operationalisation can be found in the work of Knill (1998) and Knill and Lenschow (1998), who elaborate more generally on regulatory styles but then apply them to the study of environmental policies. According to the authors, regulatory styles can be interventionist or mediating. The first describes command-and-control policy instruments which leave administrative actors little leeway in their implementation, whereas the second refers to self-regulation and flexible policy instruments which leave the administrative actors considerable room for manoeuvre. Knill and Tosun (2020) discuss in a very general fashion factors that can determine ­sector-specific policy styles, including environmental policy styles. The factors discussed include the nature and pressure of a given problem. Depending on the problem type, different actors and conflicts of interest might be involved, implying different policy styles. At the same time, dominant policy paradigms influence which actors might have more or less influence in the policy process. The authors further contend that policy legacies can create path dependencies as changes in established policy patterns can induce high costs, which can also affect sectoral policies. Finally, sector-type cleavages will have an important impact on observable policy styles. In sum, the literature reveals that there has been some interest in operationalising environmental policy styles. Of the different approaches, the one by Huitema and van Snellenberg (1999) appears particularly compelling for two reasons. First, it differentiates between the policy style observed (the dependent variable) and the factors resulting in differing types of policy styles. Second, and as also highlighted by Liefferink and Wurzel (2017), a policy style should not be conceived as a static concept but as one that may change over time. These two insights provide the basis for our subsequent considerations.

Operationalising environmental policy styles The dependent variable of this chapter is environmental policy styles, which we conceive to vary depending on different explanatory variables. One such variable, and the one on which 125

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we concentrate here, is the ideological distances between governing parties on environmental issues. As Howlett and Tosun discuss in Chapter 2, there are different ways in which the original concept by Richardson et al. (1982) can be interpreted. To recall, the original concept differentiates between patterns of anticipatory vs. reactive decision-making and whether policymakers seek to reach consensus with the aid of organised groups or impose decisions on them (see also Richardson 2018). Howlett and Tosun (2019) emphasise the process dimension of policy styles by arguing that the policy styles are defined by which actors are included in the process and who the key policy actors are. The conceptual argument we put forward here reflects both the original and the revised concept. The original concept stresses the policymakers’ approach to problem solving, which can be either anticipatory or reactive. In our view, this is one dimension of an environmental policy style as a dependent variable. Policy responses to environmental issues can either anticipate a problem – and therefore be preventive or precautionary – or react to a problem. This logic is reflected in the regulatory approaches of Germany and the United Kingdom: the first prefers prevention, whereas the latter is more geared towards reacting to environmental problems (Knill 1998, Knill and Lenschow 1998). Following Richardson et al. (1982), political systems are divided along a second dimension which concerns the relationships between governmental and non-governmental actors. In some countries, these relationships are marked by consensus and in others by imposition. In other words, in the latter case, interest groups must accept what governments decide, whereas in the first they are consulted and their interests are taken into due consideration in the policy process. Our conceptual approach addresses this dimension but in modified fashion. However, the second dimension of environmental policy styles as we conceive it refers to the degree to which it is consensual or conflictive concerning the parties represented in government. The third dimension of environmental policy styles refers to whether decisions are made swiftly or drag on over long periods. Turning to the revised model, Howlett and Tosun (2019) stress the importance of institutional arrangements for defining national policy styles, which also holds true for our approach, but again this is part of our explanation of differing environmental policy styles. Further, the authors differentiate between systems in which the policy process is dominated by bureaucrats and experts on the one side and political parties and the public on the other. This dimension is not completely covered either in our operationalisation of the dependent variable or in our explanatory model, since we concentrate on one actor group only: political parties. Overall, our operationalisation of the dependent variable is closer to the original concept by Richardson et al. (1982) than the revised model by Howlett and Tosun (2019). We operationalise environmental policy styles in terms of • • •

the degree to which a policy response anticipates or reacts to a problem; the degree to which the governmental parties reach the decision on the given policy in a consensual or conflictive fashion; the time it takes to formulate the policy response.

Explaining environmental policy styles We acknowledge that environmental policy styles are determined by several factors of which some will be stable while others will vary over time. Here our analytical interest lies on one factor that varies over time and therefore should bring about time-varying environmental policy

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styles. More precisely, we are interested in how the distance in the positions of parties forming a coalition government influences environmental policy styles. Although we hypothesise that the distances in the parties’ environmental positions produce environmental policy styles that vary over time, the number of political parties that enter parliament and that are needed to form a government depend on stable institutional arrangements, in this case electoral systems, which reflects the concept of policy styles by Howlett and Tosun (2019). Electoral systems with proportional representation, in particular without an artificial threshold, typically have more parties represented in the parliament (Cox 2007; Han 2015). The more parties are represented in parliament, the greater the likelihood for the need to form a coalition government and the more likely it is that parties in both the government camp and in the opposition camp will have different positions concerning issues like environmental policy (Bräuninger et al. 2017). Majoritarian electoral systems – in particular those without a run-off, meaning that a candidate with a simple majority wins a district seat, like in the elections for the British House of Commons – are more likely to produce single-party majorities, which eliminates the need to form a coalition government. The more parties participate in a government, the greater the number of partisan veto players (Tsebelis 2002). Therefore, the greater the ideological distance between the parties in government, the longer it will take to reach an agreement, the more conflictive the policy formulation process will be, and the more likely are reactive environmental responses. An alternative approach would have been to concentrate on not only parties in government, but all parties represented in parliament. However, in parliamentary democracies, the government and the parliamentary majority form one unit and are the actors that are decisive for the adoption of proposed policies (Bräuninger and Debus 2009). Hence, we concentrate on parties represented in government. Even though our approach is very focused, we indirectly address one of the analytical dimensions put forward by Richardson et al. (1982), which refers to interest groups. Political parties have close ties with certain interest groups, depending on their respective ideology (Gullberg 2013). For example, green parties have close ties with environmental groups, whereas economically liberal parties have ties with business associations and socialist or social democratic parties are allied with labour unions (Gava et al. 2017; Fischer et al. 2019). Therefore, our perspective on political parties and their representation in parliament also captures to some degree the role of interest groups in the political process.

Measurement of parties’ environmental policy positions We evaluate our theoretical argument by using data provided by the MARPOR project, which offers cross-country information on the positions of political parties on a large number of issues (Volkens 2013).1 The MARPOR data are based on the statements of political parties in their election manifestos, which are coded in a standardised way by means of identifying ‘quasisentences’ relevant to a given policy domain. We use the variable per501 (Environmental Protection) of the MARPOR dataset and measure the distance between the governing party with the most references to environmental protection and the party with the fewest references since the beginning of the 1980s; the starting dates for the individual countries vary across the countries due to different election dates. For the information on the elections, we rely on the ParlGov database (Döring and Manow 2019). We analyse the data for countries covered in the volume edited by Richardson (1982): France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

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Figure 10.1 presents the distances between the different parties’ positions on environmental protection. The bars indicate the degree of programmatic heterogeneity or – in terms of Tsebelis (2002) – the veto player distance vis-à-vis environmental protection between the parties that form the government. In case of a single party (minority) government, which we often find in Sweden, Norway, and in particular the United Kingdom, the distance is, of course, zero and is indicated by a horizontal line. As Figure 10.1 reveals, there are some interesting and also striking findings. There is no space to present the findings in detail here, so we restrict the interpretation of the figure to only a few cases. In the Swedish case, the coalition governments between the four centre and centre-right parties show a large degree of heterogeneity on environmental protection, mainly due to the different positions on that issue between the agrarian Centre Party on the one side and the conservative Moderate Party on the other. The veto player distance between the governing parties is clearly smaller in the five other countries under study. In France, the 2012 cabinet between the Socialists, Greens, and the Social-Liberal Party had very different positions on environmental protection according to their manifestos, whereas the difference between the governing parties decreased significantly after the 2017 election when two centrist parties – The Republic on the Move and the Democratic Movement – formed the government. The German coalition governments disagreed more on environmental protection in the 1980s and 1990s; surprisingly, there is almost no programmatic difference regarding environmental protection between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats when these parties formed ‘grand coalitions’ in 2005, 2013, and 2017. By contrast, the distance between the Social Democrats and the Greens, which are located close to each other on the simple left–right dimension, was significantly

Figure 10.1  Distances in the environmental policy positions of governing parties 128

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larger in 2002 when both parties formed the federal government. Although the Dutch coalition governments are often composed of up to four parties with very different ideological orientations, the veto player distance vis-à-vis the issue of environmental protection is relatively small, for instance when comparing it to the Swedish case.

Plausibility probe of the theoretical argument In this section, we provide some examples to illustrate the empirical plausibility of our conceptual argument. That said, it is important to explain that we do not provide a hard, empirical test but consider this section to offer a plausibility probe of our theoretical argument. We draw on secondary literature to present environmental policy styles, as these materialised at a certain point in time. We provide two examples per country in order to have variation in the distances in the environmental policy positions of the political parties and to examine whether these constellations affected the respective environmental policy style. We assess the dependent variable based on the empirical information provided by the consulted studies and by mapping that information onto the three dimensions introduced previously. For a hard, empirical test, we would have needed to examine the processes related to all environmental policies adopted by a given coalition government. Sweden is widely regarded as an environmental ‘leader’ in the sense that it stands for ambitious and anticipatory environmental policies (Andersen and Liefferink 1997). In 2006, a fourparty, centre-right coalition government led by Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt was voted into office. The incoming government replaced a Social Democratic minority government which was supported by the Left Party and the Green Party. In the Reinfeldt government, the agrarian Centre Party was in charge of environmental policy, though this struggled to realise its agenda since the Conservative Party paid less attention to environmental protection (Persson et al. 2016, p.  483). The Reinfeldt government decided to revise the structure of the Environmental Quality Objectives, which represent important elements of Swedish environmental policy. The definition of milestone targets proved a tedious and slow process as the coalition parties had “substantial value conflicts” over some issues (Hysing 2014, p. 267). Therefore, we can acknowledge an environmental policy style that was marked by conflicts between the Conservative Party and the Centre Party which resulted in delays and reactive policymaking. Norway is another country widely associated with consensual and anticipatory environmental policy, but as Figure 10.1 shows there have been periods when the parties participating in government held different environmental policy stances, which resulted in conflicts over policy projects. One of the governments with marked controversies was Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s second cabinet, which consisted of a coalition between the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party, and the Centre Party: “there was disagreement especially between the industryfriendly Labour Party and the ‘green’ Socialist Left” (Allern and Karlsen 2014, p. 654). The Stoltenberg cabinet’s plan to build a major new power line over and around the Hardanger Fjord makes this conflictive constellation apparent. The coalition government’s approval of this project was widely criticised and constituted a defeat for the Socialist Party and its environmental policy agenda. It opposed the power line and wanted to explore alternatives. Because of the conflicting views on this project within the coalition, the government announced that it would evaluate alternatives that would have the power cable run under the Hardanger Fjord instead of over it (Aalberg 2011, p. 1086). The government formed by the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party under the leadership of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005) was particularly committed to pushing the environmental agenda (Jänicke 2010). However, by the second term (starting in 2002), the 129

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two coalition parties had moved away from each other in terms of the importance they paid to environmental issues. While the Green Party – as the owner of this issue – placed even greater emphasis on environmental issues during the second term, the Social Democratic Party gave priority to other issues. As a result, the environmental policy style dragged on, becoming more reactive and conflictive. For example, the minister of economic affairs of the Social Democratic Party wanted to replace feed-in tariffs with a tender system, particularly for wind energy. The parliamentary groups of the two coalition parties revised the government’s policy bill to reflect the preferences of the Green Party and the minister of the environment, but during that process the minister of economic affairs managed to reduce the rates for wind power (Lauber and Mez 2006, p. 112). The first government of Angela Merkel (2005–2009) was characterised by a low degree of polarisation in respect of the environmental policy positions of the coalition partner: the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union on the one side and the Social Democratic Party on the other. In this regard, the environmental policy style of this cabinet was characterised by anticipatory and consensual actions. One of the successes of this government was the national strategy for biological diversity, which was adopted by the cabinet in 2007. Interestingly, the strategy lays out concrete quality and action goals with exact dates and instruments for attaining these (Meyerhoff et al. 2012). It is particularly interesting that in the election year, the two major industry associations in Germany had launched a campaign against more ambitious environmental and climate policy. The coalition government did not respond to this campaign and instead ‘imposed’ its policy agenda on the industry groups (Jänicke 2010, p. 489). The cabinet of Lionel Jospin (1997–2002) consisted of a coalition of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Greens, the Left Radical Party, and the Citizen and Republic Movement. As one can infer from Figure 10.1, the range in the coalition parties’ positions on environmental policy was not very wide: there was agreement on the policy agenda. Consequently, the Jospin government managed to transform the institutional arrangements in place for authorising genetically modified organisms away from a system based on the assessment of scientists to one where scientists and representatives of the civil society had to agree on the authorisation of new genetically modified organisms. This turned France from one of the most supportive countries into the one with the most stringent regulatory regime concerning genetically modified organisms (Tiberghien 2009). The situation proved different with the coalition governments headed by Jean-Marc Ayrault (2012–2014), Manuel Valls (2014–2016), and Bernard Cazeneuve (2016–2017) under President François Hollande (2012–2017). Similar to the Jospin government, the Green Party also participated in these coalition governments. However, François Hollande was not “known for his espousal of environmental causes” (Hayes 2012, p. 993) and neither was the Socialist Party under his leadership. Therefore, the government had difficulties in realising its environmental policy agenda – such as the introduction of a heavy vehicle transit tax, which was a lengthy process and eventually abolished when confronted with opposition from various groups, including farmers (Bocquillon and Evrard 2016). The United Kingdom is a special case in this comparative assessment. Coalition governments are atypical in this country, and so to illustrate our argument we need to compare the coalition government formed by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats (2010–2015) led by Prime Minister David Cameron with the predecessor Labour government led by Gordon Brown (2007–2010). The latter single-party government was committed to environmental and climate issues and brought about the 2008 Climate Change Act, which was designed in collaboration with Friends of the Earth (Carter and Jacobs 2014, p. 132). There was a cross-party 130

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consensus on the need to address climate change, which included the support of David Cameron (Carter and Clements 2015). When elected into office, Prime Minister Cameron was rhetorically committed to environmental protection and even wanted to be the “greenest government ever” (Carter and Clements 2015). However, disagreement and tensions with the Liberal Democrats over environmental and climate issues (Connelly 2015, p. 92), an internally divided Conservative Party, and the failure to provide strong leadership (Carter and Clements 2015) resulted in environmental issues receiving less attention and an environmental policy style marked mostly by inaction (Connelly 2015). Since 2010, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has led various coalition governments in the Netherlands. As Figure 10.1 shows, the distance between the most progressive and least progressive party in terms of environmental policy grew during his third cabinet that came into office in 2017. Despite the distance in the coalition parties’ positions, the Netherlands were one of the first countries to ban the controversial herbicide glyphosate for use outside of commercial agriculture. In this regard, the Dutch government could reconcile different interests related to glyphosate: it sent farmers a signal that they could continue to use it while signalling to all other users that glyphosate was no longer accepted. The glyphosate decision was anticipatory and was the logical outcome of a process that had started with the parliament asking the government to adopt stricter rules (Tosun et al. 2019), indicating the consensual relationship between government and parliament. The literature suggests that despite different positions, environmental issues represent an area where the Dutch parties can reach agreement (van Holsteyn 2018). Another important aspect of the Dutch environmental policy style is the collaboration of the government with the individual target groups (Bressers et al. 2009), indicating a consensual style, which stands at odds with the classification of the Netherlands by Richardson et al. (1982). However, it aligns with the classification of the Netherlands by Lijphart (2012) as a ‘consensus’ democracy. To summarise, in this section, we provided preliminary and indicative insights into the environmental policy styles of six Western European countries. We could show that the three dimensions derived from the conceptualisation by Richardson et al. (1982) and Howlett and Tosun (2019) are useful for capturing different environmental policy styles. Most importantly, the explorative analysis could show that environmental policy styles do indeed vary over time, and part of this variation can be attributed to changes in the environmental policy positions of the parties forming the government. More generally, the analysis revealed that for all countries but the Netherlands, the ideological distance between the government parties in terms of environmental protection is an important variable for explaining the different environmental policy styles.

Conclusion In this chapter, we put forward an operationalisation of sectoral policy styles, which we developed for and applied to environmental policy. Yet the applicability of our reasoning is not limited to environmental policy styles but can also be extended to any other policy sector. It aligns with the conceptualisation put forth by Cairney in Chapter 7 and complements it by stressing how sectoral policy styles come about. In this regard, we concentrated on the environmental policy positions of parties represented in government in six West European countries and argued that differences between the parties’ positions determine the corresponding policy style, which can refer to (i) the degree to which a policy response anticipates or reacts to a problem; (ii) whether the governmental parties reach the decision on the given policy in a consensual or conflictive fashion; and (iii) the time it takes to formulate the policy response. We subjected 131

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our theoretical argument to a plausibility probe and could see that our expectations align with the empirical reality. However, we must note that there exist very few systematic empirical investigations of environmental policy styles on which we could rely. Therefore, we invite future research to reduce this gap. Another limitation of the operationalisation presented in this chapter is that we did not differentiate between the ministry portfolios of the parties in government and did not elaborate on the importance of coalition agreements to environmental policy styles. A  refinement of our theoretical argument is another avenue we want to highlight for future research. Another way of furthering the insights presented here would be to extend the analysis to a larger set of countries. Although our approach clearly has its limits, it has also three advantages. First, we proposed an operationalisation of sectoral policy styles that is dynamic in the sense that it considers the changes in the parties’ positions on environmental issues as well as the composition of the respective coalition government. Second, both our operationalisation of environmental policy styles and our explanation for the differences in them align with both the original concept of policy styles (Richardson et al. 1982) and the revised one (Howlett and Tosun 2019). Third, while the operationalisation is simple, it facilitates a rigorous empirical testing of the theoretical argument that we put forward in order to explain differences in environmental policy styles across countries and over time.

Note 1 We follow here the logic of scholars affiliated with the MARPOR project and the saliency approach they propose for measuring policy positions. The basic idea of this approach is that political parties define their policies by stressing certain topics more than others (Budge 2015).

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Liefferink, Duncan and Andersen, Mikael S., 1998. Strategies of the ‘Green’ Member States in EU Environmental Policy-Making. Journal of European Public Policy, 5 (2), 254–270. Liefferink, Duncan and Wurzel, Rüdiger K.W., 2017. Environmental Leaders and Pioneers: Agents of Change? Journal of European Public Policy, 24 (7), 951–968. Lijphart, Arend, 2012. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Meyerhoff, Jürgen, Angeli, Daija and Hartje, Volkmar, 2012. Valuing the Benefits of Implementing a National Strategy on Biological Diversity – The Case of Germany. Environmental Science & Policy, 23, 109–119. Mühlböck, Monika and Tosun, Jale, 2018. Responsiveness to Different National Interests: Voting Behaviour on Genetically Modified Organisms in the Council of the European Union. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56 (2), 385–402. O’Riordan, Timothy and Jordan, Andrew, 1995. The Precautionary Principle in Contemporary Environmental Politics. Environmental Values, 4 (3), 191–212. Paarlberg, Robert L., 2001. The Politics of Precaution: Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Persson, Åsa, Eckerberg, Katarina and Nilsson, Måns, 2016. Institutionalization or Wither Away? TwentyFive Years of Environmental Policy Integration Under Shifting Governance Models in Sweden. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 34 (3), 478–495. Ramesh, M. and Asher, M.G., 2000. Welfare Capitalism in Southeast Asia: Social Security, Health and Education Policies. Springer. Richardson, Jeremy, ed., 1982. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin. Richardson, Jeremy, 2018. British Policy-Making and the Need for a Post-Brexit Policy Style. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Richardson, Jeremy, Gustafsson, Gunnel and Jordan, Grant, 1982. The Concept of Policy Style. In: Jeremy Richardson, ed. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen & Unwin, 1–16. Seeberg, Henrik B., 2017. How Stable Is Political Parties’ Issue Ownership? A Cross-Time, Cross-National Analysis. Political Studies, 65 (2), 475–492. Tiberghien, Yves, 2009. Competitive Governance and the Quest for Legitimacy in the EU: The Battle Over the Regulation of GMOs since the mid-1990s. Journal of European Integration, 31 (3), 389–407. Tosun, Jale, 2011. Political Parties and Marine Pollution Policy: Exploring the Case of Germany. Marine Policy, 35 (4), 536–541. Tosun, Jale, 2013a. How the EU Handles Uncertain Risks: Understanding the Role of the Precautionary Principle. Journal of European Public Policy, 20 (10), 1517–1528. Tosun, Jale, 2013b. Risk Regulation in Europe: Assessing the Application of the Precautionary Principle. New York, NY: Springer. Tosun, Jale, Lelieveldt, Herman and Wing, Trevelyan, 2019. A Case of ‘Muddling Through’? The Politics of Renewing Glyphosate Authorization in the European Union. Sustainability, 11 (2), 440. Tsebelis, George, 2002. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. New York, NY and Princeton, NJ: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press. van Haute, Emilie, 2016. Green Parties in Europe. London and New York, NY: Routledge. van Holsteyn, Joop J.M., 2018. The Dutch Parliamentary Elections of March 2017. West European Politics, 41 (6), 1364–1377. Volkens, Andrea, 2013. Mapping Policy Preferences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wurzel, Rüdiger K.W., Zito, Anthony R. and Jordan, Andrew J., 2013. Environmental Governance in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Use of New Environmental Policy Instruments. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Zander, Joakim, 2010. The Application of the Precautionary Principle in Practice: Comparative Dimensions. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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11 Finance and monetary policy styles Caner Bakir and M. Kerem Coban1

Introduction Policy styles are stable, standard procedures of policymaking, conditioned by prevalent local politico-economic and cultural factors. Richardson et al. (1982, p. 2) define (national) policy styles as ‘ “[s]tandard operating procedures” for making and implementing policies. . . [while] societies develop legitimising norms for policy activity’. A policy style is a function of ‘a government’s approach to problem-solving. . . [and its] relationship to other actors in the policymaking and implementing process’ (ibid., pp.  12–13). It is an essential pillar upon which a policy regime rests. A policy regime is a constellation of policy paradigms, governance arrangements (i.e., policy styles), actors (e.g., politicians, bureaucrats, interest groups among others that make up policy subsystems), and policies (Howlett and Tosun 2019a, p. 4; see also Jochim and May 2010; May and Jochim 2013; Wilson 2000 on policy regimes). As a significant pillar of policy regimes, policy styles are formed through constellations of the government’s approach to policymaking (i.e., reactive or anticipatory/active) and state-society relations (i.e., consensual or hierarchical) (Richardson et al. 1982). In regard to the government’s approach to policymaking and problem-solving, the first dimension, Richardson (2018, p. 4) argues, ‘[s]ome governments [have] appeared to adopt an anticipatory/active [stance] towards societal demands, whilst others have seemed to adopt an essentially reactive approach to problem-solving’ (emphasis in original). The second dimension of policymaking style considers ‘[a] government’s relationship to other actors in the policy-making and implementing process . . . Is [the] government very accommodating and concerned to reach a consensus with organised groups, or is it more inclined towards imposing decisions notwithstanding opposition from group[s]?’ (ibid., emphasis in original). There are a variety of understandings of (national) policy styles within the literature (e.g., Adam et al. 2017; Howlett and Tosun 2019a; van Waarden 1995). For example, Howlett and Tosun (2019b) examine cross-national policy style variations produced by differences between institutional arrangements and political regimes, demarcating between (national) policy styles relative to the intersection between key policy actors in various political regimes (e.g., bureaucrats/experts or politicians/public) and decision-making inclusiveness (high/low level). Such conceptualisations are valuable, providing innovative and fresh ways to evaluate policy styles; this chapter, however, adopts the Richardson et al. (1982) typology. In contrast to Howlett and 135

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Tosun (2019b), this chapter examines policy sector styles at the systemic level with a particular focus on finance and monetary policy sectors. Doing so requires a broader approach than a national level assessment of political regimes.2 The Richardson et al. (1982) typology provides a more relevant and applicable method to achieve the objectives of the chapter. Additionally, a wider view of finance and monetary policy styles that have emerged globally is useful for future comparative research at the national level, while recognising divergence at the local and/or regional levels. This chapter explains finance and monetary policy style and how it has evolved since 1945. Drawing on the Richardson et al. (1982) typology, the chapter examines three modes of finance and monetary policy styles. These are the hierarchical-proactive style present during the ‘embedded liberalism’ period between 1945 and the early 1970s; the consensual-reactive style that lasted from the early 1970s to the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC); and the refined consensual-reactive style that emerged in the post-GFC period. This chapter seeks to examine how policy styles evolve. However, this question can hardly be conceived in isolation from how policy subsystems and policy paradigms – which define how policy issues are conceptualised and what policy instruments are applicable – evolve. As one of the pillars that constitute a policy regime, policy styles evolve as policy subsystems are replaced with new actors who also bring along and impose their own policy paradigms. This is because policy paradigms constitute the ideational basis of governance arrangements. Accordingly, the chapter addresses an essential area of inquiry in the broader policy studies field with respect to how policy styles change. It has been argued that wars, crises, shifts in power, or changes in elites’ perceptions, among other exogenous and/or endogenous factors, may drive changes in policy styles (Howlett and Tosun 2019a, pp. 7–8). The chapter points to shifts in policy subsystems and their monopoly over finance and monetary policy style at the global level, as well as the role of prevailing policy paradigms that are instrumental in coalition-building and coalitionmaintenance (Blyth 2002, 2013; Béland and Cox 2016; Campbell 2004; Hall 1993). The remainder of this chapter identifies the three monetary and financial regulatory policy styles that have emerged globally. While reviewing these modes of finance and monetary policymaking, it examines the policy paradigms that inform policy styles, the policies these modes produced, and the actors involved in shifts in modes of styles. The chapter concludes with suggestions for further research.

The hierarchical-proactive style: state dominance and proactive finance and monetary policymaking In the wake of the early post-war period, ‘embedded liberalism’, as a policy regime, emerged to address post-war rebuilding, societal demands for social welfare, and economic development (Helleiner 2019; Ruggie 1982). Embedded liberalism was a ‘class compromise’ between labour and business, which was mediated by ‘Keynesian-minded’ bureaucrats (Helleiner 1994, pp. 27–28). Embedded liberalism was based on the idea that active state involvement in domestic economic management was imperative for economic development. Thus, the financial order established following the Bretton Woods negotiations included capital controls on speculative, unproductive, and short-term money flows and macroeconomic policymaking autonomy informed by Keynesian policy ideas. Within this context, the policy subsystem and the understanding of the need for states’ decisive involvement in economic development led to a hierarchicalproactive finance and monetary policy style. Recalling Richardson et al. (1982), policy styles are constellations of a government’s approach to policymaking (i.e., reactive or anticipatory) and state-society relations (i.e., consensual or 136

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hierarchical). Thus, there are contrasting arguments regarding the role of hierarchical statesociety relations in policymaking processes. This debate is closely related to another in the field of comparative political economy. Atkinson and Coleman (1989) examine with which actor ultimate decision-making power rests. They suggest a typology  – a more complex version of Katzenstein’s (1978) classic work on policy networks – wherein policy networks can be distinguished according to the levels of centralisation in the state structure and mobilisation of business interests. For example, in a developmental state, if the state is highly centralised and achieves autonomy in an environment with a highly mobilised private sector, the two actors work in concert. Amsden (1989) documents a well-known case of such a network with the role of business elites, who had close ties to the state during the developmental era in South Korea, within a centralised bureaucratic and hierarchically organised state where interactions were structured according to the logic of ‘embedded autonomy’. In contrast, when the state is less centralised and has a low level of autonomy but the private sector is highly mobilised, a pressure pluralist network is formed. In such a case, the private sector cannot fully override the authority of the state but can pose significant challenges to its autonomy. In such an environment, Rajan and Zingales (2003) argue that private sector actors can become so entrenched in state-society relations that it is hard to contest their interests. Yet the ultimate decision-making power remains with the state. Hierarchical state-society relations lead to proactive state-directed finance and monetary policies, which can be observed through the strict control maintained by the state over regulatory policies. The hierarchical-proactive style relied on a mix of monetary policy and finance instruments to regulate the financial industry. For example, monetary policy instruments included interest rate ceilings on deposits and loans as well as bank lending to favoured sectors. Finance policy tools included taxation of the financial system through high capital requirements, high reserve requirements, restrictions on certain types of financial assets, regulations on development of the equity and securities market, restrictions on speculative unproductive and shortterm (i.e., hot money) flows, and entry barriers for foreign financial organisations (Helleiner 1994; McKinnon 1973; Shaw 1973). These instruments of ‘financial repression’ indicate that the state had a hands-on, proactive approach to regulating the financial industry, which also served to limit private credit (Goodhart 2011a). Beginning in the 1930s, central banks were subjugated to treasury departments and finance ministries. As such, the restrictive policy style was implemented by politically and operationally subordinated central banks (Goodhart 2011a), and/or central banks had to work closely with the finance ministry in the development of regulatory policies. In the meantime, states pursued a targeted fiscal policy aimed at active demand management and social welfare (Helleiner 1994). The hierarchical-proactive style was adopted in different parts of the world, and specific instruments served distinct policy goals. In the developed economies, financial restrictions served the Keynesian welfare state. A  compromise between labour, business, and the state emerged with the adoption of Keynesian policy ideas, which aimed for full employment and stable economic growth through state-driven, active demand management, without interference in the private ownership of modes of production (Hall 2019, p. 124). This compromise can be observed in various political economies, ranging from the New Deal–era United States to Britain and continental Europe. Major developing countries (e.g., Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, India) and newly industrialised developmental states in East Asia (e.g., Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) relied on a restrictive finance and monetary policy mix of targeted subsidies, export credits, tariffs and quotas, and limits on licences, with the goal of state-led industrialisation through either export-promotion or import-substitution (Amsden 1989; Evans 1979; Haggard et al. 1993; Hirschman 1968; Kohli 2004; Wade 1990; Zysman 1983). 137

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The next section examines why the hierarchical-proactive style faced limitations in the 1970s, and how it constituted a window of opportunity to address widespread policy problems during that period. Thus a paradigm shift occurred, causing a replacement of the hierarchicalproactive style in the late 1970s.

The consensual-reactive style: the rise of neoliberalism and deregulation Crises are one of the major stressors that can erode the legitimacy and monopoly of policy subsystems (Wilson 2000). As such, crises also provide a significant window of opportunity for the replacement of previously held policy ideas (Boin and ’t Hart 2003). The policy subsystem and the dominant state paradigm, which heavily regulated the financial industry and proactively managed the domestic economy, underwent significant challenges to its monopoly and legitimacy as it failed to address rising inflation rates and stagnant economic growth during the 1970s. Crises during the 1970s thus not only challenged the policy subsystem and the actively restrictive, interventionist state policy paradigm but also the effectiveness of the hierarchicalproactive style. As paradigmatic assumptions of neoliberal ideology replaced the earlier paradigm, programmatic policy ideas such as economic and financial deregulation were increasingly adopted and implemented by policymakers. As a result, a novel policy style emerged: the consensual-reactive style. This style refers to the state allowing more space for non-state actors in the policymaking process while adopting a reactive problem-solving approach.3 The states adopted a subordinate role vis-à-vis markets in the production and delivery of goods and services (Büthe and Mattli 2011). The consensual-reactive style replaced embedded liberalism with ‘embedded financial orthodoxy’ (Cerny 1994, p. 326). In a world of global finance where capital flows freely across borders, the financial services industry started challenging the state’s policy capacity to effectively regulate the markets. As such, states gradually had to abandon their proactive role in the realm of markets (Helleiner 1994; Strange 1997 [1986], 2015 [1988]). In this respect, the consensual-reactive policy style indicates the ‘retreat of the state’ (Helleiner 1994; Strange 1996, for contending views on the ‘retreat of the state’, see Sørensen 2004; Weiss 1998). The emergence and diffusion of the consensual-reactive style across the world is closely related to individual and collective policy entrepreneurs, institutional entrepreneurs, and channels of diffusion such as socialisation, peer competition, and coercion (Dobbin et al. 2007). Individual and collective policy entrepreneurs and institutional entrepreneurs such as politicians (e.g., Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan), elite policymakers (e.g., Paul Volcker, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan in the United States; Kemal Dervis in Turkey; José Alfredo Martinez de Hoz in Argentina), academics (e.g., Milton Friedman), international and supranational organisations (e.g., the World Bank, IMF, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, European Union (EU)), and their transnational networks led and mediated the emergence and adoption of the consensual-reactive policy style around the world (Abdelal 2007; Bakir 2009; Blyth 2002; Chwieroth 2009; McNamara 1999; Mügge 2011; Plehwe 2011; Tsingou 2015; Watanabe 2015; Woods 2006). The consensual-reactive style is a product of the emergence of a new policy subsystem that imposed itself with a policy paradigm change in the form of a shift from the Keynesian policies of the hierarchical-proactive style to the monetarist, deregulatory finance and monetary policy style. The consensual-reactive policy style prioritised taming high inflation and ensuring price stability. Advocated by academic economists such as Milton Friedman (1970), this shift caused ‘simultaneous changes in . . . instrument settings, the instruments themselves, and the hierarchy of goals 138

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behind policy’ (ibid., p. 279; see also Yagci and Bakir forthcoming). For example, states relied on a fixed exchange rate for industrial policy and economic development. Further, this policy paradigm required fiscal retrenchment, as the active demand management of the hierarchicalreactive style shifted towards supply side management. Additionally, both financial regulatory and supervisory policy and monetary policy had a microprudential perspective, in the sense of being solely interested in the health of individual financial organisations and ignoring interdependencies among them at the systemic level (Borio 2003). It used capital requirements, liquidity-related restrictions, and loan-loss provisions, among many others. The consensual-reactive policy style originated in the developed countries, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s with reduced barriers to foreign entry and currency convertibility, among other policy instruments (Eichengreen 2008). Institutional reforms and further liberalisation followed the initial steps of industry liberalisation. These reforms and further liberalisation included central bank independence, inflation targeting, budget cuts, and the privatisation of public entities. While both liberalisation and institutional reforms originated in the developed countries, they have diffused into developing countries since the 1980s (Ban 2016; Naím 1994). The spread of central bank independence provides an illustrative case of such global policy diffusion, which also serves to underline similar dynamics between policy diffusion and consensualreactive style institutional reforms in other policy areas introduced by the policy subsystem and deregulatory policy paradigm. Marcussen (2005) argues that diffusion was bolstered by a number of factors: legal obligations stemming from the formation of the European monetary union, conditionality in structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and World Bank, policy emulation by former colonies, and the training of individual central bankers from developing countries in European and American universities and/or central banks. Consequently, beginning in New Zealand in the early 1990s, previously politically subordinated central banks gained legal independence to ensure price and output stability following a period of stagflation across the world (Fernández-Albertos 2015; Fischer 1996; Goodhart 2011a). Moreover, the consensual-reactive policy style led to the delegation of ministerial regulatory and supervisory tasks to (semi-)autonomous agencies (Jayasuriya 2001; Levi-Faur 2011; Majone 1994; Moran 1981). The emergence of independent central banks and (semi-)autonomous agencies depoliticised finance and monetary policymaking (Dönmez and Zemandl 2019), while widening the space for the financial industry in the policymaking process as the role of the state declined (Wray 2007). This decline is closely related to the fact that regulatory capitalism entails an increase in self-regulatory arrangements and governance through networks; the primary role of the private sector in the policymaking process intensified with privatisation, delegation to (semi-)autonomous agencies, and the extensive use of social and economic regulatory instruments (Levi-Faur 2006). Within this context, the microprudential regulatory and monetary policy stance of the consensual-reactive style was enforced through a ‘light touch’ approach. This made ‘the selfcorrecting potential of markets central, and it relegated government intervention to correcting market failures’ (Mügge 2011, p. 186). The light touch approach and exclusive focus on market failure correction dominated at the domestic, regional, and international levels. Mügge (2011) demonstrates its strict application in the EU context, arguing that this approach to accounting standards, derivatives, and credit rating agencies in the EU caused high volatility in bank earnings, excess credit supply, and the build-up of unquantifiable risk in bank balance sheets (ibid., p.  193). Moreover, at the international level, the failure to address emerging systemic risks through robust regulatory standards, particularly Basel standards, was also due to the consensualreactive style’s light touch approach (Baker 2010; Goldbach 2015; Kobrak and Troege 2015). 139

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However, the literature points to contrary dynamics as well. For example, Braithwaite (2008) argues that the rise and emergence of regulatory capitalism does not indicate a deregulatory period (see also Ayres and Braithwaite 1992). Braithwaite claims the financial and human resources of regulatory agencies in the United States expanded during this time, while their enforcement approach became stricter (ibid., pp. 8–9). A similar outcome of significant regulations can be seen at the international level. For example, the policy networks of central bankers and regulators – based in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) since the mid-1970s – have produced a framework of regulatory standards following crises in developed and developing countries (Goodhart 2011b). Known as the Basel framework, it first appeared in 1988 following the Latin American debt crisis of 1982 and was updated in the early 2000s. The Basel framework provided a regulatory template on which both developed and developing countries converged (Jones and Zeitz 2019). Still, such regulatory rules and their enforcement cannot be fully considered without the influential role of the private sector on the structure of the policymaking process of the ­consensual-reactive style, despite facing certain constraints (Young 2012). The literature points to various strategies and channels, such as lobbying, ‘revolving doors’ between regulatory agencies, lobby organisations and policymaking, and close social ties between policymakers and regulatees, that are at play at the domestic, regional, and international levels (Baker 2010; Barth et al. 2012; Lall 2012; James 2018; Young et al. 2017). Finally, the consensual-reactive policy style was based on a policy paradigm that asserted market efficiency and limited state intervention (Harvey 2005). This paradigm expected that efficient, competitive, and unchained markets would boost economic growth through productive and efficient allocation of capital, both within and across borders (Levine 1997). As such, while driven by technological advancements and a rise in international trade and financial transactions (Helleiner 1994), this policy paradigm served to deregulate both domestic and international finance. Domestic and international deregulation meant the removal of restrictions on financial markets with the liberalisation of domestic and external financial transactions, barriers to foreign entry, and investment in previously restricted financial assets such as over-the-counter derivatives (Helleiner 1994; Helleiner et al. 2018; Oren and Blyth 2019; Wade 2008). Yet the consensual-reactive policy style failed to produce ‘collateral benefits’, such as good governance, institutional development, macroeconomic discipline, or financial market development (Kose et al. 2009), and created a fragile macroeconomic and politico-economic structure, as well as an institutional context in which financial leverage and credit allocation skyrocketed (Jordá et al. 2013). This environment fostered worldwide systemic risks, which resulted in a major crisis in 2007–08 – the largest since the Great Depression – that paved the way for the replacement of the consensual-reactive style with the refined consensual-reactive style.

The refined consensual-reactive style: the GFC and re-regulation The GFC marked another critical juncture for finance and monetary policy style. The crisis challenged the policy subsystem and its monetarist, deregulatory policy paradigm and, thereby, the consensual-reactive policy style. Yet, different from the conjuncture in the 1970s, it is difficult to observe a dramatic programmatic shift in the post-GFC period.4 This outcome is because programmatic policy ideas are still based on the paradigmatic assumptions of neoclassical economics.5 The prior consensual-reactive style is refined in the sense that the state re-emerged in policymaking processes so as to manage the crisis. Indeed, as the revival of the hierarchical policy rhetoric indicates (Lodge and Wegrich 2011), states have become actively involved in economic 140

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management through tax cuts, bail-outs, ‘unconventional’ monetary policy, and updates in domestic and international regulatory standards (Igan et al. 2019; Moschella 2011; Quaglia 2012), albeit at varying degrees at the national level (De Francesco and Maggetti 2018). However, while noting active state involvement, state-society relations reflect the consensual style with regard to private sector influence. However, the problem-solving approach remains reactive. While states attempted to manage the crisis and the regulatory framework was updated, neither a proactive policy stance nor further reform steps have been taken. Before we discuss how and why the GFC only refined the consensual-reactive style, it is legitimate to argue that the GFC has not generated dynamism for a paradigmatic change, a third order change in the words of Hall (1993). As Bakir and Woo (2016, p. 199) put it, international, regional, and domestic policies in the wake of the GFC reflect first and second order ideational shifts. A notable example of this is the emergence of a macroprudential approach as a layer upon the monetarist, microprudential policy paradigm (see Thelen 2004 on layering). Macroprudential policy ideas have been in the policy agenda since the 1970s (Galati and Moessner 2018). However, the ideational hegemony of the policy subsystem and its monetarist, microprudential policy paradigm, which targeted price stability and the financial soundness of individual financial organisations without a systemic outlook, had marginalised the macroprudential approach. The price stability objective of monetary policy and the microprudential approach had assumed that when price stability and the financial health of individual financial organisations were ensured, financial stability would ensue. The GFC demonstrated that there were serious gaps in the efficient, self-correcting markets hypothesis. These gaps included a lack of focus on interdependencies among individual financial organisations, channels of contagion, and endogenous risks. On the other hand, a macroprudential approach concentrates on interdependencies and endogenous risks, imposing pre-emptive measures to contain and manage systemic risks. Its tools include leverage ratio, loan-to-value ratio, debt-to-income ratio, counter-cyclical capital buffer, and time-varying capital requirements, among others (Claessens 2015). The GFC provided a window of opportunity for the incorporation of a macroprudential approach in finance and monetary policy style (Baker 2013). The macroprudential approach has added another layer upon the microprudential, monetarist policy paradigm. Reflecting this, many countries, regardless of level of income and financial development, have incorporated the macroprudential approach and its instruments (Cerutti et al. 2017). Induced by the crisis, such layering is owed to the international policy networks of academic economists, such as Charles Goodhart and Avinash Persaud, national regulators, and central bankers, at the centre of which BIS economists such as Andrew Crockett and Claudio Borio played an essential role in publicising the macroprudential approach (Baker 2013). Socialised into the macroprudential approach at meetings of the BIS or Group of 30 (G30), a network of global elite – central bankers, regulators, and politicians – helped develop domestic and international regulatory policies, such as the updated version of the Basel framework (Basel III) (Coban 2020). Policymakers reformed previously existing governance arrangements via inter- or intraorganisational policy coordination fora. In the post-GFC period, financial stability committees (FSCs) have emerged as a ‘best practice’ in the governance of macroprudential policy. FSCs aim to steer the financial industry with a macro outlook, keeping an eye on the containment and management of systemic risks that require intra- or inter-organisational coordination, depending on the structure of the regulatory governance structure. Before 2008, 12 countries had established similar committees; now, 47 have done so (Edge and Liang 2019). FSCs are reconfigurations of previous forms of inter-organisational coordination governance arrangements. For example, Coleman (1994, p.  283) documented how the French central bank and finance ministry used to coordinate regulatory and monetary policy through the 141

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bank regulatory committee (Commité de la réglementation bancaire). The main difference between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of such committees relates to the microprudential and price-output stability oriented regulatory and monetary policy approaches. Similar to previous forms, FSCs establish a policy forum for inter- or intra-organisational policy coordination among monetary and regulatory authorities and the finance ministry or among departments of the central bank. The refined form aims to monitor, contain, and manage systemic risks, reflecting the macroprudential turn in policy approach. The committees discuss emerging systemic risks and appropriate policy responses, assigning departments or organisations to take action to address issues within their mandated policy areas. For example, the Financial Stability Committee in Turkey played a critical role in the management and containment of systemic risks arising from high current account deficits and private spending. Upon the recommendations of the committee, the bank regulatory and supervisory agency moved forward with the imposition of stricter measures on private consumption and lending to households (Bakir and Çoban 2019). The policy and instrument mixes introduced by the Central Bank and the bank regulator triggered causal mechanisms that successfully contained macrofinancial risks between 2010 and 2016 (Bakir 2019). The refined consensual-reactive style still points to limited lesson-drawing from the failures of the consensual-reactive style. While crises are known to trigger policy learning and change, a failure in lesson-drawing is observable. There are several factors leading to this outcome. As Underhill (2015) argues, market-based finance, which is a product of the deregulatory consensualreactive policy style, still dominates the policy debate and responses to the crisis (see also Bakir and Woo 2016; Helleiner 2014). Another example relates to the regulation of shadow banking, referring to financial organisations that act like banks when lending but do not take deposits. Even though shadow banking had an essential part in driving systemic risk in the financial industry, this area has been left essentially unregulated in the post-GFC period (Ban and Gabor 2016). Here, the EU’s response to the sovereign debt crisis, a by-product of the GFC, is another crucial case of limited lesson-drawing from the failures of the consensual-reactive style. The EU’s crisis response included ‘unconventional monetary policy’, in the form of sovereign debt purchases, and the establishment of a financial assistance mechanism to address funding needs of the Eurozone member states (Copelovitch et al. 2016, p. 815).6 While ‘unconventional monetary policy’ and institutional reforms in the Eurozone were somewhat effective in crisis management, fiscal austerity in crisis-hit member states demonstrated a failure in lesson-drawing, as the literature points to the crisis-amplifying effect of austerity policies (Blyth 2013). Despite this, fiscal retrenchment was applied widely during a severe downturn, which intensified the negative impact of the sovereign debt crisis in these countries. While the EU has made attempts to establish a banking union for risk sharing and robust regulation of the single financial market, many pillars – including the deposit insurance scheme – have yet to be fully put into practice (Quaglia 2019). Failures in some of the financial (e.g., exclusive focus on microprudential regulation) and monetary policy (e.g., exclusive focus on price stability) programmes  – based on the paradigmatic assumptions of neoliberal economics – paved the way for policy programmes utilising monetary and macroprudential regulation to achieve macrofinancial and systemic stability. Here, related to the reactive dimension, even though the macroprudential approach attributes a greater role to the state (Baker 2018; Borio 2003), policymakers have shied away from an ambitious macroprudential programme. This outcome relates to the lack of robust data and analytical tools (Thiemann 2018), as well as the persistence of a microprudential approach to risk management (see Goodhart 2015, p. 286).

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Related to the consensual dimension of the refined style, the literature presents concerns about persistent ‘regulatory capture’ (Goodhart 2015; Maxfield 2011; Seabrooke and Tsingou 2010). Two factors are essential. Firstly, civil society organisations such as consumer groups rarely prevail against financial organisations at the domestic, regional, or international levels (Kastner 2014, 2017, 2019). Such a disadvantaged position means greater space for financial organisations to shift the policymaking process towards their interests. Secondly, Underhill (2015, p. 470) puts it nicely, [P]olicy failure endogenous to a pre-crisis regulatory coalition has so far failed to ­disturb the tenacity of material interests and therefore the ideational inertia of institutional path dependency. Despite the emergence of ideational competition from the new macroprudential approach to financial governance, the market-based approach remains intact.

Table 11.1  Three modes of finance and monetary styles Hierarchical- proactive mode 1945–early 1970s

Consensual- reactive mode early 1970s–2007/08

Refined consensualreactive mode 2007/08 onwards

State-market relations

State (dominant) Private sector (reactive)

State (reactive) Private sector (dominant)

Actors

Politically subjugated central banks Ministry of Finance (regulators, supervisor)

Policy aim

Socio-economic development Highly regulated financial system

Independent central banks Independent regulatory, supervisory agencies Inter-organisational coordination bodies Financial liberalisation Price and output stability Microprudential regulation, supervision

Policy instruments

Monetary policy (ceilings on interest rates, targeted subsidies, export credits) Finance policy (ban on financial products and services, limits on financial flows)

State (re-emerging, attempting to correct market and government failures after the GFC) Private sector (proactive, rapidly adapting to the post-GFC policy environment) Independent central banks Independent regulatory, supervisory agencies Financial stability committees Financial and price stability Macrofinancial stability Macroprudential regulation, supervision Monetary policy (interest rates, reserve ratios) Finance policy (leverage ratio, debt-to-income ratio, counter-cyclical capital ratio, loan-tovalue ratio)

Monetary policy (interest rates) Finance policy (capital ratio, liquidity ratio, loan-loss provisions)

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This is mainly driven by financial organisations’ rapid adaptation to the post-GFC environment to assert their influence (Lall 2015; Young 2013, 2014). This can be observed with postGFC regulations having been watered down at the local, regional, and/or international levels. Additionally, Kastner (2018) argues that financial organisations can back down when regulatory issue salience rises, but when regulatory concerns fade away, they can again impose their preferences on the policymaking process. Howarth and Quaglia (2016) argue that these factors may not only impact regulatory policy design at the national level but may also resonate at the regional and/or international levels. In this light, recalling Atkinson and Coleman’s (1989) typology of policy networks, we might claim that state-society relations have transformed into a unique type of pressure pluralism: an industry dominated pressure pluralism in which the state has low autonomy from the greater influence of the highly mobilised private sector in policymaking and a low level of centralisation. Relying on the original Richardson et al. (1982) typology, the chapter presented three modes of finance and monetary policy styles since 1945. Table 11.1 summarises these distinct modes. The hierarchical-proactive style is characterised by the dominance of the state in state-society relations and policymakers’ active involvement in the policymaking processes. The consensualreactive styles, both the previous and the refined types, pertain to the private sector having a disproportionate, privileged status vis-à-vis the state and include civil society in the policymaking process; the state’s role in economic management is submissive to market forces.

Conclusion This chapter has examined how finance and monetary policy styles have evolved since 1945. As an essential pillar of policy regime in the form of governance arrangements, the trajectory of policy styles reflects shifts in policy subsystems and prevailing policy paradigms. The chapter identified three styles: hierarchical-proactive (lasting from 1945 to the early 1970s), consensual-reactive (prominent from the late 1970s through the GFC), and the refined type of the consensual-reactive style (emerging in the post-GFC context). The chapter argues finance and monetary policy have transformed from heavy state control in the wake of the Second World War to an industry-dominant pressure pluralist mode in the post-GFC era, demonstrating a mere refinement of the consensual-reactive style despite the re-emergence of the state in crisis management policies. Finally, the chapter presents important avenues for future research. Firstly, the chapter implies that individual and/or collective actors’ policy entrepreneurship can lead changes in policy styles (see Bakir 2009; Bakir and Jarvis 2018 on policy and institutional entrepreneurship). Policy styles are institutionalised ways of policymaking. Therefore, changes in policy styles refer to a particular type of institutional change. Hence, individual and/or collective actors working for changes in policies could be called not only policy (and institutional) entrepreneurs but also policy style entrepreneurs. This, however, may stretch the concept. To avoid doing so, future research can look into whether we can identify policy style entrepreneurship and, if so, whether and how it differs from policy and institutional entrepreneurship. Secondly, we recognise that an examination of such differences across borders advances our understanding of variations in policy sector styles across nations. However, the chapter does not study divergence. Indeed, organisational mandates, macroeconomic and political structures, and institutional context, among other factors, drive divergence. Therefore, an analysis of divergence requires a different approach, a systematic examination of causes of divergence and/or convergence across borders and even regions. As such, future research could undertake a systematic review of the drivers

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of diverging adoption of the hierarchical-proactive, consensual-reactive, and refined consensualreactive styles at the national and regional levels.

Notes 1 We thank Sinan Akgunay and the editors for their suggestions on earlier versions of this chapter. 2 The three modes of finance and monetary policy styles diffuse in a variety of channels, and the diffused styles could take a variety of forms. Their analysis relates to the debate in the literature on the policy sector approach (Freeman 1985; Howlett 1991; Levi-Faur 2006). 3 Indeed, more rules were crafted despite relatively freer markets (Moran 1988; Vogel 1996). While this could point to a more proactive approach to problem-solving, the consensual-reactive style refers to the state following market actors, meaning that more rules are necessary to manage or contain externalities produced from market actors’ actions rather than the state dominating state-society relations. 4 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to elaborate fully on why the consensual-reactive policy style still persists. Crouch (2011) and Gamble (2019) present critical, essential analyses of its ‘strange non-death’. 5 See Best (2016) for an insightful examination of ‘how the recent financial crisis could generate both a significant shift in policy-makers’ epistemological framework and only status-quo policy changes’ (p. 52). 6 For a concise discussion of the Euro crisis, see Tosun (2019).

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Part 3

Administrative and governance styles

12 The concept of administrative styles Louisa Bayerlein, Christoph Knill, and Dionys Zink

Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the analytical concept of administrative styles, its development, applications, and theoretical determinants. Much like individuals, organisations have distinct characteristics to the ways and procedures by which they handle their daily tasks and duties. These characteristics are not necessarily grounded in (formal) rules and regulations but can be a product of informal routines. Administrative styles capture precisely these informal routines of carrying out day-to-day tasks (Knill 2001). They can be classified as part of the broader family of the concept of policy styles. Whereas the policy styles concept denotes national or sectoral patterns of policy-making, scholars concerned with administrative styles focus more narrowly on patterns of administrative behaviour and interactions. Administrative styles hence are a subset of policy styles and concentrate on the informal role of administrations in the entire policy-making process. While the two closely related concepts differ in their primary analytical focus, they share a number of commonalities. The most notable similarities lie in the common focus on ‘styles’, their procedural lens of analysis, and their characterisation as rather stable informal institutions. Most notably coined by Richardson et al. (1982), a policy style in the widest sense refers to specific interactions and behavioural patterns particularly occurring in the formulation and implementation stage of a policy. Following this basic definition, three features of policy styles can be identified. First, policy styles are distinct manners or techniques of the policy-making process. Second, just as the colloquial use of style, the term refers to behaviour or routines repeated on a regular basis. This aspect thus excludes behaviour instigated by distinct situational aspects. Lastly, the third feature of a style is the status of an informal institution. Consequently, we can understand them as long-term patterns of policy development, which tend to be ‘sticky’ over time. In line with this characterisation of policy styles, administrative styles can broadly be defined as sticky informal routines that characterise the behaviour and activities of public administrations in the policy-making process (Knill 2001). It is worth noting that administrative styles are not only akin to policy styles but should at the same time be considered a part of organisational culture. Generally speaking, in the study of administrative culture, three different levels of analysis can be distinguished. The macro level 153

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provides a bird’s-eye view on the evolution of administrative systems – the basic understanding and historical evolution of administrative systems in different political-administrative systems (e.g., Anglo-Saxon, Continental, Napoleonic, or Nordic administrative traditions) (Painter and Peters 2010). The micro level scrutinises the behaviour, routines, and values of individuals within an administration as well as of the general public towards public administration (Simon 1997; Aberbach et al. 1981). Lastly, the meso level of administrative styles focusses on standard operating procedures of administrative decision-making and behaviour (Jann 2002). These standard operating procedures can play out in various forms of interaction between an administration or organisation and other actors. Early scholars of administrative styles have focussed mainly on the relationship between society and the administration. Consequently, patterns of administrative interest mediation formed the basis for attributing distinct style to a given organisation or sector. However, by focussing merely on the state-society relationship, this ‘first generation’ of styles somewhat neglected the nexus between politics and bureaucracy (Bayerlein and Knill 2019). Given that bureaucracies not only play a executive role but instead might try to exert their own influence in the policy process, analysing politics and public administrations as one single entity leaves out important parts of the overall picture (Peters 2010; Schnapp 2004). In recognition of this shortcoming, a ‘second generation’ of conceptualisations of administrative styles emerged, which highlights in particular the (potential) policy influence an administration can have vis-à-vis its political principal. Shifting focus from state-society relations toward the politico-administrative nexus enables gaining insights on how actively public administrations on the national, sectoral, or organisational level participate in the policy process. In the following, we first provide an overview of the ‘first generation’ of administrative styles research, which, not unlike policy styles, is primarily concerned with assessing and comparing state-society relationships. After having reflected on common themes and open questions in this strand of research, in the third section, we turn to the ‘second generation’ of administrative styles research. Here, administrative styles are seen as informative of the relationship of a bureaucracy with both their political masters and society, as well as of their agency in policy-making more generally. In the fourth section, we discuss theoretical determinants for the evolution of administrative styles with a particular focus on the interplay of the internal and external challenges a given administration perceives. The fifth section concludes by briefly summarising the chapter, highlighting the concept’s potential for comparative analyses and discussing its ‘travel potential’.

Administrative styles and state-society relations The ‘first generation’ of administrative styles emerged from earlier works on policy styles (Richardson et al. 1982; van Waarden 1995). As noted earlier, policy and regulatory styles (Vogel 1986; Vogel and Kagan 2004; Adam et al. 2017) are both congenial to administrative styles and are often even used synonymously. Cornerstones informing the debate on policy styles such as regularity, informality, and relative stability are shared themes also in the administrative context. ‘First generation’ administrative styles research essentially shifts attention from policy-makers towards a specific player in the political-administrative system, namely the public administration, but retains the focus on the states’ relation to society, which we know from early policy styles research (Knill 2001; see also: Zysman 1994; Howlett 2002). Knill (2001) pioneered the debate on administrative styles in analytically separating two dimensions of sectoral administrative arrangements, namely administrative structure (structural dimension) and administrative style (behavioural dimension). While administrative structure naturally refers to formal institutional arrangements, administrative styles are defined as relatively 154

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stable, informal behavioural orientations characterising an organisational body (cf. van Waarden 1995, p.  333). An administrative style is an institutionalised modus operandi which through repetition, routinisation, and – ultimately – internalisation manifests as guiding principle of an organisation over time. In any given organisation, boundedly rational, individual bureaucrats develop routines which enable them to make decisions under shortage of knowledge, information-processing capacities, and time (Simon 1997). Strategies and coping mechanisms well proven over time are repeated, routinised, and habitualised by the members of the organisation. At the organisational level, those routines eventually become part of the genetic material of an organisation, shaping its very identity. Ultimately, this consolidates itself into informal institutions, here: styles (Wilson 1989). Most ‘first generation’ approaches to administrative styles are conceptualised along the lines of two analytically distinct dimensions (Vogel 1986; van Waarden 1995; Knill 2001): administrative interest mediation and administrative intervention. Administrative interest mediation refers to patterns of institutionalised relationships between the administration and society. Observable patterns can be typified by a number of parameters describing the nature of the relationship between public and private actors. These might be of formal or informal nature, adversarial or rather consensual, coined by strict legalism or a rather pragmatic attitude, leaving room for bargaining. Lastly, those relationships and interactions might be either closed off to third parties, characterised by restricting access to certain privileged groups, or plainly open to all societal actors. The second relevant aspect, administrative intervention, corresponds to the logic, type, content, and flexibility of sectoral administrative instruments (Vogel 1986). Administrative logic can follow either a deductive or an inductive approach. The former is guided by a case-bycase logic, where every particularity of a given case is assessed in detail. The latter draws on abstract, generalised criteria which are applicable to a large number of cases. The type of ­intervention describes the instrument choice and its content. On the one hand, sectoral instruments can impose rather hard command-and-control measures or rely on softer means such as self-regulation or even voluntary commitment. On the other, the content can vary between “substantive outcomes (i.e., the concrete numerical standards or technological standards to be achieved) or on procedural requirements” (Knill 2001, p. 39), which emphasises due process instead of strictly defining substantive outcomes. Finally, administrative flexibility refers to whether the criteria informing the regulatory process are defined by highly specified requirements or rather loose frameworks allowing for more manoeuvrability. Taking administrative interest mediation and intervention patterns together, two antagonistic ideal-typical styles can be constructed, one mediating and the other intervening (Knill 2001). Both are embedded in their respective macro-institutional environment of state tradition as well as legal and political-administrative systems. A mediating style is defined by its inductive, procedural, and non-hierarchical actions as well as flexible intervention patterns which allow for a high level of administrative discretion. Public-private relations are characterised by pragmatism, consensus seeking, and informality while taking place in a transparent setting allowing equal access to all actors. Conversely, the nature of an interventionist ideal-type is defined by a substantive, hierarchical, and detailed pattern of intervention. Interactions happen in a legalistic, adversarial, and formal manner, all whilst being closed off to other actors. Administrative styles have been utilised to explain a variety of phenomena. Employing ‘first generation’ administrative styles or the related policy styles as independent variables substantially advanced the state of the art in a variety of areas, including but not limited to diverging policy developments in Western countries (Richardson et al. 1982; van Waarden 1995), the persistence of national idiosyncrasies in regulatory regimes (Vogel and Kagan 2004), as well as the varying 155

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effect of Europeanisation on national public administrations (Knill 2001). Furthermore, Howlett (2003) scrutinised variation in Western administrative systems’ reform capacity during the upsurge of new public management reform in the 1990s through the analytical lens of administrative styles. Whereas the aforementioned studies stress the existence of national policy and administrative styles, others identified variance in sector-specific patterns (Freeman 1985). This debate notwithstanding, the first generation of administrative styles has mostly concentrated on ‘national’ styles. As a consequence, where styles are employed as a dependent variable, scholars have relied on differences between nation-states to explain variance (Richardson et al. 1982; Feick and Jann 1989; Howlett 1991; Freeman 1985). These variables such as state or legal traditions, which aim at whole sets of organisations grouped together by their policy area, operational level, or country, are often rather idiosyncratic and for the most part very abstract, which constitutes a considerable limit to the ability to generalise. Where explanations are less abstract, the picture remains inconclusive. Across first generation literature on styles, we find a plethora of other potentially relevant factors ranging from policy (scope, problem type, and portfolio size) and polity (constituency and procedural and decision rules) to structural aspects of the organisation (resources, size, leadership, and staff characteristics) (Knill et al. 2017, 2019). It could thus be said that the ‘first generation’ of styles research has not fully explored the potential of styles as a dependent variable (Bayerlein and Knill 2019).

Administrative styles and politico-administrative relations The ‘second generation’ of styles research departs from a very basic observation. At the risk of stating the obvious, public administrations do not interact exclusively with society but also with the political sphere. Scholars as early as Max Weber have broached the issue of relationships between political and administrative actors. Questions of bureaucratic autonomy and political control over the bureaucracy are quintessential topics of modern public administration research (Aberbach et al. 1981; Huber and Shipan 2002; Bauer and Ege 2017). Interacting with the context in which they are embedded and drawing on both the constraints and the opportunities provided by their structural and institutional context, bureaucracies dispose of many opportunities to influence the policy process. Despite the fact that questions of bureaucratic autonomy and political control of the bureaucracy are clearly essential in the scholarly debate on public administration (Aberbach et al. 1981; Huber and Shipan 2002; Dahlström and Badie 2011) as well as of utmost practical relevance, this aspect has not been accounted for in early styles research. While this is hardly surprising, given the concept’s roots in policy styles research and  – consequently – the first generation’s focus on the relationship between administration and society, this omission nevertheless obscures one central area of administrative activity. It is only in more recent work on styles that this dimension has received closer attention (Cooper and Marier 2015; Knill and Grohs 2015; Bayerlein et al. 2020). This ‘second generation’ of conceptualisations of administrative styles highlights administrative agency vis-à-vis the political principal and the (potential) informal policy influence bureaucracies can exert on policy outputs and processes. Shifting focus from state-society relations toward the politico-administrative nexus makes it possible to shed light on how actively public bureaucracies participate in the policy process. Extending the focus to explicitly account for politico-administrative relationships comes with the requirement to take into account the whole of the policy cycle, instead of primarily focussing on the implementation stage. Bureaucratic influence can reach far beyond the ‘street level’. Bureaucracies can be highly active in initiating the development of new policies, and they 156

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typically play a pronounced role in the drafting of policy proposals to be adopted by the legislature. Public administrations play a crucial yet varying role in all three stages of the policy cycle: initiation, formulation, and implementation. Hence, focussing merely on implementation or assuming similar behaviour across cases does not live up to the complexity of the issue under scrutiny. In a first step towards a more holistic view on administrative styles, Howlett et al. (2009) extend the concept by adding a procedural dimension along the different stages of the policy cycle. The first stage describes the bureaucracy’s role during the agenda-setting process and the initial identification and definition of a policy problem previously disregarded. Hereby an analytical perspective on a bureaucracy’s relations to its political principals as well as other external actors is already incorporated. In the drafting or formulation stage of a policy, a particular focus is put on the interactions between the political sphere and the bureaucracy. Interaction patterns between the (political) principal and the (bureaucratic) agent reveal key characteristics about bureaucracies’ administrative styles. Lastly, for the implementation stage the interaction patterns between public administrations and policy addresses are scrutinised. In these three highly stylised stages, bureaucratic standard operating procedures are expected to vary across organisations. Knill and colleagues (2019) suggest an ideal-typical differentiation of two basic ‘orientations’ that administrative routines can be geared towards. Administrative routines can be directed at either institutional consolidation (positional orientation) or policy effectiveness (functional orientation). An administration guided by a positional orientation aligns its behaviour along the policy cycle in such ways that its autonomy and legitimacy is either consolidated or advanced. In this scenario, the primary target of administrative activity would be ‘institutional policies’, that is, those policies or projects that aim at the institutional conditions and environment in which the bureaucracy operates (Knill and Bauer 2016, p. 951). Providing adequate policy solutions is less relevant for a position-orientated administration than is securing and improving its position or – in extreme cases – defending and preserving its raison d’être. Effective solving of a policy problem hence is primarily seen in light of potential gains in organisational standing. Following the ideal-type, a purely positional bureaucracy would therefore be more inclined to desist from advancing a potentially fruitful policy when doing so would impact its standing in any negative way. Conversely, an administration informed by a functional orientation is mostly concerned with the constant improvement of its policy performance and overall portfolio effectiveness. In this spirit, a strong emphasis is put on the optimisation of internal processes and routines which foster the initiation, formulation, and implementation of well-crafted policies (Meyer et al. 2014). Instead of constantly having an eye on the advancement of the organisation’s own institutional standing, following the ideal-type, a positional orientation would entail focussing on the organisation’s ‘substantial policy’ output (Knill and Bauer 2016, p. 951). In order to advance its policy portfolio’s performance, an administration’s “routines and standard operating procedures are thus directed towards effective problem-solving” (Knill et al. 2019, p. 88). In its purest form, a predominantly functionally oriented administration would routinely follow aspects of a positional strategy only if doing so yields improvements of the policy portfolio performance or increases in policy effectiveness. With this distinction, it is possible to build a typology of ideal-types of administrative routines throughout the policy-making process. Based on the prevalence of positional and functional orientations in administrations’ routine behavioural patterns, one can differentiate four administrative styles: one rather passive, servant-like, and three more active (Knill et al. 2019; Bayerlein et al. 2020). The former is characterised by the absence of either kind of orientation. The latter three differ in whether their activities are targeted towards either the administration’s 157

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position within the political system or organisation and aimed at their principals (positional orientation), the policy output of their organisation including content, effectiveness, or existence of programs and policies (functional orientation), or both. Thus, by following this conceptualisation alongside the two orientations, four ideal-typical administrative styles can be identified. •

•

•

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Servants as the most passive type of administration can be characterised as coming close to the stereotypical image many people have in mind when referring to public administrations. Behaviour and action (or non-action) is strictly guided ‘by the book’. The administration will take no action beyond the formal procedural and legal arrangements which define and regulate its scope of responsibilities and functions. Their administrative routines and behaviour are thus informed by a low positional as well as a low functional orientation. Advocates on the other hand follow a strictly functional orientation. Their behavioural patterns are directed at constant improvement of their polices, thus relating to aspects of quality, internal consistency, and effectiveness. Behaviour geared towards positional standing, which includes preserving or promoting their institutional position, is not prioritised in their administrative routines. Instead, they advocate for their approach of attaining substantive policy goals. Consolidators align their administrative behaviour and routines towards the establishment and advancement of their political autonomy, status, and size. The central aspect informing their actions is the increase of competencies. Hence, expansion of the policy portfolio antecedes policy consistency. The central driver of consolidators’ actions thus is to be found in positional interests rather than a mere concern for policy performance. Lastly, the entrepreneur shares traits of both the advocate and the consolidator in routinely pursuing both consolidation and policy effectiveness. An entrepreneurial administration strongly advocates its approach towards solving policy problems. However, at the same time, a pronounced positional motivation determines their administrative routines and behaviour.

These and related types of styles at the politico-administrative nexus have been applied to various policy fields and analytical levels. Although the ‘second generation’ is still emerging, so far, it has yielded highly interesting empirical results. In international policy-making, administrative styles have been employed in the case of the OECD to help explain knowledge production (De Francesco and Guaschino 2020) and bureaucratic involvement in ‘high politics’ (Enkler et al. 2017). In a comparison of eight international organisations, it has been shown that administrative styles vary greatly across organisations and that the propensity of bureaucratic bodies to influence the policy process does not only depend on the formal powers of the organisations, but, to a large extent, also on their informal routines, that is, styles (Bayerlein et al. 2020). On the supranational level, administrative styles have been adapted to map EU agencies’ political entrepreneurship (Wood 2018), as well as to detect informal similarities in how staffers in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the EU Commission, two otherwise highly diverse organisations, carry out their tasks (Knill et al. 2016). Lastly, it has been shown that the second generation of administrative styles research can be applied to national bureaucracies in different sectors. For instance, they have been identified as potential barriers to administrative reform (Grohs 2019), serve to explain varying bureaucratic behaviour in the national transposition of EU directives (Gröbe 2019), and have been found to account for whether we see long-term planning or short-term political thinking in home care policymaking (Cooper and Marier 2015). 158

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In this emerging field of second-generation styles scholarship, two factors deserve particular attention. Firstly, parts of the second generation of styles research were explicitly conceptualised for public administrations on the international level (Knill et al. 2016). As compared to the national context, in which the first generation of styles was theorised, it deals with rather young organisations and institutions. Legacies and national traditions are thus by definition of lesser relevance. In lieu of larger national or sectoral systems, the primary unit of analysis is the individual organisation (or even organisational subunits). Administrative styles of the second generation can therefore be observed in any given bureaucracy, be it an international organisation, a ministry on the national or subnational level, a local government, or any other (independent) agency. Secondly, for research on styles as the dependent variable, this focus on the organisational level opens up the space for more concrete theoretical reasoning on the determinants of administrative styles.

Determinants of administrative styles Given that, analytically, ‘second generation’ styles are not necessarily bound to national traditions, the central objective of developing an explanatory framework is for it to be applicable for public administrations in general, regardless of the level at which the institution might be located. While explanations at the organisational level naturally need to account for characteristics of the organisation itself, they also have to factor in the diverse environments and contexts they operate in. Thinking along these lines, Knill and colleagues (2019) suggest two determinant dimensions, namely internal and external challenges, which should  – in conjunction  – affect administrative styles. On the one hand, institutions might be externally challenged by a number of factors emerging from the institutional setting an administration is positioned in. On the other, organisations might possess the internal potential to actively influence their surroundings or, conversely, be incapable of doing so due to challenges within the administration (Oliver 1991). These two determinant dimensions are sufficiently abstract to be applied to a wide range of organisations yet allow for taking organisational, national, or sectoral specifics into account. Hypothetically, for instance, some external challenges might vary with policy sectors, while internal challenges should partially depend on characteristics of national administrative systems. Styles can thus be expected to first and foremost vary across organisations, although family resemblances within policy sectors or national administrative traditions are very likely. This approach yields the additional benefit of working with two dimensions which use analytically separate yet entwined objects of analysis: structural and behavioural aspects of administration and politics (Howlett 2003, p. 475). Responsible for the actions and behaviour of an organisation is the interaction between organisational agency (internal) and the surrounding institution’s demand, hence the organisational environment (external). How an administration thereupon deals with those institutional demands varies with the way internal and external pressures interact (Greenwood and Hinings 1996). By routinising  – and finally institutionalising – the distinct mechanisms used to cope with the combination of internal and external pressures, they become part of an organisation’s standard operating procedure (Feldman and Pentland 2003). External challenges to an administration can be defined as the perceived threat to an organisation’s institutional status or its operations by exogenous interference. In their behavioural routines, “agents are not free-floating and unencumbered but rather operate within an institutional context that at least in part determines their behaviour” (Howlett and Lindquist 2004, p. 16). Importantly, it has been argued styles are affected not by the nature of an administration’s environment as such but by the perception of external challenges emerging from said 159

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environment (Bayerlein et al. 2020). After all, an administration can only react to what it is aware of. “Conflicting institutional demands in a given field are not experienced in a similar way by all organizations since field level institutional processes are filtered and enacted differently by different organizations” (Pache and Santos 2010, p. 11). By using perceived external challenges as a determining factor, the concept takes structural features of an administration’s environment into account. Perceived external challenges can be divided in two broader categories: domain challenges and political challenges. Domain challenges refer to the dynamics of the organisational domain an administration is located in. Organisations located in the same domain or jurisdiction might compete for resources and competences. A lack of innovative power or inability to adapt might entail budget cuts or diminishing political attention which allows “some organizations to flourish and some to languish or, less frequently, to die” (Peters 2010, p. 203). Second, the extent to which an administration sees itself as politically challenged matters for their style. An organisation that perceives its position as being in the political spotlight, thus highly salient on the agenda of its society and its political principals, will put more effort in the consolidation of its status than an ‘administrative backbencher’. Momentum in this dimension is generated by changes in political preferences such as political turnovers, fiscal constraints, and actions of societal actors targeting the administration, for example a call for administrative reform or even threatened or actual termination of a body (Lewis 2002; Boin et al. 2005). Internal challenges negatively affect a bureaucracy’s ability to follow through with clear-cut and consistent policy targets. Public administrations are considered internally challenged when epistemic disparities or cognitive ‘straightjackets’ within an organisation limit its policy capabilities. Firstly, an organisation needs adequate ‘cognitive slack’ in order to follow through with any given policy objective. Cognitive slack refers to the ability to incubate and communicate new ideas, which is dependent on the time, space, and resources provided for doing so. Innovations require room to grow, adequate timeframes given to professional staff to acquire and process specialised information, and a certain level of cognitive resources dedicated to the development of ideas (cf. Bauer and Ege 2017; Cooper and Marier 2015; Durant 2009). Secondly, internal challenges decrease when staff members share a common professional background and hence are equipped with a homogeneous epistemic belief system (Kaufmann 1960; DiMaggio and Powell 1983). The assumption underlying this aspect is that staff coming from a similar educational and professional background (such as law, economics, or medicine) are more likely to produce a strong and consistent policy orientation. Vice versa, internal heterogeneity can lead to internal contestation of belief systems which can impair the administration’s ability to act concertedly and consistently (Bayerlein et al. 2020). How do these challenges relate to administrative styles? External challenges have been theorised to primarily impact the positional orientation of an administration. If an administration sees itself as unthreatened by political or domain challenges, one would not expect to observe a distinct positional orientation directed at institutional consolidation. An administration will only pay explicit attention to its positional standing and consequently adapt its routines when it is under threat. Conversely, the more an institution’s status is under political scrutiny and at risk of being politically challenged, the more consolidation-driven it needs to act in order to protect or improve its institutional position. Internal challenges determine the functional orientation of administrations. Only when there are sufficient cognitive resources, space, and time will an administration be truly able to create optimal policy outputs. For an organisation to adopt a certain administrative style, it matters whether it is by default restricted to solely “administer” policies or actually able to develop an interest for the provision of best possible solutions. Table 12.1 provides a summary of the four previously mentioned ideal-types in relation to the two determinant dimensions. 160

The concept of administrative styles Table 12.1  Four ideal-typical administrative styles and their determinants External challenges

Internal challenges

High Low

Low

High

Servant Advocate

Consolidator Entrepreneur

Source: Adapted from Knill et al. (2019)

Conclusion Studying administrative styles is important for (comparative) research on policy-making because they capture and explain variance in policy-making and implementation beyond formal factors alone. We have seen that the ‘first generation’ of administrative styles research draws heavily on earlier conceptualisations of policy styles. While doing so retained crucial elements of policy styles, such as the emphasis on state-society relationships and – above all – the notion of a style itself in its informality, stickiness, and regularity, it substantially added to the literature by shifting focus to public administrations. An emerging ‘second generation’ of conceptualising administrative styles extends the original concept’s scope by explicitly addressing the politico-administrative nexus. Departing from the basic insight that public administrations interact not only with society, but also, sometimes even predominantly, with their political principal, administrative styles have been employed to capture administrative agency, that is, bureaucracies’ (informal) potential to influence policy outputs, outcomes, and processes. The concept captures administrations’ dominant orientations regarding the rationale for their work in policy initiation, drafting, and implementation. Informal bureaucratic routines and standard operating procedures can be informed by a functional orientation, a positional orientation, both, or neither. Depending on the respective prevalence of positional and functional orientations in behavioural patterns, we can identify four ideal-typical administrative styles governing the behaviour of administrations in the policy process: a servant style (low functional and positional orientation), a consolidator style (low functional but high positional orientation), an advocate style (a high functional orientation combined with low positional orientation), and an entrepreneurial style (high functional as well as positional orientation). Administrative styles of the ‘second generation’, spelled out this way, emerge as a result of interactions between sustained internal and external challenges as perceived by an administration over a long period. Crucially, the central unit of analysis is the organisation as such, not national or sectoral systems. Thereby, it becomes possible to adapt the styles concept to the subnational, national, supranational, or international sphere. Although so far most research on administrative styles at the politico-administrative nexus has been carried out in the context of international organisations, the concept certainly has ‘travel potential’. Both its constituting ‘orientations’ and its determinant dimensions are purposefully universal and theoretically can be applied to various policy areas, political environments, and polity contexts. In case a given organisation does not have a role in one of the three stylised policy-making stages, the concept can be adapted, for instance by excluding the respective stage or even weighting single stages of activities. The focus on organisations also benefits theorising the determinants of styles. In combining structural and organisational factors, it is possible to forego idiosyncratic country-based explanations on the macro level and to thereby account for previously unexplored phenomena, such as withincountry variation in administrative styles. 161

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Administrative styles are a conceptual tool not only for describing administrative behaviour on the meso level, but – more interestingly – for comparative research. Informal institutions are notoriously elusive. In zooming into bureaucratic routines’ three stages of the policy cycle and specifying fields of bureaucratic activity in each of them (see Chapter 14), the concept provides a yardstick to systematically compare elements of bureaucratic culture. Administrative styles can provide a useful addition or corrective to comparative studies of public administrations’ more formal characteristics. We contend that the interaction between formal and informal aspects of administrative behaviour and agency constitutes an especially promising area of future research. Other interesting fields of inquiry could be studying change and stability in administrative styles, applying the concept to an even greater variety of organisations, or scrutinising the effect of an organisation’s administrative style on its policy outputs, to name just a few.

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Schnapp, K.-U., 2004. Ministerialbürokratien in westlichen Demokratien: Eine vergleichende Analyse. Opladen: Leske & Budrich. Simon, H.A., 1997. Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations. 4th ed. New York, NY: Free Press. Van Waarden, F., 1995. Persistence of National Policy Styles: A Study of Their Institutional Foundations. In: B. Unger and F. van Waarden, eds. Convergence or Diversity. Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 333–372. Vogel, D., 1986. National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vogel, D. and Kagan, R.A., 2004. Dynamics of Regulatory Change: How Globalization Affects National Regulatory Policies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wilson, J.Q., 1989. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. New York, NY: Basic Books. Wood, M., 2018. Mapping EU Agencies as Political Entrepreneurs. European Journal of Political Research, 57 (2), 404–426. Zysman, J., 1994. How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth. Industrial and Corporate Change, 3 (1), 243–283.

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13 The styles of civil service systems John Halligan

Civil service system A civil service is conventionally defined as a branch of government (distinguished from the judicial and legislative branches), a body of officials appointed on professional merit, or government departments and agencies responsible for implementing government policy. These understandings while complementary have different emphases and are not necessarily consistent. The implementers may represent functionaries of limited responsibilities beyond execution. The branch understanding says little about dimensions of composition beyond being different from other branches. Professional experts may get closest to a traditional conception, but a definition that emphasises expertise and merit appointments is problematic because it is difficult to find a civil service that applies these principles from bottom to top. A civil service system has four basic elements: administrative tradition and culture, administrative structures, personnel systems covering recruitment and career arrangements, and politicalbureaucratic relations. A  more elaborate formulation is to define the civil service system as ‘structures that combine rules and authority relationships which connect the state and organisational levels’ (Bekke et al. 1996, p. 2) and comprises three roles: personnel, the rules of governance, and institutional symbols and values (Bekke et al. 1996; Bekke and van der Meer 2000; McGregor and Solano 1996). At the macro level, the concept of civil service is ‘embedded in constitutional understandings and institutional arrangements, and on the expectations of civil servants symbolically defined in the public mind’ (McGregor and Solano 1996, p. 52; Bekke et al. 1996). These understandings receive expression through public values that include the impartiality of the civil service, integrity and trust, merit-based employment and institutional value to society. As a governance institution the civil service has four dimensions (Bekke et al. 1996). There is first an authority structure that reflects the organisation of government – unitary or federal, centralised or decentralised or multi-level – and how this affects the civil service. The scope of a civil service can range from central government to regional governments, the main variation being the level of inclusiveness, producing a variety of permutations internationally (Smalskys and Urbanovic 2017; Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019).

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Second, the role of the state is central because of the effect on the operational features of the civil service. Whether the civil service is an agent of the state or of government has ramifications for accountability, civil servants’ roles and external relationships. Third, the principles and rules shaping how civil services operate are dependent on the primacy accorded to management and law. The nature of the legal framework is one differentiator, and the other is the relative importance of management (Peters 2003). Finally is the handling of policy roles: how they are defined and practised, and whether civil servants have a narrow or broad range of roles (McGregor and Solano 1996; Halligan 2020). At the operational level of human resources, key dimensions are whether the career system is open or closed, merit or patronage prevails in employment, and the civil service is centred on career professionals or extends to external and political appointees. These dimensions provide a basis for understanding the meaning and nature of a civil service and for the comparative analysis of countries or clusters of like systems. There are links between these analytical levels, the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats arises with values, agency, policy roles and employment practices and it is commonly addressed through analyses of the level of politicisation. The concept of administrative tradition provides a means of making sense of the distinctiveness of civil service system models that have evolved historically. This approach crystallises the values and principles influential in shaping structures, behaviours and cultures such as the conception of the state, the relative importance of management and law, and the nature of political and administrative relationships (Peters 2003; Painter and Peters 2010a, 2010b). Comparative studies have made effective use of traditions (e.g., Bach et al. 2018) or similar models (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019) with inter alia the Anglophone, Germanic, Napoleonic and Nordic being widely used. An administrative tradition is a component of a broader state tradition, with interrelationships between how the state is defined, the nature of the bureaucracy that serves it, the civil servants who occupy positions within the bureaucracy, and the manner in which public policy is implemented (Painter and Peters 2010a, p. 6). The requirements of the civil service system derive from these constitutional, governance and personnel roles. The most relevant dimensions for defining the basis of a civil service which bear on policy roles and style are the rule of law versus management; conception of the personnel system (e.g., open or closed); the political-bureaucratic relationships; policy roles of civil servants; and the source of authority, whether the state or a government.1 There are close relations between the five: management tends to be associated with a more open personnel system; the legal basis defines operations and procedures and influences recruitment processes; the two sources of authority point to either the rule of law under the state or the political executive’s influence in government; and a political dimension underlies personnel, accountability and the source of authority.

Civil service system styles A civil service system style is the standard way of operating. It is shaped by the principles and rules that define the operational framework and the administrative culture of the system; the personnel arrangements governing employment of the professional staff; and the authority relationships of the civil service. The system style of a civil service reflects how these institutional arrangements are interpreted in terms of providing structures and personnel for governments and the state. Is it possible to encapsulate a style for a system as complex as a civil service at the national level? The difficulties can be illustrated by British cases. The administrative class of the traditional 166

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British civil service was ‘a tiny fraction’ of it, although it was used to characterise it as a whole (Chapman and Dunsire 1979, p. 13). There has been the stark distinction between Whitehall policymakers and regional officials focused on delivery. The most recent assault on the British generalist tradition has produced numerous formal specialisations for civil servants, either ‘functional areas’ or professions (including one for policy), many of which do not readily comport with a discernible civil service style. The following approach seeks to capture the essence of a style, while being mindful of the limitations. Two base styles that are ideal type in character provide a starting point and reflect a common understanding of core models: the rule of law versus public interest. The core styles are, in some respects, polar opposites. A dichotomy is conventionally drawn between two cultures: continental rule of law and public interest (Kuhlman and Wollman 2019; Painter and Peters 2010a; Page and Wright 1999). Under a legalist ideal type, the rule of law is the core principle, the authority source is the state and the personnel system is closed. The legalistic style is characterised by the dominance of law in administrative action with civil servants implementing what is required by law. In this dominant approach in European administrative traditions, administrative action focuses on following through on legal provisions (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019). The public interest formulation sees management as the central principle, the government as the source of authority and an open personnel system. Under this approach the public administrator’s task is not concerned with the law but with organising and managing programs to make them function efficiently and effectively (Painter and Peters 2010a). Departures from these types have long existed, and with increased change during recent decades, their significance has become more attenuated and modified through layering of other principles and reform ideas. Nevertheless, the ideal types provide a starting point for addressing country clusters or models based on administrative traditions and several country-level experiences. Four models have been chosen according to their attachment to one or more operating principle: the rule of law (in three cases), management (three cases) and pronounced politicisation (one case). In fact, all four cases incorporate these principles, but at least one is dominant, and the civil service style still depends on interaction with the other principles. The first two cases have been regarded as exemplars of the two ideal types; the other two represent different types of hybrid. The question of variations in styles within traditions and countries need to be noted at this point. The limits of the characterisations by traditions arise because countries that share core features of their civil service systems may be differentiated in a few respects.2

Legalist Germanic civil service In the Germanic countries (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) the codification of law is the central pervasive style that imbues administrative activities. The German model is ‘the strong legalistic orientation of the administration and the rule of law culture following the Roman law tradition’ (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, p. 19). The state is accorded special qualities that distinguish it from society and perform an integrative function expressed through values like legality and equality. The German Rechtsstaat is frequently represented as ‘the prime example of a statist view of governance, with a very strong all-encompassing body of public law governing every administrative sphere’. The required qualification for civil servants is legal training which emphasises that their role is to define the public interest and that the legal quality of decisions remains central (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, pp. 19–20; Painter and Peters 2010b, p. 22). The traditional conception of statehood in Germany and Austria regarded civil servants as ‘servants of the state’, and the status of the civil service was ‘hierarchically superordinate to the 167

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societal domain’ (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, p.  20).3 The main roles of civil servants are policy formulation and the preparation of legislation. Ministers have considerable independence compared to other countries regarding the conduct of ministerial affairs (Jann and Veit 2010). Civil servants’ discretion is restricted by how public administration has functioned under the rule of law because they have operated ‘within a tightly knit network of public and administrative law’ (Goetz 2000, p. 68). The traditional personnel arrangements were based on a closed system, career-based recruitment and separate public and private employment (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, p. 38).

Instrumentalist Anglophone civil service The instrumental style is associated with a civil service system that has the primary role of executing the will of the government of the day. It is identified with Anglophone countries (Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand). Administrative law in this tradition is less developed than the ‘rule-of-law legalism’ of European countries (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017, p. 63). The basis of the tradition is the Westminster model of the state, which provides a constitutional and governance framework centred on responsible government based on the fusion of the executive and legislature. There have continued to be shared beliefs about the reliance on professional and internal appointments to a civil service that is neutral, non-partisan and professional. The tradition is ‘characterized by an instrumental concept of statehood’ (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, p. 21), meaning that government rather than the state is the source of authority. The civil service is an open system. The tradition can both facilitate change and constrain significant departures from accepted understandings. The constraints stem from the Westminster model as well as conventions that evolved over time. The British administrative style and new world settings produced two shared aspects of administrative culture: instrumentalism and pragmatism. The combination of the two has had significant implications for the machinery of government, processes of change and relations with society. Instrumentalism has enabled the transformation of structures and practices (Halligan 2020). The related attribute, pragmatism, is significant because it routinises governments’ change agenda and reflects the nature of governing (and also the adaptive nature of the legal system) (Peters 2003, pp. 21–22; Cairney 2018). The civil service systems are anchored in managerialist principles and for that reason are prone to change and reform as governments accept the malleability of governance and management (Halligan 2020). They have also experienced chronic reformism and hyper change to the machinery of government (Donadelli and Lodge 2019; Pollitt 2007).

Civil service system styles under hybrid cultures Civil service systems have been changing significantly in the last generation, leading to the depiction of hybrid systems and layering as a representation of how reform ideas have been gradually adopted (Christensen and Laegreid 2011; Greve et al. 2016b; Painter and Peters 2010a). Hybrid civil service systems are not new but have become more apparent with reform trends. Two models are considered, one a long-standing hybrid that is relatively unresponsive to change, the other a successful reformer in melding different elements into a regional model (Greve et al. 2016b). In both cases the focus is on two major principles that shape a civil service system style.

Law and politicisation: southern European The states from southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain) are a subset of the Napoleonic tradition (Kickert 2011; Kuhlman and Wollman 2019) and have featured legalism and 168

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politicisation. The central state has a superordinate status above society (Sotiropoulus 2018, p.  886). Administration is dominated by the traditional structure of legalism, which means administrative law is central ‘as a way of “being” and “acting” in public administration’. The majority of Italian civil servants have received legal training, and their actions entail following detailed rules and legal control, including the codification of reforms as laws and regulations (Ongaro 2009, p. 168; Kuhlman and Wollman 2019). Administrative practices are also subject to exceptionally high politicisation in the form of political control of the civil service, which has limited autonomy in relations between politicians and bureaucrats and political party patronage with regard to appointments and clientelism (Kickert 2011; Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019; Sotiropoulus 2018). Comparative research on senior appointments indicates that the Napoleonic tradition is ranked the highest for politicisation of eighteen European countries (Bach et al. 2018; Kickert 2011). The civil services are subject to multiple forms of politicisation at both the top and the bottom of the civil service. Politicisation at the top occurs where elected officials determine the career progression of tenured officials (Ongaro 2009, p. 224). The rule of law applies in principle as do formal recruitment requirements, but in practice civil servants can attain office by taking a ‘political shortcut’ (Kuhlman and Wollman 2019, p. 19; Kickert 2011). Political clientelism and party patronage are more pronounced in senior positions; young civil servants in Greece must develop party links to succeed in ‘a kind of spoils system for the top echelons’ (Spanou and Sotiropoulus 2011, p. 733). Politicisation at the bottom of the civil service is often linked to clientelism. Political parties in southern Europe function primarily as job providers and sources of inter alia insurances, pensions and subsidies to members (Kickert 2011).

Law and management: Nordic The Nordic civil service (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) style encompasses several elements, only two of which, law and management, are the focus here. They are opposites in some respects, rule of law values overlapping with other European countries, while the infusion and influence of managerialism has affinities with the Anglophone model. The communitarian tradition is intrinsically Nordic and a core component of the model (Greve et al. 2016a; Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019; Painter and Peters 2010b). Management has been singled out because of the extensive range of applications, and survey results indicate that ‘it is possible to talk about a Nordic model when it comes to the use of management instruments’ (Ejersbo et al. 2017, p. 11). These instruments are embedded in organisations as ‘part of the day-to-day operations’ and influence procedures and the behaviour of individuals within agencies to improve organisational performance (Ejersbo and Greve 2016, pp. 138, 143). Nordic systems are reported to be ‘active, pragmatic . . . reformers . . . characterized by high reform activity and multiple reforms’ (Ejersbo et al. 2017, p. 1; Ejersbo and Greve 2016). In these respects, Nordic countries are akin to Anglophone systems and use such instruments more than do other European clusters (Ejersbo and Greve 2016), but there are distinct new public management reform trajectories among the four and different levels of commitment (Ongaro et al. 2018). The openness of the recruitment and career system complements managerialism, and the prominence accorded to accessibility, such as freedom of information, transparency and citizen engagement, is redolent of the Anglophone tradition but contrasts with countries of the Roman law tradition (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, p. 21). The model emerges ‘as a mixed system combining professional governance, stakeholder engagement, legality, and the more traditional Weberian bureaucratic principles’ plus actively employing management instruments (Ejersbo et al. 2017, p. 1). 169

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Civil service systems and policy roles Civil service system change Civil service systems have been affected by changes to the constituent elements distinguished earlier and have been the subject of extended debates about principles, rules, relationships and even their existence (Goetz 2000; Greve et al. 2016a; Halligan 2020; Ongaro 2009). At the governance level, the agency of the civil service, whether of the state or of government, has come under pressure. The nature of the civil service relationship to the state has been questioned in Europe: in Germany, ‘notions of the sovereignty state, the public good and the public bureaucracy seem themselves to have become obsolete’ (Goetz 2000, p. 66). Traditional concepts of the state have been modified where neo-Weberian ideas about responsiveness to citizens have been influential. The importance of networks in Anglophone, Germanic and Nordic countries signifies that previous conceptions of state-society relations are less viable. The erosion of the German state’s internal sovereignty means that conceiving ‘state-society relations in hierarchical terms is profoundly misguided, as state authority gives way to the “network state” ’ (Goetz 2000, p.  66; Greve et al. 2016a). Activist Anglophone governments have demanded greater ownership of the civil service flouting conventions and affecting the continuity once provided by the civil service (Halligan 2020). The changing significance of the rule of law and management principles is evident. The rule of law still prevails, meaning that administration in European civil services continue to be largely procedural and dominated by red tape (or ‘regulatory density’) (Thijs et al. 2018). All have registered some degree of managerial change, but the use of management instruments ranges from the high end (Nordic and Anglophone systems) to Germanic, with the Napoleonic being lowest (Ejersbo and Greve 2016; Thijs et al. 2018). A reform paradox in Anglophone countries is that bureaucratisation has been apparent because managerial oversight and political pressures induce civil servants to be risk averse and to resort to red tape (Halligan 2020). A related expression is values that attest to institutional integrity. Public attitudes towards values are reflected in surveys. For trust in government there are pronounced differences north to south (van der Meer et al. 2015) and also among Anglophone countries. Citizen distrust in southern Europe derives from the combination of rules and informal practices in routine public administration: the excessive formal rules are ‘subverted by a subterranean set of practices which help well-connected citizens to circumvent rules’ (Sotiropoulus 2018, p. 891). With personnel, the distinction between open and closed systems can be discerned but has become blurred in practice. Many civil service systems have become ‘a more open, less classical Weberian, purely career-based model’. The latter disappeared as countries adopted mixed models that used ‘various combinations of Weberian and neo-Weberian institutional characteristics’, including position-based features (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, pp. 37–38). The politicisation of civil services has been a relentless trend internationally often overriding the significance of other changes (Peters and Pierre 2004). The spread of politicisation has increased, encompassing countries once thought to be low on politicisation, and it has intensified as its breadth and depth extends down bureaucracies and affects a wider range of civil servants. Multiple types of politicisation are apparent in the different contexts of Germany and the Anglophone systems. There is a long tradition of senior German staff being deemed ‘political civil servants’ who ministers can retire at will. Second, civil servants can belong to political parties and stand for parliamentary office, and party groups may operate in ministries. Party membership has increased particularly at senior levels. Third, involvement of senior civil servants in ‘political 170

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decision-making’ (‘functional politicisation’) has long been significant, but the distinction between the civil service and the political executive has become blurred, as indicated by the ‘politicisation of administration and bureaucratisation of politics’ and the professionalisation of both fields (Jann and Veit 2010, p. 19). Anglophone countries formerly regarded in both tradition and practice as being non-­ politicised have experienced politicisation through multiple means. Politicising without formal political appointees entails multiple instruments that are not necessarily visible, four being the expansion in ministerial roles; larger numbers of political staff; direct influence over appointments of top officials; and more intense pressures by political leaders on how senior officials operate (Craft and Halligan 2020; Diamond 2019; Halligan 2020; Thijs et al. 2018).

Policy roles The roles of civil servants in policymaking are defined and practised under an administrative culture, and the extent to which they undertake a spectrum of policy roles or are specialised varies among models and over time. It is unclear how far civil servants are able to initiate policy in these days of assertive governments with a phalanx of political and partisan advisers. There is a consistent pattern across the four models of top-down political direction regarding policy or at least significant influence over the process. Strategic policy roles do not receive support because political executives lack interest or rely on political advisers and ministerial cabinets to take the initiative (Craft and Halligan 2020; Zohlnhofer and Tosun 2018). The civil service is not sufficiently resourced to be able to undertake medium- to long-term analysis, planning and thinking, or it is simply too busy reacting to ministerial perception of the short-term issues of the day and firefighting activities (Craft and Halligan 2020). In Anglophone countries, the relative importance of ministers and civil servants in policy roles (articulation of values, strategy, initiation and implementation) has changed substantially. Under a traditional conception, civil servants took a lead on policy initiation and were responsible for implementation. As ministers exercised greater policy leadership across the spectrum, they were now leading on three roles and sharing implementation (Halligan 2020). For southern Europe, ‘the tendency to turn all policy problems into problems ostensibly resolved by passing a new law’ has continued (Sotiropoulus 2018, p. 888). The Italian administration plays a weak role in the policy process with ministers relying on cabinets. The civil service adheres to the rules in policy implementation in part because of the legalistic culture, but also to minimise risks and political intervention (Lewansky 2000, pp. 234–236). The ‘policy advisory system’ has been expanding (Craft and Halligan 2020), which means a wider range of sources of policy inside the public sector, in para forms on its margin or externally in think tanks and consultancies. There are similarities across different systems in the use of alternative sources of advice such as ad hoc task forces and inquiries. The assumption of a single civil service style per country is questionable as civil services have been subject to waves of reform that produce greater variegation and expanding policy advisory systems. Large and complex civil services may exhibit several styles. British policy styles are both top-down and consensual, the latter a product of complex systems where policymakers seek pragmatically ‘to share policymaking responsibility’ (Cairney 2018, p. 41). Research on European systems indicates that while civil servants may be subject to politicians’ policy agendas, they are still engaged in shaping policy in the form of secondary legislation (Page 2012). The growth of specialised networks of policy specialists from multiple jurisdictions and non-government areas has produced functional differentiation (Jann and Veit 2010). 171

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Implications for civil service systems and policy styles Civil service systems have evolved to varying extents. The Nordic countries are relatively stable and mature, in the sense of having the capacity to adapt and absorb ideas from different agendas and traditions. The Anglophone systems are variable with unresolved tensions between traditional values and modern realities still being worked through, including the unintended consequences of managerialism and politicisation (Halligan 2020).4 Germanic systems have been evolving incrementally with a muted dynamic element coming from the political sphere and broader policy networks. In southern Europe, path dependence is strong, and formalism and politicisation prevail. With political actors assuming greater roles and the externalisation of advice one trend appears to be toward implementation and process roles for civil servants. The loss of professional expertise affects strategic capability in the civil service as politicians focus on the short term and reactive policy activity (Halligan 2020). The civil service these days is often dominated by central agents running government agenda and coordination and/or ministers’ courtiers and ‘cabinets’ driving departmental agendas. The politicisation effects on the civil service system undermine tenets of a professional civil service and its role in society and push civil servants towards being more politically engaged. The relationship between civil service system style and policy style is close because similar factors shape and influence each, although the system encompasses a wider range of dimensions. Recruitment and institutional context feature in both. The forces changing civil service systems are largely inseparable from those affecting policy styles. The implications for policy styles is that factors internal to the civil service, which may of course reflect environment pressures, have major impacts on policy roles and policymaking. The analysis of policy styles tends to focus on broader political dynamics (e.g., changes in the political system: Howlett and Tosun 2018) and less on those internal to the civil service. The internal pressures for the civil service to be reactive are at least sevenfold: the policy dominance of the centre of government, which may mean partisan units; ministers leading their ministries and departments by relying on political offices/cabinets; governments and ministers use of external consultants or think tanks; governments’ and ministers’ preference for para civil service advisers (ad hoc task forces with external appointees, temporary public inquiries and policy tsars); politicians’ disposition to be reactive towards the civil service when driven by the short-term and media politics; civil services that are overly bureaucratic because of the domination of rules and procedures; and civil services with diminished capacity to undertake policy development because of resource diversion (Craft and Halligan 2020; Halligan 2020).

Conclusion Civil service systems have several distinctive components, which have combined in different ways under the several traditions. The influence of key principles continues to be strongly evident in public law and management countries. Core elements of administration and country traditions have been resilient and contested. Civil service systems have been modified, including becoming more pluralistic and open. They have also experienced common political pressures. Policy roles have become more vulnerable for the civil service where there is a loss of initiative and discretion because political executives (and their entourages) are more active and alternative sources of advice are available. Political executives are more likely to be focused on the short term and be reactive, which

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impacts on policy work including strategic planning. Professional expertise may be valued less and recycled into processing advisory information from other sources. In an age of complex and hybrid governance, it is more difficult to characterise and generalise about the style of a civil service. There is less clarity and more ambiguity. Where the limitations of the principles and elements of the civil service system are apparent, there is scope for governments under 21st-century conditions to disregard conventions to achieve their ends. It was observed two decades ago how difficult it had become to reconcile ‘traditional justifications for the existence of the civil service . . . with the reality of modern governance’. These included loyalty to the state and the role of guardian of the public good as a basis for legitimation (Goetz 2000, p. 87). The environments of civil services and political expectations have become more demanding since then, and adjustments continue in order to meet the needs of government while preserving core principles that underpin the civil service system and its style.

Notes 1 The governmental structures of which the civil service is a part are only given passing attention because of limits of space. 2 For example, Germany and Switzerland. The Anglophone countries have varied in their commitment to managerialism with Canada being more selective and incremental. Among the Nordic countries, there are variations, for example Sweden (Greve et al. 2016b). Spain and Italy differ in some respects within their group. 3 In contrast Swiss civil servants are regarded as ‘employees of the people’ and are less superordinate (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019, p. 20). 4 The notable exception is New Zealand, which has been seeking to rebalance the civil service system.

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14 Empirically assessing administrative styles as bureaucratic routines Louisa Bayerlein, Christoph Knill, Yves Steinebach, and Dionys Zink Introduction Administrative styles manifest themselves as informal patterns of bureaucratic routines throughout the three stages of the policy process (for an overview of the concept of administrative styles see Chapter 12, this volume). These routines are informed by the respective organisation’s orientation, that is, the overall principles guiding the organisation. Two orientations can be differentiated: a functional orientation aiming at constant improvement of policy performance and a positional one centrally concerned with the autonomy and legitimacy of the administration. Starting from these orientations, four ideal-types of administrative style can be differentiated: an advocate administration, where we find a pronounced functional orientation and no positional orientation; a consolidator administration, which is characterised by the opposite constellation of strong positional and no functional orientation; the entrepreneur type of administration, which exhibits both orientations; and the servant type, which features neither of the two. This chapter is concerned with empirically assessing administrative styles. Measuring informal routines naturally poses a number of methodological challenges, most notably among which are comparability and validity. In measuring styles, the researcher must come up with a set of criteria to make analytical sense of often seemingly idiosyncratic, often unconsciously produced patterns of administrative routine behaviour and their underlying, even more elusive, orientations (Becker 2005). In setting forth our methodological approach and measurement, we thus put special emphasis on how several complications associated with these problems could be approached. First, the complex, two-level structure of administrative styles with its latent, unobservable administrative orientations that generate a set of concrete, observable routines needs to be dissected in such a way that each routine can be associated with one of the orientations. Second, such routines on the ground can vary greatly in their details and might even not be carried out consciously or knowingly connected to the orientations that generated them on a more abstract level. Because this renders ex ante specification of survey items and interview questions unfeasible, in terms of methods, styles are notoriously hard to assess using standard procedures such as surveys or fully structured interviews. Third, to enable comparative research, a measurement of styles needs to look beyond idiosyncrasies and focus on administrative routine tasks that 176

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apply to as many organisations as possible, regardless of their policy sector, organisational structure, and (inter-)national context. Indictors thought to capture manifest administrative styles as routines thus need to be rather general to allow for comparison, while at the same time specific enough to expose variation across or within organisations as well as over time. In what follows, we first discuss measuring administrative styles more generally and the problems associated with validity and comparability in particular. In the third section, we suggest a measurement scheme consisting of nine indictors, which can be each be linked to either a functional or positional orientation. Grouped by the policy cycle stages of policy initiation, policy formulation, and policy implementation, we go on to describe and discuss each of these indicators and how they relate to either of the orientations in turn. The fourth section provides a brief review of possible methods to identify administrative styles. We conclude by highlighting some of the lessons learned and point out some limitations to the approach, which bear potential for future research.

A concept for measuring administrative styles Organisational routines can generally be defined as “repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent actions, carried out by multiple actors” (Feldman and Pentland 2003, p. 103). They comprise two layers: “a surface layer that can be directly observed and an underlying, generative layer that cannot” (Pentland et al. 2010, p. 917). The latter aspect is what has been called orientations in the context of administrative styles. These abstract dispositions are deeply embedded in an organisation’s DNA and provide the “grammar” (Pentland and Reuter 1994) which generates the concrete behavioural patterns of administrative staff. Analogous to botanica, the two layers can be thought of as a genotype (here: orientation) and a phenotype (here: manifestation) of an administrative style (Hodgson 2008). Because the latent genotype cannot be directly observed, we can only assess what we can see, that is, the phenotype, which can then be linked back to the underlying orientation (Pentland et al. 2010; Becker 2005). But how can we empirically assess concepts as abstract as bureaucratic routines? In developing a measurement scheme for administrative styles, the first question in terms of construct validity is: If a functional or positional orientation were to exist, how would they show in practice? In a study of international bureaucracies, Knill et al. (2019) suggest a total of nine indictors, each of which should group empirical manifestations of either of the two latent orientations on the practical surface level. These indicators, which we discuss in detail in the next section, are generic in that, instead of naming concrete routines, they denote certain fields of activity, in which the administration could have developed a number of varying behavioural patterns geared at leaving a mark on the policy process. This is not to be understood as vagueness but rather a necessity given the very nature of informal routines. Because the orientations serve as a generative foundation to the actions an administration takes, the same orientation can manifest in a myriad of slightly different behavioural patterns (Egidi and Narduzzo 1997; Pentland et al. 2010). For example, in a given field of activity, such as support mobilisation, an organisation could have developed a number of informal routines to reach out to potential allies or sponsors more effectively than the formal rulebook would stipulate. In terms of their administrative style, any such routines in alliance-building would be an indication of the organisation having a positional orientation (Knill et al. 2019) because they serve to strengthen an organisation’s position vis-à-vis its political principal (Bayerlein et al. 2020). In order to capture these slight variations of the same theme, the indictor scheme was deliberately formulated in a generic fashion. The ‘phenotype’ behavioural patterns are then associated with the ‘genotype’ orientation by their likely goal. In other words, in a given field of activity, administrative routines could serve the 177

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purpose of organisational consolidation (positional orientation) or policy advocacy (functional orientation). Assigning a given behavioural manifestation on the ground to either of the two orientations is hence based on theoretical considerations of the researcher. What are being analysed and compared are not the individual manifestations as such, but whether we see patterns that correspond to one of the underlying orientations in each field of activity (Feldman and Pentland 2008). How to then choose such indictors? To enable comparison, it is necessary to concentrate on those fields of activity that are indeed taking place in the different organisations under study. This is easier said than done. When comparing bureaucratic routines, the focus predominantly lies on small fractions of an administration’s daily business, such as invoice processing (Pentland et al. 2010), software support (Pentland and Reuter 1994), and report writing (Feldman 1989). The concept of administrative styles, however, is meant to capture ‘what makes organisations tick’ as a whole and was designed to apply to public administrations of different kinds in different fields. The challenge thus is to identify fields of activity that (a) pertain to different organisations in different fields and (b) cover each individual organisation’s relevant activities as comprehensively as possible. In response to this challenge, Knill and colleagues (2019) propose to take the concept of the policy process (see Sabatier 1999; Howlett et al. 2009) as a baseline to identify those activities in which bureaucratic orientations should most likely become visible at each stage. They expect the manifestation of distinct style characteristics in three stages: policy initiation, formulation, and implementation and monitoring. By definition, we can suppose public organisations to be involved in the policy process. It is thus safe to assume that every organisation – regardless of the field or operating level – is covered by the indicator scheme. While this already benefits covering as many organisations as possible, the scheme allows for flexible adaption in cases where an organisation might not be (fully) involved in one of the stages. This might apply for instance to ministries in federal systems, which are not directly involved in implementation (yet might still be tasked with monitoring, drafting, and initiation). Taking the policy process as guidance also enables a quite comprehensive view on the organisation because different units carry out the different activities at different times. Rather than focusing specific tasks that are usually carried out by specialised staff, the whole organisation and its tasks throughout the process of policymaking are taken into account. The policy process then serves as an ordering principle in choosing more specific indictors among the many tasks bureaucratic orientations can manifest themselves in. This way, the measurement concept is meant to allow for comparative analysis by striking a balance between comprehensiveness and wide applicability on the one hand and the necessary specificness to capture variance on the other.

Observable manifestations of administrative styles In what ways do they manifest themselves in observable behavioural patterns along the central stages of policymaking? So far, the most detailed indicator scheme for administrative styles has been put forward in the context of international organisations (Bayerlein et al. 2020; Knill et al. 2019). Although, in part, the theoretical foundation of this measurement approach is consequently grounded in research in international organisations, we would contend that it can be adapted for other policymaking arenas. In this section we present their nine indictors and, where appropriate, briefly indicate how they can be altered to apply to organisations on the state level. Each of the three stages of the (shortened) policy process model is covered by

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three indicators, that is, fields of activity in which various routines guided by functional or positional orientations should most likely occur. An administration’s underlying orientation(s) should determine both the relative emphasis it places on the respective indicators’ practices and the amount of effort it exerts in performing those activities. To allow for a systematic comparison of the different indicators, Bayerlein and colleagues (2020) denote public administrations’ regular efforts as being either ‘low’ or ‘high’ when it comes to the execution of the different activities mentioned. This classification is based on whether certain behavioural patterns can be considered as a regular feature characterising administrative actions. In addition to this binary distinction, there is a residual medium category to capture those cases in which behavioural patterns cannot be observed on a regular basis but rather occur on occasion. Depending on the fields of activity in which a certain kind of behaviour is frequently observable, that is, fields in which the indictor takes a ‘high’ value, an organisation can be categorised as function-oriented or position-oriented as well as neither or both. The indictors denote activities that provide some room for administrative agency and are theorised to indicate either a functional or a positional orientation. There is thus a set of separate indicators for each orientation, which reflects them being different in kind rather than opposite poles of a continuum (Knill et al. 2019). Function-oriented bureaucracies put genuine effort in the development of their own policy ideas and proposals, which should translate into routinely working towards actively shaping their organisation’s policy agenda. Their interest in advocacy should furthermore translate in routinised patterns of optimising solution search, positive internal coordination, active policy promotion, and ambitious evaluation of their policies (Bayerlein et al. 2020, p. 53). Position-oriented administrations on the other hand seek to consolidate or expand their organisational standing and should hence have developed routines in mapping the political space, mobilising support, anticipating political preferences, and strategically using their formal powers. We discuss each of these indicators in turn in the sections to follow. Administrative styles as such are informal institutions, that is, “socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels” (Helmke and Levitsky 2004, p. 727). More often than not there are thus no standardised formal requirements that may predetermine how the activities that the indicators denote are to be pursued. However, the extent to which administrations evaluate their policies or make strategic use of formal powers, for instance, is per definition dependent on more structural conditions, such as whether the organisation has a specialised evaluation division or possesses the statutory competences to implement policy themselves or to sanction policy addressees. In these cases, the formal conditions serve as a yardstick against which an administration’s informal routines are assessed. Regarding the strategic use of formal powers, for instance, we will see that the manifestation ‘high’ describes that a bureaucracy does not simply stick to the rules but rather behaves ‘politically’. Figure 14.1 summarises the nine indicators and how they relate to either a functional or positional orientation.

Policy initiation Starting with the policy initiation stage, administrative orientations can manifest themselves as bureaucratic routines in three fields of activity. First, to what extent does an administration work towards being constantly aware of issues which could fall into their realm? Second, does an administration regularly rally for support of their policy endeavours? Last, how well developed are the routines of administration for detecting political preferences?

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Administrative Style

Functional Orientation

Use of Formal Powers

Mapping of the pol. Space

Support Mobilization

= Policy Formulation Stage

Political Anticipation

Evaluation Efforts

Policy Promotion

Internal Coordination

Solution Search

Issue Emerge

= Policy Initiation Stage

Positional Orientation

= Policy Implementation Stage

Figure 14.1  Indicators of administrative styles Source: Adapted from Bayerlein et al. 2020, p. 55

Issue emergence Issue emergence captures administrators’ routines of actively seeking to identify policy problems in order to put them on their organisation’s agenda. Ideas about problems can generally be put forward by civil society, including but not limited to (groups of) citizens, non-governmental organisations, academia, and the media or be brought up by public organisations. The key determinant here is whether new policy issues are put on the organisational agenda by the political principal or the bureaucracy, regardless of the ideational origin of the idea. The indicator thus denotes bureaucratic routines of either generating or detecting and filtering such ideas and subsequently placing them on their own agenda, as well as (informally) bringing them up to their political principal. The empirical focus lies on detecting the extent to which internal resources are typically devoted to identifying problems worth focusing on, whether or not there are routinised efforts to sift and filter ideas from the outside, and if and how the bureaucracy regularly and informally reaches out to their principals to pitch new ideas. It can be expected that an administration with a functional orientation, intrinsically motivated by a strong creed in its responsibility and ability to solve policy problems in its realm, will actively be on the lookout for potential issues it feels the need to address.

Support mobilisation Enjoying political support from actors inside and outside the organisational environment can be a crucial factor in both organisational survival and branching out into new fields. Administrations can actively build such support in order to increase the chance of a given idea to make it on the agenda and through the subsequent policy process. Support can be sought after in the societal realm by forming ties with external actors such as interest groups, policy networks, and the broader public in general (Stone 2008) or in case of multiple political principals, among them. Routinised establishment and maintenance of good relationships with the ‘outside world’ and various (informal) lobbying routines would be an example of activities in this field. Depending on their orientation, administrations can follow a more active strategy of recurrently working 180

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to increase external support for a certain issue by establishing coalitions or rather passively refrain from reaching out in such a way. Pursuing a strategy of support mobilisation is usually grounded in positional concerns about the individual standing of an organisation. Mobilising support might be motivated by budgetary concerns, competition over human resources, or the “quest for organisational autonomy” (Ellison 1995, p. 45) more generally, especially when core tasks are challenged by other actors or when political support for the organisation is weak.

Mapping of the political space Bureaucracies can develop highly differentiated procedures for detecting the preferences of their political principals with regard to certain policy issues (Knill et al. 2016). In order to guarantee alignment with the preferences of their principal(s) already at the initiation stage, assessing political feasibility of an issue is vital (Aberbach et al. 1981; Mayntz and Derlien 1989). Rather than monitoring which ideas might be floating around, the mapping of the political space indicator bundles activities of keeping track of political preferences of other actors in the organisational environment. On the international and supranational level, such actors include member states and national (public) organisations. Practically, for instance in the European Commission, this materialises as close interaction with national administration as well as constant scrutinising of the policy progress of member states (Knill et al. 2016). On the national level, this could include keeping preferences of other portfolios or various civil society organisations. Mapping can also include routinised efforts to keep track of other actors operating in the same policy area who might have an impact on the work of the organisation. For example, this might be the case for peacekeeping and state-building policies where responsibility is oftentimes shared amongst multiple ministries (Eckhard 2016). Pursuing mapping endeavours enables strategic positioning and is usually motivated by positional concerns about the standing of an organisation.

Policy formulation One of the most important sources of administrative influence is the drafting of policy proposals by the bureaucracy. Although such drafts might undergo certain changes in the political decision-making process, they pre-structure the basic content and the instrumental design of a policy or programme. Research on policymaking in various arenas has shown that bureaucracies display differences in the ways they are engaged in this process. To capture this variation, the three indicators of solution search, internal coordination, and political anticipation have been suggested.

Solution search Administrations can rely on different routine procedures in the development of their proposals. This indicator targets the strategy underlying the process of finding a solution to a defined policy problem. The question here is whether an administration is more inclined to follow a pattern of incremental adjustment or synoptic strategies of rational solution search. In the former case, administrations will adhere to the logic of satisficing. Rather than aiming for the most effective policy solution, existing policies will be perpetuated and incrementally adjusted in response to new developments. In the latter case, by contrast, they will apply more sophisticated techniques of systematically assessing underlying problems and evaluating different solutions, which can be labelled ‘optimising’ routines (Simon 1997; Bayerlein et al. 2020). Examples for activities in this field could be the routinised incorporation of problem 181

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disaggregation, simulations and tests, and evidence-based research (Balla and Gormley 2012, pp. 41–50). A high value for this indicator would be allocated to an organisation typically aiming for effective policy solutions to a new problem involving more often than not a fundamental policy change. A low value on the other hand can be attributed to an administration which is more inclined towards preserving and adjusting existing policies in order to react to the problem. Optimising routines should be typical manifestations of a functional orientation as in the interest of producing the best possible policy, and administration should evaluate a large number of different alternatives and go with the solution they deem best, which may not necessarily be the easiest one.

Internal coordination In essence, the indicator targets how close of a relation different parts of a bureaucracy have, or, in other words, does the one hand know what the other is doing? The central question is if and to what extent different units of a bureaucratic entity are aware of and included in the policy formulation activities of each other. Based on Scharpf ’s concept of negative and positive coordination (1994), two basic modes can be distinguished. Negative coordination represents the standard model of administrative coordination. Administrative units are typically concentrated almost exclusively on their own issues and only really become involved in the drafting process of other units when they see that a circulated draft proposal interferes with their work or objectives. By contrast, in positively coordinated organisations, drafts are circulated at much earlier stages and various administrative units engage in simultaneous joint problem-solving activities from the very start in order to “maximise the overall effectiveness and efficiency of government policy” (Scharpf 1994, p. 38). It is thus supposed that routines aiming at positive coordination should be manifestations of a functional orientation.

Political anticipation Political anticipation can be described as the level of responsiveness to political preferences, or, put simply, “the readiness of public servants to do what government ministers want” (Mulgan 2008, p. 345). In drafting policy proposals, bureaucracies can vary in the extent to which they are ex ante responsive to political preferences. In the public administration literature, this variation in the anticipation of political preferences is discussed under the heading of functional politicisation (Aberbach et al. 1981; Mayntz and Derlien 1989), which refers to the bureaucracy being responsive to politics by “anticipating and integrating politically relevant aspects in the bureaucracy’s day-to-day functions” (Husted and Salomonsen 2014, p. 750). In this spirit, administrations can adopt drafting routines, which, in anticipation of their principal’s need and wants, might include leaving out politically sensitive issues, adding certain details according to anticipated preferences, framing or re-framing the issue, or simply formulating a given proposal such that it will likely not touch upon too many sensitivities (Acs 2018). Such routines are indicative of a positional orientation because they are geared at avoiding conflict with the principal, which could jeopardise the organisation’s standing.

Policy implementation Informal routines and administrative procedures can also vary when it comes to administrative involvement in post-decisional politics. The indicators at the implementation level capture the way bureaucracies make use of their formal control and sanctioning powers, their engagement 182

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in policy evaluation, and the level of ambition when it comes to their policy in their organisational environment.

Use of formal powers This indicator denotes the extent to which political considerations play a major role in how bureaucracies use their formal implementation powers. Two approaches of how administrations secure compliance with their policies can be identified. Whereas some bureaucracies might adhere to standard templates in applying their rules, a more strategic organisation might refrain from fully deploying their legal instruments in order to avoid open conflicts (Knill et al. 2019). Routines associated with using formal powers strategically can naturally only be expected in organisations that indeed have such powers, such as some international organisations or the European Commission. However, where an organisation’s own formal means in implementing, monitoring, or sanctioning are lacking and the organisation has to rely on intermediaries, different approaches can be identified. Bureaucracies might rely on other public or private actors, as in the case of environmental standards whereby a ministry usually sets national standards which are then implemented regionally or locally. The question then would be how strictly those agents are being monitored or sanctioned and how big the margin might be between the level of standards an administration could set regarding implementation and the standard it actually dictates. Again, an administration could proceed strictly by the books, go creatively beyond what the standard procedure would stipulate, or stay below that. Administrations with a positional nature should be more inclined to routinely use their formal powers strategically and selectively in order to maintain or improve their position.

Evaluation efforts The implementation stage not only captures monitoring and enforcement but also relates to activities of policy evaluation. The goal of evaluations is to systematically assess whether a given policy has achieved its intended objectives in terms of policy outcomes and impacts. Administrative practices for systematic evaluation efforts display considerable variation across countries and organisations (Adam et al. 2018; Eckhard and Jankauskas 2019). The determining factors here are whether and how thoroughly evaluations are performed routinely and whether their results feed back into policymaking. An administration might evaluate policies only selectively and superficially, or regularly and thoroughly, as part of their routines in the post-decisional stage. Likewise, the results of such evaluations can be a vital tool for policy learning or sidelined for the most part. Performing evaluations and thereby expanding the organisational knowledge horizon beyond the required are additional steps conducted by functional-oriented administrations. When evaluation processes as well as the results are taking seriously by an administration rather than them being a mere formality, one can assume a genuine interest in policy and organisational improvement.

Policy promotion The header of policy promotion describes alternative ways to strengthen the overall impact of an organisation’s policy. It can be interpreted as the second stage of support mobilisation. Whereas support mobilisation captures the efforts of an administration to gather support for a policy proposal, the latter is geared towards rallying support and awareness only after the introduction of a new policy. This might include setting up close relationships with involved stakeholders, interest 183

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groups, or external experts. Strategies that might be pursued are soft measures such as providing information on the policy to mobilise societal pressure ‘from below’ or enlisting further intermediaries to assist promoting and monitoring the proper implementation of a policy. Routinised behaviour in the field of policy promotion can be expected for administrations with a functional orientation in the interest of making sure their policies are implemented as well as possible.

Methods Administrative styles’ informality comes with the complication that solely studying formal rules, which are usually written and readily accessible, is of limited use. Data thus have to be collected in the organisations under study themselves. Typically, scholars of routines from the fields of management and organisation studies rely on ethnographic methods and extensive fieldwork to detect and systematise administrative routines (for an overview see Feldman and Pentland 2008). This way, it is possible to describe, assess, and compare single routines across time or organisations with regard to their stability, efficiency, or effectiveness, to name just a few examples. When interested in the overall administrative style of an organisation or some of its parts, we have seen, however, that the dominant focus lies on the latent administrative orientations rather than the concrete routines on the ground, which flow from them. In other words, the details and specifics of a single routine are less important than the question of whether an administration has developed dedicated routines in a given field of activity – regardless of their form. While experts in organisation and management studies have rightfully described political science to “paint with a rather broad brush” (McKeown 2008, p. 34), this alleged superficiality can be seen as a necessary consequence of a different research focus when interested in administrative styles. For styles research, the existence or non-existence of routines for a given indicator is a vehicle through which we draw conclusions about administrative orientations. To arrive at such conclusions by way of ethnographic fieldwork would require enormous efforts with regard to time, financial resources, and access to the organisation(s) under study. We thus regard ethnographic methods to not be particularly well suited to assess administrative styles in the sense outlined here and in Chapter 12. This of course does not preclude that they could be highly useful, for instance in future studies on manifest administrative orientations in only select fields of activity or in a small number of organisations. Two further methodological approaches are commonly discussed for assessing organisational characteristics more generally: survey research and (expert) interviews. While surveys certainly have great advantages in terms of replicability and transparency, four aspects disqualify their use for administrative styles research. First, access to public administrations tends to be confined on such a broad scale. Second, public administrations for the most part are strictly hierarchical organisations where participation in queries often does not take place randomly (Lee et al. 2012). However, when only specific departments (such as public relations, etc.) participate, the data gathered might be fairly one-sided, which is a particular problem for styles research because, as collective patterns of behaviour, these informal routines necessarily have to be assessed by considering and combining different intra-organisational perspectives (Enticott 2004). Third, what we are looking for in assessing styles is information on factual behavioural patterns. Since those patterns consist of deeply institutionalised informal routines, individual bureaucrats might not be able to consciously identify them as such (Bayerlein et al. 2020). Personal contact, background information on the interviewee, and a careful interviewing strategy can help to identify such routines and nuances. Fourth, and most importantly, the second section of this chapter has shown that the concrete routines in each field of activity can vary greatly, which renders the ex ante specification of survey items highly difficult, if not impossible. 184

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Until we have enough prior knowledge to specify such survey items, semi-structured interviews can be considered to be the most suited for collecting data on the styles concept in the sense presented earlier. They are less granular and resource intensive than ethnographic observations, yet more likely to produce nuanced knowledge on routines in different fields of activity than surveys. First, they allow for targeting staffers in different departments and at different levels of hierarchy specifically. Second, it is possible to customise interview questions depending on the areas of responsibility of the respective staffer. Only some of the indicators presented previously could potentially be assessed by direct questions. For others, the researcher has to rely on a more indirect approach, which would be impossible with a survey approach or with fully structured interviews. For instance, to capture how international bureaucrats engage in solution search and internal coordination, Bayerlein et al. (2020) usually identified a number of organisational publications to which their interview partners had contributed and asked them to elaborate on the exact drafting procedure. Third, where applicable, the researcher can also substantiate the interviewees’ information with existing scholarly literature, which also serves as background during the interviews. Having such previous knowledge helps in both pinpointing unconscious processes and – after the actual interviews – contextualization and triangulation.

Conclusion In this chapter, we elaborated on how to empirically assess the concept of administrative styles (see Chapter 12). In view of the concept’s two-layered nature, we suggested concentrating on routines in select fields of administrative activity where bureaucracies have leeway to exert informal influence. In order for the measurement approach to allow for cross-organisational comparison regardless of policy fields and the level of the administrations under scrutiny, these fields of activity need to pertain to organisational core functions. We thus propose to take a standard model of the policy process as a baseline for identifying more concrete indicators. Based on a study of administrative styles in international organisations (Knill et al. 2019), nine indicators were presented – three for each step within the policy cycle. From a theoretical perspective, distinct routines in each of the fields of activity, which the indictors denominate, should be an observable manifestation of either a latent functional or a positional orientation. The second generation of styles research is still emerging and so are empirical strategies to assess them. What we have shown in this chapter is one possible measurement strategy, yet not necessarily the only one. Because the most elaborate research in this field currently centres on international organisations, it remains to be seen how much the indicators we presented earlier must be adapted to fit the national or even subnational level. In terms of methods to detect administrative routines, we briefly discussed ethnographic fieldwork, surveys, and interviews and argued that semi-structured interviews are the best available method in researching styles. Yet, which method to choose to obtain data on administrative styles depends on which aspect of the concept should take centre stage. When interested in the specifics and effects of different administrative routines as such, rather than their underlying orientations, detailed accounts based on ethnographic studies could be a welcome addition for routine research in political science – a field which has not received much scholarly attention so far (McKeown 2008). Such studies could in turn benefit styles research by clarifying which kinds of concrete routines we can expect in different organisations. A similar thing can be said about experimental methods in routine research (Narduzzo and Warglien 2008). Zooming more closely into the cognitive and behavioural micro-foundations of routines could provide highly useful information for researching administrative styles’ evolution and change. 185

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References Aberbach, J.D., Putnam, R.D. and Rockman, B.A., 1981. Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Acs, A., 2018. Policing the Administrative State. The Journal of Politics, 80 (4), 1225–1238. Adam, C., Steinebach, Y. and Knill, C., 2018. Neglected Challenges to Evidence-Based Policy-Making: The Problem of Policy Accumulation. Policy Sciences, 51 (3), 269–290. Balla, S.J. and Gormley, W.T., 2012. Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Bayerlein, L., Knill, C. and Steinebach, Y., 2020. A Matter of Style? Organizational Agency in Global Public Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Becker, M.C., 2005. The Concept of Routines: Some Clarifications. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29 (2), 249–262. Eckhard, S., 2016. International Assistance to Police Reform: Managing Peacebuilding. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Eckhard, S. and Jankauskas, V., 2019. The Politics of Evaluation in International Organizations: A Comparative Study of Stakeholder Influence Potential. Evaluation, 25 (1), 62–79. Egidi, M. and Narduzzo, A., 1997. The Emergence of Path-Dependent Behaviors in Cooperative Contexts. International Journal of Industrial Organization, 15 (6), 677–709. Ellison, B.A., 1995. Autonomy in Action: Bureaucratic Competition Among Functional Rivals in Denver Water Politics. Review of Policy Research, 14 (1–2), 25–48. Enticott, G., 2004. Multiple Voices of Modernization: Some Methodological Implications. Public Administration, 82 (3), 743–756. Feldman, M.S., 1989. Order without Design. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Feldman, M.S. and Pentland, B.T., 2003. Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48 (1), 94–118. Feldman, M.S. and Pentland, B.T., 2008. Issues in Empirical Field Studies of Organizational Routines. In: M.C. Becker, ed. Handbook of Organizational Routines. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 281–300. Helmke, G. and Levitsky, S., 2004. Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda. Perspectives on Politics, 2 (4), 725–740. Hodgson, G.M., 2008. The Concept of a Routine. In: M.C. Becker, ed. Handbook of Organizational Routines. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 15–28. Howlett, M., Ramesh, M. and Perl, A., 2009. Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hustedt, T. and Salomonsen, H.H., 2014. Ensuring Political Responsiveness: Politicization Mechanisms in Ministerial Bureaucracies. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 80 (4), 746–765. Knill, C., Bayerlein, L., Grohs, S. and Enkler, J., 2019. Bureaucratic Influence and Administrative Styles in International Organizations. Review of International Organizations, 14 (1), 83–106. Knill, C., Eckhard, S. and Grohs, S., 2016. Administrative Styles in the European Commission and the OSCE-Secretariat: Striking Similarities Despite Different Organisational Settings. Journal of European Public Policy, 23 (7), 1057–1076. Lee, G., Benoit-Bryan, J. and Johnson, T.P., 2012. Survey Research in Public Administration: Assessing Mainstream Journals with a Total Survey Error Framework. Public Administration Review, 72 (1), 87–97. Mayntz, R. and Derlien, H.U., 1989. Party Patronage and Politicization of the West German Administrative Elite 1970–1987 – Toward Hybridization? Governance, 2 (4), 384–404. McKeown, T.J., 2008. Organizational Routines in Political Science. In: M.C. Becker, ed. Handbook of Organizational Routines. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 31–51. Mulgan, R., 2008. How Much Responsiveness is Too Much or Too Little? Australian Journal of Public Administration, 67 (3), 345–356. Narduzzo, A. and Warglien, M., 2008. Conducting Experimental Research on Organizational Routines. In: M.C. Becker, ed. Handbook of Organizational Routines. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 301–324.

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Pentland, B.T., Hærem, T. and Hillison, D., 2010. Comparing Organizational Routines as Recurrent Patterns of Action. Organization Studies, 31 (7), 917–940. Pentland, B.T. and Reuter, H.H., 1994. Organizational Routines as Grammars of Action. Administrative Science Quarterly, 39 (3), 484–510. Sabatier, P.A., 1999. Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Scharpf, F.W., 1994. Games Real Actors Could Play: Positive and Negative Coordination in Embedded Negotiations. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 6 (1), 27–53. Simon, H.A., 1997. Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations. 4th ed. New York, NY: Free Press. Stone, D., 2008. Global Public Policy, Transnational Policy Communities, and Their Networks. Policy Studies Journal, 36 (1), 19–38.

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15 Convergence in administrative implementation styles in the European Union? Mark Wiering and Tetty Havinga

Introduction State officials tend to have distinctive patterns of organizing and doing things. Several studies have shown that each country has its own specific national administrative traditions. Van Waarden (1995, pp.  361–362, 1999, p.  332) characterizes the German style as legalistic and consensual, the US style as legalistic and adversarial and the Netherlands style as both pragmatic and consensual. Van Waarden (2009, p. 206) observes that both the Dutch and the German legal systems have become more legalistic. Do these national administrative traditions still exist or have processes of European integration and Europeanization resulted in a more similar (European) administrative style in the member states? These questions belong to the domain of convergence research. Over the years, the European Union (EU) has established a comprehensive legal framework that covers many policy areas. From a purely economic union, the EU has evolved into an organization spanning policy areas such as climate, environment, economy, external relations, security, justice and migration. The EU strives for legal harmonization between the member states as part of its ambition both to create a free market that enables goods, services, money and people to move freely in the EU area and to contribute to all kinds of societal challenges, among which are climate change and the environment. To this end, the EU has drawn up many directives and regulations. Because of this common legislation, several authors expect convergence of policy styles and administrative styles between member states (Kelemen 2011; Mazey and Richardson 1993; Papadoulis 2005, p. 351; Vogel 2011). Kelemen argues that the European integration process pushes a legalistic adversarial policy style, which he calls Eurolegalism, that is characterized “by its emphasis on strict enforcement of detailed legal norms through a combination of transparency requirements and the empowerment of private actors to assert their legal rights” (Kelemen 2011, p. 14). Other authors, however, expect that differences between national administrative styles will generally persist despite pressures for convergence (Painter and Peters 2010, p. 3; Van Waarden 1995, p. 334), This view is based on assumptions “about the ‘stickiness’ of deeply entrenched national policy traditions and administrative routines, which pose great obstacles to reforms” (Treib 2014, p. 8).

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In this chapter we will explore whether convergence in administrative styles is indeed realized and what possible drivers are. We do this based on a review of existing empirical research about four policy fields: packaging waste, labour inspectorates, water management and nature protection. But first we need to discuss what the concepts of convergence and administrative implementation style stand for. What do we mean when we talk about convergence? Convergence is “the tendency of societies to grow more alike, to develop similarities in structures, processes, and performances” (Kerr quoted in Knill 2005, p.  765). After discussing similar concepts, Knill (2005, p.  768) concludes, policy convergence can be defined as any increase in the similarity between one or more characteristics of a certain policy (e.g. policy objectives, policy instruments, policy settings) across a given set of political jurisdictions (supranational institutions, states, regions, local authorities) over a given period of time. These definitions point to two important characteristics: convergence presupposes a comparison between two or more units (such as countries) and a diachronic perspective (changes over time). This rather general notion of policy convergence could be more specific by distinguishing between the objects of convergence along the stages of the policy process (Strunz et al. 2018, p. 365). In their review of empirical studies on policy convergence Heichel et al. (2005, pp. 820–824) found that nearly half of the studies saw convergence in policies, whereas only 20% reported absence of convergence or divergence; the other third of the studies arrived at ambiguous results. The object of convergence in our case is quite specific: the styles of administrative agents while implementing EU policies, or ‘administrative implementation styles’. The general idea of a style is a characteristic way of doing things that is consistent over a longer period. An administrative style is a subspecies of a policy style focusing on organizational and procedural arrangements and the ‘codes of conduct’ within administrative bodies. Knill and Grohs (2015, p.  93) define an administrative style as “the standard operating procedures and routines that characterize the behaviour and activities of administrative bodies”. For Howlett (2003, p. 474) an administrative style is “a more or less consistent and long-term set of institutionalized patterns of politico-administrative relationships, norms and procedures.” Administrative actors are important in all phases of the policy cycle: agenda setting, policy formulation (Knill and Grohs 2015; Knill et al. 2016), implementation, and evaluation and review (e.g. Van Eerd et al. 2019). This contribution is about the implementation stage only.

Investigating administrative implementation styles and convergence Scholars of policy convergence distinguish several causal factors (Holzinger and Knill 2005; Holzinger et al. 2008; Jörgens et al. 2013; Strunz et al. 2018). In general there is agreement on five causal mechanisms and five facilitating factors (Knill 2005). Causal mechanisms might be similarities in problem pressure (and, consequently, the possibility of separately developing solutions for identical problems in the same way, see Jacobs 2016), imposition, international harmonization, regulatory competition and transnational communication. Facilitating factors are cultural, institutional and socio-economic similarities, policy type and policy dimensions (the latter relating to the exact object of convergence within policies; see Strunz et al. 2018).

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As we are comparing EU member states under influence of EU directives, this clearly falls under the causal mechanism of ‘international harmonization’ by EU law, although some of the aforementioned factors are undoubtedly also relevant. ‘Policy types’, considered as the specific characteristics of policies or sectors (e.g. higher levels of distributional conflict will lead to less chance of convergence) are especially relevant too as EU policies can differ substantially. Water quality management, for example, has been characterized as a field of ‘experimentalist governance’ (Sabel and Zeitlin 2012). This governance is typified by a strong role of framework regulation and relative discretion of member states to find their course, however supervised by intensive peer review and monitoring systems. Here we enter a domain of implementing agents having intensive contacts and frequent calibrations to fine-tune implementation guided by a ‘common implementation strategy’ with a strong role of an ‘open method of coordination’ (Citi and Rhodes 2007; Radaelli 2003; Tosun et al. 2019). However, this apparent room for policy discretion can lead to both convergence of administrative styles (through processes of both EU legal harmonization as well as intensive transnational communication) and to preservation of national styles (because of the discretionary space). In any case, the characteristics of the policy field might be crucial for convergence of administrative implementation styles. In this contribution, we focus on how ‘harmonization by EU law’ leads to changing patterns of practical implementation across policy domains. Our focus is on what Thomann and Sager (2017, p. 1260) refer to as ‘practical implementation’, ‘administrative rule-making’ and ‘frontline implementation’ (see also Versluis et al. 2011, pp. 183–184). Although transposition gives an important institutional context to practical implementation, we do not systematically analyze the transposition of EU law.1 We are particularly interested in how state administrations, such as municipalities and regional and national agencies, practically implement policy. Therefore, we speak of administrative implementation styles: long-lasting patterns of practical policy implementation by administrative bodies. Ideally, we would like to descend to the level of implementing agents (the ‘European street level bureaucrats’) and their ways of framing and interpreting goals and aims, their handling of rules and regulations, their basic orientations towards the target groups or the internal rules of the organization (compare Terpstra and Havinga 2001). This, however, turned out to be too ambitious. While there are many convergence studies on policies in general, focusing on policy adoption, instruments and settings (e.g. Holzinger et al. 2008) or outcomes (e.g. Strunz et al. 2018), there are hardly any to be found comparing practical implementation and the styles of implementing agents in more than one or two countries over time. Therefore, another approach was taken by collecting information on the changing institutional structures in which implementing agents do their work. We combined our socio-legal interest and knowledge of practical implementation and enforcement (Terpstra and Havinga 2001; Havinga 2014; Wiering 1999) with a more inductive and exploratory investigation of relevant institutional structures in four policy domains. An administrative implementation style connects the structure of administrative organizations with behaviour in an administrative context (Howlett 2003, pp.  475–477, 2004, p.  320). Put differently, the concept of administrative implementation style points to the relation between the institutional context and the implementation practices (Terpstra and Havinga 2001, p.  96). It connects agency (individual implementation officers actively using rules and resources) with structure (the institutional constrains of the implementation process). As said, we cannot directly (and systematically) study the changing behaviour and activities of implementing agents, however we argue that EU law is inevitably influencing the institutional structures in which administrative implementation agents operate and infer that this will change their patterns of behaviour. 190

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We expect that EU directives, in whatever form, (1) bring processes of formalization or streamlining through either uniform rules or uniform and obligatory procedures that were not there before; (2) lead to new, or changing, responsibilities for the state and new forms of accounting for implementation, monitoring or enforcement that accompany any EU regulatory process (as member states have to account for the implementation) and might influence existing patterns of centralization and decentralization; (3) make room for involvement of stakeholders (pluralization) as in many EU directives there is an obligation to organize participation and stakeholder involvement and to ‘open up’ domestic implementation processes. The concluding question is then: do the aforementioned processes lead to more similar, or even uniform, patterns of practical implementation or remain national implementation styles untouched? An inventory of the literature on practical implementation of EU policies in light of convergence in administrative styles revealed only a few empirical studies that matched our criteria (comparing practical implementation in time and/or between countries).2 We selected the four domains that seemed to have the most suitable and adequate literature. First we selected the two domains with studies that discussed convergence of administrative styles in some member states: packaging waste management and nature protection. We added two domains with studies that promised useful information for our investigation (although they did not focus on implementation at the street level): labour inspectorates and water quality management. Obviously these four cases are not representing all policy fields, however we do expect they give some useful insights into how institutional structures affect implementation styles across a variety of policy domains. These directives cover different topics, addressees and social contexts. Packaging waste policy targets industry, labour offices operate in the field of industrial relations (industry and labour), the Water Framework Directive targets are mostly public authorities, and the Birds and Habitat Directives operate in the relations between public authorities, conservationists, foresters and farmers. We specifically scrutinized reports and literature on the aforementioned influences of EU harmonization: processes of formalization, a changing responsibility and role of the state (and impact on centralization or decentralization) and forms of pluralization and stakeholder involvement. Thereafter, we discuss our findings and conclude on trends and factors of convergence, divergence or persistence of styles.

Changing institutional structures and administrative implementation styles: four cases Packaging waste The EU directive on packaging waste (94/72/EC) was selected because our literature search showed several investigations that provide information on changes in the implementation and enforcement of this directive in several member states. Haverland (1999) investigated the differences and similarities between German, Dutch and British packaging waste policies from the early 1990s until 1998. Haverland explicitly deals with the question of convergence and persistence of diversity between national policy styles. Bastings et al. (2017) used the EU Packaging Waste Directive in Germany and the Netherlands to test the Eurolegalism argument that regulatory styles in the EU member states converge to a more legalistic enforcement style. The regulatory enforcement style in both countries is scored prior to the adoption of the Packaging Waste Directive in 1994 and again in 2012. The starting positions in the early 1990s differed considerably between the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. The UK at the time did not have a policy on packaging waste. The Netherlands policy was characterized by a voluntary agreement between Dutch industry and 191

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the Ministry of the Environment; the company signatories to the covenant promised to reduce the amount of packaging waste. The agreement was not enforceable from individual companies. Germany already had a legalistic approach to packaging waste making producers responsible; this policy style fitted into the general regulatory culture in Germany. Haverland concludes that convergence is evident in two aspects. First, the directive resulted in convergence towards a more legal formalistic approach in the Netherlands and the UK. Both countries introduced public law setting quantitative targets. The analysis concludes that without the directive, it is quite unlikely that regulation in the UK would have been introduced (Haverland 1999, p. 278). For the Netherlands, some alternative factors point to formalization of the packaging waste policy. The directive might have been a welcome opportunity for (part of) the packaging industry and the government to switch to another system. A second aspect concerns the allocation of enforcement responsibilities towards public enforcement. Again, the Netherlands and the UK developed towards the German approach. However, on three other elements of policy Haverland (1999, p. 276) concludes on partial persistence of domestic styles. Although standards in Germany and the Netherlands have become slightly weaker and in the UK slightly stricter, standards still differ. The mode of interest integration still varies between the countries, with a trend towards pluralization. In the orientation towards the target group, there is also still diversity with a trend towards more coercion. Diversity remains persistent in relation to the allocation of recycling responsibilities in waste management. The investigation of Haverland deals with the national policies toward packaging waste and is not focused on administrative implementation or enforcement. Bastings et al. (2017), however, do focus on practical implementation, more specifically in dealing with enforcing the requirement of producers to send a monitoring report to the competent authority. The authors distinguish between two dimensions of the enforcement style: the level of formalism and the level of hierarchy. They applied 11 indicators for four aspects of the enforcement style. For the situation in the early 1990s they relied on academic literature and the legal requirements. For the 2012 situation they used reports by enforcement agencies and interviews with officials. Bastings et al. conclude that the Netherlands enforcement style has changed from a passive to a more insistent style, whereas the German style remained insistent. The Netherlands scores legalistic on formalism, however Dutch enforcement officers act pragmatically in using sanctions and in their relationship with the industry organization responsible for reporting on the implementation of the packaging waste collection and recovery systems. Despite these changes, Dutch officials hardly impose formal sanctions on individual producers; they try to avoid conflicts and are not firm believers in formalism. German officials carry out intensive detailed checks and apply a legalistic sanctioning approach. Although this seems to confirm the hypothesis that European legislation leads to convergence, the authors argue that caution is needed here. In contrast to Germany, the Dutch emphasize conformity to the spirit rather than the letter of the law. The path towards more legalistic enforcement styles in the Netherlands and Germany is not the same. Beneath the surface of an insistent enforcement style diversity persists. Both studies conclude that the policy and enforcement style in relation to packaging waste have become more similar between Germany and the Netherlands (and the UK). In particular, member states have made legislation on the issue, including the requirement for industry to report on their performance. However, both studies also show that diversity still exists with regard to the role of the industry and the style of enforcement. Other studies confirm this conclusion, that national packaging waste management systems still differ considerably between member states. Bailey (1999, 2003, p.  67 ff.), for example, distinguishes between four basic 192

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models of compliance in the EU: producer responsibility with minimal state intervention in the UK, voluntary agreements between industry and government in the Netherlands, integrated waste management in Denmark, and command and control with punitive enforcement in Germany. Cahill et al. (2010) analyzed the implementation of the Packaging Waste Directive in 11 member states. They conclude that the national systems “vary considerably in design, in terms of influence of pre-existing policy and systems, methods of achieving producer compliance (multiple or single collective schemes), fee structures, targets, waste stream prioritization and local authority involvement.” To conclude, in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom the implementation and enforcement of packaging waste policy has converted towards a more legalistic and formal implementation style, similar to that in Germany. However, as Bastings et al. (2017) point out, in the practical application diversity remains. It is also concluded that there is some centralization, although we see highly centralized systems in some member states (e.g. Germany) and highly decentralized systems in other member states (e.g. UK). Member states differ greatly in relation to the role of local authorities, industry and other stakeholders in packaging waste implementation.

Labour inspectorates Hartlapp (2014) investigated the changes in national systems enforcing social policy in 15 member states between 2000 and 2010. “National enforcement systems are defined as the public or delegated bodies that act to promote compliance and to achieve regulatory outcomes” (p. 806). For the enforcement of binding social policy norms in the EU national labour inspectorates are ‘key’ actors. Hartlapp compared the organizational structure and practices of EU-15 labour inspectorates. The information for 2000 is based on data from extensive empirical research on the implementation of six social policy directives (Falkner et al. 2005). The data on 2010 rely on official reports, email and telephone inquiries about the changes. The comparison is not focused on convergence or on particular directives or social policies. Hartlapp uses the coordination and steering capacity of national enforcement systems, as well as their capacity to exert pressure, as indicators of change. Changes are expected where the steering and coordination capacity or the pressure capacity of the national labour inspectorate showed weaknesses in 2000. She assumes that exchange of information and cross-national enforcement increases over time and will be substantially focused on free movement issues (following the logic of functional spillover). Hartlapp compares the following indicators: • • •

Differentiation of the enforcement system: (de)centralization, functional specialization and the existence of a mediating body. Inspection capacity: number of inspectors per 100,000 employed workers. Pressure capacity: level of fines, practices of imposing sanctions, existence of administrative sanctions and of reputational sanctions.

Hartlapp concludes that national “systems continue to differ in their general performance and to display particular strengths and weaknesses”. She observes “increasing coordination and steering capacity as well as greater availability of sanctions overall” (p. 817). This supports our first expectation that change will occur where enforcement capacity is particularly weak. Our empirical material on the factors driving these changes is limited. However, it seems plausible to assume that supranational actors performed as active change agents, providing soft pressure to work towards uniform implementation. 193

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Hartlapp only provides information about labour inspectorates in the form of scores on indicators. An ILO report showcases the variety of national laws and practices in the area of labour inspection sanctions worldwide. The examples also concern differences with regard to the available sanctions and administrative powers and institutional capacity among EU countries (Vega and Robert 2013). This indicates significant differences between countries in the style of enforcement. In the second part of her paper Hartlapp discusses the increased horizontal administrative coordination between labour inspectorates. Since its start in 1980, the exchange of information between member states has become more formalized and systematic. Common principles for inspection were adopted, a handbook was written and rotating audits of national enforcement systems are carried out. For our purposes we conclude that the variation between member states in both the number of labour inspectors per 100,000 employed workers and in the capacity of national enforcement systems has decreased between 2000 and 2010. The changes in the coordination and steering capacity show an improvement. There are fewer changes in the use of sanctions. The paper shows diversity between countries with regard to the level of centralization and specialization of inspectors (p. 812). However, enforcement systems with steering and coordination weaknesses in 2000 have improved (Italy, Spain, Belgium). This includes some form of centralization. Hartlapp concludes that the cooperation between member states to enforce binding EU social policy has increased. The growing horizontal cooperation between national labour inspectorates supports the argument that the European administrative space is not only characterized by a convergence of national administrations and the emergence of a supranational bureaucracy, but also includes decentralized horizontal cooperation. Hartlapp does not give any information on which actors are involved in the implementation of the policy. The study of Hartlapp is based on broad indicators and does not take into account the many institutional differences in labour law and industrial relations between member states. Though not investigating labour inspectorates or administrative implementation styles, the conclusions of Weiss (2007) are relevant here. He concludes that institutional differences in labour law systems between member states will continue to play a big role within the EU and at the same time he observes that the systems in EU countries are brought closer together towards more convergence. We expect that the persistent institutional diversity in the use of sanctions, the level of centralization and specialization indicates persistent differences in administrative styles.

Birds and Habitats Directives The 1979 Birds Directive and the 1992 Habitats Directive are two intertwined regulatory regimes that together form the core of the influential nature conservation policy of the EU. The Habitats Directive has two pillars, the first concentrating on specific areas, the second on species. The first pillar obliges member states to designate Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in order to protect habitats and species that are listed in annexes. Together with areas which are designated under the Birds Directive, this forms a network of areas also known as Natura 2000 (Borrass et al. 2015). The second pillar protects specific species (plants and animals that are listed again). This part applies beyond the protected areas, for example there is specific protection of the wolf, the sea-eagle and scorpionmoss. These regimes are sometimes referred to as biodiversity governance (Kluvankova-Oravska et al. 2013). As these nature conservation directives have been there for a while, it is interesting to detect convergence, divergence or persistence in regulatory or administrative styles in countries. On the part of EU harmonization and the actions to ‘converge’ on meaning and interpretation, 194

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Beunen and Duineveld (2010) confirm our expectations in the second section of this chapter: rules, objectives and procedures lead to formalization and proceduralization (e.g. designating sites, making reports) with the help of guidelines and additional reports. The European Commission took legal action against several member states that failed to comply to the designation of sites and to give the measures to prevent degradation; access to legal action caused the number of law suits to rise from zero to almost a hundred per year (Beunen and Duineveld 2010, p. 4). Some authors explicitly speak of Europeanization of governance here and look at possible convergence over a longer time frame. Kluvankova-Oravska et al. (2013) mainly considered synchronization of biodiversity governance in three Central and Eastern European countries (Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) that all went through important transition processes, from hierarchy to more democratic and market governance. Do EU institutions contribute to convergence in these new member states, creating more similar patterns of biodiversity governance (Kluvankova-Oravska et al. 2013, p. 403)? The outcomes were that, indeed, there is convergence in biodiversity governance, especially when it comes to the stakeholders involved. In all three member states we see an increasing role of non-state actors, in line with the general trend from government to governance. Because of obligatory participatory decision-making processes, the role and voice of non-state actors became more important. Overall, it can be said that local and regional state actors or NGOs became increasingly important and on the local and practical levels of implementation non-state actors got more voice, changing implementation practices. For example, in Poland the National Park Councils act as advisory bodies to decisionmaking authorities; scientists, environmental organizations and local government became more influential. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic similar mechanisms of cooperation with new actors can be found, also because of funding opportunities. In short, Europeanization affects the institutional networks in biodiversity governance and thus affects implementation practices. The influence of the directives is clearly visible, leading to new forms and procedures (designation) for forest and nature management in combination with public participation, increasing mechanisms of monitoring and consultation, and access to implementation practices for nonstate actors. This is accelerated by increasing opportunities for EU funding and building expertise for state and non-state actors. Does this affect the ‘European street level bureaucrat’ directly? Most comparative studies on the implementation of biodiversity governance do not explicitly study convergence on the level of administrative styles we are looking for. Nevertheless, some studies provide relevant information about the practical implementation. Borrass (2014), for example, comes close when he discusses the context of the more structural, institutional environments in which street level bureaucrats choose their options and strategies. Again, though, the eventual emphasis is mostly on cooperation of two core partners involved, in this case nature and forest administrations (issues of multi-sector governance), where nature conservation and nature protection intruded into formerly independent forest governance (Borrass 2014, p. 157). Europeanization, you might say, leads to the forced opening up of policies and therefore affects implementation practices, positions and collaborations quite seriously. How exactly is again a complicated matter according to Borrass (2014). The organizational impact of the directives was felt less in the UK because of less misfit between the old and new structures and because of a different power structure in the UK than in Germany, with more formal responsibilities for nature conservation management in the UK (e.g. the important role of Natural England). However, after the rules had become more strict (because of rulings of the European Court of Justice) the eventual impact on implementation practices was just as serious or perhaps more serious in the UK, as they were there openly discussed, while in Germany conflicts were ‘offloaded’ to the local 195

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administrations (Borrass 2014, p.  158). This goes to show that influencing on the ground administrative styles might always be a contingent and nuanced story.

Water Framework Directive The ambition of the Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) is to improve the management of water quality across Europe, for both human use and the ecology of water systems (Uitenboogaart et al. 2009; Liefferink et al. 2011; Voulvoulis et al. 2017; Giakoumis and Voulvoulis 2018). WFD’s governance requirements are ambitious too, as the directive explicitly asks for integration of policies (relating to all relevant fields using and affecting water: e.g. nature, agriculture, industry and water services), spatial integration by river basin management, cost recovery and stakeholder participation. It is interesting to look at the effects of the WFD on possible convergence of governance structures and how this (possibly) changing institutional context might influence administrative implementation styles. We must acknowledge again, however, that – as far as we know – no country comparisons were conducted that specifically look at convergence of ‘street level’ practical implementation of water governance. Fortunately, there are country comparisons that do analyze governance characteristics related to implementation (structures and substantial measures) on different points in time, namely at the start of the development of river basin management plans (RBMPs) in 2009 and mid-way in 2018, after the second round of RBMPs (Uitenboogaart et al. 2009; Wiering et al. 2018). The differences can be analyzed in time and in more detail for the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Flanders in Belgium. We deal with convergence in formalization, centralization and pluralization, but we begin with another interesting topic, that of sector integration  – specifically on the relationships between water management and agricultural policy (Wiering et al. 2020). For sector integration (or, by contrast, separation) ‘joint organizational arrangements’ (e.g. agriculture and water or environmental policies are headed by one ministry) and ‘joint programmes’ across sectors or strongly including sectors are used as indicators. Denmark and Flanders have developed relatively strong arrangements for integration. Denmark has programme integration through the so-called Action Plans for the Aquatic Environment (that already existed before the WFD) although the responsible Ministries of Agriculture and Environment/Water were historically separated. Recently (2015), the ministries have merged into Environment and Food. Integration is seen as important, although policies have been winding because of great political controversy on agri-environmental policies (Wiering et al. 2018). Flanders has an influential Coordination Committee for Integrated Water Policy (since 2004), with an advisory role for the policy area of agriculture. The rationale for this integration committee was that it served to implement the WFD. The practical implementation of the WFD is a responsibility for the Flemish environmental agency (Vlaamse Milieu-maatschappij) and the responsibility for land and agricultural management is part of the Flemish land agency (which the Manure Bank is part of). So, organizationally there is integration in Flanders through the coordination committee and through joint policy making on water quality and agriculture; there is separation on the level of the implementing agencies dealing with environment and water and agriculture. This has not fundamentally changed over the years. In Germany there is a mixed picture on organizational integration, when looking at Länder North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), with a joint ministry, and Lower Saxony, where two ministries are involved (Environment and Agriculture). In both cases the practical implementation of the WFD is (still) seen as institutionally fragmented, with low capacities for water quality management to live up to the integrative task. In the Netherlands, there is organizational separation 196

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of water and agricultural policies and agencies and there are no strong integrative joint programmes, but this is more or less compensated by strong capacities of water managers who push to have water programmes implemented in collaboration with other sectors. In conclusion, when it comes to policy integration, the WFD has consolidated or strengthened the organizational integration in Flanders (Belgium) and in Denmark, but for the Netherlands and Germany policy sectors are still relatively separated. You might say there is a slight move towards integration that can be related to the WFD, but no convincing evidence of convergence in structures between countries. Neither are there new and strong structures for integrative river basin planning created in these countries. If we consider the impact on style, we can conclude (thus far) that despite very favourable conditions for sector integration in Denmark (a long history of joint programmes) this has not led to a more ‘consensual’ style between agriculture and water. In Flanders this seems to be much more the case, where new institutional structures have been accompanied by a legalistic but consensual style when it comes to manure policies that are partly related to water quality management. On formalization, the WFD is a quite complicated case. The WFD gives a framework that comprises other former directives, for example, the important Nitrates Directive which deals with diffuse pollution from agricultural sources. If we look at the WFD and the Nitrates Directive, the latter setting relatively strict emission standards and prescribed means next to goals, we see increasing similarities in the nature of measures taken with regard to diffuse pollution of agriculture (Wiering et al. 2020). However, as was typified earlier by experimentalist governance (in the second section), most of the WFD is more procedural in nature, with setting end goals instead of standards or prescribing means, and here we see a great variety in approaches and measures taken in several countries. Yes, all countries follow obligatory procedural pathways and steps, but, except for Flanders, there is no indication that this would lead to important changes in formal institutional structures and administrative styles. Considering the dimension of multi-level governance (centralization/decentralization) and the expectation that national government might have a new role of coordinating implementation and accounting for it, we do not find evidence of overall convergence to more centralized or decentralized approaches in the WFD case. The structures are not fundamentally different because of the EU directive, except perhaps for Flanders’ integrated water policy. What we do see is that in most countries, there is an increasing communication and deliberation between levels of governance (‘up and down the stairs’) (Wiering et al. 2018). Finally, the WFD induced a wave of stakeholder participation in most member states at the start of the implementation process, discussing objectives, pathways and measures in all kinds of round tables, area-based discussions and surveys (Uitenboogaart et al. 2009). This generally leads to more transparency of the work of implementing agents, such as, for example, Dutch regional water authorities or specific river basin organizations. At the same time this wave has also died down a bit, as the WFD procedures and measuring systems are quite complicated and one ‘needs a long breath’ in following all cycles of decision-making. However, the directive opened up the practices of implementation – for those who have that long breath.

Conclusion We scrutinized the literature on four policy domains for evidence of convergence, divergence or persistence of domestic administrative implementation styles within Europe. Are these styles becoming more similar in Europe? We payed particular attention to the question of whether there is a trend towards more formalization, centralization and pluralism. The results are summarized in Table 15.1. 197

Mark Wiering and Tetty Havinga Table 15.1  Convergence in administrative implementation styles in the European Union? Case

Formalization / juridification

Packaging Waste Directive

Yes, clearly

Centralization /multi-level governance

Some indications of centralization Some Member States highly centralized system (Germany), others highly decentralized (UK, Spain) Labour Yes, because of rules In some Member inspectorates and procedures States some indications of centralization Still highly diverse Birds and Increased juridical On local and Habitat access and case practical levels Directives law – increasing implementation mechanisms of actors more monitoring and important/ consultation decentralization Cases: former East European countries Water Mostly procedural No changes, Framework environment persistence – Directive has changed, increasing “up guidelines for and down water quality the stairs” management governance Overall similar A more formalized Mixed message; we trends? and procedural see centralization, environment decentralization and increasing communication between levels

Pluralization / multi-actor governance

Dominant picture, convergence of styles or persistence of diversity?

Major differences Convergence per country, no towards more convergence, legalistic formal trend towards style. Overall: pluralization Persistence of diversity.

Unknown

Persistence of diversity?

Strong increase of stakeholder involvement, integration of forest governance and nature conservation

Convergence according to expectations formulated, except centralization.

Initially, strong increase of stakeholder involvement, but WFD is (too) complex Some indication of pluralization /more involvement of stakeholders

Convergence according to expectations formulated, except centralization.

Before drawing any conclusions, it is important to emphasize once more that we came across a huge gap in the scholarly literature. Research comparing the practical implementation and enforcement of European legislation between several countries is very scarce, let alone research with larger numbers of countries. Most comparative research remains limited to the transposition or the organizational structure of policies and, perhaps, enforcement and does not concern the style of frontline implementation and enforcement agencies (compare Treib 2014; 198

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Versluis et al. 2011, p. 198). Notable exceptions are Dörrenbächer 2018; Falkner et al. 2005; 2007; Havinga 2014; Versluis 2007. Moreover, research into administrative implementation style focusing on convergence, comparing in the course of time, is even more difficult to find. We only found a handful of such research projects in more countries (Bastings et al. 2017; Hartlapp 2014; Haverland 1999). We therefore have taken an explorative and pragmatic approach by discussing the changing institutional context of implementing agents in four policy areas where relevant information appeared to be available. Based on the literature found and our analysis, no clear general conclusion can be drawn yet as to whether there is a convergence of administrative implementation styles across Europe. In all cases we observe convergence of particular elements relevant for administrative implementation styles next to persistence of other elements (see Table 15.1). We can respond, however, to our previously formulated expectations. Is there convergence towards more formalization and juridification? According to Kelemen (2011) and others this is indeed the case, as EU interventions (regulations, directives, programmes) often seem to result in the formalization and juridification of national policy and implementation practices. EU law may oblige the member states to lay down the national policy in a domestic law. We saw this clearly in the Netherlands in the case of the Packaging Waste Directive. The previously existing system of a voluntary agreement with industry did not fit into the EU framework and the enforcement style became more insistent. In most cases, domestic legislation already existed but had to be adapted to the EU obligations and procedures, and procedures had to become more transparent and accountable. Formalization and juridification also opens legal opportunities for challenging policy, implementation or enforcement. In particular with regard to the Birds and Habitat Directives, courts were mobilized successfully by conservationists and environmental NGOs. Environmental NGOs in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands have lodged formal complaints with the Commission to stop building projects in important natural habitats (Jordan and Liefferink 2004). These forms of formalization are to be found in all explored cases. Is there convergence in light of a stronger role of national government as the ‘competent authority’ held accountable for EU implementation and therefore a tendency towards coordination and centralization? EU law makes the national government of the member states responsible for the timely and correct implementation of EU law in their country. As a result the national government becomes involved also in cases of previously decentralized policies and implementation issues. This is clearly visible, for example, in the domain of food safety, where centralization of implementation and enforcement is visible in several member states. In countries such as Austria, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom, a national food safety authority was introduced in a decentralized system. Abels and Kobusch (2015) show that this is not only because of the European Food Law, but also because of domestic pressures asking for more efficiency and transparency after the Bovine Spongiforme Encephalopathie crisis. Based on case studies of environmental policy in Europe, Jordan and Liefferink (2004, p. 352) conclude, Europeanization has helped to further centralize policy making responsibilities into the hands of the central government departments (the UK) and technical agencies (Sweden) at the expense of sub-national pollution control bodies, and local or regional government (e.g. Germany). In the Bird and Habitat case we, however, found that, especially in East European member states local and regional state actors (and NGOs) became more influential. The Dutch situation of the 199

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WFD holds that there is foremost increasing communication between regional, provincial and national authorities and thus increasing coordination ‘up and down the stairs’, but no strong tendency towards centralization. Finally, do we observe convergence towards increasing stakeholder involvement and thus a pluralization of implementation practices? In the cases on water and nature conservation we clearly see this increasing involvement of stakeholders (sometimes even formalized) and the ‘opening up’ of previously more closed water governance or nature conservation and forestry practices. Practical implementation as such becomes more accessible, although not all elements of EU directives are accessible and attractive for public involvement, as some implementation processes and procedures tend to be long and complex (covered in the third section on the WFD). However, the presence of (publicly) available information about administrative practices opens possibilities for public debate (in parliament, media and other places) and legal contestation of the policy and its practical application. Stakeholders, including industry and NGOs, can criticize practices, lobby for change and try to enforce change in court. We see this clearly in the Bird and Habitat Directives case. In short, this more indirect form of pluralization gives outsiders access to information that was not accessible before, which opens up opportunities to challenge existing practices of implementation. Whether there is an increasing uniformity of implementation and enforcement styles is still difficult to say. Despite convergence on some points, our cases and other research show many differences in administrative implementation practices between member states (Dörrenbächer 2018; Falkner et al. 2005, 2007; Havinga 2014; Versluis 2007). What we can conclude is that there is certainly more uniformity in the institutional structures wherein the ‘European street level bureaucrat’ works. Light or stronger forms of formalization, increasing coordination and pluralization change the framework in which street level administrative implementation and enforcement takes place. Whereas in the past domestic policy could allow for considerable autonomy for street level implementation by national inspectors or decentralized implementation agencies, domestic regulations and guidelines now ask for using standard operating procedures and registration requirements. As Bastings et al. (2017) already concluded, even if enforcement is converging towards more insistence (in their two cases), beneath the surface diversity in style still persists. And, are these observed convergence trends also caused by mechanisms of EU harmonization? Obviously there is no ‘all else being equal’ investigation possible. As was introduced in the second section, several factors can influence convergence: common EU law and policy, increasing horizontal communication between national implementation and enforcement organizations, and similar social and economic problems and developments. We expect that the influence of EU law (imposing new rules and procedures) will be more straightforward in processes of increased formalization and coordination, as EU law creates rules and procedures other than those created before EU interference. Elements of pluralization are sometimes clearly reinforced by EU law but are also due to increasing horizontal communication on different levels of governance and similarity in policy problems. Particularly in situations where causal factors coincide, the pressure for more uniform implementation practices will increase.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Menno Hoppen for research support and our colleague Duncan Liefferink for critically reviewing earlier versions of this chapter.

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Notes 1 From the EU perspective the transposition of EU law into national law can be considered implementation. Versluis et al. (2011, p. 183) call this ‘formal’ or ‘legal’ implementation, to distinguish from ‘practical’ or ‘administrative’ implementation. 2 We searched Google Scholar for all articles with (combinations of) ‘implementation and/or enforcement’, ‘style’, ‘convergence/divergence’ and then selected the comparative studies. The result was disappointing; only a few studies matched our criteria.

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van Eerd, M.M., Wiering, M. and Dieperink, C., 2019. Policy Discretion, Adaptation Pressure and Reloading Implementation Experiences in EU Water Governance: The Case of the Netherlands. Water Alternatives, 12 (3), 886–906. van Waarden, F., 1995. Persistence of National Policy Styles: A Study of Their Institutional Foundations. In: B. Unger and F. van Waarden, eds. Convergence or Diversity? Internationalization and Economic Policy Response. Aldershot: Avebury, 333–372. van Waarden, F., 1999. European Harmonization of National Regulatory Styles? In: J.A.E. Vervaele et al., eds. Compliance and Enforcement of European Community Law. Deventer: Kluwer Law, 95–124. van Waarden, F., 2009. Power to the Legal Professionals: Is There an Americanization of European Law? Regulation & Governance, 3 (3), 197–216. Vega, M.L. and Robert, R., 2013. Labour Inspection Sanctions: Law and Practice of Labour Inspection Systems. Geneva: International Labour Organization. Versluis, E., 2007. Even Rules, Uneven Practices: Opening the ‘Black Box’ of EU Law in Action. West European Politics, 30 (1), 50–67. Versluis, E., van Keulen, M. and Stephenson, P., 2011. Analyzing the European Union Policy Process. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vogel, D.J., 2011. The Transatlantic Shift in Health, Safety & Environmental Risk Regulation, 1960 to 2010. Jerusalem Papers in Regulation & Governance Working Paper, 38. Voulvoulis, N., Arpon, K.D. and Giakoumis, T., 2017. The EU Water Framework Directive: From Great Expectations to Problems with Implementation. Science of the Total Environment, 575, 358–366. Weiss, M., 2007. Convergence and/or Divergence in Labor Law Systems? A European Perspective. Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 469–486. Wiering, M.A., 1999. Controleurs in Context. Handhaving Van Mestwetgeving in Nederland en Vlaanderen. Lelystad: Koninklijke Vermande. Wiering, M.A., et al., 2018. The Implementation of the Water Framework Directive: A Focused Comparison of Governance Arrangements to Improve Water Quality [online]. Available from: https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/ bitstream/handle/2066/199699/199699pub.pdf [Accessed 5 May 2020]. Wiering, M. et al., 2020. The Wicked Problem the Water Framework Directive Cannot Solve: The Governance Approach in Dealing with Pollution of Nutrients in Surface Water in the Netherlands, Flanders, Lower Saxony, Denmark and Ireland. Water, 12 (5), 12–40.

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16 Governance styles Re-thinking governance and public policy Michael Howlett, Giliberto Capano, and M. Ramesh

Introduction: what is governance? Governance is a general concept which describes some of the complexity of political and policy processes by focussing on the relationships existing between governments and the governed. Policy making is an arena full of actors who are not only vertically structured but also linked together by a series of informal relationships (Solomon 2008; Richardson 2012), and we need to understand how these work so that society is steered. The use of the term ‘governance’ helps to capture these additional aspects of government and governing, where a multitude of actors interact in both formal and informal ways (for example, international relations, international political economy, global studies). Despite a great deal having been written on governance in recent years, many questions remain about fundamental aspects of the subject. This is especially the case in both defining and understanding governance modes or styles and their dynamics, the subject of this chapter. After at least two decades of discussion and debate around the term, however, there is now a fair degree of agreement among public policy scholars as to what governance is and what it does. This governance lens is useful in helping us understand how political power is distributed and exercised and how policy problems are dealt with by it. The concept of governance is also useful from a policy perspective, since it enables us to reduce the apparently chaotic reality of policy making by describing sets of state and societal relationships as different ‘modes of governance’ which affect and direct policy making in specific ways. Many varieties of governance exist, both cross-nationally and cross-sectorally, and understanding why this is the case and how it has come about is important for the future of governance and policy studies. Each variety or mode of governance can be seen as a governance style with important ramifications for policy making and policies. Three specific aspects of governance are critical in understanding the differences between governance styles and their impact of policy-making styles: dynamics, strategy and capacity. The notion of governance dynamics suggests that styles of governance identified in earlier studies may not be stable but rather dynamic. These change over the course of time, as governments adopt different architectural features and mix policy tools in different ways.

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Governance strategy is a concept which reflects this ability of governments to alter governance arrangements and give them their dynamic character. It suggests that behind every mode of governance lies a specific undertaking as different policy actors seek the best arrangement to attain their purposes. This is particularly true of governments, since they continue to be in charge of systemic responsibility and are the most powerful authoritative actors in virtually all societies. Governance capacity is a third critical concept, one which emphasizes that not every choice of governance mechanism is likely to be equally successful in terms of attaining policy goals. Every governance arrangement must be effective, that is, capable of resolving political and policy problems, but simply designating or advocating a specific arrangement does not ensure its success. Each of these aspects of governance styles and their implications for policy studies are set out in the following.

Governance thinking: the concept of governance in political science and public administration Political and policy reality cannot be grasped only by observing the behaviour of those actors who are formally granted power (governments, parliaments, courts). This does not mean that hierarchy does not matter (Heritier and Lehmkuhl 2008; Goetz 2008; Bell and Hindmoor 2009; Lynn 2012), rather just that many other actors participate in policy making, pursuing their own interests and ideas; and there are many places beyond the state where such participation may be witnessed. There will always be a degree of hierarchy in any governance mode, because governments exist and have to do their job, but this blends with other principles of coordination and coexists with market-driven principles and network-oriented behaviour. A focus on ‘governance’ mechanisms and modes helps address this complexity and its implications for policy making. In its simplest form, hierarchical governance is usually distinguished from market and ­network-based governance as ideal types (Williamson 1975). Political scientists commonly use typologies as a methodological tool with which to order reality and grasp the most important aspects of a political phenomenon, and there is a vast array of typologies in governance studies. The typological tradition gives a succinct picture of what the more important dimensions of any governance arrangement are. Many scholars emphasize the fundamental principles of coordination on which a governance arrangement can be based. Considine and Lewis, for example, focus on hierarchy, network and enterprise bases of state-societal linkages (2003), as does Howlett (2019). By using the dichotomization of implicit and explicit rules and of hierarchical and non-hierarchical interaction, he has proposed four types of governance arrangements: legal, network, corporate and market. Borzel (2010) on the other hand focusses above all on the institutionalized structure of governance by distinguishing between hierarchy, competition and the negotiating system. This is the basis of the ‘mode’ approach to understanding governance. After lengthy, heated debate among policy scholars, the original dichotomies proposed by a first generation of governance scholars – between old (hierarchical) governance and new (non-hierarchical) governance – have been superseded. Only those with a specific normative afflatus continue to see current governance as something totally different from ‘old’ governance (Rhodes 1997; Dorf and Sabel 1998; Zeitlin 2011).

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Not only are such dichotomies historically inaccurate, many scholars have pointed out that the features of the new governance arrangements often promoted as effective responses to changes in state-societal arrangements (polycentrism, flexibility, cooperation, deliberation, non-coerciveness) also seem to be less effective than expected, and above all, that their effectiveness and enforcement are closely linked to the presence and actions of public institutions and their own fundamental resources (authority, financial means, information and organization) (Davis 2002; Richards and Smith 2002; Kooiman 2003; Heritier and Eckert 2008; Gunningham 2009; Lynn 2010). In an alternative ‘dimensions’ approach, governance is understood as a shift away from a common starting point along a spectrum from hierarchy to network. Treib et al. (2007), for example, focus on three pairs of dichotomies related to both coordinative modes and tools and actors involved in specific arrangements (soft vs. hard law; only public actors vs. only private actors; hierarchy vs. market). Howlett et al. (2009) and Tollefson et al. (2012) have gone beyond the focus on the fundamental coordination mechanisms characterizing the previous typologies and assume that governance arrangements fulfil a multi-dimensional space in that each can be more, or less, hierarchical, and thus more, or less, plurilateral, with corresponding possibilities in their institutional, political and regulatory dimensions. All of these typologies offer important insights into the ways in which governance arrangements can be designed; nevertheless, they only portray a rather general picture of what governance is. Governance arrangements are usually composed of a prevailing coordinating principle (hierarchy, market, network) accompanied by other principles (it is quite rare to find a monopolistic governance arrangement, that is, an arrangement governed or monopolized by just one coordinating principle). The reason for this is not only the ever-present shadow of hierarchy, but also that policy making is usually characterized by the asymmetric coexistence of different coordinating principles. For example, in education policy – even in the more market-driven systems (for example, in the Netherlands or England) – policy instruments such as institutional autonomy and competition are accompanied by the supervision of public institutions and work through the involvement of several stakeholders in a network-based system (Woessman 2007; OECD 2010) Over the course of time, the balance between these constituent principles may change as a result of the pressure or actions of the most important actors and may shift in a specific direction (towards the increased institutional autonomy of schools, or on the contrary, towards the more intrusive role of the state by means of a closer link between funding and national testing). This way of working can be found in all policy fields. Governance is ever changing. In a policy context, governance is treated as affecting problem-solving activity, with different kinds of problems calling for different kinds of governance leading to different kinds of policy responses. Hence, for example, ‘new governance’ often simply means that new actors have entered the policy-making arena and new policy instruments (contracts, partnership, ­recommendations, participation, benchmarking, learning) have been added to the traditional policy-steering toolkit. These changes are undoubtedly important, since they have increased the complexity of policy making and thus its possible dynamics, direction and equilibria, but do not represent a sharp, distinctive non-linear break with the past. Several further elements also emerge from the governance literature which merit consideration in relation to their impact on policy making. Firstly, these typologies do not offer any further information about how a prevailing governance arrangement is chosen; this is a matter for further theorization as we explain later. Secondly, recent research shows how hierarchy is always present, at least potentially, in every governance arrangement, albeit in different forms (Hill and Lynn 2005; Heritier and Lehmkuhl 2008; Goetz 2008; Borzel 2010; Lynn 2010; 206

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Capano 2011), and this constant factor slips away in many typological efforts in which it appears as only one of the principles of coordination. Finally, the typological approach only manages to account for the some prevailing trends in governance arrangements and policy designs, but it is inherently limited by the fact that very often, real governance arrangements consist of complex policy mixes, that is, of a blend of different coordinating principles and their respective policy instruments (Capano et al. 2012). The actual workings of governance arrangements are further analyzed to get a better grasp of their dynamics (because they change over time and very often are characterized by different policy mixes), of their strategic nature (since they are the products of the actions and interactions of policy actors driven by specific goals), and of their capacity (that is, how likely governance arrangements can be effective in relation to certain important collective goals). Taken together these elements make up a governance ‘style’, which is an important determinant of policy responses and policy designs (Howlett 2019). Each of these elements is discussed in turn in the following sections.

Understanding governance dynamics Relating governance thinking to policy making requires a dynamic orientation, since the way in which society and its political processes are steered can radically change, at least in terms of the intensity of this steering process (Hogwood and Peters 1983). This means that governance arrangements and workings should be analyzed from a diachronic perspective. A mode of governance thus is not stable but rather in equilibrium, meaning the mix of coordinating principles and policy instruments adopted at time 0, which persists until one of the components is changed, is only temporary and subject to fluctuation. Very often, the intrinsically dynamic character of governance is not taken into consideration, and scholars tend to portray a static picture of the reality of governance, characterized by diachronic punctuations. This tendency is evident in all studies of the ‘demise of the state’ produced during the 1950s and ’60s, which a couple of decades later was reversed by a series of studies on the ‘return of the state’ (Evans et al. 1985; Evans 1997). The same could be said about the ‘new public management’ (NPM) movement, which has often been assumed to have radically changed the ways in which public policies are steered, governed and managed (Aucoin 1990; Lane 2000; Barzelay 2001). Once again it too was reversed in recent years by a significant body of work underlining the partial, contextualized impact of NPM itself (Lynn 2006; C. Pollitt and G. Bouckaert 2000, 2009; Ramesh and Howlett 2006; Ongaro 2009). That is, it is clear that even in the past, governments were not the sole decisional forces, at least not in democratic political systems, and even dictatorial and totalitarian systems encountered resistance from many elements of society. However, thinking about the dynamics of general modes of governance in recent years has focussed on shifts away from governments to societal actors and has attributed this change to two converging factors. On the one hand, it notes a trend towards the current fragmentation of the policy-making process, during which a number of actors, including interest groups, NGOs and social movements, have found new room for manoeuvre they may not have had in the past and notes the fact that many countries have decentralized their political institutional arrangements in response to these changes. On the other hand, studies have also shown that this change has been intentionally pursued by governments, following the discovery that the traditional command-and-control approach to steering was inefficient and ineffective and that the involvement of other actors in policy making could help temper the constant social pressure they were under. These counter forces have generated what may appear at first sight to be a radical change of the way in which society is 207

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steered, involving more actors and making decision-making more horizontal, less hierarchical, but on closer inspection emerges to be a complex new trend in designing the ways of governing. The ways in which policy is steered in many countries and sectors at present are less monocentric than previously, as they are characterized by the presence of a plethora of policy actors; however, whether this means a reduced degree of hierarchy and greater cooperation is a matter for empirical research to establish and cannot be taken for granted. Furthermore, the use of new policy tools does not mean that they do not need to be hierarchically addressed, at least from a distance, through various other policy instruments that governments adopt in such cases: instruments such as financial incentives, periodic evaluation, the request for transparent processes and so on (Howlett 2019). In order to understand governance dynamics, we need to focus on certain important aspects of a diachronic development, namely initial equilibrium; directionality; temporal dimension; and relationships with the external environment, which ‘traditional’ governance studies have largely ignored. The initial equilibrium refers to the specific configuration of governance arrangements and policy instruments at time 0. This implies defining the kind of balance to be found between the general principles of coordination, how such principles are implemented with regard to the chosen policy tools, and which types of actor are present. These relations with the external environment represent a complex aspect of governance dynamics, which needs to be simplified if theoretical and conceptual progress is to occur. The first form in which these relationships take place is within the boundaries of the constitutional arrangement of the state. Unitary, regional and federal state structures have different effects on governance arrangements. As we know from the works on scholars such as Baumgartner and Jones 1993, 2002, the greater the number of institutional venues that policy actors may use to pursue their interests, for example, the greater likelihood there will be that changes will also occur to governance equilibria. The second important aspect is the nature of interest groups (Dür and De Bièvre 2007; Binderkrantz and Krøyer 2012). The more pluralistic the external environment, the greater the pressure on governance dynamics will be. On the contrary, if the social environment is organized in a more corporatist way, then governance dynamics will be subjected to less pressure for change. The third important external factor is the social relevance of the policy field. The more a policy field is considered important in the public’s eye, the more it will be subjected to external pressures which can affect governance dynamics. The directionality of governance dynamics means focussing on the logics of their development. Governance arrangements may change in either an incremental or a radical way, thus moving away from the initial equilibrium point in terms both of the mix of general coordinating principles and policy instruments and of the set of actors involved. However, the real challenge is that of understanding whether the direction of governance dynamics is reversible, that is, whether it is subject to oscillation over time, returning to previous equilibrium points and mixes. Understanding the temporal dimension of governance dynamics gives us the sense of the historical sequence through which governance dynamics develop. Governance dynamics can develop in a punctuated way, with long periods of stability followed by periods of radical change; however, such dynamics may also develop according to a continuous process characterized by the occasional micro-change (the progressive calibration of specific policy instruments) while the equilibrium between the general principles of coordination remain apparently the same (although an incremental change in policy instruments can lead to a more radical degree of change in the medium/long term).

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The strategic nature of governance Very often, governance arrangements are viewed from a functionalist perspective, as a structure of institutionalized relationships by means of which certain systemic functional requirements are met and structural-functional needs are satisfied. However, this does not help us understand the intrinsic dynamics of governance or the importance of actors’ behaviour to it (Peters 2012; Mayntz 2004). Governance in this sense can be seen as a strategic dimension of policy making. This means that actors know that the features of governance arrangements and the types of policy instruments adopted have an impact on the interests they are pursuing and that the positions/ roles they have in the existing governance arrangement represent a fundamental source of power and/or influence. This awareness justifies the emphasis that all governments have placed on continually re-designing governance arrangements within policy fields in order to better accomplish their goals. At the same time, this awareness underlies the ongoing battle over policy instruments and the features of governance arrangements (which can be defined as ‘meta-governance’). Governments, for example, are interested in achieving public policy results according to their respective electoral manifestos and in resolving contingent policy problems. Governments play a central role in governance changes and shifts: they are constantly searching for solutions to their policy and political problems, and very often changes in the components of governance – from ministerial reorganization to stakeholder limitation or enhancement – represent a highly promising way forward. Regarding policy problems, most governments and especially democratic ones subject to the whims of the ballot box are intrinsically committed to offering better performing policies, and they are very often the first to promote governance reforms in order to do so. It should be assumed that it is in the interests of government to adopt those instruments and equilibrium in governance arrangements which in a specific context may help build effective policies. The increasing role of the ‘market’ principle of coordination in many policy fields is governments’ response to the financial crisis afflicting ‘the big state’. NPM policy instruments have been adopted by governments in order to make public administration more accountable and responsible. As far as political problems are concerned, governments are continuously faced with the problem of having to legitimize their decisions outside the normal route of democratic parliamentary procedures. This means that the governance toolkit can provide certain solutions to the issue of political and social consensus, for example. The stable involvement of specific interest groups in governance arrangements, or the structural openness of such arrangements, may represent a strategic decision designed to ensure government’s control of the agenda and the significant probability of effective implementation. Governance arrangements thus lie at the heart of the constant battle for power constituting the very substance of politics and policy making. While actors pursue their substantial contingent policy goals, at the same time they try to gain advantages but always in relation to existing governance arrangements. Thus trade unions, for example, would prefer a more corporatist form of governance, or at the very least a series of very impermeable arrangements, while large firms would prefer strongly market-oriented governance arrangements and social movements highly decentralized, polycentric arrangements together with deliberative policy-making tools, and so on. It is clear that not all policy actors are successful in their battle for such arrangements and that the losers must operate within a governance design which is not their preferred one.

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Thus, from this point of view, the impact of governance styles on policy making should also be studied at the ‘meta-governance’ level by focussing on the ‘battle’ for governance arrangements (Howlett 2009). Furthermore, observation of the strategic behaviour of policy actors in the governance battle is of fundamental importance to an understanding of why, very often, within the context of structural multilevel policy making, actors change behaviour according to the level of governance. Structurally speaking, the governance game is a multi-level one, and thus the power/ position preferences of actors may vary according to the governance equilibrium at each level and to the kind of links (strong/loose) that exist between the different levels of governance. By abandoning a structuralist or a functionalist perspective and assuming the strategic nature of policy actors’ behaviour, our understanding of governance development becomes more realistic but also more complex. It becomes more realistic because the analysis of policy actors’ strategic behaviour enables us to get a better understanding of what practical governance actually is and of how and why it changes. It is by viewing the development of governance in terms of actors’ strategies that the real role of the state and government can be understood; and it is from this micro-perspective that the real nature and impact of existing governance arrangements on policy making can be understood.

The importance of governance capacity There is a need to focus on governance capacity in order to get a better understanding of the effectiveness of governance arrangements once launched. Fukuyama (2016) has hypothesized that governance is the government’s ability to make and enforce rules and to deliver services. He suggests that scholars should pay attention to two critical dimensions which have been neglected in the literature: state capacity and autonomy. The idea is that the different varieties of governance found in different countries and sectors can be explained by variations in capacity and autonomy of governments, but also that capacity and autonomy can vary over time and across instrumentalities, size and levels of government. Most literature and research, however, has focussed on the architectural features of governance arrangements, and we have suggested additional work should be done on which actors or types of relationship matter in governance. However, attention also must be paid to the real effects of changes in governance on policy and governance outcomes. There are several reasons why we should also focus on the capacities of governance. The first is that governance arrangements are institutionalized patterns of behaviour whereby public policies are designed, and commonly perceived problems are handled and possibly resolved. This results in the inescapable problem of the importance of the capacity of governance arrangements to deliver policy results. Secondly, governance arrangements also represent one of the places where the power game leading to legitimization of the social order is played out. Thus, we need to understand how governance arrangements can preserve political consensus and legitimation, both of which are prerequisites for successful policy attainment. Thirdly, governance changes (that is, changes in the dynamics and strategic aspects of governance) cannot be understood without a more detailed analysis of the capacity of governance. Governance capacity is not the same as good governance in its different definitions (World Bank 1994; Fukuyama 2013; Pierre and Peters 2005), state or government capacity (Besley and Persson 2011), quality of government (Rothstein 2011), systemic sustainability in governing pooled resources (Ostrom 1990), or the capacity to produce optimal or good regulation (Jordana and Levi Faur 2004). All of these things can help define aspects of governance capacity, although they are too partial or too prescriptively oriented to identify with capacity as such. 210

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The quality of government, that is, the ability to maintain social order and to effectively decide and implement democratically legitimized policies (Matthiews 2012), is a significant aspect of governance capacity. Policy capacity focusses on performance in the respective policy field: if performance is perceived as satisfactory, then the existing governance arrangement will persist, otherwise a decision may be taken to change that governance arrangement and/or policy instrument in order to improve policy performance or to redefine policy issues. Political capacity means the capacity to maintain the political consensus both of those actors involved and of those not involved and to preserve the general perception of legitimacy. When the political aspect of governance does not work, this constitutes a situation in which the inherited governance arrangement is challenged by actors (not necessarily new ones) demanding a role (if outsiders) or a stronger role (if insiders).

Conclusion: the idea of governance styles and their impact on policy making The idea of governance styles provides a diachronic perspective on the varying policy instruments and institutional features which steer the movement of private actors. The development of specific governance modes over time and the directionality of governance dynamics impact directly the nature of policy making and the choices of policy tools and programs which emerge from policy-making processes. How this affects the balance and relationship between both public and private actors and how innovations in instruments affect this balance are key questions. Some governance arrangements, for example, promote collaboration while others promote competition and contention. And, of course, governance modes can ‘fail’. These failures of different modes of governance – governments, markets and networks – in specific circumstances from stagflation to excess privatization are well recognized in the literature. What is less recognized is that while all three modes suffer from severe limitations, they do not all afford the same level or type of risk. In situations where both market and network failures are likely and substantial, hierarchical governance may remain a preferred option even in the face of various government failures since at least the needed services will be delivered, although perhaps inefficiently distributed in a technical sense and in all likelihood not as responsive to users’ preferences. These propensities make it even more important that policy-makers take into account governance modes and styles when fashioning policies. In choosing instruments and programs, governments need to understand the nature of the problem they are trying to address and the tools they have at their disposal to address it, which are directly affected by the innate features of existing governance modes. These must be matched to the problem they seek to address while the dynamics and the capabilities of governments and their societal partners to successfully implement the best option in any given governance situation similarly needs to be carefully assessed and addressed if governance-induced policy failures are to be avoided (Howlett 2009, 2019).

References Aucoin, P., 1990. Administrative Reform in Public Management: Paradigms, Principles, Paradoxes and Pendulums. Governance, 3 (2), 115–137. Barzelay, M., 2001. The New Public Management: Improving Research and Policy Dialogue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Baumgartner, F.R. and Jones, B., 1993. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 211

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Baumgartner, F.R. and Jones, B., eds., 2002. Policy Dynamics. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Bell, S. and Hindmoor, S., 2009. Rethinking Governance: The Centrality of the State in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Besley, T. and Persson, T., 2011. Pillars of Prosperity: State Capacity and Economic Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Binderkrantz, A.S. and Krøyer, S., 2012. Customizing Strategy: Policy Goals and Interest Groups Strategies. Interest Groups and Advocacy, 1 (1), 115–138. Börzel, T., 2010. European Governance; Negotiation and Competition in the Shadow of Hierarchy. Journal of Common Market Studies, 48 (2), 191–219. Capano, G., 2011. Government Continues to Do Its Job. A Comparative Study of Governance Shifts in the Higher Education Sector. Public Administration, 89 (4), 1622–1642. Capano, G., Rayner, J. and Zito, A., 2012. Governance from the Bottom Up: Complexity and Divergence in Comparative Perspective. Public Administration, 90 (1), 56–73. Considine, M. and Lewis, J.M., 2003. Bureaucracy, Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Public Administration Review, 63 (2), 131–140. Davis, G., 2002. Policy Capacity and the Future of Governance. In: G. David and M. Keating, eds. The Future of Governance. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 230–243. Dorf, M.C. and Sabel, C.F., 1998. A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism. Columbia Law Review, 98 (2), 267–473. Available from: https://doi.org/10.2307/1123411. Dür, A. and De Bièvre, D., 2007. The Question of Interest Group Influence. Journal of Public Policy, 27 (1), 1–12. Evans, P., 1997. The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization. World Politics, 50 (1), 62–87. Evans, P., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T., 1985. Bringing the State Back in. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Fukuyama, F., 2013. What Is Governance? Governance, Article first published online: 3 March 2013. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12035. Fukuyama, F., 2016. Governance: What Do We Know, and How Do We Know It?. Annual Review of Political Science, 19 (1). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-042214-044240. Goetz, K.H., 2008. Governance as a Path to Government. West European Politics, 31 (1–2), 258–279. Gunningham, N., 2009. Environmental Law, Regulation and Governance: Shifting Architectures. Journal of Environmental Law, 21 (2), 179–212. Heritier, A. and Eckert, S., 2008. New Modes of Governance in the Shadow of Hierarchy: Self-Regulation by Industry in Europe. Journal of Public Policy, 28 (1), 113–138. Héritier, A. and Lehmkuhl, D., 2008. The Shadow of Hierarchy and New Modes of Governance: Sectoral Governance and Democratic Government. Journal of Public Policy, 28 (1), 1–17. Hill, C.J. and Lynn, L.E., 2005. Is Hierarchical Governance in Decline? Evidence from Empirical Research. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15 (2), 173–195. Hogwood, B. and Peters, B.G., 1983. Policy Dynamics. New York, NY: Wheatsheaf. Howlett, M., 2009. Governance Modes, Policy Regimes and Operational Plans: A Multi-Level Nested Model of Policy Instrument Choice and Policy Design. Policy Sciences, 42 (1), 73–89. Howlett, M., 2019. Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments. London: Routledge. Howlett, M., Rayner, J. and Tollefson, C., 2009. From Government to Governance in Forest Planning? Lesson from the Case of the British Columbia Great Bear Rainforest Initiative. Forest Policy and Economics, 11 (5–6), 383–391. Jordana, J. and Levi-Faur, D., 2004. The Politics of Regulation: Institutions and Regulatory Reforms for the Age of Governance. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Kooiman, J., 2003. Governing as Governance. London: Sage. Available from: https://doi.org/10.4135/ 9781446215012. Lane, J.E., 2000. New Public Management. London: Routledge. Lynn, L.E., 2006. Public Management: Old and New. London: Routledge. 212

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Lynn, L.E., 2010. The Persistence of Hierarchy. In: M. Bevir, ed. The Sage Handbook of Governance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 218–236. Lynn, L.E., 2012. The Many Faces of Governance: Adaptation? Transformation? Both? Neither? In: D. Levi- Faur, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 49–65. Matthiews, F., 2012. Governance and State Capacity. In: D. Levi- Faur, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 281–293. Mayntz, R., 2004. Mechanisms in the Analysis of Social Macro-Phenomena. Philosophy of Social Sciences, 34 (2), 237–254. OECD, 2010. Pisa 2009 Results: What Makes a School Successful? Resources, Policies, and Practices. Paris: OECD. Ongaro, E., 2009. Public Management Reform and Modernization: Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Ostrom, E., 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Peters, B.G., 2012. Governance and Political Theory. In: D. Levi-Faur, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19–32. Pierre, J. and Peters, B.G., 2005. Governing Complex Societies: Trajectories and Scenarios. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G., 2000. Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G., 2009. Continuity and Change in Public Policy and Management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Ramesh, M. and Howlett, M., 2006. Deregulation and Its Discontents: Rewriting the Rules in Asia. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Rhodes, A.W., 1997. Understanding Governance. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Richards, D. and Smith, M., 2002. Governance and Public Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richardson, J., 2012. New Governance or Old Governance? A Policy Style Perspective. In: D. Levi-Faur, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–17. Rothstein, B., 2011. The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust and Inequality in a Comparative Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago. Solomon, J., 2008. Law and Governance in the 21st Century Regulatory State. Texas Law Review, 86 (4), 819–856. Tollefson, C., Zito, A.R. and Gale, F., 2012. Symposium Overview: Conceptualizing New Governance Arrangements. Public Administration, 90 (1), 3–18. Treib, O., Bahr, H. and Falkner, G., 2007. Modes of Governance: Towards a Conceptual Clarification. Journal of European Public Policy, 14 (1), 1–20. Williamson, O.W., 1975. Markets and Hierarchies. New York, NY: Free Press. Woessmann, L., 2007. International Evidence on School Competition, Autonomy and Accountability. A Review. Peabody Journal of Education, 82 (2–3), 473–497. World Bank, 1994. Governance: The World Bank’s Experience. Washington, DC: World Bank. Zeitlin, J., 2011. Transnational Transformations of Governance: The European Union and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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Section 2

Process styles

Part 4

Agenda-setting styles

17 Media-driven agenda-setting styles Max Grömping

Introduction Societal interests aiming to influence public policy outcomes commonly combine direct interactions with policymakers with the mobilization of public opinion via news media and public actions in complementary ways. The latter strategy – seeking access to the media as a conduit to shaping policymakers’ issue attention and stance on issues – is frequently prioritized by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other citizen groups (de Bruycker 2018; Dür and Mateo 2013). However, national policy styles differ as to how permeable they are for this type of ‘outside’ or media-driven agenda-setting. It is a frequent and routinized occurrence in some countries where NGOs are accepted voices in the media and amongst policy elites, and their advocacy efforts often make inroads into policy debates. In other countries, bottom-up issue proponents are marginalized and largely excluded from the policy process. What explains these differences? In this chapter, I explore the conditions shaping media-driven agenda-setting in a broadly comparative perspective. I argue that this element of a national policy style is structured by two interacting factors varying across and within countries, specifically the institutional context and the issue context. First, macro-institutional structures, that is to say the degree to which the media system provides an open arena for issue proponents, the degree of associational freedoms, and the extent to which elected policymakers are motivated by a functioning electoral link to care about public opinion, provide more or less opportunity for media-driven agenda-setting. Second, characteristics of the policy issues being lobbied on make them more or less amenable to media-driven agenda-setting, specifically whether the issue is an urgent social problem, whether it is within the sphere of legitimate controversy, and whether it is related to the provision of public goods. This chapter thus connects the discussion of national policy styles with insights from interest groups scholarship and social movement studies about how these actors attempt to influence policy outcomes. It contributes to the former literature the perspective of non-elite policy actors and bottom-up movements that, notwithstanding enduring political opportunity structures, assert their agency to carve out a role in the policymaking process. To studies of societal interest representation the chapter contributes the insight that national policy styles vary 219

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considerably in global comparison, diverging from the bounds of the Western liberal democracies usually studied in the group literature. Media-driven agenda-setting styles play out in the tension between actors’ routinized behaviours, institutional structures, and opportunities provided by the issue context. This means that, surprisingly, this type of agenda-setting is not limited to liberal democracies but can also be found among authoritarian polities, where it funnels valuable information about social grievances and preferences to the autocrat and simultaneously poses a risk of uncontrolled issue intrusion onto the political agenda. The chapter proceeds as follows: The next section introduces the notion of different agendasetting styles. I then theorize media-driven agenda-setting and develop propositions about how institutions and issues structure this aspect of a national policy style. By way of illustration, the fourth section tests some of these propositions with data on human rights groups’ media-driven agenda-setting in more than 60 countries. The fifth section concludes.

Agenda-setting styles Placing issues on the political agenda is a key precursor – although certainly not a guarantor – of policy change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014). Keeping issues off the agenda, on the other hand, preserves the status quo and is arguably an even stronger indicator of political power (Bachrach and Baratz 1962). The agenda-setting process denotes the competition among societal groups – or issue proponents – to direct the attention of the media, the public, and policy elites towards certain policy issues (Dearing and Rogers 1996, p. 1–2, Cobb et al. 1976, p. 120). It links societal interests to the issue agendas of political institutions and publics, and consists of several sub-processes, such as media agenda-setting (Weaver and Elliott 1985), public agenda-setting (McCombs and Shaw 1972), and political agenda-setting (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014). The currency of agenda-setting is attention, measured as the deployment of resources per time unit dedicated by an actor towards thinking about an issue (Newig 2004, p. 153). Attention is produced and expended in different arenas, for instance the news media, the legislature, or the bureaucracy (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988), and its quantitative aspect – for example, the number of news stories, or the frequency of mentions of an issue in parliamentary debate – makes it a useful yardstick by which to measure agenda-setting success (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014, p. 10). As there is a limit placed on the amount of information per time unit that any individual or collective actor can receive and process, attention is by definition a scarce resource, a bottleneck through which would-be agenda-setters need to pass (Jones and Baumgartner 2005). Drawing on Cobb et al. (1976), one can think of different ideal types of agenda-setting, depending on what role the mass media play in them.1 Inside access describes a style without mass media involvement, where issues arise within government agencies or are brought to decision through powerful lobbying groups – often without the public knowing about them at all. Agenda-setting and policy formulation are intimately linked in this mode, and a monopolization of the process by bureaucracies, experts, or hidden participants is to be expected (Kingdon 2011, p. 199). Mobilization is an agenda-setting style in which politicians or public officials initiate a policy and then require mass public support for its implementation. In a way, the dynamics of agendasetting are reversed, as the issue is already on the policy agenda by virtue of its announcement, but the government needs to expand it to the public agenda in order to garner sufficient public support. Mass media play a reactive role, akin to an amplifier.

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The outside initiative, in contrast, is a media-driven agenda-setting style, in which issue proponents who lack insider status aim to build public awareness and support to pressure policy elites into acknowledging the issue. This requires drawing attention from mass publics who have no direct experience of the issue, and who, for the most part, invest little energy in seeking out information about politics or policy and remain relatively uninformed (Graber 1988, p. 105). The mass media are the prime gatekeeper for this, as media content drives the salience mass publics attach to an issue (McCombs and Shaw 1972). Media also frame these issues by focusing upon certain events and giving them a meaning through interpretive schemata packaged with the information contained in a story (Iyengar 1991). It therefore follows that success in the outside initiative depends on issue proponents achieving attention and favourable framing in the media (Gamson and Wolfsfeld 1993; Koopmans 2004). Of course, ‘the media’ are now a much more networked and hybridized arena than when Cobb and collaborators developed their typology. Social media afford communications directly between issue proponents and their publics, as well as among publics, multiplying the kinds and numbers of potential agenda-setting actors (Jungherr et al. 2019). Not being covered by legacy mass media used to be the same as not receiving public attention at all, but these two things cannot be conflated anymore (Tufekci 2013). Indeed, the social media agenda differs from the agenda of legacy media, with spikes in attention arising at different times, usually earlier, and topics diverging from traditional news coverage (Neuman et al. 2014). As such, there is no single media agenda, if there ever was one. Instead, multiple online and offline media agendas intermingle, enabling the often erratic intrusion of issues from unexpected directions (Guo and McCombs 2015). Still, there is some indication that the effect of traditional media attention on online attention is significant (King et al. 2017) and that legacy news brands’ online presence also steer the public online agenda (Harder et al. 2017). On balance, therefore, it is still fair to study the legacy media as important conduits of agenda-setting power.

Media-driven agenda-setting What Cobb and collaborators termed the ‘outside initiative’ is a media-driven mode of agendasetting in which media campaigns, popular mobilizations, or both coerce policymakers into paying attention to and positioning themselves vis-à-vis an issue. Media outlets themselves may engage in this type of agenda-setting, by steering attention towards certain issues rather than others through watchdog journalism or forms of gatekeeping. In this chapter, however, I focus on societal groups – such as social movement organizations, NGOs, or interest groups – who proactively seek out media attention via press conferences, publicity stunts, or other forms of ‘outside lobbying’ (Kollman 1998). Media-driven agenda-setting may be efficacious for two reasons. Firstly, political elites derive clues about the public and other elites directly via their own consumption of media content, not least by inferring public sentiment from what they see on the news (van Aelst and Walgrave 2016). Secondly, media also indirectly cue elected officials about what part of the public wants by covering demonstrations and other public manifestations (Wouters and Walgrave 2017). As such, successful media-driven agenda-setting enables the bottom-up intrusion of issues onto the political agenda. But when, where, and why is media-driven agenda-setting an important component of a national policy style, and when is it marginal? In the following, I develop some propositions in this regard, keeping in mind that the ideal types outlined previously are not mutually exclusive and will probably co-exist in a polity (Cobb et al. 1976, p. 137).

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National policy styles are both institutionally and psychologically rooted (see Chapter 2), drawing our attention to the structural as well as behavioural correlates of agenda-setting styles. Media-driven agenda-setting is the outcome of attention-seeking behaviour of societal groups; the gatekeeping behaviour of media professionals; the attention-giving behaviour of publics and policy elites; and the institutional arrangements constraining all of these behaviours. Building on related accounts of political opportunity structures (Kitschelt 1986), the sociology of news production (Reese 2001), and exchange perspectives of group influence (Berkhout 2013), I focus specifically on two bundles of explanatory factors related to the institutional context and the issue context.

Institutional context All stages of policymaking are strongly affected by institutional opportunities and constraints structuring public and private actors’ behaviour (Kitschelt 1986; Tosun and Croissant 2016). Of particular interest here are opportunities for societal interest representation in the associational, media, and electoral arena that deal with outside initiatives through either exclusion or integration. The first institutional prerequisite for agenda-setting via the media is a pluralistic media arena representing a wide range of societal views and facilitating the free flow of information (Norris and Odugbemi 2009). Yet, this arena function of the media is routinely curtailed by censorship or other restrictions to press freedom under authoritarian regimes (Stier 2015; Roberts 2018). Often, oppressive libel laws stifle critical stories (Stanig 2015). Or worse, violence directed against journalists muzzles political reporting (Hughes et al. 2017). Such curtailments of media freedom limit the very spectrum of topics that newsmakers are able to cover, or cover critically. In such conditions it makes little sense for societal groups to appeal to the public via the media as they would have to expect their voice to be distorted or completely ignored. This logic holds that, all else being equal, where media freedom is protected, media-driven agenda-setting is more prevalent. Secondly, associational rights protecting those collective actors that aggregate outside interests are crucial for media-driven agenda-setting. Low barriers to entry, the absence of specific prohibitions on political activities, or favourable tax and funding environment, as well as the protection of freedom of speech and right of assembly, provide opportunities for would-be issue proponents to form and become sustainable. Concurrent with this argument, the level of democracy in a country significantly predicts NGO prevalence (Bailer et al. 2013). And among autocracies, single-party regimes, where a modicum of associational rights exist, boast more NGOs than do monarchies, military regimes, or personalist dictatorships (Böhmelt 2014). Consequently, I expect that, other things being equal, where associational rights are protected, mediadriven agenda-setting is more prevalent. A third important factor is a functioning electoral link between citizens and politicians. Agenda-setting by way of the media is aimed at expanding the scope of conflict from a group’s core supporters to larger publics. The calculus is that these publics then pressure policymakers to adjust their position; ideally, their sheer number will provide electoral leverage that may threaten incumbent politicians. However, this logic holds only if the electoral link is intact, meaning that policymakers actually face the prospect of losing office if they do not comply with public preferences. Yet, in closed autocracies without competitive elections policymakers are insulated from public pressure via the ballot box. And under electoral authoritarianism, the playing field is severely skewed, with incumbents disproportionately more likely to return to office (Schedler 2006). And even under democratic regimes, there is stark variation in the 222

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integrity of the electoral link (Norris and Grömping 2019). Attempting to influence the political agenda via appeals in the media is hence only an attractive strategy where clean elections motivate politicians to care about public opinion. I therefore expect that, all else being equal, where elections are conducted with integrity, media-driven agenda-setting is more prevalent.

Issue context Independent of institutional arrangements, some policy issues will be more amenable to mediadriven agenda-setting than others – and more so at certain times than at others. The issue context shapes if and when issue proponents’ advocacy efforts match well with news routines such as conflict, timeliness, or economic considerations (Reese 2001). Rather than challenging such routines, issue proponents commonly accept them as given and try to emulate them as closely as possible (Powers 2018, p. 131). As sources, they engage in a transaction with newsmakers, in which they provide information subsidies that mimic news routines in exchange for latent public opinion support and favourable issue expansion or containment (Berkhout 2013, p. 240). Which issue contexts are advantageous for such an exchange relationship? The real-world severity of a social problem increases issue urgency, which interfaces well with news routines around timeliness and drama. Seminal work on the ‘issue-attention cycle’ supposes that objective conditions drive the early stages of public interest in an issue (Downs 1972). Although such attention cycles can later take on a life of their own, real-world problems and events have been recognized as driving forces of news coverage (Lawrence 2000). Scandals, disasters, and other focusing events afford independent voices and activists opportunities to interpret and frame what occurred and become ‘thematically relevant’ sources (Wolfsfeld and Sheafer 2006). Groups will thus factor the urgency of an issue into their calculus when deciding if and how to go public, because attaching oneself to a popular issue signals the group’s standing as an important player in the field (Junk 2016). I therefore expect that, other things being equal, policy issues related to an urgent social problem will generate more media-driven agenda-setting than will less urgent issues. Secondly, groups advocating for issues related to the public interest engage more frequently and more successfully in media-centric tactics than those lobbying for private interests (Hanegraaff et al. 2016; Dür and Mateo 2013). Public interest groups stand to gain from an expansion of the scope of the conflict, as it increases the core resource of their pressure politics – favourable public opinion – while private interest actors are better off eschewing the media’s limelight (de Bruycker 2018). Therefore, I expect that, ceteris paribus, policy issues related to public good provision will generate more media-driven agenda-setting than will other issues. Finally, issue deviance, or the degree to which an issue is rejected by journalists and the political mainstream as unworthy of being heard in public, will negatively impact on its fit with media-driven agenda-setting. Many policy issues in most countries fall into the ‘sphere of legitimate controversy’, where debate and contestation about the best policy solution takes place (Hallin 1986). But issues located in the sphere of deviance are deemed unfit for public discourse, either for reasons of ideology, morality, or the self-preservation of the political regime. Actors advocating on these issues will be exposed, condemned, and actively excluded from the public agenda by the media (Hallin 1986, p. 117). Deviant issues certainly exist in democracies – for example where mainstream parties set up a cordon sanitaire around rightwing populism (Wettstein et al. 2018). But an even stronger dynamic should be expected under authoritarianism where discussion of taboo topics is often completely eliminated. Examples of deviant issues under authoritarianism are human rights, defence, internal security, and media regulation (Schuler 2020). While policymaking certainly occurs in these issue spaces, it is almost 223

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Favourable

(4) High

(1) None

(3) Medium

Issue context

(Urgency, public interest, deviance)

(2) Low

Unfavourable Unfavourable

Institutional context

(Media freedom, associational rights, electoral linkage)

Favourable

Figure 17.1  Hypothesized prevalence of media-driven agenda-setting

certainly not preceded by bottom-up actors running media campaigns. I therefore expect that, all else being equal, policy issues deemed as deviant will generate less media-driven agenda-setting than will other issues. Summarizing the preceding arguments, Figure 17.1 maps the theorized propositions onto a two-dimensional space. The x-axis shows the institutional context, which is more favourable for media-driven agenda-setting the freer the media are, the better protected associational rights are, and the closer the electoral link binds elected officials to public preferences. The y-axis depicts the issue context. Here, conditions are more favourable the more urgent a given issue is, the more it is linked to public goods provision, and the less deviant it is. The model expects very little or no media-driven agenda-setting in cases where the institutional context and the issue context is unfavourable (1). Where the issue context is favourable but institutional opportunities are low (2), there should still be very little media-driven agenda-setting, as the necessary institutional prerequisite are not fulfilled. In a situation with an open institutional context but unfavourable issue context (3), the model expects a moderate degree of media-driven agendasetting. In contrast, the highest incidence of media-driven agenda-setting is expected where both contexts are favourable (4).

Illustrative case: media-driven agenda-setting of human rights NGOs In the following, I  present some illustrative comparative evidence on media-driven agendasetting in a particular issue space: human rights advocacy. The data is drawn from a global 224

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census of electoral advocacy groups covering 1,176 organizations in 118 countries and tracking media attention and organizational characteristics from news content analysis and an organizational survey (Grömping 2019).2 Media-centric advocacy is a predominant strategy of choice of citizen groups and NGOs (Dür and Mateo 2013; Hanegraaff et al. 2016), making this a useful sample to study some of the aforementioned propositions.

Mapping media-driven agenda-setting I use a measure of media attention towards NGOs as an indicator for the prevalence of mediadriven agenda-setting. Specifically, I  count the number of newspaper articles mentioning a group’s name in a period of two months before and after the last national election. The corpus covers 1.9 million newspaper articles in 449 daily broadsheets receiving everyday all-page archiving in the Factiva news archive service.3 The number of sources per country range from zero to 15, with a mean of 4.5 and a median of three sources. To increase the robustness of the analysis, 48 countries and 369 corresponding groups are dropped from the dataset, where only one or no national newspaper is included in Factiva. Whilst this indicator is not a direct measure of the concept under investigation, it still gives a good indication about how easy or difficult it is for groups to pass the minimal requirement for agenda-setting via the media in a given national setting. Without media attention, the issues attached to the actor are guaranteed not to make it to the political agenda. The first step of analysis is to map the distribution of media attention groups are able to claim in each country, measured as the ratio of articles mentioning a group to the total number of news articles covering the election in question.4 Figure 17.2 graphs the cumulative distribution of agenda space across countries. The x-axis represents the share of attention a group receives on the media agenda, and the y-axis depicts the percentage of countries in which human rights NGOs remain below a given proportion of attention. The graph shows that media-driven agenda-setting is very unequally distributed across nations. In 26% of countries, groups receive not a single mention in the domestic press, and half of all countries see less than 0.1% of media agenda-space dedicated to human rights NGOs. At the same time, there is a small number of

Figure 17.2  Cumulative distribution of media attention to human rights NGOs across countries Note: N = 807 group, 68 countries

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Figure 17.3  Cumulative distribution of media attention to human rights NGOs within countries Note: N = 807 groups, 68 countries

countries where media-driven agenda-setting is more common. For instance, in 22% of all countries, groups on average manage to surpass 0.5% of domestic news attention, meaning that they are named in one of every 200 newspaper stories. In eight countries (12%), agenda space for human rights NGOs is even larger than 1%. Furthermore, when looking at the distribution of media attention within countries, I find an exponential power-law distribution of attention. Figure 17.3 plots two common indicators of divergence from normality of a distribution. The full line shows the skew of media attention by country. Only about 13% of countries display a ‘fairly symmetrical’ distribution of attention (skewness  2) in 34% of countries.5 In addition, the dashed line plots the cumulative distribution of kurtosis, which measures the combined sizes of the two tails of an empirical distribution. The distribution of attention indicates ‘peakedness’ or infrequent extreme deviations (kurtosis above 1) in all but 9% of countries. In combination, Figures 17.2 and 17.3 suggest that national policy styles vary dramatically in the extent to which they are open to media-driven agenda-setting. Media attention remains elusive for most interest organizations in most countries most of the time. The top five countries most amenable to media-driven agenda-setting in this sample – Botswana, Russia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Kuwait – are surprising and seem disparate on first glance. They represent differing levels of democracy and autocracy, different institutional settings, and different political and bureaucratic cultures. Yet, they have something in common that facilitates media agendasetting by societal groups, at least in the issue space of human rights. The next section explores this puzzle.

Contextual opportunities and constraints The theoretical expectation developed previously suggest that macro-institutional configurations as well as issue dynamics should explain variation in media-driven agenda-setting. The 226

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data on human rights NGOs allow a preliminary investigation of these propositions. Specifically, I test whether two contextual indicators – media freedom and issue urgency – are related to the extent NGOs can claim space on the national media agenda. Figure 17.4 reports log odds of two generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMM) explaining whether groups cross the attention threshold (non vs any attention) in domestic news. The first model M1 takes into account only contextual factors, in particular media freedom measured from Reporters Without Borders’s Press Freedom Index,6 reversed and normalized to a scale of zero to one, as well as issue urgency via the inverted ten-point electoral integrity rating (1 = no electoral malpractice; 10 = very high malpractice) of the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) expert survey (Norris et al. 2017). In addition, the lagged dependent variable is controlled for. The second model M2 also controls for organizational characteristics, such as resources, media effort, and degree of professionalization, which have been shown to predict group’s media access (Andrews and Caren 2010; Binderkrantz et al. 2017).7 Figure 17.4 shows that neither media freedom nor issue urgency by themselves predict media attention to a group. However, media freedom facilitates the agenda-setting of human rights groups, if and when ‘their’ issue is an urgent problem in the real world, as the positive and significant coefficient for the interaction term suggests. The size of the effect is modest but consistent across both models. Importantly, it is robust when controlling for common organizational factors, or for the possibility of an endogenous relationship between resource endowments and previous agenda-setting success, through the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable. Figure  17.5 further explores this relationship substantively, based on the results of model M2. It depicts on the y-axis the predicted probability of receiving media attention from zero to 100%. The x-axis varies issue urgency from 4, where electoral malpractice is not a major

Figure 17.4  Explaining media attention to human rights NGOs Note: Generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMM), logit link function, random effect for country. Dependent variable: Media attention to group (yes/no). M1: country-level predictors only, plus lagged DV; M2 including group-level controls (coefficient estimates omitted). N = 406 (M1), 153 (M2); No. of countries = 58 (M1), 43 (M2). Depicted with 95% confidence intervals.

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Figure 17.5  Predicting media attention to human rights NGOs Note: Based on M2 (Fig. 17.4), at media random effect, other variables held constant at mean, 90% prediction interval. N =153.

problem (e.g. Morocco) to 9, where malpractice is endemic (e.g. Burundi). The indicator for media freedom is set at two levels, low = 0.4 (e.g. Sri Lanka), and high = 0.9 (e.g. Austria). My theory of the issue context would expect that where election fraud is common, election reform NGOs should be sought-after sources. And indeed, this is the case in countries where the media approach the ideal of an open arena (depicted by triangles in Figure 17.5). Here, an increase in issue urgency beyond a certain threshold of about six (the level of Russia) virtually ensures media attention. However, the situation is dramatically different in countries where the media are not free (depicted by circles). Here, the likelihood of coverage is about equal to countries with a free press, when issue urgency is low. But when wrongdoings around elections rise, this is actually associated with a lower likelihood of attention, decreasing to a point of being negligible in the worst cases. Rather than exposing problems and devoting more coverage to monitors as key sources, the press either self-censors or bows down to repression. Media-driven agenda-setting becomes exceedingly difficult under such conditions. In summary, media-driven agenda-setting is a fierce competition among societal groups for scarce media attention. It is exacerbated by the constraining effect of institutions where issue proponents cannot rely on a fair media arena. In free media landscapes, issue urgency relates to higher media access. Taken together, this suggests that media-driven agenda-setting is unlikely to be a widespread aspect of national policy styles. It relies on institutional prerequisites and a favourable issue context that limit its prevalence to specific settings.

Conclusion National policy styles vary in the degree to which non-elites and their issues gain access to the political agenda. Among different modes of agenda-setting identified by seminal scholarship in comparative politics, media-driven agenda-setting is the one most likely to facilitate such issue intrusion. This chapter explored structural prerequisites for this type of agenda-setting. I posited 228

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a model in which the institutional context interacts with the issue context to help explain when and where media-driven agenda-setting is likely to occur. Specifically, media freedom, associational rights, and an intact electoral linkage between policymakers and the citizenry provide a favourable institutional context, whereas high issue urgency, low issue deviance, and the public interest nature of an issue present a favourable issue context. A national policy style should exhibit most media-driven agenda-setting where both contexts are favourable. By way of illustration, I provided some supportive evidence situated within the issue context of human rights advocacy. There are some limitations to the generalizability of the empirical component of this chapter. First, while the presented evidence supports the expected relationships concerning issue urgency and media freedom, other aspects of the issue context and institutional context remain to be investigated. Second, results are in the first instance generalizable to agenda-setting via offline media, but dynamics in the online sphere may differ. Where print media are constrained, for instance, public attention may merely be displaced to online social media, rather than completely muted. Third, results may not travel to other issue industries or to other group types. Due to their nature, human rights NGOs are more antagonistic to the state and may in turn be shunned by the media due to the high stakes involved. In addition, business groups and other group types may have reasons related to organizational maintenance not to engage in media-centric advocacy. Keeping in mind these limitations, the chapter makes some theoretical contributions, drawing strength from its globally comparative design. First, from the perspective of policy styles, the analysis confirms the importance of the institutional context. Both anticipatory and reactive policymaking requires information about societal grievances and preferences routinely being funnelled to policymakers. Media-driven agenda-setting is an important avenue for this, and the greater the opportunities for this mode of agenda-setting, the higher the informational input. At the same time, media-driven agenda-setting also presents policy elites with the risk of uncontrolled intrusion of issues onto the agenda. As such, it has on balance a better match with inclusive rather than exclusive national policy styles. This was borne out in the empirical analysis, as institutional constraints associated with authoritarianism hamper media-driven agenda-setting, thus confirming the expectations about Type 3 and Type 4 national policy styles (see Chapter 2). The chapter furthermore adds an important dimension to the analysis of national policy styles, in that it pays attention to the intervening effect of the issue context. This is likely to be important in other aspects of national policy styles as well, in that temporal variation matters. Second, for studies of interest groups, the lesson that social-institutional variation matters is one of significance. Media-centric advocacy is more prevalent in countries where the media arena provides a free conduit for advocacy efforts and where high-quality elections motivate policymakers to care about public opinion. However, there are limits to the greater inclusiveness fostered by media-driven agenda-setting. The empirical discussion showed that access to the public agenda is heavily skewed, with only few organized interests receiving the bulk of attention while the majority remain unnoticed. This confirms previous findings of bias in interest representation via the media (Binderkrantz et al. 2017). Third, the findings shed light on the policy process in non-democracies. The very fact that media-driven agenda-setting exists in the seemingly adverse environment of authoritarian regimes is somewhat surprising. In the absence of fair elections as the conduit for responsiveness, partly free media may be one of the institutions adopted by autocrats to glean information about societal grievances and preferences (Lorentzen 2014). This raises the question to what extent media-driven agenda-setting in authoritarian contexts is indeed a vehicle for the organic intrusion of issues onto the political agenda and to what degree it is merely a tool for autocratic stability. If nothing else, it suggests that autocrats must balance both functions carefully. 229

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Notes 1 Although Cobb et al. (1976) distinguish their term ‘agenda-building’ from ‘agenda-setting’, I use the latter to encompass both, leaning on later discussions of the sub-components of agenda-setting (Dearing and Rogers 1996). 2 The data include non-state, non-profit, non-partisan, and non-media collective actors that document electoral malpractice in their own country and advocate for changes in the way elections are conducted (Grömping 2017). They represent a sub-class of human rights NGOs focused on the public interest issue of electoral integrity, referencing explicitly a large number of human rights standards about election conduct (Davis-Roberts and Carroll 2010). 3 https://global.factiva.com. 4 This is necessary for cross-national comparability, given that election coverage varies drastically from only a handful to many thousand news items per election. 5 See Hair et al. (2009) for a discussion of these rule-of-thumb thresholds. 6 https://rsf.org/en/ranking. 7 For further discussion of the modelling strategy, see Grömping (2019).

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18 Interest groups and agenda-setting styles Darren R. Halpin1 and Bert Fraussen

Introduction Scholars have a well-developed literature that captures the way policy makers deploy sets of policy instruments or tools to develop public policy. While policy instruments (or tools) are crucial for all parts of the policy process, the literature has tended to focus disproportionately on implementation (Howlett 2019, p. 8). The same may be said for the concept of policy styles, where authors have recently sought to recast discussion from system-level styles to styles that might be defined at each stage of the policy process (see Howlett et al. 2009). One notable area of renewed emphasis concerns the agenda-setting phase which key scholars claim has been subject to relatively little attention (Howlett 1997; Howlett and Shivakoti 2014). Within this nascent strand of the policy instruments literature, scholars aim to understand the instruments – predominantly procedural – that government uses to shape the issues that it pays attention to and subsequently has to address (in terms of both volume and content) (see Howlett and Shivakoti 2014). Yet, equally, scholars need an appreciation for how the other side of the policy equation – organised interests or interest groups – approach agenda setting. Just as government and related institutions have a policy agenda to manage and deploy agenda-setting processes to winnow out unwanted distraction and manage finite resources, groups engage in the same tasks. This facet of intra-organisational life has not featured strongly in interest group scholarship. However, an exciting recent stream of work has begun to provide insights into what internal and external factors drives processes of agenda setting, as well as the structure and carrying capacity of group agendas. These publications provide a solid basis to start considering interest group agendasetting styles (see Barakso 2004; Goss 2010; Fraussen 2014; Halpin 2014; Heaney 2004; Scott 2013; Strolovitch 2007). This chapter connects the discussion of governmental agenda-setting styles with insights from the interest group literature around how they themselves agenda set. For scholars of organised interests this debate holds particular relevance, given that groups are one of the primary agents charged with making policy demands. This chapter probes agenda setting from the interest group perspective. It first unpacks four dimensions of interest group agendas, and ultimately

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identifies ideal-type agenda-setting styles. Second, it points to the range of drivers that shape decisions by groups to prioritise issues onto their lobbying agendas.

Conceptualising interest group agenda-setting styles? Is it possible to speak of group agenda-setting styles? Here we offer one possible way to conceptualise variations in the way group agendas are set. In so doing, we tentatively argue that the way groups agenda set within their organisation shapes how likely it is that they are able to fit into prevailing governmental or institutional policy styles (whether at the issue, domain, or system levels). Partly building upon Halpin and Fraussen (2019), group agenda-setting styles are conceptualised along four dimensions: (i) structure, (ii) carrying capacity, (iii) policy process, and (iv) posture. We explain each next. (i) Structure: It has been argued that group agendas can be conceptualised as composing of three distinct, yet related, layers: (a) ‘interests’, (b) ‘priorities’, and (c) ‘actions’ (Halpin 2015) (see Table 18.1). First, groups have a broad sense of what policy space they are ‘interested’ in. Research on Washington lobbying has long pointed out that the observed lobbying activity of groups belies a broad policy remit. These discussions get to the basic foundational layer, if you will, of a group’s policy agenda: how broad and diverse is the set of issues it has a general interest in? Or, more colloquially, what is its natural ‘policy terrain’? Second, while what the policy terrain groups have an ‘interest’ in is likely to be relatively broad, at any one time groups then ‘prioritise’ a subset of this broad policy space for concerted effort (see Halpin et al. 2018, and earlier discussion). The claim that groups engage in a conscious process of prioritisation, and that it is a conceptually distinct layer in a groups’ agenda, resonates with uncontroversial general rules of thumb discussed in the literature. Research in the US notes that most groups have a propensity to ‘monitor’ well outside areas they are active on (Baumgartner and Leech 1998, p. 161). A classic US study noted, “numerous interest groups monitor any given policy question and consider taking a more active role in the debate” (Heinz et al. 1993, p. 380). In his work, Nownes (2006, p. 85) argues, “the typical public policy lobbyist spends between 20 and 40 percent of his or her time on policy monitoring and compliance monitoring”. In short, the assumption is that against the very broad foundational layer of a group’s interests – all the things they might be reasonably considered to have an interest in – they then need to settle on a subset of things to start to actively work on, not least develop viable policy positions on. Third, groups actively engage in policy work to further their agenda on specific issues: the agenda is ‘actioned’. It is this component of group policy agendas that has attracted the overwhelming attention of group scholars: mostly because of a concern with assessing policy influence. Table 18.1  Components of interest group policy agenda structures Components

Description

(a) Policy interests (b) Policy priorities

Broad policy remit of a group Set of issues that group has consciously decided to develop positions on and focus its attention Set of issues that a group is actively engaging in lobbying on

(c) Policy actions Source: Derived from Halpin (2015)

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While on their own each has been subject to some modicum of analysis, these have not (to our knowledge) been taken as a set of related propositions. Yet, we can say that the group literature is heavily invested in the idea that advocacy organisations have what we have called a pyramid structure: they typically have rather general policy interests and set broad issue agendas, also monitor relatively broadly, yet lobby narrowly (see Baumgartner and Leech 2001; Baumgartner et al. 2011). The structure of the agenda would approximate a pyramid shape, with broad monitoring at the base, tapering to a small tip of observable policy advocacy. This orthodoxy has rarely been empirically explored and certainly not via systematic scrutiny of how a set of groups sequentially resolve each of these questions. Recent work has shown that in fact there is considerable variation in the structure of agendas, with survey research indicating that just 29 percent of the Australian groups has a pure version of this pyramid structure (Halpin and Fraussen 2019). The argument here is that there are three models of agenda setting among the interest group system (see Figure 18.1). The first is the pyramid model, whereby a group decides a broad-based set of policy interests, prioritises a subset of those for concerted attention, and then lobbies on an even smaller number of these policy issues. The third is the inverted model, whereby group leaders identify a broad policy perspective or ideology (e.g. progressive politics), against which it solicits a large number of relevant issues, which are refined based on constituency feedback. In between these is an intermediate or ‘narrow-cast’ model, where a group focuses on a very narrow set of issues and only devotes monitoring attention to the issue-set it advocates on, and vice versa. What has this to do with public policy making and agenda setting? There are some reasons for arguing that groups that manifest a pyramid-shaped agenda structure generate value for policy making. There is value in the active lobbying of groups being underpinned by a broad investment in monitoring and position formation. Groups that spread their policy attention more broadly are best able to contribute to democratic character of policy making by counteracting the niche seeking that is likely to undermine the pluralistic competition that scholars see as crucial to the democratic contribution of groups (Schlozman et al. 2012). Groups monitoring broadly are also more likely to be important in linking policy communities (Browne 1990) and are closer to what neo-corporatists saw as valuable ‘encompassing’ groups (Schmitter and Streeck 1999). In addition, broad monitoring could facilitate interventions from groups that are timely and better aligned with the perspectives and priorities of policy makers, as such groups will possess a more fine-tuned understanding of the political agenda. This is crucial to ensure a valuable contribution of groups to the policy process, but without this pyramid structure they are less likely to be aware of these important contextual factors.

Pyramid

Narrow-cast Public Position Policy Actions

Attention Policy Priorities

Inverted Public Position

Policy Actions Attention Policy Priorities

Monitor Policy Interests

Monitor Policy Interests

Public Position Policy Actions Attention Policy Priorities Monitor Policy Interests

Figure 18.1  Ideal-type interest group agenda-setting structures Source: Adapted from Halpin and Fraussen (2019)

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Of course, not all groups will conform closely to this normative ideal. We can, for instance, identify groups for whom ‘ambulance chasing’ is the clear instinct when it comes to issue agenda setting  – they spend little time on monitoring and prioritising and simply follow the issue agenda of the day (see Karpf 2012; Fraussen and Halpin 2018). This might be conceptualised as an inverted structure. Somewhere in between these two types would be a narrow-cast agenda structure. Here, groups engage in all layers of agenda setting, yet do so on a very small issue-set at one time. Single-issue campaign groups might be a good example of this case. We argue that the inverted model prioritises tactical nimbleness and outsider strategies, while the pyramid model values insider strategies including sustained interaction with policy insiders, combined with an implicit promise to cover a specific and more or less agreed-upon issue territory. (ii) Carrying capacity: Groups, like all institutions and organisations, face clear limits of time and financial/human resources which shape the carrying capacity of their agendas (if not the specific issues they take on or avoid). In a survey of Australian groups Halpin and Fraussen (2019) asked respondents to indicate, during a typical 12-month period, the number of issues monitored (those issues that you generally pay attention to or see as relevant), the number of issues that receive serious attention (those issues that you allocate staff time to), and the number of issues upon which this organisation takes a public position (those issues you send out a press release on, make a statement on, or release a policy paper on). During a typical 12-month period, the median group monitors about eight issues, devotes serious attention to five issues, and develops a public position on three issues. Thus, we can see that there are clear limits on how many issues a given group can ‘carry’ – with many more issues subject to monitoring actions and fewer to formal public position taking. But, as is clear, there is substantial variation with respect to how many issues a group takes onto its agenda at any one time. From a normative perspective, we might prefer that groups have a large carrying capacity. Why? Groups that can actively process many issues simultaneously are better placed to assist government in anticipating policy changes, better prepared to move into new areas, and able to draw links between policy niches. (iii) Policy process: Groups might have broad interests that shape the issues they are concerned with, but the precise position that they form on that issue is by no automatic. Some groups have established and well thought out policy platforms, while others make it up on the run. The work on governance and public policy has emphasised the importance of groups to be able to deliver the “commitment of members” to the policy table (Peters 2005, p. 80). This means policy makers can see evidence of – and factor in – a set of policy positions that a constituency has ‘agreed’ on. For groups, being known for possessing a well-established policy platform, which is signalled and predictable, reduces substantially the uncertainty for policy makers in doing their policy work (see discussion in Kollman 1998). Arguably, this allows policy makers to factor in the likely positions of groups in advance, and for groups, means that they can maximise their ability to exercise indirect power. In work on Australian national interest groups (Halpin and Fraussen 2019), it was found that many citizen and business groups had extensive internal apparatuses, which enable them to crystallise and anchor their policy positions. These included annual conferences, elaborate policy committees, and the development of research-based policy positions. Among campaign-style groups, such internal structures that create path dependence were often absent; instead the use of real-time online testing of messaging directed efforts (and these lobbying efforts often shifted frequently) (see also Fraussen and Halpin 2018). These differences in internal structures might also explain why diffuse citizen groups often have less difficulty in establishing their policy position, compared to business groups (see De Bruycker et al. 2019; Halpin 2006). (iv) Posture: While somewhat intangible, the attitude of groups to the policy environment is also a salient component of their agenda-setting style. There is a strong thread that argues that 236

Interest groups and agenda-setting styles Table 18.2  Ideal-type interest group agenda-setting styles Agenda-setting features

Agenda-setting style

Structure Carrying capacity Policy processes

Style 1 – Orthodox Pyramid structure High capacity Strongly institutionalised.

Posture

Anticipatory

Style 2 – Alternative Inverted structure Low capacity Weakly institutionalised and shallow into org. Reactionary

Source: Adapted from Halpin and Fraussen (2019)

the capacity for government to resolve pressing policy questions requires a long-term strategic view, which is in part enabled by the potential for groups and other non-state actors such as firms to take proactive policy stances (Craft and Howlett 2012; Peters 2015, see also Kim and Darnall 2016). In their classic analysis of the prospects for states to engage in ‘anticipatory’ policy making, Atkinson and Coleman (1989) note the requirement that groups are able to be “capable of looking to the longer term” (p. 63). Put simply, groups that know what they want – and are well prepared and have been on the scene for some time – might be considered best placed to identify and communicate to elites the legislative opportunities available and to respond to those windows as they open. Yet, not all groups adopt such an approach. Recent work tested the extent to which groups are proactive or reactive, in their own estimation (Halpin and Fraussen 2019). The results of a survey of national Australian interest groups found that when asked to indicate what proportion of issues they dealt with in the last 12 months were ‘long-standing issues’ versus those that ‘popped up’ unexpectedly, a majority of groups indicated that at least 60  percent of issues that they are typically dealing with are long-standing issues  – with the balance being something that emerged unexpectedly. Only a very small proportion of groups indicated that their agenda was dominated by issues that ‘popped up’ unexpectedly. Summary: On the basis of these dimensions we can identify what we refer to as the ‘orthodox’ style of agenda setting, addressing its four critical components: a proactive or even anticipatory policy posture, institutionalised procedures to establish policy platforms, a high carrying capacity, and a pyramid-like agenda structure (Halpin and Fraussen 2019). We contrast this with the reverse of this type, what we call an alternative agenda-setting style. This style is characterised by weakly institutionalised and reactionary agenda-setting procedures and a policy agenda that has an inverted structure and a low carrying capacity.

What drivers guide agenda setting within interest groups? Organised interests are central agents in transmitting grievances, problems, or policy demands to government. Yet, like governing institutions and organisations, they too have to prioritise issues and decide what issue agenda to advance. But what do we know about how they settle on issues they seek to advance onto the policy-making agenda of government and related institutions? The agenda of any institution – be it the media, parliament, judiciary, or broader public – is simply the list of things subject to discussion and perhaps even acted upon. Agenda setting is thus the process through which such institutions go about sifting and sorting which issues will make it onto their agenda and thus gain attention. Organisations like parties or interest groups also have agendas and thus engage in processes of agenda setting. But what considerations shape this process within groups? 237

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In a recent contribution, Halpin et al. (2018) set out the drivers that shape the selection of an issue to be subject to advocacy by a given interest group. They identify five distinct drivers that shape group decisions to lobby: internal responsiveness, policy capacities, niche dynamics, political opportunity structure, and issue salience. These are worth reviewing in turn (and are summarised in Table 18.3). First, the obvious reason that might lead a group to pursue one set of issues over another is pressure from members: that is, internal responsiveness. After all, groups are by definition voluntary organisations that exist predominantly to pursue the interests of members (Jordan et al. 2004). Indeed, the basic premise for group formation in pluralist theory is the pursuit of a set of objective interests (Truman 1951). It follows that these interests expressed by members would direct group effort. Such a proposition is no doubt the resting assumption of much of early group theory and associated normative accounts of groups in representative democracies. In practice, the precise nature of whom group leaders should be responsive to is varied. For instance, many groups are financed by large donors, philanthropic foundations, or institutional contributions (e.g. government), which may well shape decisions over which issues to prioritise (see Walker 1991). More broadly, groups might have an organisational mission which informs what issues are ‘important’ or ‘talismanic’, and as such need to be pursued (see discussion by Minkoff and Powell 2006). Second, group capacity matters. By policy capacities we mean the skill set and range of potential policy actions available to a group at a point in time (Daugbjerg et al. 2018; Wu et al. 2015). It is reasonable to expect that groups will take on issues where and when they have the skills and expertise to make a credible contribution. Most groups could be expected to have in-house staff who can operate well in their ‘core’ policy niche, yet they may struggle to offer such input in more peripheral areas. Of course, like all institutions and organisations, groups face clear limits of time and financial/human resources which shape the carrying capacity of their agendas (if not the specific issues they take on or avoid). Halpin and Binderkrantz (2011) show, based on survey data, that breadth of engagement varies; some stick to narrow issue agendas – in relation to topic/domain – and others span many. This variation is in part explicable owing to variation in group type and resources. Simply, if groups do not have sufficient money and staff, their scope for working on issues is limited (or else, the depth of their engagement in an issue portfolio will be more superficial). Third, we would expect groups to seek out policy niches where they have a competitive advantage. Aggregate-level analysis of organised interest systems in the UK, Europe, and the US demonstrates that there is substantial variation in the breadth of policy domains that groups engage in. There are those who keep to narrow and predictable policy niches and those that seek to encompass a broader terrain (Browne 1990; Halpin and Binderkrantz 2011; Heaney

Table 18.3  Drivers of issue prioritization Drivers

Key question posed . . .

Member preferences Organisational capacity Niche seeking Political opportunity Issue salience

Does the issue align with member preferences? Does the group possess the resources and skills to progress the issue? Is the issue one other groups are neglecting? Are political conditions favourable to advancing the issue? Is this an issue that others – like government or public – are also attentive to?

Source: Adapted from Halpin et al. (2018)

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2004). There is a well-established literature which suggests that groups will – all things being equal – seek out policy terrain on which they can specialise (Gray and Lowery 2000). It follows that we would expect to see a group prioritise issues where it fits into an existing policy niche that the group views as its ‘own’ and where it reduces conflict with similar groups over either policy access or for potential membership resources. It has been a strong expectation that as the overall size of organised interest systems in liberal democracies grow, it would lead to the fragmentation of the system. Yet, contrary to expectations of growing fragmentation and hollow cores (Heinz et al. 1993), work has also shown that as organised interest systems grow in size, there is little discernible evidence of more specialisation or niche building – there is a steady state of policy core and peripheral actors (Halpin and Thomas 2012). Irrespective of growth in the organised interest system, a core of generalist groups will always develop. Fourth, we expect political opportunity structure to matter. The public policy literature has extensively highlighted how windows of opportunity may open, offering specific sets of interests that are ideal junctures for achieving their policy goals (Kingdon 1984). Where the policy environment is positive, groups are expected to prioritise the issue, and when they sour they are expected to hold it in abeyance. Opportunity structures might often be shaped by which party is in government, but the concept is multifaceted. For instance, groups are shown to be more likely to mobilise where the likelihood of victory is high (Baumgartner et al. 2009) and when they perceive government to be an ally. Of course, groups may also mobilise where conditions are not optimal, but others have started to pay attention to an issue that matters to them, and they need to ‘counteract’ or block initiatives (Austen-Smith and Wright 1994, 1996). Finally, groups might engage in ‘negative lobbying’, which is alerting government or policy makers to the potential costs of taking a certain course of action (McKay 2012). Finally the salience of the issue is relevant. The issues that groups prioritise are likely to be shaped by what other institutions are focusing on and paying attention to. Research has established at the aggregate level that as government shifts its attention from one issue area to another, groups follow (Leech et al. 2005; Baumgartner et al. 2011). This also seems to hold for media attention (Danelian and Page 1994; Kollman 1998; Binderkrantz et al. 2017) and public opinion (Rasmussen et al. 2014). This may also work if we think about policy failures or focusing events that disturb equilibriums and reshuffle public priorities (Birkland 1998; Cobb and Elder 1983; Kingdon 1984). Such events might be expected to lead groups to reconsider whether to move on one issue versus another. The survey work demonstrated that each of these five factors was in fact recognised as simultaneously important by groups. However, the more internally focused factors – like responsiveness to members and group capacity – were somewhat more strongly rated as important compared to the more external environmental factors.

Bringing it all together: the ‘fit’ of group agenda-setting styles with prevailing policy styles? How can we engage our initial review of agenda-setting policy instruments and policy styles pursued by government and policy makers with this latter investigation into the agenda-setting styles of groups? As Howlett and Tosun (2018) explain, one of the limits of the policy styles approach is linking it to the normative pursuit of a more anticipatory policy-making style. They remark, “while a government may wish to develop an anticipatory policy style, it may not be equipped to do so – or will only partially achieve this goal if it lacks the capacity pre-requisites required of such 239

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a style” (Howlett and Tosun 2018, p. 392). A key element of this capacity derives from that of the organised interest system it works with (Daugbjerg et al. 2018). Our work strives to develop a systematic understanding of this capacity through conceptualising an interest group agendasetting style. In this regard, empirical work demonstrates that there is substantial variation with respect to the orientation groups take to agenda setting (see Halpin 2015; Halpin and Fraussen 2019). Some seek to lead the government agenda, others simply follow, but most juggle both instincts. Moreover, the agenda size of many groups is small, meaning that they can only attend to a small number of issues at any one time. The public policy literature has tended to see the larger broad and encompassing groups as more useful from a governance perspective, but only a small number of groups in fact invest in developing policy platforms and seeking to work on these with government. Many react to a moving governmental agenda, while others pursue one issue at a time and are thus not well prepared to pivot to new terrains. And, importantly, the agendas they pursue are not straightforward transmission belts for social grievances but rather subject to a vast array of internal prioritisation processes that filter, sift, and winnow the universe of all issues to those that are subject to concerted action.

Conclusion Agenda setting is a vital element of the study of public policy. Since Schattschneider’s observation that whoever controls what is admitted as a policy issue exercises substantial power, a myriad of social scientists have explored what propels an issue onto the public agenda, the lifecycles of issues, and why some issues make it and others do not. Extending the policy instruments approach to agenda setting is a worthy endeavour, which creates additional opportunities for developing systematic insights into the way government goes about managing demands to recognise issues as ‘public’, and thereafter to give them attention. The contribution we make are three-fold. First, we develop a framework to describe and analyse interest group agenda-setting styles. After elaborating four dimensions through which it is possible to characterise group agendasetting styles, we pull these together into a typology of two ideal types. This approach is one possible way in which to summarise the styles that groups adopt when agenda setting. As is reported, this broad approach has been applied to the Australian context to a limited degree, using quantitative survey responses. As such, there are certainly more nuanced options to be explored in terms of operationalising these styles – both within single systems and comparatively. Why do some policy sectors, or national systems, foster one or other group agendasetting styles? Do groups develop or switch styles over their life-course? These questions are posed by the kind of framework we have offered here. Second, we convey insights from the literature on interest groups that might inform our assumptions about the policy demands made on government: namely what guides group decisions to advocate on an issue, or not? The contribution here has been to clarify and elaborate drivers of issue prioritisation. In this way we can better organise the undoubted complexity and generate a better understanding of what broad types of considerations drive issue prioritisation. Earlier we undertook a comprehensive review of the interest group literature and identified five broad themes. The outcome of this process provides the field with a useful palette of theoretically informed expectations against which to assess empirical findings and construct future research projects on the question of issue prioritisation, or the policy agendas of interest groups more generally. Of course, not all nuances within the literature can be captured in a list of items such as ours. In that regard, future work might better seek to capture how prioritisation is shaped by potential high costs versus potential high gains (Godwin et al. 2008). 240

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Certainly trade-offs between these drivers on specific issues is one way to move forward. It is also important to be mindful that prioritisation might be motivated by organisational maintenance issues that may (or may not) coincide with imperatives of policy influence (Lowery 2007). We can only capture these maintenance issues in an indirect manner in the current setup, where we presume that groups are looking for strategies to pursue issue-based policy preferences. Finally, we attempt to tie this all together by positing that certain agenda-setting styles have a better ‘fit’ with certain policy styles. Specifically, we argue that ‘orthodox’ agenda styles fit best with anticipatory/consensus policy styles, while ‘limited’ agenda styles fit best in an environment dominated by a reactive/impositional policy style.

Note 1 We wish to acknowledge that this chapter draws heavily from work co-authored with close colleagues Herschel Thomas (University of West Virginia) and Anthony Nownes (University of Tennessee).

References Atkinson, M. and Coleman, W., 1989. Strong States and Weak States: Sectoral Policy Networks in Advanced Capitalist Economies. British Journal of Political Science, 19 (1), 47–67. Austen-Smith, D. and Wright, J., 1994. Counteractive Lobbying. American Journal of Political Science, 38 (1), 25–44. Austen-Smith, D. and Wright, J., 1996. ‘Theory and Evidence for Counteractive Lobbying’. American Journal of Political Science, 40 (2), 543–564. Barakso, M., 2004. Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Baumgartner, F., et al., 2009. Lobbying and Policy Change. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Baumgartner, F., et al., 2011. Congressional and Presidential Effects on the Demand for Lobbying. Political Research Quarterly, 64 (3), 3–16. Baumgartner, F. and Leech, B., 1998. Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and Political Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Baumgartner, F. and Leech, B., 2001. Interest Niches and Policy Bandwagons: Patterns of Interest Group Involvement in National Politics. Journal of Politics, 63 (4), 1191–1213. Baumgartner, F.R., Larsen-Price, H., Leech, B. and Rutledge, P., 2011. Congressional and Presidential Effects on the Demand for Lobbying. Political Research Quarterly, 64, 3–16. Binderkrantz, A., Halpin, D. and Chaques, L., 2017. Diversity in the News? A Study of Interest Groups in the News Media in the UK, Spain and Denmark, British Journal of Political Science, 47 (3), 723–732. Birkland, T.A., 1998. Focusing Events, Mobilization, and Agenda Setting. Journal of Public Policy, 18 (1), 53–74. Browne, W.P., 1990. Organized Interests and their Issue Niche: A Search for Pluralism in a Policy Domain. Journal of Politics, 52 (2), 477–509. Cobb, R.W. and Elder, C.D., 1983. Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda-building. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Craft, J. and Howlett, M., 2012. Policy Formulation, Governance Shifts and Policy Influence: Location and Content in Policy Advisory Systems. Journal of Public Policy, 32 (2), 79–98. Danelian, L.H. and Page, B.I., 1994. The Heavenly Chorus: Interest Group Voices on TV News. American Journal of Political Science, 38, 1056–1078. Daugbjerg, C., Fraussen, B. and Halpin, D., 2018. Interest Groups and Policy Capacity. In: X. Wu, M. Howlett and M. Ramesh, eds. Policy Capacity and Governance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. De Bruycker, I., Berkhout, J. and Hanegraaff, M., 2019. The Paradox of Collective Action: Linking Interest Aggregation and Interest Articulation in EU Legislative Lobbying. Governance, 32 (2), 295–312. 241

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19 The politics of parliamentary agenda-setting styles Shaun Bevan, Enrico Borghetto, and Henrik Seeberg

Introduction Political attention is a crucial but scarce resource in day-to-day parliamentary decision-making. Before a bill is tabled on the floor of parliament, a fierce competition takes place among political actors to decide which issues deserve attention. While the public spotlight is normally on political actors arguing about levels of regulation or spending on specific issues, consequential decisions are made much earlier in the process, namely at the moment of setting the legislative agenda.1 Schattschneider (1960) referred to this as the ‘conflict of conflicts’ in which the political agenda is continuously formed. A large amount of research on political agenda setting has proliferated to understand this process. It builds on the idea that even if the political agenda can grow over time (Green-Pedersen 2007) and its size may vary across political units (Mortensen and Seeberg 2016), its carrying capacity is relatively fixed, and the critical question for understanding the style of parliamentary agenda setting is therefore: which issues take up policy-makers’ scarce attention? We address this question by focusing on the scope of the parliamentary agenda across advanced democracies. The scope refers to the capacity of the agenda to carry several issues at the same time (Green-Pedersen 2007). This question is fundamental to the functioning of parliaments as it indicates the breadth of decision makers’ issue attention. Research shows that the agenda is quite constrained during major crises, such as the 2008 financial meltdown, and more diverse when the economy booms. Having a broad scope may imply a low threshold to propel issues to the agenda, but it may also indicate a crowded agenda (Jennings et al. 2011; Borghetto and Russo 2018). Since opposition parties are typically kept out of the legislative process by government parties acting as gatekeepers, they will try to use other channels to publicize their positions and bring attention to their preferred issues (Klingemann et al. 1994; Maltzman and Sigelman 1996). Some of the available channels “to go public  .  .  . are embedded in the legislative process” (Cox 2006, p. 152), such as the use of question time in parliamentary systems (Martin 2011b). This is the focus of our chapter. The stage of question time is particularly interesting for the study of issue competition in parliament (Otjes and Louwerse 2018) because, to some extent, it represents a level playing field for government and opposition parties. For the most part, 244

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majority parties use it to allow ministers to give reasons for their decisions and announce their achievements. On the other hand, opposition parties can employ it to put issues on the agenda that potentially upset existing majorities, so-called wedge issues (van de Wardt et al. 2014; De Vries and Hobolt 2012) or to politicize issues on which the government is not performing well and, in this way, invite voters to punish it at the next elections (Seeberg 2013, 2018). Overall, existing research has highlighted that opposition parties have more flexibility in their agenda strategies (Green-Pedersen and Mortensen 2010). Since they do not have responsibility over policy-making, they can use this public stage to direct attention to a problem without necessarily having to develop a solution (something government parties find difficult to do) and keep this focus for a longer time (Green-Pedersen and Mortensen 2010). The empirical section of this chapter analyzes the variation in agenda scope across parties by looking at their agenda-setting decisions during question time in order to advance our understanding of styles of parliamentary agenda setting. Research on parliamentary agenda setting is booming (John et al. 2013; Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014; Vliegenthart et al. 2016; Baumgartner et al. 2019 for recent reviews). Yet, it has been more focused on the formalities of ‘who can do what when’ (Garritzmann 2017; Rozenberg and Martin 2011) or on particular issues (Green-Pedersen and Wilkerson 2006; GreenPedersen and Krogstrup 2008; Engeli et al. 2013) than on describing the scope of the agenda more broadly and in a comparative setting (exceptions are Jennings et al. 2011; Borghetto and Russo 2018; Borghetto and Chaques-Bonafont 2019). Therefore, we know very little about the general composition of the agenda in advanced democracies. This is an unwanted gap because it leaves open to what extent parliamentary agenda setting reflects different policy styles across advanced democracies. Does the basic composition of parliamentary agendas differ across political systems because there are different styles in which the agenda is formed? We test several propositions on the precedents of similarity and differences in parliamentary agenda setting in six West European political systems. We argue that it is not meaningful to categorize a policy style as such for each country. Rather, factors that can be present or absent in all countries decide the scope of the parliamentary agenda, and the policy style of parliamentary agenda setting can therefore differ across countries and over time depending on the presence of these factors. That said, the factors that we test might suggest that systematic variation across countries is probably greater than temporal variation within each country.

Policy styles in parliamentary debate: what do we know? Research on parliamentary agenda setting, namely the use of non-legislative activities such as interpellations, motions, and questions to the minister, has had a slow start in comparison to studies of the legislative process and executive politics but is now rapidly gaining ground (Rozenberg and Martin 2011; Martin 2011b; Garritzmann 2017). The prevalent perspective on parliamentary agenda setting is that these activities are mainly used for oversight purposes to extract information from the executive as well as to hold the executive to account (Höhmann and Sieberer 2020; Zittel et al. 2019; Martin and Whitaker 2019; Bundi 2018; Bailer 2011). Although case studies show that especially opposition parties use parliamentary questions to spiral issues onto the political agenda (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup 2008; Seeberg 2013), we still know little about the extent to which these activities systematically are employed to direct attention to specific problems, about which issues receive attention, and which are left out. The literature only indirectly touches on these typical agenda-setting questions (Bachrach and Baratz 1962; Green-Pedersen 2010): some studies try to account for which ministers receive more 245

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questions (Höhmann and Sieberer 2020; Zittel et al. 2019; Martin and Whitaker 2019; Bundi 2018; Bailer 2011); others show that either parliamentarians or parties use these tools to emphasize issues on which they have issue ownership (Vliegenthart and Walgrave 2011; Vliegenthart et al. 2011; Otjes and Louwerse 2018; Bevan and John 2016; Wouters et al. 2019). Rather than addressing which issues are on the parliamentary agenda or why, scholars have mostly studied formal procedures. A large number of studies unravel the peculiarities of parliamentary activities, noting that the ratio of written vs. oral questions differs across countries as well as the extent to which questions can be asked spontaneously or may provoke a subsequent debate and even a vote (Garritzmann 2017; Rasch 2011; Russo and Wiberg 2010; Rozenberg and Martin 2011). Beyond a margin of variation, the main story is that members of parliaments in most advanced democracies can ask questions and try to set the parliamentary agenda. When it comes to studying the actual use of parliamentary activities, scholars have primarily investigated if these can be used to control the executive in countries as diverse as Germany (Höhmann and Sieberer 2020; Zittel et al. 2019), Ireland (Martin 2011a), Britain (Martin and Whitaker 2019), Switzerland (Bundi 2018; Bailer 2011), and the EU (Jensen et al. 2013; Font and Durán 2016). Hence, multi-country studies that focus on the actual use of parliamentary activities are very rare. We are not downplaying the relevance of institutional rules and norms. In general, scholars note that party discipline is imposed to a much lower extent in non-legislative activities compared to, for instance, roll-call votes or bill introductions where individual members are expected by the party leader to abide by her instructions (Martin 2011b, p. 263). Yet, even a cursory look at procedures regulating parliamentary questioning across countries reveals some significant variation. In countries like Denmark, for instance, oral as well as written parliamentary questions offer members of parliament much freedom to promote an individual agenda (Green-Pedersen and Mortensen 2019). In other countries such as Italy, each parliamentary group is allowed only one question during each weekly session, so  – in light of the tight agenda – most decisions about the content of the questions have to be coordinated at the party level (Russo and Cavalieri 2016). Finally in countries like Portugal, only frontbenchers are allowed to take the floor and address the prime minister during the bi-weekly question time, and time is distributed proportionally to the size of the parliamentary group (Belchior and Borghetto 2019). Another distinction drawn by most scholars is between written and oral questions. Studies point out that parliamentarians have a greater leeway when they use written questions than when they use oral questions, which are not constrained by time limits and are not discussed on the public stage (televised sessions) so they are not as salient for the party image. The expectation is that these instruments present a rare opportunity for individual members to signal their positions to their constituents (Russo 2011; Saalfeld 2011). Our empirical analysis incorporates these important insights by focusing, firstly, only on oral parliamentary questions (other studies already showed how oral parliamentary questions function in similar enough ways in general for meaningful pooled analyses; e.g., Vliegenthart et al. 2016; Garitzmann 2017). Secondly, we control for the number of questions available to each party when accounting for agenda scope since the former probably influences the latter. Summing up, the literature provides little research on cross-country variation in parliamentarian’s actual agenda setting or ‘policy styles’ and little focus on the question of how parliamentarians try to elevate or exclude issues from the parliamentary agenda. The rest of this chapter aims at unpacking that open question by considering the scope of parliamentary questions as well as the practical and institutional factors that drive the scope of parliamentary debates.

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Propositions on policy styles in parliamentary debate As we pointed out earlier, although all advanced parliamentary systems envisage some form of questioning the government (Garritzmann 2017), institutional and contextual differences can have a heavy influence on the scope of parliamentary questions, namely on the number of issues which each party raises. One clear contextual effect on the scope of parliamentary debate is time. Longer periods of time offer the opportunity to address more issues and widen the scope. For instance, party behavior differs across the electoral cycle, and hence, so does the political agenda (Pardos-Prado and Sagarzazu 2019). Right before and after parliamentary elections, the political agenda is usually locked in on the few issues that each party prefers to emphasize. Before elections, parties try, due to the rise of issue voting among voters, to raise the salience of the issues on which they have issue ownership (Meguid and Belanger 2008; Petrocik 1996). After elections, the government experiences the ‘honeymoon period’ in which a key priority is to implement the most important electoral pledges. Hence, if a country encounters frequent national elections, it will never escape this interval of a narrow agenda scope. Between elections, the expectation is that the political agenda to a large extent is rather unpredictably influenced by the arrival of unforeseen societal problems and dramatic events such as the 9/11 terror attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the 2008 financial crisis (Baumgartner et al. 2011). For this reason, longer running cabinets face more issues and parliamentarians pose questions about more issues given more opportunities over time. Our remaining explanatory factors vary at the party level.2 First, we expect that the size of the parliamentary group has an impact on the scope of parliamentary questions. To begin with, in most countries (an exception is Italy) the amount of floor time available to each group, which is indirectly related to the potential carrying capacity of its agenda, is proportional to the share of its seats. On average bigger groups are expected to use their longer time slots to touch on a greater variety of issues. Moreover, bigger groups are also more likely to harbor a greater range of policy expertise, which should translate to a greater propensity to broaden the scope of questioning. Finally, it might be a question of labor and resources: although questions vary in length and specificity, preparing them might be demanding in terms of labor for small groups. For these reasons, we should expect that the larger the party, the more issues it focuses on. Our second party-level factor distinguishes between government and opposition parties. We expect the agenda scope of government parties (despite often being among the largest groups) to be somewhat more constrained than that of opposition parties. On the one hand, as we have already recalled, government parties use question time – when they do ask questions – as a stage to present the government’s accomplishments. As a result, they will be more likely to direct their focus on the limited range of issues addressed in the government program (Timmermans 2006). Vice versa, opposition parties will have more freedom to address issues beyond their platforms, either to ride changes in public opinion or to attack the government on issues it would rather not face (Green-Pedersen and Mortensen 2010). Hence, we expect that opposition parties focus on more issues than government parties. Finally, political parties vary greatly not just in terms of institutional position and memberships, but also in their policy profiles. One important distinction that might have an impact on agenda scope is between predominantly policy-seeking niche parties  – parties limiting their programmatic appeal to a limited set of non-economic issues that are neglected by their competitors (like green parties with the environment and nationalist parties with immigration) – and predominantly vote-seeking mainstream parties (Adams et al. 2006; Wagner 2011). On average, we expect niche parties to replicate their electoral issue competition strategy and focus on a rather limited number of key issues (but see Bergman and Flatt 2020) also during question 247

S. Bevan, E. Borghetto, and H. Seeberg

time. On the other hand, mainstream parties are expected to use oral questions to bring attention to issues that are not strictly ‘owned’ by the party but that allow reaching a wider share of the electorate (Somer-Topcu 2015). Such a broad-appeal catchall strategy may be a convenient strategy at times because it allows the mainstream party to respond to variation in media attention (Vliegenthart et al. 2016). Hence, we expect that mainstream parties focus on more issues than do niche parties.

Methods and data In order to understand the scope of parliamentary questions, we make use of data from the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP; www.comparativeagendas.net). Our data includes all parliamentary questions asked for extended time periods in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Table  19.1 offers a brief description of each series as well as the time period covered. All of the countries have parliamentary systems with multiple parties. Yet, the countries and time periods included in our analyses cover important variations in the number of parties present, the presence of niche parties, the length of the electoral cycle as well as a mixture of majority, coalition, and even minority governments. While the varying time periods for each series does limit direct comparisons, by including as much data as was available at the time this chapter was written, we are able to offer the most comprehensive view of the content/ scope of parliamentary questions to date. Our analysis focuses exclusively on oral questions (see also Borghetto and Chaques-Bonafont 2019). To present a view of parliamentary questions we first call back on Schattschneider (1960) and present the scale and scope of questions. Scale, or the number of questions asked (across issues) is a simple enough metric but one that could be broken down in a number of ways, to questions by topic, year, etc. All of these perspectives have value but, given our focus on policy styles, we chose to present this data as the average count by party within each cabinet in Figure 19.1. The scope of questions could also be presented in a number of ways. One of the most direct measures of scope is simply a count of the number of issues (or subtopics) covered by questions (not counting the number of questions per issue). This is a common and accessible way to indicate the scope of the agenda (see, e.g., Green-Pedersen 2007; Baekgaard et al. 2018). Given our use of CAP data, topics, more specifically subtopics, offer a key insight into the breadth of issues covered by parliamentary questions. Subtopics are nested within wider topics, such as labor, long-term care, and the drug industry subtopics within the wider topic of health. The Table 19.1  Available country data sets Country

Number of Number of Number of Number of Start of time End of time Number of elections cabinets parties questions series series questions per year

Belgium

6

9

16

7,418

1988

2010

337.2

Denmark

6

8

12

3,103

1997

2016

163.3

Italy

5

11

23

4,600

1998

2017

242.1

Netherlands

8

9

19

1,431

1984

2009

57.2

Portugal

4

4

7

2,410

2005

2019

172.1

Spain

10

10

10

17,460

1982

2018

485.0

Total

39

51

87

36,422

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Parliamentary agenda-setting styles

CAP codebook consists of 213 subtopics nested within 21 major topics (see codebook at www. comparativeagendas.net). Importantly, by using a common coding system across nations, the scope of parliamentary questions can be compared from parliament to parliament and cabinet to cabinet. To get a first glance at our data and before moving into the analysis of scope, we start out with the somewhat simpler measures of scale, that is, the number of questions (gray dashed line in Figure 19.1). The graphs for each country reveal that each party from just a handful of questions (Netherlands) to hundreds of questions (Spain) per cabinet indicate clear differences in the usage and approach to questions between countries. At the same time, though, the scale of parliamentary debate is descending in Spain and Belgium while ascending in Denmark and Portugal. Shifting our attention to issues, the first thing to notice is that the average number of subtopics follows quite a different pattern. This indicates that the scope of parliamentary agendas is not solely driven by the scale, in this case the number of questions. Unlike the up- and downward moving trends in the scale, the scope within countries is in general stable over time. A meaningful average appears over the course of all cabinets. This average can vary greatly between countries from roughly 10 subtopics in the Netherlands among the 213 possible subtopics in the codebook to more than 50 in Spain. This is a substantial difference that indicates a very narrow parliamentary agenda in the Netherlands and a fairly broad agenda in Spain. These differences likely come down to institutional rules and the process of asking questions. Moreover, despite growing complexity of governance and growing issue competition, there is no firsthand, common pattern in how scope develops over time once differences in the stable level of scope are accounted for. The next section further explores what explains the number of subtopics by party and within cabinets, our dependent variable, through the implementation of a mixed negative binomial regression design, which is recommended when the distribution of count observations is highly skewed.3

Empirical test of the propositions on policy styles in parliamentary debate Table 19.2 presents the regression results using incidence rate ratios (IRR). The simplest way to understand an IRR is as a multiplicative term affecting the scope of questions. As such, any value greater than 1 indicates an increase in scope, while any value less than 1 indicates a decrease in scope. While for the attribution of parties to specific party families, we followed the Manifesto Research Group classification (Volkens et al. 2020), data about the remaining explanatory factors (cabinet duration, share of seats of the parliamentary group and whether it is part of the majority coalition) were extracted from the ParlGov Database (Döring and Manow 2018). Finally, the regression models include four control variables which might be related to the scope of questions: fixed effects by country (with Belgium as the omitted country), the total number of questions addressed by the group during the cabinet term (using hundreds of questions), the average unemployment rate during that cabinet, and the total number of ministerial portfolios in the cabinet (for the last two variables we relied on cabinet-aggregated data retrieved from the Comparative Political Data Set [Armingeon et al. 2019]). Our model behaves basically as we expected, judging from our control variables. Although the comparison of scale and scope in Figure  19.1 suggests that there is no 1:1 relationship between them, these are naturally connected. The more questions a party is allowed or able to ask, the broader the number of subtopics. This effect is statistically significant and with an 249

S. Bevan, E. Borghetto, and H. Seeberg Table 19.2  Mixed negative binomial mixed model  

DV = Number of subtopics addressed by a party during a cabinet term

Predictors

Incidence Rate Ratios

(Intercept) Duration of the cabinet (in months) Share of seats of the parliamentary group Cabinet party (1 = government) Green party (0 = remaining party families) Far-right party ((0 = remaining party families) Control variables Total number of questions addressed by the group (in hundreds) Average unemployment rate during the cabinet Total number of ministerial portfolios in the cabinet Denmark Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Variance N Observations AIC log-Likelihood

p

12.69 (0.31) 1.02 (0.00) 1.02 (0.00) 0.84 (0.07) 1.69 (0.18) 1.21 (0.17)