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Identifying the Institutional Micro-Foundations of Gender Policy Change: A Case Study of Police Governance and Violence against Women and Girls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2021

Francesca Gains Open the ORCID record for Francesca Gains [Opens in a new window]  and
Vivien Lowndes Open the ORCID record for Vivien Lowndes [Opens in a new window]
Francesca Gains
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Vivien Lowndes
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Abstract

A case study of reform in police governance provides an opportunity to examine how the micro-foundations of institutional change impact gender policy. The literature has established an association between institutional transformation and opportunities for gender policy change. It is clear that new actors and new rules are significant, but less is known about their interaction. Elinor Ostrom's concept of “rules-in-use” captures rules and their enactment in combination. Interviews with a new cadre of directly elected police and crime commissioners in England revealed the ways in which they worked with new institutional rules to prioritize violence against women and girls. Seven sets of rules are identified, arranged along a formal-informal continuum. Most were not specifically “about gender” but, when enacted by motivated, knowledgeable and reflexive actors, they facilitated gender policy change. A focus on micro-foundations enables the identification of institutional building blocks for gender policy change, highlighting the co-constitutive relationship between actors and rules.

Keywords

Institutionsmicro-foundationsgender policy changeviolence against women and girls
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 394 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association.

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Footnotes

Thanks are due to the European Research Council for funding (Understanding Institutional Change: A Gender Perspective) and to PI, Georgina Waylen. We would also like to thank Matt Crow for research assistance and our interviewees for contributing to the research. Thanks to the journal editor and reviewers for very helpful comments.

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