LIST OF PANELS

In the past few years, policy capacity emerged as a useful conceptual lens in understanding the effectiveness of policy design and delivery (Mukherjee, Coban, and Bali 2021). Defined as “[t]he set of skills and resources – or competences and capabilities – necessary to perform policy functions” (Wu, Ramesh, and Howlett, 2015: 166)” along different dimensions and across multiple levels, the concept of policy capacity has been applied to examine various policy sectors such as foreign policy, education, bank and financial regulation, and climate change policy (see e.g., Saguin and Howlett 2022; Yan and Saguin 2021; Domorenok and Prontera 2021), and to elaborate on different policy functions such as mobilisation for instrument choices (Daugbjerg 2022; Steinebach 2019) or policy integration and coordination (Coban 2021; Maggetti and Trein 2022).

With the exception of research in countries such as the Philippines (Saguin, Ramesh, and Howlett 2018), Brazil (Koga et al. 2022; Yan, Sano, and Sumiya 2022), India and China (Bajpai and Chong 2019; Yan and Saguin 2021), Malaysia (Jensen 2019), and Turkey (Coban 2020; 2021), the empirical focus of the policy capacity literature is mostly on the Global North. Policy capacity studies in these contexts have proved the applicability of the concept in policy environments with sub-optimal conditions for effective policymaking, such as intelligence deficits (Ascher 2021) and weak or volatile institutions (Andrews, Pritchett, and Woolcock 2017; Brinks et al. 2020). Further theorizing is needed to encourage more in-depth investigations of policy capacity in developing countries or non-Western contexts similar to Newman et al. (2022) or Koga et al. (2022) who elaborated on the (lack of) peculiarities that call for re-conceptualization of policy capacity. This would undoubtedly constitute an important endeavour of decolonising the field of public policy and administration (e.g., McDonald III et al. 2022).

The Global South offers an exciting empirical setting to advance the theorisation of policy capacity in three ways. First, capacity development interventions populate policy reforms in developing countries, allowing us to address a blind spot on the determinants of the varying levels of policy capacity. Second, it permits the identification of the dimensions of policy capacity that are more “critical” in the sequencing of enhancing policy capacity. Third, “political management” of policy capacity has not been well addressed in existing literature (Brenton, Baekkeskov, and Hannah 2022). For that matter, research about populist, authoritarian governments in the Global South can expand our understanding about the loss of rare, fundamental existing capacity in these jurisdictions (Ansell et al. 2021; Bauer et al. 2021; Milhorance 2022). More complete theorization of policy capacity thus warrants a systematic and comparative analysis of the drivers, mechanisms, and political-administrative relations in the Global South (Bertelli et al. 2020).

Motivated by the literature gaps highlighted above, we encourage public policy scholars to pay more attention to policy capacity in the Global South, which provides us a fruitful empirical ground not only to contribute to empirical research, but to theorisation of policy capacity.

References

Andrews, Matt, Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock. (2017) Building state capability: Evidence, analysis, action. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ansell, Christopher K. et al. (2021) The loss of capacity in public organizations: A public administration challenge. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance 4:1, pages 24-29.

Ascher, William. (2021). Coping with intelligence deficits in poverty-alleviation policies in low-income countries. Policy Sciences 54:2, pages 345-370.

Bajpai, Kanti, Byron Chong. (2019) India’s foreign policy capacity. Policy Design and Practice 2:2, pages 137-162.

Bauer, Michael W. et al. (2021) (eds) Democratic backsliding and public administration: How populists in government transform state bureaucracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bertelli, Anthony M. et al. (2020) An agenda for the study of public administration in developing countries. Governance 33:4, pages 735-748.

Brenton, Scott, Erik Baekkeskov, Adam Hannah. (2022) Policy capacity: Evolving theory and missing links. Policy Studies. DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2022.2043266

Brinks, Daniel M. et al. (2020) (eds) The politics of institutional weakness in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coban, M. Kerem. (2020) Compliance forces, domestic policy process, and international regulatory standards: Compliance with Basel III. Business and Politics 22:1, pages 161-195.

Coban, M. Kerem. (2021) Coordinating monetary policy and macroprudential policy: Bureaucratic politics, regulatory intermediary, and bank lobbying. Public Administration. DOI: 10.1111/padm.12744

Daugbjerg, Carsten. (2022) Against the odds: How policy capacity can compensate for weak instruments in promoting sustainable food. Policy Sciences 55:3, pages 451-467.

Domorenok, Ekaterina, Andrea Prontera. (2021) Governing by enabling in multilevel systems: Capacity building and local climate action in the European Union. JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies 59:6, pages 1475-1494.

Jensen, Olivia. (2019). Designing effective water policy: Capacity and effectiveness of reforms in developing countries. Policy and Society 38:1, pages 77-95.

Kim, Sojeong, Adam M. Wellstead, Tanya Heikkila. (2022) Policy capacity and rise of data-based policy innovation labs. Review of Policy Research. DOI: 10.1111/ropr.12494

Koga, Natalia et al. (2022) Analysing the information sources Brazilian bureaucrats use as evidence in everyday policymaking. Policy & Politics 50:4, pages 483-506.

Maggetti, Martino, Philipp Trein. (2022) Policy integration, problem-solving, and the coronavirus disease crisis: Lessons for policy design. Policy and Society 41:1, pages 53-67.

McDonald, B. D., Jeremy L. Hall, Janine O'Flynn, Sandra van Thiel. (2022) The future of public administration research: An editor's perspective. Public Administration 100:1, pages, 59– 71.

Milhorance, Carolina. (2022) Policy dismantling and democratic regression in Brazil under Bolsonaro: Coalition politics, ideas, and underlying discourses. Review of Policy Research. DOI: 10.1111/ropr.12502

Mukherjee, Ishani, M. Kerem Coban, Azad S. Bali. (2021) Policy capacities and effective policy design: A review. Policy Sciences 54:2, pages 243-268.

Newman, Joshua, Emi Patmisari, Ida Widianingsih. (2022) Policy analytical capacity and" Eastern" styles of policy analysis: evidence from West Java Province, Indonesia. Policy Sciences 55:3, pages 469-485.

Saguin, Kidjie, M. Ramesh, Michael Howlett. (2018) Policy work and capacities in a developing country: Evidence from the Philippines. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 40:1, pages 1-22.

Steinebach, Yves. (2019) Instrument choice, implementation structures, and the effectiveness of environmental policies: A cross-national analysis. Regulation & Governance 16:1, pages 225-242.

Yan, Yifei, Kidjie Saguin. (2021) Policy capacity matters for capacity development: Comparing teacher in-service training and career advancement in basic education systems in India and China. International Review of Administrative Sciences 87:2, pages 294-310.

Yan, Yifei, Hironobu Sano, Lilia A. Sumiya. (2022) Policy capacity matters for education system reforms: A comparative study of two Brazilian states. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. DOI: 10.1080/13876988.2022.2110472

Xu, Xun, M. Ramesh, Michael Howlett. (2015) Policy capacity: A conceptual framework for understanding policy competences and capabilities. Policy and Society 34:3-4, pages 165-171.

Policy capacity has provided a useful conceptual lens for public policy scholars to understand the effectiveness of policy design and delivery. Much knowledge has been accumulated on the role and the use of policy capacity in various policy sectors such as foreign policy, education, bank and financial regulation, and climate change policy, and for different policy functions such as mobilisation for instrument choices or policy integration and coordination. Despite that, the empirical focus of the policy capacity literature is still mostly on the Global North.  While there are several exceptions with studies on the Global South (e.g., the Philippines, India, China, Turkey, Brazil, Malaysia), these studies share similar setbacks on theorising policy capacity:

-   What are the determinants of policy capacity? What are the drivers and mechanisms of higher (or lower) policy capacity? How could we best treat policy capacity as the dependent variable rather than an independent variable?

-   How could we measure policy capacity to foster cross-country, cross-sectoral comparisons?

-   How could we conceive, treat, and theorise temporality in policy capacity?

-   Is there an “order” among the three components and/or levels of policy capacity?

-   What are the drivers and mechanisms of policy capacity development? How can we measure its success?

-   Why and how do populist, authoritarian governments intervene in policy capacity? And, why and how do they cause decay in policy capacity?

In this light, we invite public policy scholars to problematise these pressing concerns with a particular Global South outlook, as we believe that the Global South provides exciting settings not only to contribute to empirical research, but also to theorisation of policy capacity. Please send 300-500 word abstract of your proposal to be considered for this hybrid panel.