Suchergebnisse

This article explores how the relative centralization of decisionmaking authority can affect a societal group's ability to achieve its interests. It examines the US semiconductor industry's efforts to persuade the Reagan administration to press Japan on its import barriers and its firms' trade practices. I find that the industry's eventual success was facilitated by an institutional change that centralized the structure of decisionmaking authority. Centralization proved more favorable to the industry's influence in this case because it reduced the number of competing state interests involved in policymaking and concentrated authority in state units that shared the industry's preferences. To account for the change in this structure I focus on the interplay between government officials and policy windows. The analysis suggests that centralization may under some conditions be more conducive than decentralized structures to societal influence, and that modest institutional changes can have significant policy implications.

Examines Thatcher government industrial policy before and after 1983; view that domestic structural conditions affected policy decision-making.

Examines industry efforts during the 1980s to persuade the administration to initiate bilateral trade talks with Japan, with the aim of obtaining a relaxation of import barriers and reform of trade practices deemed disadvantageous to US companies. 1982 High Technology Working Group and 1985 Unfair Trade Practices Petition.

Students of institutional change pay insufficient attention to the conditions under which institutional reform produces unintended procedural and policy consequences. The authors contend that the broader institutional context in which an altered institution is embedded influences the likelihood and extent of such unintended outcomes. Three aspects of this environment are particularly important. First, a reformer's access to policy instruments may allow him or her to monitor compliance and sanction noncompliance with the altered institution. Second, normative understandings can reinforce or work against specific institutional reforms. Finally, the organization of decision-making authority within the state determines the ability of state and societal actors to derail institutional change and its intended consequences. Two empirical investigations illustrate the argument: congressional attempts in the 1980s to limit executive authority over U.S. policy in Nicaragua and the institutional reforms Margaret Thatcher implemented to advance a market-oriented industrial strategy.