AccueilFirst International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP)

AccueilFirst International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP)

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Publié le mercredi 19 décembre 2012

Résumé

The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers from all over the world with an interest on public policy, to reinforce the exchanges between them and to participate to the update production of knowledge. During this conference, opportunities will be provided for both junior and senior researchers to present and discuss new research, theoretical, conceptual and methodological insights and empirical findings through a system of panels and workshops with audience participation and to discuss some common papers by a system of conference speakers and plenary discussions.

Annonce

Presentation

Public policy has become an established focus of scholarly attention over the last 50 years. Participants have come from a range of disciplines, including economics, political science, public administration, geography, sociology, and law among others and have been involved in a variety of inter and multi-disciplinary areas such as labour studies, women’s studies, environmental studies, governance studies and studies of public management. Some researchers have focused on theories and concepts such as discourse analysis or public choice theory; on frameworks of analysis such as network theory or advocacy coalitions; on the policy process (such as agenda-setting or decision-making); some on the development of professional modes of practice (‘policy analysis’, policy appraisal and evaluation and ‘policy work’), others on specific subject-areas such as health policy, education policy, energy policy, welfare policy; and others on policy dynamics and change (such as punctuated equilibrium theory, path dependency analysis and others). 

So there are a number of divergent ongoing conversations among scholars in the field and not many opportunities for them to meet together. Some existing conferences focus on professional practice but many others are subject centered or disciplinarily specific. There is a need for a meeting-space in which the full range of scholars with an interest in public policy can come together and learn from one another. 

As the Chairs of policy-relevant IPSA Research Committees we see a need for a global approach to these subjects and are proposing a joint international conference, to be held every two years, in the ‘off-year’ between IPSA Congresses. We see this conference as providing a forum for the increasing international community of researchers who work on public policy to present empirical findings, help develop and refine existing debates and scholarship, and to promote innovation and consistency in research programs, methods and concepts.

Although this conference has been created under auspices of the two IPSA research committees most directly focused on public policy (RC30 Comparative Public Policy and RC32 Public Policy and Administration) with the support of other policy-related IPSA RCs dealing with local government, gender policy, and health policy, and with related policy groups and organizations in Europe and North America, the goal is to enlarge the organizing and scientific committees to all networks on public policy from other disciplines and inter-disciplinary orientations in these areas and others around the globe.

By creating a biennial international conference, the goal of the project is not only to bring together researchers from all over the world on a regular basis but also to reinforce the exchanges between researchers already involved in IPSA and other cognate organizations, and thus to create a large network and space for research on public policy inside and across different disciplines, beginning with political science but extending from there to other groups of policy investigators and thinkers. 

During this conference, opportunities will be provided for both junior and senior researchers to present and discuss new research, theoretical, conceptual and methodological insights and empirical findings through a system of panels and workshops with audience participation and to discuss some common papers by a system of conference speakers and plenary discussions. This conference will also provide an opportunity to develop links between researchers and scientific journals and publishers interested in the policy sciences, as well as links between scholars and practitioners interested in advancing policy and policy-relevant knowledge.

Call for papers

POLITICS AND POLICY

Perspectives on public policies in the Arctic region

Chairs :
Cécile Pelaudeix, University of Grenoble, cecile.pelaudeix@sciencespo-lyon.fr
Arild Moe, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, arild.moe@fni.no

Discussant :
Thierry Rodon, University of Laval, thierry_rodon@carleton.ca

Developments in the Arctic have mostly been studied through defense studies, international relations, geopolitics, and to a lesser extent, economics. Public policies of Arctic states in the High North have attracted far less attention, with the exception of indigenous peoples rights. We refer here to the definition of the Arctic by the Arctic Human Development Report based largely on northern political units. Although the Arctic is not a homogenous region, physically, economically and politically, the Arctic states face comparable challenges of adapting to a warmer climate and development of remote areas. Many parts of the Arctic are characterized by a harsh environment with little infrastructure, long distances, and ethnically diverse populations. While some regions are affected by out-migration, others by in-migration, more transient workers are needed for mining and the hydrocarbon industries.

The purpose of this panel is to analyze and discuss :
1. To what extent the climate change and economic prospects in the Arctic have changed public policies
2. To what extent public policies are limiting or motivating economic development, through legislation, infrastructure development, direct or indirect subsidization, particularly in the mining and hydrocarbon sector and in transport (shipping)
3. The capacity to act by the elected representatives at the local level, and to analyze to what extent citizens and communities are engaged in the development of public policies
4. How conflicting interests between economic sectors are considered (e.g. tourism versus mining, petroleum activities versus fisheries and traditional subsistence)
5. How social cohesion between various categories of the population (indigenous/non indigenous, permanent/transient) appears as an issue in current public policies
6. If public policies are shaped by regional frameworks of cooperation and international agreements and norms
7. How Arctic policy making can be seen as an imaginary and symbolic construction.

Comparative approaches of public policies in the Arctic are particularly welcome. 

The materiality of de/politicization : new avenues for policy research

Chairs :
Ross Beveridge, Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS), Erkner/ Berlin, beveridge@irs-net.de.
Arno Simons, Department of Sociology, Technische Universität (TU), Berlin, arno.simons@tu-berlin.de.

Discussant :

In recent years, political scientists have shown increasing interest in de/politicization (e.g. Burnham, Hay). Viewed variously as an outcome of neo-liberalism, new public management/ managerialism, scientization of policy or the new post-democratic/ post-political settlement, depoliticization relates to attempts at reducing the formally political character of decision-making (e.g. through framing) or shifting it to another arena beyond the formal political system (e.g. through delegation of tasks) (Flinders and Buller). As such it is seen as a feature of new forms of governance, one viewed overwhelmingly in negative terms. Politicization is associated with contestation, making things contingent, the object of political agency (Gamble). Until now de/politicization scholars have focused mainly on core political science, public policy or political economy issues such as state economic policy and discussions have generally focused on discursive and institutional processes. This panel seeks to build on and move beyond these foundations through inviting post-structuralist scholars to consider the materiality of de/politicization. Materiality has also become more of a concern to policy scholars in recent years, as the influence of science and technology studies (STS) and governmentality literatures have grown. However, thus far these two areas remain largely unconnected. Thus this panel asks how issues, goals, instruments or even actors are shifted from the realm of fate and necessity (the non-political) to that of deliberation and contingency (the political) by means of socio-material configuration ? What are the material outcomes of de/politicization ? Also, how are various materialities – such as technological artifacts, infrastructures, documents, databases or computer models – involved in processes of politicization ? The overall aim is to begin developing a new agenda and analytical vocabulary for studying de/politicization. Contributions from across the social sciences are invited, and a diversity of approaches is encouraged.

Policy Narratives and Public Policy

Chairs :
Michael D. Jones, Virginia Tech, jonemic1@vt.edu
Elizabeth Shanahan, Montana State, shanahan@montana.edu

Discussant :
Tanya Heikkila, University of Colorado, Denver, TANYA.HEIKKILA@ucdenver.edu

Narrative-based methodologies have a long and rich history in the study of public policy. These methodologies embrace an assortment of epistemologies ranging from interpretative methods such as Emory Roe’s Narrative Policy Analysis to the more empirically oriented Narrative Policy Framework. This range of methodologies has been deployed to explain a near innumerable array of substantive public policies across a growing body of inter and transnational areas of interest. Such diversity—in both approach and substance—has produced many conceptions of policy narratives that invoke diverse theoretical and philosophical traditions and varied operational protocols. While many of these approaches to the study of policy narratives converge, there are also critically important areas of divergence. In the interest of illuminating these points of convergence and divergence, the Policy Narratives and Public Policy panel invites interested scholars to submit papers that take seriously the role of policy narratives in shaping public policy design, processes, and outputs. All methodologies and approaches are welcome as well as are all substantive policy foci.

Radical right parties’ impact on a state’s decisions in the sphere of public policy

Chair :
Eremina Natalia, Saint-Petersburg State University, nerem78@mail.ru

The Panel aims to identify the radical right parties’ influence on the state’s decisions. It is of special importance to investigate how parties called radical and anti-government ones are becoming an integrate part of the political establishment and how their rhetoric penetrates into the process of making decisions. The research can explain the radical right parties’ potency to influence the political process and political system in different states.
We are soliciting scholars who are interested in discussions to further our understanding of governance in the context of political radicalization processes.
The papers should be linked to at least one of the four problem areas :

  •  the European radical right parties’ ideology ;
  •  the comparison of the general and radical right parties’ ideological statements ;
  •  the radical right parties’ ideas in the government politics ;
  •  the comparative analysis of the Russian case.

GOVERNANCE AND POLICY PROCESS

New governance and changing policy debates

Chairs :
Benoit Daviron, CIRAD, MOISA, Montpellier, benoit.daviron@cirad.fr
Eve Fouilleux, Cepel Montpellier, eve.fouilleux@cirad.fr
Bruno Jobert, IEP de Grenoble, Bruno.Jobert@upmf-grenoble.fr
Maria Ines Picazo, University of Concepción, Chili, mpicazo@udec.cl

During the eighties and nineties, the shock therapies applied by neoconservative governments left few openings for policy debates. At the end of the century, a seemingly new policy regime has emerged under the flagship of the governance or “new governance”, with a strong overtone of participatory and inclusive rhetoric. The aim of this panel is to delineate the configuration of the policy debates at stake in this new policy regime.

We postulate that the core of this new regime remains based on the principle of superiority of the market on public intervention and that the rise of participatory and inclusive instruments can be analyzed as a tentative answer to new legitimation problems. Simultaneously however, growing privatizations and the multiplication of non majoritarian institutions, particularly in the finance sector, restrict the scope for open policy debates to take place.

These contradictory trends –the promotion of participation joined to a form of antipolitical management- combine into a new regime of policy debates that we propose to analyze in this panel. At odds with consensus driven approaches and deliberative theories, we wish to promote here an agonistic approach of such a new regime. As a matter of fact, the new governance regime can be seen as resulting from the interaction between the ‘old’ neoliberal policy frame on the one hand, and political actors, organized interests and social movements on the other hand, who do not necessarily share neoliberal values and beliefs. Innovations in the regime of policy debates, new forums, new instruments and professions, new argumentation rules can be seen as resulting from these tensions and conflicts.

We suggest four possible directions to study the contemporary evolutions of policy debate institutions under the new governance regime :

  •  The narrative power of international institutions (notably based on ranking and best practices) and their impact on policy debates ;
  •  The growing role of multinational firms on policy debates (limits imposed by confidentiality and property rights) Corporate Social Responsability and the promotion of multi-stakeholder forums, …) ;
  •  Forms and impacts of the privatization of experts knowledge (foundation and think tanks, new professions and expertise in debates framing and decision processes, …) ;
  •  Social movements and new governance : between capture, cooptation and constitution of alternative policy debates settings.

Policy Regimes and Governing

Panel Chairs
Peter J. May, University of Washington, USA, pmay@u.washington.edu
Jeffrey S. Worsham, West Virginia University, USA, jworsham@wvu.edu

Discussant :
R. Kent Weaver, Georgetown University, USA

The role of policies in governing has long been recognized as important for the study of public policy. Consideration of this was central to Lasswell’s vision of the policy sciences in improving democratic governance and among early writings in the field about the policy-politics connection. However, attention to these issues has waned. Papers are sought for this panel that renew consideration of how public policies reshape politics and with what effect. In reviving this focus, this panel considers the forces that come to define governing arrangements, the feedback processes that affect their political impacts, and the resultant implications for stability and change.

Papers should fit into one of two related sessions :

  • Policy Regimes and Governing – Papers for this session should consider the relevance of policy regimes as foci for depicting and analyzing governing arrangements. This may include papers that advance the conceptualization of policy regimes, provide empirical analyses of the value of thinking about policy regimes as a foci for policy scholarship, analyze ways of measuring the strength of regimes, or advance theorizing about the origin and contours of policy regimes.
  • Policy Regime Stability and Change – Papers for this session should consider the factors that affect policy regime stability and change. This may include papers that advance theorizing about these, consider the feedback effects of policy regimes, provide empirical examinations of regime stability and change, or provide comparative cases of regime change in different settings.

Papers for both sessions are sought that advance the understanding of policies as governing instruments and of the interplay of policy and politics in governing. Paper proposals should identify the session to which they are targeted and how they respond to the call for papers.

Institutional analysis and public policy : towards a new research agenda

Chairs :
Bruno Dente, Politecnico di Milano, bruno.dente@polimi.it
Bruno Palier, Sciences-Po Paris, bruno.palier@sciences-po.fr
Claudio Radaelli, University of Exeter, C.Radaelli@exeter.ac.uk

In its different variants, the neo-institutionalist approach is the main explanatory framework for comparative public policy analysis. It is now common to use institutional variables as independent variables to explain policy variation across countries, between different policy areas or over time. Whilst in an early stage of neo-institutionalism the major emphasis was on institutional emergence, recently there has been progress in accounting also for institutional change and evolution over time. Some scholars have also combined institutional analysis with experimental work, getting into the micro-behavioral foundations of neo-institutionalism.
However, neo-institutional practice has also generated some serious, recurrent pitfalls of analysis. The panel convenor has explored the “pitfalls problem” in a recent paper that has raised scholarly attention and debate (Radaelli/Dente/Dossi : Recasting Institutionalism – Institutional analysis and public policy, forthcoming in European Political Science).
With this panel, we want to provide a broader assessment of how neo-institutional theory is applied, contrasting pitfalls with good practice of how institutions ‘work’ (e.g., outside the policy system, within the policy process, via supporting mechanisms) in the explanation of public policy.
We are therefore interested both in empirical papers, if the research design is specifically aimed at establishing strong causal links between institutional settings and policy outcomes, and theoretical or methodological papers, stressing the implications of specific institutionalist approaches for case selection, model specification, and so on. We also welcome papers, possibly inspired by analytical sociology, that connect institutions and actors via mechanisms, trying to move beyond the ad-hoc approach to mechanism selection that is dominant in the field. Submissions by senior scholars and young researchers will be equally welcomed.

Policymaking in Latin America

Chairs
Guillaume Fontaine, The Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences, Ecuador, gfontaine@flacso.org.ec
André-Noël Roth, National University of Colombia (UNC), Colombia,

Discussants
Juan Antonio Zornoza, UNC
Betty Espinosa, FLACSO

In order to answer the questions “is there a latin american way of policymaking ?” and “what makes it so peculiar that does not exist elsewhere ?”, the panel “Policymaking in Latin America” is looking for communications which confront theoretical arguments with empirical case studies. The panel is open to any contribution regarding the policy process in latin american countries within any theoretical framework. No matter if the discussed papers adopt a constructivist, institutionalist or positivist perspective, neither if they analyze instruments, actors, decision-making process or even historical trends, nor if they focus on formulation, implementation or impact evaluation. What is important is that they explain how their theoretical perspective helps the authors understand a particular empirical process, expected to address a specific problem.

Papers analyzing the incidence of political change on the policy process are particularly welcome. What is at stake here is to determine if the State´s coming back at the center of the democratic governance basically relies on the ideological orientation of so-called left-wing governments or if this trend is also followed by supposed right-wing majorities. We also look forward to discussing the importance of institutional aspects of the policy process in this trend, such as the stability of the state apparatus, the proficiency of administration and civil servants, the economical dependency on natural resources and the countries´ insertion in global networks and communities.

Abstracts should include a concise description of the theoretical perspective and the methodology used for the research. The authors should also present the main problems of their research, their working hypothesis and main discoveries. Particular attention should be paid to the national dimensions of the problem the policy is or has been dealing with, and the comparison it allows with similar policies in other countries from or outside Latin America.

Changing concept of ’state’ and ’stateness’ in the current paradigm of Global Governance : continuing debate"

Chair
Nina Belyaeva, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, nina.belyaeva@gmail.com

In the current paradigm of growing Global Integration and emerging of the new Actors of Global Public Policy,- from Church to Global Media, from Private Armies to broad global citizens movements - the role of the State as a global actor and the whole concept of ’nation state’ amd ’stateness’ is been challenged. Those challengers come from two different sides - from ’outside’ the state, representing global trends, forces and flows, and from ’within the state’, where more diversity of political and governing forces are emerging, that the ’traditional state’ has to cope with.

This Panel is based on the collective accomplishment of the participants of the similar panel, held during the last IPSA Congress in Madrid and presenting the ’work-in-progress of the previous paper-givers, as well as the opportunity for the new ideas and new authors to join the existing collective - in order to bring this academic debate into a publishable volume.

New Directions in Understanding the Governance of Complex Systems

Chairs
Derek Kauneckis, University of Nevada, USA, kauneck@unr.edu
Rolf Künneke, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, R.W.Kunneke@tudelft.nl
Claudia Binder, Claudia.Binder@geographie.uni-muenchen.de

One of the most significant challenges in policy studies is in understanding the formation of increasingly complex public good production systems and how they maintain and change function over time. This panel seeks papers on new methods and models for understanding the management of complex common pool resource systems. While much of this work continues to draw on the common pool resource management literature it also demands new approaches to understanding increasing complex systems and the co-evolution of management arrangements. The study of complex systems face similar methodological and theoretical challenges, such as how to examine the multi-scale nature of institutional arrangements, understanding the impacted of different nested structures of decision-making, adequately accounting for the variety of incentives and behavior of diverse social agents, determining the configuration of networked interactions, and dealing with the influence of endogenous and exogenous change on systemic-level properties. Papers are welcome from a broad range of approaches such as network analysis, techno-socio-ecological systems, common pool resource analysis, socio-ecological systems, and coupled natural-human systems. Research on substantive topics such as large-scale water management, information commons, regional energy grids, transportation networks, and international atmospheric and biological commons is particularly encouraged. Papers focused on either sub-system or system-level analyses are welcome. The panel hopes to attract an international group of scholars working on similar issues of governing complex systems from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

POLICY DESIGN

Policy Design : Principles and Processes

Chair :
Michael Howlett, Simon Fraser University, Canada, howlett@sfu.ca

Abstract

Policy design extends to both the means or mechanisms through which policy goals are given effect, and to the goals themselves, since goal articulation inevitably involves considerations of feasibility, or what is practical or possible to achieve in given conjunctures or circumstances given the means at hand. That is, public policies are the result of efforts made by governments to alter aspects of their own or social behaviour in order to carry out some end or purpose and are comprised of complex arrangements of policy goals and policy means. These efforts can be more or less systematic and the ends and purposes attempted to be attained are multifarious and wide- ranging. Should all of these efforts be thought of as embodying a conscious ‘design’ ? In most cases the answer is ‘yes’. Even when the goals pursued are not laudable, such as personal enrichment or military adventurism, or when the knowledge or the means utilized is less than scientific, such as religious or ideologically inspired dogma or implementation preferences, and even when these efforts are much more ad hoc and much less systematic than might be desired, as long as a desire for effective resource use in goal attainment guides policy-making, it will involve some effort at design. However, this does not mean that all designs are equal or generate equal results and systematic study of policy designs and design processes are required for the field to advance.

As an area of study Policy Design engendered a large literature in the 1980s and 1990s with prominent figures in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia such as Lester Salamon, Patricia Ingraham, Malcolm Goggin, John Dryzek, Hans Bressers, Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider, G.B. Doern, Stephen Linder and B. Guy Peters, Renate Mayntz, Christopher Hood, Eugene Bardach, Evert Vedung, Peter May, Frans van Nispen and Michael Trebilock writing extensively on policy formulation, policy instrument choice and the idea of designing policy institutions and outcomes. After the early 1990s, however, this literature tailed off and although some writings on policy design have continued to flourish in specific fields such as economics, energy and environmental studies, in the fields of public administration and public policy more generally the idea of ‘design’ was often replaced by the study of institutional forms and decentralized governance arrangements.

The set of panels proposed herein is aimed at revisiting the older literature and re-establishing design as a serious area of concern in the policy sciences. The Panel is composed of three topics :

  • (1) Policy Design : What is it ? - which explores the definitions, metaphors and concepts used in the study of policy design as both a subject (noun) and a process (verb) ;
  • (2) Policy Design : Who Does It ? - which explores the process of policy formulation and how design considerations enter into it ; and
  • (3) Policy Design : Where Is It Going ? - which provides an opportunity for discussions about contemporary trends and directions in policy design(s) and design research.

References

Linder, S. H., and B. G. Peters. “The Analysis of Design or the Design of Analysis ?” Policy Studies Review 7, no. 4 (1988) : 738–750.

Beyond policy outcomes : analyzing the effects of policies and policy designs on social and political behaviour

Chairs :
César Cruz-Rubio, GIGAPP, cesar.cruz.rubio@gigapp.org
Roberto Castellanos-Cereceda, rcastellanos@comunidad.unam.mx

Discussants :
Paul Teske, University of Colorado
Prof. Alex Caldera, México, University of Guanajuato

Significant effort has been placed on studying policy processes, its phases and outcomes, including, among other, aspects such as analysing the variety of actors and their relationships shaping policies ; the political economy of designing and implementing policies and analysing the outputs, outcomes and impacts of policies. Besides these lines of research and analysis, it is also of analytical relevance to look at the social and political effects of public policies. Policies have substantial influence and specific effects on the life of vast sectors of the society, not only those for which the policies have been designed to benefit, influence or affect, but also on other social groups not initially or mainly considered as recipients of policy actions and decisions. Public policies effects could include the following : modifying the role of actors, changing the structure of relationships among them and the terms of public debates (including who may take part or not in those debates) ; modifying the resources available to specific actors or groups of actors, and changing the preferences of groups and actors.

The Panel proposed will attempt to analyse some of the social and political effects of public policies, with specific focus, among others, on the following : the effects of policy designs on strategic behaviour of political actors and coalitions facing policy change ; the policy effects in terms of social trust and the mechanisms through which these occur, the institutional effects of drinking water policies and the different ways in which policy could have social effects on the wellbeing of the society and the preferences of social actors.

Morality Policy – Theoretical Advancements and Empirical Evidence

Chair
Christoph Knill, University of Konstanz, christoph.knill@uni-konstanz.de

The recent years have witnessed a remarkable increase in scholarship on so-called morality policies – areas of societal regulation which are particularly prone to conflicts of basic values. While those studies have produced a range of intriguing new insights, the research program is still under construction, both conceptually and empirically. Can morality policies be identified a-priori or does our categorization vary between countries and across time ? How do framing effects interfere with our assessment ? To what extent do religious beliefs structure the political conflict and what are the ramifications for the political process ? How can we explain policy change and stability ?
Around the globe, such questions have increasingly found the attention of political scientists during the past years and the empirical evidence is growing. Scholars have studied issues as diverse as abortion, gambling, same-sex marriage, pornography, prostitution, euthanasia, capital punishment and drug consumption as morality policies both in the form of single case studies and in a comparative fashion. The question remains, however, what the defining cornerstones of an integrated theory of morality politics should be and to which extent such a theory is elusive or attainable.
The proposed panel brings together contributions which speak to the questions outlined above. It explicitly invites diverse research designs, which approach the study of morality politics from different theoretical and methodological angles. Based on the accepted contributions, the panel will take stock of the current state of the research field and identify promising avenues for its further development.

The relevancy of a supra-regional focus in public policy : the case of Central and Eastern Europe

Chairs :
Julien ARNOULT, University of Paris II, icpp.panel.ceec@gmail.com
Elena MORENKOVA, University of Paris II,

Discussant
Dr Noemi Lendvai, University of Bristol

The Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) represent a common case study in political science, especially in the field of politics and regime transition. Nevertheless, there has been a gap in the research focused on supra-regional scale, which would examine this group of countries as a single zone. One of the reasons testifying a need for such a research is an abundance of public operations in the area.
Even though there has been plenty of research on public policy in relation to the European Union (EU) at EU, national, sub-regional and local scale, there has been a lack of research on post-communists countries, which are a particular research case, either they are inside or outside the EU.
All CEEC are post-communist countries, with similar political, economic, social systems and legacies. Since 1990, the European Communities established programs for the whole region, which has been aiming at reaching a goal to reach the Western European standards and institutions. They set up bodies devoted to their development, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the field of economics. However, some new EU members remain closer to non-EU post-communists countries than to EU founding-members, and vice-versa. In this regard, studying public policy on CEEC from the viewpoint of the EU is relevant, even though opportunities for such research are limited.
Thus, the question arises of how draft a public policy on supra-regional scale. Is a public policy devoted to so-presumed homogenous countries applicable and efficient ? Can such a public policy enable a regional convergence ? How to define a common sense ? Can we pose the same problem, the same agenda-setting, and apply the same instruments for a variety of cases, and solve the problem with it ? Is there a prevailing public policy model ?
Papers may contribute to highlight how to install a supra-regional policy in a zone, which is considered as homogenous, in a various field of cases :

  •  State reform ;
  •  Setting a supra-regional public policy within the scope of the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy and the Stabilisation and Association Process ;
  •  EU’s initiative, such as but not limited to the Eastern Partnership or INOGATE ;
  •  EU related institutions, such as but not limited to Euronest ;
  •  Financial-institutions-made public policies, such as but not limited to the EBRD, EIB, CEDB ;
  •  Democratization process as a public policy : OSCE, Council of Europe and its parent bodies ;
  •  Energy policy such as but not limited to the Energy community.

POLICY EVALUATION

How Policy Evaluation Praxis Interacts With Its Political System Context

Chairs
Prof. Dr. Fritz Sager, Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern, fritz, sager@kpm.unibe.ch
Dr. Kathrin Frey, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Universität Zürich, kfrey@ipz.uzh.ch

Research on evaluation utilization and evidence based policy has shown that evidence is not incorporated into the policy making process in a simple, one-to-one manner. Rather, it depends on characteristics of the subject matter, of the political system, of the involved actors, and of the evidence itself, whether and how it possibly exerts an impact on policy making. This panel addresses the questions of how policy evaluation praxis is influenced by its political system context, and how policy evaluation in turn influences the political system it takes place within. This topic is of theoretical significance for political science and public administration theory as so far, research on the relationship between specific attributes of political systems and the practice and institutionalization of policy evaluation is missing. It also is of practical relevance as not only in developed democracies, considerable resources are invested in evaluations each year, and need can be stated as to the question of how to best make use of this investment and how to avoid negative consequences. To comprehensively link attributes of policy evaluation with policy, polity, and politics therefore is considered an innovative and fruitful research track.

Papers are invited to address one or more of the following aspects :

  • The role of political institutions such as constitution, federalism, democracy, or government system for policy evaluation practice and usage
  • The role of policy sector attributes for policy evaluation practice and usage
  • The role of public administrative cultures for policy evaluation practice and usage
  • The role of system specific politics for policy evaluation practice and usage

Both conceptual and empirical papers are welcome.

Experimenting with Public Policy : Issues of Design and Effectiveness.

Chairs
Belinda McFadgen, VU University, Amsterdam, b.k.mcfadgen@vu.nl
Michael Sander, University of Bristol, michael.sanders@bristol.ac.uk
Edward Challies, Leuphana, University of Luneberg, Germany, challies@leuphana.de

Discussant
Professor Peter John, University College London

In recent years, a number of academic disciplines have encouraged the use of policy experiments in policy decision making. A policy experiment is generally defined here as an intervention to test the effects of a policy in a real-world setting. It is expected that experimentation can test policy ideas against experience (allowing policy makers to identify failures and correct them), support knowledge acquisition and learning, help to decrease uncertainty and cope with system complexity, and create protected space for innovations to emerge.
However, important questions have been raised about this approach as it has been advanced in both theory and practice. The recent adoption of wholesale experimentation by governments, for example by the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team, the government of New South Wales, and others (Haynes et al, 2012) has attracted a great deal of attention. In particular, the ethical implications of conducting experiments and the practical issues of their implementation raise important challenges around the maintenance of internal and external validity and the often competing demands of scientists and political decision-makers.
This panel will bring together academics from a number of fields and policy areas to discuss both current and ongoing policy experiments, questions of experimental methodology and practice, and issues around maximising the usefulness of such experiments for both policy professionals and decision makers while maintaining scientific credibility. We welcome papers for submission that report the results of one of more policy experiments and either offer new findings on the practical or statistical methodologies surrounding policy experiments, or offer insights into impact and dissemination of findings to decision makers.

The context and use of ex ante evaluation within governments

Chairs
prof. dr. Marleen Brans, University of Leuven, Belgium, marleen.brans@soc.kuleuven.be
dr. John Turnpenny, University of East Anglia, UK, j.turnpenny@uea.ac.uk

Discussant
Ellen Fobé, University of Leuven, Belgium

The panel is aimed at enhancing the development of empirical and conceptual understandings of ex ante evaluation, as a mechanism to support policy making and to strengthen policy analytical capacity within governments. Papers for the panel are therefore welcome to develop and share comparative research experiences on ex ante evaluation across various settings, across different policy issues, or across regional or national boundaries.
Aiming to complement the existing literature on ex ante evaluation, the panel invites paper contributions :

  •  analysing and comparing the use of different types of ex ante evaluation within or across various policy domains or countries
  •  better understanding the relationship between ex ante evaluation and the context and politics of policy making
  •  analysing the values and interests at play in the practice of ex ante evaluation
  •  critically reflecting on why, where, when and by whom different policy analytical tools and techniques are employed
  •  exploring and critically assessing techniques which might be employed to enhance the practice of ex ante evaluation, such as knowledge brokerage exercises between researchers and officials

Do performance indicators matter ? Investigating their impact on policy-making

Chairs
Catherine Fallon, University of Liège, catherine.fallon@ulg.ac.be
Nathalie Schiffino, Catholic University of Louvain, nathalie.schiffino@uclouvain.be

Discussant
Joël Ficet, Free University of Brussels

We postulate that the reform in public management and the generalisation of scoreboards and indicators impact upon the dynamics of every stage of policy making. The aim of this panel is to highlight the transformative potential of the policy use of indicators, in other words : to focus on statistics in action, while acknowledging the social construction of numbers and indicators, considered as policy instruments (Lascoumes 2007, Lascoumes and Gales 2005).

Scientific literature assumes that a double impoverishment is occurring with the use of performance indicators (Salais 2010). On the one hand, quantifying a socio-political problem reduces social complexity to figures (social reductionism). On the other hand, policy agents seem to be more focused on performance target achievement than on socio-political objectives, which would mainly be highlighted by a shift of focus from “outcomes” to “outputs” (normative reductionism).

Therefore, we need to know more about this phenomenon. How do indicators contribute to public management ? What are their advantages and disadvantages, notably regarding the influence of public management on policy-making ? In a wider way, do they frame political debate and, if so, how ? When indicators are used in policy evaluation, do they operate a distortion of quantification on what is measurable (usually outputs) and a reduction of measurement to operational objectives ? Could this distortion/reduction be related to a risk of losing the end/general objectives of policy and to a depletion of political debate ?

We are willing to call for papers that address a.o. the following issues :

  •  Comparative analyses that support (or not ?) the generalization of this trend towards performance and the implication of this double reductionism in different countries or regions.
  •  Empirical analyses about different policy sectors that show the use of such performance indicators by different actors (policy makers, managers, civil servants, stakeholders).
  •  Empirical analyses showing evidence of trends against this reductionism process through participatory evaluation
  •  Methodological approaches which help to overcome the barriers between public management and policy analysis, especially regarding the evaluation issue and/or more specifically the use of performance indicators.
  •  Theoretical and/or empirical analyses providing evidence, framework, and hypotheses related to link the use of performance indicators and policy change, at different stages of policy.

POLICY ADVICE AND EXPERTISE

Science and policymaking : theorizing when and how scientific or expert authority matters in policy making

Chairs
Linda A. White, University of Toronto, lwhite@chass.utoronto.ca
Grace Skogstad, University of Toronto, Skogstad@chass.utoronto.ca

Discussant
Michael Howlett, Simon Fraser University, Canada

The goal of this panel is to reflect on how and when scientific evidence influences policy across countries and cases. The obvious interest-based response is "when governments believe that adopting the advice of experts is vote-getting". In some cases, though, policy makers have pursued evidence-based policy making and relied on the advice of scientists even when it is strategically irrational in the short or long term. This panel brings together scholars engaged in theoretical and empirical research on when and how a knowledge regime, as compared to a critical/oppositional community, matters to policy making, when neither knowledge or critical oppositional regimes matter, and what accounts for variation in their impact over time, and across policy venues, policy areas, and policy actors.

Individuals interested in participating in this panel are asked to contact Professor Linda White directly, with a title of their paper and a brief abstract.

Comparing policy advisory systems

Chairs
Prof. Dr. Sylvia Veit, University of Bamberg, Germany, sylvia.veit@uni-bamberg.de
Thurid Hustedt, University of Potsdam, Germany, Thurid.Hustedt@uni-potsdam.de

Discussant
Prof. Dr. Rob Hoppe, University of Twente, Netherlands

It is by now almost a truism in political science and public administration that policy-making depends upon knowledge and expertise. By transferring ’objective’ knowledge, i.e. scientific evidence, to policy-making, both rationalization and legitimacy of policies supposedly increase. Hence, policy advisory systems – understood as the organizational configuration of policy advisory actors in a jurisdiction or a policy field – do play a key role in the policymaking process. Over the last decades, policy advisory systems in many Western democracies diversified due to e.g. a growing importance of formal policy evaluations or technological developments. Today, policy advice is not only provided by the ministerial bureaucracy (as Max Weber indicated), but by actors so different as e.g. governmental research agencies, permanent scientific advisory bodies, ad hoc commissions, think tanks or consulting firms.
Whereas there is wide range of research on problems at the ’science-policy interface’ as well as on different kinds of advisory institutions (e.g. single ministerial advisors or research agencies), there is a lack of theory-driven, comparative research on the organizational characteristics of policy advisory systems and its effects. Empirical studies indicate considerable variations of policy advisory systems across and within countries across policy domains. This research gap is puzzling because in an institutional theory perspective the organizational set-up of policy actors causally structures policy making. Thus, the organization of policy advisory systems is assumed to affect policy-making.
The panel addresses this research gap and focuses on the premises and implications of policy advisory systems for policy-making. We invite both theoretical and empirical papers on the organization of policy advice, its causes and consequences. The panel particularly welcomes theory-based empirical analyses from an organization or institutional theory perspective. We encourage cross-country and within-country comparisons across policy fields.

Expertise and involvement in the work of policy

Chair
Hal Colebatch, University of New South Wales, Australia, hal@colebatch.com

The analysis of policy as a field of practice has led to a recognition of ‘policy work’ as the sustained activity which creates policy and makes it significant. Graduate programs have emerged to train
‘policy analysts’ as the experts in this field, but they have to contend with the institutionalised expertise of other professional groups, the ‘process expertise’ pf administrators, as well as with the non-professional expertise of political leaders. And they have to contend with the increasingly-expert claims of oursiders, as members of the public demand the right to participate in policy development, with the knowledge that they bring (‘ordinary knowledge’, such as ‘lay epidemiology’) being recognised as valid.

The tension between these ‘values of practice’ and the people and procedures in which they are embodied is dealt with in various ways. One is to establish stages : first the expert draft, then the public response. Another is for practitioners to try to come to terms with the rival value and to incorporate it in their own practice : experts building ‘public response’ into their technical criteria, or public advocates taking courses in conflict resolution. Yet another is for ‘public consultation’ to become an area of specialised practice in its own right, with the emergence of skilled practitioners who can manage the proceedings of ‘public participation’.

These intersections of values and practices are accompanied by tension, uncertainty and ambiguity, but they are seen as necessary for the validation of the governing that emerges. This panel will explore the ways in which policy practitioners (insiders and outsiders) encounter this tension, how they respond to it, and with what outcomes, and how our conceptual understanding of policy work can be enriched by the examination of these empirical cases.

Papers are invited which address any aspect of this topic.

The Use of Experts and Expertise in Public Policy Making

Chair
Julia Metz, Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB), julia.metz@wzb.eu

Discussant
Åse Gornitzka, University of Oslo

Public policy makers have always relied on external experts and expertise. A normative consensus used to exist implying that the use of scientific knowledge in policy making brings positive results as it advances informed policy making. In the 1970s this perspective was brought into question by Carol H. Weiss and others, who began to analyse policy makers’ various motivations to use external knowledge and developed analytical typologies of knowledge utilization.

Today, 40 years later, the ‘speaking truth to power’ perspective is once more challenged by an increased politicization of the use of external expertise in the policy process. A politicization of policy advice has shifted the focus to the legitimacy of policy makers’ use of external experts and expertise in the policy process and to the type of experts providing advice. This has also revitalized social scientists’ interest in the link between expertise and politics. While Weiss’ and others’ typologies are still widely applied, we may ask in how far these knowledge utilization concepts are still useful today.

This panel welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions that address one of the following questions and is open to a diverse range of research approaches :

  •   How can we identify and measure the use of experts and expertise by public policy makers ?
  •   Who are the experts ? What explains choice of expert types ?
  •   In how far do institutional and contextual conditions impact on policy makers’ use of experts and expertise ?
  •   Which differences exist over time, between policy areas, or across jurisdictions and levels of government ?
  •   Which theoretical advances have been made that help us understand and explain the use of experts and expertise by policy makers ?
  •   What do current observations imply for the democratic legitimacy of the policy process and the problem-solving capacity of policy outputs ?

Science in public policies

Chairs
Pauline Riousset, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, pauline.riousset@fu-berlin.de
Eva Kunseler, The Netherlands. Oranjebuitensingel 6, NL, eva.kunseler@pbl.nl

The role of knowledge in policy-making has become both a critical and a controversial issue. Member States’ governments, as well as the European Commission call for “evidence-based policies”. Nevertheless, the actual influence and use of science for the design of policies is far from being fully understood. Evidence is more and more at the core of policies. At the same time, the role of evidence can be questioned in politicized hotly debated settings, when political decisions are already made or when evidence is strategically used (Weiss, 1979). Thereby, for this panel, we call for abstracts on the following aspects.

Firstly, we focus on the role of evidence in policy making. We welcome papers that tackle the mechanisms by which evidence informs (or not) policy making on hotly debated issues. Mechanisms relate for example to the influence of the policy context on the use of knowledge or the conditions under which knowledge promote “policy change” (Sabatier, 1998). We also welcome papers on the channels by which evidence shapes policy : scientific assessments from expert organizations, in-house gathering of evidence or use of knowledge appraisal tools.

Even though policy contexts profile the use of evidence, there is still room for scientific experts or policy advisors to develop strategies to influence the uptake of evidence. To be relevant to policy making, knowledge needs to be credible, legitimate and salient (Cash et al, 2002). We welcome papers that discuss the criteria for policy relevant research.

Finally, access to data and research papers is usually not sufficient for research to penetrate policy arenas. Knowledge brokers and transition arenas between science and policy are important mediators between research and policy. How do “boundary organizations” (Jasanoff, 1987 ; Guston, 2001) create salient, legitimate and credible knowledge ? What role do knowledge brokers play in the design of policies ?
In order to foster cross-fertilization among disciplines, sectors, countries and perspectives and to encourage a fruitful exchange on analytical frameworks and theories, the panel welcomes scholars from all disciplines and sectors to submit a paper.

Policy-related Expertise and Political Parties

Chairs :
Vilém Novotný, Charles University in Prague, vnovotny@fsv.cuni.cz
Martin Polášek, Charles University in Prague, martin.polasek@ff.cuni.cz

Discussant :
Michel Perottino, CEFRES, Prague

Political parties are facing great challenges stemming from major structural reforms of the current welfare state, in which political parties play an essential role, and deep changes in contemporary societies. These reforms and societal changes, however, create significant stress on the generation of appropriate policy-related expertise within the political parties (proposals of solutions to pressing problems). Political parties have developed, in responding to this pressure, mechanisms and organizational arrangements to produce the necessary policy-related expertise.
The general aim of this panel is to explore what policy capacities, policy analytical capacities, and policy advice systems have political parties to fulfil successfully their key role in the political system, and eventually where the limits of their action are laying. It means that there is emphasised rather expertization of politics than politization of policy advice, and linking of policy work (policy analysis) and party organization theories.
The papers are supposed to address following questions :
How do political parties respond to contemporary pressure on formulating appropriate solutions to policy problems ?
How do they formulate their policy options ?
How do they cooperate with policy experts outside political parties ?
What are their organisational and personal capacities to cope with this challenge ?
What is their policy analytical capacity ?
How is structured their policy advice system and how it is working ?
How do institutional arrangements influence the capacity of political parties to affect policy-making process ? Who are the people involved ? What are they actually doing ? Etc.
Generally, the panel asks how political parties cope with these challenges or what their policy capacity, policy analytical capacity, and policy advice system are to generate needed policy-related expertise.

Political Advisers, Public Policy and Core Executive Studies

Chairs
Richard Shaw, Massey University, New Zealand, R.H.Shaw@massey.ac.nz
Chris Eichbaum, Victoria University, New Zealand, chris.eichbaum@vuw.ac.nz

In recent times political advisers – variously described as Special Advisers (SpAds), Ministerial Advisers or Exempt Staff – have attracted increasing academic attention. The focus to date has predominately been on empirical matters. Two issues have attracted particular attention : the impact of partisan staff on relations between government ministers and senior civil (or public) service officials, and the nature and extent of the accountability arrangements applying to political staff.
Much of the research thus far has been descriptive, and tends to reinforce the assumption that while political advisers are a significant new addition to the landscape of executive government, their advent has not fundamentally altered the institutional parameters of the policy process.

There is a strong case, then, for an explicitly theoretical turn in the study of political advisers. There are indications of the emergence of a more conceptual approach to the issues at hand (one recent publication, for instance, locates advisers’ activities in the established literature on policy transfer), but beyond that theoretical accounts remain thin on the ground. In particular, there is much potential for expanding the field by examining political advisers through the theoretical lens offered by core executive studies.

This panel calls for papers that shift the frontiers of research past present limits. Specifically, papers are sought which : (1) theorise the contribution political advisers make to the policy process ; (2) extend comparative understandings of the impact of political advisers on institutional arrangements within the core executive and/or the policy process ; or (3) theorise the work political advisers do (e.g. as a form of political socialisation for a career in parliamentary and executive politics).

POLICY FORMULATION AND DECISION

Public Policies in Latin America and the Cognitive Approach : Paradigms, Actors and Coalitions

Chair :
Melina Rocha Lukic, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil,melina.rocha@fgv.br
Carla Tomazini, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle/ Universidade de Campinas, carlatomazini@gmail.com

This panel addresses researches about Latin America made through the "Cognitive Approach of Public Policy". This theoretical framework is based on analysis of public policy that relies on a cognitive and normative perspective, especially through the concepts of paradigm, frame of reference and advocacy coalition. In this sense, what were the paradigms followed by the Latin American public policies lately ? How paradigms have responded to economic and political changes occurred in the region ? How have they changed over time ? The panel also intends to discuss about the actors and coalitions on Latin America public policies. If the state used to be the main protagonist of public action, a number of other actors, coalitions and institutions have emerged in the last years to substitute state in a large number of areas. Who are they and who do they represent ? How do they influence the agenda setting of Latin America public policy ? What are their strategies and their roles in the formulation and implementation of public policies ? We encourage proposals that combine conceptual discussion and empirical analysis. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to : social policy (social security, health care, social care, child protection, education policy), fiscal policy, cultural policy, development policy and environmental policy

Policy Work in Subnational States

Chairs
Bryan Evans, Ryerson University, b1evans@politics.ryerson.ca
Arnost Vesely, Charles University, veselya@fsv.cuni.cz

Papers will be welcomed that focus on the issue of policy work and the people engaged in such work at the subnational policy level. Papers in this this panel will examine “policy work” which is not limited only those who work directly as analysts and advisors for government, but also includes those who are engaged in policy work for non-governmental agencies and who interact with policy professionals. Policy work takes place not at the apex of the administrative state but rather among rank and file policy workers whose job it is to push, haul, and hammer into shape the eventual outcomes we know as policy. Paper that examine the following questions will be especially welcome, but other papers that deal with policy work in subnational state will also be considered.

  • How do policy workers actually do their jobs and construct policy on a day-to-day basis ?
  • What role do NGO policy workers play in ongoing policy work from consultation to negotiation and implementation ?
  • Does policy work differ from sectors such as health service delivery to public transit ?
  • Do subnational governments have policy workers devoted exclusively to policy work ?
  • What are the actual numbers of policy workers and has their functions changed over the years ?
  • What are the differences between issue management and long term policy planning ?
  • How do politicians make use of policy professionals in subnational states ?
  • How much time is devoted to issue management and how much time to policy analysis ?

Making Sense of Policy Transfer, Learning and Convergence in a Globalized World

Chairs
Sophie Enos-Attali, Institut Catholique de Paris, s.enos-attali@icp.fr
Elizabeth Sheppard, Institut Catholique de Paris, elizabethksheppard@gmail.com

Discussant
Elsa Tulmets, CERI-Sciences Po

If policy transfer is certainly not a new phenomena, the context of globalization has made it a continually developing trend linked in part to influences such as the transnationalisation of policy problems, interdependence and the increasing importance of international governance bodies.

The globalization of policy learning and the resulting policy transfer have been a rapidly developing subset of public policy studies since the 1990s. The number of publications on transfer in France and Europe more generally has grown rapidly, including New Directions in the Study of Policy Transfer edited by Mark Evans (2010), Policy Transfer in European Union Governance : Regulating the Utilities edited by Simon Bulmer, David Dolowitz et al. (2007), or Anja Jakobi’s International Organizations and Lifelong Learning : From Global Agendas to Policy Diffusion (2009).

Yet, studies of international policy learning and transfer remain limited and should be encouraged. The scientific interest of this panel in the current state of international politics is to understand the continuing phenomena specifically in times of crisis of transfer and to understand and identify current trends. As such, the panel invites papers along the following suggested themes :

  • The origins and development of international policy transfer between developing countries
  • The role of international organisations in policy learning and transfer, such as the IMF, OECD, World Bank, EU, NATO etc.
  • The different forms of learning and transfer, such as normative or institutional transfer
  • The mechanisms and processes associated with policy learning and transfer
  • Evaluations of the outcomes of international learning and transfer within systems of national government and administration
  • The role of non-state actors as well as informal networks in international policy learning and transfer
  • Case studies on individual policy transfers in specific domains

METHODOLOGIES

Comparing Methodologies : Discussing Traditional and Emerging Research Methods in Public Policy

Chairs
Nathalie Burlone, University of Ottawa, Canada, nburlone@uottawa.ca
Geneviève Tellier, University of Ottawa, Canada, gtellier@uOttawa.ca
Jonathan Paquette, University of Ottawa, Canada, jonathan.paquette@uottawa.ca

Research methods in public administration have been the center of several debates in academic journals, focusing either on the possibility of cumulating knowledge, questioning its intellectual core, or paradigm, or debating the quality and pertinence of research methodology used. Encompassing these discussions, the purpose of this panel is to bring together a number of papers using traditional and emerging methodologies in public policy in order to foster methodological debate through research applications. Whether quantitatively or qualitatively oriented, policy researches offer scholars and students a wide array of ways to look at similar policy issues as well as an opportunity to discuss the benefit of comparing importing methods from one policy area to the other. This panel aims at providing an opportunity to discuss policy analysis from a methodological standpoint. In order to do so, theoretical and empirical papers employing qualitative, quantitative and critical methods are welcome.
Ideally, the panel will be dived in three sections : one rather general, focusing on research design, theory development, research questions, epistemological and ontological assumptions, ethics, utility of public policy research, etc. ; another regrouping qualitative research methods such as (but not restricted to) documentary research, text and discourse analysis, narratives, phenomenology, interviews, focus group, ethnography, action research, visual methods ; a last one centering on quantitative methodology including (but not restricted to) regressions, quantitative discourse analysis, surveys, online research methods, spatial analysis, time series analysis. Papers using mixed methods are also welcome.
Proposal should be sent to Nathalie Burlone – nburlone@uottawa.ca

Configurational comparative methods as the way forward in comparative public policy and administration ?

Chairs
Valérie Pattyn, Public Management Institute, KULeuven, Belgium, valerie.pattyn@soc.kuleuven.be
Colin Talbot, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK, Colin.Talbot@mbs.ac.uk

Discussant
Phil Haynes, University of Brighton, UK

Although comparison is since long acknowledged as the ’essence of the scientific method’ in political science in general and public policy and public administration in particular, the necessity for comparison has not been more pressing than today. Despite the evident value, it can be argued that PP and PA have not fully exploited the comparative opportunities available. It is in this respect relevant to assess the potentials which configurational comparative methods (CCM) can bring to advance the field. Taking stock twenty five years after the publication of Ragin’s classic “The comparative method” (1987), the number of applications in the field has increased (hesitantly), but CCM techniques are still only used by a small niche of scholars.

In this panel we would like to discuss the pros and cons of configurational comparative methods for the development of public policy and public administration. Are these methods a key to bring the field a step forward ? Or do we face particular obstacles in their application ?

The panel offers researchers the opportunity to present their experiences in applying CCM in the framework of public policy and public administration research. We welcome both theoretical and practice-based contributions. Yet, the purpose of the panel is primarily reflective, rather than strictly technical.

In this respect, we first of all invite papers considering the potentials and pitfalls of CCM for the fields of public policy and PA from a meta-perspective. Papers can be backward looking (taking stock of the current applications), forward looking (what next ?), or both.

Besides, we welcome papers that describe specific applications of the approach in the framework of public policy or public administration. Given the purpose of the panel, we expect participants to clearly explain in their paper which contribution their CCM application has made/can make to the advancement of public policy and public administration research. All types of applications are possible.
The output of the discussion should help us to elaborate a research agenda for the future.

ENVIRONEMENT POLICY

Analizing public action in the extractive sector

Chairs
Marc Le Calvez, Sorbonne Nouvelle university, mlecalvez@flacso.org.ec
Anne Lucie Jarrier, Panthéon-Assas university, aljarrier@gmail.com

Discussants
Isabelle Rousseau, Mexico College
Guillaume Fontaine, FLACSO Equateur

Analyzing public action in the extractive sector is particularly challenging as there is no common trend. Each mineral producing country develops its own exploitation model.

Theory provides many conceptual frameworks to understand public action in strategic sectors. The « ressource curse » approach (Sachs and Warner) put the stress on the deterministic effecs of mineral abundance in the subsoil limiting the country’s economic development.
Others researchers focus on governance deficiency (Fontaine) in the sector. In any case, the path dependency approach (Pierson) or the analisis of a paradigmatic change (Hall) can be valuable to determine institutional practices and the choice between deep reforms or continuity.

Moreover, the extractive sector is closely related to environmental policies and land use planning policies. Theses public policies may limit, contrain or control the extractive sector (ex : Costa Rica). In many case, the exploitation of natural ressources is the opportunity for a discussion on sustainable developpment model.

This call for papers is looking for international case studies/ comparative approach of the extractive sector. The theoretical approach has to be sustained by a field investigation and any type of ressources (oil, gaz, gold...) can be considered. Papers may be oriented in two direction :
1. The paper may focus on a sectorial anlysis of the extractive sector
(sectorial approach of public policy)
2. The paper may put the stress on a multisectorial approch and study
the contradiction or complementarity between two diferent policies.

Animals endangering human health : a new public policy sector ?

Chairs
Laure Bonnaud, INRA, laure.bonnaud@ivry.inra.fr
Nicolas Fortané, INRA, nicolas.fortane@ivry.inra.fr

Discussant
Didier Torny, INRA

Researchers have often chosen a segmented approach to the analysis of policies for the prevention and management of risks relating to animal diseases : food safety, animal health, the management of a given crisis (vector-borne diseases, epidemics, food infections), the role that expertise plays in public decision-making, etc. This means that there is little analysis of the globalisation of on-going health policies, which we take to be a redefinition - both vertical (scale, levels of public action) and horizontal (, jurisdictions, sectors) - of the boundaries of these public policies. For their supporters, the purpose of the now current notions of “veterinary public health”, “global health”, “biosecurity” or the “One Health initiative” is to establish links between sectors of public action which are usually considered to be separate. This operation thus leans towards a definition of a new framework for the production and implementation of public policies, one that is juxtaposed, complementary to or competing with existing systems. In this way, it once again frames the analysis of public policies for the management and prevention of these “global” risks.
We hope for two types of communication from this panel :

  • Little is known about the emergence of the notions of “veterinary public health”, “biosecurity”, “global health”, and of the development of international initiatives such as “One Health”. How are they constructed ? Who are the moral entrepreneurs of these labels (individuals, professional groups, epistemic communities, agencies, national and international organisations) and what motivates them ? What policy instruments are promoted and developed for this purpose ?
  • The globalisation of health policies which is expressed through the notions of “veterinary public health”, “biosecurity” and “global health”, defines a new framework for public policies which is implemented at local, national and international levels, whereas older systems of intervention still remain. How do the traditional actors (both public and private) of health, animal health and food safety policies accommodate this movement ? To what extent does the range (knowledge, instruments, practices, organisations) of global approaches (i.e. multiscale and trans-sector) modify these public policies ? Are we seeing a standardisation of methods of public intervention or, on the contrary, is it that certain sectors are managing to preserve a certain number of specificities, despite the redefinition of their boundaries ?

The panel will accept analyses of singular public policies (animal health, food safety, public health), and both comparative (between countries, between public policies) and multi-level analyses.

Governing Water Resources with Vested Interests : getting from policy to implementation ?

Chairs
T. Darbas, Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation, Australia, Toni.Darbas@csiro.au
P. Roebeling, University of Aveiro, Portugal, peter.roebeling@ua.pt

Terrestrial, freshwater and coastal systems are linked through a bio-chemical as well as socio-economic and political-institutional processes that are, in turn, affected by global change. These linkages constitute a host of mutual benefits as well as a range of negative impacts and hazards, potentially leading to tensions, conflicts and welfare losses. Consequently, there is a need for efficient, equitable and sustainable water resources management policies across boundaries and interfaces in these socio-ecological systems.

Environmental and natural resource economics accepts that downstream benefits could compensate upstream practice change if mutually acceptable transfer mechanisms could be settled upon. This would, however, require international treaties, regulations and institutions that allow for the transfers of these welfare gains across these boundaries and interfaces. Provided full cooperation of all involved parties, market behaviour would then lead to efficient and sustainable water resources management outcomes.

It is frequently claimed that stewardship of water resources needs to be a public responsibility and should not be privatised. Similarly, the Integrated Water Resources Management paradigm states that catchment/watershed management authorities are the most equitable, efficient and sustainable way to manage water from catchment to coast. In the face of electoral volatility and institutional inertia, however, catchment management bodies regularly appear, disappear and reappear re-mandated and re-staffed. Administrative harmonisation of the nations under the European Water Framework Directive is likely to take years or even decades. Constitutional amendment is the price to be paid to remove state resource management rights in federated Australia, to the Murray Darling Basin’s detriment.

The question arises whether market based instruments and mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem services, can be politically enduring yet constructed by harnessing the vested social, environmental and economic interests of the multiple, acute and diffuse publics in water resources management. To this end, international NGOs have become influential public policy actors in their own right and could play this role. Other than the policy levers of exhortation, alignment with government agencies and project funding, they have no inherent/necessary connection to the national and sub-national administrative machinery through which water resources management policies are traditionally implemented. This panel aims to : i) unravel what the experience of these institutions is in water resources management across boundaries and interfaces in socio-ecological systems ; and ii) assess what we learn from this about policy practice as well as about the analysis of policy practice.

POLICY CHANGE

Best Practices : The Policy Transfer of Standards

Chair
Dr. Leslie A. Pal, Carleton University, Canada, leslie_pal@carleton.ca

The financial crisis has reinforced the importance of an effective public sector for economic stability and performance. This understanding of the role of the public sector is not new : public sector reform has been a key agenda item for most OECD and many non-OECD states since 1990. Most governments have sought to learn from each other, primarily through international institutions such as the OECD, the United Nations, the World Bank and others.

These institutions have prescribed what they call "best practices" in public management and governance. In doing so, they have contributed to the growing adoption of "standards" in all areas of social, political and economic life, as well as a loose global coordination of governance institutions. There has been very little scholarly examination of these prescription practices, their history, their evolution, their contradictions and reversals, or their consequences. This is a major oversight, both because of the importance of public sector reform, and the fact that most governments look to international agencies, academic associations, and leading schools of thought for inspiration as they reform.

This Panel invites analyses of governance "standards"and their transfer across jurisdictions. Papers can focus on the standards themselves, the transfer process and its mechanisms, and/or outcomes and impacts.

The Panel is inspired by a research project headed by Leslie A. Pal (Carleton University) and Ian D. Clark (University of Toronto). Please see : http://ww2.publicpolicy.utoronto.ca/ppgr/BestPractices/Pages/default.aspx

Institutional Change in Developing Countries : new approaches to an old challenge

Chairs :
Wellington Almeida, University of Brasilia, almeidawellington@uol.com.br
Paulo Carlos du Pin Calmon, University of Brasilia , paulo.calmon@gmail.com

Discussant :
Paulo Carlos du Pin Calmon, University of Brasilia

This panel invites papers that deal with studies related with institutional change in developing countries.
As different models of institutional change have been proposed in the last twenty years. They focus on a series of distinctive analytical approaches, from the old tradition based on modernization, cultural variables, rational choice and bounded rationality models, to the new wave of studies based on path dependence, punctuated equilibrium, institutional complementarities, coalitional institutionalism and the effects of distributional conflicts on compliance.
Most of these approaches are based on case studies that analyze public policies in developed countries. Attempts to apply these models to the analysis of public policies in the developing countries have been rare. On the other hand, important questions concerning the study of the determinants of policy change in developing countries remain unanswered. However, they became especially relevant in the last few years when policies concerning environmental sustainability, inequality reduction and human rights promotion became a priority in the policy agenda of developed and developing countries.
The purpose of this panel is to explore to what extent these recent models of institutional change can be applied to analyze these policies in the developing world. More specifically we are especially interested in a critical assessment of the applicability of these models in the study of recent changes in social policies in Latin America and Africa. We will also be interested in learn about new approaches for institutional change that can be used to assess the new wave of public policies in the developing world targeted to reduce income and categorical inequality, as well as to promote environmental sustainability.

Governance Shifts : Comparative Studies of Governance Change in Policy Sectors

Chair
Jeremy Rayner, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, jeremy.rayner@usask.ca

The claim that a substantive change has occurred in the way that states govern society in the developed world is increasingly under attack. A core proposition of the original claim is that the traditional mechanisms that states have used to steer society have altered : authority is being diffused vertically, upwards towards global institutions and networks and downwards to local communities ; and horizontally to different ’stakeholders’. The panel invites papers that test this proposition from a comparative perspective at the sectoral level. Papers may consider any aspect of changing governance arrangements - such as the choice of policy instruments, policy network structures, or institutional change - but they should focus on comparing change across multiple policy sectors in a single jurisdiction or single policy sectors, such as health, energy or education, across multiple jurisdictions. Papers are also solicited that compare sectoral governance change in the context of changing problem definitions and address the claim that particular kinds of problems attract similar governance solutions. Papers that address the vertical dimension of governance change in the shape of international/domestic policy linkages are also welcome, especially those dealing with multiple levels of governance such as the impact of international governance arrangements in policy sectors that are already influenced by regional integration projects and federalism. The goal of the panel is to review that state of the art of comparative governance studies at the level of policy sectors and subsectors.

Actor-centered Approaches of Policy Change : raising some theoretical and methodological issues

Chairs
Patrick Hassenteufel, Université de Versailles, France, Patrick.hassenteufel@uvsq.fr
Nils Bandelow, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Nils.Bandelow@tu-braunschweig

Discussant
Klaus Schubert, University of Muenster, Klaus.Schubert@uni-muenster.de

Theoretical lenses of public policy present different approaches to understand the role of actors in policy change. They focus on different types of actors and assume different forms of rationality, strategy and resources. For example the Multiple Streams Approach (Kingdom 2011) refers to the idea of policy entrepreneurs that advocate their pet policies against ambiguous decision makers. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier/Weible 2007) uses coalitions of actors, united by a common belief system, as the main point of reference. Single actors may influence policies by becoming policy brokers. Institutionalist theories focus on the role of institutions for the set of options actors may have (Scharpf 2000) and the development of institutions by political actors. More recently Mahoney and Thelen (2010) proposed a typology of change agents in order to explain different types of gradual change. Change-actors can also be structured by a shared policy reform program (Hassenteufel and al., 2010).
The panel is interested in papers that address questions related to the role of actors from different perspectives. The papers might argue theoretically or present empirical evidence from different countries and policy areas. Contributions should be to one of the following questions :
1. Which type of actors influence policy change ? May policy analysis focus on individuals, coalitions, collective actors or organizations ?
2. Which type of rationality do political actors apply ? Do actors follow beliefs, interests, or do they react to situations ?
3. What resources are more relevant to influence policy change ? How is it possible to explain that in some cases actors promoting change succeed and in other cases not ?
4. Which sort of methods can policy analysis use to describe, understand or even measure the influence of actors on policy change ?

Studying Coalition Politics and Policy Change across Contexts

Chair
Daniel Nohrstedt, Uppsala University, Sweden, daniel.nohrstedt@statsvet.uu.se

Discussants
Karin Ingold, University of Bern, Switzerland, karin.ingold@ipw.unibe.ch
Chris Weible, University of Colorado Denver, United States, chris.weible@ucdenver.edu

Studying policy processes requires a focus on actors, events, and contexts surrounding the ongoing change and stasis in public policy over time. Insights from novel descriptions and rigorous explanations are gained through in-depth examination and comparative analyses within and across political systems. Yet, challenges remain in developing systematic approaches for documenting and comparing public policy developments across different contexts that vary by political institutions, economic conditions, and geography. Events vary from elections to public opinion shifts and crises. And the actors vary by culture, belief systems, resources, and strategies they employ to influence policymaking. This panel seeks to showcase a collection of papers that analyze politics and policy change under the guidance of the advocacy coalition framework. Contributions will compare and contrast cases across different political systems. The focus will be on developing long-term research strategies for better comparisons of subsystem processes.

The new Policies of Privatization

Chairs :
Dr. Renate Reiter, FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, Renate.reiter@fernuni-hagen.de
Prof. Dr. Annette E. Töller, FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, Annette.toeller@fernuni-hagen.de

After a first wave of privatization of public services in OECD-countries during the 1990s mainly touched technical and transport public infrastructure, privatization (accompanied with regulation) has recently turned to policy fields or sectors that so far seemed more distant from the market. Initially, services related to the welfare state (e.g. hospitals ; health care and social services ; child and youth care ; labor market integration) have become subject of specific new national and subnational policies of privatization. What is more, today, privatization may also touch the very core functions of the (liberal) state, like the operation of prisons or clinics for hospital order treatment. The panel focuses on such comparatively new fields or sectors of privatization. It is generally interested in both the study of national (and subnational) privatization policies in specific countries as well as in comparative studies on the new policies of privatization in different countries. Papers – addressing both, the national and the subnational levels – should be theory-driven and deal with one or more of the following questions :
• What types of privatization and/or patterns of privatization policies in ‘market-distant’ or ‘close-to-the-state’ fields or sectors can be identified ?
• What are the driving-forces of privatization (old and new) ?
• What can account for differences between sectors and countries ?
• What methods and theories can be applied to the study of new privatization policies ? Are there new theories of privatization ?
• What effects does privatization in such ‘market-distant’ policy fields have, namely on the regulative capacity of the state, on the quality of the service provided, on the workforce within these sectors, and on beneficiaries or addressees of the respective policies/services ?

DISCOURSES AND INTERPRETIVE POLICY

Understanding policy narratives

Chairs
Nicolas MAISETTI, Sciences Po Aix / CHERPA, France, nicolas.maisetti@yahoo.fr
Sonia LEMETTRE, Sciences Po Grenoble / PACTE, France, sonialemettre@hotmail.com

A growing number of researchers and young scholars have turned to discursive and interpretive approaches in policy analysis (Fisher & Forester, 1993), focusing on the construction of meaning as a cognitive and linguistic linkage between actors and power. Policy narratives (Radaelli, 1999) are of particular interest in understanding how discourse can shape policy decisions. Although policy analysis is focused on full description of complex machinery or procedures, few academics are looking at the logic of manufacturing meaning. Underlining the use of narrative processes can be a heuristic entry in order to grasp how narratives are experienced and interpreted.

In this panel, we will not consider discourses and particularly policy narratives separately from actions, actors, and the context of their enunciation. On the contrary, we would appreciate papers (both empirically and theoretically founded) that understand policy narrative as a field of meaning which contributes to structure a set of public policies. A trend sometimes tends to identify narratives everywhere. This phenomenon can be explained by the expanding literature describing (if not prescribing) narratives as strategic justifications of policies, which actors endorse as “story-telling”. We are not interested in the identification and description of every narrative, but in papers which show the purpose for which policy narratives are constructed and the ways in which they can have concrete effects on policies. Not only has a policy narrative to be identified, but the analyst has to focus on actors’ practices : who are the co-producers of the narrative ? What are the chains of solidarity and rivalry between them ? How do they use it to regulate the policy process ? How do other actors try to challenge this narrative, producing alternative or dissident ones ?

We invite scholars willing to consider the scope of “policy narratives” to submit their papers : theoretical debate, methodological questions or empirical applications are welcome to discuss how policy narratives help us understand policy process through their uses.

Global Discourses, Local Decision-making : Rescaling Power Relations in Social Protection Arrangements

Chairs
Olivier Giraud, LISE - CNRS / CNAM, France, olivier.giraud@cnam.fr
Barbara Lucas, Haute école de travail social and University of Geneva, barbara.lucas@unige.ch

Discussant
Lea Sgier, Central European University, Budapest

This panel focuses on the influence of global discourses on policy-making at the various stages of the policy cycle, and particularly at the crucial but under-investigated stage of policy implementation at the local level. So far, most policy analysis theories in the domain of social protection have been inspired by national welfare states and social policies. Recently, however, both socio-economic globalisation and political regionalisation and decentralisation have highlighted the importance of rescaling processes in the field of social policy. Rescaling processes imply a weakening of the traditional overlap of policy formulation, policy-making and definitions of social citizenship at a single (e.g. national) scale, and its re-articulation along different policy scales. In this panel, we would like to thematise the consequences of such processes in the field of social protection - in which national values, symbols, traditions, actors or systems have played a key role ; and ask where to global discourses come into play ?
We will explore this issue starting from key words of the international agenda of social protection, like ’flexicurity’, ’activation’, ’empowerment’, ’active aging’ or ’social investment’. In spite of their ambivalence and fuzziness, these concepts have become the cornerstone of ambitious policy programmes that are to be implemented in various national contexts and, ultimately, at the local level. How do these ’empty signifiers’ make sense in the very politicised and nationalised domain of social protection ? How do national policy actors (re-)interpret them, and make them relevant to national or local policy-making processes ? By what mechanisms do new policy programmes inspired by such key concepts actually influence policy implementation at the local level ? Where and when do local actors possibly “jump scales” (Randeria, 2007) and refer directly to global discourses ? Finally, what can we learn from these specific configurations from the point of view of discourse theory or discursive institutionalist analysis of public policy (Schmidt, 2010) ?
This panel welcomes empirical as well as theoretical papers that raise questions related to rescaling processes and the influence of global discourses in social policy.

Foresighting(s) : (re)shaping policy-narratives ? The transformation of strategic forward-looking narratives for policy process

Chairs
Chloë Vidal, ENS de Lyon, France, chloe.vidal@logmail.net
Sylvain Le Berre, IEP de Rennes, Université de Rennes, France, sylvain.leberre@univ-rennes1.fr

Since the 70’s, futures studies has to deal with “the increase of uncertainty”, linked to the expansion of interdependencies. As a historical construction, foresight keeps on being redefined, reconfigured and contested. The several new foresight methods seem to be the result of the need to develop new forms of policy regulation and anticipation. It takes different forms according to the States and the situations of expertise, but sometimes it seems to be driven by common trends.
Public authorities’ competences are dissipated across several interdependent levels – local, regional, national, international – and the international dimension has become an essential prism for a detailed study of the transformation of public action.

The production of knowledge and forward-looking discourses are nowadays commonly used in the policy process. From the issue of the agenda setting process (pessimistic scenarios setting, search for opportunities, broad priority-setting...) to the issue of the formulation process (improving strategy formation, informing policy, long-term vision-building processes...), it seems that futures studies – and foresight in particular – are embedded into complex decision-making and policy-making processes.

As such, futures studies involve more than just anticipating trends and their consequences but a much more active process of shaping. It contributes to shape not only policies and politics, but also the “territory”. In other words, the forward-looking discourses take part of a narrative on both the territory and the public policies, and therefore act as an intregation tool, characterized by a spatialization process of sectoral issues. So how is the future integrated into narratives ? What are the structure and the specificity of forward-looking knowledge ? What is its relation to the policy process and its link to governance ?

In this panel we would like to underline how, through the analysis of foresight’s methods evolution, we may understand the increasing complexity of politics, the transformation of public management, and collective imaginaries, which are accompanied by a transformation of the expertise.

Papers can be theoretical, empirical, and methodological.

PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

Leadership and Structure in the Co-production of Public Services

Chair
Dr Hans Schlappa, University of Hertfordhsire Business School, UK, h.schlappa@herts.ac.uk

This panel aims to support the development of new concepts through which contemporary challenges and opportunities for the collaborative provision of public services can be explored.

Leadership and Co-production
The concept of co-production is based on notions of participation, engagement and empowerment and therefore leans towards theories of collective or ‘distributed’ leadership. Concepts of distributed leadership support the argument that leadership can no longer be perceived as being primarily the role of an individual because leadership is inherently emergent and reliant on a range of actors who continuously negotiate collective action (Thorpe et al. 2011). Contemporary debates on public services point to the need for such a conceptualisation of leadership if more collaborative forms of services provision are intended (Currie et al. 2011 ; Lawler 2007). Co-production offers a fresh perspective on leadership models, but contemporary accounts of collaborative service delivery say little about how institutional structures can be designed and managed in ways best suited to facilitate co-production (see examples in the volume edited by Pestoff et al. 2012).

This leads to questions about the nature of leadership in the co-production of public services : Can there be a ‘leader’ in the co-production process ? Given that distributed leadership implies ‘the dynamic interaction of leader, followers and the situation’ (Spillane 2006) can government officials pursue policy goals and discharge their accountabilities in co-production situations ? With regard to institutions, questions arise as to whether the spaces where services are co-produced can be ‘shared’ by different actors in ways which reflect the principles of collective service production and shared leadership ? Bringing together leadership and co-production in a conceptual framework is expected to generate fresh perspectives on contemporary challenges and opportunities for innovation in service provision.

References
Currie, G., Grubnic, S., and Hodges, R. (2011), ’Leadership in Public Service Networks : Antecedents, process and outcome’, Public Adminstration, 89 (2), 242-64.
Lawler, J. (2007), ’Individualisation of Public Sector Leadership’, Public Administration, 86 (1), 21-34.
Pestoff, V.A., Brandsen, T., and Verschuere, B. (eds.) (2012), New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-production (London : Routledge).
Spillane, J.P. (2006), Distributed Leadership (San FranciscoJossey-Bass).
Thorpe, R., Gold, J., and Lawler, J. (2011), ’Locating Distributed Leadership’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 13 (3), 239 - 50.

Street-Level Policy Research : Expanding the Boundaries

Chairs :
Evelyn Brodkin, University of Chicago, USA, e-brodkin@uchicago.edu
Aurélien Buffat, University of Lausanne, CH, aurelien.buffat@unil.ch
Peter Hupe, Erasmus University Rotterdam, NL, hupe@fsw.eur.nl

Since Lipsky’s seminal work (1980), the study of street-level bureaucracy has developed as a major interest in diverse types of research on public policy, management, sociology, and politics. This body of work has shed light upon discretion in street-level behaviour, and highlighted the policy-making role of front-line organizations and those who work in them : front-line workers play an active and crucial role in determining about ‘who gets what, when and how’ (Lasswell 1936). In this sense, the behaviour of street-level agents might be seen as the ‘continuation of politics by other means.’
Although street-level research has received attention from European and American academics in diverse fields, there have been too few opportunities for exchange across disciplines and approaches. Our aim is to bring together scholars working on diverse aspects of street-level research, but joined by a common interest in advancing the field and considering its implications for policy studies.
We propose a panel that will contribute to the latter aim by taking up two important themes. The first theme is “Policy-Making at the Street-Level.” This would be broad in purpose, intended to spur an international venture aiming at a) making a critical assessment of our knowledge regarding the role and influence of street-level organizations in the politics of policymaking and policy implementation ; b) assessing the state of international research in this area through presentation of empirical and theoretical studies, and c) advancing exchange about the future of the field and its contributions to policy studies. The second theme, “Managing and Governing Street-Level Organizations : A New Form of Politics ?” focuses more specifically on emerging research on the governance and management of street-level organizations, with a particular interest in the political implications of managerial strategies looking across countries and policy areas.
Papers may be either theoretically or empirically focused. We welcome contributions reflecting diverse national political-administrative contexts, policy sectors, and types of front-line agencies. Characteristic of the panel is a strong international and potentially comparative orientation, with both European and American scholars (but also beyond), and both junior and senior researchers invited to participate.

LOCAL AND MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE

Multi-level governance in a networked state : reconciling democracy with ‘good governance’

Chair
Professor Henrik Bang, HB@ifs.ku.dk
Dr Paul Fawcett, paul.fawcett@sydney.edu.au

The increasing transfer of political power and knowledge ‘upwards’ to transnational and global systems, ‘sideways’ to quasi-autonomous actors, networks, and partnerships, and ‘downwards’ to sub-national authorities has transformed national government into a network state. This is not because its power and knowledge have necessarily been ‘hollowed out’, but more because the nation state has become intrinsically dependent for its survival and development on its cooperation with a whole range of ‘relatively autonomous’ political systems from the local to the global. It is within this problematic that the concept of multi-level governance has emerged in an attempt to better understand and explain the dynamic, communicative and interactive interrelationships that exist within and between states at different levels of governance and government.

A range of new dilemmas are emerging as part of this process. One crucial one is between democracy (inputs) and ‘good governance’ (outputs). The central concern of democracy has always been around ensuring that citizens with different, often opposed, interests and identities acquire free and equal access to and recognition in decision-making processes. The basic task of ‘good governance’, in contrast, is about how political authorities manage to articulate and perform authoritative policies that improve the welfare and wellbeing of their population(s). Today, an increasing problem, at all levels, is the collapse of this distinction into practices that place good governance ‘in the shadow’ of democracy, or vice versa, as policy areas are rendered either ‘apolitical’ or ‘risky’ domains that need to be ‘managed’. This session calls for papers which discuss this tension from a variety of different angles, such as those that exist between : sovereignty and metagovernance ; effectiveness and legitimacy ; ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of participation ; ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ approaches to power ; and liberty (‘freedom from’) and the practice of freedom (‘freedom to’).

Polycentric Public Policy and the Environment

Chairs
Benjamin Cashore, Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Benjamin.Cashore@yale.edu
Steven Bernstein, University of Toronto, steven.bernstein@utoronto.ca
Iben Nathan, University of Copenhagen, in@life.ku.dk

Collective governance responses to global environmental problems increasingly occur through polycentric and local processes. Their ultimate goal is to influence domestic or regional policies at multiple scales (e.g., national, subnational and sub-regional, and local) and/or the behaviour or practices of firms. These interactions occur across global governance institutions (public, private or hybrid) with states, communities and firms, whose actions ultimately determine how and whether many global environmental or sustainable development problems are being addressed.

This panel will include papers that focus on particular ways in which public policies interact with increasingly complex governance arrangements to address major environmental problems. This influence does not only flow back and forth between international institutions and domestic (and smaller-scale) governance, but also multiple sites of authority at multiple scales. The need to pay closer attention to interactions with domestic and polycentric policy making to address global problems, and the role of public and private “governors” who have, or earn, authority, is particularly notable in issues where unifying multilateral solutions are weak or absent. Examples include legality verification of forest product exports to prevent illegal logging (which can involve interactions among states, domestic rule-making, NGO-led certification systems, firms and local communities) in the absence of an international forest treaty and polycentric and networked forms of governance to combat climate change (e.g., city networks or attempts to link national, regional and international carbon markets).

The panel is especially interested in papers that address these linkages in specific policy contexts in both the developed and developing world. Papers might also address how knowledge generation about causal forces that link polycentric governance systems to policy outcomes may foster policy learning about appropriate and effective governing strategies.

Bernstein, Steven and Benjamin Cashore. 2012. “Complex Global Governance and Domestic Policies : Four Pathways of Influence.” International Affairs 88 (3) : 585-604.
Ostrom, Elinor. 2010.“Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change” Global Environmental Change 20 550–557

Who governs in public governance ? The politics of public and private in local services

Chairs
Giulio Citroni, University of Calabria, Italy, giulio.citroni@unical.it
Maria Tullia Galanti, University of Florence, Italy, tullia.galanti@gmail.com

Discussant
Prof. B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, bgpeters@pitt.edu

The panel calls for papers presenting empirical research on the transformation of local government action challenging the more established notions of State and Market, of public and private, with specific reference to public-private partnerships, corporatization, privatization and public governance initiatives in the fields of public services, utilities, and welfare. The scientific interest will lay in both in-depth country studies and in comparative studies. This is intended to maximise the shared knowledge of public service and to foster comparative cross-country research.

The more general question “who governs in public governance ?” may be answered through other specific research questions : who are the main actors in public services ? What are their interests ? What are their strategies and resources ? Are there any conflicts, and how do these conflicts affect the distribution of political resources ? How did the rationality and rationales of actors at various level of government change ? Did new governance arrangement change the meaning of “public” in the policy-making of service provision ? What variables (economic, institutional, cultural, political, agency, chance) may help explain the different politics of public services ?
Single-country or comparative studies of prevailing trends in the forms of local government action will be most welcome. Explicit analysis of political causes and consequences of transformation will be favoured.

Policy for Democratic Decentralization & its Discontents : A Comparative Perspective

Chairs
Professor Fred Lazin, Ben Gurion University, Israel, fred.lazin@gmail.com
Professor Ashok Sharma, University of Auckland, drashok_sharma@hotmail.com

Discussant
Dr. Rajvir Sharma, University of Delhi, India, rajvir_sharma@rediffmail.com

Democratic decentralization covers a system of governance in which citizens of any locality possess the right to hold local public officials accountable through various democratic means. In developed and developing countries authority is devolved to local units of governance that are accessible and accountable to its citizens.
Policy planning and execution at local levels is a matter of concern for scholars engaged in local government research. During last few decades all democracies are moving towards more decentralization but the capability of local government institutions to serve their masses is continuously under question. This issue is more vital in developing countries where service delivery by local government institutions poses numerous challenges in mitigating the problems of vulnerable sections of the society. This problem is less alarming in developed countries due to improved level of public participation.
In all democracies decentralization process faces problems and discontents from its inhabitants. Papers on either national or cross national dimension are invited which focus on issues of local government reforms, democratic decentralization and its implications for public policy.
Identification on the gaps between proposed reforms and actual practices and suggestions for improvement would also form the part of the deliberations of this panel. Has the nature of democracy really changed from representative to participatory or it is merely a change in the form and not in substance of governance is another theme we hope to address.

The relationship between size and local democracy

Chairs :
Professor Robert Cameron, University of Cape Town, Robert.Cameron@uct.ac.za
Chris Game, University of Birmingham, C.H.Game@bham.ac.uk

For Plato, the headline-seeker, the size of the ideal state was 5,040 adult males. Aristotle was a touch more cautious : between 500 and 1,000 households. Later, Dahl and Tufte (1973) were more hesitant still. There is no optimum size for a political system. Rather, the whole issue of size and democracy is a trade-off, between citizen participation and system effectiveness – by which, incidentally, they meant primarily problem-solving capacity, rather than service provision. Economists and fiscal federalists have their own trade-off, but are concerned more about heterogeneity of citizens’ preferences for public goods than about their political participation.

There has been no shortage of research-based literature over the past couple of decades. The bulk, as is often noted, was certainly for a time concerned mainly with the relationship between size of sub-central government units and the efficiency or quality of service provision. But more recently – associated partly with the continuing trend of merger-based municipal reorganisations – greater attention has been paid to the impact of size, or growing size, on various measures of local democracy, and it is this trend that prompts this panel proposal.

The panel would welcome further empirical contributions to these issues, particularly those with a comparative dimension, but reviews of the growing literature and assessments of the state of our knowledge would also be welcome.

Urban Governance and the City

Chair
Dr. Evren Tok, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, Doha-Qatar, etok@qfis.edu.qa

This panel intends to bring together studies focusing on the interstices of urban governance, policy making and city. On the one hand, cities have been emerging as competitive locomotives of national economies, on the other hand, there exist significant problems and inefficiencies pertaining to the policies in sustaining effective urban governance. Many policies related to transportation, sewage, electricity, water, communication, education, health, governance, and infrastructure and their efficient and synchronized operation is vital for a competitive city and better urban governance. Recently, many governments and urban policy makers have been presenting and implementing “smart city” projects that emphasize increasing use of information communication technologies and recast new forms of urban governance. This panel invites case studies, either comparative or single case, that attempt to foray new dynamics of urban governance in developing and developed country contexts. What are the emerging forms of public-private collaborations or partnerships as a result of increasing role and responsibility of urban scale ? Is Smart City building a solution to broader urban problems ? What are the challenges and opportunities that result from increasing use of ICTs by urban governments ? What are the urban governance mechanisms that could ensure a fine balance between public interest and economic competitiveness ?

Extraterritorial Affairs and the Federated State : Para-diplomacy in 2013 and Beyond

Chair
Rajeev Venugopal, University of New Brunswick, Canada, raj.venugopal@gnb.ca

Federations, whether centralized or fragmented, have a particular combination of history, societal, economic and political/constitutional factors to consider when dealing with domestic public policy matters. As such, the intergovernmental implications of policy decisions and actions are well-researched within the rubric of federalism studies.

In this era of intense globalization, however, comparatively little has emerged on how sub-national actors (ex. provinces, states, länders, municipalities...) pursue extraterritorial interests through their own international policies. Commonly referred to as “para-diplomacy,” the participation of sub-national orders of government in extraterritorial affairs is a normal yet contested space in policy studies.

In Canada, for example, tension between regional and central government aspirations in international relations is illustrated by contrasting the Province of Québec’s Gérin-Lajoie doctrine from the 1950s (which holds that the province has international jurisdiction in policy areas in which it has exclusive and constitutional jurisdiction), with recent sentiments from Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations who remarked “... the provinces’ role is to be provinces – and stay home.” How should such disjunctures be approached ? While important contributions have been made through works such as Hans J. Michelmann and Panayotis Soldatos’ classic text “Federalism and International Relations : The Role of Subnational Units,” (Oxford, 1991), much has happened that requires us ask :

 How do sub-national jurisdictions in federations pursue specific or parochial interests ?
 How do such interests complement, compete or intersect with those of the central government ?
 Does disaggregation of a state’s voice on the world stage result in a cacophony of voices that obfuscates matters ? Or, does this fragmentation allow for more efficacious pursuit of self-interest in inter-jurisdictional (and internationalized) policy areas such as : economic development, demographic growth or primary and post-secondary education ?

The proposed panel seeks high quality submissions examining such kinds of questions from a theoretical, conceptual or case study perspective.

PUBLIC AND POLICY

Naming, identifying, creating the ’public’ : the “governmental dimensions” of public policies ?

Chairs
Guillaume Gourgues, Université de Franche-Comté, France, guillaume.gourgues@hotmail.com
Alice Mazeaud, Université de La Rochelle, France, alicemazeaud@yahoo.fr

This panel proposes to gather papers which deal with the shape, the extent and the meaning of the construction of “public” by public policies. How public policies target (and act on) the “publics” ? How far public policies can identify “sub-publics” ? What are the social characteristics that public authorities attribute to them ? Are there any differences between the classical sociological categories (unemployed, workers, etc.) and the “publics” created by public policies ? Can we compare the usual identification techniques, such as statistics and the more informal techniques that circulate within public policies ? One can also wonder how the targeted individuals react to this categorization ? Could these categories become real social groups ? Is it possible that the created “publics” provide the basis for the constitution of a social “public” as defined by Dewey ?

This panel aims to understand the place of this categorization within the administrative activities which belong to the policy making process but also to study the impacts of the categorization on social groups and individuals ; two issues that could enlighten the “governmental dimension” of public policies. Indeed, our own researches on public participation settings in different public policies lead us to express a hypothesis : the first (implicit) “functions” of public policies is to create a set of “publics” which are crucial for the organization and control of the “political consent” of population. This hypothesis can be heuristic to understand some trends in public policies, beyond their official aims and normative dimensions. For instance, it could provide us some empirical elements about the proliferation of participatory settings : Is the main aim of these settings to create different “publics” (“citizens”, “inhabitants”, “youths”, etc.) in order to obtain the consent of some individuals who belong to these “publics” ? In order to discuss this “governmental dimension” of public policies we will favor papers that lean on comparative or monographic empirical research.

What is public in public policy ?

Chairs
Liisa Häikiö, University of Tampere, Finland, liisa.haikio@uta.fi
Helena Leino, University of Tampere, Finland, helena.leino@uta.fi
Pia Bäcklund, University of Tampere, Finland, pia.backlund@uta.fi

In this panel we discuss the various meanings of public in the practices of public policy. We are interested in the different contents of public. The working environment, networks and practices of public policy have changed profoundly during the last decades, thus transforming the idea of public as well. At first sight political issues and actors appear to be more public and transparent than ever before. Is this the case, and what does public mean in a particular context ? How are the boundaries between private and public drawn and how are they manifested in various local policy practices ? There are several possibilities to approach this phenomenon, for example by asking :

  •   When is an issue or matter public policy ?
  •   What is public in public administration ?
  •   What is public action in public policy ?
  •   How to politicize public policy ?
  •   How do private actors participate in public policy ?
  •   How are public policies implemented in practice ?

We welcome both empirical as well as theoretical papers approaching public in public policies and the methodological insights chosen for the analysis. We hope to receive case studies from different socio-cultural and political contexts to strengthen our understanding of how the local circumstances frame the idea of public in public policy. The papers can be from various fields of public policy, e.g. social, environmental, land use planning, health, transport, municipal policies and so on.

PUBLIC PROBLEMS AND AGENDA SETTING

Energy Policy in Europe : Understanding Agenda-Setting Dynamics

Chairs
Jale Tosun, University of Mannheim, jale.tosun@mzes.uni-mannheim.de
Sophie Schmitt, Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance, schmitt@forschungsinfo.de

Discussant
Kai Schulze, University of Konstanz

In this workshop we seek to bring to together policy analysts working on agenda setting and researchers concentrating on recent developments in energy policy-making in European countries and at the level of the European Union. Which energy-related topics have received increased attention and why ? Which attempts to include an energy-related topic onto the policy makers’ agenda were unsuccessful ? How can we explain both successful and unsuccessful attempts of agenda setting ? In what way are agenda-setting processes on different political or administrative levels interrelated ? How does agenda setting impact on subsequent decision-making processes ? These are the research questions guiding this panel that aims to provide both stimulating theoretical and empirical insights. A restricted empirical focus on energy policy seems promising for attaining the analytical objective of this panel, for this allows us to gain more detailed insights into the interaction between the key actors and how their behaviour is shaped by the relevant institutions, situational factors or strategic considerations. We primarily encourage the submission of empirically oriented papers that are informed by theoretical considerations concerning agenda setting. Proposals on any topic in the area of agenda setting in energy policy are welcome, but papers will be especially favoured in the following areas : studies addressing unsuccessful attempts of agenda setting concerning energy policy issues, analyses concentrating on the empirical assessment of framing and priming processes, and any type of comparative research.

Risks and Crisis management : a new cause for the policy makers ?

Chairs
Leo Bourcart, Grenoble Institute of Political Studies, France, leo.bourcart@etu-iepg.fr
Claude Gilbert, CNRS (to be confirmed)

Discusant
Leo Bourcart, Grenoble Institute of Political Studies, France, leo.bourcart@etu-iepg.fr

The general interest of policy scientists in risks and crisis management has constantly grown since Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society in 1986. It is now widely admitted that natural or man-made disasters, biological risks and sanitary crisis have to be considered first as the results of social and economical dynamics if not concrete political choices.
On the other hand, the multiple recent fails of crisis management during episodes such as the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 and 2010, or the E.Coli Crisis in 2011, and the unprecedented impacts of disasters such as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, rather show that governments still struggle to consider risks and crisis management as priorities of their political agenda.
Yet risks and crisis management policies are numerous and still increasing in many countries, but they are disseminated through a wide variety of institutions and organizations, and their objectives are diverse,ranging from regulation to simple consulting. Reciprocally, some emerging actors, mainly coming from international organisations, local governments and NGOs use the topic of risks and crisis management as a gateway to ”penetrate” the field of public policies : they develop and promote their own knowledge, and challenge the action of the national governments on this specific topic.
This panel would then be the opportunity to discuss how the importance of risks and crisis management has evolved in the field of public policies. Is risks and crisis management becoming an autonomous problematic inside the public policies ?
This panel aims at attracting scholars within the topic of risks and crisis management with background in Political Sciences, International Relations, Sociology, Anthropology or Economics. Both Senior and Junior researchers are welcomed.

The fight against discrimination : a new paradigm of public policy in Europe ?

Chairs
Ewa Bogalska-Martin, University of Grenoble, France, ewa.martin@iut2.upmf-grenoble.fr
Aline Prévert, Science Po Grenoble, France, aline.prevert@sciencespo-grenoble.fr

The issue of the fight against discrimination has gradually become one of the priorities of EU policies. While one can not speak of a common pattern European fight against discrimination, there is a common set of standards that must be respected and implemented by all the Member States. An injunction is fundamental and explicit in the European directives - the role and responsibility of the state as the central actor who must guarantee equal treatment. Nevertheless, the member countries and their institutions, with commitment of representatives of civil society, trade unions and economic actors, are invited to develop and adapt devices of antidiscrimination policy to national contexts and taking into account their cultural specificities.

The purpose of this panel is to explore and analyze how the institutionalization of the paradigm of non-discrimination society in France and Europe since the late 1990s has gradually renewed social and political issues in European societies and has allowed the emergence of a specific field of the Fight Against Discrimination Policy (FADP), marked by different forms of actions, conflicting interpretations and concurrences between players. The object will be to analyse the dynamic structuring of this field of public policy, the role of public and private actors and single European citizens. In other words, to understand how the issue of non-discrimination with its legal basis, its meaning and modes of action, structuring helps to renew its field models of public policy, and more broadly how it reexamines democratic principles, conceptions of social life, integration and citizenship. The purpose is also to analyze how the institutionalization of this paradigm and the emergence of themes and issues related such as equal opportunities or diversity in France and abroad, supported by a range of actors and action of citizens who act on behalf of enforcement of those principles, was able to renew the social and political spaces. The issue is to examine how this paradigm reconfigures other public policies, including employment policies, education, urban policies and many others. Can we speak of a meta-policy ?

The scientific interest of this panel is to bring together the researchers from different scientific disciplines (political sciences, sociology, geography, anthropology, science management...) coming from different countries, who work on issues of inequality and discrimination and to introduce the multidisciplinary debates.

BUSINESS AND POLICY

What Price Business Solidarity ?

Chair
Graham K. Wilson, Boston University, US, gkwilson@bu.edu

Discussant
Tim Werner, University of Texas, US

We all lapse into talking about business and politics as though business is a unitary actor. It is not. Corporations have conflicting political on questions such as trade liberalization and are affected differentially by regulations. In at least some political systems, much political activity by business is devoted to opposing other businesses.
One potential conflict of interest is between large corporations and small business on a range of issues including differential access to capital markets, ease or difficulty of complying with regulations and tax regimes. Large and small businesses can also be divided by culture and ideology ; executives of large corporations may be less ideological than the owners of small businesses. In practice, however, large corporations seem to subordinate their own self-interests to maintaining an alliance with small business by failing to support policy proposals unwelcome to them.
Hypothesize that the reason large corporations failed to promote their self-interest is that they valued their political alliance with small business so highly. Small business brings many political advantages to the table including geographical diversity ; strong local political connections and well-developed interest groups. While large corporations have more resources, small business has political strengths.

This hypothesis invites at least four responses : What are the strengths small businesses bring to the alliance in different political systems ? ; Do large corporations indeed hold back from promoting their own short term self interests in order to preserve an alliance with small business ? ; What is the international pattern ? Do large and small businesses form enduring alliances in all democracies even if large corporations have to sacrifice their own interests in order to maintain them ? ; What accounts for diversity internationally in the strength of alliances between small and big business ?

Business and the Policy Process

Chair
Achim Lang, University of Konstanz, Germany, Achim.Lang@uni-konstanz.de

Discutant
Hannah Murphy, University of Tasmania, Australia

Theories of the policy process rather infrequently consider different actor types in their conceptualization of the policy process. There is the tendency to ascribe policy actors to different policy functions or to treat them indiscriminately. However, empirical studies show that for example business is more active in pressure politics as well as behaves differently compared to other policy actors.

This panel seeks to explore these actor characteristics and their differences further. It invites papers that theoretically and/or empirically explore the role of business in the policy process. What role has business in advancing policy change ? What is the conceptual status of business in theories of the policy process such as the advocacy coalition framework, the punctuated equilibrium theory, the multiple streams framework or other theoretical frameworks ? What role has business in the agenda setting ? Is business different compared to other policy actor ? Are there different roles played by different types of business actors such as companies or organized business ?

Business, Civil society and Public Policy

Chair
Hannah Murphy, University of Tasmania, Australia, Hannah.Murphy@utas.edu.au

Discutant
Karsten Ronit, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Business and civil society groups are increasingly active and influential at all levels of policy-making from the local to the global. This coincides with the shift from government to governance, whereby governments can no longer govern alone, and indeed require the input of social groups to secure public policy outcomes. Business actors present in various forms including as firms and/or via sectoral or more general business associations, whilst civil society groups may comprise non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions, and even more loosely based social movements.
This panel will examine the interactions between business actors, civil society groups, governments and international organisations in an effort to distil their policy contributions and understand the relationships that give rise to – and sustain - both public and private governance arrangements.

A particular focus will be the conflicting and cooperative relationships between business and civil society groups in the process of policy-making, from agenda-setting through to implementation and compliance monitoring. As such, the key questions to be canvassed may include : To what extent can NGOs, unions and consumer groups properly be considered ’countervailing actors’ to business organisations ? ; Under what conditions do business and civil society engage in policy cooperation ? ; How can the contributions of business and civil society actors to private governance arrangements best be understood ? ; In what circumstances can business and civil society groups influence policy-making at international organisations ? ; and What determines the choices business and civil society groups make in engaging with some international organisations over others ? The panel aims to attract original papers from scholars with expertise in interest groups, governance and the policy process to help expand understandings of how business and civil society groups contribute to contemporary governance arrangements.

Business and Sustainability

Chair
Karsten Ronit, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, kr@ifs.ku.dk

Discussant
Harvey Feigenbaum, George Washington University, US

It is hotly debated whether business only caters to its own particularistic interests, or whether various societal concerns can be successfully integrated into business strategy. There is no simple answer to this question and studies must examine how interests can be aligned in particular situations and issue areas. In recent years such alignment problems have been framed in terms of sustainability, and this panel scrutinizes a diversity of sustainability challenges. Business can conflict with major interests and values in society, and sustainability therefore covers dimensions, such as economic, social, environmental and cultural sustainability : The effective functioning of the market, the social balance in society, the environmental quality of ecosystems and the thriving of cultural traditions can in each their way be disrupted by business, but much depends on how business addresses these concerns.

Undoubtedly, firms and industries have much to gain through attending to these challenges of sustainability but challenges are all different in character, and, accordingly, must be handled in different ways. We therefore need a better understanding of the nature of these challenges for business and the policy fields in which they are embedded.

Business has devised many strategies and finds itself in an increasingly complex environment where other stakeholders expect determined action from firms and industries, in some cases immediate action is demanded, in other cases action is required in a longer time frame. This time perspective offers different opportunities for firms and industries, and we need to examine these different opportunities. A unified answer from business is hard to achieve and the pattern of business responses must be seen in the light of competition within business itself, including the role of leaders and laggards. We therefore need a better understanding of what drives the behavior of both leaders and laggards when addressing the challenges of sustainability.

HEALTH POLICY

The Widening Public Health Agenda

Chair
Patrick Fafard, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Patrick.Fafard@uottawa.ca

Since the publication of the famous 1974 Lalonde report in Canada about the social, genetic, environmental and behavioural determinants of health, policy-makers and policy advocates in many countries have embraced (perhaps more in principle than in practice) the notion of "health in all policies." The Alma Ata Declaration of 1984, signed by all member states of the World Health Organization, built on that notion and called for a new definition of health and health care, and a (much) wider scope of health care policy. This also entails the need to strengthen intersectoral governance at local, regional, national and international levels to address the social determinants of health and integrate health considerations into policies outside the traditional realm of Health Departments (e.g. education, transportation, finance, agriculture and housing). One additional inspiration for these efforts seems to be reining in (public) health care, of course.

This widening public health approach challenges governments to develop an ambitious policy agenda. For example, is growing evidence of the importance of the social determinants of health (e.g., housing, social and economic inequality, early childhood development) ; and some research suggests that economic inequality is closely correlated with poor health. New diseases (e.g., H5N1 ; SARS ; HIV/AIDS) require public health authorities to develop new programs and governance approaches for controlling infectious disease. There is (in some countries more than others) growing distrust by citizens of the traditional public health programs such as vaccination or water fluoridation. The demographic and epidemiological transitions in North America, Japan and Western Europe since the mid-1970s (and more recently, in other parts f the world as well) went hand-in-hand with a rapid growth of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that contribute to the global burden of disease.

Whereas the traditional public health concerns were commonly seen as the responsibility of specialized officials (often at the local level), the new public health agenda involves governments at all levels and often implies an ambitious and expansive role for the national state and international collaboration efforts. Action on social determinants of health (SDOH) often requires whole-of-government responses that are difficult to design and implement. Action on inequality requires redistribution and new initiatives in social provision at a time when the trend is to continue to shrink the welfare state. Action on the SDOH and inequality engage governments both horizontally (e.g., intersectoral and interdepartmental strategies) and vertically (e.g., new and existing national and international agencies institutions). Finally, much of the contemporary agenda of public health is global and engages new and existing international institutions.
Public health specialists have mostly focused their (epidemiological) research on the policy agenda of public health. While often empirically rich, this research is seldom linked to theories of the policy process and policy change. Thus, the framing of the new and expanded policy agenda of public health offers a rich menu for policy scholars working with existing theories of policy making and governance.

This panel invites papers that deal with the wide range of public policy, politics and governance issues of the “new public health agenda”. We are interested in papers that create bridges between empirical research and theory in public health and contemporary theories of policymaking and governance. Our working assumption is that theoretical work in political science has much to offer public health and vice versa. We are particularly interested in papers that consider the challenges associated with action on the SDOH and inequality : how and to what extent has the notion of SDOH made inroads into the health policy agenda ; have governments been able and willing to put in place the necessary intersectoral structures and initiatives ; and what has been accomplished as a result of efforts to address the SDOH on a global scale ? We would like to compare the efforts of South Australia, British Columbia, Norway and The Netherlands and other countries in realizing the goals of “Health For All in the Year 2000” and assess recent policies oriented at improving the health of populations.

Risk selection as a policy tool

Chair
Terje Hagen, t.p.hagen@medisin.uio.no

All advanced economies aim to improve the efficiency and equity of their health care systems, to restrain public expenditure and enhance innovation and responsiveness to consumer preferences. All health care systems face a trade-off between solidarity and efficiency. In social health insurance systems (SHI), competition between sickness funds aims to improve efficiency but may also lead to risk selection and lower quality. Tax based national health systems (e.g. NHS), may have fewer selection problems, but—especially under decentralized administration—more issues of regional inequality and inefficiencies. In this paper, we compare incentives for risk selection and efficiency improvement in SHI and NHS countries, illustrated with date from the Netherlands and Norway as well as other countries. The Dutch risk-adjustment scheme compensates insurers for over-representation of high-risk (and high-cost) groups of insured in their portfolio to deter risk selection. In Norway, the risk-adjustment serves to improve efficiency and fairness in allocation budgets for Regional Health Enterprises. Health status as measured by DRGs (40%) and demographic and certain cost factors (60%) are the two main elements in the Norwegian risk adjustment system. This contribution discusses essential differences between those approaches, in particular in how they create incentives for efficiency.

There has been a substantial world-wide research on risk adjustment methods, beginning in the US in the 1980s and in a number of European countries since the 1990s. Sicker patients, on average, cost more, and recover less well than healthier patients even with the best of health care (Iezzoni 2003, Ellis 2008). Risk adjustment refers to accounting for patient-level health risk factors to determining differences in resource requirements and health outcomes of patients over a particular time period. In national health systems involving non-competitive health plans, risk adjustment enables equitable resource allocation over different regions or population groups (Rice and Smith 2001, Astana et al, 2010). In SHI systems, risk adjustment helps to determine capitation payments to competing health plans in order to reward efficient behaviour by minimizing (or at least reducing) incentives for risk selection. It thus reconciles the dilemma of balancing efficiency with solidarity (Van de Ven and Ellis, 2000 ; Blumenthal et al, 2005). As a predictive tool, moreover, risk adjustment can be used to assess the disease burden of a population, inform budget and planning processes of governments, and identify high cost patients for case management and disease management purposes (Zhao et al, 2003).
In addition, risk adjustment can serve to evaluate provider performance by recognizing that cost as well as treatment outcomes for patients presenting with less severe health issues are likely to be better (Thomas et al, 2004 ; Kominski, 2007). Economic profiles of providers can identify which providers are inefficient by comparing their practice costs to expected costs allowing for patient-level characteristics ; and meaningful comparisons across providers can be made on various quality dimensions by establishing baseline risk assessment after allowing for patient-level health risk factors of those treated. The paper (perhaps separate panel) discusses experiences of SHI and NHS countries with designing and implementing different types of risk equalization models, evaluate the different models, and suggest topics for future research. There is a growing body of knowledge and literature about risk equalization methods. Comparative papers and contributions welcome, in particular with a comparative approach.

Recent change in social health insurance

Chair
Claud Wendt, Siegen University, wendt@soziologie.uni-siegen.de

Since the Second World War, social health insurance schemes (founded on the late 19th century German model of mandatory employment-based health insurance, administered by quasi-independent administrative bodies, the sick funds) gradually expanded into two directions : expansion of population covered and expansion of the range of entitlements.
In the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, with economic stagflation and high unemployment, countries across the industrial world engaged in extensive debate about the future of their welfare states and (public) health care systems. They also discussed shifts away from government control an engaged in efforts to broaden the scope of consumer choice and market competition. First, there were some efforts to replace the public funding of health care by private health insurance (as in the UK), but those efforts met with strong public opposition.
The attention shifted to changes in the payment and contracting modes of medical care as well as changes in ownership. The UK restored the legal independence of hospitals that had been nationalized with the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain in 1948. It also created a “purchaser-provider split”, separating responsibilities for the financing and the ownership and management of hospitals and other institutions. Another direction of change was the decentralization of responsibilities from central governments to regional and local authorities, or from central government towards independent (social or private) health insurance agencies.
Those changes did not occur evenly across countries or continents, however. While some nations largely kept or strengthened their existing arrangements, others engaged in extensive and long-lasting health reform efforts. The most wide-spread change occurred in the payment for medical care. Ever since the early 1970s, countries tried to shift away from global hospital budgets based on historical costs and developed a wide range of new payment forms such as per diem, per episode or per patient category (case-based payment). For self-employed physicians and other health professionals, those efforts commonly resulted in a mix of different payment forms : capitation (an amount per patient registered per year), per visit, per hour with special pay for special activity (e.g. flu shots or the purchase of information technology). Several countries engaged in extensive debate about privatizing health insurance and health care, delisting entitlements or setting priorities but, with some notable exceptions, there was not much change until the late 1990s when there was renewed interest in market mechanism in health care to help control (public) costs. The changes did not occur evenly across countries, however. The panel seeks to assess the shaping and outcomes reform efforts, and "after reform maintenance"—namely, measures to soften impact of, say, increased user fees or expanded government involvement in monitoring private actors.

The panel seeks to compare the health reform efforts in Latin America, Western Europe, Asia and to assess similarities and differences across countries, both in their expansionary stages and in their retraction efforts.

Changing demographics

Chair
Michael Gusmano, New York Medical College, Michael_Gusmano@NYMC.edu

One particular (perceived or real) challenge to health policy-making is the changing demographics. Ever since demographers realized they needed to revise their demographic projections in the late 1970s—as the baby boom generation reached maturity—the aging of populations (as one of the leading causes of the rapidly expanding public expenditure for pensions and health care services) became an object of fretting and concern. Those concerns—sometimes framed as “intergenerational justice” assumed that aging populations create unaffordable, ungovernable (and undesirable) fiscal burdens in industrialized countries and elsewhere (but most visible in Europe and Japan).

The unaffordability claim rests on several assumptions : (a) older persons use, on average, more health services than younger ones and therefore, aging must drive up health care spending ; (b) with aging, the number of dependents is growing, and with that, the fiscal burden on the working populations ; (c) elderly persons, defined as persons older than 65, need on balance, more services that they supply.

In our paper “The Bright Side of Aging” (Gusmano and Okma 2010) we seek to debunk those assumptions as a contribution to the debate about the consequences of aging. That is not to argue that there is no need to adjust the organization of health care to cater to the growing need of frail elderly.

Organising Health

Chair
Hal Colebatch, University of New South Wales, Australia, hal@colebatch.com.

The dynamics of policy for health have a lot to do with organising. Some of this is overt, such as the existence and practices of ministries of health, hospitals and medical schools (even if these all seem to be concerned more with sickness response than health). In other contexts, the organisational dimension is less apparent, and seems to be less about recognisable organisations, and more about organising – e.g. the way that knowledge and skill is recognised (or not) in the practice of caring for health, or the way that the norms and practices of care providers and care seekers (and the frictions and tensions between the two) shape access to care and the outcomes for health, with important implications for policy responses directed to the health status of people in socially-marginal categories.

So this panel is addressed to organising for health in the broadest sense. It encompasses broad questions about the relationship between governmental activity, professional organising, commercial interests, collective community action in various forms, and the management of the self in the organising of health. It can also cover specific concerns such as the management strategies of government agencies, and ‘cross-cutting’ questions such as the ways in which democratic norms of participation and empowerment are mobilised, resisted and performed at different point in the organising of health. Papers are invited on any subject within this broad field, particularly those relating empirical material to the development of analytic frameworks and approaches.

Federalism, Comparative Analysis, and Subnational Health Care Delivery : Examining the Private/Public Sector Mix

Chairs
Howard Palley, University of Maryland, HPALLEY@ssw.umaryland.edu

Federalism leads to differential (varied) health delivery results --- particularly regarding the public/private sector mix in subnational jurisdictions. An extensive literature examines this situation from a variety of perspectives. Thus, comparative methodology is an appropriate approach for viewing the institutional outcomes in such subnational health delivery systems. Subunits may be termed states (Australia, U.S.A., and India), provinces (Canada), lander (Germany) or cantons (Switzerland).

Health care policies and programs in such comparative subnational settings are related to the national/subnational government relationship. The political disposition to act by political parties at both the national and subnational level and political and economic sustainability issues will affect the organization of health delivery in such subnational jurisdictions. Prevailing ideologies, political culture and historical factors may also affect the organization and delivery of health services at the subnational level. So a multiplicity of factors will affect the extent of variability of the private and public sector activities in the delivery of health services in various subnational jurisdictions.

Also in federal systems national policies regarding subnational units vary from the current “open” or “permissive” federalism of Canada to the highly regulatory federalism of Switzerland. This panel will examine how these factors “play out” regarding the mix of publicly-provided health care services and the involvement of the commercial private organizations in the delivery of health care in various national contexts and the subnational level.

National studies using a comparative analysis to examine subnational variability are appropriate for this panel. Also, the examination of comparative national federal approaches would also be appropriate.

Comparative Health Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe : Europeanization versus Subsidiarity

Chair
Jim Björkman, Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands (bjorkman@iss.nl)

Discussant
Juraj Nemec, Matej Bel University, Slovakia

Because health programs provide citizens with access to health care as a right in modern systems of social protection, promises regularly appear to reform the sector by lowering costs, expanding access and improving quality. Reform is a complex process embedded in empirical realities of power and privilege as well as economic constraints so the panel examines reforms in national health systems throughout Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. To guide comparative enquiry, reform is defined as shifts in decision-making power over allocation of resources and the distribution of financial risks in health care funding between as well as within public and private sectors. Any reform seeks to modify how arrangements are organized and thus to re-arrange the distribution of costs, benefits and valued resources. Issues of cost, access and quality span reforms in financing (revenue and expenditure), in services (who gets what, when, where, how), and in assurance that professionals are delivering competent care.

While decentralization has been a popular strategy in health care, the role of central governments has increased in both tax-funded and insurance-funded health systems. Different reasons explain the interest in recentralization such as financial constraints exacerbated by the international economic crisis, lower capacity of local authorities to prevent disparities in services provided, duplication of efforts, and the inefficient use of resources. Reforms in both decentralization and recentralization have implications for health systems in terms of equity, funding mechanisms, management of health providers and quality control.

Of particular interest is the impact of European integration on national health policies. Health politics have long been an arena under control of member states with a minimal EU role. However, Europe plays an increasing role in national health systems due to the working-time directive, competition law, cross-border rights of patients, and regulation of professional qualifications. The panel seeks to understand the impact of European integration on the content of health policies, delivery and politics. Papers are invited on theoretical and empirical perspectives including the study of actors, institutions and governance structures, health policy analysis and institutional adaptations as well as policy transfer. Cross-national and cross-regional comparisons are particularly welcome.

ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL POLICY

Regulation, Governance and Development Policy : The Political Economy of Market Building

Chairs
Toby Carroll, National University of Singapore, tcarroll@nus.edu.sg
Darryl Jarvis, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, Djarvis@ied.edu.hk

Discussant
Paul Cammack, City University of Hong Kong

Policy debates in developing country contexts have historically concerned themselves with creating the institutional and organizational capacities necessary to support effective state building. For much of the last 50 years, the dominant approach to development and object of academic inquiry has thus been focused on state based institutions as purveyors of order, most particularly in terms of the rule of law, but also in terms of evolving centralized bureaucracies as planners and implementers of development, and developing enabling strategies around these motifs to realize economic growth. In its most simple expression, this motif was referred to as the ‘developmental state,’ where policy and policy processes were usually equated with states driving industrial policy, setting economic targets, and then orchestrating a policy environment that conjoined the interests of capital, labour and the state through a corporatist compact.

This image of development, however, has now withered, in part through ideational changes that see the state not so much as an enabling agent but an obstacle to effective and efficient developmental outcomes. The emergence of new public management approaches and market building activities and supported through developmental finance that is provisioned through commercial practices — as opposed to multilateral or bilateral funding initiatives — now defines the new universe of development. This transition is most obviously associated with the demise of the developmental state and the rise of the regulatory state.

The implications of this transition are numerous and reflected in evolving public management practices centered around public private partnerships, privatization, and market creation for the provision, for example, of infrastructure but increasingly also of health and educational services, transportation systems, and social security schemes, among others. For developing states such reforms have profound implications, not least for the role of the state, the allocation of and exposure to risk, and the provision of services that support general well-being.

This panel seeks to explore the implications of this transition and the impact it has on the developmental state, developmental outcomes, policy practices in development countries, and the distribution of risk. Papers that explore any of these issues in relation to empirical case studies are particularly welcome.

New challenges for budgeting in the public sector

Chairs
Elio Borgonovi, Bocconi University, Italy, elio.borgonovi@unibocconi.it
Carmela Barbera, SDA Bocconi School of Management, Italy, carmela.barbera@sdabocconi.it

Discussants
Silvia Rota, Bergamo University, Italy
Ileana Steccolini, Sda Bocconi School of Management, Italy

Public decision making is strongly intertwined with budgeting processes. The budget is central to policy making, as it represents a fundamental tool for authorizing, constraining and controlling expenditure, and regulating the relationships between the electorate and the legislature, the legislature and the executive, and the executive and the bureaucracy.

Budgeting processes tend to reflect the economic, cultural, social and organizational context where they are prepared. At the same time, they embody public decision making processes, and, thus, in turn influence the economic, cultural, social as well as organizational context where they take place.

The recent financial and fiscal crises are shaping a new role for public sector entities as well as new relationships with the private sector. On the one hand, government decisions appear to be strongly influenced by international pressures, financial markets and strongly constrained by existing entitlements and debts. On the other, the provision of public services has increasingly come to rely on collaborations and partnerships involving public and private sector entities.
Moreover, global financial markets, international and supranational constraints and influences, past decisions on entitlements, debts and tax burden, needs to cutbacks, spending reviews, performance assessment, and inter-organizational arrangements, increasingly affect public decisions and actions. As a consequence, traditional approaches to budgeting might look outdated.

These evolutions are posing new and significant challenges to public sector entities that require an in-depth reflection on the following questions :
 Are there forms and systems of decision making and budgeting that can be more appropriate than traditional approaches to face these challenges ?
 How might internal budgeting processes be improved ?
 How the need for stronger inclusion, participation of stakeholders and socialization of political decisions can be satisfied ?
 Are there possible solutions to face the dilemma of the relation between the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making processes, accountability and transparency ?

The Public Policies of Eurozone Member States under Financial Help Conditionality : from ‘Moral Suasion’ to ‘Diktat’ ?

Chairs
Pr. Christophe Bouillaud, PACTE, France, christophe.bouillaud@iepg.fr
Clément Fontan, CERAPS, France, clement.fontan@gmail.com

Discussant
Sabine Saurugger, PACTE, France, sabine.saurugger@iepg.fr

Since the beginning of the European debt crisis, it became evident to many observers that the group of creditor actors (the creditor States, the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Found) was prone to formulate comprehensive policy options for Eurozone member states facing deep financial distress. Without apparently much regards for the specific situations of each member state, they designed a “one size fit all” set of preferred solutions (fiscal austerity, structural reforms of the labour market, endorsement of the “endogenous growth theory”, etc.) to allow for collective financial help (like the “European Stability Mechanism”). The ECB’s new chairman, Mario Draghi, went so far as to declare that “the European social model was already dead”, to justify the comprehensive reengineering of nearly all post-war public policies he asks for in this context.
The papers included in this panel should then take some of the following questions into consideration : What is the real extent of this new, not to be discussed, “one best way” model on national public policies in Europe ? What kind of policy domains are most impacted ? Could we really speak of a European ‘diktat’ as this term was used for IMF programmes during the 1990’s years ?

We welcome both empirical and theoretical studies on these questions, both on countries under direct financial assistance or adjustment programme (Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy) and on countries providing, directly or indirectly, financial assistance. The latest group shall be studied as well since the financial help provided worsened the fiscal positions of the creditor countries which are then implementing their own austerity programmes (e.g. France, Belgium or Netherlands).
The other group of questions aim at studying societal resistances against this conditionality. Which form of resistances can be observed ? Are the resistances different from one country to another ? Are they taken into account by domestic and EU political leaders ?

One Last Swing of the Policy Pendulum : The Comeback of Privatization

Chair
Dr Alberto Asquer, University of London, UK, aa144@soas.ac.uk

Privatization is a public policy that broadly consists of the reduction of the government’s ownership of corporate entities or public assets. Once a dominant policy within several governments’ agendas in the 1970’s, privatization was also especially intense during the 1990’s (especially in former Soviet economies) and recently met a resurgence of interest when various governments in the world aimed to raise revenues through the sale of state-owned enterprises and public assets as a way of fixing public finance in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (PB Report, 2011). Although the “policy pendulum” occasionally swings back towards the “re-publicization” of privatized firms, generally privatization keeps a primary position among the various forms of involvement of private operators and investors in the provision of public services, i.e., public-private partnerships.

The sale of state-owned enterprises and public assets often entails a radical reconfiguration of the way entire sectors of the economy are regulated. A regulatory regime based on public ownership is substituted by one where parts of economic activity are opened up to private operators and investors (Howlett and Ramesh, 1993 ; Bös, 1991 ; Vickers and Yarrow, 1988). The detailed ways in which privatization is conducted may vary considerably across countries and epochs (Clifton et al., 2006 ; Savas, 2000, 1987 ; Feigenbaum et al., 1998 ; Wallin, 1997 ; Starr, 1988 ; Lundqvist, 1988 ; Kolderie, 1986 ; Gómez Ibáňez, 2003). In any case, the entry of private operators and investors into industries previously regulated through full public ownership generally results in the erosion of rent positions enjoyed by the former public service providers – that often delivered services in monopoly conditions.

This panel aims to host papers concerned with addressing the following empirical, theoretical, and conceptual questions :

  • What are the features of the latest “privatization wave” that took (is taking) place in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis ?
  • What accounts for the policy decision to privatize state-owned enterprises or public assets ?
  • What accounts for the similarities and differences of privatization across countries or regions in the world ?
  • What accounts for privatization of publicly-owned companies or public assets at the sub-national level ?
  • How does privatization relate to ongoing discourses about the crisis of the financial system (or possibly about the critique of the global capitalism system) ?
  • How does privatization relate to the making of markets especially within the “global south” ?

GLOBAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY

International Organizations and Domestic Public Policy

Chairs
Carsten Daugbjerg, University of Copenhagen/the Australian National University, cda@foi.ku.dk
Grace Skogstad, University of Toronto, skogstad@chass.utoronto.ca

Contemporary domestic policy making within many policy fields occurs within a larger context of international institutions that exercise political authority beyond the boundaries of the state. Some of these authoritative institutions, like the World Trade Organization, exercise `hard’ or legally binding powers over member countries. Other international organizations, like the OECD or the World Bank, exercise `soft’ power through the knowledge and norms they produce and disseminate about desirable policy goals and policy instruments. How do these two types of policy instruments affect domestic policy making ? While ‘hard’ instruments may have direct impact on domestic policy making in some instances, the large number of cases brought before the Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the WTO indicates that compliance with such instruments is not always straightforward. Though compliance with ‘soft’ instruments cannot be enforced, there are many indications that they may have significant influence on domestic policies.

The purpose of this panel is to examine the domestic policy consequences of these two types of international organizations, including by restructuring power relations among domestic state and non-state actors, reshaping the composition of policy networks and influential actors’ domestic agenda, and redefining policy problems and policy solutions.

Global Public Policy : Fact or Fiction ?

Chairs
Diane Stone, University of Western Australia, diane.stone@uwa.edu.au
Will Coleman, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wdcolema@uwaterloo.ca

Public policy studies have been bound by the Westphalian concept of sovereignty more so than scholars of International Relations, many of whom have embraced the idea of ‘global governance’. In classical political science, public policy processes occur inside the nation-state. By contrast, orthodox IR theory holds that states are the dominant actor in the international system and that international policies are made between states. With its strong tendency to ‘methodological nationalism’, comparative public policy also compares policy development within and between states. Policy studies tend to limit analysis to the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalise national policies rather than ask if there is transnational policy-making above and beyond the state. There is little conceptualisation of global public policy – policy that is either co-authored by states, in coalition with other actors such as in ‘global public private partnerships’ or ‘private’ global policy.

Are there policy processes that fit the term “global public policy’ ? Or do we need to remain Westphalian and acknowledge the continued dominance of states in policy making ? Is all global public policy really still international public policy ? If global public policy is distinct and to some extent delinked from national processes of policymaking, the venues in which such policy action occurs need not be tied to sovereign structures of decision making. (This is related to but also different from Europeanization.) Consequently, it is necessary to ask if there are policy processes that are not only inter-connected with, but also analytically and politically “autonomous” from, national policy processes. What steps might public policy studies take to overcome its methodological nationalism and to provide added analytical value, beyond international relations theory, international law or cognate disciplines ? How might policy scholars build the analytical tools needed to gain insight into ‘transnational public policy’ or ‘global policy processes’ ?

Global Policy Processes and Transnational Administration

Chair
Diane Stone, University of Western Australia, Diane.stone@uwa.edu.au
Stella Ladi, University of London, s.ladi@qmul.ac.uk

Discussant
Jacint Jordana, Institut Barcelona d’ Estudis Internacionals, Barcelona

At the transnational level there have been a proliferation of practices and processes of policy-making and policy delivery beyond but overlapping with traditional nation-state policy processes. These range from practices such as standard setting and ’best practice’ in areas like the OECD’s guidelines on transfer pricing or genetic testing, to the World Bank’s ’global programs such as Cities Alliance or the Global Forum for Health Research. In the case of EU member states yet another level of policy-making exists formally via directives and regulations and informally via the open method of co-ordination. There are many other public or private initiatives that go by different names : ’multi-stakeholder initiatives’, ’global public-private partnerships’ and ’global initiatives’ (such as the privately convened Global Initiative on Drug Policy Reform). These developments represent a challenge to traditional policy studies which has focused on either what has happened inside the sovereign state or comparisons of policy inside states.

Global policy processes are more fluid and fragmented due to the absence of clearly designated authority. The logic of the ’new public management’ has encouraged private and public policy entrepreneurship in an international devolution and supra-national delegation of policy delivery. Likewise, policy transfer and international diffusion have contributed to the spread of policy tools and practices. NGOs, philanthropic foundations and companies have become important partners in the delivery of international public goods. Transnational policy networks have also proliferated. Given the increased evidence of global policy processes and transnational administration, more work needs to be done in applying traditional public policy models to the new policy-making realities.

The Chairs call for conceptually informed empirical papers that identify and interrogate (i) global policy processes, and (ii) the constitution, character and effectiveness of global programs and partnerships.

Analyzing foreign policy as a public policy : bringing non-state actors back in

Chairs
Frédéric CHARILLON, University of Auvergne, frederic.charillon@gmail.com,
Delphine LAGRANGE, Science Po Paris, delphine.lagrange@sciences-po.org

Discutant :
Marie-Christine KESSLER, University of Paris II

Analyzing Foreign policy as a public policy leads to go beyond the realist and neo-realist theories that, in International Relations, define the state as a unitary actor. This requires a work of definition of the actors, either diplomatic or bureaucratic, and of the political decision-makers.

The new global context, marked by a growing role of multilateral arenas, strengthens the need to develop new insights on the interaction between different types of actors, in a multiscalar approach (local, national, regional, global).

The starting point of the analysis proposed here will thus concern the role of non-state actors as well as the one of international organizations in determining states foreign policies.

With the help of Public policy conceptual tools, the objective is to understand :

  •   to what extent are foreign policy practices (agenda setting, decision-making process, implementation) and issues (identification and formulation) evolving with the double constraint of : a) the necessity to take the non-state actors’ agenda into account and b) the need to integrate this dimension into a multilateral framework that seems to give more room to such actors.
  •   To what extent can foreign policies assessment be an issue for scientific research, in the understanding of new diplomatic practices. In other words, is it possible to analyze the results of a given foreign policy, when it is the outcome of complex interactions including external actors ?

The selected cases studies can deal with several types of states, paving the way for new insights on the link between regimes, systems of governments, and the role of non-state actors in a multilateral game. Priority will nevertheless be given to the study of democratic global or mid-rank powers (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Italy, Spain, Japan, etc.), although comparative studies can be also proposed with developing countries where non-state actors play a specific role (Egypt, Pakistan, etc.).

IDENTITY, CULTURE AND POLICY

Cultural policy : analyzing its challenges and developing lessons for public policy

Chairs
Elodie M. Bordat, Science Po Aix-CHERPA, Elodie.bordat@sciencespo-aix.fr
Nicolás Barbieri, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-IGOP, nicolas.barbieri@uab.cat

This panel is focused on the promising intersection between the field of cultural policy analysis and the policy analysis approach. Showing the analytical and empirical relevance of the combination of these two fields is one of the main goals of this panel. We understand cultural policy as a moment of convergence and coherence between, on the one hand, representations of the State’s potential input with regards to art and culture’s role within society, and on the other hand, the organization of a public action (Urfalino, 2004).
We invite the submission of proposals for papers on the following topics :

1. Comparative cultural policy :
Public policy analysis has contributed to the renewal of comparative policy studies (Maillard and Smith, 2004). Likewise, we consider that particular characteristics of the cultural policy domain may also help to enrich this debate. We will focus on comparative works, whether cross-national (Audet and Saint-Pierre, 2011 ; Poirrier, 2011), case-oriented or variable-oriented (Ragin, 1987), intersectorial, diachronic, between geographic areas or institutional arrangements, etc.

2. Cultural policy and policy change :
We welcome communications focusing on evolution, historical development and significant changes in cultural policies and proposals that analyses these issues applying well-established frameworks of policy change analysis but also other disciplines (sociology, economy, anthropology, etc.). We look forward to papers which address causes and consequences of policy change produced by whether endogenous and exogenous factors, structural factors (economic and political crisis), models of governance (new public management), etc.

3. Policy formulation, management and evaluation :
In this axis, we solicit contributions focusing on the cultural policy process, including agenda-setting, alternative specification, decision-making, implementation and evaluation. We also welcome proposals focusing, among other issues, on profiles of policy actors (policy-makers, practitioners), processes of professionalization of these actors, the role of cultural users/publics in policies formulation and implementation, analyses of the impact of cultural policies in a broad sense, etc.

The Construction of Minority Groups in Public Policy and their Usage and Access to Public Services

Chair
Bel Parnell-Berry, University of Hull, bryelparnellberry@yahoo.co.uk
Karlijn Völke, karlijnvolke@gmail.com

Discussants
Alana Helberg-­‐Proctor
Marleen van der Haar

The major themes of this panel are manifested in the two main, educational aims, which we will attempt to tackle. First, the panel explores ‐ by means of interdisciplinary approaches -‐ the theoretical knowledge with regard to minority groups’ access to Public services and development of policies. For instance, we would want to address how “minority groups” are constructed in public policies at local, national, state and supranational geopolitical levels. Additionally, how do “minority groups” negotiate access to usage of public services and policymaking processes ?

Second, through a focus on empirical realities the panel explores and identifies the challenges and capacity of an international interdisciplinary academic network to contribute to an increase of minority groups’ access to public services. In order to address this aim, we will seek to answer questions such as how can academic research contribute to increase minority groups’ role within public service delivery and/or policymaking practices ? Also, to what extent do researchers experience theoretical and methodological challenges when studying minority groups’ access to public services ?

Policies focusing on counterterrorism, immigration and diversity are no longer confined to national borders, yet directly impact the lives of those often constructed as belonging to a “minority group” within the context of a nation state. These developments raise fundamental questions regarding democracy and pluralism in policymaking processes as they affect the accessibility of “minority groups” for involvement in the development and use of public services.

We welcome papers discussing topics such as (ethnic) categorisation, integration and immigration policies, diversity policies and affirmative action in various fields such as health, policing, employment, housing, education and academia. We also welcome papers that problematize the very concept of minority groups and/or minority studies.

Multiculturalism, Equality and Immigration : Contemporary Challenges, Changes, Contrasts & Comparisons

Chairs
Professor Alexandra Dobrowolsky, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada, adobrowolsky@smu.ca
Professor Yasmeen Abu-Laban, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, yasmeen@ualberta.ca

Multiculturalism and equality have not only been the subject of passionate philosophical debates, but they have also sparked, and continue to fuel, heated political discussions over policies that extend from immigration to social and constitutional policies. Recently, however, hostility towards the idea of multiculturalism, especially in response to migration, has grown, and with it the allegation that the recognition of cultural diversity poses a threat to gender equality. In contrast, Canada is often seen as providing the template for “successful” immigrant integration and vibrant multicultural and equality discourses and practices. Nevertheless, negative rhetoric, and the pitting of multiculturalism against equality, is also on the rise in Canada, despite recent research that suggests that the purported failures of Canadian multiculturalism are more imagined than real.

The objective of this panel is to shed further theoretical and empirical light on these debates given the rise of “multicultiphobia” combined with the fast and furious changes to immigration policies, in Canada, and abroad. For example, changes to Canadian immigration policies have included the much larger and much more context-specific role of provinces in the attraction and retention of newcomers, as well as growing use of temporary workers. What do recent Canadian trends, as well as comparative studies, tell us about decentralization and multilevel governance in immigration, and migration in relation to citizenship and citizenship rights ? In turn, what are the potential repercussions for multiculturalism and equality ? Where are the key sources of policy thinking on these matters ? What is the extent and nature of policy transfers involved ? Which countries can provide us with better predictors as to future trends vis-a-vis the state of immigration policy, multiculturalism and equality ? These are the core questions and themes of this panel.

The cultural dimension of public policy and governance – an international perspective

Chairs
Prof. Klaus Frey, Universidade Federal do ABC, Brazil, Klaus.frey@ufabc.edu.br
Prof. Filipe Teles, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, filipe.teles@ua.pt

Discussant
Prof. Vanessa Elias de Oliveira, Universidade Federal do ABC, Brazil, Vanessa.oliveira@ufabc.edu.br

Concepts in public policies, governance and public administration are increasingly being developed and discussed on a global scale, whereas they usually stem from theories and empirical experiences made in specific cultural contexts. Very often those concepts start from the assumption of universally valid and accepted guiding principles as efficiency, transparency, accountability, social welfare, democracy, sustainability or even market-friendliness. International development agencies like the World Bank as well as the more and more globally integrated scientific community are increasingly engaged in not only developing but also disseminating such homogenizing concepts in a world characterized by significant cultural diversity. In this panel we assume this cultural dimension as a crucial variable to explain differences in the comprehension and assimilation of such concepts in different national and regional contexts, with significant impacts on, for instance, policymaking, implementation strategies and assessment. In addition, we suppose that the cultural dimension not only matters from the north-south perspective concerning, for instance, the transfer of the ideas of good governance or new public management to development policies. But also in the developed world such concepts do not necessarily travel so straight and well between different societies and might lead to adjustment processes in different respects : reconciling them positively with the existing institutional and cultural conditions ; undermining them in order to maintain deep-rooted traditional practices ; or reinventing them in order to develop proper and innovative approaches. The further problem with these concepts, with a specific cultural focus, is that they can be poor in capturing variety and can exclude innovative answers and experimentation that challenge traditional approaches.
For this panel we invite papers able to shed light on the role of culture in reform processes with regard to governance and public policy. We particularly encourage contributions to the following topics :
• Theoretical contributions on the cultural dimension of governance and public policy
• Methodological approaches able to highlight the role of cultural differences in such adaptation processes
• Empirical research on specific countries as well as comparative studies in international perspective.

Studying « politics of memory » as public policies : a new frontier for the understanding of the contemporary transformations of the State ?

Chair
Sarah Gensburger, National Center for Scientific Research – ISP, France, sgensburger@yahoo.fr

Discussant
Audrey Celestine, University of Lille 3, France

Since the beginning of the 1990s, an inscreasing number of governments has been implementing public policies in the field of « memory ». Strangely enough considering the recent development of « memory studies », political scientists have so far shown little interest in these public actions that have to do with evoking the past. Yet, scholarship on public policies can help to see differently several of the dimensions of the contemporary “memory boom” while the patterns of these memory policies challenge part of the conceptualization of the recent changes in public policies and the State :

1) The implication of the State in the public evocation of the past is anything but new. However, it is only since the 80s that more and more governments have been labelling their policies as dealing with « memory » and been, consequently, implementing specific services. Since the development of these memory policies is exactly contemporary with the diffusion of new public management, how can it be that the administrations in charge of memory policies have « failed », until now, to define any performance indicator ? Can the study of these policies tell us something new about the limits and/or side effects of new public management ?

2) In most of their dimensions, memory policies can be seen as an example of « icon politics » (Michael Moran). How can we articulate their inflation during the past 30 years with the conflicting rise of a controlling regulatory state ? What are the final goals of policies labelled through « memory » and who are their publics ?

3) Finally, (re)thinking « politics of memory » as public policies opens a new field for the sociology of public policy instrumentation. This sociology has so far been paying attention to highly technical and innovative instruments. How can it help to understand the recent multiplication of public celebrations of the past – from the vote of new national days to the organization of occasional ceremonies ? Can a public policy instrumentation rest on symbolic and ancient tools when implemented within new social and political configurations ?

These three directions are far from tackling all the dimensions of the issue. This panel wants to gather the diversity of works focused on the intersection, seen as promising, between memory studies and public policy approaches. Memory issues have already found the attention of some political scientists during the past few years, mainly in Europe and the United-States. This panel hopes to take stock of these studies and open new directions.

GENDER AND POLICY

Gender and Public Policy

Chairs
Stephanie Paterson, Concordia University, Canada, spaterso@alcor.concordia.ca
Francesca Scala, Concordia University, Canada, Francesca.Scala@concordia.ca

The importance of gender and social location as analytical lenses for policy is undeniable. On the one hand, gender and critical analysis has become increasingly valuable in applied settings. For example, internationally, more than 160 governments have explicitly committed to ‘mainstream’ gender into policy analysis. Furthermore, gender is increasingly tied to broader governing principles such as accountability, representativeness, responsiveness, and efficiency. At the same time, however, scholars have noted that throughout the West, women’s policy agencies and advisory councils linking to women’s groups to the state have been largely dismantled, thereby limiting the analytical capacity and influence of gender analysts within governments. Thus, the conditions under which gender analysis takes place, as well as how such analysis is learned, applied, and implemented, and to what effect, are important targets of inquiry.

On the other hand, numerous studies have demonstrated that public policy has a tremendous impact on the politics of everyday life, from state structures to identities, and cannot be understood without reference to social location. Yet, we are at a point in history where the very importance of ’gender’ as both signifier and analytical concept is being questioned, both from conservative groups and from post-gender theorists and activists. It is therefore important – and necessary – to make visible the power relations premised on gender, race, sexuality, ability, and so on, that permeate every aspect of public policy.

Towards this end, we propose a panel on Gender and Public Policy for the First International Conference on Public Policy. We welcome papers on topics such as gender mainstreaming, gender and the bureaucracy, Trans politics, feminist theory and policy, and empirical analyses interrogating the lived effects of public policy. 

THEORIES OF POLICY PROCESS

Morality Policy – Theoretical Advancements and Empirical Evidence

Chair
Christoph Knill, University of Konstanz, christoph.knill@uni-konstanz.de

The recent years have witnessed a remarkable increase in scholarship on so-called morality policies – areas of societal regulation which are particularly prone to conflicts of basic values. While those studies have produced a range of intriguing new insights, the research program is still under construction, both conceptually and empirically. Can morality policies be identified a-priori or does our categorization vary between countries and across time ? How do framing effects interfere with our assessment ? To what extent do religious beliefs structure the political conflict and what are the ramifications for the political process ? How can we explain policy change and stability ?

Around the globe, such questions have increasingly found the attention of political scientists during the past years and the empirical evidence is growing. Scholars have studied issues as diverse as abortion, gambling, same-sex marriage, pornography, prostitution, euthanasia, capital punishment and drug consumption as morality policies both in the form of single case studies and in a comparative fashion. The question remains, however, what the defining cornerstones of an integrated theory of morality politics should be and to which extent such a theory is elusive or attainable.
The proposed panel brings together contributions which speak to the questions outlined above. It explicitly invites diverse research designs, which approach the study of morality politics from different theoretical and methodological angles. Based on the accepted contributions, the panel will take stock of the current state of the research field and identify promisingavenues for its further development.

Strategies for Research Design and Analysis in Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework

Chair
Chris Weible, University of Colorado Denver, United States, chris.weible@ucdenver.edu

Discussants
Adam Henry, University of Arizona, United States
Daniel Nohrstedt, Uppsala University, Sweden

One of the leading frameworks for comparative policy analysis is the advocacy coalition framework. Despite worldwide applications, general challenges persist in defining and operationalizing concepts, modeling collected data, and applying the ACF’s theories in different contexts. More specifically, new and experienced scholars struggle to define and understand subsystems as semi-autonomous as well as nested and overlapping, to measure and model coalitions and learning, and to find valid explanations for policy change. The purpose of this panel is to discuss these general and specific challenges using the experiences and work by graduate students or recently graduated scholars who have applied the advocacy coalition framework in their dissertations. The panel will include manuscripts with original data to highlight approaches to data modeling and analyses and will also feature proposals to highlight issues of research design and conceptual development and measurement.

Bounded rationality and public policy : A new scientism for a post-modern world ?

Chairs
Simon Hegelich, University of Siegen, Simon.Hegelich@uni-siegen.de
Bryan D. Jones, Texas University, bdjones@austin.utexas.edu

Discussant
Carsten Hefeker, University of Siegen

In public policy analyses, especially in punctuated equilibrium theory, recent contributions try to identify general empirical laws in the tradition of Herbert Simon, the “father” of bounded rationality. Simon always thought the social sciences “needed the same kind of rigor and the same mathematical underpinnings that had made the ‘hard’ sciences so brilliantly successful.” (Simon in his Nobel Lecture)

On the other hand, approaches like the multiple streams framework stress the ambiguity of the policy process and argue that the assumption of the possibility of objective social sciences falls short behind the strong arguments of post-modernism.
The main question therefore seems to be : Do we need more sophisticated scientific approaches to cope with the complexity and ambiguity of post-modern public policy, or do we need a broader understanding of contingency to take us beyond the limits of objectivism ?

The theoretical foundation of bounded rationally might lead a way out of this dualism : If the limitations of the human mind are taken as a starting point, the room for subjectivity is defined by objective boarders. Public policy analyses then would not try to determine the outcomes of the policy process but rather to understand decisions in the context of their boundaries.
From these questions, three topics arise :

  1. State of the art in objective public policy analyses : methods, problems, new ideas
  2. Post-modern public policy : new hermeneutic approaches
  3. Bridging the gap : objective hermeneutics and cognitive data analysis in public policy

Empirical, methodological, and theoretical papers are invited that make a contribution to objective public policy analyses or discuss the limits of such approaches. In addition, we welcome papers addressing meta-problems in public policy analyses like theory testing or the influence of the scientific community.

New directions in the study of public policy

Chairs
Peter John, University College London, peter.john@ucl.ac.uk
Hellmut Wollmann, Humboldt University Berlin, hellmut.wollmann@rz.hu-berlin.de
Daniel A. Mazmanian, University of Southern California, mazmania@usc.edu

« In » the 2nd edition of his book, Analyzing Public Policy, Peter John wrote : “The surprise is that, bar the large expansion of interest in interpretative policy analysis, there have been relatively few innovations in the theory of public policy since 1998, or at least not as many as there were in the early 1990s”.

This panel is designed to challenge this view and to show that in fact there are innovations in both the theory of public policy and with tests of those theories. One such recent shift in theoretical reflection and empirical research might be seen in the “post governance” debate heading in a “getting government (regulation, hierarchy) back in” direction and perhaps towards a in a new conceptual and institutional “hybridisation” and “mix” (for instance of a “neo-Weberian” sort).

Interested colleagues are invited to put forward papers that show new directions in the field. We welcome any contribution, either theoretical and empirical, which aims to offer a new perspective, or at least to show how an existing perspective still can provide innovations.

Submission guidelines

Although authors may propose multiple papers we highly recommend only one paper per author. If more than one paper is presented this may involve scheduling problems which we may not be able to address.

Before proposing a paper, you must be verify that, if your proposal is accepted, you will attend the conference.
A paper proposal may only be submitted to one panel. There are more than 80 panel proposals. Please take your time to find the panel which correspond to your proposal. Here, you can navigate easily between proposals.
Please note that English will be the official language of the conference. Abstracts, papers, and presentations are expected to be delivered in English.

To propose a paper proposal, you must e-mail to the panel chair(s) by 

February 1st 2013,

a document (Word or eq.) containing :

  • The title of your proposal
  • The name, email and university of the author(s)
  • An abstract of 300 words to explain your proposal

Paper proposers will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal by the panel’s chair before the 1st March.

The conference is panel-based and all paper proposers are encouraged to locate the most appropriate panel for their work and submit their abstract there. However in some cases a paper proposal may not fit in any panel. In this case the paper should be submitted to the "Open Panel" by sending directly to icpublicpolicy@gmail.com.

Lieux

  • Institute of Political Sciences - Domaine Universitaire - 1030 avenue centrale
    Grenoble, France (38400)

Dates

  • vendredi 01 février 2013

Mots-clés

  • politiques publiques

Contacts

  • Philippe Zittoun
    courriel : icpublicpolicy [at] gmail [dot] com

URLS de référence

Source de l'information

  • Karine Feuillet
    courriel : karine [dot] feuillet [at] umrpacte [dot] fr

Licence

CC0-1.0 Cette annonce est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universel.

Pour citer cette annonce

« First International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) », Appel à contribution, Calenda, Publié le mercredi 19 décembre 2012, https://doi.org/10.58079/mg1

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