Institutional Change and Globalization
... Defining populism is no easy task, since there are so many definitions, including as a political style, a discursive frame, a political ideology, an attitude toward elites, a characteristic of certain political parties, a risk to liberal democracy, or a potential corrective (e.g., Laclau, 2002;Mudde, 1994;Stone, 1997) while promoting policy change through mechanisms of identification, reinvention, diffusion, and learning (Heclo, 1974;Argyris and Schön, 1978;Swidler, 1986: Jobert, 1989Rose, 1991;Campbell, 2004;Dobbin et al., 2007). ...
... The traditional literature in public policy and international relations provides great insight into the causal mechanism of diffusion, which involves patterns of successive or sequential adoption of policies and practices within as well as across countries or venues. Diffusion itself covers a number of different processes through which ideas may spread, including by simple imitation or emulation, dissemination of information, transmission of norms, or translation, which serves to transform as its adapts ideas and discourse to local contexts (Dobbin et al., 2007;Keck and Sikkink, 1998;Campbell, 2004;Ban, 2016). Such processes apply to populism as much as to the mainstream, but somewhat differently with regard to the medium of diffusion. ...
Populist agenda-setting is under-theorized, in part because of the fragmentation of scholarship on populism and agenda-setting. Policy studies has concentrated on the ideas, agents, and mechanisms of mainstream agenda-setting; comparative political economy, political sociology, comparative politics have centered on the sources of populism; and party politics, social movement, and political communication studies have focused on the characteristics of the populists themselves. This article builds on all such literatures to theorize the interactive effects of populism on agenda setting when populists are on the outside, in elective office, or in government. Using the four ‘Ms’ of populists’ ‘discursive construction of discontent’—message, messenger, medium, and milieu—the article examines how populist messages shape the policy narrative; how populist messengers frame the debate; how they use the media to captivate ‘the people;’ and why, depending on milieu, populists are able to leverage ‘the people’s’ support to upend the mainstream and/or capture power.
... Actors, through the use of ideas, possess the ability to influence the cognitive or normative beliefs of other discourse participants, a phenomenon known as ideational power (Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016). Ideas play a crucial role in shaping the attitudes and actions of these actors (Campbell, 2004). Participants in a discourse can be different individuals or groups, depending on the subject matter: members of government, politicians, activists, media representatives, officials, experts, lobbyists (Schmidt, 2010a). ...
Objective: Examined for years in various contexts, the environmental issue does not directly focus on the involve- ment of actors in the process of discourse institutionalisation, which is achievable through the application of discursive institutionalism. The aim of the study is to characterise actors involved in the environmental discourse studied using the discursive intuitionalism approach: who participates in discourses, with whom they co-participant, and based on which sources of discourse records their presence is studied. Research Design & Methods: A systematic review examined 185 DI articles from 2004 to 2022, selecting 33 focused on environmental topics for content analysis. Findings: Seven actor groups in environmental discourse were identified, with government, experts, and NGOs being the most frequent participants. Government predominated in co-occurrence, and discourse records mainly originated from government documents, legislative materials, and reports. Implications/Recommendations: Further research is recommended to delve into actor profiles, explore the relationship between discourse source selection and actor appearance, and observe trends in DI research methods. Emphasising inclusive representation in environmental discourse is crucial for policymakers. Contribution/ Value Added: Participation in environmental discourse is dominated by actors with specialised knowledge or resources, responsible for shaping political agenda goals. This results in low representation of unaffiliated citizens, business, and media. Article classification: research article Keywords: environmental discourse, environmental policy, discursive institutionalism, actors, environmental economics JEL classification: Q5, H8
... Algunos estudios relevantes son Campbell (2004), Saxenian (2017) y Block y Keller (2011). ...
Este artículo realiza un breve estado de la cuestión de la investigación sobre la calidad institucional desde perspectivas sociológicas. Partiendo de la concepción de institución propia de esta disciplina, se han seleccionado dos grupos de trabajos que son útiles para conocer cómo los rasgos institucionales influyen en algunos aspectos de las organizaciones o agregados de ellas. En primer lugar, los estudios que se ocupan de la confluencia de elementos de la estructura social y la cultura en sectores de actividad de países o áreas territoriales, particularmente presente en la sociología del desarrollo. En segundo lugar, los trabajos que se centran más en la faceta cultural de las organizaciones. Aunque ambas corrientes comparten asunciones teóricas e intereses de investigación, están poco conectadas en la literatura que estudia las instituciones desde el punto de vista de su rendimiento social. Sin embargo, ofrecen resultados empíricos complementarios. A partir de su comparación se obtiene una aproximación de las aportaciones de la sociología al estudio de la calidad institucional, lo que a su vez facilita identificar retos para futuras investigaciones y colaboraciones con otras disciplinas.
Why did the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) and the New Democratic Party (NDP) enter into a supply-and-confidence agreement in March 2022? Interparty cooperation among federal parties is rare during minority governments, and yet the agreement created a formal alliance in the House of Commons. In this article, we argue that ideational factors led to the 2022 agreement. We examine the role of programmatic beliefs and strategic learning during the COVID-19 crisis and the 2019-2021 election sequence to shed light on changes in federal parliamentary strategies in Canada. From ad-hoc voting coalitions to extended cooperation on social policymaking, the LPC and the NDP learned how to work together in the House of Commons while using the agreement as a tool to compete with each other in anticipation of the next federal election.
This study has the purpose to analyze the implications of institutional cognitive, ethos, beliefs, tradition, and emotional dimensions. It is assumed that cognition, values, beliefs, and tradition are the background of institutional paradigms development that facilitates and constraints operations, actions, and activities. The method used is supported by the meta-analysis, descriptive and reflective based on the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical review of the literature. It is concluded that institutions are shaped by paradigms formed by cognitive, ethos, beliefs, tradition, and emotional dimensions.
This review essay takes stock of the recent literature about the role of ideas in social policy, with a particular focus on a key issue in social policy research: the changing interactions between states and markets over time. Specifically, our aim is to examine how the ideational literature discusses and explains prominent contemporary social policy evolutions: the rise of social investment and the financialization and technocratization of the welfare state. This is done based on the scholarship on state/market interactions and the role of ideas in social policy, and by utilizing key insights of scholars of ideational influences on state/market interactions. The article ends with a short agenda for future research on ideas and discourses as a crucial factor in the evolution of the welfare state as a key space in which states and markets interact.
When in 1998, the historic Belfast/Good Friday Agreement marked the end of the 30-year violent Northern Ireland conflict often referred to as the ‘Troubles’, many commentators regarded it as the culmination of the life’s work of one man: John Hume. Hume was seen by many as a man of peace, but for others he was a trojan horse for violent Irish nationalism. This paper explores these contradictions through the lens of liminality and argues that central to Hume’s ability to create change in a schismogentic environment of conflict was his own ‘inbetweenness’: a leader of nationalism, but not a nationalist, a believer in non-violence, who engaged actively with men of violence, an MP elected to a British parliament, who worked hand in hand with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. In doing so it proposes a typology of five liminal leadership approaches which allowed for the untangling of the conflict over time: Reframing the Problem; Stakeholder Cultivation; Opening Linguistic Space; Practicing Disruption; and Acceptance of Sacrifice. This paper makes three contributions: to our understanding of leaders who inhabit and utilise liminal spaces, to leadership approaches in zero sum environments including those riven by ‘wicked’ conflicts, and to an understanding of Hume himself and his legacy.
How might international institutions matter? To consider this central question of International Relations, we analyze a most-likely case for the importance of materially driven enforcement: the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) use of blacklisting in the global regime targeting money laundering and terrorism financing. Scholars and practitioners often argue that fear of financial harm caused by FATF’s lists explains the near-global commitment to FATF’s standards, even if compliance lags. We search for statistical evidence of this impact across four different measures of financial flows and find that listing is not correlated with financial harm. To explain these null results, we examine bank decision-making and find that the lists’ impact is likely diminished by two overlooked factors: the existence of multiple, competing lists and banks’ access to more fine-grained, client-specific information provided by third-party companies. We interpret this contradiction—a commitment to compliance generated in part by a fear of enforcement, despite a lack of evidence for enforcement’s impact—as a “rational myth.” The results challenge a common understanding of a major global governance regime, confirm ideas about the limited ability of states or International Organizations to control governance outcomes, and advance a new research agenda on the impact of bank decision-making on global governance.
Among factors that threaten wild populations of African megafauna, wildlife trade has gained prominence as a global policy issue, with concerted international campaigns aiming to influence the trade of species such as elephants, rhinos and lions. Trade policy is strongly contested, confounding attempts to develop coherent approaches across jurisdictions and through international mechanisms such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This undermines conservation efforts. Understanding the drivers of such conflict may help to address this problem.
Scholars of political science increasingly recognise the power of ideas as drivers within policy processes. Guided by this literature, we developed an analytical framework and conducted a thematic analysis to examine the ideas driving wildlife trade policy conflict. Our nested case study approach examined debates over trade policy toward African elephants, rhinos and lions at two levels: the international policy arena of CITES and within a single country, South Africa. Informed by earlier literature, we tracked the evolution of international trade policy debates over a 4‐year period (2016–2019) and analysed submissions to a national policy review process in South Africa that took place during 2020.
During the study period, state and non‐state actors contributed to vigorous trade policy debates within seven key thematic issues across the case study species. Arguments were driven by both cognitive ideas, which specify cause‐and‐effect relationships, and normative ideas, which are values‐based and especially salient elements of anti‐trade stances.
Fusing these cognitive and normative ideational elements, we identified three distinct overarching narratives relating to wildlife trade policy. These three narratives align with broader environmental policy and political narratives and elucidate inherent tensions within the CITES arena. They also reveal differing ethical interpretations and perceptions of risk and precaution.
Policy implications. Wildlife trade policy conflict is driven at least in part by competing ideological visions, which may be entrenched by the CITES Appendix listing system. The structural role of CITES in perpetuating this polarisation—and the consequences thereof—warrants further research.
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Our goal is to identify the factors that encourage internal auditors in the public sector to use their discretion when conducting audits. By investigating multiple relationships between principals and agents, we show how complex structural conditions and accountability pressures influence public auditors’ discretion in the choice of audits they decide to conduct. To test our theoretical model and hypotheses, we created a closed-ended questionnaire distributed to a sample group of Israeli auditors. Our findings reveal a conditional effect between the factors related to the internal and external work environments of internal auditors. Our analysis indicates that internal support for internal auditors’ professional authority is significantly related to their inclination to stretch the boundaries of their role when they strongly believe that their direct principals are concerned about the expectations of the public and the audit committee regarding accountability. Nonetheless, individual auditing experience in the public sector was not significantly related to their professional approach. Our bottom-up approach emphasizes the role of citizens’ democratic awareness and their demand to support the broad scope of gatekeepers, rather than just explanations about the role of elites. Moreover, our conclusions emphasize the role of internal support for the auditors’ professional authority and question the role of their perceived independence in the approach they adopt to auditing.
Literatures on institutional, ideational and policy change have made great strides in dynamically conceptualizing agency within structure. What continues to be insufficiently understood, however, is how actors actually work with ideas, that is, how broad policy ideas become concrete and implementable. One concept that has gained some traction in understanding actors' application of ideas is bricolage, understood as the stabilization or changing of institutions through a creative recombination of existing ideational and institutional resources. We theorize bricolage as a process of working with ideas by testing their cognitive, normative and strategic capacity. In contrast to much of the existing literature, we theorize this ideational policy entrepreneurship as collective agency. This gives greater analytical weight to how different bricoleurs work together—simultaneously and across time—to develop the ideas that come to shape policy. The empirical relevance of the theoretical argument is corroborated with an analysis of the work of bricoleurs in the paradigm shift of German pension policy.
There is debate about whether complex problems should be addressed technocratically or whether they should be politicized. While many tend to favour technocratic decision-making and evidence based policy, for others politicization of policy problems is fundamental for significant policy change. But politicization does not always lead to problem solving. Nor is it always necessary. This paper addresses the question: Under what circumstances should problems be politicized, and what is the effect of such politicization? It adds politicization, through windows of opportunity, to the split ladder of participation to assess policy change through two case studies: successful and unsuccessful constitutional change in Ecuador (2008) and Chile respectively (2022). It argues that where there is no agreement on either science or policy, politicization is required to address lack of consensus in values, but constitutional protection is needed to protect minorities and the vulnerable, their access and human right to water. De-politicization stymies policy change potentially harming democracy. This paper argues for a citizen engaged exploration of the complex problem of climate change and its impacts on water, but a targeted politicization coincident with, but developed well in advance of, windows of opportunity. Moreover, policy framing correlated with complex problems continues to be a key consideration. Furthermore, alliances of disparate actors, elections of new political leaders and considerations of property rights and justice issues are paramount. Significant constitutional policy change reflects social learning, but subsequent court actions by policy entrepreneurs is required to effectively implement this change. Framing constitutional change to protect rights to water and effect international agreements (including the Warsaw International Mechanism under the climate change regime) advances water justice and may increase success.
Over the last decade, French asylum authorities have developed a set of specific policies for the processing of asylum claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity which has led to the de facto construction of the administrative category of “LGBTI refugees.” Amidst the broader trend of increasing restrictions on migration in general, and restrictions impacting asylum seekers in particular, the question arises as to why French authorities expanded the scope of refugee protection to include LGBTI asylum seekers? Following a historical neo-institutionalist approach, this paper seeks to unravel this paradox, aiming to explain why and how the “LGBTI refugees” category emerged in France. I argue that the emergence of the LGBTI refugee category cannot be solely attributed to international or EU influence, but rather emerges from a national translation process integrated within the broader transnational European and global system.
The pandemic-induced disruption has created a critical juncture at which the opportunity to experiment with new policy trajectories has widened. Yet, how much public support is there for such an experiment? This chapter addresses this question by studying the Activation (Prakerja) and unemployment protection (Jaminan Kehilangan Pekerjaan, JKP) policies, which served as essential policy responses during the COVID-19 crisis in Indonesia. In this study, the authors analysed 47,916 tweets containing public debates that took place up to three months after the policies' inception. Having performed a set of analyses on sentiments, emotions, and most appealing tweets, the authors argue that different forms of support for Prakerja and JKP emerged not because of the policies' breakthrough traits, but due to citizens' pragmatic-cognitive logic shaped by the urgency and severity of the COVID-19 crisis. It makes the idea of state-centred welfare responsibility (something Prakerja possesses) more desirable than contribution-based insurance, which JKP offers. Discussing the Indonesian case fills in the existing research gap as it facilitates a better understanding of the political legitimacy of welfare state policy institutionalization in developing countries during the COVID-19 catastrophe.
The concept of robustness has received increasing scholarly attention regarding public policy and governance, where it has enhanced our understanding of how policies and governance are adapted and innovated in response to disruptive events, challenges, and demands associated with heightened societal turbulence. Yet, we know little about the robustness of the ideas undergirding the efforts to foster robust policymaking and public governance. Based on a review of recent strands of governance theory and the ideational turn in public policy research, we define a new ideational robustness concept, which can help us to explain why some governance and policy ideas persist, while others disappear. As the contributions to this special issue demonstrate, studying ideational robustness opens new avenues for reflecting on how the robustness of ideas may affect the robustness of public policy and governance.
To better understand why bureaucracy is still going strong despite a century of scorn, this article asks: How has the bureaucratic governance paradigm managed to achieve its ideational robustness in the face of consecutive waves of criticism and societal challenges? This question is answered by studying the combination of a broad range of ideational robustness strategies that have enabled bureaucracy to weather the storm and stay relevant and praiseworthy in the eyes of public governors. The article describes the core components of the bureaucratic governance paradigm and reviews four consecutive waves of criticism before explaining the ideational changes that have enabled the relative stability of public bureaucracy based on the adaptation and innovation of its content and scope. In addition to summarizing key debates about public bureaucracy, the article develops six ideational robustness strategies that may be used to study other core ideas in public governance.
In this contribution, we identify how the framing strategies employed by policy and political actors make policy ideas robust. We examine the policy ideas of solidarity and sustainability to show how framing strategies that took advantages of the valence and polysemy of both ideas shaped them into robust policy ideas. Both ideas began as wide-ranging concepts designed to build coalitions in debates over a particular large-scale policy problem. Robustness is a quality that emerged over time as these ideas grew to become highly attractive framing devices to justify policy proposals. Moreover, they have proven to be resilient despite changing circumstances or even efforts of their opponents to reframe them in a negative way.
The judiciary is a field lacking research in relation to its administration and innovation; however, different theoretical perspectives can be followed. This work reviews this trend while adding to it. An institutional perspective is presented, as is its explanatory potential. This perspective captures the context of the public sector; however, when analyzing its interpretation in terms of innovation, it is revealed to be doubly paradoxical. From the theoretical point of view, institutionalization focuses on the maintenance of processes, while innovation, gradually or abruptly, investigates their disruptions. Nevertheless, institutionalization can be observed as part of the sedimentation of innovation. Institutionalization is presented, in the context of innovation, as a selection mechanism that shapes such innovation. This paradox is presented under the review of organizational institutionalism vis-à-vis innovation and, for its unfolding, considers the adoption of innovation as an adaptation to the prevalent rationalized elements. This presentation is paralleled with the interpretation that innovation is limited by a structure that, sometimes rationalized, forms its trajectory. Considering the social function of the judiciary that is anchored in institutionalism, historical institutionalism is thus added, centrally placing the judiciary in the current institutional matrix and associating its path dependence with the dimensions of its innovation. Based on these outlines, propositions and a suggested agenda for future research are presented.
Despite the proliferation of national environmental science worldwide, the erosion of environmental sustainability presents a problem for advanced economies with a substantial volume of scientific output. The worsening state of the natural environment presents a profound conundrum at the intersection of science and sustainability, characterised by conflicting pathways for the world’s nations. In this study, I confront this predicament by examining whether the influence of national culture moderates the transition of domestic scientific research into tangible CO 2 emissions reduction. Drawing on a dataset spanning 30 nations renowned for their high scientific productivity over a 24-year period, I use a panel data model that incorporates lag time to analyse the nuanced impact of national cultures on sustainability. My findings reveal distinctive outcomes: those cultures characterised by high Power Distance (e.g., Eastern European) contribute to increased CO 2 emissions via an industrial innovation pathway that prioritises economic growth, while those with high Individualism and high Uncertainty Avoidance (e.g., Western European) facilitate a reduction in CO 2 emissions through the translation of scientific knowledge into public science that stimulates a societal innovation pathway and sustainability. In addition to these moderating effects, my investigation exposes that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita exerts a direct positive influence on CO 2 emissions, while an increase of GDP allocated to military expenditure (e.g., USA, China, Israel, South Korea) has detrimental effects on CO 2 emissions, potentially hampering Net Zero aspirations. These findings hold significant implications for both theory and policymaking in the environmental arena.
Is it possible to develop a robust crisis management response in a system where governance is characterized by coercive power and adversarial bargaining rather than the diversity, inclusion, and openness highlighted by extant scholarship as conducive factors for robustness? Using two instances of crisis in the European Union—the Eurozone crisis (2010‒2015) and COVID-19 pandemic (2020‒2022)—the paper argues that how actors reinterpret existing rules and institutions offers an important source of robustness in crisis management. Based on the employment of a disaggregation of robustness into degrees of robustness, as well as the concepts of ideational and institutional power, we show how actors can counter the coercive power of dominant coalitions and open up for rule adaptation through reinterpretations of existing rules that, at least in the short term, can solidify the functioning of existing institutions faced by turbulence. In the context of the Eurozone crisis, ideational and institutional power thus enabled a moderately robust response without treaty reform. In the case of the pandemic, it was possible to convince (particularly German) policymakers of the need to employ new ideas about common debt. This meant less need to employ ideational and institutional power by other actors, leading to significantly more effective crisis management than in the Eurozone crisis, what the paper terms maximal robustness.
This article examines the complexities surrounding the implementation of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) within Ghana's basic education system, exploring the intersection of religious, cultural, and political factors. Introducing CSE has sparked significant public discourse and resistance in Ghana, where religious and cultural beliefs are deeply ingrained and often institutionalized in politics. The study utilizes punctuated equilibrium theory to understand the sustained opposition to CSE policy changes. It examines the historical progression of Ghana's educational reforms, highlighting the struggle to maintain cultural and religious values while promoting human rights and gender equality. The contribution of this study is its exploration of the political institutionalization of religion in Ghana, investigating the combined impact of religious bodies, political entities, and civil organizations in shaping public opinion on education policy reform. It further underscores the intricate task of navigating socio‐cultural beliefs and human rights in policy‐making processes.
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The World Bank’s (WB) growing emphasis on decentralizing educational systems has sparked widespread discussion in the literature. This study examines whether WB reforms are indeed associated with decentralizing educational systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), as commonly assumed. Using unique, untapped country-level panel data on 30 LMICs from 1990 to 2019, I do not find a significant association between the WB’s actions and changes observed in educational systems. Employing the institutional logics perspective, I argue that the WB’s diffusion of “homogeneous” educational reforms may clash with “heterogeneous” socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts, thus hindering the direct translation of reforms into tangible outcomes on the ground.
In the expansive realm of social sciences, institutionalism serves as a foundational theoretical framework, meticulously examining how institutions exert influence and shape societal structures. This study, rooted in the premise that functionalist differentiation theory, facilitates the identification, analysis, and redefinition of issues within social structures, delves into the intricate interplay between social structure and institutional logics. Employing a meta-cognitive and analytical descriptive and reflective methodology, grounded in an extensive review of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literature, the research elucidates that social structures and institutional logics play crucial roles in institutions, despite not seamlessly aligning or integrating. The study underscores that these relationships, while pivotal, often give rise to contrasting institutions, perpetuating institutional dysfunctions, and paradoxes within societies.
The article examines Brexit through the historical institutionalist scholarship on European integration, critical junctures and institutional change. It finds that the concepts of path dependence, and critical junctures that emerge from exogenous shocks, as well as most processes of endogenous institutional transformation cannot fully account for Brexit. How can a Member State leave the European Union, if membership in the organisation produces path-dependent effects and there is no exogenous shock? To answer the question, the article introduces the concept of a hybrid critical juncture – a period of increased contingency and uncertainty that is created gradually by a combination of exogenous and endogenous causes and agency. The article examines the events that led to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU to demonstrate how the hybrid critical juncture concept explains Brexit. The analysis contributes to understanding potential future European disintegration and incremental institutional transformation broadly defined.
Whilst the existing literature on multilingual learning in curriculum has properly addressed a variety of instructional factors, few studies have been dedicated to investigating the influence of institutionalisation as a contextual, power-laden factor on multilingual curriculum which in turn influences multilingual learning. To fill this gap, this qualitative study examines undergraduate students' conceptions and experiences of the institutionalised dual-foreign-languages programme of English and French in a Chinese university. The findings unveil how the institutionalisation of dual-foreign-languages learning, as mediated by specific curricular arrangements, imposed a predetermined pathway towards achieving predetermined curricular goals. In such institutionalised curriculum, students experienced and conceived dual-foreign-languages learning as a rigidly devised project, in which they were pressurised to conform to fixed curricular arrangements as well as their underlying ideologies, and in which they also agentically responded to the institutionalised curriculum with the initiative to reflect and negotiate. It is thus suggested that curriculum developers and administrators should be cautious about imposing curricular intentions that oversimplify multilingual learning dynamics which may impede learning instead of promoting it.
This chapter first critically analyzes the main available explanations in IPE regarding trade policy preference formation. After that, it offers a new theory for collective actors as the unit of analysis with clear scope conditions (times of crisis and uncertainty), which is based on the interaction between distributive incentives, taken from the OEP paradigm, and economic and political ideas, borrowed from ideational approaches in IPE. Then, it outlines a “mechanismic explanation,” following Beach and Pedersen’s (Process-Tracing Methods. Foundations and Guidelines. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2013) terminology, based on this theory and presents the hypotheses that derive from it. In addition, it formulates the main competing explanations in the same way. Finally, it describes the process tracing method used to evaluate the capacity of the competing causal mechanisms to account for the two case studies.
This study considers the reforms of Chile’s state sport structures from 2001
to 2022. Drawing upon institutional frameworks, the purpose of this
article is to analyse the emerging rules, practices and narratives from
these reforms. This study employed a qualitative approach, with data
gathered from document analysis and semi-structured interviews with
six policymakers/bureaucrats from the Ministry of Sport (MINDEP) and
National Institute of Sport (IND). Data was analysed through thematic
coding of available texts (e.g. policies, government documentation,
media sources and interview transcripts) via MAXQDA 2022 qualitative
analysis software. The findings highlight that incommensurate rules, practices
and narratives may be the impetus for institutional change. Rules
connected with New Public Management (NPM) and the creation of the
National Institute of Sport (Law 19.712 of 2001) conflicted with the discretionary
practices of previous institutional arrangements. Subsequent
legislation created a (rule-based) dichotomy between ‘thinkers’ (MINDEP)
and ‘doers’ (IND), which has been influenced by the practice of politically
based appointments into the IND. While informants suggested that the
system’s parochialism and incapacity render change unlikely in the future,
there is nevertheless evidence of change emanating from the combination
of broken rules (in the form of scandals), incommensurate practices
and contemporary narratives about the need to engage with
communities.
This study has the purpose of analyzing the implications between the social structure and the institutional logics. It begins with the assumption that the functionalist differentiation theory can identify, analyze, and redefine the problems and objects of study in social structure and institutional logics fulfill crucial functions in institutions. The method used is the meta-cognitive and analytical descriptive and reflective based on the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literature review. The study concludes that the implications of the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical relationships between social structure and institutional logics are crucial functions and spheres of institutions in societies, although they are not fully compatible, integrated, contrasting institutions, and reproducing institutional dysfunctions and paradoxes.
Plain English Summary
European Microfinance Institutions that more tightly pursue social objectives are also more likely to be financially sustainable but are penalized by regulatory restrictions on interest rates.
The microfinance sector underwent a significant global expansion in recent years, creating chances for underprivileged and vulnerable groups, particularly women entrepreneurs, to start their businesses. The balance between social and financial sustainability is one of the most hotly debated themes in a growing number of studies, although there is little empirical evidence on the European microfinance sector. In this paper, we provide one of the first pieces of evidence of this relationship in the European context. Our findings have important implications for researchers, policymakers, and society as a whole. The research reveals that European Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) that more tightly pursue social objectives are also more likely to be financially sustainable. Furthermore, smaller MFIs appear to achieve a double bottom line more easily, especially targeting higher shares of women borrowers. The critical aspect of European MFIs appears to be their greater reliance on subsidies, as well as a regulation that is ill-suited to the microfinance sector, especially regarding interest rate caps. Thus, a more structured regulatory framework focused on social sustainability variables could improve microfinance effectiveness in the coming years.
This chapter details what makes the EU promoting human rights for LGBTI persons a wicked problem. After highlighting a shortcoming of how the literature addresses such problems generally―within conventional problem–solution lines of thinking―this chapter explains how the scholarly fixation of solving wicked problems has focused the debate on the far end of a problem-solving process, when the practical reality is knowledge creation and negotiation around meaning are what matters most. One chief aim of this book is to reorient this focus to the beginning of the process, when sense is made to define a problem in the first place. The second part of this chapter proposes a conceptual framework suitable to study the problem definition based on sociological new institutionalism and more specifically involving the concepts of institutional change, translation, and sensemaking.
This chapter introduces the EU in its “wicked” entirety as a modern public organization within a modern world. To this end, it details the various complexities and ambiguities that undergird the EU’s very functioning, starting with the webbiness inherent in the EU’s competency structure as a meta organization, which consists of different entities with partly overlapping competencies, before explaining those pertaining to its current formal administrative structure. Subsequently, a brief historical overview detailing the emergence of these structures over time is sketched out―from the 1950s as economic communities to the attempt of the EU as a global unitary actor promoting human rights externally with the Treaty of Lisbon. Such an overview provides the necessary information to understand this part of the local should be in “local context” within which staff make sense and the institutions that structure their everyday work, doing and thinking.
Institutions are often framed as the “rules of the game”, especially because they provide both incentives and constraints that shape human behaviour. Beyond being context specific, institutions consist of both formal and informal rules. Due to Africa’s colonial past and continuing attempts to mimic values and ethos of the colonizer, its public policy context reflects an institutional duality that draws on the realities of the colonial metropolis and its precolonial norms and experiences. Contemporary Africa is neither completely indigenous nor modern in terms of its institutional configurations, and informal institutions loom larger in form and context than formal institutions. Yet development practitioners and policymakers continue to analyse policymaking and performance of governments in Africa in a way that speaks to a universalized view of formal institutions. This ignores the weight of informal institutions in shaping policymaking in African countries. This chapter discusses the public policy context in Africa, drawing attention to Africa’s unique institutional settings to explain why policy contents often generated on the basis of the worldviews of former colonizers have failed to address the vexed issues of human well-being as far as Africa is concerned.
Multiple theoretical and conceptual frameworks explain how public policies are developed, further contested, and reshaped. Underlying these frameworks are the following variables: ideas, interests, and institutions. While several studies have stressed the importance of each of these variables, how do they interact and, probably, interdepend in the making of public policy, particularly in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region? Building on an earlier work that emphasizes the importance of ideas, particularly in transnational policymaking in Ghana, this chapter explores how ideas influence the construction of interest and institutions. In doing so, it draws on information from policies and programmes implemented in some SSA countries. The chapter draws broadly from ideational analysis to argue that ideas are critical elements in public policy development. While interest and institutions direct policy actors’ behaviour in specific ways, ideational elements which include cognitive and normative beliefs define interests and serve as a basis for building support for institution creation and maintenance. The exploration of how the three variables interact in public policy process would extend the field of ideational studies by accounting for the interdependence of ideas, interests, and institutions in public policy.
Although there is a growing literature on transnational ideational processes in sub-Saharan Africa, the linkages between local, national, and transnational actors and ideas in African social policy would gain from more systematic mapping. In this paper, we explore what we call the “scales of ideational policy influence” by sketching a multi-level, actor-centric, and institutionalist perspective on ideational policy influence at the local, national, and transnational scales. This discussion leads to analysis of how these scales interact in terms of specific ideas and how both governmental and non-governmental actors seek to impact social policy decisions in sub-Saharan Africa. To illustrate the three scales of ideational influence and their interaction, the paper turns to the making of poverty reduction policies in Ghana. We show how policy ideas move from the global level to a national and subnational level using ideational mechanisms aided by the institutional position of actors and material factors.
This article provides a novel conceptualization of bricolage as a strategy for incremental supranational self‐empowerment. It argues that the cumulative effects of different bricolage tools employed by the Commission have been central for progressively strengthening its role in EU security and defence, which culminated in the establishment of the European Defence Fund (EDF) and the Commission's Directorate‐General Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS). Building communication upon communication, the Commission used discursive bricolage to set the conditions for employing existing EU financial and organizational resources to advance its interests. Specifically, with its incremental bricolage approach, the Commission has managed to mitigate sovereignty concerns of member states, progressively nudging them towards deeper integration. Overall, our article shows how the Commission has strengthened its influence through the cumulative bricolage tools even in the intergovernmental domains of security and defence.
While European governance of individual policy sectors has received considerable academic scrutiny, less attention has been paid to the development of intersectoral coordination. This paper charts the emergence of a supranational boundary-spanning policy regime (BSPR) in education and employment in Europe. By looking at issues, ideas, interests and institutions, we gain a deeper understanding of the conditions for the emergence and further institutionalisation of European intersectoral coordination in education and employment from the 1990s onwards. The study relies on semi-structured interviews with European policy-makers in education and employment and EU policy documents. We analyse how endogenous and exogenous factors frame (policy) issues that contribute to the emergence and further strengthening of intersectoral coordination, the extent to which ideas for European education and employment stress intersectoral policy designs, how interests support or hinder intersectoral work, and which institutions are developed with intersectoral reasoning. We find that endogenous forces (rather than exogenous ones) played a significant role in the emergence of a European BSPR in education and employment. Structural aspects and policy instruments (institutions), alongside ideas and interests, then contribute to the institutionalisation of the European BSPR in education and employment.
There has been a conspicuous shift in the European Union’s perception of economic interdependence and open markets, manifested in a mushrooming number of screening policies aimed at verifying foreign direct investments raising national security concerns. The introduction of these policies can be viewed as a market constraint that might negatively affect business operations, so it is puzzling that some European business actors did not actively resist their adoption, despite having wide lobbying opportunities in Europe. I explore this puzzle using the case of Denmark by drawing on theories of securitisation and preference formation under uncertainty. I argue that business actors established their policy preferences in the context of uncertainty and the gradual increase in security framing by the European and local political elites. Exposed to these increasing security discourses across different levels and networks, businesses adjusted their policy preferences, balancing between different identities. The flexibility inherent in a multilevel and evolving securitisation process led to the legitimisation of investment screening policies among interest groups and mitigated their resistance to the imposition of market constraints on security grounds.
Differential access to life-saving COVID-19 vaccines reveals the inequitable distribution of wealth and power in the global system. While several countries have developed homegrown vaccines to avoid being priced out of markets dominated by transnational drug companies, Brazil—a country with a significant research and pharmaceutical base—lagged behind those of other middle-income countries. Why? This paper blends insights from dependency theory and the theory of global capitalism to demonstrate how political coalitions, leadership, and normative frameworks negatively affect state capacity and technological development. First, austerity in public investment in research, development, and innovation prior to and during the pandemic limited the amount of resources necessary to create homegrown vaccine candidates. Second, political leadership informed by science denialism did not prioritize the development of vaccines and even discouraged their use. The analysis of vaccine development in Brazil reveals that having a pharmaceutical base and strong leadership committed to scientific principles and backed by a political coalition seeking to expand social democratic rights play a vital role in developing treatments and responding to health crises.
The cost-of-living crisis that began in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and the attempted Russian invasion of Ukraine has major implications for social policy. In advanced industrial countries, this is the most dramatic cost-of-living crisis since the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s. In this contribution, we explore the inflation and social policy nexus to identify the nature and sources of inflation, its redistributive and policy implications, and the specific nature of the current cost-of-living crisis compared to two other recent crises: the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on advanced industrial countries and drawing on the available scholarship about these topics, we offer the background necessary to understand the challenges facing welfare states in times of dramatically high inflation. As a way to provide broad context to the present themed section, our discussion stresses the economic, social, and political dynamics shaping social policy adaptation to inflationary pressures.
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