LIST OF WORKSHOPS

Recent decades have seen a series of contributions from political science and sociology on the subject of ‘policy change.’ After the COVID pandemic and in the current context of economic, institutional, and cultural crisis, the public policy analysis needs – more than before – ‘multivariable’ approaches to consider the different perspectives and to better understand the reality studied. Besides the ways for explaining policy changes in public policy (as gradual, brutal, incremental, or radical), scholars have also conceptualized ‘change’ by analyzing the settings in which they occur: in the process, in the outcomes, in the results. Thus, in addition to the complexity of assessing change, both theoretical choices (such as cognitive approach, institutionalism perspective, rational choice) and major independent variables (such as institutions, interests, ideas) are crucial to understanding, defining, and analyzing policy change. This leads to the question: How to navigate through different theories when dealing with empirical cases in order to understand significant changes in public policies?

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 demonstrated 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 evolve. The authors also 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 and 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’ is considering ‘layering’ as a mode of institutional design.

This panel addresses the possibilities of combining different theoretical models to study the various types of public policy changes (gradual, brutal, incremental, or radical, or/and in the process, in the outcomes or in the results) that highlight not only the relevance 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.

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.

Giessen, Lukas (2011): Reviewing empirical explanations of policy change: Options fot its analysis and future fields of research. Allg. Forts. u. J.-Ztg. 182 (11/12): 248–259.

Hall, P. 1993, Policy Paradigm; Social Learning and the state, Comparative Politics, 25(3), pp. 275–296.

Hogan, J, Howlett M., 2015, Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice: Discourses, Ideas and Anomalies in Public Policy Dynamics. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

KNILL, C., K. SCHULZE and J. TOSUN (2010): Policy change and its measurement in comparative policy analysis: Conceptual problems and potential alternatives [Politikwandel und seine Messung in der vergleichenden Staatstätigkeitsforschung: Konzeptionelle Probleme und mögliche Alternativen]. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 51 (3), pp. 409–432.

Mahoney, J; Thelen, Kathleen (eds.). 2015, Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis (New York: Cambridge).

Mahoney, J, Thelen, K. (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 Kathleen 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 based on their various perspectives, such as change in process, in the outputs and in the outcomes; 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 processes through analysis that connect ideas, institutions, interests, and context. In addition, we are interested in understanding the role of the ambiguities faced by actors as they struggle to change public policy. 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.

Recent decades have seen a series of contributions from political science and sociology on the subject of ‘policy change’. After the COVID pandemic and in the current context of institutional, economic, and cultural crisis, the public policy analysis needs – 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 demonstrated its limits to explain gradual changes and it has trouble dealing with the more uncertain and messy dynamics.

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, it offers correctives to dualist views that separate periods of institutional stability and change. Nevertheless, the lack of precision, the static character of the model of agency, and the low-explanatory power overall are the critics that had made to this model (Van der Heijden and Kuhlmann, 2017). The combination with the idea, dimension, or considering, as Capano (2019) proposes, ‘layering’ as a mode of institutional design could be the starting point to crafting models to explain policy change.

This panel addresses the integration of theories to explain policy change based on their various perspectives (such as change in process, in the outputs and in the outcomes), 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.

Norma Muñoz del Campo

Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy, Universidad de Santiago. Specialized in public policy analysis. My lines of research have been developed based on the intersection of cognitive and institutional approaches in order to study the reforms that have taken place in Chile since the transition to democracy to date. I am also interested in current debates on teaching-learning processes and their application to the teaching of public policy. My work has been published in Latin American Policy, Cahiers des Amériques Latines; Estado Gobierno y Gestión Pública; Cambridge Scholars Publishing; Routledge; Edward Elgar Publishing.

Melina de Souza Rocha Lukic

Course Director in the Political Science Program at York University – Glendon Campus. She obtained her doctorate in political science at Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle in 2013. Her thesis ‘La crise de la fiscalité au Brésil (1988-2010) : un changement de paradigme inachevé’, under the supervision by Prof. Yves Surel, was published by L’Harmattan editions in 2017. She worked as an associate professor in the Law School at Fundação Getulio Vargas (2011–2018), Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto (2017–2018) and short-term consultant at the World Bank (2019). Her areas of research are taxation and fiscal policy, federalism and comparative public policies.

Carla Tomazini

Adjunct faculty member at Sciences Po and associate researcher at Laboratoire Printemps (UVSQ/Université Paris-Saclay). Her research interests are in the field of comparative politics, with a focus on political institutions and the Welfare State. She recently published: ‘Pioneering anti-poverty policies in Brazil and Mexico: ambiguities and disagreements on conditional cash transfer programs’ (International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2021) and ‘Beyond consensus: ideas and advocacy coalitions around cash transfer programs in Brazil and Mexico’ (Critical Policy Studies, 2019).