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A key insight of contemporary studies of public policy is that solving complex policy problems usually requires effective policy mixes, that is, bundles or portfolios of different policy instruments (Howlett and del Rio, 2015) that share a common target or goal (Kern and Howlett, 2009) and that are, ideally, complementary or synergetic (Howlett and Rayner, 2018). The interest in such policy mixes is flourishing (Capano and Howlett, 2020), also in new academic communities such as sustainability transition or environmental governance studies (Kern et al., 2019; Morrison et al., 2020) where it is acknowledged that policy mixes are needed in order to address complex policy challenges related to a combination of market and system failures (Schmidt and Sewerin, 2019). There is, however, a growing disconnect in the literature between the theoretical-conceptual underpinning of policy mix studies and limited success in the development of common empirical approaches to study real-world policy mixes systematically. This disconnect is not entirely surprising given the degree of abstraction of theoretical-conceptual policy mix work and the fundamental challenge in policy analysis to measure the dependent variable – that is, policy or policy change – in a comparable and meaningful way (Howlett and Cashore, 2009; Schaffrin et al., 2015). For applied research into policy mixes, this tension creates practical challenges, namely, how to apply abstract conceptualizations of policy mix characteristics in a way that avoids conceptual stretching and how to assess the constituent parts of a policy mix systematically. Overcoming these challenges is necessary in order to produce generalizable empirical findings that have a relevance beyond a case-specific context. Therefore, this chapter argues for a bottom-up approach for studying policy mixes, which means applying a unified and comparable understanding and assessment of design characteristics of the constituent parts of policy mixes, namely, individual policies. This chapter briefly reviews the state-of-the-art of the burgeoning theoretical and conceptual literature on policy mixes and highlights the persistent empirical challenges researchers and practitioners face when aiming to analyse and understand complex real-world policy mixes.

Although the comparative study of environmental politics and policy dates back well into the 1970s, it has never featured prominently within comparative politics generally. Against a background of mounting environmental pressures, most notably climate change, this low profile seems puzzling. As Steinberg and VanDeveer (2012) point out, building bridges between comparative environmental politics and the broader field of comparative politics is an important task for current research. This dissertation seeks to contribute to this linkage by revisiting the issue of cross-national environmental performance, focusing on climate performance. By addressing both the outcome and the output dimension of national climate performance, this thesis engages with two central issues of comparative politics: (i) the effect of political institutions on performance and (ii) policy change. Thus, it also contributes to broader research into the capacity of political systems to deal with complex longterm political problems. This dissertation attempts to make six major conceptual, methodological, and analytical contributions: 1) the thesis presents a conceptualization of general environmental performance based on the "planetary boundaries" approach; 2) it provides a theoretical framework for policy output and develops a measurement for its assessment; 3) it argues that actor constellations of specific environmental problems need to be considered to strengthen theoretical arguments about the effects of political institutions; 4) it argues that entire policy portfolios rather than (a set of) individual policy instruments need to be considered for assessing policy change; 5) it analyses the effect of political institutions on climate performance; 6) and it analyses policy change in climate mitigation and the role of policy innovations in altering policy portfolios.

Complex societal or environmental problems require fast and substantial socio-technical transitions. For instance, in the case of climate change, these transitions need to take place in the energy, transport and several industry sectors. To induce and accelerate such transitions, numerous policy interventions are required, which interact with each other in policy mixes. While several conceptual studies on policy mixes have been published recently, there is very little empirical research apart from single case or small-n studies. It has been prominently argued that the debate about policy mixes has reached an impasse partly due to this lack of empirical work. This paper addresses this gap by providing a first analysis of the temporal dynamics of complex policy mixes. To do so, we develop a conceptualization and measurement of policy mix balance across instrument types as well as policy mix design features (in the form of intensity as a general and technology specificity as a technology-focused design feature). This allows us to answer the question how temporal dynamics of policy mixes differ between countries regarding their balance and design features. Our measurement approach is developed bottom-up, i.e., policies are assessed individually and then aggregated systematically at the policy mix level. This enables overcoming the 'dependent variable problem in the study of policy change', i.e., the problem of measuring policy output. More specifically, we develop a comparative dataset of 522 renewable energy policies in nine OECD countries. Our analysis shows that countries' policy mix dynamics vary strongly regarding some variables (e.g., technology specificity) but less regarding others (e.g., balance). As a validity check, we also test the effects of these mix dynamics on policy outcome in the form of renewable energy technology diffusion. We reflect our findings in light of the theoretical debates around policy mixes and policy design and discuss how our results provoke an agenda for the new generation of research on policy mixes. We specifically discuss avenues for future research with a particular focus on the 'politics of policy mixes'. ; ISSN:0048-7333 ; ISSN:1873-7625

To tackle the manifold crises of our times, most notably the environmental crises we face, ambitious policy change is urgently needed to achieve the necessary radical transformation of our industrialised societies. Yet, while there is increasing demand for public policy scholarship to provide guidance on how policy should be designed to achieve such change, existing scholarship struggles to provide 'forward-looking' recommendations. Within this context, our article takes a step back to reconsider the underlying logics of policy change. We argue that focusing on policy, its effect and the subsequent politics it triggers is best achieved by combining insights from the policy design, policy mix and policy feedback literatures. This combination allows us to re-evaluate which potential pathways towards policy change exist.
The main contribution of our article is its proposition of two distinct pathways towards policy change, building on a systematic understanding of policy design elements. These pathways place greater emphasis on policy change happening (1) 'bottom-up' through initial low-level design changes rather than 'top-down' through high-level ideational change, as argued in earlier scholarship, (2) through the interplay of several policies in a complex mix. In this way, these pathways provide a useful framework for systematically analysing how policy should be designed to achieve ambitious policy change and thus enable transformative societal change.

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory‐building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy‐induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed‐methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal‐typical trajectories of policy change. ; ISSN:0190-292X ; ISSN:1541-0072

Comparative policy studies face a number of methodological challenges where conceptualization of the object of comparison—policy output—is the most fundamental. On the basis of three common approaches of the study of policy output, we reconsider this widely applied concept and propose a refined measure as a function of both density (number of policy instruments) and intensity (content of policy instruments). We theoretically derive six policy‐intensity measures (objectives, scope, integration, budget, implementation, and monitoring), which are used for weighting national policy instruments on an Index of Climate Policy Activity. The article presents an empirical application of this measurement approach. Focusing on national climate policy instruments in the energy production sector in Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we investigate changes in the countries' policy portfolios from 1998 to 2010. The article demonstrates that our Index of Climate Policy Activity provides a reliable and valid measurement for national policy output that can be applied for comparative analyses of policy output.

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory‐building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy‐induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed‐methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal‐typical trajectories of policy change.