LIST OF PANELS

Recent decades have seen a series of contributions from political science and sociology on the subject of “policy change”. In the current context of economic, institutional and cultural crisis, the public policy analysis need - more than before - "multivariable" approaches to consider the different perspectives and to better understand the reality studied.

On the one hand, the cognitive approach of public policies proposes a model based on a radical paradigm change to explain how the policy changes over time (Hall,1993). An analysis based only on the cognitive criteria, however, has shown its limits. Hall’s paradigm model could not explain entirely the gradual changes in the cognitive perspectives of public policies. Hogan and Howlett (2015) argue that this model structures and limits how policies are developed and wonder if this happens as a discursive process of trial and error, something similar to the Carstensen’s concept of “policy bricolage” (2011). Therefore, this approach should be integrated with theories and approaches that explain how public policy evolves in a more incremental way.
 
On the other hand, the neo-institutionalism approaches have proposed a much more refined model to explain the policy change by transcending the notion of critical junctures and proposing a model based on incremental changes (Streeck, Thelen, 2005; Mahoney, Thelen, 2010, 2015). A gradual institutional change (GIC) approach connected with historical institutionalism offer correctives to dualist views that separate periods of institutional stability and change (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010; Palier, 2005; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). Nevertheless, Van der Heijden and Kuhlmann (2017) outline three main critiques to Mahoney et Thelen’s Model: the concepts it builds on lack precision, the model of agency it uses is too static, and the theory needs analytical and explanatory power overall. They outline that an expansion in the set of explanatory variables is needed to include, for example, ideas or spatial change to the notion of temporal change (p. 545). For Capano (2019) one way to “bridge the different theoretical perspectives on institutional and policy dynamics”(591) is considering “layering” as a mode of institutional design.
 
This panel addresses the integration of theories that highlight not only the importance of institutional approaches which determine the behavior of the actors and explain how institutions change or evolve; but also theories revealing “the power of ideas" associated with progressive and/or incremental changes that end up generating outcomes of interest.
 
References
 
Capano, G. 2019, Reconceptualizing layering—From mode of institutional change to mode of institutional design: Types and outputs. Public Administration, 97, 590-604.
Carstensen, M. 2011, Ideas are not Stable as Political Scientists want them to be: A theory of Incremental Ideational Change. Political Studies, 59, 596-615.
Hall, P. 1993, Policy Paradigm; Social Learning and the state, Comparative Politics, 25(3), p. 275-296.
Hogan, J, Howlett M, 2015, Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice: Discourses, Ideas and Anomalies in Public Policy Dynamics. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Mahoney, J; Thelen, Kathleen (eds.). 2015, Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis (New York: Cambridge).
Mahoney, J, Thelen, Kathleen (eds.) 2010, Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Palier, B. 2005, Ambiguous Agreement, Cumulative Change: French Social Policy in France. In Institutional Changes in Advanced Political Economies, edited by Wolfgang Streeck and Katheen Thelen, 127–44. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Streeck, W; Thelen, K, 2005. Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Van der Heijden, J., & Kuhlmann, J. 2017. Studying incremental institutional change: A systematic and critical meta‐review of the literature from 2005 to 2015. Policy Studies Journal, 45, 535–554.

In order to advance the understanding of how public policies evolve, this panel encourages papers that discuss modes that could explain both institutional and/or cognitive changes in public policies from a comparative perspective. More specifically, the panel invites papers that contribute to the study on public policy change through analysis that connect ideas, institutions and context. We would like to discuss papers that foster a perspective centered on the dynamics of change, beyond theories based on critical junctures or exogenous shocks, and thus focusing on continuities rather than radical changes. 
 
The panel is open to methodological and theoretical perspectives based on institutional and/or cognitive approaches, and welcome empirical papers related to all types of policies and all regions of the world.