LIST OF PANELS

Public policy researchers traditionally analyze policy dynamics using several theoretical models and approaches to explain why and how change - and no change - occurs, and to analyze its resulting pattern (incremental, termination, succession, policy shifts, and/or perpetuation/stasis). In order to do so, researchers mainly focus on ideational dimensions, institutional determinants, social constructions, and political and power-related processes as key explanatory variables. But mainly - and no matter the lenses used - researchers have analyzed and explained policy changes centered on the way policy instrument’s (and policy mixes) change, considering policy change and the changes in policy instruments as equivalent. In most cases, change in policy instruments is both considered the materialization of policy change (that is, the unquestionable evidence that a change effectively occurs) and related, as the main source of evidence that make it possible to test and make improvements for theory development). Public policy is both means and ends. As Howlett reminds us, policy designs are both the processes as well outcomes (2011). Taking into account outcomes, we may analyze both independent variables (policy change and policy instrument's change) and say that it is also possible that a policy change effectively occurs when the strategies or processes are oriented to reactivate a existing - but out of use - policy designs, that is to say, a policy change without policy instruments change.  Conversely, a policy mix change do not necessarily means that a policy change effectively occurs, when change is mainly oriented - or has as main objective and a desirable trajectory- to develop outcomes based on stasis and/or perpetuation. Given these challenges, we believe it is necessary to deepen our understanding on the existing relation (and the necessary differentiation) between policy change (ends and outcomes) and policy instrument's change (means and processes), assuming both as analytically separable phenomena. Our goal is to explore policy change analysis taking into account this differentiation. This panel will welcome case studies and/or theoretical contributions, to understand the role may play the use of actor’s deliberate strategies for policy change. For example, changing the use of existing instruments (policy mixes) as a strategy for policy change (which might be called as “instrumental reviving” strategies) or for example, promoting (major) policy instruments change, who instead what is sought is to favor legitimation processes, and promotes stasis and/or perpetuation, a strategy that might be called “simulation” or “leopard strategy” in order “to change to obtain no change”, and finally, policy failure (that is, when change or no-change occurs as an unintended outcome by policy makers or the responsible political leaders).

As many scholars have recognized, the epistemological and methodological diversity makes very difficult to develop a fruitful academic debate about theoretical perspectives of policy change (Capano, 2010). For theory development, it is a necessary task to find common spaces and use common baselines in which several theoretical approaches can talk, in order to make relevant comparative analysis about its explanatory power.