Analyzing national policy styles empirically using the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI): insights into long-term patterns of policy-making

Abstract

The concept of national policy styles differs between states in respect of whether their governments react to policy changes in an anticipatory or reactive fashion and whether they seek to achieve consensus with societal actors or impose decisions on them. To date, this conceptualization has been applied to a limited number of states and produced only a small set of case studies due to the absence of large-n data. We assess whether the dimensions on strategic planning and public consultation of the Bertelsmann Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) provide conceptually sound and empirically insightful indicators of national policy styles. Our explorative analysis reveals that the SGI are useful for operationalizing the concept of national policy styles and could advance the debate on it. Our analysis shows that differences exist between countries in terms of their policy styles, and that the policy styles remained stable in most countries between 2014 and 2020.