Scholars have consistently shown that learning of successful policies in other states leads to higher likelihood of policy adoption. This study extends this finding two ways. First, policy learning can also lead to more comprehensive adoption of successful policies. Second, the effect of policy learning on policy comprehensiveness is conditional on lobbying by interest groups, an alternative source of information about policy success. To test these hypotheses, we conduct a directed dyad-year analysis using a dataset on American state drunk driving regulations from 1983 to 2000. The results show that more comprehensive policy adoption by states is positively related to policy success in other states when lobbying by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is relatively low. Moreover, lobbying by MADD increases policy comprehensiveness when policy success is relatively low. This study advances the literature by examining the conditional effects of lobbying on the relationship between policy learning and policy reinvention.

While the importance of political appointments is a matter of consensus, theorists and empiricists generally focus on different considerations, such as ideology and confirmation duration, respectively. More recently, there have been efforts to integrate empirical and theoretical scholarship but, to date, no empirical analysis assesses theoretical expectations about the relationship between temporal concerns and nominee ideologies. We fill this gap by examining theoretical predictions and related expectations about how the passage of time affects the President’s choices of nominees. We find that executives are disadvantaged as days pass and Presidents propose nominees with whom they are less ideologically compatible over time.

This article proposes a new perspective for analysing regulatory reforms by emphasising the important role of policy entrepreneurs. We provide a framework for understanding the interaction between appointed regulators and politicians, as well as other players in the policy arena, by emphasising the strategies that entrepreneurial regulators use to promote their agendas. Analysing the individual regulatory entrepreneur’s barriers, goals and strategies helps us gain a better microunderstanding of how regulatory reforms are actually achieved. We maintain that when regulators act as policy entrepreneurs, they change policy outcomes by adopting strategies that promote their agendas. We develop this argument by analysing two case studies of regulatory reforms in Israel: one in the banking sector and one involving changes in competition policy.

We update past work on the democratic deficit, defined as incongruence between majority public preference and public policy in the American states. We reconsider public opinion and state policy on seven issues related to immigration and health questions. Using original data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey as well as new data on state policy and other predictors, we show that these seven issues have distinct qualities from Lax and Phillips’s larger basket of 39 policy questions in different issue areas. From 2008 to 2014, the democratic deficit on these issues diminished somewhat in the presence of a heightened level of issue salience.

How are civil servants and politically appointed advisers likely to respond to policy proposals that they believe will harm their countries severely even if they are legal? Based on the different loyalties and roles of political advisors (PA) and civil servants (CS), we hypothesise that (1) PAs are more likely to voice internally, (2) CSs are more likely to voice externally and (3) CSs in functionally politicised systems are more likely to stay silent. These hypotheses are tested on – and partially supported by – data collected through two surveys directed to the ministerial staffs in Denmark and Sweden. PAs are more likely to voice internally, but none of the two groups is particularly keen to voice externally. The propensity to voice concerns in case of perceived harmful policy proposals depends on the kind as well as the level of politicisation.

Research on regulation has focussed on explaining the independence of sector regulators and assessing the effects of regulations on markets. This article broadens the scope of such research by studying and explaining how regulatory actors interact at the de facto level in a multi-actor regulatory arrangement when making regulatory decisions in the telecommunications sector of Colombia. We propose that regulatory decisions depend on the manner in which actors influence each other. In this article, we are not only focussing on the policy outcome itself but also on the regulatory decision-making process. We performed a social network analysis and used an exponential random graph model to analyse the data. Our findings suggest that actors’ level of influence is affected by the access they have to other organisations, the divergence of positions they have with these other organisations and the power resources of an organisation. In addition, there are structural network characteristics that affect regulatory decisionmaking.

How does the salience of environmental issues influence climate policy adoption in the American states? This article considers how two aspects of public salience, issue problem status and issue attention, work with environmental interest group membership to influence climate policy adoption in the American states. We contribute to the theoretical development of issue salience and offer alternative measures that capture differences in salience across subnational units. We find evidence that states where climate change is perceived to be a problem, and where attention to environmental issues is high, are more likely to adopt relevant policies. Furthermore, states with Republican majorities in either legislative chamber are less likely to adopt climate policies. Our findings have implications for the impact of salience on the policy process.

While contestation between competing policy paradigms is usually considered to hamper the policy-making process, this article develops an argument explaining how paradigmatic contestation can also help policymakers obtain their preferred policies. Based on a typology of three paradigm situations – paradigm dominance, paradigmatic contestation and paradigm mixes – this article introduces three different types of strategies (paradigm stretching, banking on inconsistencies and commensurability framing) and explains why more strategies become available when a policy field moves from a situation of paradigmatic dominance to one of contestation and paradigm mixes. An analysis of the introduction and development of direct income payments in the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, subsequently illustrates how a shift in paradigm situation affected the European Commission’s discursive strategies and shaped the development of direct payments through consecutive reforms. Reflecting on sectoral and institutional variations, the article also discusses the applicability of these findings to other institutional settings and policy fields.

We seek to understand the incentives facing Congress members to hold executive agencies accountable. Specifically, we explore whether Congress members are rewarded for taking politically costly oversight actions. We evaluate the effect of oversight activities on citizens’ evaluations of Congress members, taking into account the member’s partisanship, the citizen’s partisanship and agency ideology. Using a survey experiment, we find evidence that citizens’ evaluations of members are affected by the members’ oversight activity, with both copartisan and cross-party members rewarded for oversight efforts. Politically costly actions against ally agencies, however, do not appear to be rewarded to a greater extent by copartisans. These results provide insight into the way in which citizens interpret oversight activities by Congress members, suggesting that while good governance actions hold value for citizens, costly oversight actions aimed at ally agencies are not rewarded by copartisan citizens more than politically expedient oversight actions.

We maintain that political institutions’ policy objectives are best met under conditions when they are unified, and also when their administrative leadership is effective. We apply this argument to the understanding of how unified Democratic and Republican governments in the American states have influenced the incomes of affluent citizens. We find that affluent income gains occur under unified Republican state governments when compensation to executive agency heads is sufficiently high. These income gains are notable relative to both divided and unified partisan control of state governments. The evidence highlights the asymmetric role that bureaucratic leadership plays in attaining policy outcomes consistent with political institutions’ policy preferences, while underscoring the limits of electoral institutions to shape policy outcomes of their own accord. Efforts to lower the capacity of the administrative leadership constrain unified political institutions from converting their policy objectives into policy outcomes.

This article studies local processes of policy feedback by analysing citizens’ fairness perceptions of public childcare fees in a German town. Employing an experimental vignette study, we uncover complex feedback effects: first, citizens in the study regard a fee level as fair that is close to the actual fee level in the city, suggesting self-reinforcing feedback effects. Second, citizens strongly support a fee structure in which fees vary according to parental income. As this preferred fee structure differs from the local fee structure in the town itself, we interpret the citizens’ preference as evidence for self-undermining policy feedback. Finally, the actual characteristics of the respondents matter less than the fictitious characteristics of the parents in the vignettes, which points to the importance of interpretive rather than resource-based feedback effects. In concluding, we highlight the relevance of these findings for broader debates about policy feedback.

Does party government moderate the responsiveness of public policy to public opinion? Analysing a new dataset, we examine whether the ability of governments to respond to the public on 306 specific policy issues in Denmark, Germany and the UK is affected by the extent of coalition conflict and by the fit of the considered policy changes with the government preferences. We find a systematic but relatively weak positive impact of public support on the likelihood and speed of policy change. Contrary to expectations, a higher number of coalition partners are not associated with fewer policy changes nor with weaker responsiveness to public opinion. We also find no evidence that responsiveness to public opinion is necessarily weaker for policy changes that go against the preferences of the government. Rather, it appears that public and government support for policy change are substitute resources.