Specific Policy Domains Research Articles

Security, privacy and freedom and the EU legal and policy framework for biometrics

The adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon and the granting to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the same legal force as the Treaty has lent a new impulse to the consideration of fundamental human rights by the European Union (EU). The question remains, however, as to how this legal discourse, centred upon human rights, is actually shaping the EU regulatory framework in specific policy domains. The aim of this paper is to critically appraise the ways that the fundamental rights of security, privacy and freedom guaranteed by the Charter are being construed in the context of EU law and policy on biometrics, an ethically and morally sensitive security technology whose development and use are being actively promoted by the EU. We conclude that the interpretation of the pertinent rights, as well as their balancing, owes a great deal to the goals of EU policies for research and development, and under the auspices of Freedom, Security and Justice, shaped largely by political and economic considerations. These considerations then tend to prevail over ethically or morally-based legal claims.

Preferences and Subjective Satisfaction: Measuring Well-being on the Job for Policy Evaluation

Behavioural welfare economics has raised doubts about the use of revealed preferences as an indicator of 'true' individual well-being. Subjective satisfaction ('happiness') measures have become increasingly popular, as they seem to avoid paternalism while at the same time not being dependent on observed choice behaviour. We argue that there is a clash between using subjective satisfaction and respecting preferences, because the former also depends on aspirations. We propose the equivalent income indicator as an alternative cardinalization of the utility function. It does respect preferences but does not depend on aspirations. We apply our general ideas to one specific policy domain: monitoring job quality as individual well-being on the job. Our empirical results about the quality of jobs for school-leavers in Flanders show that the choice of a specific indicator of well-being is highly relevant from a policy point of view. The most popular measures that are in use now (the paternalist equal weights-indicator and subjective job satisfaction) may be misleading if they are not complemented by information about the other indicators.

Reflexivity and the Regulation of GM Food and Feed in the EU

This paper attempts to apply Archer’s theory on reflexivity to governance arrangements, and more specifically, to risk regulation. We argue that the realisation of citizens’ inherent reflexive ability provides an additional independent justification to the widespread literature that calls for deliberative modes of governance. Subsequently, this contribution singles out a specific policy domain in the European Union (EU), namely the one concerning the regulation of genetically modified (GM) food and feed. It stresses that the substantial scientific uncertainty that surrounds agricultural biotechnology in addition to the strong objections of European citizens towards the technology renders this sensitive regulatory area an ideal candidate for the implementation of governance arrangements that make use of deliberation. What is more, a distinction is made between politics based on ‘routine action’ (or shallow politics) and politics based on reflexivity (or reflexive politics). In making this distinction, the paper examines the EU GM food and feed regulatory regime to ascertain the extent to which it utilises and encourages citizens’ deliberative input.

Party Election Programmes, Signalling Policies and Salience of Specific Policy Domains: The German Parties from 1990 to 2005

Parliaments and governments function as problem-solving institutions for specific policy domains. Due to the division of labour in governments, parties are interested in the stated policy priorities and the domain-specific positions of their possible coalition partners. This article investigates the coalition-relevant content of German election manifestos. Our goal is to identify policy domain-specific party positions and saliencies; we are less interested in the positions of parties on broadly defined ideological scales. Therefore, we present a new method of coding election manifestos. We partition manifestos into text corpora belonging to different policy domains by hand coding the titles the parties themselves have chosen for these sections. Section length is used as our measure of domain salience. We then estimate policy positions for these domains with the computerised content analysis algorithm WORDFISH. In this manner we estimate positions and saliencies of the German federal parties from 1990–2005. To validate our method, we compare our results with those of Slapin and Proksch and with results based on the CMP data.

Planning People: The Ideology and Rationality of New Labour

This article discusses ways of understanding the ideology of New Labour, and argues that it would be better to explicate its ‘rationality’: the conceptual tools and frameworks that are employed in government thinking. It shows that this rationality is primarily concerned with ‘modernizing’ the state, the economy and people, all of which must be enabled to act in ways imagined to be appropriate for the new ‘knowledge economy’. The article then considers the specific policy domain of planning and argues that, here, reforms are primarily concerned to modernize planners and to ‘govern’ their visions of what planning must be.

The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization and Governance. By Rachel Cichowski. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xv+294. $85.00 cloth; $32.99 paper; $26.00 e-book.

The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization and Governance. By Rachel Cichowski. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xv+294. $85.00 cloth; $32.99 paper; $26.00 e-book. An exemplary addition to a growing interdisciplinary body of literature on the European Union (EU) legal system, The European Court and Civil Society explains an international treaty governing economic cooperation became a quasi-constitutional polity granting individual rights and public inclusion (p. 1). Accounts of how this transformation came about have been previously proffered but none as nuanced as Cichowski's empirically driven explanation. The study provides new and important insights into the role of civil society litigation and mobilization in spurring institutional change and supranational governance. The first chapters lay out the theoretical, empirical, and normative debates with which the book engages and develops the theoretical approach applied in subsequent chapters. Cichowski's theoretical contribution is powerful: existing scholarship on European legal integration has been dominated by the increasingly stagnant debate between intergovernmental approaches, which argue that national governments' policy preferences systematically influence judicial decisions and neo-functional approaches, which focus on the role of supranational institutions and transnational society. The study, by exploring the interactions between individual activists, law and courts and the impact of this dynamic on governance (p. 244), transcends this debate and is able to draw conclusions about the causes, effects, and feedback effects of supranational governance, mobilization, and litigation. The heuristic device that the study develops is used to evaluate whether, how, and why integration has evolved in specific policy domains: questions that have not been satisfactorily answered by the existing theoretical approaches. Part I explores the dynamic process of institutionalization through litigation by focusing on legal mobilization in the gender equality and environmental protection policy domains. The cases were strategically chosen to allow for a comparison of the effect of the legal basis-treaty-based rights (gender equality) versus rights enshrined only in secondary legislation (environmental protection)-on judicial rulemaking capacity and the ease with which member state governments can retaliate against adverse rulings. Part II switches focus and takes mobilization as the starting point of analysis. It argues that national executives are no longer alone in the European arena; public interests are equally present. Focusing on the same policy domains, Cichowski finds that litigation and legislation provide new political and legal opportunities, prompting individuals and groups to shift their mobilization to the emerging supranational space. A formidable strength of the book is the robust methodology that combines quantitative analyses across 15 countries from 1970 to 2003 in the two policy domains with detailed, lively, and systematic case law analysis and a historical study of the mobilization dynamic at the European level. …

Philanthropic Strategies for School Reform

Although support for K-12 education has long been a priority for philanthropic organizations, foundations are increasingly choosing to play a leading role in fostering the development and implementation of new policies designed to reform K-12 education. This article is an effort to understand the strategies and tactics employed by foundations currently engaged in K-12 education policy. In-depth interviews conducted with senior staff members of 20 foundations identified as substantially engaged in education policy and school reform were conducted to examine three fundamental strategic choices: the foundation's decision to engage in education policy, including the specific policy domain within education; the foundation's choice on where to intervene in the policy process and at what level of government; and the foundation's tactics to leverage additional resources. Findings suggest that foundations consciously seek to engage in education policy as an integral ingredient of their philanthropic initiatives and are led by staff and board leadership in these decisions. Most foundation activities in this arena aim to create individual niches of activity within the school reform agenda based on the foundation's informed theory of change. As a group, however, foundation engagement in education policy is collectively cautious and ultimately incremental as foundations attempt to make change at the state and district level primarily through demonstration projects and funding research and development activities.

Implementation: the need for a contextual approach to the implementation of musculoskeletal guidelines

This chapter focuses on how strategies to reduce the burden of musculoskeletal disease might be used to inform the development of best clinical practice, public behaviour and health policy. We review what is known about how to modify clinical practice and public behaviour and the effectiveness of a range of interventions that seek to achieve change. From a health policy perspective we examine how those who produce evidence can be linked with decision-makers and how evidence can be used to answer key questions that are pertinent to policy-makers. We argue that implementation strategies need to be targeted to meet the particular contextual constraints and opportunities found within the specific clinical field, policy domain or public setting, but that research is needed to establish the cost and clinical effectiveness of more complex implementation strategies and the financial impact of changing public policy.

The European Union and the Member States: Which Level of Government Should Do What? An Empirical Analysis of Europeans' Preferences

In this paper we empirically study the preferences of European citizens concerning the allocation of powers between EU and the Member States using Eurobarometer data from 1995 to 2003. Descriptive analysis highlights a ranking of countries according to their level of Europeanism, and a quite clear pattern of preferences relative to the allocation of competences for specific policy domains. With econometric analysis, first we regress a measure of Europeanism on a number of individual characteristics and, second, we select some policy domains and investigate the determinants of preferences for centralisation of competences at the EU level. Also econometric analysis reveals interesting patterns regarding EU citizens' preferences for allocation of powers.

Policy Analysis for What? The Effectiveness of Nonpartisan Policy Research Organizations

For the past several decades, scholars have studied the role of policy research in decision making. Depending how “use” is measured, the results have indicated only modest or indirect impacts. This study takes another direction to studying knowledge utilization, comparing the influence of nonpartisan policy research organizations in 19 states on their principal clients: state legislators. Nonpartisan research agencies represent a particularly rigorous test since the literature on knowledge utilization questions whether nonpartisan policy analysis organizations (NPROs) can remain neutral and contribute meaningfully to policymaking. Further, this analysis is comparative across states, studies institutions rather than specific reports or policy domains, and examines multiple types of “use.” Using the results of surveys of both agencies and legislators, the results indicate a strong association between the size and type of policy research organizations and legislators’ assessments of use, even controlling for political and ideological factors. This suggests that policy analysis organizations—even those in a highly politicized environment—have a significant impact on policymaking, mainly by providing information and analysis to decision makers but also in influencing public policy outcomes.

Escolha institucional e a difusão dos paradigmas de política: o Brasil e a segunda onda de reformas previdenciárias

This article discusses current approaches to the study of institutional change and innovation in the global environment. Although there is convergence in policy innovation as a result of globalization, there is a tendency to emphasize homogenization and leave aside variety and heterogeneity. We examine current explanations of how policy paradigms are diffused and consider how these explanations have been applied to a specific policy domain, namely pension reforms. The case study of Brazil’s pension reform is presented in summarized form as an empirical illustration of the arguments developed in the theoretical discussion. We find that national responses to the influences of globalization are in fact shaped in crucial ways by domestic institutions and path dependency phenomena.

Complexity, Coupling, and the Future of European Integration

AbstractWhy is there more integration in some areas of the European Union than others? Analyzing the dynamics of the integration process at the “normal politics” level, I specify two conditions, complexity and coupling, that make integration in Europe more likely in specific policy domains. Integration is more likely under conditions of low complexity and tight coupling. Using these two hypotheses, I probe tendencies toward more integration in four areas: competition policy, social policy, agriculture, and foreign and security policy. Integration need not be just a matter of conscious design or bargain, but also the perhaps unintended consequence of interaction between the various actors at the EU level. I conclude that European integration is segmented and that a more integrated Europe is necessarily a more expensive Europe.

Declining Government Confidence and Policy Preferences in the U.S.: Devolution, Regime Effects, or Symbolic Change?

No trend in U.S. public opinion has elicited more enduring concern among scholars, political commentators, and politicians than declining levels of public confidence in the federal government. Motivated by the possibility that this decline signals a crisis of legitimacy or growing dissatisfaction with the overall direction of public policy, two generations of scholarly debates have yielded three competing theoretical interpretations of this phenomenon. While they provide divergent answers to important questions about the devolution of policy-making from the federal government to subnational levels of government, competing hypotheses implied by these interpretations have not been successfully evaluated. We seek to advance theory and research by investigating whether governmental confidence affects the public's willingness to support federal involvement within specific policy domains such as health care and education. Evaluating hypotheses implied by competing interpretations of declining government confidence, we find that the relationship between government confidence and policy preferences is small and shows no evidence of trends. We discuss implications for competing interpretations of government confidence and the possible role of declining confidence in explaining contemporary patterns of welfare state retrenchment.

The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states.

Care is now a widely-used concept in welfare state research, firmly established in the literature by feminist analysis. We believe that the concept as it has been used and developed to date has limitations that have hampered its development as a general category of welfare state analysis. In essence we argue that the political economy aspects of the concept have remained underdeveloped. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate a care-centered concept--which we name social care--that countenances and develops care as an activity and set of relations lying at the intersection of state, market and family (and voluntary sector) relations. We are especially concerned to examine what the concept of social care can tell us about welfare state variation and welfare state change and development. The article works systematically through these themes, beginning with a brief historical sketch of the concept of care and then moving on to elaborate the analytic potential of the concept of social care. In the latter regard we make the case that it can lead to a more encompassing analysis, helping to overcome especially the fragmentation in existing scholarship between the cash and service dimensions of the welfare state and the relative neglect of the latter. The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements. In this and other regards, the concept has the potential to say something new about welfare states.

Egalitarian Social Movements in Western Europe: Can They Survive Globalization and EMU?

Scholars have traditionally explained egalitarian social movements in terms of interest-based politics applied to specific policy domains and defined by distinct and immutable identities, such as class, nation, race, or gender. Recent contextual changes limit the analytical power of this traditional mode of analysis. This essay proposes that globalization and European regionalism have opened space for social movements organized by “modular” and context-dependent politics, in which identities are not fixed but multiple, interchangeable, and crosscutting. The convergence criteria of European integration, in tandem with the deregulatory pressures of globalization, repress egalitarian interests in national policy agendas. But the uncertain and overlapping authorities across territory and identity provide new political opportunities for broad-based mobilization, especially when wedded with strategies that take advantage of modular politics. Two recent cases illustrate the increasing significance of context-dependent identity formation in West European social movements. In Sweden, wage-earner feminism gained prominence for its appeal when it went beyond gender interests and captivated a broad-based alliance for a post-Fordist labor compromise. Similarly, the 1997 Eurostrike against Renault gained concessions, for it cast a wide net to attract different identities: class, nation, and Europe. The interplay among European regionalism, globalization, and “modular” politics will ultimately shape the future of egalitarian social movements in Western Europe.

Values or Views of Government? Analyzing the Ideological Sources of Public Policy Preferences

Since the Great Society programs of the 1960s, several researchers have reported that while Americans tend to resist an activist conception of the federal government, they nevertheless give high levels of support to some social programs. In the research literature, the subsequent distinction betweenpolicy-specific valuesandgeneral views of governmentraises an important but as yet unanswered question: Which of these two factors has a greater impact on support for governmental action within specific policy domains? Answering this question is necessary to advancing social–scientific knowledge about the causal mechanisms shaping public policy preferences, and the current study develops a systematic analysis using data from two national surveys and from a new state-level survey. Results from analyses using ordered logit models show that while general views of government affect people's willingness to endorse governmental action, the extent to which they value the specific goals of governmental action has a much greater impact within specific policy domains, and this appears to be a stable feature of United States public opinion since the 1970s. Additional analyses reveal that while general views of government shape preferences for spending on health, social security, and other types of social welfare, they are only minimally related to spending preferences in policy domains that do not relate to the welfare state. The relevance of these findings for understanding the nature of policy preferences and some of the sources of public support for attempts to reduce the size and responsibilities of the federal government are discussed.