This article explains the relaunch of the European Union's (EU) economic reform agenda in 2010. After repeated delays during 2009, the European Commission scaled back its initial plan for a revived social dimension and instead proposed a strengthened governance architecture of economic surveillance. Using the multiple streams framework we argue that the new Europe 2020 strategy which emerged is a product of two overlapping policy windows which opened suddenly in the problem stream (the Greek sovereign debt crisis) and politics stream (shifting institutional dynamics). This created a window of opportunity for skilful policy entrepreneurs to 'couple' the three streams by reframing the existing Lisbon Strategy as the EU's exit strategy from the crisis. The article contributes to understanding policy change under conditions of ambiguity by demonstrating the causal significance of key temporal and ideational dynamics: the timing of policy windows; access to information signals; and the role of policy entrepreneurs.

Online learning continues to grow at post-secondary institutions across the United States, but many question its efficacy, especially for students most at-risk for failure. This paper engages that issue. It examines recent research on the success of community college students who take online classes and explores similar comparisons using 656,258 student records collected through the Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework. In particular, the research investigated retention rates for students in three delivery mode groups -students taking only onground courses, students taking only online courses, and students taking some courses onground and some courses online at five primarily onground community colleges, five primarily onground four-year universities, and four primarily online institutions.Results revealed that taking some online courses did not result in lower retention rates for students enrolled in primarily onground community colleges participating in the PAR Framework. Moreover, although retention rates were lower for such students taking only online courses than for similar students taking only onground or blending their courses, much of the difference could be explained by extraneous factors. Essentially no differences in retention between delivery mode groups were found for students enrolled in primarily onground four-year universities participating in the PAR Framework, while at participating primarily online institutions, students blending their courses had slightly better odds of being retained than students taking exclusively onground or exclusively online courses. No differences between the latter groups were found at these institutions.Patterns of retention were similar regardless of gender across institutional categories, and were mostly similar regardless of Pell grant status with the exception of fully online students at traditional community colleges. Age, however, did differentially affect delivery mode effects. Older students taking only online courses were retained at higher rates than younger students taking only online courses at both primarily onground community colleges and primarily online institutions. The results suggest that, despite media reports to the contrary, taking online courses is not necessarily harmful to students' chances of being retained, and may provide course-taking opportunities that otherwise might not be available, especially for nontraditional students.

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This article seeks to provide a better understanding of why business power varies over time and between firms. It assumes that business influence derives from firms' ability to send credible information signals about policy costs, causing policy-makers to amend proposals. This 'structural-informational' power is mediated by two factors. First, the structure of the policy process enables policy-makers to assess the credibility of industry claims through institutional screening mechanisms, which vary over time. Second, the influence of individual firms is dependent on anticipated policy costs and past reputational damage, leading them to pursue different signalling strategies to maximize credibility. These claims are illustrated using the case study of United Kingdom banking reform between 2010 and 2013. Structuralinformational power helps to explain why bank 'ring-fencing' reforms were agreed in the face of powerful industry opposition, but also why specific banks were subsequently able to extract important policy concessions.

This chapter uses the domestic political economy framework to consider the implications of Brexit for UK financial regulation. It outlines the likely future UK–EU relationship by analysing the preferences, role, and influence of key domestic groups on Brexit, and by assessing the EU’s framework for managing relations with third countries. We argue that elected officials pursued a ‘hard’ Brexit position in response to parliamentary constraints and pressure from financial regulators to avoid becoming rule-takers. The City of London authorities pushed strongly for a bespoke deal based on mutual recognition, although this masked significant intra-industry divisions. The EU’s insistence that the future relationship be based on the existing third-country regime reflected a desire to defend the single market, but also Franco-German incentives to compete for post-Brexit business. However, the coverage of third-country equivalence rules in finance, and the inclusion of financial services in trade agreements, remains limited.