Christine Rothmayr Allison

Comparative Policy Studies: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

1. Conceptual and Methodological Challenges in Comparative Public Policy Christine Rothmayr and Isabelle Engeli PART I: TYPES OF COMPARISONS AND THEIR METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES 2. Conceptualizing Public Policy Michael Howlett and Ben Cashore 3. Selecting Research Cases and Inferential Types in Comparative Public Policy Research Jeroen van der Heijden PART II: COMPARATIVE DESIGNS 4. Case Studies and (Causal-) Process Tracing Joachim Blatter and Markus Haverland 5. Intermediate-N Comparison: Configurational Comparative Methods Isabelle Engeli, Benoit Rihoux, and Christine Rothmayr 6. Quantitative Methodologies in Public Policy Christian Breunig and John Ahlquist 7. Interpretive Analysis and Comparative Research Dvora Yanow PART III: NEW CHALLENGES IN COMPARATIVE DESIGNS 8. Comparing Beyond Europe and North America Joseph Wong 9. Methods for the Analysis of Policy Interdependence Fabrizio Gilardi 10. Gendering Comparative Policy Studies: Towards Better Sciencel Amy G. Mazur and Season Hoard 11. Mixed-Methods Designs in Comparative Public Policy: The Dismantling of Pension Policies Adrienne Heritier and Sophie Biesenbender

Diverging against all odds? Regulatory paths in embryonic stem cell research across Western Europe

An interest-driven account of embryonic stem cell research would, given the considerable financial and scientific concerns, likely predict regulations to converge towards permissive policies. However, across Western Europe, national regulations of embryonic stem cell research vary considerably, from general bans to permissive policies. There is a lack of systematic accounting for the non-convergence, and the sparse attempts at explanation are contradictory. Drawing on qualitative comparative analysis and configurational causality, we assess the interaction of a number of explanatory factors. Our empirical analysis reveals the importance of one factor in particular, path-dependence, insofar as prior policies on assisted reproduction exert a strong and systematic effect on the subsequent regulation of embryonic stem cell research.

Half a century of “muddling”: Are we there yet?☆

Abstract Half a century after the publication of Lindbloms seminal article “The Science of Muddling Through”, we revisit the heritage of incrementalism in this special issue, analyzing its legacy in public policy and public administration. The articles discuss the extent to which recent theoretical developments have transformed the original idea, reinforced it, or possibly rendered it obsolete. In this introductory article, we provide a short overview over the core elements of incrementalism and assess how the concept is used in scholarly publications and research today. We thereby focus on incrementalism as an analytical concept rather then a prescriptive theory. We argue that even after a half a century of “muddling”, we are not yet through with incrementalism. Some of the ideas that underpin the concept of incrementalism continue to drive research, often in combination with more recent theoretical approaches to the policy process. After half a century, incrementalism is still part of the policy scholars tool kit.

Introduction: The Biotechnology Revolution and Comparative Policy Studies

Much has changed in the seven years since Rothmayr and Varone (2002) wrote that political scientists were largely absent from debates on public policies in the life sciences. As the numerous references cited in the introduction and contributions to this volume attest, the ‘‘consequences of the biotechnology revolution’’ (Fukuyama 2002) have left their mark on political science, most notably in the field of comparative policy studies. During the 1980s, a period characterized by limited regulatory activity, political scientists had a modest interest in biotechnology policy-making. Public debate during this period dealt with the potential benefits and risks of biotechnology, and only to a lesser degree with the regulation of actual products or treatments. Studies addressing biotechnology policies were limited to asserting the need for investigation and discussion of different policy options (e.g. Funke 1985, 1988), to critically discussing different policy choices (e.g. McCormack 1988), or to analysing emerging frameworks for promoting research (e.g. Coleman 1989). Beginning in the 1990s, technological advances and the commercialization of the first GM products created a number of controversies around the globe (Bauer and Gaskell 2002), thus increasing the political salience of biotechnology. Developments that raised awareness included the first successful gene therapy treatment (1990); the commercialization of genetically modified crops (mid 1990s); the first successful cloning of a mammal, the sheep Dolly (1997); and the successful derivation and cultivation of human embryonic stem cells (1998). Whereas in some countries during the early stages of public debate in the 1980s, all types of biotechnology applications were lumped together into a general discussion of the risks and benefits of ‘‘genetic engineering’’ (Abels and Rothmayr 2007: 154–157), public attention now turned to

Direct Legislation in North America and Europe: Promoting or Restricting Biotechnology?

Abstract This article analyzes the impact of direct legislation, such as initiatives and referenda, on policies for agro-food and medical biotechnologies. Between 1980 and 2007, citizens around the world voted on biotechnology policies on 25 occasions. The analysis of these referenda and initiatives has shown that the mobilization of the popular initiative has proven to be an institution for successfully promoting more state intervention, in particular for agro-food biotechnology. Direct democracy contributed to opening up the policy-making process for interests critical towards biotechnology and thus helped to produce a more inclusive policy-making process and provided a counterweight to the influence of physicians and research interests on public policies. However, direct legislation also allowed proponents of biotechnology to promote medical research and applications.

Has Simeon's Vision Prevailed among Canadian Policy Scholars?

Concerned by the proliferation of idiosyncratic prescriptive case studies in the nascent subfield of policy studies, Richard Simeon, in his seminal 1976 article, asked scholars to produce more comparative policy research that aimed at explaining general events and contributing to theory building. The extent to which Simeons vision materialized remains debated. With a view to informing this debate, we conducted a systematic content analysis of the articles published in five major generalist public policy journals from 1980 to 2015. The analysis reveals that Canadian policy scholars took a comparative turn, publishing more territorial, sector and time comparisons than in the past. We also found evidence that theoretical knowledge accumulation is more important today for Canadian authors than it was when Simeon wrote his article.

Similar Regulatory Challenges but Contrasting Modes of Governance? The Puzzle of Governing Human Biotechnology across Western Europe

Human biotechnology is a fairly recent policy issue that emerged onto the political agenda in the 1980s and 1990s in most Western European countries. As an emerging policy area, human biotechnology was largely unstructured and the governance was mostly left to the medical and scientific communities. In the meantime, with the exception of Ireland, all Western European states have designed regulation, yet governance modes still vary considerably. Various governance modes have been developed. Some of these modes rely on traditional “command and control” governing arrangements, others operate with delegated or partial self-governance. While the government has taken a more pre-eminent role over time in the governance of the field, some striking variation remains. The challenge is to understand when, how and under what conditions modes of governance emerge and evolve over time. In this chapter, we shed light on the impact of the dynamics between stakeholders in building up modes of governance over time. We argue that the variation in the configuration of and the interactions between stakeholders, in particular medical and scientific stakeholders, impacts on the trajectory of governance modes over time. The continuous process of structuring a new policy problem is tightly linked to establishing modes of governance (Capano et al. 2012).

Rationalism and Public Policy: Mode of Analysis or Symbolic Politics?

Abstract This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as elaborated by Lindblom in his 1979 article. We argue that while rationalism as a mode of analysis has lost much of its prominence, rationalism as symbolic politics is still very much alive and might even be more present today than it was back when Lindblom wrote his famous 1959 article. The recent shift to new modes of governance whereby elected officials are increasingly delegating decision-making powers to independent bureaucracies – what Majone calls the “regulatory state” or what the British describe as “agencification” or quangoisation” – has created an important legitimacy deficit for those non-majoritarian institutions that exercise political authority without enjoying any direct link to the electoral process. In such a context – and in addition to growing public distrust towards partisan politics – rationalist politics is likely to become more rampant as independent bureaucracies lack the legitimacy to publicly recognize the fundamentally incrementalist – and thus values-laden – nature of their decision-making processes. To develop these ideas, the article looks at the case of “supreme audit institutions”. We argue that the synoptic model is a mean for SAIs to legitimize their shift from classical financial auditing to performance auditing. In comparison to other independent bureaucracies, they are particularly prone to rationalist politics not only because of their institutional independence, but also because of the tradition of financial auditing and the rise of new public management.

Law in Books Versus Law in Action: A Review of the Socio-legal Literature

The chapter shows that a large part of socio-legal scholarship is focusing on the mobilisation and interpretation of constitutional norms and not on constitution drafting per se. By emphasising the importance of law in action, this research reminds us of the fact that constitution making is not limited to times of constitution drafting but represents a continuous process through which constitutional norms evolve—sometimes in important ways without any formal changes at all. The literature review points to an ongoing debate between demand and supply, between bottom-up perspectives and top-down elite-driven explanations. Uncertainty enters mainly into the latter approach in order to explain the decision of political elites to adopt judicial review and entrench written rights in the national constitution or in order to understand why national governments are willing to tie their own hands by adhering to international rights institutions. Electoral uncertainty is used to explain why elites would transfer power to other institutions through judicial review and entrenching rights. In this perspective, the spread of constitutional review and rights protection around the globe needs to be primarily explained on the basis of an analysis of political and economic power relations at the national and international level. Demand-side and bottom-up explanations do not negate the important role of elites in these processes, but emphasise preceptorial power and how changing ideas and values ultimately allow for explaining the global spread of rights protection. The literature on the proliferation of human rights reveals that the focus on the national level provides a too limited perspective. Processes of diffusion are important in terms of the types of rights and the extent to which human rights are entrenched in national constitutions.

« Faire la politique soi-même » : le cas des mobilisations contre le gaz de schiste au Québec

The literature on activism characterizes the recent transformations of activism as part of a process towards the “personalization of politics”. For structural or cultural reasons, committed citizens appear to be developing a new relationship to politics, seeking personal satisfaction in their engagement. We propose an alternative interpretation, and characterize this transformation as “do-it-yourself” (DIY) politics. Based on the protests against shale gas development in Quebec, we show that the DIY politics is the “logical” (in the sense of rational) result of citizens developing the means to compensate for the lack of institutional opportunities in the context of developments that potentially threaten their lives and livelihoods. Hence, rather than a quest for personal fulfillment, DIY politics must be understood as a more prosaic and contingent reaction to a specific situation, an individual and collective response to a situation experienced and perceived as problematic. In the conflict surrounding shale gas development in Quebec, which serves as our case study, we show that 1) the initial impulse to mobilize may be accurately interpreted as moving from the “territory of the self” (“ territoire du moi ”) to the “territory of the us” (“ territoire du nous ”), and that 2) it is the double failure of institutional representation that underpins civic engagement: the failure of institutional representation and the lack of representation by collective actors already in place.