The GOVERNANCE blog

Robert H. Cox

Why do some ideas succeed, and even acquire paradigmatic status?  In the current issue of Governance, Robert H. Cox and Daniel Beland argue that a key consideration is the attractiveness of an idea — a quality they call its valence.  Multiple factors heighten valence, including the newness of a concept and its level of abstraction.  Cox and Beland show how valence has influenced the spread of the concept of sustainability.  “By examining the transformation of sustainability from a limited policy domain to paradigmatic status in several policy areas,” they argue, “we can identify the factors that have made the idea attractive.”  Read the article.

Sheri Berman

What have we learned about the role of ideas in political life since Peter Hall’s influential article on policy paradigms appeared twenty years ago?  In the current issue of Governance, Sheri Berman examines the strengths and weaknesses of current scholarship on the role of ideas.  “The way forward,” Berman says, involves work in three important areas: developing clearer definitions of ideational variables, a better understanding of the processes by which ideas become institutionalized so that they have durable influence, and more careful analysis of how ideas shape actors’ motivations.  Read the article.

The current issue of Governance contains a set of articles that mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Peter Hall‘s classic article, “Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State.”  The articles were prepared for a symposium held at Suffolk University in Boston in December 2011.

Frank Baumgartner

In his contribution, Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examines the commonalities and differences between Hall’s approach and his own work with Bryan Jones on policy change.  Baumgartner questions Hall’s view that there are three different types of policy change, of increasing severity.  “It may be possible,” he argues, “to conceive of a single process that can explain the full range of types of change.”  Baumgartner illustrates this argument by examining changes in the federal budget over the last sixty years.  Read the article.

Paulette Kurzer

In 2002, ten percent of the Dutch labor force was enrolled in the country’s disability insurance scheme.  In the current issue of Governance, Paulette Kurzer of the University of Arizona examines how the politics of ideas shaped the trajectory of disability reform.  “Ideas played a strategic role,” Kurzer says.  Center-left politicians seized on the concept of labor market activation as a device for thwarting neoliberal restructuring of the disability program.  The concept of activation also resonated with voters — but for very different reasons.  Voters were drawn to the idea as a way of barring ethnic minorities from taking advantage of the program.  Read the article.

Mitchel Orenstein

From 1981 to 2004, more than thirty countries modified their government-run pension systems to include individual, private savings accounts.  But pension privatization stopped abruptly in 2005.  What happened?  In the current issue of Governance, Mitchell Orenstein of Northeastern University argues that ideational as well as fiscal factors caused a temporary halt to the privatization trend.  “The tables turned in 2005,” Orenstein says, “with the rise of anti-privatization critiques within the World Bank and the high-profile rejection of pension privatization in the United States.”  Read the article.

In a recent article in Governance, Paulette Kurzer examined the politics of disability reform in the Netherlands.  Last week, Jan-Maarten van Sonsbeek and Raymond Gradus provided a comment on the Governance blog about Kurzer’s argument.  Here, Kurzer replies.

Paulette Kurzer

Dr. Jan-Maarten van Sonsbeek and Professor Raymond Gradus recently raised some questions about my argument presented in my Governance article, Disability reform in the Netherlands. They claim that the reason for the successful passing of the substantial reforms of the disability insurance fund is primarily due to the structure and details of the new law. The new legislation  clearly differentiated between the severely disabled and other forms of disability and built upon years of smaller tweaks and reforms. They believe that the 2006 reforms did not provoke an electoral backlash or voter resistance because of its smart design. They would argue that the reforms incorporated a logic that convinced the social partners and voters to go along with the new legislation. Read the rest of this entry »