LIST OF PANELS

What happens when new policy issues such as emerging technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence) or major crises (e.g. a pandemic) emerge on policymakers’ agenda? How does policymaking on such new issues differ from policymaking in more established contexts? Why do some issues continue to be politically relevant for extended time periods, getting established with specialized actors and dedicated institutions while others disappear? Can the state successfully shape the development towards integrated, specialized policymaking communities for new issues?

Questions such as these can be addressed by studying “nascent policy subsystems”. Those “issue areas that have only recently emerged on the public agenda” (Stritch, 2015, p. 438) are characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity (Beverwijk et al., 2008; Fidelman et al., 2014; Ingold et al., 2017). Their study highlights the dynamic character of policymaking: The moment when new issues emerge, are framed, reframed, and disappear; new actors entering the political space and established actors reacting to a new, uncertain situation; new policy solutions being designed in the earliest stages of an issue’s presence on the agenda and previous policy content being changed. Nascent policy subsystems can also affect policymaking in more established policy subsystems, potentially destabilizing or reshaping the landscape of policy subsystems, thus underlining the interrelated nature of policy subsystems, and illustrating the limits of the policy subsystem concept.

The concept of the policy subsystem is central to multiple established theories of the policy process (McGee & Jones, 2019), such as the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993; Weible et al., 2011), the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993, 2002; Jones & Baumgartner, 2005) or the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) (Kingdon 2011; Herweg et al. 2018). Additionally, nascent policy subsystems bear similarities to concepts used by other strands of public policy research, such as emerging regulatory regimes (Howlett & Newman, 2013). So far, nascent policy subsystems have been most explicitly theorized and studied by scholars from the tradition of ACF (Ingold et al., 2016, 2017). This ACF-driven research has greatly advanced our understanding of nascent policy subsystems. However, we are convinced, that research on nascent policy subsystems can profit from a diversity of theoretical perspectives and that, in turn, several strands of public policy research can profit from applying a nascent policy subsystem perspective. [onsite panel]

Studying nascent policy subsystems offers a perspective on policymaking that is different from policymaking in established, often closed policy communities. Analyzing them may help us understand the preconditions for policymaking in these communities (Ingold et al., 2016) and investigate how the state handles new problems and whether it is able to shape the structures of policymaking around them. We invite both conceptual as well as empirical papers addressing questions like:

-        How to conceptualize and measure policy subsystems’ nascency and development from the perspective of different approaches to the policy process?

-        What are distinctive characteristics of nascent as opposed to mature policy subsystems?

-        How do nascent policy subsystems impact policymaking in established policy subsystems?

Literature:

Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (1993). Agendas and Instability in American Politics (1st ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (2002). Policy Dynamics (F. R. Baumgartner & B. D. Jones, Eds.). University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199548453.003.0016

Beverwijk, J., Goedegebuure, L., & Huisman, J. (2008). Policy change in nascent subsystems: Mozambican higher education policy 1993-2003. Policy Sciences, 41(4), 357–377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-008-9072-0

Fidelman, P., Evans, L. S., Foale, S., Weible, C., von Heland, F., & Elgin, D. (2014). Coalition cohesion for regional marine governance: A stakeholder analysis of the Coral Triangle Initiative. Ocean & Coastal Management, 95, 117–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.OCECOAMAN.2014.04.001

Herweg, N. & N. Zahariadis, R. Zohlnhöfer (2018). "The Multiple Streams Framework: Foundations, Refinements, and Empirical Applications", in: Weible, C.M & P. A. Sabatier (eds). Theories of the policy process, New York: Routledge, pp.17-53.

Howlett M, Newman J (2013) After “the Regulatory Moment” in Comparative Regulatory Studies: Modeling the Early Stages of Regulatory Life Cycles. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice15(2), 107–121.

Ingold, K., Fischer, M., Heikkila, T., & Weible, C. M. (2016). Assessments and aspirations. In C. M. Weible, T. Heikkila, K. Ingold, & M. Fischer (Eds.), Policy Debates on Hydraulic Fracturing: Comparing Coalition Politics in North America and Europe. Springer.

Ingold, K., Fischer, M., & Cairney, P. (2017). Drivers for policy agreement in nascent subsystems: an application of the advocacy coalition framework to fracking policy in Switzerland and the UK.  Policy Studies Journal, 45(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12173

Jones, B. D., & Baumgartner, F. R. (2005). The politics of attention: how government prioritizes problems. University of Chicago Press.

Kingdon, J.W. (2011). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy, New York: Longman.

McGee, Z. A., & Jones, B. D. (2019). Reconceptualizing the policy subsystem: Integration with complexity theory and social network analysis. Policy Studies Journal, 47(S1), S138–S158. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12319

Sabatier, P. A., & Jenkins-Smith, H. C. (1993). Policy change and learning: an advocacy coalition approach. Westview Press.

Stritch, A. (2015). The advocacy coalition framework and nascent subsystems: Trade union disclosure policy in Canada. Policy Studies Journal, 43(4), 437–455. https://doi.org/10.1111/PSJ.12112

Weible, C. M., Sabatier, P. A., Jenkins-Smith, H. C., Nohrstedt, D., Henry, A. D., & deLeon, P. (2011). A quarter century of the advocacy coalition framework: An introduction to the special issue. Policy Studies Journal, 39(3), 349–360. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1541-0072.2011.00412.X