LIST OF PANELS

The panel, which will necessarily adopt a comparative approach, welcomes papers (both quantitative and qualitative) focusing on processes of formulation and implementation of changes in the ‘rules of the political game’. The papers may concern different levels of governance (from the local to the national and supra-national) and touch upon the institutional and decision-making settings of specific policy sectors, as well as center on the usefulness of mechanisms commonly used in the literature to describe and theorize constituent policies. Possible topics, hence, may be the following: Public participation in reforming institutions and public administration Institutional reform and policy change: which relationships? Institutional performance and institutional reform Public administration performance and structural change Administrative traditions and reforms: practices and challenges The challenges in comparing administrative and institutional change The role of policy innovators and entrepreneurs in processes of institutional change

This panel intends to discuss the interactions and mechanisms at the heart of dynamics of institutional change through a policy lens. The aim is to gather experiences, theses and reflections on the policy cycle of institutional and administrative reforms. Therefore, the panel will highlight empirical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of the study of institutional and administrative change as a ‘constituent policy’ (Lowi 1972), which appears to be a relatively under-investigated field of research, notably in policy studies. However, this is a recurrent item on the political agenda of most countries and involves not only domestic political actors but also social, economic, and international ones. It may regard the whole political system as well as specific policy domains, where competences and roles in decision-making and implementation may change. Policy transfers and emulation (for instance, as concerns electoral systems and administrative practices) are also quite common in this field.