LIST OF PANELS

Research on policy change and especially dismantling has been fundamentally inspired by Pierson’s (1994) seminal work on welfare retrenchment. During the last decade, policy cutbacks gained attention again and a growing number of studies have investigated policy dismantling, most of them concentrating on the European Union. Against the backdrop of the 2009 economic crisis, many researchers follow the assumption that economic hard times and political turbulences trigger policy change and favour processes of dismantling, especially in costly regulatory policy fields such as environmental policy. However, although evidence points to reduced policy ambition, this rarely manifests in large-scale and visible cutbacks, but rather in reduced activity (e.g. Steinebach and Knill 2017, Gravey and Jordan 2019). Scholars also note that dismantling takes place in rather hidden and omitted forms, e.g. in comitology procedures (Burns and Tobin 2020, Pollex and Lenschow 2020). While this growing body of research has developed valuable insights into processes of policy dismantling there are several aspects in need of further research.
This panel aims to push the frontier with regard to three main topics. First, while there is evidence of visible and far-reaching dismantling, e.g. in the U.S. since the Trump administration assumed office (Hejny 2018), hidden forms of policy cutbacks seem to be a feature of the EU’s multi-level and multi-actor governance system. Research has yet to develop theoretical expectations on when, where and under which circumstances dismantling takes place. We aim to elaborate on research that investigates the particular role of European institutions and intra- and inter-institutional dynamics (e.g. Bürgin 2020; Knill et al. 2020). Second, following earlier literature on welfare state retrenchment (e.g. Pierson 1994; Jensen et al. 2019), most recent studies concentrate on environmental and climate policy. Comparative policy analyses are still missing, both within the regulatory policy domains (e.g. environment, consumer, health) and across regulatory and (re)distributive policy fields. Third, existing research has developed clearly defined conceptual features of dismantling, i.e. reduction in instrument or policy density (Bauer and Knill 2014). Yet, considering recent insights developed by research on policy customization (Thomann 2017), differentiated policy implementation, or notions of experimentalist governance (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010), dismantling may occur on the supranational level while flexible governance arrangements allow EU member states to expand policy – or vice-versa. Thus, in order to refine the concept of dismantling the panel seeks to discuss the unique multi-level features of the European governance structure.
Overall, considering these questions the panel aims to further our understanding of policy dismantling in three areas. First, we intend to develop expectations on when, where and under which circumstances dismantling might occur. Second, we pursue to develop insights based on comparative approaches. While there is a considerable body of research on environmental policy and earlier work on social policy, less is known about other areas, such as consumer or agricultural policy. Third, in order to put dismantling into wider analytical perspective we seek to integrate concepts and cross-fertilise analyses of dismantling with differentiated integration, other flexible governance arrangements or customization.

Our panel aims to push the frontier of policy dismantling research. Both earlier works on welfare state retrenchment (Pierson 1994) and current research on (mostly) EU environmental policy tend to point to path-dependency and limits to dismantling. Yet, increasingly we learn about subtle, even hidden forms of policy cutbacks and about variance, within a policy field, between policy fields and between political arenas and systems. In order to advance our knowledge about when, where and under which circumstances dismantling might occur, this panel on policy dismantling seeks contributions that take innovative approaches to investigate policy change. The panel aims at combining research based on case studies, small-, medium (e.g. QCA approaches)- and large-N comparisons, as well as papers taking a more theoretical perspective. We expect contributions to either apply existing research to policy areas and political settings not yet in the focus of dismantling research or to develop innovative perspectives and explanations addressing the core questions of this panel. Furthermore, while we concentrate on dismantling research, analyses focussing on the absence of cutbacks is equally interesting since it contributes to the broader understanding of policy change. For instance, when do attempts to dismantle fail and what aspects (e.g. veto-players, public attention, partisan politics) might explain that failure?
Contributions might focus on:
·      Decision-making processes and arenas (e.g. committees) as well as actors and their preferences.
·      The interplay of public policy and public administration investigating policy dismantling or policy stasis by addressing, e.g. restructuring of administrations’ competencies or turf wars.
·      Conceptual and normative analyses, placing the dismantling literature in wider debates on (EU) governance and questions of   legitimacy.
·      Policy areas not yet fully covered in dismantling research, e.g. consumer or health policy.
·      Interplay of policy areas (e.g. environmental and agriculture) and consequences of policy change and dismantling leading to, e.g. incoherence or discrepancy.
We explicitly invite contributions investigating dismantling in contexts beyond the European Union. Papers might address processes on the national or subnational level or take a closer look at multi-level dynamics.