European Policy Analysis最新文献

{"title":"Welfare state support during the COVID-19 pandemic: Change and continuity in public attitudes towards social policies in Germany","authors":"Bernhard Ebbinghaus,&nbsp;Lukas Lehner,&nbsp;Elias Naumann","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1152","DOIUrl":"10.1002/epa2.1152","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Our analysis asks whether the pandemic situation affects welfare state support in Germany. The pandemic has increased the health and income risks calling for welfare state intervention. While increased needs, more deservingness, and higher state responsibility during such a crisis would suggest augmented support generally and among those at risk, this might be a short-term effect and cost considerations could reverse this trend. We study public attitudes towards four key social policy areas based on the German Internet Panel (GIP). We use three waves prior and further three waves since the pandemic had been declared in March 2020. The analysis shows both continuity in the popularity of social policies, in particular health and pensions, and some short-term increase in support for unemployment and family policies. The results after nearly 2 years suggest rather continuation with some thermostatic short-term boosts in support instead of any long-lasting change.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 3","pages":"297-311"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/e2/e7/EPA2-8-297.PMC9350131.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40704031","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":"How do good governance and democratic quality affect policy performance?","authors":"Nils C. Bandelow,&nbsp;Johanna Hornung","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1144","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;This special issue of European Policy Analysis aims at combining the increasingly comprehensive comparative democracy research with public policy analysis. In comparative democracy research, various datasets have been developed and regularly collected in recent decades to describe and assess institutional features of democratic and non-democratic political systems. Some of these datasets also include at least some variables to cover public policies while others do not (Apaza, &lt;span&gt;2009&lt;/span&gt;; Coppedge et al., &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;; Bertelsmann Stiftung, &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;). At the same time, policy research always seeks to integrate institutionalist factors, in particular in the context of international comparisons (Béland, &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;; Hornung, &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;; Zohlnhöfer et al., &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;). Moreover, the perspective of policy research is increasingly broadening beyond Anglo-Saxon countries as the original scope of application and addresses policy processes and outcomes in a variety of states and political systems which makes the systematic study of the relationship between the characteristics of political systems on the one hand and their policy performance on the other particularly important (Bandelow et al., &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The specific focus of this special issue is on a discussion of the relationship between democratic qualities, good governance (executive capacities and executive accountability), and policy performances (economic, social, environmental, and pandemic policies) in OECD and EU states. Data for the analysis of this relationship is provided by the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) project of the Bertelsmann Foundation since 2009 (Jäckle &amp; Bauschke, &lt;span&gt;2009&lt;/span&gt;; Schraad-Tischler &amp; Seelkopf, &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;; Bertelsmann Stiftung, &lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;). SGI can serve as a central data basis because it includes data on all of the above-named pillars. The SGI project provides a European perspective as it includes many European (mostly German) scholars even though it also collects data for non-European democracies. This issue is thus also intended to contribute to one of EPA's central goals, namely the discussion of European perspectives on policy research. In selecting authors for the contributions, a balance had to be struck between relevant knowledge of the data set on the one hand and the challenge of possible biases in assessing the SGI’s strengths and weaknesses on the other. While Bertelsmann Foundation officials were involved in discussions during the planning phase of this special issue to some extent, they had no influence on the composition of the contributions, their content, or the review process. The concept of this issue was developed independently of the Bertelsmann Foundation. There were neither financial nor content-related or other influences. Many of the methods and results presented here lend themselves to applications to other data sets. It is important for us to emph","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 2","pages":"130-135"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1144","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72163588","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":"Pandemic responses at the subnational level: Exploring politics, administration, and politicization in Swedish municipalities","authors":"Jörgen Sparf,&nbsp;Evangelia Petridou,&nbsp;Mikael Granberg,&nbsp;Per Becker,&nbsp;Beatrice Onn","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1151","DOIUrl":"10.1002/epa2.1151","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Swedish response to the pandemic at the national level has attracted considerable international attention, but little focus has been placed on the way municipalities dealt with the crisis. Using Hay's dimensions of politicization, namely the capacity for human agency, deliberation in the public domain, and social context, we analyze the politicization of the municipal response to the pandemic in Sweden. We do this based on the analysis of the decision making process to activate (or not) an extraordinary crisis management committee. We find inter alia, that (i) only a quarter of the municipalities activated the committee while a majority of them had an alternate special organization in place; (ii) support to the existing organizational structure was more salient than creating an extraordinary organization, and (iii) a robust municipal structure was deemed to be one able to withstand shocks without resorting to extraordinary governance arrangements. We find a ‘conditioned politicization’ of the response, privileging administration over politics.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 3","pages":"327-344"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/f0/e9/EPA2-8-327.PMC9347882.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40704030","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 influence of democracy, governance and government policies on the COVID-19 pandemic mortality","authors":"Uwe Wagschal","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1146","DOIUrl":"10.1002/epa2.1146","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The paper analyses the determinants of mortality during the Corona pandemic. In a first step, possible causes are subjected to a global comparison.The focus is on political, institutional, economic, demographic and health policy factors. It is shown that, contrary to the assumption, democratic countries have a higher Covid-19 mortality. In a second step, the developed democracies are then analysed to explain this puzzle. Here, more detailed information is used than in the global comparison. It turns out that, measured by the Oxford Stringency Index, government action has been largely unsuccessful. Also, the party-political composition of the government does not play a role.The most important factors are a country's governance structures, the level of corona incidence, a country's burden of high-risk patients and its health system. In addition, cultural factors and the vaccination rate seem to have an influence on mortality.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 2","pages":"231-247"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/02/b2/EPA2-8-231.PMC9347565.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40590095","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":"Identifying diverse paths toward successful policy performance in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Union countries: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) exploitation of the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) data","authors":"Giulia Bazzan,&nbsp;Priscilla Álamos-Concha,&nbsp;Benoît Rihoux","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1145","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although the policy performance field acknowledges the importance of adopting a long-term decision making perspective to attain more sustainable policy outcomes, it overlooks the way in which sustainable governance conditions and policy performance relate to each other. We address this gap by investigating why some countries succeed in terms of policy performance while others do not. Applying a fuzzy-set QCA to 41 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and European Union countries of the Sustainable Governance Indicators data, we find out that successful economic and social policy performance is mainly driven by executive accountability conditions combined with effective implementation, while the high-quality of media plays a key role in successful environmental policy performance. Considering the multiple paths that practitioners can follow toward sustainable development benefits, they can also learn how to shift from short-term to long-term thinking by identifying “what works and why,” formulating good practices and guidelines for better policy performance in the respective national contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 2","pages":"178-208"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1145","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72140721","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":"Measuring Policy Performance, Democracy, and Governance Capacities: A conceptual and methodological assessment of the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI)","authors":"Aurel Croissant,&nbsp;Lars Pelke","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1141","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper provides a critical assessment of the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) and compares it with other prominent indices that address specific components of governance: V-Dem, WGI, and BTI. We offer a comparative assessment of content validity of these governance measures, their data generation processes, and their convergent validity. We conclude that the SGI’s most important contribution is the conceptualization of policy performance as a discrete index. Other relative strengths are the theoretical embeddedness and the exclusion of irrelevant meanings of governance, and the conceptualization of three governance components (<i>Governance</i>, <i>Policy Performance</i>, and <i>Democracy</i>). However, in terms of geographic and temporal coverage, the SGI is clearly inferior to WGI and V-Dem. The handling of third-party statistical data, the absence of uncertainty scores, and the (a-theoretical) aggregation of different indicators are additional shortcomings of the SGI. Finally, the SGI’s iterative process of expert deliberation has merits but is prone to biases.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 2","pages":"136-159"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1141","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72191760","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":"Analyzing national policy styles empirically using the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI): insights into long-term patterns of policy-making","authors":"Jale Tosun,&nbsp;Michael Howlett","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1142","url":null,"abstract":"<p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 2","pages":"160-177"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72191761","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":"Sustainable policy performance and types of governance: Is there a trade-off between consensus and efficiency?","authors":"Detlef Jahn,&nbsp;Sophie Suda","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1143","DOIUrl":"10.1002/epa2.1143","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We use the Bertelsmann Foundation's Sustainable Government Indicators (SGI) to find out how executive efficiency and consensus capacity influence sustainable policy performance. Although those two concepts are often seen as opposites, we show that this is not the case and that they can actually complement each other: separately as well as together, an efficient executive and consensus capacity support more sustainable policy performance. However, government efficiency is a double-edged sword. Depending on the policy positions governments take, outcomes vary. In this respect, efficient government structures are an amplifier of policy outcomes. In the case of sustainable policy performance, left-leaning governments increase sustainable policy performance, while right-leaning governments do not.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 2","pages":"209-230"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1143","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43053939","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":"How immigration affects the welfare state in the short and long run: Differences between social spending and policy generosity","authors":"Friederike Römer","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1140","DOIUrl":"10.1002/epa2.1140","url":null,"abstract":"<p>To assess how immigration affects welfare states, studies have mainly used social expenditure as an indocator of welfare state strength, with inconclusive results. Furthermore, the relationship between immigration and different social policy fields has been mostly overlooked, and temporal dynamics have often been ignored. Using data on 21 OECD countries 1980–2010, this paper tests how immigration relates to (a) social expenditures, and (b) generosity of policy in regard to unemployment benefits and public pensions. Using dynamic and static panel models and controlling for relevant structural factors there is evidence for a robust and significant negative association between net migration and spending in the short term, with no evidence that migration increases social spending in later years. Some evidence is found for the compensation hypothesis, i.e., a positive association between net migration and unemployment generosity. A robust positive association was also found for net migration and pension generosity. There is thus little support that migration has a burdening or undermining effect on the welfare state.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"9 1","pages":"69-90"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/epa2.1140","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45658193","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":"Super-users and hyper-experts in the provision of policy advice: Evidence from a survey of Canadian academics","authors":"Andrea Migone,&nbsp;Michael R. McGregor,&nbsp;Kathy Brock,&nbsp;Michael Howlett","doi":"10.1002/epa2.1139","DOIUrl":"10.1002/epa2.1139","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The relationships of influence and activity between academics and other actors (public, private, and non-governmental) in the policy process are complex. Although older work often argued academic research at best had an indirect “environmental” or “enlightenment” effect on policy-makers, (May et al. (2016). Journal of Public Policy, 36, 195) recently argued that in the US case previous studies misconstrued the role of academic policy advice because they surveyed “average” academics and in so doing missed the significant impact of a small elite group of “hyper-experts” within an already small group of “super-users” interacting on a constant basis with government policy-makers. This article draws upon data from a survey of academics in four fields (Business, Engineering, Health and Politics) in six major Canadian Universities to map out the relationships existing between academics and other actors in the public, private, and non-governmental sectors and test for the existence of this elite pattern of interaction in a second country.</p>","PeriodicalId":52190,"journal":{"name":"European Policy Analysis","volume":"8 4","pages":"370-393"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43978467","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}