LIST OF WORKSHOPS

Research on policy studies and policy processes have frequently used local governments as their main units of observation, and have claimed that policy is transversal to any level of government or unit of organization. Policy studies is an indisputably wide-ranging endeavor (Sabatier, 1986). Although the literature is clearly cognizant of the peculiarities of local and subnational policy making (Eissler, Russell, & Jones, 2014; Liu, Lindquist, Vedlitz, & Vincent, 2010; Pierce et al., 2014; Sabatier, 1973), it has not capitalized on the wide-array of variations observed in local governments’ policy processes, choosing instead to focus on the observed commonalities. We believe that there is much to be learned from examining, in-depth, the specific mechanisms at play in local governments’ policy processes. Therefore, the purpose of this panel is to convene a multi-disciplinary forum to discuss a diverse array of issues related to the study of the policy process at the subnational and local government levels.

Questions that will guide the panel’s discussion are:

How might local realities challenge basic assumption in the study of the policy process or in policy studies?
What is distinctive about local governments or subnational governments that may call for a revision of our analytical lenses as policy students?
What new ways of making sense of the available theoretical body might be unveiled after considering local features in the study of the policy process? Along the same lines, what can be said about agenda setting, problem definition, policy design, policy implementation, and policy evaluation, among other policy-relevant processes?
 

Scientific relevance

Although policy studies have frequently taken cities, municipalities or localities as their main unit of observation, there has been a tendency to focus on the commonalities, in order to provide a basis for extrapolation and theoretical external validity, while neglecting variations that could enhance our understanding of the local-level policy process. The aim of this panel is to offer an opportunity to explore the diverse sources of variation and elements of the policy process at the local government level, which could be useful to understand, in a more nuanced way, other aspects of the policy process. This requires calling attention to the features that are relevant in the local context, and to explore whether these could help to better inform how the policy process is experienced. It would be noteworthy to understand how incorporating the study of these local features could add depth or call into question well-established assumptions within the theories of policy change and the policy process, among other theories in the policy field.

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, especially in quantitative studies, 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 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):

The roleplay of, and the interaction of, formal and informal institutions in the governance of the local policy process.
Accounts and normalization of illegal or illicit institutions (e.g. corruption; brokerage; clientelism; cronyism; etc.)
Conventional policy theories under the lenses of local governance’s challenges or circumstances.
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.)
Local demographics affecting the policy process.
Citizen participation and local policy making.
Public-Private Partnerships in the local policy process.
 

While the official language in the workshop is English, the panel welcomes work written in Spanish. If the paper is in Spanish the author(s) should prepare an extended abstract in English in order to provide sufficient bases for a discussion in an international forum. Also note that presentations in Spanish are welcome, however, we strongly recommend that power point presentations or any other visually-presented material be in English. 

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, and how these 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.

Oliver Meza. Research-professor in the Public Administration Division at Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). Member of the National System of Researchers (SNI). His main lines of research focus on public policies of subnational governments, metropolitan regions and policy analysis.

Emilio Moya Díaz. Assistant Professor of the Department of Sociology and Political Science of the Catholic University of Temuco. Master in Sociology and Phd in Latin American Studies. He is principal investigator of the Fondecyt Initiation project "Social links and corruption in the local public context: the coexistence of the formal and informal". In addition, he is the general coordinator of the Araucanía Regional Transparency Observatory.