Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557320x15898191176090
May Chu
{"title":"The limits to the internationalisation of regulation: divergent enforcement strategies in China’s food safety regulation","authors":"May Chu","doi":"10.1332/030557320x15898191176090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557320x15898191176090","url":null,"abstract":"This article empirically analyses enforcement strategies that characterise food safety regulations in China. It demonstrates that the Chinese government has deployed a dichotomous approach, resulting in very different regulations in its domestic and export food markets. The export food sector exhibits strong deterrent measures whereas regulation of domestic food markets is reactive and relies on persuasive approaches to enforcement. These variations between the two sectors result from a combination of the internationalisation of regulatory practice in the case of exports and resource constraints, a lack of institutional capacity and resistance to regulation from intertwined business and government interests when it comes to domestic food markets. This article addresses a gap in existing theories of regulation by showing how an industrialising economy with an authoritarian regime employs an accommodative and pragmatic approach to regulation that balances international pressure and national interests and produces contrasting approaches in different sectors.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80606804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557320x15907721287475
Benjamin Ewert, Kathrin Loer
{"title":"Advancing behavioural public policies: in pursuit of a more comprehensive concept","authors":"Benjamin Ewert, Kathrin Loer","doi":"10.1332/030557320x15907721287475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557320x15907721287475","url":null,"abstract":"Behavioural public policy is predominantly based on insights from behavioural economics and psychology in order to ‘nudge’ people to act in line with specific aims and to overcome the dilemma of behaviour that contradicts economic rationality. In contrast, we define behavioural public policy as a multi-disciplinary and multi-methodological concept that utilises insights from the whole range of behavioural research. Based on a scoping review and peer survey we see merit in behavioural insights from disciplines such as anthropology, geography and sociology as well as the application of qualitative methods. Our findings identify the need to advance behavioural public policy conceptually and methodologically. This article challenges our current understanding of behavioural policymaking by integrating ‘foreign’ views and approaches that do not (yet) belong to the core discipline. We argue that behavioural public policy should not be a synonym for a limited number of policy approaches (for example, nudges) based on specific research methods (for example, randomised control trials) to reach individual behaviour change. Instead, our findings suggest a redefinition of the scientific footing of behavioural public policy.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79214850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557320x15835195302535
Ingela K. Naumann, C. Crouch
{"title":"Rescaling education policy: central‐local relations and the politics of scale in England and Sweden","authors":"Ingela K. Naumann, C. Crouch","doi":"10.1332/030557320x15835195302535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557320x15835195302535","url":null,"abstract":"Governments worldwide have sought to introduce greater choice and competition as mechanisms to improve the quality of education provision and outcomes. However, there is considerable cross-national variation in education policy, particularly regarding the role of local government. To explain such differences, this article focuses on recent reforms in compulsory education in England and Sweden. It shows that although governments in both countries have advocated choice, competition and participation, education reform has led to the centralisation of school governance in England but decentralisation in Sweden. Drawing on the concept of ‘scalecraft’ as a specific form of ‘statecraft’, it argues that these differences in the rescaling of education policy reflect different conceptions of central‐local relations and the role of local government. More broadly, the article shows how national governments strategically use scalar reorganisation (scalecraft) to support broader political goals (statecraft), contributing to a better understanding of the spatial dimensions of public policy reform.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"59 1","pages":"583-601"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87580908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557320x15986403024733
Jakob Trischler, J. Kaluza
{"title":"Co-production in the recruitment of frontline public service employees","authors":"Jakob Trischler, J. Kaluza","doi":"10.1332/030557320x15986403024733","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557320x15986403024733","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses whether involving public service users in the recruitment of frontline employees (FLEs) helps to identify candidates who have the skills needed to co-produce with citizens. It investigates user involvement in FLE recruitment in three public service organisations in Sweden – from the perspectives of service managers, service developers, Human Resource Managers, union representatives and frontline employees. It finds that involving users was perceived to be beneficial for attracting and identifying applicants with a user-centred mindset. User involvement was also seen useful for establishing realistic expectations of what public services can deliver. However, a perceived challenge was to ensure equality and equity of user contributions. This included finding users who were sufficiently informed but without resorting to ‘expert users’. Many users required preparation, which added to the complexity and cost of recruitment, and it was important to overcome internal resistance by involving staff in designing and trialling the process.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80950307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557320x15956825120821
Holger Strassheim
{"title":"Who are behavioural public policy experts and how are they organised globally?","authors":"Holger Strassheim","doi":"10.1332/030557320x15956825120821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557320x15956825120821","url":null,"abstract":"Behavioural public policy has spread internationally over recent years. Worldwide, expert units are translating insights from behavioural sciences into policy interventions. Yet, behavioural expert networks are a puzzling case. They seem to oscillate between two modes of collective action: as an epistemic community, they are based on the consensual belief that biases in behaviour pose a problem for policymaking. As an instrument constituency, they bring together a diversity of actors, unified not by consensual beliefs about problems but by practices of promoting behavioural instruments as solutions. Drawing on a review of literature, this article provides a systematic analysis of the relation between epistemic communities and instrument constituencies. It argues that there has been an ‘agency shift’ from one mode to the other. The implications are that experts should be aware of the fact that the instruments they are proposing might develop a political life of their own.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87335155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557319x15613699681219
Michael Howlett
{"title":"Challenges in applying design thinking to public policy: dealing with the varieties of policy formulation and their vicissitudes","authors":"Michael Howlett","doi":"10.1332/030557319x15613699681219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557319x15613699681219","url":null,"abstract":"Policy design is a type of policy formulation activity centred on knowledge application in the creation of policy alternatives. Expected to attain public sector goals and government ambitions in an effective fashion, it can be undertaken many different ways. The current literature on policy design features an ongoing debate between adherents of traditional approaches to the subject in the policy sciences and those importing into policymaking the insights of design practices in other fields such as industrial engineering and product development: ‘design-thinking’. Issues examined in more traditional approaches to policy design are very wide-ranging and address a wide variety of formulation modalities and their strengths and weaknesses. Efforts to promote ‘design-thinking’ in the public policy realm, on the other hand, focus on policy innovation and rarely deal with issues such as the barriers to implementation, political feasibility or the constraints under which decision-making takes place. This article discusses these differences and argues adherents of design-thinking need to expand their reach and consider not only the circumstances facilitating the generation of novel ideas but also the lessons of more traditional approaches concerning the political and other challenges faced in policy formulation and implementation.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"40 1","pages":"49-65"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76071114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557319x15586040837640
Maurits Waardenburg, M. Groenleer, J. D. Jong
{"title":"Designing environments for experimentation, learning and innovation in public policy and governance","authors":"Maurits Waardenburg, M. Groenleer, J. D. Jong","doi":"10.1332/030557319x15586040837640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557319x15586040837640","url":null,"abstract":"There has been much debate about the contribution of 'design thinking' to the fields of public policy and governance. This article makes an empirical contribution to this debate by examining the Organised Crime Field Lab - an environment for experimenting with, learning about and innovating in collaborative governance. The study involved working with 18 different multi-agency collaborations involving over 160 professionals as they developed novel approaches to fighting organised crime. Combining quasi-experimental and action research methods, our analysis offers valuable insights into how an environment can be designed that creates the conditions to support collaborations in overcoming the most common challenges in their design process. In particular, we find that a specially designed environment including a structured but flexible problem-solving space, an inclusive facilitative process and a custom-made accountability structure can support collaborative design processes.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":"67-87"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81693620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557319x15579230420090
B. Peters
{"title":"Designing institutions for designing policy","authors":"B. Peters","doi":"10.1332/030557319x15579230420090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557319x15579230420090","url":null,"abstract":"Policy design has returned to the centre of discussions of public policy, both for academics and practitioners. With that interest in policy design has come an interest in organisations and institutions that will do the designing, with much of the interest being in structures such as policy laboratories that attempt to foster innovation. These organisations tend to exist outside government hierarchies and support collaborative designing with stakeholders and citizens. This paper examines the potential of these structures from an organisational perspective. Although they do offer great promise as sources of innovation they also confront a number of institutional barriers and dilemmas. This paper focuses on those barriers and dilemmas, as well as some possible means of overcoming them.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"131-147"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90200371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1332/030557320x15910206974407
Subba Reddy Yarram, B. Dollery, C. Tran
{"title":"The impact of rate capping on local government expenditure","authors":"Subba Reddy Yarram, B. Dollery, C. Tran","doi":"10.1332/030557320x15910206974407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/030557320x15910206974407","url":null,"abstract":"In common with higher tiers of government worldwide, Australian state governments often adopt highly interventionist ‘one-size-fits-all’ policies aimed at improving local government efficiency and performance. In this article, we employ recent expenditure data to investigate empirically the short-term impacts of rate capping on municipal expenditure in the Australian state of Victoria and to explore whether it had differential effects on spending by different types of local authorities. We find that while total spending did not fall, budgets for ‘invisible’ services, like aged care and disabled services, did decline. Our analysis also shows that the impact of rate capping on the various types of municipal expenditures is uneven between the different categories of local authority. Our findings add to the existing literature on local government finance by demonstrating that the impact of rate capping varies according to different expenditure types classified by local council categories in a non-linear population framework.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"129 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80003804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy and PoliticsPub Date : 2019-06-05DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447350439.003.0005
Bent Greve
{"title":"What form has the development in welfare spending taken?","authors":"Bent Greve","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447350439.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447350439.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter look into the size of the overall spending on welfare as a percentage of the total economy, measured by GDP, as this is one indicator of whether in relative terms social policy is actually declining or not, albeit it cannot stand alone. This chapter tries to show and depict the development from before the financial crisis until the current time, insofar as comparative data are available.","PeriodicalId":47631,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"77-102"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147914396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}