Contenu du sommaire

Revue International Review of Public Policy Mir@bel
Numéro vol. 4, no 2, 2022
Texte intégral en ligne Accessible sur l'internet
  • Behavioural Expertise: Drift, Thrift and Shift under COVID-19 - Joram Feitsma, Mark Whitehead accès libre avec résumé en anglais
    Many government responses to the coronavirus-pandemic have been marked by attempts at expertization and scientization. Particularly, politico-epistemological authority is being given to the behavioural science community consulting government. This article critically scrutinizes this most recent wave of behavioural expertization. Taking developments in the UK and the Netherlands as our case-studies, we shed light on the disparate ways in which behavioural expertise is being (re)shaped during COVID-19. Some of these ways point at processes of behavioural expertise ‘drift', in which the applicability and robustness of this knowledge source gets overstated. Other ways instead point at processes of behavioural expertise ‘thrift' or ‘shift', where the knowledge is used only minimally or taken in wholly new and norm-breaking directions. Doing so, we seek to demonstrate the importance of institutional context in understanding how behavioural expertise is currently shaping public policy: underpinning institutional configurations determine whether the expertise is gauged and applied effectively.
  • Narrators and Narratives: A Study of Climate and Air Issues in Delhi, India - Daniel Costie, Kristin Olofsson accès libre avec résumé en anglais
    Policy narratives are deliberative tools used to influence public opinion and shape the policy agenda. This work examines policy narratives and the policy actors who tell them by exploring the stories surrounding air and climate issues in Delhi, India, using the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). As a proof-of-concept exercise that explores the potential validity and reliability of the ego-alter dyadic approach to dissecting narratives, we aim to enhance theory regarding narrativity by focusing on the narrator. We find distinct patterns of narrators in this set of narratives and several key trends are identified. There is an overall tendency towards hero-centric narratives and some distinct proliferation of specific groups as the receivers of actions. In addition, we find that there is a relationship between the magnitude of stories produced and a tendency to use traditional characterization in those narratives. This work has implications for future scholarship interested in empirical applications of discursive power in the policy process.
  • The effects of state aid policy trade-offs on FDI openness in Central and Eastern European Countries - Marco Schito accès libre avec résumé en anglais
    Scholarship suggests that much of the success of the FDI-led economic growth policies of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) is due to investment incentives that national governments made available to multinational corporations, particularly in the form of state aid. Less attention has been given to how inward FDI policy among CEECs is affected by the policy trade-offs that the use of different state aid tools entails. This article builds on insights from qualitative case studies to argue that not all state aid is the same. It tests this proposition against those quantitative studies that failed to find a consistent effect of government incentive policy on the host country's openness to – or reliance on – FDI on a sample of 11 CEECs between 2000 and 2018. The findings support the claim that those measures aimed at promoting regional development are associated with more openness to FDI, but also that this relationship has started to falter following changes in state aid control policy. The key policy implication is that the contradictions between the different levels of governance at which state aid is regulated affect the host countries' use of this measure as a tool of investment attraction for economic growth policy.
  • Linking compliance and policy learning - Thenia Vagionaki accès libre avec résumé en anglais
    This article analyzes the link between compliance and policy learning. It argues that member states that tend to comply with EU regulations are also more prone to learn from EU soft law instruments, such as the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC). To empirically demonstrate this argument, the article offers evidence from two illustrative case studies, Greece and Spain, based on insights from semi-structured interviews conducted with EU and national experts. The evidence shows that in Greece, compliance is problematic and learning – via EU soft law – remains mostly blocked. In Spain, where compliance is stronger, learning is more instrumental and political in nature. By focusing on the critical period before and right after the 2008 financial crisis, the article explains the different trajectories of these two Southern European countries with respect to their EU obligations through the lens of policy learning.
  • Multiple Book Review Essay - Aaron Smith-Walter accès libre
  • Forum

    • Innovations and Public Policies - Hubert Heinelt accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      The term “innovation” is frequently used in both public and scientific debates. However, at first glance, its meaning is extremely fuzzy. This is true even for its use in political science in general and in policy analysis in particular. Nevertheless, if different meanings of innovation are examined, a particular concept behind the term “innovation” can be identified. At the same time, it becomes clear that, with few exceptions, the term is often used in a way that is surprisingly detached from the social context to which it refers. The main aim of this contribution to the forum section of the journal is to show that it is crucial to consider the social, and thus also the temporal, context in which innovations take place – and thereby to understand innovations from the perspective of the actors who consider them necessary and who implement them. This is done by using concrete examples from a recently finished research project.
  • Book Review