For all the day-to-day changes, the parties have actually been surprisingly faithful to their overarching ideologies. However, in no way has this stability precluded change. The main claim made in this article is that, on the contrary, in several instances it appears that the only way of keeping up ideological stability is through policy change. The kind of stability based on an ongoing adaptation and change might be the very triggering cause behind the successful opening up of a policy window. By offering a firm point of reference, ideology analysis could function as a bridge between ‘formative’ approaches – which indicate some degree of actor freedom — and ‘path dependency’ approaches – which stress deterministic structuring by institutions – and provide one of the missing links between institutional and rational choice analyses.

In the absence of partisan ownership of an issue, what factors shape public preferences for federal, state and local policy action? The Zika virus provides a unique context in which to examine this question, as it is a new threat to public health in the United States and lacks clear partisan ownership. We examine (1) which Zika policies do citizens support, (2) at which level(s) of government and (3) what factors explain citizen assignment of policy responsibility to different levels of government? Using nationally representative survey data, we find that the three most popular policy responses to Zika are travel warnings, research funding and public education, with the federal government being the preferred policy actor. In the absence of clear partisan issue ownership, we find that Republicans are significantly more likely to prefer state policy action, while partisanship has no impact on public preferences for federal or local policy action.

State-level income tax policy is a hotly debated topic in both academic and political spheres. Although economic theory and some empirical analyses suggest that larger income tax burdens affect migration decisions, there is also a good deal of empirical evidence showing that tax policy has little to no effect. This lack of consensus in the academic literature is echoed in the political world, where many states are debating whether to eliminate income taxes or reduce rates as a means of spurring economic growth. Connecticut’s adoption of an income tax policy in 1991 provides a unique opportunity to analyse the impact of a sizable income tax policy change on migration. The results suggest that Connecticut’s income tax deterred movement into the state but had no impact on exit from the state, resulting in a net loss in migration.

Policy processes are affected by how policymakers assess public support for a policy. But is public support for a given policy itself affected by characteristics of the policy process, such as cooperation or confrontation amongst policy actors? Specifically, if different branches of government hold conflicting positions on a given policy, do clashes affect public support for the policy? To address this question, we exploit an unexpected clash amongst the executive and judiciary in New Delhi, between survey waves, over exemptions for women in the context of the odd–even rule, a policy intervention to reduce air pollution from transportation. We find that public support for the contested policy was not undermined by the executive–judiciary clash. However, the clash polarised public opinion by gender, based upon the policy exemptions. Our findings shed new light on the broader question of how conflicts amongst different parts of government influence mass public policy preferences.

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.

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.

Research on bureaucratic power typically focusses on rulemaking and policy implementation, while bureaucrats’ participation in the legislative process remains underexplored. We theorise and test a specific mechanism by which bureaucrats attempt to sway legislative outcomes, which we term indirect bureaucratic lobbying. Using a novel survey of state-based health lobbyists in 25 states, we show that state Medicaid agency staff routinely request lobbying assistance from provider associations and consumer advocates. We also provide the first systematic evidence of the conditions under which indirect bureaucratic lobbying is likely to occur. Our results suggest that individual-level policy agreement interacts with institutional factors, most notably agency performance and gubernatorial power, to increase the likelihood that bureaucrats will use this strategy to attempt to influence legislative deliberations.

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.

The choice facing British government about maintaining the status quo for sterling or joining the euro is a choice between long-term policy regimes. Short-term considerations such as the relative position of business cycles or the current level of the sterling-euro exchange rate have a bearing on the adjustment costs and the timing of entry. The article therefore examines the EMU framework versus the British framework for monetary policy; the performance of economic policy in Britain and in Euroland, and especially Germany as Euroland's main precursor; the relevance to the adjustment costs of membership to the Maastricht criteria and the Chancellor of the Exchequer's five economic tests for joining the euro; and whether or not Britain can qualify for joining EMU. The analysis is broadened to include supporting policies for monetary policy, especially fiscal, labour market and other structural policies where relevant.

Governance has become one of the central concepts in political science, but what is absent is the question: Which modes of governance produce which policy output? This paper develops a classification scheme for modes of governance in all dimensions of public policy and then applies it empirically in four Austrian case studies concerning higher education and innovation. We extend the scholarly discussion on governance to the factor interests and argue that this analytical factor needs to be taken into account in future research in order to understand the modes of governance in policy processes.

Although the term ‘subsidy’ is commonly used in the context of social, industrial, and trade policy, there is no general agreement concerning its precise definition. This paper argues that current usage of the term ‘subsidy’ does not permit us to isolate a distinct policy instrument. Instead, subsidies exist when the tax system fails to accord with specified ‘norms’. Thus, the subsidy turns out to be a normative concept and is defined relative to desired ends. Explicit acceptance of the normative character of subsidies might clarify policy disputes by distinguishing between disagreements over ends, and disagreements about technical relationships.

This paper attempts to explain what influenced efficient decisions in the adoption of important technology in the steel industry. An index of efficient decisions for the adoption of the basic oxygen furnace and for continuous casting is discussed theoretically and then empirically developed for the steel industries of 28 and 27 countries respectively. Statistical tests are performed to determine the influence of government ownership of the steel industries, central planning of the economies and involvement in international competition on efficient decisions regarding technology adoption. The tests reveal that both government ownership and central planning retarded efficient decisions regarding the adoption of technology.

US exchange rate policy shifted in 1985 from unilateralist nonintervention to actively promoting dollar depreciation and multilateral cooperation. Pressures from producer interests, particularly multinational companies making manufactured goods, and from sympathetic members of Congress were the most important of multiple forces pushing the US Treasury toward dollar depreciation. Once the Treasury had chosen an activist course, a multilateral strategy had several benefits over a unilateral approach to depreciation. It could better counter the immediate threat to Administration trade policy from Congress, orchestrate depreciation, strengthen Treasury's influence within Washington and shift the burden of adjustment away from US fiscal policy, then frozen, onto other governments. When the trade account is in balance, individual policymakers have flexibility in determining exchange rate policy. But when large trade deficits arise, the domestic political pressures of trade-exposed sectors will dominate personalities and ideas.

In the context of a re-examination of the conceptual and political foundations of merit/demerit goods, this paper attempts to identify how far they might take us in understanding, explaining, and providing normative justification for, public sector intervention. If merit/demerit influences are to be discovered in actual policies they must be capable of being isolated, at least at the margin, from other policy influences, such as conventional sources of market failure, pure paternalism, and pressure group activities.

Military administrators in sub-Saharan Africa often appoint civilian political elites to cabinet positions for the following reasons: to advance effective governance, as a response to demands for transition to civilian rule, and as a political technique to civilianize the military regime. Empirical patterns of civilian cabinet appointments by the types of post-military political regimes show that the nature of civilian involvement in military administration is a valid predictor of the types of regime likely to follow military rule. Further findings confer some historical insights to the programmed and the national conference models of democratization in the region. In addition, military administrative analysis is a way to gain new insights into military transition in the region.

The dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization tends to give verdicts for the plaintiff much more often than verdicts for the defendant. Simple logic suggests that this is a puzzle: it is not immediately obvious why defendants do not settle out of court if they are likely to be found guilty. I argue that there are three alternative explanations for this puzzle: imperfect enforcement, asymmetric information, and domestic constraints. By examining three major WTO cases, I find the domestic constraints explanation the most persuasive.

An analytical perspective for grasping how welfare states relate to the ordinary life-pursuits of their population and how the latter relates to the welfare state is needed. What welfare states do is distinguished into social administration, social education, social reform, and social steering. Steering reaches furthest into people's lives. As such it is problematic both to integrative and aggregative theories of democracy; it can also include the possibility of calling forth more signals from the population than less ambitious democratic policies. A systematic overview of aggregate Swedish household data the major activities of households provides a basis for analysing how the population is affected by and affects the welfare state. The state appears as an important provider of work, housing, childcare, and leisure; the most effective signals from households to the state come forward when public provision and subsidy have created tight markets. From the household perspective, signals to government through individual action of various sorts, direct or mediated, appear crucial even in very organized Sweden.

The recent bifurcation of European studies into state-centric and new institutionalist camps has resulted in a sterile theoretical debate that says little about an empirical world where bargaining outcomes cover both member states' preferences and the institutional setting. This article is an attempt to move beyond the theoretical debate. It juxtaposes a conceptual framework for analyzing EU negotiations with an analysis of the bargaining process on the settlement of the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy. The conceptual framework will identify a set of variables that can explain the bargaining outcome: preferences of national government representatives, preferences of the European Commission, and the institutional setting.

Left-right partisan conflict has been a key driver of welfare state expansion and retrenchment over time and across countries. Yet, we know very little about how left-right differences in party appeals vary across social policy domains. Why are some issues contentious while there is broad consensus on others? This paper starts from the simple premise that partisan conflict is a function of how popular a certain policy is. Based on this assumption, it argues that the left-right gap should be (1) larger for revenue-side issues than for expenditure-side issues, (2) larger for policies targeted at groups that are viewed as less deserving and (3) larger for more redistributive programs than less redistributive ones (e.g. means-tested versus earnings-related benefits). These expectations are tested on fine-grained policy data coded from 65 Austrian party manifestos issued between 1970 and 2017 (N = 18,219). The analysis strongly supports the revenue–expenditure hypothesis and the deservingness hypothesis, but not the redistribution hypothesis.