Pre-existing Policy Research Articles

How Behavioral Interventions Can Reduce the Climate Impact of Energy Use

Kristian S. Nielsen is a research associate in the Department of Zoology at University of Cambridge. He received a PhD from Copenhagen Business School in 2019 with a dissertation focused on the role of self-regulation in environmental behavior change. His current research focuses on bridging research in behavioral science and biodiversity conservation as part of an interdisciplinary project called Nudging for Nature. His other research interests revolve around behavior change as a climate change mitigation strategy, the dynamics of the behavior change process, self-regulation and self-control, and sustainable clothing consumption. Sander van der Linden is Reader in Social Psychology in Society and director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He is also a fellow in Psychological and Behavioral Sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology. His research on the psychology of human judgment and decision-making, especially in the context of climate change, has received numerous awards including the Rising Star award from the Association for Psychological Science and the Sage Early Career Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology . Paul C. Stern is president of the Social and Environmental Research institute and was previously a principal staff officer at the US National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine where he directed its Board on Environmental Change and Society. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association. His research interests include the integration of social science into research and practice for governing environmental change and into risk assessment and management. Among his publications are Environmental Problems and Human Behavior (coauthor) and Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (coeditor).

Attitudinal Feedback towards Sub-national Social Policy: A Comparison of Popular Support for Social Health Insurance in Urban China

Policy feedback theory posits that pre-existing policies shape citizens’ policy preferences and attitudes. This attitudinal feedback effect may, in turn, either reinforce or undermine current policies. This study seeks to examine whether attitudinal feedback explains why urban Chinese are motivated to contribute to social health insurance, a highly tangible issue for ordinary Chinese. Empirical data were collected in an original survey of urban inhabitants in three provinces between late 2017 and early 2018. Quantitative results reveal clear attitudinal feedback. Resource effects, interpretive effects, and individual learning effects all appear to shape motivations for contributing to social health insurance.

Why are highway speed limits really justified? An equilibrium speed choice analysis

Speed externalities – the impacts that a driver’s speed choice imposes on others – are usually quoted to justify highway speed regulation in the form of maximum speed limits. However, speed externalities could already be internalized if a pre-existing policy were in place that is related to speed, questioning the traditional rationale supporting speed limits. Given the relationship between speed and fuel consumption and the omnipresence of fuel taxes around the world, it comes as a surprise that pre-existing taxes on motor fuel are completely missing in the debate on the general appropriateness of speed regulation. In this paper we develop an economic equilibrium model of highway speed choice accounting for (i) a market failure – speeding externalities capturing the fact that drivers do not internalize the adverse consequences of speeding on other highway users and the society as a whole; (ii) a famous speed related behavioral anomaly – causing adverse effects drivers impose on themselves by falsely predicting the time saving potential of speed; (iii) a pre-existing fuel tax – closing the wedge between the privately and socially optimal speed. The latter creates a ‘government feedback effect’ reflecting the positive feedback effect of speed on fuel tax revenue and so the broader beneficial fiscal impacts of speed choice ignored by drivers. Numerical computations for Germany indicate a dominant ‘government feedback effect’ ((iii) outweighs (i)) for mean speeds up to around 120 km/h presuming fully variable travel time budgets and beyond that speed level when drivers put (some of the) travel time savings from speeding into more highway traveling. This implies that speed externalities are largely internalized and that the externality rationale in favor of speed regulation does not apply to the majority of drivers. Nevertheless, a moderate speed limit on German highways of 130 km/h would probably not compromise economic efficiency, at least as long as the share of diesel cars is significant. Generally, when drivers are subject to lack of rationality leading to excess speeding, (iii) is not able to outweigh (i). Then, speed limits remain highly warranted provided that appropriate “nudging” is not available. The numerical finding is likely to hold for a large number of European countries too but probably not for North American countries where fuel taxes are considerably lower.

Intelligence, warning, and policy: the Johnson administration and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of intelligence on policymaking in the Johnson Administration during the 1968 Prague Spring. It argues that the US intelligence community was unable to provide policymakers with an accurate picture of Soviet priorities during the Prague Spring and did not effectively communicate the increasing potential for Soviet military action. Although intelligence warnings were issued prior to the invasion, these warnings were neither forceful enough to counteract the belief that the Soviet leadership would refrain from invasion nor convincing enough to alter pre-existing policy positions. Consequently, intelligence had little impact on decision-making throughout the Prague Spring.

Administrative clientelism and policy reform failure: the Western Canada Integrated Land Management experience 1990–2015

Policy scholars can learn a great deal from students of clientelism with respect to the forces at work in the policy process. This is apparent, for example, with respect to scholarship in recent years which has focused attention on the idea of replacing patchworks of public policies in specific issue areas with more coordinated or ‘integrated’ policy strategies (IS). In theory, such strategies should display a judicious mix of policy goals and means which can produce policy outcomes matched to specific large-scale problem contexts. Empirical work on such strategies, however, has shown the resilience of pre-existing policy elements often leading to reform failures and/or sub-optimal outcomes from such efforts. This article examines a case study of large-scale policy reform efforts in the area of Integrated Land Management (ILM) in Western Canada which reveals the role played by policy clientelism in blocking efforts to enhance policy integration in this area. This finding is significant in pointing out more generally the role played by clientelism in preventing successful policy reform.

The Affordable Care Act in the States: Fragmented Politics, Unstable Policy.

Many argue that the frustrated implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) stems from the unprecedented level of political polarization that has surrounded the legislation. This article draws attention to the law's "institutional DNA" as a source of political struggle in the 50 states. As designed, in the context of US federalism, the law fractured authority in ways that has opened up the possibility of contestation and confusion. The successful implementation of the ACA varies not only across state lines but also across the various components of the law. In particular, opponents of the ACA have experienced their greatest successes when they could take advantage of weak preexisting policy legacies, high levels of institutional fragmentation, and negative public sentiments. As argued in this article, the fragmented patterns of health care politics in the 50 states identified in previous research have largely persisted during the Trump administration. Moreover, while Republicans were unsuccessful at repealing the legislation, the administration has taken advantage of its structural deficiencies to further weaken the legislation's capacity to expand access to affordable, quality health insurance.

Circular Regulations (CR) for Bioeconomy Development

The term Circular Regulations (CR) is introduced to describe a broad regulatory framework, designed with a circular understanding of the economy. Central in this discussion is the transition towards bioeconomy, a term that is not always used consistently, and sometimes treated in the same way as circular economy (CE), although these terms are not necessarily equivalent. In this article we endorse a systemic interpretation of CE, where a continuum of approaches, extending from reusing/recycling/upcycling to refuse/rethink/reduce, gradually replace existing linear “end-of-life” concepts. CE is a key prerequisite for the bioeconomy shift, a transition that further builds on CE, where circular design and processes are further augmented with increased resource utilization and intensive applications of innovative science and technology. The prevailing regulatory arrangements in CE, however, remain either fragmented or largely based on pre-existing policies, drafted to address issues of the linear economy, thus presenting several limitations when dealing with the underlying paradigm shift: complex market relationships that go beyond the standard neoclassical model. CR adopts an encompassing approach to regulatory design; it is not meant to be a rigid set of rules, but rather a regulatory framework where institutions, market rules, and business practice explicitly account for environmental and socially responsible activities, while securing an enabling environment for innovation. CR directly reflects on CE, where bioeconomy growth is informed by science, enabled by technology, driven by business, and supported by relevant policies and institutional frameworks. The article presents a conceptual setting towards CR and a practical example for its development.

“My good friends on the other side of the aisle aren’t bothered by those facts”: U.S. State legislators’ use of evidence in making policy on abortion

ObjectiveIn recent years, U.S. states have passed many restrictive abortion policies with a rationale of protecting health and safety, in apparent contravention of abundant scientific evidence on abortion safety. This study explored whether and how state legislators use scientific evidence when deciding abortion policy. Study DesignWe conducted 29 semi-structured interviews with state legislators and their aides in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia in March through July 2017. We recruited via e-mail to members of all health-related committees of the General Assembly in each state, plus sponsors and co-sponsors of 2017 abortion bills, with follow-up via phone and in person. We conducted iterative thematic analysis of all interview transcripts. ResultsWe found no cases of lawmakers’ decisions on abortion being shifted by evidence. However, some lawmakers used evidence in simplified form to support their claims on abortion. Lawmakers gave credence to evidence they received from trusted sources, and that which supported their pre-existing policy preferences. Personal stories appeared more convincing than evidence, with participants drawing broad conclusions from anecdotes. Democrats and Republicans had different views on bias in evidence. ConclusionsIn this sample, evidence did not drive state legislators’ policymaking on abortion. However, evidence did help inform high-level understanding of abortion, if such evidence supported legislators’ pre-existing policy preferences. This work may help public health practitioners and researchers develop more realistic expectations for how research interacts with policymaking. Implications of this workTo increase the utility of research, reproductive health researchers and practitioners should 1) work with established intermediaries to convey findings to lawmakers; 2) present stories that illustrate research findings; and 3) consider the evidence needs of the judicial branch, in addition to those of legislators.

The belt and road initiative in Southwest China: responses from Yunnan province

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been the subject of extensive analysis since late 2013. Most of this views it as a manifestation of China’s approach to global issues under Xi Jinping, whether economic, geopolitical, or as a bid to reshape globalization. There has so far been less research into the domestic dynamics of the BRI, including at the sub-national level in China. Based primarily on an examination of provincial-level policy documents and research, this paper explores the ways in which policy makers in the southwestern province of Yunnan have responded to the BRI, and what this might mean for the implementation and shaping of the initiative. It identifies the promotion of externally-oriented development as the main response in Yunnan to the BRI, structured around the idea of making the province a ‘pivot’ to south and southeast Asia. This provincial-level response is shaped by pre-existing policy goals in Yunnan and reflects more continuity than change in policy substance. This is consistent with interpretations of the BRI as an ‘omnibus’ policy which can incorporate multiple objectives and act as a framework within which provincial actors can compete for influence or which they can use to make progress towards achieving local objectives in the context of national strategy. The paper concludes that in the case of Yunnan and the BRI, broad alignment between provincial and central government objectives suggests that on this issue, Yunnan is more of an ‘influencer’ and ‘interpreter’ than ‘ignorer’ of national policy goals.

Explaining the diversity of policy responses to platform-mediated short-term rentals in European cities: A comparison of Barcelona, Paris and Milan

Short-term rentals facilitated by online platforms (like Airbnb) have recently become a subject of intense debate, leading many city governments to pass new regulations attempting to control both their proliferation and platform activities. While these policy responses vary greatly from city to city, there is little comparative research to explain this diversity. This paper employs a sociological approach to public policy analysis to compare the politicization process, collective action around and regulation of platform-mediated short-term rentals (PM-STR) in three cities – Barcelona, Paris and Milan. They were chosen to represent most-dissimilar cases in terms of regulatory outputs, both in terms of stringency (weak in Milan, intermediate in Paris, strong in Barcelona) and choice of policy sectors (sharing economy and tourism in Milan, housing and land use in Paris, urban planning and tourism in Barcelona). Two main findings emerged from the comparison. First, the differences between regulations can be explained by the type of actors who politicized the issue in the first place and framed it within a specific policy sector, the pre-existing policy instruments traditionally used in that sector and the distribution of competences between the city and higher tiers of government. Second, the regulations remain continuously subject to intense political mobilization by six types of actors with clashing interests: professional STR operators, associations of hosts or ‘home-sharers’, the hotel industry, residents’ associations or citizens’ movements, ‘sharing economy’ advocates and corporate platforms. Each actor constructs different narratives regarding PM-STR, claiming different types of rights in this contentious politics of regulation.

Are national commitments to reducing emissions from forests effective? Lessons from Indonesia

For Indonesia to achieve its greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments, it will have to reduce emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and peatland degradation. The National Action Plan for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions was Indonesia's first comprehensive plan. It reflected Indonesia's emission reduction commitments to 2020, and the first phase ran from 2010 to 2014. This research evaluates its design and implementation. It assesses seven out of thirteen actions that were implemented to reduce emissions from forestry and peatland degradation. It is shown that only two actions had a direct, evidence-based link to emission sources. Three actions had some evidence of a link, albeit dependent on many factors. For the remaining two actions, focused on emissions from agriculture in peatland, there was no information to demonstrate clear and targeted implementation of the actions. The analysis also shows that the indicators listed in the National Action Plan were insufficient to demonstrate meaningful reductions of emissions. Part of the explanation for the problematic design of the actions is that many of them were pre-existing policies, aimed at achieving a variety of different objectives that were just rebadged as climate change actions.

Competing Frames, Domestic Discretion and Uneven Outcomes: Administrative Reform in Greece under the Crisis

In the past nine years, the Greek administration has undergone a wide range of reforms. Did the high ambitions translate into significant change? In order to provide some answers, the paper examines and compares the outcome of administrative reforms that took place in the past years in two core state areas relating to the use of state resources and presenting similar problems: (i) budgeting and fiscal management and (ii) human resources management. Reforms in these areas are assessed in relation to targeted administrative deficiencies. The main research finding is that change has been uneven affecting at different degrees the policy core. The ambitious agenda primarily resulted in the modernization of policy instruments. New policy frames competed with old ones, sometimes prevailing and sometimes being captured and hollowed out. In fiscal management there is significant change, challenging deeper policy frames and patterns accounting for critical deficiencies. In contrast, in HRM reforms results are rather unambitious. Thus the changes introduced are mostly secondary and do not challenge the core of pre-existing policy arrangements. The paper offers an explanation of these uneven outcomes and questions the conditions of reform sustainability.

Reshaping urban political ecologies: an analysis of policy trajectories to deliver food security

In a context of increasing urbanization, cities have become key sites for rebuilding food systems in order to deliver good food for all. Indeed, municipal governments around the globe are developing food policies to integrate different sectors and actors implicated in delivering food security outcomes. Despite the acknowledgement of the need to develop integrative plans and food governance approaches, sustainable food transitions are conditioned by specific socio-ecological configurations of individual cities. Furthermore, inclusiveness and integration are discursively deployed but challenging to implement on the ground. In order to understand these policy trajectories we mobilised a political ecology framework to explore how the specific configurations of nature and society express themselves in the process and outcomes of urban food policies. We selected two European cities: Cardiff and Cork. These cities represent distinct urban foodscapes and diverse state-civil society relationships. The results of this international comparative study indicate that the specific entry points of each city’s policy trajectory condition the establishment of integral food policies. Our analysis shows how policy opportunities for success are shaped by existing sociocultural dynamics (e.g., social asymmetry, level of engagement from civil society, pre-existing policy environment, and degree of state involvement), as well as particular ecological basis (i.e., availability and access to spaces for growing, share of green spaces, local climate, etc.). Furthermore, the potential of urban food policies to effect change on the city’s foodscape hinges on their capacity to leverage place-based assets, and transform the structural processes that create exclusive and food insecure spaces in the first place.

Party Polarization, Ideological Sorting and the Emergence of the US Partisan Gender Gap

This article argues that the modern American partisan gender gap – the tendency of men to identify more as Republicans and less as Democrats than women – emerged largely because of mass-level ideological party sorting. As the two major US political parties ideologically polarized at the elite level, the public gradually perceived this polarization and better sorted themselves into the parties that matched their policy preferences. Stable pre-existing policy differences between men and women caused this sorting to generate the modern US partisan gender gap. Because education is positively associated with awareness of elite party polarization, the partisan gender gap developed earlier and is consistently larger among those with college degrees. The study finds support for this argument from decades of American National Election Studies data and a new large dataset of decades of pooled individual-level Gallup survey responses.

Developing social impact assessment guidelines in a pre-existing policy context

ABSTRACTFew jurisdictions have translated internationally agreed social impact assessment (SIA) principles into statutory provisions. Governments and regulatory bodies tend to provide developers with high-level frameworks, or require that social impacts be ‘considered’, without specifying how this is to be done. In Australia, this lack of clarity leaves all parties uncertain about requirements for SIA. The New South Wales (NSW) Government’s 2017 release of the SIA guideline for State-significant mining, petroleum and extractive industry development represents an attempt to clarify requirements and provide guidance. In this paper, we describe the process of bringing this guideline to fruition from the perspective of being directly involved in its development, and highlight the challenges involved in integrating leading-practice principles into the state’s pre-existing policy framework. While the guideline represents a significant advance in policy-based SIA guidance, some aspects leave room for improvement. The real test of the guideline’s impact will lie in its influence on SIA practice in NSW, and ultimately in social outcomes for communities affected by resources projects.

(Im)mobile and (Un)successful? A policy mobilities approach to New Orleans’s residential security taxing districts

Policy mobilities scholars critically analyze the processes of assemblage, mobilization, and mutation that shape policy circuits, but have been critiqued for an over-emphasis on successful and mobile cases. This paper adds to a growing effort to diversify the empirical scope of the field through an example that blurs the boundaries of mobility/immobility and success/failure. I examine residential security taxing districts, which are derived from the common business improvement district model but which in their specifics are unique to New Orleans. Security districts are quasi-public entities established within elite urban enclaves to collect taxes to fund neighborhood security patrols. First, I analyze the model’s rapid spread among the city’s neighborhoods, demonstrating the relevance of the policy mobilities framework in a case of intra-urban mobilization. Second, I explore why the model has not spread to other cities, particularly given New Orleans’s centrality as a site for neoliberal policy experimentation in the post-Katrina era. These post-disaster interventions applied preexisting policy prescriptions and were driven by outside experts, while the city’s own neoliberal experiments were ignored. Troubling the association of mobility and success, I conclude that this immobility should not be considered failure so much as anonymity.

POST-BREXIT THREATS TO WORK SAFETY AND HEALTH STANDARDS AND GOOD WORKING CONDITIONS IN THE UK

This paper reviews how legal, political and economic threats to be borne out of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) will short-change pre-Brexit work protection standards in the United Kingdom (UK). These threat-factors are considered in view of their effects on two classes of workers: low-income temporary agency workers (TAW); and low-income self-employed workers in the growing UK gig economy. This paper describes impending post-Brexit threats, to pre-existing policy implementation threats curtailing legally envisaged occupational safety and health (OSH) standards, and the practice of proactively preventing all foreseeable work related risks to the mental or physical health of workers. Post-Brexit threats add to current limitations to employment protections for low income workers in the UK, and despite the recently proposed labour law reforms by the 2017 Taylor Review in regard to low-income workers, it is argued that these Brexit threat factors increase the risk of not extending the principle of equal protection to these two classes of workers in UK law, in ways envisaged under the current EU regulation. The paper concludes that in view of the notion of occupational well-being, the risks of physical and mental harms posed to low-income workers through exploitative work practices segment them from other workers who enjoy full employment law protections under UK labour law.

National responses to global health targets: exploring policy transfer in the context of the UNAIDS '90-90-90' treatment targets in Ghana and Uganda.

Global health organizations frequently set disease-specific targets with the goal of eliciting adoption at the national-level; consideration of the influence of target setting on national policies, programme and health budgets is of benefit to those setting targets and those intended to respond. In 2014, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS set ‘ambitious’ treatment targets for country adoption: 90% of HIV-positive persons should know their status; 90% of those on treatment; 90% of those achieving viral suppression. Using case studies from Ghana and Uganda, we explore how the target and its associated policy content have been adopted at the national level. That is whether adoption is in rhetoric only or supported by programme, policy or budgetary changes. We review 23 (14 from Ghana, 9 from Uganda) national policy, operational and strategic documents for the HIV response and assess commitments to ‘90–90–90’. In-person semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposively sampled key informants (17 in Ghana, 20 in Uganda) involved in programme-planning and resource allocation within HIV to gain insight into factors facilitating adoption of 90–90–90. Interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically, inductively and deductively, guided by pre-existing policy theories, including Dolowitz and Marsh’s policy transfer framework to describe features of the transfer and the Global Health Advocacy and Policy Project framework to explain observations. Regardless of notable resource constraints, transfer of the 90–90–90 targets was evident beyond rhetoric with substantial shifts in policy and programme activities. In both countries, there was evidence of attempts to minimize resource constraints by seeking programme efficiencies, prioritization of programme activities and devising domestic financing mechanisms; however, significant resource gaps persist. An effective health network, comprised of global and local actors, mediated the adoption and adaptation, facilitating a shift in the HIV programme from ‘business as usual’ to approaches targeting geographies and populations.

The effects of the Fukushima disaster on nuclear energy debates and policies: a two-step comparative examination

ABSTRACTUnder what conditions do critical events trigger large-scale public discussion and mobilisation, and can these lead to policy change? In a comparative study of nuclear energy policy after the Japanese Fukushima disaster in March 2011, a theory-development approach is adopted, mobilising data collected from national news agencies’ newswires, public surveys, legislation and parliamentary databases, and newspaper editorials in 12 established democracies between March 2011 and March 2013. The analysis suggests two main hypotheses that can guide future research: critical events are more likely to trigger policy change when intense (contentious) mobilisation from policy challengers aligns with the views of the general public, and is backed by major political allies; and critical events are more likely to trigger intense (contentious) mobilisation when policy challengers articulate their opposition around pre-existing policy debates on the issue and resort to pre-existing organisational and mobilisation resources.

Economic Patriotism after the Crisis: Explaining Continuity and Change in European Securities Enforcement

Since the global financial crisis, European governments have sought to intensify the supervision of financial markets and national regulators have received broader powers to sanction securities violations. Yet few studies have empirically examined whether regulatory approaches have systematically shifted in the aftermath of the crisis, and how these reforms have impacted long standing national strategies to promote domestic financial interests in the European single market. Examining hundreds of enforcement actions in three key European jurisdictions, this paper provides one of the first comparative assessments of the pattern of longitudinal change since the crisis. In the UK, aggregate monetary sanctions have increased 40-fold since the crisis, while criminal convictions for insider trading have skyrocketed from zero before 2009 to 40 from 2009-2015. In France and Germany, by contrast, there have not been systematic changes in domestic securities enforcement patterns, with both countries assessing penalties and prosecuting insider trading at similar rates before and after the crisis. Building on Story and Walter’s (1997) account of how France, Germany, and the UK sought to shape the rules of the single market to benefit national financial interests, and Clift and Woll's (2012) work on “economic patriotism” in open markets, I argue that longstanding industrial strategies still influence the enforcement of financial regulation, but that depending on the relationship between the crisis and the domestic regulatory system, these strategies have been adjusted to different degrees. In the UK, where the financial crisis was a direct rebuke to the “light touch” regulatory approach, financial supervision was overhauled, and more adversarial enforcement strategies institutionalized, to preserve London’s status as an international financial centre. By contrast, in France and Germany, where domestic regulatory systems were not as implicated by the financial crisis, domestic securities supervision and enforcement changed less dramatically; however, the crisis also created a window of opportunity for both countries to successfully push for new European-level regulation that the UK had previously blocked, leading to new centralized supervisory institutions that could eventually undermine national industrial strategies. In sum, in all three cases the enforcement response to the crisis was intended to maintain pre-existing policy regimes established to promote national financial interests within the European single market; but because the crisis had different implications for domestic regulatory arrangements, we observe different patterns of change in securities enforcement practices.