LIST OF PANELS

The main factors to explain policy change that have been discussed in the last decades have been related to different dimensions and approaches: advocacy coalitions, belief, and ideas; narratives and frames; policy networks, institutions, crises, and external shocks. In particular, the cognitive approach of public policies proposes a model based on a radical paradigm change to explain how a policy changes over time (Hall,1993). However, an analysis based only on the cognitive criteria has demonstrated its limits to explain gradual changes and to deal with more uncertain and messy dynamics. In the other hand, 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. This approaches also offer ways to overcome dualist views that separate periods of institutional stability and change. Nevertheless, the lack of precision, the static character of the agency model, and the overall low-explanatory power are the critics that have been made to this model (Van der Heijden and Kuhlmann, 2017 in Munoz-del-Campo and Rocha, 2020).
In addition, Knill, Schulze and Tosun (2010) state that the studies of change do not represent a coherent body of research and do not enshrine a concrete understanding concept of policy change. However, we stress here that these studies do provide ways to systematize and shape methods of measuring policy change that can be replicated. As such, we propose in this panel to discuss the explanatory power of the theories used so far to explain stasis and policy change.
This debate considers two dimensions of study: a first one regarding the meaning of change, which aims to contribute to specifying what change really means today and how it occurs. The second dimension refers to the different stages of change (such as: change in process, in the outputs, and in the outcomes): its real or transitory condition without neglecting the results of change that do not always contribute to strengthening public policies but also (and as we have seen strongly during the last decade) to dismantle it.
Finally, this panel aims to contribute to clarify a systematic and empirically concrete understanding of policy change as such and observe the real possibilities of measuring it and establishing causality.

In order to advance the understanding of how public policies evolve, this panel encourages papers that discuss the methodological and theoretical approaches which imply both conceptualizing the dependent variable of the policy change and independent variables to explain policy change.
More specifically, we propose a systematic way to assess policy change using an analytical grid of three levels (Munoz-del-Campo, 2021): 1. Scope: changes in a whole system or only part of the system; 2. Pace: fast or slow; 3. Mode: Gradual, incremental, radical, or brutal.  We also consider integrating the state of change: such as a change in process, the outputs, and the outcomes. And, finally, we propose a debate about the factors explaining, supporting, or impeding policy change and its "real" impact.

The panel invites papers contributing to the study of public policy change processes through analysis that connects ideas, institutions, interests, and context promoting the mixed-theory and mixed-factor frameworks to shape the analysis trying to measure change. Moreover, we are interested in understanding the role of the ambiguities faced to change public policy.
The panel is open to methodological and theoretical perspectives based on institutional and/or cognitive approaches and welcomes empirical papers related to all types of policies and all regions of the world.