Policy Style Research Articles

Policy Evaluation and Policy Style Analysis of Ride-Hailing in China from the Perspective of Policy Instruments: The Introduction of a TOE Three-Dimensional Framework

Online ride-hailing in China brings convenience for the public, but it has caused several problems, such as inadequate supervision, data security risks, and financial risks. This new industry has also disrupted the traditional taxi market. China’s government implemented some policies, which were initially disorderly tightening, and then formed the policy system responding to various needs for tackling these issues gradually. There were some policy fluctuations and regulatory effects during this period, therefore, it is imminent to evaluate the online ride-hailing policy text. In this paper, we took 43 online ride-hailing policies as samples, with the consideration of policy instruments and statistical inspection methods. In this paper, we also constructed an innovative three-dimensional analysis framework by combining content analysis, and further identify the ride-hailing policy development during different stages of development periods (2016–2022). Digging into the problems existing in the new online ride-hailing, policies were drawn by module division, unit coding, inductive statistics, the quantitative evaluation of policy text content, and TOE (technology-organization-environment) style analysis. Finally, we provide insightful policy recommendations for online ride-hailing policies, committed to providing theoretical support and a decision-making basis for governance policies in the transportation industry.

Collaboration in Handling COVID-19 Turbulence from a Threefold Perspective: A Literature Review

The crisis due to COVID-19 can be called turbulence and its handling requires cross-border collaboration because complex problems tend to be overcome through multi-actor collaboration in networks and relationships to obtain common solutions. Collaborative governance is present as an instrument for implementing policies for handling COVID-19 to address the government's limitations in material, technical, and resource matters. Using a qualitative approach, this study aims to identify the implementation of collaborative governance in handling COVID-19 by countries in the world in a threefold perspective. This perspective is a new approach in collaborative governance that has the same basis as the Collaborative Governance Regime theory, but tends to narrow the thinking to three layers that support each other in the form of folds: values ​​(individuals and policies), decision structures (action situations and sub-systems). policy), and context (external variables, stable parameters, and external events). Public values ​​grow from the social context and are articulated in collaborative governance platforms and are important for the government to work on to improve community compliance with government programs. The turbulent COVID-19 situation creates space and decision-making. Each country has different choices, backgrounds, and policies but still bases the process of making and implementing policies on collaborative governance according to their respective preferences. In the folds of policy style and administrative culture, each country has its own dynamics. Countries with sufficient experience in handling outbreaks are able to make administrative adjustments more quickly, which helps speed up the response to the pandemic

The logic of authoritarian industrial policy: the case of Angola’s special economic zone

ABSTRACT The commodity boom witnessed the emergence of ambitious developmental projects in Africa. But in its focus on the distribution of power, the extant literature struggles to explain the logic driving observed development strategies. To fill this gap, this article provides the first comprehensive study of the Zona Económica Especial de Luanda-Bengo, Angola’s main industrial project of the post-civil war era. Built at a cost of at least US$1 billion, sprawling over 1.5 million hectares, and comprising establishments imported by the state across multiple sectors, the Zona Económica Especial’s ill-conceived design doomed it to failure from the start. But this did not hinder its use for elite rent-seeking, supported by the international networks fed by Angola’s oil wealth. I argue that these outcomes reflect the ruling MPLA’s typical ‘bifurcated policy style’, marked by a disjuncture between discourse and policy practice and the competition for the spoils of the state’s heavy expenditures. Its origins are to be found in the strategies deployed by MPLA leaders to enforce organizational cohesion and to pursue military and programmatic goals over the course of its long civil war. I contend that similar analyses could help illuminate the drivers of industrial policy in other party-based authoritarian regimes.

Catching up with the European Union’s recovery and resilience agenda: green transition reforms in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan

ABSTRACT Drawing on Europeanization and policy change scholarships, and with the aim of understanding the extent to which Next Generation EU has become a vector of policy change in the country, this article analyses policy reforms concerning the ecological transition, which Italy has designed within the framework of its National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). More specifically, the study provides a descriptive analysis of the two versions of the plan (Conte’s proposal and Draghi’s final version) in order to unveil the nature and direction of policy change embedded in particular in its final version, as compared to previous Italian ecological policies. The empirical research presented in the article shows that the logics of path-dependence and policy layering have prevailed in the design of the green pillar of the NRRP, as it introduced a limited number of policy reforms; lacked specific implementation targets, and was developed in conformity with a highly fragmented and top-down style of policy making: one that was typical of previous Italian environmental and climate policies.

Policy styles and pandemic management: The case of Turkey.

Using the concept of a policy style developed by Howlett and Tosun, this article explores the linkages between Turkey's policy style and its pandemic management. Turkey took both preemptive and restrictive measures with respect to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Before the virus hit the country, flights to and from various countries including China were suspended, the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) was established, and a COVID‐19 disease guide was prepared. After the virus entered the country, immediate restrictive measures, such as national lockdowns and international and intercity travel restrictions were put in place. Turkey adopted a centralized response to the pandemic with the President, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Health, and the SAB acting as central players. From the perspective of policy style, this article shows how Turkey's general characteristics of policy‐making processes have been reflected in its pandemic management policies.

Investing in the knowledge economy: The comparative political economy of public investments in knowledge‐based capital

AbstractInvestments in education and retraining, or research and development have become essential in today's knowledge‐intensive economies. While private actors often underprovided such knowledge‐based capital due to various market failures, there is also considerable variation in the extent to which governments invest in knowledge‐based capital due to cross‐sectional and intertemporal trade‐offs. I argue that in trying to account for this variation, corporatist institutions are a neglected but crucial factor. By necessitating and facilitating cooperation and compensation, corporatism creates a more collaborative style of policy making and a sense of common ownership of policy problems that helps overcome the trade‐offs associated with investments in knowledge‐based capital. Using within‐between mixed‐effects models on a novel time‐series‐cross‐sectional dataset, I find strong support for this argument. Corporatist countries invest a lot more in knowledge‐based capital, and corporatism also affects how countries react to deindustrialization. This is an important finding given the key role of long‐term policy making in areas like climate change politics, pandemic preparedness or responding to the digital transformation.

Gendered Perceptions of Personality Traits, Policy Stereotypes, and Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties: Lessons from Turkey

Abstract Although several studies have examined the relationship between gender and support for right-wing populist parties, much of the scholarly attention has focused on explaining the gender gap in populist-party support. This article shifts the focus to gender stereotypes, which we argue are closely related to the macho-type policy style of populist-political parties. Utilizing an original survey conducted in Turkey, we examined how gender-based personality traits and policy stereotypes—the belief that women and men are better at handling different issue areas, and that they have different personality traits—correlate with support for the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP). We show that male and female policy stereotypes are significantly associated with both the right-wing populist AKP support and support for the secular opposition parties, albeit in opposite ways. These results suggest that support for right-wing populist parties is multidimensional and consists of gendered perceptions of competence, traits, and key socioeconomic characteristics.

The Significance of Leadership in the Evolution of Policy Styles: Reconciling Policy-Making in the Short and Long Term

Can relatively short-term political leadership affect long-term national policy styles, and if so, how? We examine these questions in order to explain the temporal dynamics in national policy styles observed in several recent studies whose findings have challenged the traditional view that policy styles lend continuity and stability to policy-making. In its original formulation, the concept of policy styles refers to the extent to which governments are committed to anticipatory or reactive policy-making, as well as to whether they seek to reach consensus with societal groups over policies or simply impose decisions on them. Following these definitions, we contend that political leaders can alter a long-held policy style and often do so due to strategic considerations, either in an attempt to improve their policy performance or in response to an exogenous shock, such as an economic crisis. We illustrate this argument by using longitudinal records of changes in country-level governance indicators which include data on dimensions of policy styles. Specifically we examine how two of the Sustainable Governance Indicators compiled by the Bertelsmann Foundation changed for Ireland, Italy, Malta, and Poland between 2014 and 2020. As the cases show, government leaders sought to alter long-standing processes and the arrangements of governance and policy-making. Our empirical findings support the overarching argument that the study of national policy styles should be combined with that of political leadership.

Taking women on boards: a comparative analysis of public policies in higher education

ABSTRACT There is growing interest in the underlying mechanisms affecting female leaders in Higher Education (HE). This article compares four countries – Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden to identify key structural conditions (enablers and barriers) for female representation in academia by studying the regulative framework of government policy. Two research questions are guiding the analysis: first, what (if any) policy instruments are chosen to increase the number of female leaders in HE? Second, to what extent does this choice of instruments mirror either sectorial logic (HE) or national policy styles? The empirical results of the article show that while processes of policy diffusion are observable at the sectoral level, gender equality policies and instrument choice differ considerably in the four countries under consideration. The article thus concludes that national policy styles need to be understood as enabling and disabling policy factors for gender equality in HE shaping the process of translating diffused models decisively.

Analyzing national policy styles empirically using the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI): insights into long‐term patterns of policy‐making

AbstractThe concept of national policy styles differs between states in respect of whether their governments react to policy changes in an anticipatory or reactive fashion and whether they seek to achieve consensus with societal actors or impose decisions on them. To date, this conceptualization has been applied to a limited number of states and produced only a small set of case studies due to the absence of large‐n data. We assess whether the dimensions on strategic planning and public consultation of the Bertelsmann Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) provide conceptually sound and empirically insightful indicators of national policy styles. Our explorative analysis reveals that the SGI are useful for operationalizing the concept of national policy styles and could advance the debate on it. Our analysis shows that differences exist between countries in terms of their policy styles, and that the policy styles remained stable in most countries between 2014 and 2020.

Robust, resilient, agile and improvisatory styles in policymaking: the social organisation of anomaly, risk and policy decay

This theory development article employs neo-Durkheimian institutional theory to present a fresh understanding of policy styles in the policy process. Calls for resilient, robust, agile and improvisatory policymaking are not readily compatible with each other. Each of these styles carries risks and each generates anomalies. Each tends to decay over time. Governments should therefore expect risks of inconsistency and decay in policymaking shaped by these styles. The article argues that these styles, and their risks and tensions, and the trajectories of their decay all arise from the contrasting forms of informal social organisation among policymakers in which they are cultivated. These forms of social organisation give rise to distinct types of bounded rationality, which shape decision-making differently in each ordering.

Frustrating Brexit? Ireland and the UK’s conflicting approaches to Brexit negotiations

ABSTRACT While Ireland and Northern Ireland barely featured during the 2016 referendum campaign, they have been central to Brexit negotiations. For some, Ireland’s prominence in talks represents core EU values of solidarity and peace. For others, Ireland has been ‘used’ as a bargaining chip to ‘frustrate Brexit’. In contrast, this paper shows how conflicting policy styles had an impact on the outcome of Brexit negotiations on the border in Ireland. Drawing on the literatures on Brexit negotiations, British policy style, and new intergovernmentalism, it shows that Ireland pursued a deliberative approach, contributing to its negotiating success. This is contrasted with three, relatively ineffectual, British approaches to Ireland, ‘lack of engagement’, ‘magical thinking’, and ‘delayed deliberation’. The paper draws on original interviews conducted with Irish politicians during negotiations, and interviews with senior British political figures contained in the UK in a Changing Europe Witness Archive.

The United States and Asia in 2021

The past year was a transition, with President Biden proclaiming “America is back,” signaling a change in the agenda and style of US foreign policy. Yet the Biden administration’s approach in the Indo-Pacific has been one of both continuity and change. “Strategic competition” remains the focus of US–China relations, with tensions increasing and few signs of improvement. Yet, it is imperative that this relationship be managed carefully in the years ahead to keep competition from turning into military conflict.

Policy Styles and Epistemic Policies in the Regulation of Health Claims. A Comparison of Europe, the United States, and Japan

ABSTRACT I analyse epistemic and non-epistemic factors involved in expert advisory practices and decision-making relating to the regulation of health claims in the US, EU, and Japan. I consider the changes that have taken place, historically, in regulatory policies in all three cases in order to confirm the hypothesis that not only epistemic, but also non-epistemic factors and values determine the methodological decisions on which expert assessments are based for the authorization of health claims. I found that the current European, US, and Japanese assessment systems are based on different kinds of what have been termed ‘epistemic policies’ and that these policies and other characteristics shape what might be identified as differing ‘policy styles’ in the regulation of health claims.

Horizons of Social Democracy. Social investment or transcending capitalism?

AbstractThis article explores new horizons for social democracy, by initially identifying two sets of proposals currently being advanced in policy debates: the social investment welfare state and Thomas Piketty’s ‘transcending capitalism’ blueprint. The article dismisses two possible interpretations of fundamental distinctions between them: (1) that they correspond, respectively, to redistributive and predistributive social policy styles; and (2) that they differ regarding their socially transformative daring. After establishing their common social democratic grounds, the article sets out the terms for a new conversation between them, with a view to assessing frontiers for social democratic ambition. The imagined conversation makes explicit their distinct emphases—one on labour strength (social investment); and the other on capital democratisation (transcending capitalism)—and reveals that these are because of contrasting assessments of problems and possibilities. It also makes clear that the integration of the two proposals is both possible and desirable, but suggests that an all‐encompassing social democratic agenda might offer possibilities beyond such an integration.

How transparency enhances public accountability: The case of environmental governance in Chile

Our research addresses the questions why transparency improves public accountability in the extractive sector, how, for whom and in what circumstances. Using a realist approach of policy design, a causal mechanism linking transparency and public accountability is tested on the case of Chile´s environmental reforms, during the first Bachelet administration (2006–2010). Our hypothesis is that transparency improves public accountability through a causal mechanism made of two sets of formulation and calibration activities producing the causal entities responsible for the policy outcome. In order to empirically assess this causal mechanism, we treat policy instruments of information, regulation, treasure and organization as expected empirical observations along the process. We run five series of hoop tests on these instruments and use Bayes theorem of likelihood to update our confidence in the hypothesized mechanism. Our findings indicate that transparency institutionalization is shaped by a policy style combining a decentralized coordination mode with genuine collaborative governance. This has practical implications, not only for Chile´s on-going application to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) certification but also for any country interested in improving environmental governance in the extractive sector.

Policy styles and political trust in Europe’s national responses to the COVID-19 crisis

ABSTRACT Why do countries respond differently when they face the same pandemic? In this article, we comparatively investigate the effects of policy styles in shaping responses to the COVID-19 crisis in two European countries: Greece and Sweden. Extending the concept of policy styles to extraordinary policymaking, we argue that political trust and policy styles result in national responses that range from centralization to decentralization. The combination of policy styles and political trust inevitably raises questions about the role of experts in shaping responses to pandemics. We conclude with implications for theories of national policy styles, political trust and crisis management.

Neural Policy Style Transfer

Style Transfer has been proposed in a number of fields: fine arts, natural language processing, and fixed trajectories. We scale this concept up to control policies within a Deep Reinforcement Learning infrastructure. Each network is trained to maximize the expected reward, which typically encodes the goal of an action, and can be described as the content. The expressive power of deep neural networks enables encoding a secondary task, which can be described as the style. The Neural Policy Style Transfer (NPST)11NPST: Neural Policy Style Transfer. algorithm is proposed to transfer the style of one policy to another, while maintaining the content of the latter. Different policies are defined via Deep Q-Network architectures. These models are trained using demonstrations through Inverse Reinforcement Learning. Two different sets of user demonstrations are performed, one for content and other for style. Different styles are encoded as defined by user demonstrations. The generated policy is the result of feeding a content policy and a style policy to the NPST algorithm. Experiments are performed in a catch-ball game inspired by the Deep Reinforcement Learning classical Atari games; and a real-world painting scenario with a full-sized humanoid robot, based on previous works of the authors. The implementation of three different Q-Network architectures (Shallow, Deep and Deep Recurrent Q-Network) to encode the policies within the NPST framework is proposed and the results obtained in the experiments with each of these architectures compared.

Is COVID-Era Assertiveness in Chinese Foreign Policy Novel?

China has responded to criticisms of its handling of the COVID outbreak by an assertive foreign policy style referred to as ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’. This study argues that this does not represent a radical shift in Chinese foreign policy but exacerbates a pre-existing trend. We say that this assertiveness builds upon the twin pillars of ‘core interests and the unambiguous exposition of the ‘striving for achievement’ policy adopted by China since Xi Jinping’s elevation as the President in 2012. We outline China’s response to its competition with the United States, based on heightened nationalism and practiced through centralised decision making.

Does policy style shift when the political regime changes? Insights from Turkey

ABSTRACT This article applies the concept of ‘policy styles’ to Turkey in order to contribute to the scholarly debate on the relationship between policy styles and political regime. By uncovering the distinctive features of Turkey’s policy processes through a within-case comparative approach, I advance two arguments. First, while policy styles are commonly viewed in literature as determined by administrative traditions, political institutions and policy paradigms, Turkey’s policy style has been more responsive to electoral politics, and, until recently, problem situation, in particular crises. Second, policy style is both a cause and a consequence of regime change. Turkey’s policy style has displayed both continuities as well as differences as it descended into authoritarianism. The characteristics of the policy style gradually undermine institutions of democracy. As democratic backsliding proceeds, government redesigns the institutional context of policy-making, reinforcing and consolidating the anti-democratic features of the policy style.