Policy Sectors in Comparative Policy Analysis Studies

Volume Four

Iris Geva-May, B. Guy Peters, Joselyn Muhleisen, Iris Geva-May, B. Guy Peters, Joselyn Muhleisen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429806698
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Volume Four of the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis, "Policy Sectors in Comparative Policy Analysis Studies" contains chapters concerned with comparison within disciplinary policy sectors. The volume contains detailed analyses of policies within six major policy sectors, and illustrates the important differences that exist across policies healthcare, environment, education, social welfare, immigration, and science and technology.The reader will find some common aspects and dimensions – theoretical or methodological – across all policy domains, as well as differences dictated by the characteristics of the discipline or the locus in which the policy point at issue takes place. Indeed, some scholars have argued that the differences and similarities that exist across and within policy sectors can transcend the differences or similarities across political systems.

"Policy Sectors in Comparative Policy Analysis Studies" will be of great interest to scholars and learners of public policy and social sciences, as well as to practitioners considering what can be reliably contextualized, learned, facilitated or avoided through lesson-drawing.

The chapters were originally published as articles in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis which in the last two decades has pioneered the development of comparative public policy. The volume is part of a four-volume series, the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis including Theories and Methods, Institutions and Governance, Regional Comparisons, and Policy Sectors. Each volume showcases a different new chapter comparing domains of study interrelated with comparative public policy: political science, public administration, governance and policy design, authored by the JCPA authored by the JCPA co-editors Giliberto Capano, Michael Howlett, Leslie A. Pal and B. Guy Peters.

Part 1
An Introduction to the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis Book Series

Why the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis Studies?

IRIS GEVA-MAY, B. GUY PETERS AND JOSELYN MUHLEISEN

The Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis is a collection of the most representative articles in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis (JCPA) on its twentieth anniversary. The JCPA has “pioneered the domain of comparative policy analysis” studies since 1998¹ and is still the only journal explicitly devoted to promoting comparative policy studies. The articles published in the JCPA have become classics in the field of comparative policy analytic studies, and have established it as a distinctive field of study since (Thomson Reuters 2008; Radin 2013; Geva-May, Hoffman and Muhleisen 2018). The papers published over the last two decades in JCPA are explicitly comparative and could be viewed as cornerstones of comparative public policy analysis theory, methodology, policy inter-disciplinarity, and inter-regional scholarship. Contributors include founders of the field of policy analysis, comparative politics, and comparative public administration and management from which comparative policy analysis (CPA) has derived: Peter deLeon, Duncan McRae, Laurence E. Lynn, B. Guy Peters, Beryl Radin, David Weimer, Frans Van Nispen, Yukio Adachi, as well as second- and third-generation policy analysis scholars who have set high scholarship bars in advancing the field.

The term “comparative” has normatively been associated with descriptive accounts of national similarities or dissimilarities with respect to content or to features of the public policy process requiring information sharing. At the research level, it has traditionally been concerned with cross-national generalizations or explanations of differences among policies. As the founding editors of the JCPA declare in the first volume, “JCPA seeks to go beyond these confines and offer an intellectual arena for analyzing comparative explanatory frameworks and research methods, testing models across spatial structures … and comparing different instruments for achieving similar ends”.²

The collections of articles included in the volumes of this series support the aim and scope of the JCPA to establish points of reference for aspects of comparative policy analytic studies. The four volumes compile, respectively, those foundation articles which contribute to the four main aspects of CPA scholarship advanced by the JCPA: (a) Apply or develop comparative methodologies and theories; (b) Investigate valid and reliable means of performing inter-regional or inter-social units comparisons; (c) Investigate the connection among public policy, institutions, and governance factors that can explicate similarities or differences in policymaking; (d) Finally, they focus on the application or utilization of comparative public policy analysis in a variety of policy sectors such as immigration, technology, healthcare, welfare, education, economics, and many others.

Although the chapters included in each volume are classified according to a specific overarching topic, we do find overlaps between, for instance, regional comparisons and methodology or theories, or linkages to institutions as independent variables and policy sectors as dependent variables – thus transcending the single focus of the research presented in each of the volumes.

There is one more aspect that has been explicitly covered neither in the JCPA (except for its anniversary Vol 20:1) nor as a separate volume in the present series: the linkages among comparative public policy and the more established fields of comparative politics (political science) and public administration, as well as the newly emerging (or diverging) domains such as governance – from public administration and policy design – from public policy. To open a window to further comparisons among inter-related public domains we introduce a new chapter in Part II of each volume. Authored by the JCPA co-editors, the four chapters embrace the notion that the established political science and comparative politics, as well as public administration and comparative public administration, have much to offer to policy studies and to the developing field of CPA studies. It is also noteworthy that the comparative policy analytic studies domain is seen as a source of lesson drawing for the increasing interest in policy design and in governance. The cross-fertilization between these domains can range anywhere between theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical. Identifying points of similarity or difference in enhancing lesson drawing, adaptation, transfer and borrowing, or missed opportunity thereof.

These fundamentals common to all domains of study are addressed by Guy Peters and Geva-May who note down the prospective gift of (comparative) political science to CPA and reciprocal missed opportunities in Volume One; Capano contributes a new chapter on governance, regimes, and comparative public policy in Volume Two; Leslie Pal writes about comparative public administration and comparative public policy in Volume Three; while Howlett addresses the newly emerging branch of policy design and what can be derived from comparative public policy in Volume Four.

In today’s politics and policymaking, the reality of global policy convergence, economic competition, and political fads, the cross-national sources of information have proliferated to the extent that any policy analyst, public policy scholar, or policy decision-maker in any given country is bound to be aware of developments that happen in a different “social unit” as Ragin and Zaret (1983) label units of social analysis. Comparisons between social units may be nations or institutions, or points of reference such as policy goals, actor interference, market failures, or intervention in public policy issues of concern. The main reason is lesson drawing in order to maximize utility of policy solutions, avoid failure, or utilize information to seek advantage. Comparative cross-national policy analysis can extend insights, perspectives, or explanations that otherwise would be difficult or impossible to obtain. Lesson drawing (Rose 1991; Geva-May 2004), transfer, borrowing, adoption or adaptations, or sheer inspiration (DeLeon 1998; Geva-May 2002a) increases effectiveness and efficiency, and avoids fallacies. Notwithstanding this stipulation, there is a word of warning: CPA done badly has an immediate effect on the public, and can be financially wasteful or dangerous to the social units and populum immediately involved. Furthermore, it can be detrimental to the credibility of policymaking, as well as to policy analysis as a practical and scholarly domain.

One more contention is that in the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis Studies the terms policy analysis, policy studies, and policy analytic studies are often used by authors interchangeably for a number of reasons: Foremost, because these domains are often similar in their possible points of linkage to the comparative aspects that they cover. Additionally, in today’s third generation of policy analysis studies, the borderlines between policy studies, policy design, and policy analysis have frequently blurred and the terminology used has often been transposable. The terms used contain a wider perception of public policy within which domains and sub-domains complement one another despite their very distinct roles. Except for those actually studying or working in these sub-fields, the scholarly work refers to them frequently interchangeably.

We selected the articles in the series not only by thematic relevance and excellence, but also based on how they serve the aim and scope of the JCPA (Geva-May and Lynn 1998) which set clear intellectual avenues towards the development of the field beyond the mere prevalent perception of “comparative” as the comparison of two objects – whether institutions or regions. Proven valid enough to have served as scholarly cornerstones in the development of comparative policy studies for two decades, each respective JCPA aim drives the focus of each respective volume in the series. Volume One presents selections focused on comparative theory and methodology development, and comparative theory testing: two central aims of the JCPA. Volume Two addresses institutions and questions about modes and types of governance which speaks about the aim of examining the inter-relations between institutions and policy analysis either as dependent or independent variables. Volume Three builds on comparative empirical research, as well as lesson drawing and extrapolation, and evaluates comparative research methods through articles on regional policy differences or similarities. Volume Four touches on almost all the aims of JCPA through studies of specific policy sectors – healthcare, immigration, education, economics, welfare, technology, etc., – particularly allowing for lesson drawing, extrapolation, and possible avoidance of failures within sectors.

Volume One: Theory and Methodology

CPA depends upon the various theoretical and methodological approaches to public policy. The same theoretical perspectives such as the advocacy-coalition framework, multiple-streams models, and agenda-setting are important for understanding national and international policymaking and public policy comparatively. These are applied through lesson drawing and policy transfer, for instance, among others, by Pal (2014), and Wolf and Baehler (2018).

Of particular interest are the linkages of policy theories with various academic disciplines, including economics, political science, sociology, and law, all of which bring their own theoretical perspectives to bear on public policy. Each of the articles included in the first volume demonstrates the need to make difficult theoretical and methodological choices in the study of CPA.

Perhaps the most important aspect of these articles is that the researcher had to make a conscious choice about theory and method, and had to justify those choices. The articles also indicate how they frame policy problems and how they overcome methodological challenges in CPA (Ira Sherkansky 1998; Hoppe 2002; Green-Pedersen 2004; Peters 2005; Saurugger 2005; Stiller and van Kersbergen 2008; Capano 2009; Howlett and Cashore 2009; Greer et al. 2015; among others). In doing so, many address another aim of the JCPA: the evaluation of comparative research methods. One way to both evaluate the aptness of research methods and to test theory is to conduct empirical studies. For example, Green-Pedersen contends with the dependent variable problem in the context of social welfare research (Green-Pedersen 2004).

Volume Two: Comparative Policy Analysis and Institutions

“Evidence-based policymaking” is more difficult than sometimes assumed, depending, as it does, on understanding both the dynamics of public policy and the institutional contexts. Despite this difficulty, there has been a surge of interest in policy designed on the basis of “scientifically” demonstrated effectiveness and the ability to identify those successful policies within various structures.

Drawing on the larger institutionalism and governance literatures, many selections in the second volume are concerned with distinct forms of governance and types of political institutions. Governance and institutions are treated both as independent and dependent variables (Weimer and Vining 1998; Ng 2007; Radaelli 2008). The latter make an important distinction between first-order and second-order instruments. The first are those known to policy analysts, the second less transparent depend on features of institutions that “facilitate or constrain” the adoption of first-order policies. The authors contend that in order to make meaningful comparisons, it is important to analyze the usefulness of policy analysis against the analysis of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword to the Book Series: The Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis
• Part 1 An Introduction to the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis Book Series
• Part 2 Lesson Drawing Relationships: Comparing Associated Disciplines and Comparative Policy Analysis
• Part 3 The Classics: Policy Sectors in Comparative Policy Analysis Studies
• Index