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Information exchange networks at the climate science-policy interface: Evidence from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal
Abstract
Scientifically informed climate policymaking starts with the exchange of credible, salient, and legitimate scientific information between scientists and policymakers. It is therefore important to understand what explains the exchange of scientific information in national climate policymaking processes. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal to investigate which types of organizations are favored sources of scientific information and whether actors obtain scientific information from those with similar beliefs as their own. Results show that scientific organizations are favored sources in all countries, while only in the Czech Republic do actors obtain scientific information from those with similar policy beliefs. These findings suggest that actors involved in climate policymaking mostly look to scientific organizations for information, but that in polarized contexts where there is a presence of influential denialists overcoming biased information exchange is a challenge.
... Most studies focus on how scientific information is exchanged among different organizations in policy networks (Kenis and Schneider, 2019). By tracing the flow of scientific information, these studies have commonly found that scientific organizations are important actors that shape the context of climate policymaking (Ingold, 2011;Tindall et al., 2020;Wagner et al., 2021). ...
... Numerous policy network studies on climate change attribute science to specific coalitions that emerge around particular preferences, beliefs, or policy ideas (Ingold, 2011;Brockhaus and Di Gregorio, 2014;Wagner and Ylä-Anttila, 2018;Gronow and Ylä-Anttila, 2019;Malkamäki et al., 2019;Kammerer et al., 2021). Rather few policy network studies (Leifeld and Schneider, 2012;Kettle et al., 2017;Malkamäki et al., 2019;Locatelli et al., 2020;Tindall et al., 2020;Wagner et al., 2021), however, focus on the specific exchange relationships (e.g., information exchange or advice) involved in the science-policy interface in climate change policy networks. Recently, a growing number of studies investigate information sharing in policy networks (Fischer et al., 2017). ...
... Second, scientists or scientific organizations are generally a popular source of information (Fischer et al., 2017;Wagner et al., 2021) which aligns with the observation that scientific argumentation has become increasingly important in climate politics in recent years (Kukkonen and Ylä-Anttila, 2020;Kukkonen et al., 2021). The research has consistently found that information exchange is driven by similar preferences (Huckfeldt and Sprague, 1987;König and Bräuninger, 1998;Zafonte and Sabatier, 1998;Weible and Sabatier, 2005;Henry et al., 2011;Fischer et al., 2017;Jasny et al., 2018), although some recent studies have reported that this is not always the case (Leifeld and Schneider, 2012;Wagner et al., 2021). ...
We examined how scientific information influences policy beliefs among organizations in climate change policy networks in Germany and Japan. Different combinations of information types, policy beliefs, and organizational roles were found to play instrumental roles. Ideational influence can occur when (1) the sender is a credible information source, (2) the receiver can understand the “message,” and (3) the receiver depends on the sender’s information. Organizational roles involved in this ideational influence are different in technical and political information exchange. The leverage of influence depends on the organizational ecology of different roles in each country.
... Policy network scholars study how a much wider range of actors (public, private and third sector actors as well as scientific organisations) engage in a policymaking process. The policy networks' literature has routinely studied how policy actors collaborate with one another, focusing on the exchange of information, support and resources as well as co-participation in policy forums (Berardo and Scholz, 2010;Leifeld and Schneider, 2012;Hamilton et al, 2018;Heaney and Leifeld, 2018;Wagner et al, 2021a). A large body of the literature, often informed by the advocacy coalition framework, has found that policy actors with similar beliefs tend to coordinate their activities to increase the chances that their preferences or views inform or shape policy decisions (Weible and Sabatier, 2005;Henry, 2011a;Matti and Sandström, 2011;Ingold, 2011). ...
... Policy network analysis is the study of the relationships and the interdependencies between those that participate in a policy process (Laumann and Knoke, 1987). The approach has been used to identify relevant actors, to map the relationships among them and to investigate if interdependencies between actors can explain collaboration patterns, power dynamics and the exchange of information (Henry, 2011b;Ingold, 2011;Leifeld and Schneider, 2012;Gronow et al, 2020;Wagner et al, 2021a). ...
Advocacy strategies are a key success factor for public, private and third sector actors who participate in and seek to influence policy choices. Despite this, research on policy networks has paid little attention to the forms of advocacy studied by interest groups scholars. The interest groups’ literature differentiates insider from outsider strategies and assumes that interest groups with strong access to policymakers opt for insider strategies, while those with weak access are constrained to the use of outsider strategies. This literature has not considered how the full set of actors that constitute a policy network use advocacy strategies. Furthermore, the insider/outsider dichotomy oversimplifies and neglects the possibility that actors’ choices are interdependent. Using climate change policy network data from four countries that vary by interest group system, we investigate if policy actors’ choices of advocacy strategies are similar to those in their collaboration network and to those with similar policy beliefs as their own. Results show that, irrespective of the context, actors are likely to use the same advocacy strategies as their collaboration partners and those whose policy beliefs are like their own. This research demonstrates the value of using a policy network approach to move beyond the insider/outsider dichotomy on interest groups’ use of advocacy strategies. It makes a clear contribution to this scholarship by advancing the debate on strategies that policy actors employ to influence policymaking through evidencing interdependencies between the strategies used by policy actors due to belief similarity and a ‘networking effect’.
... The rapid shutdown of heavy industry during the economic transformation allowed the country to comfortably achieve the European Union's (EU) 2020 (European Environmental Agency, 2019) as well as the EU2030 (European Environmental Agency, 2018) climate targets without major policy changes. Adoption of more ambitious mitigation policies has been prevented by the strong position of energy incumbents Černý and Ocelík, 2020) and overall polarization of the climate policy subsystem (Wagner et al., 2020). As a result, the Czech Republic remains a coal-dependent economy (Vlček et al., 2019) with the fifth highest CO2 emissions per capita in the EU (European Environmental Agency, 2019). ...
... Although the Czech climate sceptic movement has been considerably less active since the end of the Klaus presidency in 2013, the strong position of industry incumbents and widespread presence of anti-environmental rhetoric among political elites (see Binka, 2008;Osička and Černoch, 2017) provide resources for its renewal. Moreover, recent research has shown the continued presence of climate scepticism within the scientific community (see Wagner et al., 2020). ...
Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus on the existence and serious impacts of anthropogenic climate change, diverse societal actors strive to undermine both its scientific basis and derived policy responses. Mass media constitute a key discursive space where such actors attempt to influence public understanding and thereby particular policy (non)responses. This research focuses on media communication strategies of climate sceptics in the Czech Republic. It uses discourse network analysis to examine a corpus compiled from four major national newspapers between 2009 and 2018. The results show a crucial role for former President Klaus, who was the most represented actor on the issue. Sceptics mostly resorted to a counter-framing strategy based on questioning the integrity and motivations of climate scientists and climate protection supporters. This research provides supportive evidence that the Anglo-American model of climate scepticism has been successfully adopted in the context of post-communist Europe.
... Such networks usually operate outside centralized bureaucracies or formal government bodies and are designed to address pressing issues by enhancing the quality of public administration and sharing specialized knowledge about successful solutions (Eberlein & Newman, 2008). Networks are typically established by interdependent actors around a policy problem and are recognized as such that can impact the dynamics of policymaking process and policy outcomes (Eberlein & Newman, 2008;Wagner et al., 2020). When well-designed, such networks can even be more effective at addressing environmental issues than formal institutions (Scholz & Wang, 2006). ...
... First, there is an increasing demand for knowledge and expertisesharing on global challenges requiring a coordinated response, such as on climate governance (e.g., Miller, 2007). Second, sharing best practices and policy-relevant insights can improve the governance of complex issues at different levels (Hsueh, 2019;Shyrokykh, 2019;Wagner et al., 2020). In contrast to coercive and hierarchical governance via conditionality, trans-governmental networks permit flexibility in the extent and areas of cooperation, as well as the pace of transformation. ...
Climate change mitigation and adaptation are among the policy areas covered by the European Union (EU) in trans‐governmental cooperation with the neighboring countries. Although this cooperation is open to all European Neighborhood Policy countries and Russia, there is significant cross‐country variance. This article maps the EU's climate networks in the neighborhood and, building on time‐series cross‐sectional data analysis, explains the cross‐country differences. The study contributes to Europeanization and network governance literatures by demonstrating that the main driver of EU engagement in climate networks in the region is interdependencies stemming from geographic proximity. Meanwhile, state capacity is an important condition for establishing climate cooperation: climate cooperation develops more with closer neighbors that have stronger state capacity. Importantly, contrary to the logic of its international climate commitments, climate vulnerabilities do not define the extent of the EU's engagement in climate networks with its neighborhood.
... A now vast amount of academic literature has sought to understand how humanity is responding to the climate crisis; examining the local, national, regional, transnational, polycentric, and international dimensions of climate politics (Bulkeley and Newell 2015;Jordan et al. 2018;Keohane and Victor 2011;Lieven 2020;Wagner et al. 2021b ), and investigating the role of the private sector, scientific organisations, NGOs, international institutions, thinktanks, policy networks, and the media (Allan 2021;Dunlap and Jacques 2013;Satoh, Nagel, and Schneider 2022;Tobin et al. 2018;Vesa, Gronow, and Ylä-Anttila 2020). Not enough research has examined the interests and ideas of the groups that participate in local climate governance while also examining how they engage with both local and national policymaking institutions. ...
Public participation in local governance is crucial for effective climate action and for ensuring that policies are designed in a way that respects the rights of communities. Policy developments and choices are shaped by the groups that participate, by the ideas that they hold, and by the institutions that enable and constrain their participation. This paper seeks to understand local climate change governance in Ireland by identifying the environmental interests and the ideas of the groups that participate, and by examining how they engage with institutionalised local policymaking processes and with the organisations that represent the officially recognised views of the country’s national environmental movement. An analysis of survey data collected from the groups that are members of one of Ireland’s Public Participation Networks shows that a majority of groups are small, rural, voluntary, interested in a wide variety of environmental issues and have a pro-ecological worldview. Most groups follow a pro-institutional advocacy strategy at the local level, while only a minority interact with the national environmental movement, mostly limiting their engagement to the acquisition of information. This paper contributes to the literature that examines how interests, ideas, and institutions shape public participation in local climate politics.
... Work in this cluster of 18 (22%) articles addresses voluntary organizations in local environmental politics (e.g., Daneri et al., 2021), environmental justice movements (Vandepitte et al., 2019), advocacy and litigation coalitions (Aamodt, 2018;Holm & Berardo, 2020;Nilsen et al., 2018), the role of religious and indigenous organizations in environmental conservation teaching and awareness (e.g., Brown et al., 2021;Ellingson et al., 2012;Mlaki & Massawe, 2019;Standley et al., 2009), nonprofit scientific institutions as brokers of credible climate change information (e.g., Wagner et al., 2021), and the role of voluntary organizations in participatory governance or as democracy-building, bottom-up actors in climate action (e.g., Greenspan et al., 2022;Van Veelen & Eadson, 2019). Two articles address advocacy organizations vis-à-vis the commercial sector (e.g., Odziemkowska, 2022;Spitz et al., 2021). ...
The voluntary and civil society sector plays important roles in climate policy, mitigation and adaptation, especially given the pervasive government and market failures in this policy domain. Does the quality and quantity of scholarship published in nonprofit-focused journals reflect the topic’s importance? This article reviews voluntary sector scholarship on climate issues and serves to introduce Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly’s first organized collection of research on the voluntary sector and climate change. We begin by summarizing and commenting on the findings of a modified systematic literature review of past research on this subject. We then introduce the other five articles published in this symposium, place them in the context of past literature, and discuss their potential contributions to helping researchers expand the conversation and the knowledge on this topic in future work. Finally, we outline ideas and issues for future research.
... The fact that scientific community has reached a consensus on such a topic as climate change does not necessarily mean that policymakers accept and utilize scientific results or recommendations (Hoppe et al. 2013;Jasanoff 2010;Jordan 2014;Miller 2001;Mitchell et al. 2006;Sundqvist et al. 2018;van Eck 2016;Wagner et al. 2021). Turning the findings of CCS into policies and actions is regarded as challenging in science, technology, and society (STS) studies because of the complex relationship between the two worlds. ...
This paper qualitatively investigates one of the influential transnational municipal networks, Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM)’s position in three Turkish municipal governments in bridging the climate change science and climate change policy gap. In the last two decades, the importance of science-based policymaking for climate mitigation and adaptation and transnational municipal networks empowered by municipalities that guide city policies linked to international agreements has been recognized. In this paper, we argue that CoM has acted as a boundary-object in producing climate change policies and plans in Turkish municipal governments. However, CoM has done so to a certain extent; their effectiveness was limited due to the general atmosphere on climate change policies in Turkey. We substantiate this claim through a two-layer examination: a case-specific analysis of three municipalities and semi-structured interviews with thirteen experts in climate change policy-related issues.
... Due to characteristics of the knowledge exchange and knowledge coproduction processes of science and policy of climate, a common rubric through which the climate science-policy interface is analyzed within the literature is network analysis (Ranchod and Vas, 2019;Wagner et al., 2021). Using the data collected from Twitter, we assess CCAFS' place within its network of strategic partners by analyzing the relationship between accounts mentioned in tweets. ...
Many parts of the world are increasingly experiencing the effects of climate change, making climate adaptation of rural livelihoods crucial to secure social and economic resilience. While the past two decades have witnessed a significant evolution in climate adaptation policy, evaluating the impact of climate science on policy has remained a challenge. This study employs the Digital Methods epistemology to explore the dynamics of agriculture-focused climate science and changes in attitude towards Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and climate change, using the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) as a case study. By considering online networks and narratives as evidence of “offline” influence, it effectively repurposes publicly available data from digital sources such as social media and websites by employing text mining and social network analysis to assess the influence and reach of the program among stakeholder at various levels. Results show that CCAFS has supported increased public awareness of CSA; that it actively engages with key actors within a network of stakeholders with more than 60 thousand members; that it has positively shifted the debate on climate adaptation among strategic partners through increased message alignment and space in the policy agenda; and that the program’s reach is potentially amplified to 5.8 M users on Twitter.
... It is commonly regarded as the replacement of 36 adversarial and managerial modes of collaboration (Ansell & Gash, 2008). Specifically, 37 some scholars view collaborative governance as a voluntary mechanism rather than a 38 mandate, determined by past collaborative experiences, belief homophily, and resource 39 dependency (Wagner et al., 2020). In other words, the influencing factors of a collective 40 'public value' in a broad sense (Sørensen & Torfing, 2009). ...
Existing literature often analyzes the effects of horizontal relationships on collaborative governance, though some scholars have started to recognize the role of hierarchical interventions. This paper identities two poorly examined areas of study. First, there is a lack of empirical studies to understand the diverse impacts of hierarchical interventions on collaborative governance. Second, there is little deliberation on how existing horizontal relationships can moderate the effects that hierarchical interventions have on collaborative governance. This paper utilizes environmental collaboration data from the Yangtze River Delta region in China to estimate the impacts of hierarchical interventions on collaborative arrangements and the contextual effects of horizontal relationships. We find that hierarchical interventions, such as top-down regulations and performance evaluation, enhance the formalization of collaborative arrangements. Additionally, horizontal relationships derived from past experiences can moderate the effects of hierarchical interventions, notwithstanding such effects vary among different interventions.
... However, a more nuanced understanding of the policy context, policy actors and their interlinked relationships is needed. For example, network analysis can aid understanding of information exchange between actors, and whether network structures lead to the exclusion of certain actors (Oliver and Faul, 2018;Wagner et al., 2020). Deeper understanding of power relations is also crucial, including the sources and types of power, particularly in SPIs where multiple policy actors can claim the right of participation (Fritz and Binder, 2020). ...
There is growing interest-and need-among researchers and research organizations to contribute societally relevant work as well as to demonstrate the policy impact of their research. Diverse science-policy interfaces (SPIs) aim for scientifically informed policymaking by connecting scientists with policymakers. Effective SPIs need to be grounded in credibility, relevance and legitimacy; at the same time, however, they become part of the complex, politicised web of public policymaking. In this article we examine how forest researchers who participate in diverse SPIs in the context of the Global South navigate this complexity. We apply the concepts of credibility, relevance and legitimacy to explore the tensions researchers experience, as well as the strategies that researchers apply when responding to them. The research is based on in-depth interviews with 23 forest researchers and highlights (i) the tensions related to ensuring both policy and political relevance particularly in the context of research led SPIs; and (ii) tensions arising from the need to maintain credibility in the face of contestation and pressure to omit research critical of existing policies and practice and also the legitimacy of 'experts' operating within the SPI. Ensuring SPI effectiveness (research impact) also emerged as an additional source of tension. While multiple response strategies were identified, including knowledge co-production and strategic engagement with key policy actors, some of the tensions led to compromises, which we discuss. We conclude by highlighting the need to understand power relations in terms of both planning but also evaluating effective SPIs.
... The case was selected (1) based on its relevance within the European context and (2) as it represents, in an energy transition perspective, an exemplar of reoccurring struggle of a local community against regime incumbents. As for the former, the Czech Republic is a coal-dependent economy with the fourth highest CO 2 emissions per capita in the European Union and the third largest brown coal consumer in the Union [70,71]. More than 871 million tons of recoverable reserves lie beyond the mining limits, thus creating a sustained economic pressure to expand or at least preserve production, which would substantially postpone any coal phaseout [see [72,73]]. ...
As the energy transition proceeds, local opposition against various energy developments is increasingly widespread. This paper explores the role of social networks for participation in opposition to coal mining in the Czech Republic. A case study of the opposition movement examines whether network connections and social influence channeled through cooperation networks increase the intensity of opposition. It uses a novel approach of autologistic actor attribute models to include both individual-based and network-based predictors. The number of an individual’s network connections was found to be the sole positive predictor. By contrast, the effects of social influence, individual sociodemographic predictors, and sociopsychological predictors were not present. This shows the critical importance of the underlying cooperation network, which increases both opportunities and incentives to cooperate. The results further suggest that the opposition movement network has multiple centers revolving around high-level participants. Such arrangement indicates a division of labor among the professional activists, radical grassroots activists, and residents, thus enabling the opposition to efficiently access various resources. It also shows that research on local opposition should consider not only individual attributes but also relational contexts which allow to adequately capture the opposition’s organization. Only with such understanding may more suitable and inclusive future policies be designed.
... With regard to climate change policymaking, some scholars have identified numerous crucial factors that influence the functioning of the science-policy interface. For instance, they have looked at how scientific information flows in climate policy networks between the producers and users of scientific knowledge (Kettle et al., 2017;Wagner et al., 2020) and how political and cultural factors, such as political culture and geopolitics, impede the use of scientific knowledge in climate policymaking (Lahsen, 2009). Having too little or too much trust in the climate-science policy interface can also complicate the use of scientific knowledge in policymaking (Lacey et al., 2018). ...
In this article, we argue that the science–policy interface can be understood as a discourse network constituted by discursive interaction between scientific organizations and other actors that both use scientific arguments in conjunction with other policy arguments. We use discourse network analysis to investigate the climate change policy process in Finland between 2002 and 2015, focusing on the role of and relationships between scientific actors and arguments in the discourse networks. Our data consist of policy actors’ written testimonies on two law proposals, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (2002) and the enactment of the Finnish Climate Law (2015). Our results show that two competing discourse coalitions have influenced the development of climate change policy in the 2000s. In 2002, the dominant coalition was economic, prioritizing economic growth over climate change mitigation. In 2015, the climate coalition that argued for ambitious mitigation measures became dominant. The majority of scientific actors were part of the dominant economy coalition in 2002 and part of the dominant ecology coalition in 2015. The centrality of scientific arguments increased over time, and both discourse coalitions used them progressively more. These developments reflect the increasingly central position of science in Finnish climate policymaking. We contribute to the literature on the science–policy interface by operationalizing the interface as a set of connections in a discourse network and by showing how the analysis of discourse networks and their properties can help us understand the shifts in the role of science in policymaking over time.
This article presents a research synthesis of 162 studies focusing on information use for decision making in public administration, management, and policy. The findings reveal that a significant proportion of work is centered around performance management and policy implementation. Notably, around one‐third of the reviewed studies adopt a behavioral science perspective. The analysis predominantly includes civil servants and citizens as the subjects, with quantitative studies outnumbering qualitative investigations by more than twofold. We identify three distinct components in understanding information use: the objective features of information architecture; the subjective mechanisms involving cognitive biases (i.e. over/under‐reaction to irrelevant information features) and decision noise (i.e. heterogeneity); and the moderating role of information user typology. Context should also be taken into account. The article explores how these findings relate to current societal challenges and emphasizes the potential of mixed‐methods, multi‐sample, and/or multi‐site research in advancing knowledge in this area.
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Responses to current environmental challenges, such as the energy transition, require collaboration among diverse actors interacting in complex and conflicting policy settings. This study examines the drivers of inter-organizational collaboration within the conflictual context of Czech coal phase-out by investigating hypotheses on belief homophily, political influence, and expert information. It uses a sequential mixed-methods research design combining exponential random graph modeling, which controls for network self-organization processes, and directed qualitative content analysis, which validates and extends the findings from the previous stage. The results show that organizations perceived as influential and organizations providing expertise are more likely to be involved in inter-organizational collaboration. Belief homophily does not predict collaboration but is relevant for disincentivizing collaboration among actors with low-compatible beliefs, thus contributing to conflict reproduction. The study concludes that future collaborative arrangements need to avoid such design flaws as those of the recently established Coal Committee, which reinforced existing power asymmetries and conflicts.
This article focuses on climate change policies in Portugal. It seeks to understand institutional stances about climate change and to draw the links between organisations on policy influences, sources of scientific information, collaborations and advice. It is based on a questionnaire survey of the main institutional actors. This study concludes that there is a consensus among institutional actors on climate change and support for mitigation measures. The network analysis shows the centrality of governmental actors and some closure of the sectors, which tend to function in “silos”, with weak institutional interactions in the period under analysis.
Polities shape power structures and interaction patterns between actors in policymaking processes. Although the social fabric of interactions is key to successful policymaking, it remains unclear which relational structures are typically found across political systems. By adopting a network approach, we analyse differences in power structures and interaction patterns across four policy networks in German and Swiss consensual–federal, French majoritarian–unitary, and hybrid Dutch consensual–unitary democracies. Using survey data from 149 state and non‐state actors, we fit exponential random graph models and calculate predicted probabilities to compare the four networks. Results show that the consensus democracies institutionalize neighbourhoods of networks where actors share power and collaborate with opponents. Our case of a majoritarian democracy illustrates power concentration with restricted access to competitors, limiting the need to interact and search for compromises with opponents. Findings allow future work to differentiate typical from atypical network structures, given the embeddedness into a political system.
Статья посвящена критическому осмыслению опыта применения теории политических сетей в современной отечественной и зарубежной политической науке. В отношении российских исследований отмечен ряд проблемных зон, относительно которых до сих пор не достигнут консенсус: широкая интерпретация терминов, ограничения методологии и методики применения теории политических сетей в изучении российской политики, преобладание теоретических текстов, а не эмпирических исследований. Для разрешения терминологических противоречий авторы предлагают закрепить термин сети политики, который сужает описываемый объект до форматов преимущественно горизонтального сотрудничества, в котором могут принимать участие органы власти, негосударственные институты гражданского общества и бизнеса и/или неинституционализированные объединения граждан в процессе реализации публичного управления. Также в статье дается обзор ограничений использования сетевой методологии изучения политики в мировой практике и обосновывают их общей тенденцией кризиса позитивизма в общественных науках.
Во второй части статьи приводятся результаты проведенного мета-анализа научных статей, посвященных сетевому анализу политики (N=37). Авторы выделяют три логики исследования: (1) исследование отдельных сетей и концентрация выводов на конкретных политиках; (2) развитие методик, заключающееся в разработке и апробации новых подходов к сетевому анализу на эмпирическом материале; (3) фокус на теории политических сетей и доработка её положений через призму проведённого исследования. Кроме того, авторы концептуализируют ряд методических подходов, используемых учеными для преодоления методологических и методических ограничений сетевого подхода к исследованию публичной политики.
The paper is devoted to the critical reconstruction of the policy network theory in contemporary political science. The number of issues that are still lacking in consensus among researchers are found in Russian policy network studies: the broad understanding of the terminology, limitations to theoretical and methodological grounds in application to Russian area of research, dominance of theoretical articles rather than empirical studies. The authors develop the definition that resolves the opaque understanding of the policy network term in Russian language. They define it as the formats of predominantly horizontal collaboration involving public bodies, private business entities, NGOs and/or uninstitutionalized citizens’ communities that participate in public governance procedures. The limitations of the policy network methodology that is caused by the crisis trends in positivist approach are also argued in the paper. The results of the meta-analysis of the policy network studies (N=37) are represented in the second part of the paper. The authors highlight three logics of the policy networks research: (1) the studies of the specific policy networks and focus on the concrete policies; (2) development of the methods of policy network analysis and their empirical tests; (3) focus on theoretical contribution to the policy network theory based on the empirical and comparative studies. Besides, the conceptualization of the approaches that may help the researchers to overcome theoretical and methodological limitations of the policy network theory is given.
The extent to which a policy actor is perceived as being influential by others can shape their role in a policy process. The interest group literature has examined how the use of advocacy tactics, such as lobbying or media campaigns, contributes to an actor’s perceived influence. The policy networks literature, in turn, has found that network ties and occupying certain institutional roles can explain why actors are perceived as influential. When investigating what explains perceptions of influence, interest groups scholars have not accounted for network interdependencies and network scholars have so far not examined the advocacy tactics used by interest groups. This paper addresses the gap at the intersection of these two literatures by investigating the relationship between network ties, institutional roles, advocacy tactics and the presence of influence attribution ties in climate change policy networks. Exponential random graph models are applied to network data collected from the organisations participating in the national climate change policymaking processes in six EU countries that vary by the extent to which they are majoritarian or consensual democracies: Czechia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and Sweden. The results show that network ties and institutional roles are better predictors of influence attribution ties than advocacy tactics and that there is no pattern in the relationship between advocacy tactics and influence attribution ties across different institutional contexts. These findings suggest that because influence is primarily associated with structural factors (network ties and institutional roles) that more established policy actors are likely to have more influence, which may inhibit the need for a significant step change in climate policies.
Local authorities play a key role in tackling climate change by implementing targeted adaptation and mitigation measures. The specific implementation of a mix of adaptation and mitigation strategies is the outcome of the interaction of policymakers through a political debate and their attitudes towards climate change. By concentrating on the political discourses occurring in the Assembly of an Italian region (Emilia-Romagna), we use a multi-method approach of Discourse Network Analysis and Concept Mapping to investigate local policymakers’ positioning. Our investigation shows that actors are grouped not only according to their political affiliation, but also to the debated topics, and this relates to the preference for supporting adaptation or mitigation measures, which characterizes the local policy debate.
Individual Determinants of Climate Change Scepticism in the Czech Republic This article focuses on the issue of climate change scepticism among the inhabitants of the Czech Republic and pursues two objectives: to compare climate change scepticism of Czech citizens with citizens of other European countries and to examine the relationship between individual characteristics of Czech citizens and their opinion on climate change. For this purpose, the concepts of epistemic scepticism and response scepticism are employed. The data from round 8 of the European Social Survey are analysed to demonstrate the level of Czech climate change scepticism in comparison with other European countries and to examine the association between the individual characteristics of Czech citizens and climate scepticism. The results indicate that Czech citizens are among the most sceptical in Europe. Furthermore, the outcomes from a series of regression models demonstrate that both epistemic scepticism and response scepticism are associated with political trust and personal values The findings are contrasted to previous research from other European countries and differences are discussed, taking the specific Czech historical, economic and political context into account.
Coal phase-out is an integral part of the ongoing energy transition to a decarbonized economy. Any such process involves diverse actors that compete over the nature and pace of such transition. This research uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework to analyze the conditions of policy change within an adversarial subsystem. It focuses on the coal subsystem in the Czech Republic, a post-communist coal-dependent country with comparatively large economically recoverable reserves. Using data from an organizational survey, exploratory social network analysis techniques are applied to identify advocacy coalitions and deductive block-modeling is used to test hypotheses on the subsystem’s functioning. The focus is on: (1) fragmentation of decision-makers, (2) targeting of decision-makers, and (3) use of expert information. Two competing and ideologically distant coalitions were identified: The Industry Coalition and Environmental Coalition. The results further show high fragmentation among decision-makers, as indicated by their cross-coalition membership and the heterogeneity of their beliefs. The targeting of decision-makers is practiced by principal members of both coalitions, i.e. environmental non-governmental organizations and industry, but also by research organizations. Lastly, expert information exchange strongly overlaps with the identified coalitions and thus increases their cohesiveness. It is argued that such subsystem configuration limits the potential for policy change through negotiated agreement or policy learning. Policy brokers and policy venues are suggested as remedies to moderate the adversarial nature of the subsystem.
Research has repeatedly shown that individuals and organisations tend to obtain information from others whose beliefs are similar to their own, forming “echo chambers” with their network ties. Echo chambers are potentially harmful for evidence-based policymaking as they can hinder policy learning and consensus building. Policy forums could help alleviate the effects of echo chambers if organisations with different views were to participate and to use the opportunities that forums provide to learn from those outside their networks. Applying exponential random graph models on survey data of the Irish climate change policy network, we find that policy actors do indeed tend to obtain policy advice from those whose beliefs are similar to their own. We also find that actors tend not to obtain policy advice from the those that they encounter at policy forums, suggesting forums are not enabling policy learning.
Although substantial attention has focused on efforts by the new Administration to block environmental policies, climate politics have been contentious in the US since well before the election of Donald Trump. In this paper, we extend previous work on empirical examinations of echo chambers in US climate politics using new data collected on the federal climate policy network in summer 2016. We test for the similarity and differences at two points in time in homophily and echo chambers using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) to compare new findings from 2016 to previous work on data from 2010. We show that echo chambers continue to play a significant role in the network of information exchange among policy elites working on the issue of climate change. In contrast to previous findings where echo chambers centered on a binding international commitment to emission reductions, we find that the pre-existing echo chambers have almost completely disappeared and new structures have formed around one of the main components of the Obama Administration’s national climate policy: the Clean Power Plan. These results provide empirical evidence that science communication and policymaking at the elite level shift in relation to the policy instruments under consideration.
This article contributes to our understanding of the formation of policy networks. Research suggests that organisations collaborate with those that are perceived to be influential in order to access scarce political resources. Other studies show that organisations prefer to interact with those that share core policy beliefs on the basis of trust. This article seeks to develop new analytical tools for testing these alternative hypotheses. First, it measures whether perceptions of reputational leadership affect the likelihood of an organisation being the target or instigator of collaboration with others. Second, it tests whether the degree of preference similarity between two organisations makes them more or less likely to collaborate. The article adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining exponential random graph models (ERGM) with qualitative interviews, to analyse and explain organisational collaboration around United Kingdom banking reform. It is found that reputational leadership and preference similarity exert a strong, positive and complementary effect on network formation. In particular, leadership is significant whether this is measured as an organisational attribute or as an individually held perception. Evidence is also found of closed or clique-like network structures, and heterophily effects based on organisational type. These results offer significant new insights into the formation of policy networks in the banking sector and the drivers of collaboration between financial organisations.
Which European Union actors are most powerful in the governance of the euro crisis? The euro crisis has reignited the classic debate between intergovernmentalists, who tend to stress the coercive power of dominant member states in the European Council, and supranationalists, who maintain that through the use of institutional power, the Commission and the European Central Bank turned out the 'winners' of the crisis. This paper argues that euro crisis governance is best understood not just in terms of one form of power but instead as evolving through different constellations of coercive, institutional and ideational power that favored different EU actors over the course of the crisis, from the initial fast-burning phase (2010-2012), where the coercive and ideational power of Northern European member states in the European Council was strongest, to the slow-burning phase (2012-2016), when greater influence was afforded supranational actors through the use of ideational and institutional power.
The gap between science and practice is widely recognized as a major concern in the production and application of decision-relevant science. This research analyzed the roles and network connections of scientists, service providers, and decision makers engaged in climate science and adaptation practice in Alaska, where rapid climate change is already apparent. Our findings identify key actors as well as significant differences in the level of bonding ties between network members who perceive similarity in their social identities, bridging ties between network members across different social groups, and control of information across roles—all of which inform recommendations for adaptive capacity and the co-production of usable knowledge. We also find that some individuals engage in multiple roles in the network suggesting that conceptualizing science policy interactions with the traditional categories of science producers and consumers oversimplifies how experts engage with climate science, services, and decision making. Our research reinforces the notion that the development and application of knowledge is a networked phenomenon and highlights the importance of centralized individuals capable of playing multiple roles in their networks for effective translation of knowledge into action.
The book The Energy Sector and Energy Policy of the Czech Republic is divided into eight chapters. The first describes the key actors and the legislative framework of the energy sector of the Czech Republic, including an analysis of the Government, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of the Environment, and other legislative and regulatory bodies and political parties. The second chapter introduces the rich and complicated history of the development of the Czech national energy sector. The following chapters familiarize the reader with the coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, renewables industries, and electricity and heat. The book is recommended to scholars and researchers, as well as experts in the relevant fields of study, but will also serve as a guide for those outside academia who work with the topic daily, such as in public administration.
Research on the influence of social network structure over flows of knowledge in support of sustainability governance and action has recently flourished. These studies highlight three challenges to evaluating knowledge-action networks: first, defining boundaries; second, characterizing power distributions; and third, identifying obstacles to knowledge sharing and connectivity. We present concepts from social network analysis (SNA) commonly found to influence knowledge flows. We examine applications of SNA from across the social sciences and use the case of land governance in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as an illustration of how all three challenges affect knowledge-action networks. SNA is a useful way to understand and overcome many challenges to knowledge flow and thus help improve informational governance strategies for sustainability.
Collaboration between actors in political decision-making processes is crucial from both an actor and a process perspective. Previous studies have highlighted the role of preference similarity, power, and opportunity structures as drivers of collaboration. However, these studies have focused on single policy sectors and have therefore overlooked possible differences in effects across sectors, as well as interactions between sectors. This article innovates by taking a cross-sector perspective. Applying exponential random graph models to collaboration networks covering 11 decision-making processes, we show that relational opportunity structures have a fairly consistent influence on collaboration, whereas the effects of social and institutional opportunity structures vary across processes. The effect of institutional opportunity structures is contingent on the importance of institutional arenas. Our hypothesis on cross-sector influences receives partial support. Opportunity structures and interactions between sectors add to preference similarity and power, which have a strong and robust influence on collaborative tie formation.
There is a strong political divide on climate change in the US general public, with Liberals and Democrats expressing greater belief in and concern about climate change than Conservatives and Republicans. Recent studies find a similar though less pronounced divide in other countries. Its leadership in international climate policy making warrants extending this line of research to the European Union (EU). The extent of a left–right ideological divide on climate change views is examined via Eurobarometer survey data on the publics of 25 EU countries before the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2009 ‘climategate’ controversy and COP-15 in Copenhagen, and an increase in organized climate change denial campaigns. Citizens on the left consistently reported stronger belief in climate change and support for action to mitigate it than did citizens on the right in 14 Western European countries. There was no such ideological divide in 11 former Communist countries, likely due to the low political salience of climate change and the differing meaning of left–right identification in these countries.
The science-based management of natural resources requires knowledge exchange between scientists and environmental decision-makers, however, this exchange remains a significant challenge. Rather, evidence suggests that decision-makers rely on individual experience or other secondary sources of knowledge in isolation from scientific evidence when formulating decisions, potentially compromising the effectiveness of their decisions. As a result a new field of research broadly characterised as ‘knowledge exchange’ has emerged, focused largely on identifying and overcoming the barriers to knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers. More recently knowledge exchange research has also begun to explore the relationship between science and decision-making specifically in relation to marine ecosystems and resources. The aim of this paper is to review the literature in relation to knowledge exchange for natural resource management, with a focus on recent evidence in relation to the management of marine resources. This review identifies critical barriers inhibiting knowledge exchange among marine scientists and decisions-makers, such as the inaccessibility of science to decision-makers as well as institutional barriers that limit the extent to which scientists and decision-makers can prioritise knowledge exchange activities. Options for overcoming these barriers, such as novel approaches to knowledge exchange (e.g. – knowledge co-production, knowledge brokers and boundary organisations) and the enabling environments and institutional reforms needed to complement efforts to improve knowledge exchange, are also identified. This review concludes by articulating the gaps in our understanding of knowledge exchange, to help guide future research in this field and improve the sustainable management of marine resources.
Making decisions informed by the best-available science is an objective for many organisations managing the environment or natural resources. Yet, available science is still not widely used in environmental policy and practice. We describe a ‘4S’ hierarchy for organising relevant science to inform decisions. This hierarchy has already revolutionised clinical practice. It is beginning to emerge for environmental management, although all four levels need substantial development before environmental decision-makers can reliably and efficiently find the evidence they need. We expose common bypass routes that currently lead to poor or biased representation of scientific knowledge. We argue that the least developed level of the hierarchy is that closest to decision-makers, placing synthesised scientific knowledge into environmental decision support systems.
For three decades, the “politics matters” literature has found that political ideology is an important explanation of public policy. However, this literature systematically fails to include the influence of the bureaucracy. In fact, it is almost impossible to identify a single study in this literature that controls for the influence of the permanent bureaucracy. In this article, we investigate whether politics still matters when bureaucratic preferences are taken into account. We do this in a simultaneous test of political and bureaucratic influences on public budgets, a policy measure often studied in the “politics matters” literature. We find that political preferences trump bureaucratic ones in policy areas salient to the public but not in less salient areas. This might be comforting news from a democratic perspective. However, as public budgets represent an easy case for political influence, it is food for thought that political preferences do not always prevail.
Background and Aims
Policymakers frequently encounter complex issues, and the role of scientists as policy advisers on these issues is not always clearly defined. We present an overview of the interdisciplinary literature on the roles of scientific experts when advising policymakers on complex issues, and in particular on the factors that influence these roles.
Methods
A structured literature search was combined with literature found in reference lists of peer reviewed papers (the snowball method). In total, 267 publications were analyzed using scientometrics analyses (discipline clustering analysis and co-citation analysis) followed by a qualitative analysis and interpretation.
Results
The scientometrics analysis shows an amalgam of disciplines that publish on our research topic. Five clusters of authors were identified based on similarities in the references used: post-normal science, science and technology studies, science policy studies, politics of expertise and risk governance. The content of the clusters demonstrates that authors in different clusters agree that the role of experts is influenced by the type of problem (simple or complex) and by other parties (the public and stakeholders). However, opinions vary on the extent to which roles can vary and the necessity to explicate different viewpoints.
Discussion and conclusions
Publications on scientific experts who provide policy advice affirm that such experts should and do hold different roles, depending on the type of problem and factors such as values held by the expert and the type of knowledge. We conclude that research on expert roles has remained mostly theoretical. Existing theories about science systems can be used to study real policy advice processes. Most theories are well elaborated, but empirical proof for the described changes, roles and processes is limited.
There is increasing recognition that the development of evidence-informed health policy is not only a technical problem of knowledge exchange or translation, but also a political challenge. Yet, while political scientists have long considered the nature of political systems, the role of institutional structures, and the political contestation of policy issues as central to understanding policy decisions, these issues remain largely unexplored by scholars of evidence-informed policy making.
We conducted a systematic review of empirical studies that examined the influence of key features of political systems and institutional mechanisms on evidence use, and contextual factors that may contribute to the politicisation of health evidence. Eligible studies were identified through searches of seven health and social sciences databases, websites of relevant organisations, the British Library database, and manual searches of academic journals. Relevant findings were extracted using a uniform data extraction tool and synthesised by narrative review.
56 studies were selected for inclusion. Relevant political and institutional aspects affecting the use of health evidence included the level of state centralisation and democratisation, the influence of external donors and organisations, the organisation and function of bureaucracies, and the framing of evidence in relation to social norms and values. However, our understanding of such influences remains piecemeal given the limited number of empirical analyses on this subject, the paucity of comparative works, and the limited consideration of political and institutional theory in these studies.
This review highlights the need for a more explicit engagement with the political and institutional factors affecting the use of health evidence in decision-making. A more nuanced understanding of evidence use in health policy making requires both additional empirical studies of evidence use, and an engagement with theories and approaches beyond the current remit of public health or knowledge utilisation studies.
Many policy networks are characterized by belief-oriented segregation, where actors with shared belief systems are clustered together and few opportunities exist for communication across coalitions of like-minded stakeholders. This inhibits the ability of network actors to effectively learn about, and successfully manage, complex policy problems. Despite the importance of understanding why these structures emerge, the processes that generate belief polarization in networks are not well-studied. This paper derives a general agent-based model of network formation and belief change from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), a prominent theory of the policy process that has been widely applied to the study of belief conflict in contentious policy systems. Simulation results suggest that the ACF assumption of biased information processing plays a critical role in the emergence of belief-oriented segregation in networks. This model provides a starting point for re-thinking the role of cognitive bias in social and policy learning, as well as the relationships between belief change and the evolving structure of policy networks.
In theory, lower-level governments (provinces, regional governments, or member states) operating in multilevel systems within and beyond the nation-state can choose from a wide repertoire of modes of policy coordination to solve collective problems non-hierarchically. These modes range from unilateral policy emulation over informal intergovernmental agreements to binding interstate law. The modes that governments are willing and capable to use, however, vary considerably across multilevel systems which affects governments’ collective problem-solving capacity. This paper argues that the nature of executive–legislative relations in lower-level governments is crucial to account for this variation. The presence (or absence) of power sharing shapes the willingness of lower-level governments to enter agreements that greatly constrain individual government autonomy. Power-concentrating governments, as opposed to power-sharing ones, tend to avoid such agreements. The type of power sharing affects the capacity to enter agreements that require legislative approval. Compulsory power-sharing governments, as opposed to voluntary power-sharing governments, should find it difficult to enter such agreements, since this type of power sharing invites inter-branch divides. To substantiate these arguments, we apply them to Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and the European Union.
The United States, Germany, and Japan - the world's three most powerful and successful free market societies - differ strikingly in how their governments relate to their economies. Comparing Policy Networks reports the results of collaborative research by three teams investigating the social organization and policymaking processes of national labor policy domains in the United States, Germany, and Japan during the 1980s. The researchers gathered information about policy goals, communication patterns, and political support connections from 350 key national organizations, including labor unions, business associations, public interest groups, government agencies, and political parties. These networks reveal similar conflict divisions between business and labor interests, but also distinctive patterns within each nation. Unique combinations of informal policy-making networks and the national political institutions may in part explain the differences in power structures and legislative decisions.
Which organisations saw their positions on two contentious issues reflected in the Irish climate law of 2015, and what role did advocacy coalitions play in the policy process? These questions are answered drawing theoretically from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and by conducting a network analysis of survey data collected from the organisations involved in the national climate policy process. The study finds that several institutionally important or economically powerful organisations, particularly those involved in the agricultural sector, as well as the government parties saw their preferences reflected in the law. This resulted in legislation that excluded binding emission reductions targets, differentiating it from similar laws introduced in other European countries. Organisations in favour of stronger regulation formed a coalition to advocate for their positions, but they largely failed to get their way.
The need for better linkages between evidence and policymaking has been well established in the literature, with a heightened focus on the relationship between researchers, research utilisation and policy development. However, fostering such linkages using a policy network approach has seldom been discussed. This article revisits a key framework in the policy network literature: the policy community, to shed further light on such linkages. Using an empirical approach built on the experience of the Social Policy Research Centre, this article discusses the utility of a policy community network between academic researchers and policymakers. In doing so, the study makes clear that the establishment and strengthening of policy communities is time-bound. Furthermore, this paper argues the need to adhere to network conditions as interactions remain fluid and mature over time.
ClimAdaPT.Local’s goal was the development of 26 Municipal Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change (EMAAC). The project aimed to increase the capacity of these municipalities to incorporate adaptation to Climate Change (CC) in their planning instruments. To do so, several methodologies and tools were specifically developed. One of these, the local stakeholder engagement strategy, constitutes an innovation as far as the development of these strategies in Portugal is concerned. This paper focuses on this stakeholder engagement process and its achievements. ClimAdaPT.Local’s stakeholder engagement was workshop based. These were put in place in order to understand perceptions of CC, its impacts, local risks, but also survey potential inputs into the ongoing EMAAC development. Each session comprised several discussion tables, intending to: (i) obtain a global reference framework on perceptions and sensitivity to CC at the local level; (ii) complement the vulnerabilities assessment made by the technical staff from each municipality; (iii) inform, adjust and optimise the local adaptation strategies. In addition, stakeholders were asked to share their visions of the future, namely how CC and local territorial identity will be articulated in the near, and not so near, future. The analytical findings encompassed in paper refer to point (i). All in all, in Portugal, there is a widespread perception that CC is happening, in particular among social groups that engage in activities such as agriculture and fishing. And despite being considered to pose a threat, CC is, at the same time, broadly perceived as a window of opportunity to put in place measures that improve local living conditions.
New techniques of unconventional oil and gas extraction, such as hydraulic fracturing, challenge current political, institutional and administrative practices in how to regulate activities in the underground. Conflicts of interests between economic promotion, landscape and natural resource protection, and new trends on energy markets are further intensified by the fact that techniques of oil and gas extraction come with a considerable amount of uncertainties regarding ecological and health impacts. Information exchange is one important aspect of how political actors try to reduce uncertainties and conflicts. Based on exponential random graph models (ERGM) for network data, we analyze to what degree ideologies, public authority, existing collaboration and scientific expertise drive information exchange in hydraulic fracturing regulation in the United Kingdom. Results show that technical and political information exchange have to be disentangled, and that the former is driven by expertise and existing collaboration, the latter by ideology, public authority and existing collaboration.
Researching media coverage of climate change may shed light on the different configurations of global and domestic factors affecting journalism and politics. This article analyzes climate change coverage in Portugal from 2007 to 2014 in comparison with 14 other countries. It shows that the Portuguese press tends to reproduce the global political agenda on climate change, mainly focusing on international events associated with global political decision-making processes, instead of providing a domesticated coverage, as observed in other countries. National and local levels of action are thus obscured. The interplay between global and domestic factors—including characteristics of Portugal’s press and politics, such as national political leaders’ lack of mobilization and communication on climate change, media’s deference to powerful sources, and reliance on international news feeds—creates the conditions for global politics to play an hegemonic role in media representations, which is likely to influence public engagement with climate change.
The domestic arena has never been so important for the politics of climate change. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change established a global framework that emphasises ‘nationally determined’ responses to climate change. This places national policies – and the political and institutional factors that help or hinder those responses – front and centre. In the comparative study of climate politics, Ireland is not just another understudied case. It is in many respects an interesting case, both for its peculiarities and for what it shares with other countries: its sets of opportunities and challenges; its successes and failures; and the circumstances in which policy-makers have operated. This symposium addresses some rapidly developing areas in the study of comparative climate politics. In doing so, it contributes to developing knowledge of the features that make the Irish case interesting; that make it similar to and potentially representative of other classes of cases; and that make it different from other cases and in some respects unique. Overall, the symposium highlights significant constraints on effective policy responses to climate change in Ireland.
Why people collaborate to achieve their political objectives is one enduring question in public policy. Although studies have explored this question in low-intensity policy conflicts, a few have examined collaboration in high-intensity policy conflicts. This study asks two questions: What are the rationales motivating policy actors to collaborate with each other in high-intensity policy conflicts? What policy actor attributes are associated with these rationales? This study uses questionnaire data collected in 2013 and 2014 of policy actors from New York, Colorado and Texas who are actively involved with hydraulic fracturing policy debates. The results show that professional competence is the most important rationale for collaborating, whereas shared beliefs are moderately important, and financial resources are not important. Policy actor attributes that are associated with different rationales include organisational affiliation and extreme policy positions. This article concludes with a discussion on advancing theoretical explanations of collaboration in high-intensity policy conflicts.
Corporatist Nordic welfare states are largely thought to have exemplary environmental policies. Finland, however, was labeled “a failing ecostate” by a recent study owing to its weak climate change policy. Why is Finland different? We use data from a survey of organizations belonging to the Finnish climate change policy network to investigate two alternative explanations related to policy networks. According to the Cooptation Thesis, inclusive corporatist polities, where environmental NGOs (ENGOs) have support from and access to the state, formulate less ambitious policies because environmentalists moderate their views to secure state funding and political access. Second, according to the Treadmill of Production Theory, the decisive feature of Nordic corporatism with regard to environmental policy is the tripartite system linking business interests, labor unions, and the state in a coalition that prioritizes economic over ecological values. The results indicate that the ENGO Coalition is the least influential, least resourceful, smallest, least linked to the others, and not particularly moderate. The Treadmill Coalition is the most influential, most resourceful, second largest, well linked to the state, and least ecological in its beliefs. Thus, of the two policy network explanations, the dominance of the Treadmill Coalition rather than cooptation of ENGOs gets support.
The Politics of Evidence Based Policymaking identifies how to work with policymakers to maximize the use of scientific evidence. Policymakers cannot consider all evidence relevant to policy problems. They use two shortcuts: ‘rational’ ways to gather enough evidence, and ‘irrational’ decision-making, drawing on emotions, beliefs, and habits. Most scientific studies focus on the former. They identify uncertainty when policymakers have incomplete evidence, and try to solve it by improving the supply of information. They do not respond to ambiguity, or the potential for policymakers to understand problems in very different ways. A good strategy requires advocates to be persuasive: forming coalitions with like-minded actors, and accompanying evidence with simple stories to exploit the emotional or ideological biases of policymakers.
Information in politics is overabundant. Especially elite politicians are bombarded with information. Politicians must be selective to stay on top of the information torrent. Aggregate-level work within the bounded rationality framework showed that information selection is at the core of decision making. Yet, an answer to the question as to how individual elite politicians go about selecting information is lacking. We know that they unavoidably do, but how exactly they perform this selection task remains largely unknown. The article draws on interviews with 14 party leaders and ministers in Belgium about their information processing. We present a typology, and a funnel, of consecutive information selection mechanisms and attitudes. Politicians partially outsource their information selection to procedures and/or staffers, they personally apply rigorous rules of thumb about what to attend to and what not, and they compensate the pressure and constant risk of messing up with a large dose of self-confidence.
The central assumption in the literature on collaborative networks and policy networks is that political outcomes are affected
by a variety of state and nonstate actors. Some of these actors are more powerful than others and can therefore have a considerable
effect on decision making. In this article, we seek to provide a structural and institutional explanation for these power
differentials in policy networks and support the explanation with empirical evidence. We use a dyadic measure of influence
reputation as a proxy for power, and posit that influence reputation over the political outcome is related to vertical integration
into the political system by means of formal decision-making authority, and to horizontal integration by means of being well
embedded into the policy network. Hence, we argue that actors are perceived as influential because of two complementary factors:
(a) their institutional roles and (b) their structural positions in the policy network. Based on temporal and cross-sectional
exponential random graph models, we compare five cases about climate, telecommunications, flood prevention, and toxic chemicals
politics in Switzerland and Germany. The five networks cover national and local networks at different stages of the policy
cycle. The results confirm that institutional and structural drivers seem to have a crucial impact on how an actor is perceived
in decision making and implementation and, therefore, their ability to significantly shape outputs and service delivery.
In considering issue expertise in policymaking, we unpack differences in the supply and types of expertise with attention to the presumed privileged role of the bureaucracy. Our empirical investigation is based on witness testimonies of congressional hearings for a policy area involving various forms of expertise – critical infrastructure protection policymaking. Three sets of findings stand out. One set substantiates the role of the bureaucracy as an important information conduit while also showing it is not a primary source of issue expertise. A second set shows how differences in issue maturity and salience affect the demand for and supply of expertise. A third set illustrates the influence of a small cadre of hyper-expertise in drawing attention to problems and solutions across different venues. These findings challenge the conventional view of the bureaucracy in policymaking while expanding the understanding of different sources of information and types of issue expertise in policymaking.
This article introduces to policy studies the concept of valence, which we define as the emotional quality of an idea that makes it more or less attractive. We argue that valence explains why some ideas are more successful than others, sometimes gaining paradigmatic status. A policy idea is attractive when its valence matches the mood of a target population. Skilled policy entrepreneurs use ideas with high valence to frame policy issues and generate support for their policy proposals. The usefulness of the concept of valence is illustrated with the case of sustainability, an idea that has expanded from the realm of environmental policy to dominate discussions in such diverse policy areas as pension reform, public finance, labor markets, and energy security. As the valence of sustainability has increased, policy entrepreneurs have used the idea to reframe problems in these various policy areas and promote reforms.
We study the extent of political homophily—the tendency to form connections with others who are politically similar—in local governments’ decisions to participate in an important form of intergovernmental collaboration: regional planning networks. Using data from a recent survey of California planners and government officials, we develop and test hypotheses about the factors that lead local governments to collaborate within regional planning networks. We find that local governments whose constituents are similar politically, in terms of partisanship and voting behavior, are more likely to collaborate with one another in regional planning efforts than those whose constituents are politically diverse. We conclude that political homophily reduces the transaction costs associated with institutional collective action, even in settings where we expect political considerations to be minimal.
This article explores how patterns of information supply on policy problems influence political attention. It advances two central claims. First, different policy areas are associated with distinct practices in monitoring policy problems: Some produce abundant, ongoing, and reliable information, while others yield scarce, sporadic, and/or unreliable data. Second, these variations in information supply are likely to influence political attention, with information‐rich areas associated with a more proportionate distribution of attention, and information‐poor areas yielding punctuated attention. The article tests these claims through comparing U.K. political attention to asylum and illegal immigration. Asylum is observed on an ongoing basis through bureaucratic data, court hearings, and lay observations, producing more constant and proportiate political attention. Illegal immigration is observed sporadically through focusing events, usually police operations, eliciting more punctuated attention. These insights about political attention may also help explain why policy responses may be punctuated or incremental.
Policy change occurs because coalitions of actors are able to take advantage of political conditions to translate their strong beliefs about policy into ideas, which are turned into policy. A coalition's ability to define a problem helps to keep policies in place, but it can also cause coalitions to develop blind spots. For example, policy subsystem actors will often neglect the need for coordination between governmental actors. We examine the financial crisis of 2007–2009 to show how entrenched policy ideas can cause subsystem actors to overlook the need for policy coordination. We first analyze the prevalent idea that policymakers should aim to keep inflation low and stable while employing light touch regulation to financial markets. We then demonstrate how this philosophy led to a lack of coordination between monetary and regulatory policy in the subprime mortgage market. We conclude with thoughts about the need for coordination in future economic policy.
For scientists seeking to play a positive role in policy and politics and contribute to the sustainability of the scientific enterprise, scientists have choices in what role they play. This book is about understanding this choice. Rather than prescribing what course of action each scientist ought to take, the book aims to identify a range of options. Using examples from a range of scientific controversies, The Honest Broker challenges us all - scientists, politicians and citizens - to think carefully about how best science can contribute to policy-making and a healthy democracy.
Information exchange in policy networks is usually attributed to preference similarity, influence reputation, social trust, and institutional actor roles. We suggest that political opportunity structures and transaction costs play another crucial role and estimate a rich statistical network model on tie formation in the German toxic chemicals policy domain. The results indicate that the effect of preference similarity is absorbed by institutional, relational, and social opportunity structures. Political actors choose contacts who minimize transaction costs while maximizing outreach and information. We also find that different types of information exchange operate in complementary, but not necessarily congruent, ways.
Peter Hall's 1993 article came at the same time as a parallel body of literature was developing, some building explicitly, some only implicitly, on similar ideas. I review some literature on policy communities, ideas, and the nature of policy change before exploring the statistical distribution of budget changes at three levels of aggregation. The similarity of these results suggests that a single process may be at work rather than different processes for first-, second-, and third-order change, as Hall's original formulation has it. As Hall suggests, these processes typically generate only marginal adjustments but occasionally create fundamental change. The degree of discredit to the status quo may be an important unexplored variable in explaining the ability of policy reformers to enact marginal, substantial, or fundamental policy changes. In sum, this article shows the similarities and mutual value of Hall's approach with others that would appear to be starkly contrasting.
This study examined the awareness of, use by, and influence on stakeholders in coastal and marine policy-making in Eastern Canada and the United States of environmental publications produced by government agencies. Research was conducted in collaboration with government agencies and the publications evaluated were: (1) The2009State of Nova Scotia's Coast Report, released by the Government of Nova Scotia; and (2) The State of the Gulf of Maine Report, released by the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment. Studying the use and influence of such reports is essential to assure accountability for use of public funds and for environmental protection. Interviews and surveys, web analytics, media scans, and citation analysis were conducted shortly after public release of the reports. The views of multiple stakeholders were considered, including policy and decision makers, scientists, industry, and the public. While produced for different audiences and in different formats, the two reports are important sources of baseline information on regional coastal issues. The methods used to promote awareness of the reports targeted the “interested public”, which included individuals and groups who usually respond to government requests for input, who may be better able to inform policy, and who are already active in coastal zone conservation. Raising awareness and use of information was challenged by the need to communicate environmental information to diverse audiences and to engage the general public (stakeholders and individuals outside of established networks). Results are presented within the context of communication and information pathways at the “science-policy interface”.
This article uses exponential random graph models to investigate the roles of policy-relevant beliefs and social capital as drivers of network structure. The advocacy coalition framework argues that actors with similar policy beliefs are more likely to form coalitions, leading to policy subsystems fragmented into ideological groups. Social capital is defined as trust and norms of reciprocity, which helps cement cooperative relationships. Hypotheses are tested using survey data of policy elites involved in land-use and transportation planning in four regions of California. The findings suggest that coalitions of actors with similar belief systems are knit together by policy brokers seeking to build transitive social relationships.
We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States.
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) was developed to provide a causal theory of the policy process which would serve as one of several alternatives to the familiar stages heuristic, with its recognized limitations. This paper first summarizes the central features of the ACF, including a set of underlying assumptions and specific hypotheses. We next review the implications for the framework of six case studies by various authors dealing with Canadian education and with American transportation, telecommunications, water, environmental, and energy policy. While generally supportive of the ACF, the case studies also suggest several revisions.