LIST OF PANELS

Policy studies and the studies about the policy process have used local governments as their units of observation. A normal tendency among these studies is to focus on the commonalities in order to provide the basis for extrapolation and theoretical external validity.

The panel aims to focus on the singularities of the local realm purposefully cognizant of the context that surrounds it to understand how this local supra-local relationship could help to develop a more nuanced understanding of the policy process itself; perhaps even bringing new light to the main and well-established assumptions in the policy literature.

The panel aims to convene a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to discuss a diverse array of issues related to the study of the policy process at the subnational and local government levels. The panel welcomes all relevant theoretical and empirical papers that could contribute to the discussion of the local side of the policy process.

Scholarship in local governments has long discussed the difficulties of making a general theory about local realities. Cutting-edge work has encountered surmountable difficulties in bridging the theoretical gaps that arise when local circumstances and contexts are considered. Studies of local governments offer a nuanced view of a varied set of phenomena while at the same time providing rich data settings to answer difficult questions that would have been difficult to address in a more global or broader circumscription. While a lot of policy studies have taken cities, municipalities, or localities as their main unit of observation, there is a tendency to focus on the commonalities, which would provide the basis for extrapolation and theoretical external validity, while perhaps neglecting a multiplicity of sources of variation and elements that could also be useful to understand, in a more nuanced way, other aspects of the policy process. 

This “call for papers” aims to attract the attention of all those students and researches engaging with the local side of the policy process. A variety of topics are expected and welcomed in the panel, such as the following:

Governance challenges in democratic consolidation in policy processes (agenda setting, design, implementation, and/or evaluation, among others):

1.    The roleplay of, and the interaction of, formal and informal institutions in the governance of the local policy process.

2.    Accounts and normalization of informal or illicit institutions (e.g. corruption; brokerage; clientelism; cronyism; patronage; etc.)

3.    Mainstream policy theories under the lenses of local governance’s challenges or circumstances.

4.    Power dynamics and local actors that affect the implementation of public policies (elites, interest groups, client networks, etc.)

5.    Horizontal or vertical intergovernmental relations and local policy process. (i.e. how it affects the agenda-setting, how policy is design, challenges in the coordination of policy implementation, etc.)

6.    Local demographics and social context affecting the policy process.

7.    Citizen participation and local policymaking.

8.    Public-Private Partnerships in the local policy process.