LIST OF PANELS

The panel is aimed to analyze the characteristics or conditions leading to policy changes, considering the institutional context in which it develops. The panel is open to accept proposals of analysis of policy changes occurred in the past, contemporary policy changes and/or inter-temporal comparisons of policy changes. In doing this, the panel seeks to set links to the emerging field of work of “History and Public Policies”.

The panel will address questions on whether the way in which problems have been addressed in the past determine how they are faced later, and the role of institutions in policy changes. The analysis focuses on how institutions – formal and/or informal – influence the policy process, on whether types of interchanges among policy actors persist over time and on whether informal institutions shape the way in which formal institutions operate or whether it is the other way around how the policy process develops.  

According to Capano (2009) the dynamic of policy change may be intrinsically evolutionary or revolutionary, meaning the former a process of continuous adaptation, incremental and gradual nature. Revolutionary policy changes involve breaking with the past and introduction of new solutions to policy problems. Thus, a natural question in this context is how formal and informal institutions relate to evolutionary and revolutionary policy changes.

According to the path dependence perspective, history matters because current decisions are dependent of past decisions. Page (2006) points out that the dependence of past decision patterns are the consequence of a perception of higher benefits because of the learning, getting used to it and the cost of change; of self enforcement to maintain a given decision pattern; of a positive feedback gotten from a certain decision; and of the lock in of alternatives way of decision or action. Peters et al. (2005), in turn, argues that formal and informal institutional patterns also change over time and that ideas are very important in explaining institutional changes. This would mean that path dependence perspective would have limited validity in explaining policy changes, especially when these are generated after (formal and/or informal) institutional changes.

Given that “historical institutionalism of the polity focuses on analyzing what happened, when and how” (Skocpol 1995: 104), following Peters et al. (2005) the panel will focus on the relationship among institutions, ideas, policy brokers and agencies to analyze the path development of policy changes. Then, the panel seeks to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between institutions and policy change.

The panel is aimed at discussing empirical evidence provided by case studies on policy change in different contexts. Although the panel is open to any case, the presentation of case studies from Latin America, East Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania is highly encouraged.

REFERENCES:

Capano, Giliberto. 2009. “Understandign Policy Change as an Epistemological and Theoretical Problem.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Vol.11, Nº1, pp. 7 – 31.

Page, Scott. 2005. “An essay on the existence and casuses of path dependence”. Santa Fe Institute of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Peters, Guy; Jon Pierre y Desmond S. King. 2005. “The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism”. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 67, Nº4, pp. 1257 – 1300. Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press.

Skocpol, Theda. 1995. “Why I am an Historical Institutionalist”. Polity, Vol. 28, Nº1, pp. 103 – 106. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

The panel is aimed to analyze the characteristics or conditions leading to policy changes. The panel is open to accept proposals of analysis of policy changes occurred in the past, contemporary policy changes and/or inter-temporal comparisons of policy changes. In doing this, the panel seeks to set links to the emerging field of work of “History and Public Policies”.
The analysis focuses on how institutions – formal and/or informal – influence the policy process, on whether types of interchanges among policy actors persist over time and on whether informal institutions shape the way in which formal institutions operate or whether it is the other way around how the policy process develops.  
The panel is aimed at discussing empirical evidence provided by case studies on policy change in different contexts. Although the panel is open to any cases, the presentation of case studies from Latin America, East Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania is highly encouraged.