Instrument constituencies and epistemic community theory

Abstract

This contribution fleshes out the insights that the epistemic community (EC) approach can make to studying the public policy process and to how policy instruments are formulated and implemented. This contribution places the EC concept in the context of how policy instruments evolve and are supported by a separate network type, the instrument constituency (IC). It studies the conceptual differences between the EC and IC, analyses the conceptual progress and research output of the EC literature, and then reviews the EC literature to develop new analytical propositions about how epistemic communities, in relation to instrument constituencies, shape instrument change. This contribution then explores the value of these network concepts and propositions by examining four United States federal environmental policy instruments. It concludes that there is strong evidence for the role of ICs, and to a lesser extent, ECs, and that such public policy analysis would benefit from a greater network conceptualization.

Mobilizing Policy (In)Capacity to Fight COVID-19: Understanding Variations in State Responses

“…With the COVID-19 case, however, policy scholars are presented with the highly unusual opportunity to study virtually simultaneous but different government responses to the same problem and thus tease out the key factors which drove those decisions and their implications for both policy success and future practice. The case studies detail how the problem of the pandemic was constructed at the cognitive and ideological level by national and international governing elites and epistemic communities (Peters, 2005(Peters, , 2018Haas, 1992;Zito, 2018;Dunlop, 2009) and with how traditional mechanisms for dealing with problems -national policy styles (Howlett & Tosun, 2019) -were over-ridden or came to the fore in specific national circumstances.…”

The Rise and Spread of Behavioral Public Policy: An Opportunity for Critical Research and Self-Reflection

“…Particularly in the early phase, behavioral expertise seems to have formed an epistemic community (John, 2018;Zito, 2018). Following the criteria developed by Haas and others (Haas, 2013, 351-352), an inter-and transnationally active circle of behavioral experts has formed a 'knowledge-based community with an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge ' (2013, 351-352).…”

Europe’s essential workers: Migration and pandemic politics in Central and Eastern Europe during COVID‐19

“…This article analyzes the contexts and coalitions of actors that shaped policy processes and outcomes. It investigates the “distinct networks and coalitions of actors” that influenced “core elements of the policy process,” by emphasizing the relationship between instrument constituencies—i.e., sets of actors that manage the ongoing relationship between knowledge, policy strategy, and implementation—and epistemic communities—i.e., networks of experts with a particular knowledge of a policy domain and an authoritative claim to that knowledge (Zito, 2018). This paper argues that the structure of migratory systems, and migrants themselves as political actors played a crucial role in framing COVID‐19 as a problem and in determining policy responses in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).…”