Condemned to complexity? Growing state activity and complex policy systems

Limberg, Julian; Knill, Christoph; Steinebach, Yves

doi:10.1111/gove.12684

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…First, there is the question of implementation capacity. [51], [52] Two aspects are important in this context: a lack of implementation capacity and a lack of will. [53] , [54] The former may refer to administrative capacity and the latter to the role of veto players in the classical tradition as actors with veto power in a policy eld.…”

Section: Is There a Monitoring Process?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Stringency of Climate Legislation and Policy in the European Union and the 21OECD Countries, 1990-2020.

Jahn

2024

Preprint

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Legislation and policies to mitigate climate change are an important part of the toolkit available to highly industrialized democracies to address climate change. However, our knowledge of the stock of legislation is far from perfect. There are some studies that count the number of laws and policies. But when it comes to a deeper analysis of the content of the measures, our knowledge is very limited. In this paper, I offer a way to measure important aspects of policy stringency (or, as it is often called, ambition, importance, relevance, significance, intensity) of legislative initiatives for macro-comparative studies using publicly available data. The paper examines three well-established datasets from the International Energy Agency, the Grantham Institute, and EcoLex/FaoLex for their representativeness and suitability for such an analysis. In particular, it uses the European Union's 2020 and 2030 climate and energy frameworks and the national and subnational legislation of 21 OECD countries. It shows that the EcoLex/FaoLex dataset is best suited to capture qualitative aspects of legislation. The paper develops indices for the relevance, scope and importance of legislation and policy measures, which are cumulated into an index of saliency and filly in a measure of the (gross) potential impact (GPI) of legislation at the national level.

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Section: Is There a Monitoring Process?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Stringency of Climate Legislation and Policy in the European Union and the 21OECD Countries, 1990-2020.

Jahn

2024

Preprint

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“…First, policy accumulation inevitably creates more and more complex policy portfolios with often interacting and interdependent policy targets and instruments (Limberg et al. 2023). This, in turn, implies that a greater number of governmental interventions will not work out as planned and trigger policy controversies (Hinterleitner 2022, 3).…”

Section: Policy Accumulation In Democracies and Autocraciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While policy accumulation often positively reflects responsiveness to citizens' and interest groups' demands and, in consequence, modernization and progress, it also undermines democratic governance in two ways. First, policy accumulation inevitably creates more and more complex policy portfolios with often interacting and interdependent policy targets and instruments (Limberg et al 2023). This, in turn, implies that a greater number of governmental interventions will not work out as planned and trigger policy controversies (Hinterleitner 2022, 3).…”

Section: Policy Accumulation In Democracies and Autocraciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autocracies and policy accumulation: the case of Singapore

Aschenbrenner¹,

Knill²,

Steinebach

2023

J. Pub. Pol.

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The tendency of vote-seeking politicians to produce ever-more policies in response to the citizens’ demands has been identified as a central driver of the process of “policy accumulation.” If we accept this premise, policy accumulation should be a central feature of modern democracies but overall be less pronounced in autocracies. Due to its highly ambivalent nature, policy accumulation and its implications may thus constitute an important but so far neglected facets of the new system competition between democracies and autocracies. In this article, we test this argument in the context of the authoritarian regime of Singapore. Singapore is one of the very few autocracies that display elements of political competition and has a level of socio-economic development that is comparable to advanced democracies. Singapore thus constitutes a least-likely case for low levels of policy accumulation. By studying changes in Singapore’s environmental policy over a period of more than four decades (1976 to 2020) and by contrasting the patterns observed with the policy developments in 21 OECD democracies, we find that autocratic regimes do indeed tend to accumulate less than democratic regimes. More precisely, we find that Singapore (1) has only produced about one-fourth of the environmental policy measures of an “average” democracy and (2) is constantly the country with the lowest level of policy accumulation in our sample. These findings hold even when controlling for alternative explanations, such as the effectiveness of the administration and the government’s ability to opt for stricter and more hierarchical forms of intervention.

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“…While governments could theoretically react in multiple ways to the citizens’ demands for greater social protection (e.g., by simply increasing the generosity of existing measures), they typically do so by adopting new social policy instruments. This way, policy accumulation inevitably creates more and more complex policy mixes with often interacting and interdependent policy targets and instruments (Limberg et al., 2023). This, in turn, implies that a greater number of governmental interventions will not work out as planned and trigger policy controversies (Hinterleitner, 2022, p. 3).…”

Section: The Concept and The Consequences Of Policy Accumulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do parties matter for policy accumulation? An analysis of social policy portfolios in 22 countries

FERNÁNDEZ‐I‐MARÍN,

KNILL,

STEINEBACH

2023

European J Political Res

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This article analyses the role of political parties in policy accumulation. We study this relationship in the area of social policy. Our analysis builds on a large data set covering the size of policy portfolios (policy targets and instruments) in three subfields of social policy for 22 OECD countries over 30 years. We find that the probability of social policy accumulation is not affected by the government's ideological position. Left governments do not produce more extensive social policy portfolios than right ones. Yet, this striking result does not contradict governments’ political ideologies, as left and right parties accumulate for different reasons. While left parties address new social policy targets to broaden the scope of the welfare state, right parties adopt new policy instruments to condition social benefits. These findings hold regardless of how we measure governments’ ideological position and despite strong endogenous policy growth dynamics, that is, countries with greater policy portfolios also display higher levels of policy accumulation. Our findings indicate that party political considerations can explain the reasons for but not the level of policy accumulation. Changes in government are thus unlikely to stall or slow down the constant accumulation of public policies.

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Condemned to complexity? Growing state activity and complex policy systems

Cited by 8 publications

References 69 publications

The Stringency of Climate Legislation and Policy in the European Union and the 21OECD Countries, 1990-2020.

The Stringency of Climate Legislation and Policy in the European Union and the 21OECD Countries, 1990-2020.

Autocracies and policy accumulation: the case of Singapore

Do parties matter for policy accumulation? An analysis of social policy portfolios in 22 countries

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