Suchergebnisse

Junior ministers are very common in coalition governments. Existing research argues that parties assign junior ministers to satisfy the office goals of coalition partners or as a mechanism to manage delegation costs. This article aims to reassess this argument. Using interviews, personal calendars, coalition agreements and an original data set on junior ministers in Israel, it finds that junior ministers are engaged in policymaking either on general issues under the ministry's jurisdiction or issues that are salient to their party. Although rival junior ministers have the capacity and the incentive to monitor the minister, they do so only on the margins, either because they do not need to, or because they focus on safeguarding their policymaking autonomy. Finally, all junior ministers assist the minister and represent the ministry.

To make a comprehensive policy change, actors often turn to the gradual path where they introduce small-scale changes hoping that their accumulation will meet their goal over time. Nonetheless, they often stop the transformative process before meeting their original goal. This paper argues that this can be explained by policy learning. When actors learn from reliable information that the accumulation of the small-scale changes does not meet their expectations, they stop the transformative process. At the same time, the policy is not illuminated due to feedback effects and beliefs by the majority of actors that the small-scale changes are beneficial.

AbstractDuring a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabinet ministers in Israel during the first wave of the COVID19 crisis, this paper finds that ministers' policy involvement during a crisis is relatively low. Most ministers are little involved in issues outside their jurisdiction. Ministers less central to the crisis management are also little involved in issues under their jurisdiction. Ministers central to the crisis management are highly involved in introducing decisions on issues under their jurisdiction, but not necessarily in other aspects of policy making. These findings have implications for issues of accountability and trust.

AbstractCabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies have significant agenda‐setting power. However, not all ministers use it equally. This paper examines what affects the ministers' use of their agenda‐setting power. It explores this question based on the case of Israel, using three measures of agenda change and in‐depth interviews with former ministers. The paper finds that limited agenda capacity constrains the ministers' agenda‐setting power. However, the ministers themselves do not see this as a significant constraint and point at motivation instead. Ministers holding a portfolio that is salient to their party are not likely to change the agenda more. Ministers from small parties change the agenda less, and so do ministers in ministries where a significant proportion of services are provided by street level bureaucrats. Ministers in ministries that are seen as more salient change the agenda more. These findings are consequential for understanding policy responsiveness and proportionality in policy response.

AbstractIn the agenda-setting process, prior to the decision-making process, there is a predecisional process whereby some issues are systematically blocked by powerful actors from being placed on the formal agenda. These issues are termed "nondecisions". This article argues that the predecisional process exists not only at the issue level but also at the level of problem definitions. Because of the empirical challenge of studying problem definitions that are not on the formal agenda, the article suggests examining problem definitions that were on the formal agenda and then disappeared from it. Such problem definitions can be termed nondecisions when their disappearance is due to latent power mechanisms, such as anticipated reactions or information control. The article tests these arguments using two American policy cases: prescription drug prices and child care. In so doing, it sheds light on the predecisional process and expands our understanding of the politics of problem definitions.

Policy drift occurs when actors block attempts to adjust policies to changing realities, thereby changing policy impact. We know much about the conditions for policy drifting, but lack theorization of the conditions for reversing the drift by updating the policy. This article examines when and how actors favouring drift decide to reverse it. These actors have different characteristics from those favouring policy update. Based on the case of prescription drug coverage in the US, the article argues that actors promote drift reversal when maintaining the current drift becomes politically risky. Even then, they will act only when able to limit the scope of the reversal. In addition, in order to implement the policy update, actors will use blame avoidance strategies to gain the support of their constituency and soften opposition.

One of the most important phases of case‐oriented research is identifying the relevant population of cases. The best practice scheme suggests first identifying the positive and then the negative cases, based on the assumption that the population is small and known. This scheme is inapplicable when the population is unknown, as is the case with many public administration and public policy outcomes, which are often less visible. However, most research either ignores this difficulty or recommends a single case study. This article suggests that when the population is unknown scholars can apply the possibility principle to identify the relevant population of cases. In order to do so, a large dataset is required. In policy studies, the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) can serve this aim. This article highlights CAP's applicability for case selection based on the possibility principle in two less visible policy outcomes: conversion and drift. In that, it not only addresses an overlooked challenge but also promotes both CAP as a useful tool for qualitative researchers and the expansion of comparative work on conversion and drift.

Gradual transformative policy change has attracted increasing attention in recent times. However, existing explanations for the evolvement of the various modes of such change do not account for the direction and content of change and also have difficulty with more complex policy change processes in which several modes are employed. Ideational analysis can fill this gap, albeit most ideational research does not address gradual policy and ideational changes. Based on a process tracing of two cases from Israeli immigration policy, this article argues that a low level of discretion and a strong status quo bias are conditions that enable institutional conversion through layering. Ideational change in policy solution and problem definition ideas, and the interaction between the two, can explain this pattern and its direction. The article not only expands our knowledge of gradual transformative change, but also moves ideational research a step beyond punctuated equilibrium.

In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighing the risk of a drift against the costs of imposing co-responsibility. These findings demonstrate an understudied mechanism through which coalition governments narrow ministerial autonomy and informational advantage once policies reach the cabinet. In doing so, this research contributes to a better understanding of policymaking in coalition governments.

Members of parliament routinely submit private bills. Yet, a minority of these bills are enacted. Existing research suggests that, because of the low enaction rates of private members' bills, policymaking motivation is not the primary purpose of members of parliament in submitting these bills. We question this assumption and argue that existing research examines the policy effect of Private Member Bills (PMB) too narrowly. Taking a policy process perspective, we propose, first, that a more accurate assessment of the success rate of private members' bills should look only at the bills entering the legislative process. Second, we propose that the policy effect of private members' bills should not be limited to the end result of enactment, but rather to examine their effect on the agenda-setting stage. We demonstrate these propositions using the case of private members' bills in Israel, a country that has one of the highest rates of PMBs and has institutionalized the process of evaluating them. The study provides a better understanding of private members' bills in parliamentary democracies.

This article introduces a new dataset to study Israeli politics. Taking an agenda-setting approach, the dataset includes longitudinal series of political outputs—legislative, executive, judicial, and public opinion—as a measure of policy attention in Israel from 1981 to 2019. Each item in each series is hand-coded using the coding scheme of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), providing a unified longitudinal overview of the Israeli political agenda. The dataset enables scholars interested in Israeli policy and politics, as well researchers from communication, economy, and law to study agenda dynamics within specific venues, between venues over time, and across countries. It also enables comparative studies that situate Israel among other countries and provides empirical evidence to assess whether, in what, and to what extent Israel is exceptional.

How do institutions transform? To answer that question, this article introduces a dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes. Instead of looking at each mode of gradual change—like layering or drift—as a stand‐alone process, we examine how the application of one mode of change affects the opportunities of change agents to induce additional modes of gradual transformation. We first point to the fact that any single mode of change produces a real but limited transformation. Nevertheless, since the application of a gradual mode of change alters the institutional context, it opens new change opportunities by affecting the support in the targeted institution and/or its internal coherence. Consequently, change agents who aspire to comprehensive transformation will be able to use these new opportunities to implement additional modes of gradual transformation. Two case studies of gradual social policy transformations in Israel exemplify these theoretical assertions.

Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneurs often shift their activities to a more favourable venue. In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a significant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs' role in the policy process by examining the strategies they use in the incremental path. Specifically, it focuses on one gradual change strategy, conversion – redirection of existing institutions to new purposes. Based on the case of policy entrepreneurs in the Holy Basin of Jerusalem, the findings indicate that when the entrepreneurs shift the venue to the bureaucracy they can establish cooperative relations with the government that will provide them with the needed capacities to exploit the gaps in the existing rules and redirect them to serve their aim.