Suchergebnisse

Through accounts from innovative research projects by world-leading political scientists, this volume offers a unique perspective on research methodology. It discusses the practical and intellectual dilemmas researchers face throughout the research process in a wide range of fields from implicit attitude testing to media analysis and interviews. Jessica Bain, University of Leicester, UK Michael Bruter, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Nathalia Chaban, University of Canterbury, Christchuch, New Zealand Robert Erikson, Columbia University, USA Mark Franklin, European University Institute Julie Gervais, University Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne, France Sarah Harrison, LSE, USA Will Jennings, University of Southampton, UK Martin Lodge, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Milton Lodge, SUNY at Stony Brook, USA Maya Renko, European University Institute Aaron Strauss, Princeton University, USA Brad Verhulst, Virgina Commonwealth University, USA Ben Wellings, Australian National University ?

"What are the common challenges that researchers face when designing and performing research? What are the choices and trade-offs that social scientists encounter when seeking to implement a fascinating idea? This volume brings together world-leading scholars from a range of political research methodologies and sub-areas in order to show how they have dealt with these challenges during the research process. Looking at every stage of the research process, Political Science Research Methods in Action showcases common problems that affect diverse research approaches and shows how they were encountered and resolved. Aiming to help researchers - whether new or experienced - to take control of their research, this volume brings the research process to life and shows how actual research is 'done' within the frameworks of core methodological principles that guide research design"--

This major new text assesses the main theoretical approaches to regulation and applies them to understanding real-world regulatory problems, encouraging students and practitioners in public management to think critically and creatively about the different tools available to them.

What are the key trends and challenges facing contemporary executive politics? How do systems of executive politics respond to different types of crisis? How can we define the contemporary setting of executive politics? Executive Politics in Times of Crisis explores these questions. It brings together leading international scholars and showcases key conceptual and substantive arguments, thereby contributing to our understanding of key debates involving the 'executive factor' in political life. The contributors to the volume consider key concepts and developments which challenge existing stereotypes about the way in which the executive and the execution of policies operate. This includes debates about politicization, internationalization, managerialism, policy instruments and blame with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe and the lesser developed world. The contributors consider how executive politics has responded to and is challenged by contemporary crises, setting the international agenda for the study of executive politics.

The traditional understandings that structure the relationships between public servants and the wider political system are said to have undergone considerable change. But what are these formalized and implicit understandings? What are the key dimensions of such bargains? In what conditions do bargains rise and fall? And has there been a universal and uniform change in these bargains?The Politics of Public Service Bargains develops a distinct perspective to answer these questions. It develops a unique analytical perspective to account for diverse bargains within systems of executive government

Uncertainties run deep during a crisis. Yet, leaders will have to make critical decisions in the absence of information they would like to have. How do political leaders cope with this challenge? One way to deal with crisis-induced uncertainty is to base all decisions on a core principle or value. This is what we call a principled approach. The pragmatist approach offers an alternative: an experimental, trial-and-error strategy based on quick feedback. In this paper, we consider both approaches in light of the COVID-19 experience in four European countries. We conclude that the pragmatic approach may be superior, in theory, but is hard to effectuate in practice. We discuss implications for the practice of strategic crisis management.

In a crisis, the temptation for political leaders to 'go big and do it fast' can be overwhelming. Societal pressure to act decisively can lead to crisis measures that in hindsight may well be considered overwrought and impulsive. The so-called pragmatist approach to crisis management offers an attractive alternative to the 'big decision' approach that was also popular during the COVID-19 crisis. At least in theory, this alternative offers solutions for the often-observed shortcomings of large-scale crisis responses. In this paper, we consider the possibilities and limitations of the Pragmatist approach, using illustrations from the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

Little is known about how processes of 'expert' control interact with or move towards collaborative models of regulation. This paper focuses on a critical example of such an apparent shift: customer engagement in price-setting in water regulation in Scotland and England/Wales. By drawing on original interview and documentary analysis, the paper demonstrates a neglected rationale for and usage of 'collaborative regulation': regulators introduced customer engagement to incentivise regulated firms into further efficiencies. This points towards an increasing hybridisation of the contemporary regulatory state, in which collaborative regulatory processes are used to advance 'econocratic' objectives of expert regulators.

The Horizon 2020 TransCrisis project has studied the EU's capacities to deal with transboundary crises and how these capacities are related to Member State capacities and their governance arrangements.1 We found that the European Union (EU) has many capacities of different types (plans, alert systems, regulations, ad hoc systems) that can be employed to organise a response against transboundary crises. But these capacities are scattered across institutions and agencies, their use is not always clearly defined, and their performance is uneven at best. We argue that these capacities and their governance arrangements should be strengthened, and urgently so. We also offer a set of recommendations to decision-makers at both the EU and the member-state level to enhance these capacities. This document should be read as an addendum to our White Paper, which laid the groundwork for this prescriptive effort.2 Both the White Paper and these recommendations for the world of practice are motivated by one overriding concern: the prospect of more, and more serious, crises that threaten the wellbeing of European citizens and undermine the legitimacy of its institutions. In light of these developments, we offer practical suggestions for enhancing particular processes, mechanisms and organisations to deal with a variety of transboundary threats. Our suggestions come, by necessity, in the form of a menu: certain courses fit certain appetites. It is for the practitioner to assess what the best match between threat and prescription is.

TransCrisis: a research agenda for developing understanding of transboundary crisis management in Europe The TransCrisis project focused on transboundary crisis management capacities in the EU and its member states, focusing on how EU-level institutions, European political leaders and national governments develop and utilise these capacities in a diversity of domains. At the EU level, TransCrisis diagnosed a growing presence of decision-making processes and institutional crisis management procedures at a time of growing political debate about the legitimacy of the European Union. Building on TransCrisis The TransCrisis consortium is unique in that it brought together scholars from the fields of political science, public administration and international relations with diverse interests in crisis management, regulation and comparative politics. This allowed TransCrisis to focus on different aspects of transboundary crisis management in the EU and to draw synergies across them. In particular, TransCrisis focused on transboundary crises in three areas that had previously not been engaged with in an integrated fashion: - The traditional domains of civil protection, public health and security; - The domains broadly defined by the Single Market, namely issues arising in particular from growing market integration and interdependence; - The importance of constitutional politics in particular member states. TransCrisis highlights the importance of taking a holistic view of transboundary crisis management that incorporates both immediate 'fire-fighting' and long-term crisis management approaches that seek to build resilience. Above all, the value of TransCrisis research has been to integrate research traditionally associated with civil protection and 'societal security' domains with domains that are also characterised by transboundary crises, namely constitutional politics and integrated European markets. The tight connectedness between these three areas of transboundary crises has been a prominent feature emerging from ...