Suchergebnisse

Democratic governments produce more policies than they can effectively implement. Yet, this gap between the number of policies requiring implementation and the administrative capacities available to do so is not the same in all democracies but varies across countries and sectors. We argue that this variation depends on the coupling of the sectoral bureaucracies in charge of policy formulation and those in charge of policy implementation. We consider these patterns of vertical policy-process integration an important feature of bureaucratic quality. The more the policymaking level is involved in policy implementation (top-down integration) and the easier the policy-implementing level finds it to feed its concerns into policymaking (bottom-up integration), the smaller the so-called "burden-capacity gap." We demonstrate this effect through an empirical analysis in 21 OECD countries over a period of more than 40 years in the areas of social and environmental policies.

AbstractConstant policy growth can overburden bureaucracies if implementation capacities are not expanded in lockstep with policy production. This development may undermine policy effectiveness and hence the long‐term legitimacy of democracies. This article provides a systematic analysis of this phenomenon. We demonstrate that (i) overburdening is a general trend in advanced democracies; (ii) the extent of overburdening varies by the institutional context in which policy makers operate; and that, in consequence, (iii) countries' bureaucracies differ in their distance (or closeness) to the "tipping point" after which additional policies do more harm than good. We provide information on the ratio between the policies up for implementation and the bureaucratic capacities available for 21 OECD countries over a period of 45 years (1976–2020), focusing on the areas of environmental and social policy as two major areas of governmental intervention. Bayesian analyses and background interviews serve to illuminate the reasons for and consequences of overburdened bureaucracies.

AbstractDemocratic governments have constantly added new policies to existing policy stocks to confront societal, economic, and environmental challenges. This development has the potential to overburden public administrations in charge of policy implementation. To address this issue, we theorize and analyze how the relationship between the size of sectoral policy portfolios and implementation capacities affects sectoral policy performance. Our Bayesian analysis of the environmental policies of 21 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries from 1976 to 2020 reveals a widening "gap" between the policies up for implementation and the implementation capacities available and shows that this gap negatively affects environmental policy performance. Qualitative insights from 47 in‐depth interviews with implementers validate these findings and shed light on the underlying causal processes. Our findings suggest that in advanced democracies transforming additional policies into effective problem‐solving crucially hinges on the deliberate expansion of implementation capacities.

ResumenSe examinan las preferencias en cuanto al tiempo de trabajo de mujeres que trabajan en las manufacturas 20 horas semanales, en diferentes horarios estables, sobre la base de una investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa para identificar perfiles en función de dichas preferencias, y las razones de las mismas. Las conclusiones matizan investigaciones precedentes al poner de relieve que: 1) no todas estas empleadas pueden considerarse subempleadas; 2) trabajar 20 horas semanales no equivale a una baja centralidad del trabajo y es compatible con que las horas de trabajo se experimenten como significativas, y 3) algunas trabajadoras a tiempo parcial quieren conservar tiempo para actividades no domésticas y no laborales a pesar de ganar un salario bajo.

RésuméL'étude porte sur les préférences en matière de temps de travail de femmes occupées vingt heures par semaine, selon des horaires fixes, dans une entreprise manufacturière. Sur la base d'une analyse quantitative et qualitative, les auteurs définissent plusieurs profils types, en fonction de ces préférences et des motivations sous‐jacentes. Leurs résultats permettent de nuancer les conclusions d'études précédentes: 1) toutes les travailleuses interrogées ne peuvent pas ětre considérées comme étant en sous‐emploi; 2) měme à temps partiel, le travail peut ětre central et avoir du sens; 3) malgré la faiblesse du salaire, le temps libéré par le temps partiel n'est pas toujours destiné aux obligations familiales.

AbstractThis article examines the working‐time preferences of women working 20‐hour weeks, on different, stable schedules, in manufacturing jobs. The authors conducted qualitative and quantitative research to identify worker profiles based on these women's working‐time preferences and the reasons for them. Their findings add nuance to previous research by highlighting that: (1) some, but not all, of these employees can be considered underemployed; (2) working 20 hours a week does not equate to low work centrality and is compatible with working hours being experienced as meaningful; (3) some part‐time women workers want to keep time for non‐caring, non‐working activities despite earning a low salary.

In this article, we analyze dynamics of policy change from the perspective of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET). In particular, we investigate how economic crises impact on patterns of policy change in policy areas that vary in terms of their proximity to economic matters: social, environmental, and morality policy. We make two contributions. First, we show that economic crises lead to more incrementalist patterns of policy change in crisis‐remote policy subsystems and make policy punctuations in these areas less likely. However, if such punctuations do occur, they tend to be particularly extreme. Second, we argue that the empirical implications of PET are best tested by separately analyzing variance as an indicator for incrementalism and degrees of freedom as an indicator for punctuations. The empirical analysis builds on two data sets capturing policy output changes in 13 European countries over a period of 34 years (1980–2013).

AbstractMorality policies evince a much closer relationship to religious doctrines than is the case in other policy areas and hence constitute a most likely case for the observation of religious effects on policymaking and regulatory change. Yet we still lack generally accepted answers to the questions of whether and how religion matters to morality policy. In this paper, we present a theoretical argument that helps to overcome the seemingly contradictory expectations derived from the secularization and religion matters hypotheses. We postulate a bottleneck effect of religious opposition: while religious influence matters most during early stages of the policy process when the problem definition of a moral issue is still in flux, it diminishes during later stages when the issue has made it onto the political agenda. We find evidence of the bottleneck effect in a dataset of policy permissiveness covering 26 countries and spanning 50 years for five morality policies (abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, and same‐sex marriage). The data is analyzed via a multilevel model and using Bayesian inference.

The question of whether or not religion accounts for variance in the governance of moral issues, between and within countries over time, has long been debated but never conclusively answered. A novel data set encompassing innovative measurements of state regulation of "life‐and‐death" issues and of the religious stratification of society enables us to answer why previous studies reached contradictory results. The time‐series cross‐sectional analysis of 26 countries over 50 years reveals that dominant religious denominations in society indeed influence state governance approaches regarding the issues of abortion and euthanasia. This denominational effect is shown to be contingent on the religiosity of a country's population, but independent from the formal state–church relationship. Lastly, it is shown that the religious effect has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with time, exposing the timeframe of analysis as decisive for inferences drawn in the study of morality policy.

RésuméLes auteurs examinent l'effet d'un programme visant à favoriser l'inclusion des personnes handicapées dans l'emploi sur l'absentéisme pour maladie et accident parmi les bénéficiaires. Après une évaluation qualitative des spécificités du programme, ils procèdent à une quasi‐expérience, en utilisant deux groupes témoins (non équivalent et sans traitement) et des séries chronologiques interrompues (2005–2012). L'analyse repose sur un modèle binomial négatif hiérarchique non imbriqué, avec une variable dépendante retardée. La comparaison entre les trois groupes (personnes handicapées, bénéficiaires ou non, et personnes valides) montre que les absences pour maladie sont sensiblement réduites chez les bénéficiaires. Pour les accidents, le recul est plus faiblement attesté.

ResumenSe investiga un programa empresarial de inclusión de personas con discapacidad con objeto de reducir el absentismo por enfermedad y por lesión. Tras observaciones de campo y entrevistas para determinar las características del programa, se aplicó un diseño cuasi experimental con dos grupos de control no equivalentes sin tratamiento y una serie temporal de 2005–2012. Mediante regresión binomial negativa jerárquica y una variable de resultado retardada, se compararon los datos de los trabajadores con discapacidad participantes con los no participantes y con los trabajadores sin discapacidad. Observamos una reducción de las ausencias por enfermedad entre los participantes, y también de las ausencias por lesión, aunque con resultados menos concluyentes.

AbstractThis article presents research on an organizational inclusion programme aiming to reduce absenteeism due to illness and injury among employees with disabilities. Qualitative fieldwork on the programme's characteristics was followed by a quasi‐experimental design with two control groups (non‐equivalent and no‐treatment) using abbreviated time series (2005–12). The data of employees with disabilities who participated in the programme were compared with those of non‐participants and of employees without disabilities, through a hierarchical non‐nested negative binomial regression with a lagged outcome variable. The authors find strong evidence of a reduction in absence due to illness among participant employees with disabilities, and somewhat weaker evidence of reduced absence due to injury.

One of the greatest achievements of the EU is the freedom of movement between member states offering citizens equal rights in EU member states. EU enlargement and the COVID-19 pandemic allow for a critical test of whether EU citizens are indeed treated equally in practice. We test preferential treatment of EU citizens in two hypothetical choice experiments in Germany at two different time points: in the period before and during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Theories of responses to threat suggest that the COVID-19 crisis should increase discrimination against mobile EU citizens. While our findings reveal sizeable discrimination based on nationality and language proficiency of mobile EU citizens, the findings also suggest that, contrary to expectations, discrimination did not increase in the initial COVID-19 crisis period.