Dismantling Public Policy? Social and environmental policy in a period of austerity
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In this public lecture, Andy Jordan offered a more comparative approach to understanding policy dismantling, by looking in greater detail at the dynamics of cutting in two different policy fields: one (social policy) which has been subjected to study before and the other (environmental policy) which has not. Andy examined what motivates politicians to dismantle, the strategies they employ to dismantle, and the effects these have on policy and politics.
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Dismantling Public Policy? Social and environmental policy in a period of austerity
- 1. Dismantling Public Policy: Social and Environmental Policy in Periods of Austerity Andrew Jordan a.jordan@uea.ac.uk ‘CONSENSUS’ project
- 2. Benson, D. and A.J. Jordan (2012) Environmental Policy. In: Cini, M. and N. Perez- Solorzano Borragan (eds.) European Union Politics (4e). Oxford University Press: Oxford., pp 325-337.
- 3. Townsend, T. et al. (2013) How national legislation can help to solve climate change. Nature Climate Change, 3, May, 430-432.
- 4. Pierson, P. (2011) The welfare state over the long run. ZeS-working paper, 2-2011, University of Bremen.
- 11. Dismantling Public Policy: Social and Environmental Policy in Periods of Austerity Andrew Jordan a.jordan@uea.ac.uk ‘CONSENSUS’ project
- 12. ‘Conventional wisdom’ • Dismantling mostly occurs in ‘hard times’ • Dismantling is dominated by ‘the politics of less’ (loss/pain imposition) • Dismantling is politically difficult (treacherous even?) • Dismantling is all about blame avoidance • Dismantling is a different kind of politics… • … Which requires different analytical approaches
- 14. The welfare state was battered but essentially “remains intact” (page 5);
- 16. Two approaches • Qualitative case studies: of known or ‘most likely’ dismantling events (six in total – 3 social vs. 3 environmental) → “hypothesis generating” • Quantitative analysis of changes in policy (25 OECD countries, 30 years, 75 policy items, social vs. env. policy) → “hypothesis testing”
- 18. Role of policy type Policy type Policy expansion Policy Dismantling Distributive Costs diffuse; benefits conc. Costs conc; benefits diffuse Regulatory Costs conc; benefits diffuse Costs diffuse; benefits conc.
- 19. Role of policy type Policy type Policy expansion Policy Dismantling Distributive Costs diffuse; benefits conc. Credit claiming Costs conc; benefits diffuse Blame avoidance Regulatory Costs conc; benefits diffuse Blame avoidance Costs diffuse; benefits conc. Credit claiming
- 20. Analytical ‘travelling’ problems • No shared terminology: retrenchment, termination, deregulation etc (dismantling) • Dependent variable problem (outputs) • Which aspect of ‘policy’ (presence, instruments, setting) • ‘Multi-dimensionality’ of change (basket of indicators)
- 21. Dimensions and Indicators Dimension Indicators (and explanation) Policy Density Policy Density Change in the number of policies over time Instrument Density Change in the number of instruments over time Policy Intensity Substantial Intensity Instrument settings: scope and stringency Formal Intensity Enforcement capacities Administrative capacities Procedural capacities
- 22. Measurement of policy expansion and dismantling Policy dimension Policy expansion Policy dismantling Policy presence New policy is added to existing ones Existing policy is abolished Policy instruments Number of instruments increases Number of instruments decreases Setting of policy instruments Tightening of regulatory levels Loosening of regulatory level
- 24. Preferences • politicians perceive that the benefits (to them) of dismantling are greater than the costs → active and revealed dismantling • the costs of the status quo (i.e. not dismantling) are perceived to be greater than the costs of dismantling → passive and hidden dismantling
- 26. Preferences • politicians perceive that the benefits (to them) of dismantling are greater than the costs → active and revealed dismantling • the costs of the status quo (i.e. not dismantling) are perceived to be greater than the costs of dismantling → passive and hidden dismantling
- 29. Reveal Hide ActivePassive SYMBOLIC: lets play for time…. ACTIVE: lets cut! DEFAULT: benign neglect (death by a thousand cuts) ARENA SHIFTING: lets blame someone else (scapegoating)
- 30. Definition of policy dismantling “a change of a direct, indirect, hidden or symbolic nature that either diminishes the number of policies in a particular area, reduces the number of policy instruments used and/or lowers their intensity. It can involve changes to these core elements of policy and/or it can be achieved by manipulating the capacities to implement and supervise them.”
- 31. Dismantling Strategies: Expected Effects Dismantling Type Effects By Default Non adjustment of substantial intensity Arena Shifting Transfer/Delegation of responsibilities Symbolic Action Announcement of a reduction in policy density or intensity; relabeling policies; commissioning reports Active Dismantling Reduction in policy density: abolition of policies/instruments; reduction in intensity
- 32. Ch no./case Policy density Instrument density Substantial intensity Formal intensity Pensions No No Yes No Air pollution No No Yes Yes Child benefits No Yes Yes Yes Social benefits No No Yes No Waste No No No No Water No No No No
- 34. Role of policy type Policy type Policy expansion Policy Dismantling Distributive Costs diffuse; benefits conc. Credit claiming Costs conc; benefits diffuse Blame avoidance Regulatory Costs conc; benefits diffuse Blame avoidance Costs diffuse; benefits conc. Credit claiming
- 35. Two approaches • Qualitative case studies: of known or ‘most likely’ dismantling events (six in total – 3 social vs. 3 environmental) → “hypothesis generating” • Quantitative analysis of changes in policy (25 OECD countries, 30 years, 75 policy items, social vs. env. policy) → “hypothesis testing”
- 38. Social policy I
- 40. Social policy II
- 43. Conclusions • Dismantling happens… and not just in ‘austere times’ • Not just social policy… • Dismantling is ‘multi-dimensional’ • Intensity seems to change more than density • Env policy – strategies are more open/revealed cf social policy • Moving beyond the social policy ‘niche’ area – broader policy theory
- 44. Seeing the wood for the trees: ‘frozen landscape’ or ‘maginot line’?
- 45. New directions • Investigating ‘deviant’ cases qualitatively? • Investigating policy sub-types • Working across other policy areas? • Polity focused categories? • Moving beyond policy outputs to policy impacts and outcomes • Post-adoption (‘innovation’) dynamics
- 46. Bauer, M., A.J. Jordan, C. Green- Pedersen and A. Héritier (eds.) (2012) Dismantling Public Policy: Preferences, Strategies and Effects. Oxford University Press: Oxford
- 47. Further reading C. Knill, S. Schmitt, K. Schulze and J. Tosun (eds.) (2013) Social and Environmental Policy Under Economic Pressure. Cambridge University Press. Bauer, M., Jordan, A.J. and C. Green-Pedersen (2013) Dismantling Public Policy: Preferences, Strategies and Effects. Journal of European Public Policy, 20, 5, (in press).
Editor's Notes
- Despite the many important advances that have been made in public policy research (see for recent contributions Häussermann 2010, Mettler 2011, Jacobs 2011), as scholars we still know far less about dismantling – its causes, its patterns and its unfolding political consequences – than we do about its opposite – policy expansion . Indeed, many textbooks on public policy have virtually nothing to say about dismantling. 'Dismantling Public Policy? Social and environmental policy in a period of austerity”
- Despite the many important advances that have been made in public policy research (see for recent contributions Häussermann 2010, Mettler 2011, Jacobs 2011), as scholars we still know far less about dismantling – its causes, its patterns and its unfolding political consequences – than we do about its opposite – policy expansion . Indeed, many textbooks on public policy have virtually nothing to say about dismantling. 'Dismantling Public Policy? Social and environmental policy in a period of austerity”
- Prospect theory + Policy feedback But without research which focuses on other policy sectors , we are not really in a position to conclude that this assertion is applicable to more or even all policy areas (and thus can be absorbed into a general account of policy dynamics), or if it is only really applicable to the field of social policy (and chiefly the welfare state).
- Section 9.2 reminds us of the challenges that had to be overcome in our pursuit of a more comparative approach, chiefly in terms of the need to develop definitions, measures and categorizations of dismantling that ‘travel’ (Peters 1998) more easily between policy fields.
- 1. the greatest effects, measured first and foremost in terms of alterations in policy outputs, were revealed in changes in policy intensity, not policy density he only clear case of change in policy density was to be found in relation to child benefits (Chapter 5) (where the reductions in policy and instrument density were characterised as a kind of policy “evaporation”). Of the six cases, this provided the closest – but by no means a perfect - approximation to “complete” policy termination, i.e. the dismantling of both policy density and intensity. 2. The clearest examples of reductions in policy intensity are to be found in the pensions (Chapter 3) and child benefits (Chapter 5) cases. The study of social benefits – and specifically the indexation of unemployment benefits (Chapter 6) - also revealed remarkable dismantling had taken place in terms of reduced policy intensity, even in a country such as Sweden where the welfare state has generally been assumed to be resilient, backed by unions and other significant policy takers. significant reductions in policy intensity were very much the exception not the rule; a finding which echoes some of the early claims made in the welfare state retrenchment literature, as well as subsequent work on the politics of loss imposition (Pal and Weaver 2003: 328). his is noteworthy because our cases extend beyond social policy to environmental policy, where in principle we might expect to find more examples of politicians dismantling to ‘claim credit’ by helping powerful actors to lower their regulatory costs. It is also noteworthy because all six cases were selected on the grounds that dismantling appeared to be taking place 3. The other aspect of policy intensity, that is formal intensity, appeared to have been mostly unchanged across all the cases. 4. Finally, not all the cases exhibited a consistent pattern of change in intensity – there were some interesting examples of little or no overall change (for example waste) and even some policy expansion (e.g. pensions in Switzerland – albeit part of a wider compensatory deal to win around opponents). 4. On balance, therefore, we can cautiously conclude that our output-focused empirical scheme proved capable of measuring policy dismantling across a mixture of policy areas and jurisdictions.
- This and the following illustrations depict the sum of policy changes per year and context (i.e. UK vs. the complete sample). The dark shaded areas refer to policy dismantling, while the light areas designate policy expansion. „ Policy change“ implies all instances of change of any direction, covering both policy density (i.e. items and instruments) and policy intensity/stringency (i.e. level and scope). It is interesting to note in this context, that we observe hardly any dismantling in the environmental policy subfields. This is not only true for the UK but also for the OECD sample in general. In contrast, dismantling in social policy is much more common, even though apparently the UK does not feature among the top-dismantlers (compare the shares of expansion and dismantling in social policy for the UK and the OECD sample).
- In the slides that Sophie sent you yesterday density and intensity are combined. I now send you two additional slides in which they are separated again for the purpose of showing that intensity changes occur more often than density changes. This holds true for both policy fields, but it is clearly more extreme in the case of social policy change. These graphs show the data broken down for changes in environmental policy for density and intensity. As the y-axis shows, the number of intensity changes are greater than density changes. This is even more drastic in the case of social policy change as illustrated by the next slide.
- These graphs show the data broken down for changes in social policy for density and intensity. Please not the different scales of the y-axis for density and intensity changes...the difference is quite remarkly in the case of child benefits in particular.