Suchergebnisse

This article compares the relative explanatory power of structuralist and interpretative approaches to the study of policy change. By assessing the fit of these approaches against the actual reform of the formulation, approval, and implementation stages of Italy's budget process in the 1990s, the article shows that structural factors (such as fiscal pressures and changes in the electoral rules) played a key role in the reform of the formulation stage but not in that of the approval and implementation stages, where the content of reform followed the managerialist paradigm endorsed by the Italian reform community. Italy in the 1990s was under considerable pressure to achieve fiscal retrenchment, and the managerialist paradigm advocated measures that were largely antithetical to those that can be deduced from the changes in institutional context. Thus, the Italian case provides an excellent opportunity to assess the relative causal impact of ideas and structure on reform. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article studies the political conflict surrounding the implementation of the European Union's Services Directive in Greece between 2010 and 2018, the period in which the country was subject to external conditionality by external institutions. Focusing on the opening of jurisdictional boundaries for four professions (tourist guides, taxi owners, lawyers and engineers) that differ in terms of power and of organisational structure, we find that power differences, including control of the professions' institutions of interest aggregation and representation, explain the liberalisation outcomes across the four professions. This article thus puts the spotlight on the role of domestic interest groups in the implementation of EU legislation and directs researchers' attention to the broader issue of bias in interest intermediation, a classic, but lately understudied, issue in the study of politics.

This article applies a processual approach to the explanation of administrative reform in Italy over fifteen years. By carrying out a comparison between better regulation and digitalization policies it shows that the oscillation in the level of implementation over time and across policies can be explained by the intensity and direction of spillover and certification mechanisms and that in turn these mechanisms are activated by design features and contextual factors at different levels of analysis. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article argues that differences in sociopolitical reputation can explain why interest groups fail or succeed in influencing policymakers and that therefore sociopolitical reputation is a useful addition to the conceptual toolbox of interest groups scholars. Focusing on pharmacies and their associations in Greece and Portugal between 2005 and 2021, this article uses the concept of sociopolitical reputation to explain why reform attempts to reduce pharmaceutical spending and increase competition in the pharmacy sector were successful in Portugal but not in Greece, even though pharmacists are a much stronger interest group in Portugal than in Greece and even though both countries were under significant exogenous pressure to introduce structural reforms in the wake of the Eurozone crisis.