European Policy Analysis最新文献

{"title":"Crisis management across Europe","authors":"Nils C. Bandelow, Johanna Hornung, Fritz Sager, Ilana Schröder","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1238","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The first issue of European Policy Analysis (EPA) in 2025 demonstrates how the various political crises can act as a magnifying glass to further emphasize the explanatory power and relevance of policy process research. This applies both to the long-term economic and social challenges in Europe and to short-term and temporary crises, although they have to be treated very differently (Mavrot et al., <span>2024</span>). With regard to lessons learned and future resilience, it is important to systematically analyze the experiences of past crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Policy process research can make an important contribution here, particularly with regard to the role of science in the policy process (Capano et al., <span>2024</span>; Chen & Zhang, <span>2024</span>; Hadorn et al., <span>2022</span>; Weible et al., <span>2020</span>). One of the important lessons learned was the special role of scientists not only in advising politicians but also in political communication. Here, Switzerland's small federal democracy, with its special direct democratic elements offers a special environment. Ksinsik (<span>2025</span>) combines concepts of science communication with the Narrative Policy Framework in a paper that has won the Best Paper Award of the ECPR Standing Group of Public Policy. The study looks at the special way Swiss scientists worked with policy discussions during the pandemic. It uses an index from NPF research to measure the devil-angel shift (Chang & Koebele, <span>2020</span>). By analyzing Swiss newspaper articles, the research reveals that scientists employed narratives more frequently when providing problem advice compared to policy advice.</p><p>Equally focusing on the domestic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, Demler (<span>2025</span>) investigates changing party competition and political actors' positions in Germany as a result of the crisis. Just as the first article in this issue, she ties in with similar analyses of COVID-19 discourses across countries (Lemor & Montpetit, <span>2024</span>; Persson et al., <span>2022</span>) and looks at the discourse in German newspapers to extract information on the positions of political actors and measures their centrality in the discourse network. The findings indicate that those actors that are central in the discourse are characterized by being part of the executive branch of the Länder and federal level and having candidate status. Hence, the polarization of discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic was less an issue of government versus opposition but between legislative and executive branch, whereby crisis communication apparently was also actively used for personal profile-building.</p><p>In the third contribution to this issue, Cantó et al. (<span>2025</span>) examine how and why macroeconomic factors such as economic development moderate the relationship between European Structural and Investment Funds and EU Support. The empirical basis of this study consists of Eu","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"11 1","pages":"6-9"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1238","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143431293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Translating policy harmonization into practice—The case of the EU Blue Card Directive","authors":"Almina Bešić,&nbsp;Andreas Diedrich,&nbsp;Dženeta Karabegović","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1234","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study introduces a translation perspective to analyze the policy harmonization process, highlighting imitation, brokering, and editing in shaping policy dynamics at EU and national levels. The translation perspective emphasizes that while policy development is ongoing, the protracted process signals a shift in EU-wide coordination of skilled labor migration. We show how ongoing translation efforts have transformed the coordination of skilled labor migration across the EU, as labor migration policies have translated into each other, resulting in mutual transformation. The study provides insights into the complex processes of policy harmonization via the Blue Card, enhancing understanding of EU labor migration policy. The findings demonstrate the continuous nature of policy translation between multiple contexts. The article traces developments surrounding the EU Blue Card Directive, including a parallel scheme in Austria, offering insights into skilled migration policy dynamics beyond linear diffusion models.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"11 1","pages":"94-113"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1234","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143431722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Same money, different impact? The curving effect of European Structural and Investment Funds on EU support in Spain (1990–2019)","authors":"Joel Cantó,&nbsp;Javier Baraibar,&nbsp;Javier Arregui","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1232","url":null,"abstract":"<p>European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) engender European Union (EU) support in generating economic growth, but their effect is conditional on individual European identity and educational background. This study investigates whether the positive impact of ESIF spending on EU attitudes also depends on the alignment of funding with the economic needs of recipient regions. We examine this issue with the Spanish case (1990–2019), employing a unique combined data set of Eurobarometer waves and regional NUTS-2 economic indicators. Our findings indicate that EU funds manage to decrease Euroscepticism only in laggard regions, which receive the lion's share of funds and allocate them to public goods easily perceived and communicated to the local population. Conversely, the effect of ESIF on transforming attitudes is absent in middle and high-income regions. The findings suggest a more complicated relationship between ESIF and EU support, which necessitates taking both individual and contextual factors into account.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"11 1","pages":"54-74"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1232","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143431546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Security, first of all, begins at home”: How Finland, Latvia, and Germany prepare “ordinary people” for crises","authors":"Alexandra M. Friede","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1229","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In Europe, and specifically in countries bordering the Baltic Sea, preparedness issues have moved up the policy agenda since Russia's 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine. “Ordinary people” are encouraged to prepare for crises—be it through stockpiling food at home, fact-checking information, or signing up for military training. This article unpacks the process through which individual subjects are “responsibilized.” More specifically, it analyses how the risk of war is communicated to make targets act responsibly, drawing on empirical evidence from Finland, Latvia, and Germany. A main tenet is that policy actors appeal to nationally distinct sets of moral codes to responsibilize publics. The Finnish war experience attests to the value of being united, willing and capable of fighting back. Latvia's defence is framed as an integrative force—with the ultimate aim to deter aggressors and ensure national survival. In Germany, inconsistent messaging prevails, simultaneously reassuring and alerting the public.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"11 1","pages":"114-137"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1229","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143431155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What determines effectiveness in the policy process?","authors":"Nils C. Bandelow,&nbsp;Johanna Hornung,&nbsp;Fritz Sager,&nbsp;Ilana Schröder","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1227","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Public policies should ideally be formulated to address a societal problem and being effective in solving it, both in what regards the effectiveness of the process of their development and in their effect on the target population (Bali et al., &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;; Huber et al., &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;; Knill et al., &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;). Thereby, effectiveness can concern different aspects: It can be related to the coordination or collaboration between policy actors, it can refer to the effectiveness of the policy itself, or the subsequent governance arrangements that result from it (Lubell, &lt;span&gt;2003&lt;/span&gt;; Mei, &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;; Mizrahi et al., &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;; Navarro et al., &lt;span&gt;2012&lt;/span&gt;; Nicholson-Crotty &amp; Carley, &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;; Peters et al., &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;; Steinebach, &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;; Visintin et al., &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;; Wagner et al., &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;). This issue of European Policy Analysis (EPA) brings together research articles that deal—one way or the other—with effectiveness, but from different perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wiget (&lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;) investigates how beliefs shape the formation of advocacy coalitions among key stakeholders using the example of Swiss pesticide policy. The research is grounded in a survey conducted with 54 key actors, achieving a high response rate of 85%. The survey assessed both core beliefs—related to problem perceptions and policy objectives—and secondary beliefs—concerning support for specific policy measures. The findings reveal that actors’ beliefs significantly influence their positions and interactions, suggesting that agreement and disagreement among stakeholders often reflect deeper ideological divides. Wiget's analysis aligns with previous studies that emphasize the importance of shared beliefs in coalition formation. For instance, Weible and Sabatier (&lt;span&gt;2005&lt;/span&gt;) highlighted how policy networks are shaped by the beliefs of actors in marine protected areas, demonstrating that shared values can facilitate collaboration. Similarly, Zafonte and Sabatier (&lt;span&gt;1998&lt;/span&gt;) discussed how shared beliefs and imposed interdependencies influence ally networks in overlapping subsystems, reinforcing the notion that belief systems are crucial in understanding policy dynamics. It will be interesting to see, how this study will relate to the rising body of research on emotions in advocacy coalitions (Fullerton et al., &lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;; Gabehart et al., &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) The study also contributes to the broader literature on environmental policy, echoing findings from Ingold and Varone (&lt;span&gt;2011&lt;/span&gt;) who argued that policy brokers play a significant role in mediating conflicts and fostering cooperation among diverse stakeholders. By situating the Swiss pesticide policy debate within this framework, Wiget underscores the necessity of recognizing the ideological underpinnings of policy disagreements, which can inform more effective governance strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focusi","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"10 4","pages":"482-487"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1227","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142737403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is open strategy a good fit for Public-Private hybrid organizations?","authors":"Christian Rosser,&nbsp;Sabrina A. Ilgenstein,&nbsp;Claus D. Jacobs","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1221","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates whether the systematic application of open strategy can align goals in emerging public-private hybrid organizations, which face the challenge of integrating different identities, forms, and rationales from both public and private stakeholders. We develop an evaluative framework, addressing three crucial issues for a public-private hybrid's early development: What is the public-private hybrid's purpose? Who are the strategic actors involved? What knowledge and skills are needed? By applying the framework to a qualitative case study from the field of Swiss innovation policy, we learn that inclusiveness and transparency largely depend on the timeline of a hybrid's emergence. Public-private hybrids can either choose an inclusive, transparent but gradual, and slow strategy process or a speedy process characterized by the traditional ‘management at the top’ approach. This study offers both empirical and theoretical insights into strategy development in public-private hybrid organizations and its significance for public policy implementation.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"10 4","pages":"604-625"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142737474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The governance of the recovery and resilience facility. The incremental innovation of standard conditionality regime","authors":"Ana Mar Fernández-Pasarín,&nbsp;Andrea Lanaia","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1230","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How can we explain the system of governance underlying the conditionality regime of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)? Two contrasting instruments were adopted by the European Union to deal with the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. The initial adaptation of the intergovernmental European stability mechanism was followed by the RRF, an instrument adopted as an add-on to the EU budget and combining both supranational delegation and intergovernmental filters. Using the lenses of historical institutionalism, and a coalition-based explanatory framework, this article examines the impact of past institutionalization patterns on the shift towards the RRF combined model. It argues that space for supranational delegation occurred as the result of the incremental innovation of the standard Community regime at work in EU budget-related policies.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"11 1","pages":"75-93"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1230","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143431761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The devil-angel shift in times of crisis: How Swiss scientists used policy narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Jule Ksinsik","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1228","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper studies how scientists participated in policy debates during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland not only by telling facts but also by telling stories. It combines insights from Narrative Policy Framework and science communication literature with a conceptualization of scientific advice to study how scientists used narratives and the devil-angel shift narrative strategy to communicate about policies and problems. Quantitative content analysis of Swiss newspaper articles shows that in statements with problem advice scientists use more narratives than in statements with policy advice and that the devil-angel shift score for problem advice is significantly lower for narratives with problem advice. Overall, the research shows that problem advice is a good predictor for the use of the devil shift. However, when scientists used narratives with policy advice, they often followed a negative narrative strategy that also highlights problems.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"11 1","pages":"10-31"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1228","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143431352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Triggering policy learning via formal EU evaluation requirements in the case of Cohesion Policy","authors":"Nicola Francesco Dotti,&nbsp;Louis Colnot,&nbsp;Julia Walczyk,&nbsp;Tomasz Kupiec,&nbsp;Julie Pellegrin","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1226","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The European Union (EU), especially in the context of Cohesion Policy (CP), has played a crucial role in developing and promoting policy evaluation practices across its Member States. Evaluation systems across the Member States have been established to assess CP investments. Remarkably, the use of evaluation research and its contribution to stimulating policy learning has remained a “black box.” To address this issue, this article aims to develop a novel framework centered around four conditions for evaluation-based policy learning, namely: (1) policy relevance, (2) resources and organizational settings, (3) quality of evaluation, and (4) evaluation culture. These conditions are retrieved from the existing literature on policy evaluation and applied to the six-country cases across the EU. The findings suggest how loosening the formal EU evaluation requirements could affect policy learning in the Member States.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"10 4","pages":"515-531"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1226","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142724205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between institutions and narratives: Understanding collective action in innovation policy processes","authors":"Giovanni Esposito,&nbsp;Gaia Taffoni,&nbsp;Andrea Terlizzi,&nbsp;Nathalie Crutzen","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1224","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Explanations for collective action focus on both institutions and narratives. On the one hand, institutional approaches emphasize the role of rules that guide human behavior. On the other hand, accounting for the narratives through which policy actors make sense of their actions helps in understanding strategic behavior. However, applying institutional and narrative perspectives together is daunting, in part because there has not been a common way to integrate the two approaches. In this article, we draw from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to elaborate a novel analytical approach that combines ANT with the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). We use IGT's and NPF's analytical categories in a processual perspective to examine how policy-makers strategically use institutions and narratives to create and stabilize a network of actors in innovation policy processes. We illustrate our approach through an in-depth analysis of the development of a smart city.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"10 4","pages":"532-558"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142737393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}