Types Of Policy Changes Research Articles

Policy paradigm modes: explaining USA antitrust law changes in the 1970s

Abstract This article advances the theory of policy paradigms by investigating when paradigms are rigid, constraining alternative perspectives and policy options, and when instead they are more flexible, allowing actors to overcome paradigmatic restrictions and differences. Departing from the existing theories on policy paradigms, I conceptualize paradigm rigidity and flexibility as characteristics that develop endogenously within the policy-making process, shaped by the types of policy changes that are proposed and discussed and by the types of framing strategies policy actors employ to support their proposals. Policy paradigms can therefore have both rigid and flexible modes within the same policy area and in the same period. Conceiving paradigms in modes helps us better understand how policies change when there are competing paradigms and exogenous crises. I illustrate this empirically with an analysis of the debates surrounding four antitrust (competition) policy change proposals in the USA during the 1970s.

What Effects Could Global Value Chain and Digital Infrastructure Development Policies Have on Poverty and Inequality after COVID-19?

It is clear that in the transition out of the COVID-19 crisis in Colombia there will be great need for formal job creation. One source that has been widely discussed in policy circles is strengthening linkages of Colombian firms with Global Value Chains (GVCs). Another source that has received recent attention, and deservedly so, is digital infrastructure development (DID)—which can boost telework and virtual human capital accumulation. Reduction in poverty and inequality through more and better formal employment is an important aspect of a jobs and economic transformation (JET) agenda. In this paper, we explore—through a computable general equilibrium model (CGE) and a microsimulation framework—to what extent reforms of the type envisioned in the JET agenda and which could generate GVC linkages, as well as through DID, for Colombia, and we project their impact on poverty and inequality up to 2030. Our findings show limited impact of the three types of policy changes considered for GVCs—namely (i) fall in barriers for seamless business logistics, (ii) reductions in tariffs, and (iii) lower barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI). The impact of DID on inequality is also moot. There is however a modest impact on poverty reduction in the combined policy of digital infrastructure with a boost in skilled labor. This finding can be linked to different factors. First, there are relatively few direct jobs created to benefit households with low levels of human capital. Second, there might be indirect job creation through backward linkages to local suppliers by firms linked to GVCs, but this effect would be a general equilibrium effect that our CGE model with a partial equilibrium microsimulation distributional module does not fully capture. Third, the positioning of Colombian firms to latch onto GVCs, and also generate demand for local intermediate inputs and services, is not optimal. Fourth, DID may generate more general labor market opportunities through telework and virtual learning expansions but could also induce larger wage gaps as the skill premium rises so that the net effect on inequality is ambiguous.

Institutionalizing school failure: From abandoning to reintroducing a failing grade\u2014the rationales behind Swedish grading reforms

The article aims to depict the political framing of three grading reforms in Swedish compulsory school, in terms of the political problem they are supposed to solve and what kind of attention is given to the lowest performing pupils. Discourse analysis is employed, focusing on statement producers. The empirical material consists of policy documents from the late 1930s to 2010. The analyses show that three cases of the same type of policy change, a new grading system, rely on very different problem representations. The changes were launched as an equality tool, an accountability measure and a remedy for declining results, respectively. The discourse about the least successful pupils differs. Reasonable demands and a ranking scale without a failing grade characterize the introduction of a norm-referenced system; a first criterion-referenced system rests on a belief that virtually all pupils will meet the formulated levels for passing, an expectation not met, and a changed focus behind the second criterion-referenced system normalizes that some pupils will fail compulsory school. The article also illustrates the merits of studying educational policy change through the theoretical lens of problem representations and directs attention to how reforms can have discursive effects as well as unintended side effects that matter substantially for some people.

Age‐Differentiated vs. Age‐Integrated: Neoliberal Policy and the Future of the Life Course

AbstractObserving the human costs for persons of all ages of the institutionalized tripartite life course (ILC) characterizing advanced postindustrial societies, gerontological pioneer Matilda White Riley proposed an “age‐integrated” alternative that would support a more balanced engagement with education, work, and leisure (i.e., retirement) across the life course. Without denying the kinds of manifest benefits that the ILC has provided to modern citizens (notably enhanced educational opportunities and retirement support), Riley rightly pointed out the opportunities lost due to the restrictions imposed by the normative age‐graded or age‐differentiated model of the “three‐box” life course. However, both the age‐segmented ILC and the age‐integrated alternative envisioned by Riley have presupposed the broad floor of support of essential components of the life course (i.e., education, work and retirement/leisure) provided by the post‐World War II social contract. We demonstrate that this floor of support has been dangerously eroded by the neoliberal turn in social policy, which has undermined that social contract. Ironically, the ideas of a more individualized or “flexible” life course are often co‐opted to legitimate the off‐loading of risk to individuals that is integral to neoliberal policy. In reality, viable implementation of Riley's proposed age‐integrated model would require a rejection of such policies and a renewed public commitment at least equal to the support that undergirded the institutionalized life course. We detail some dimensions of neoliberalism's impact on the life course, and we suggest the types of policy changes that could rebuild support for the institution of the life course, with special attention to Riley's age‐integrated model and its potential to advance human interests.

Building R&D Team Leaders: Evidence from Change in Conscription Law

Over the years, teamwork innovations have increased in frequency, importance, and complexity. While supporting the development of innovations, the integration of a large number of specialized competences has produced coordination frictions among team members, which has increased the demand for team leaders. This study investigates the origins of team leadership skills in innovation by studying whether leadership-enhancing programs add to innate abilities. We combine inventor-level data with a policy change in the US that abandoned the compulsory draft in 1972 and find that, with the elimination of conscription, the probability of male inventors assuming managerial responsibilities reduces, whereas, at the same time, the probability of women inventors take up leadership positions increases. In addition, and consistent with the type of policy change, we observe less autocratic leadership styles and less hierarchical, more creative, inventive projects. We discuss the implications of our results for the management of innovative projects.

Promoting Policy Development through Community Participatory Approaches to Health Promotion: The Philadelphia Ujima Experience

BackgroundThe Philadelphia Ujima Coalition for a Healthier Community (Philadelphia Ujima) promotes health improvement of girls, women, and their families using a gender framework and community-based participatory research approach to addressing gender-based disparities. Institutional policies developed through community-based participatory research approaches are integral to sustaining gender-integrated health-promotion programs and necessary for reducing gender health inequities. This paper describes the results of a policy analysis of the Philadelphia Ujima coalition partner sites and highlights two case studies. MethodsThe policy analysis used a document review and key informant interview transcripts to explore 1) processes that community, faith, and academic organizations engaged in a community participatory process used to develop policies or institutional changes, 2) types of policy changes developed, and 3) initial outcomes and impact of the policy changes on the target population. ResultsFifteen policies were developed as a result of the funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health. Policy changes included 1) healthy food options guidance, 2) leadership training on sexual and relationship violence, and 3) curricula and programming inclusion and expansion of a sex and gender focus in high school and medical school. ConclusionsOrganizational practice changes and policies can be activated through individual-level interventions using a community participatory approach. This approach empowers communities to play an integral role in creating health-promoting policies.

Arts and craftiness: an economic analysis of art heists

We study the incentives that museums face in determining how much resources to invest in the protection of their artwork from theft. We present and analyze a game-theoretic model of art heists that accounts for the strategic interactions between museums’ and art thieves’ decisions and that incorporates several key features of the black market for stolen art. We find that the equilibrium level of security museums choose need not be monotonic in the true market value or the black market value of artwork, i.e., increasing the value of an art piece—whether it is the true market value or the black market value—does not necessarily lead museums to invest more in protecting their artwork. The effects of parameter changes in the model that reflect a shift of public policy depend critically on what type of policy change is considered. For instance, an increase in the penalty imposed for committing art theft cannot raise the amount of theft in equilibrium and could in fact lead museums to increase their level of security. On the other hand, investing more resources on law enforcement agencies so that they are better able to solve art crimes can actually increase the amount of theft in equilibrium by causing museums to spend less on security.

Measuring change in source of leader support

This article introduces the CHISOLS (Change in Source of Leader Support) dataset, which identifies which leadership changes within countries bring to power a new leader whose primary support is drawn from different societal groups than those who supported her predecessor. The dataset covers all countries of the world with populations greater than 500,000 from 1919 to 2008. We discuss the underlying rationale of our data collection, provide some brief information about the coding rules and procedures, and share some descriptive statistics. We find that changes in sources of leader support are more common in democracies than non-democracies, but also that changes in sources of leader support often occur without irregular leader transitions or large institutional changes, even within non-democracies. CHISOLS can be productively combined with other datasets like POLITY, Archigos, and DPI that provide information about political institutions, modes of leader transition, and placement on a left–right policy continuum, but CHISOLS also provides something new that was not previously available. These data allow researchers to study the extent to which different types of policy change are associated with all leader transitions, with changes in political institutions, or with changes in the set of interests that leaders most closely represent; CHISOLS facilitates comparing the effect of leaders, interests, and institutions on policy change across a wide spatial temporal domain.

The politics of policy anomalies: bricolage and the hermeneutics of paradigms

This article addresses three issues troubling predominant models of paradigmatic policy change and proposes an alternative perspective on the subject. The first issue pertains to the conflation of very specific, but difficult to operationalize, types of policy change in Peter Hall’s standard three-order typology for understanding policy development. The second has to do with the view that exogenous phenomena, namely shifts in the locus of decision-making authority, are necessary for ‘paradigmatic’ policy change to occur. The third issue stems from Hall’s strict adaptation of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas concerning the (in)commensurability of succeeding paradigms. All three problems are shown to be derivative of the fact that policy change is more complex than often assumed. Instead of conceiving of policy change in definite or ‘ordered’ terms, it is argued that analytical focus should be directed toward the hermeneutic contest that unfolds as agents patch together ideas in the attempt to identify and explain the sources of policy problems. This largely discursive conflict takes place as agents vie to influence the structure of ‘solution sets’ in a process of ‘policy bricolage’. The article advances a revised and more actor-centered formula for understanding types of paradigmatic and intra-paradigmatic policy change by developing a more precise understanding of different types or ‘orders’ of policy anomalies and the role anomaly definition plays in the construction of new paradigms.

Water policy reform and innovation: A systematic review

A growing need for innovation in water policy is increasingly recognized within water policy and governance scholarship, but the types of innovation and changes being considered or undertaken, and the conditions that enable or hinder those changes remain unclear. A systematic review of water policy reform literature was undertaken to investigate how innovation is defined in this area of scholarship and the enabling conditions or barriers shaping the innovation process. The findings of the review demonstrated that the mainstream water policy reform scholarship that examines innovation is limited. A small portion of the water policy reform literature that addresses innovation considers different types of policy changes as innovative. Therefore, the results are used to propose a typology of water policy innovations. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that preliminary knowledge about the role of policy entrepreneurs, networks, social learning, adaptive approaches, and niche experiments in the innovation process emerge in a sub-set of the water policy reform literature.

The Quest for Global Narcotics Policy Change: Does the United States Matter?

The prohibition approach to narcotics control has been in existence for decades with little or no change to the existing policy. This article explores the global drug prohibition regime, the quest for policy change and why the US matters to any change in policy. Drawing on key scholarly works and interviews from experts in the field, the article employs the theory of policy paradigm (orders of change) to explain the types of policy change occurring within the US/global narcotics regime. The hegemonic stability theory also provides some explanations for the dominant role of the US in shaping the global narcotics regime. The key finding reveals that the US and the global narcotics regime are undergoing first and second order changes in policy.

POLICY CHANGE AND EXPERT INVOLVEMENT IN CHINA

Expert involvement is usually regarded as one of the causes of policy changes. However, how does the nature of policy change, in turn, influence expert involvement? This study constructs an analytical model by adopting and developing policy network and principal‐agent theories, suggesting that expert involvement can be regarded as the result of the inherent characteristics of policy change in the Chinese policy process. Two key characteristics of policy change, namely ‘loss embeddedness' and ‘knowledge complexity’, are employed to form four types of policy changes. Empirically, a comparative study with four policy change cases illustrates that Chinese experts adopt four behavioural strategies, such as linear access, outside‐in enlightenment, deprofessionalized campaign, and locked‐out, in different types of policy change. These policy change cases include the new‐type rural cooperative medical care system, the new urban medical care system, revocation of detention and repatriation system, and the new economically affordable urban housing policy.

Estimating Marginal Propensities to Consume in Australia Using Micro Data*

This paper uses micro data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to estimate the marginal propensity to consume (MPC). Estimates are made by examining two types of policy changes – to income tax rates and lump‐sum transfers – which help to identify the effect of shocks to income on consumption. Using a fixed effects model the point estimate of MPC out of the tax cuts is around 1.0 and out of the Baby Bonus is at least 0.1. The paper also explores differences in the MPC across households according to measures of liquidity constraints and unemployment risks.

Changing Course

Policy reversals represent a particular type of policy change. Reversals refer specifically to instances when a policy is adopted or discontinued despite previously adopted positions. In cases of reversals, decision makers have reassessed their core values usually because of substantive events in the policy parameter. Although reversals represent a stark redirection, they could not take place without prior institutionalization in the field. We use Title III of the Patriot Act, which deals among other things with money laundering and terrorist financing, to illustrate our point.

Institutionalizing community-based prevention through policy change

This article summarizes the types of community policies that have shown effects on decreasing youth drug use, the contribution of community organization to policy change, and finally, the role of policy change on maintaining—or institutionalizing—community-based prevention efforts. Two types of policy change are considered: those involving implementation and those related to applicable regulations. Implementation policies are those aimed at institutionalizing prevention programs, usually through raising funds, requiring standard implementation, and creating a formal non-profit organization to implement programs. Regulatory policies include all formal laws, regulations, and ordinances aimed directly at decreasing drug use, for example, regulations which enforce the monitoring of drug-free zones. Results of studies suggest that regulatory policies may show the most immediate effect on youth tobacco and alcohol use. Programmatic policies have the most potential for long-term effects on use. Community organization appears to stimulate change in both types of policy. As yet unresolved is whether policy change can subsequently contribute to long-term community prevention efforts. Recent research has identified several barriers to institutionalization of community prevention, including a) a lack of perceived empowerment by community leaders to continue prevention work; b) insufficient preparation of community leaders for adoption of evidence-based programs; c) the notion of continuing an ineffective approach because of the costs already “sunk;” and d) a general perception that no proscribed evidence-based approach will work because each community has its own unique needs. Furthermore, results suggest that policy change requires a two- to three-year commitment by community leaders and a supportive social norm for prevention. Despite these barriers, several factors have emerged from case studies of community prevention which may expedite the movement of evidence-based prevention from science into practice. Identification of a local champion for prevention, development of local resources to sustain prevention, feedback about prevention program effects and strategic use of supportive mass media are recommended to induce local policy change and institutionalize prevention in the community. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Social Evaluation of Land-Use Controls

Social evaluation of land-use controls seeks to determine whether residents and potential future residents are treated equitably or fairly. Two standards of judicial equity are proposed: (1)A demand for equalizing resources for education among rich and poor communities; and (2)a requirement that zoning not be discriminatory by excluding moderate and low income families. Different types of policy changes are considered to insure fair housing practices. The different mechanics of computation are examined which would best benefit all in terms of transportation to jobs.