An interest-driven account of Embryonic Stem Cell Research would, given the considerable financial and scientific concerns, likely predict regulations to converge towards permissive policies. However, across Western Europe, national regulations of embryonic stem-cell research vary considerably, from general bans to permissive policies. There is a lack of systematic accounting for the non-convergence, and the sparse attempts at explanation are contradictory.Drawing on qualitative comparative analysis and configurational causality, we assess the interaction of a number of explanatory factors. Our empirical analysis reveals the importance of one factor in particular, path-dependence, insofar as prior policies on assisted reproduction exert a strong and systematic effect on the subsequent regulation of ESCR.

This paper investigates the development and adoption of governance modes in the field of human biotechnology. As the field of human biotechnology is relatively new, voluntary professional self-regulation constituted the initial governing mode. In the meantime, with the exception of Ireland, all Western European countries have moved towards greater state intervention. Nevertheless they have done so in contrasting ways and the resulting governance modes for assisted reproductive technology (ART) and embryonic stem-cell research vary greatly. Instead of imposing their steering capacity in a 'top-down' fashion, governments have taken pre-existing self-regulatory arrangements in the field into account and built up governance mechanisms in conjunction with private actors and pre-existing modes of private governance. Our analysis demonstrates that the form and content of the initial self-regulation explain why the self-steering capacity of the medical profession was largely or at least partially preserved through hybrid governance systems in Britain and in Germany, while in France the self-regulation was entirely replaced by governmental intervention.

Abstract:Half a century after the publication of Lindblom's seminal article "The Science of Muddling Through", we revisit the heritage of incrementalism in this special issue, analyzing its legacy in public policy and public administration. The articles discuss the extent to which recent theoretical developments have transformed the original idea, reinforced it, or possibly rendered it obsolete. In this introductory article, we provide a short overview over the core elements of incrementalism and assess how the concept is used in scholarly publications and research today. We thereby focus on incrementalism as an analytical concept rather then a prescriptive theory. We argue that even after a half a century of "muddling", we are not yet through with incrementalism. Some of the ideas that underpin the concept of incrementalism continue to drive research, often in combination with more recent theoretical approaches to the policy process. After half a century, incrementalism is still part of the policy scholar's tool kit.

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Concerned by the proliferation of idiosyncratic prescriptive case studies in the nascent subfield of policy studies, Richard Simeon, in his seminal 1976 article, asked scholars to produce more comparative policy research that aimed at explaining general events and contributing to theory building. The extent to which Simeon's vision materialized remains debated. With a view to informing this debate, we conducted a systematic content analysis of the articles published in five major generalist public policy journals from 1980 to 2015. The analysis reveals that Canadian policy scholars took a comparative turn, publishing more territorial, sector and time comparisons than in the past. We also found evidence that theoretical knowledge accumulation is more important today for Canadian authors than it was when Simeon wrote his article.