Why should we take institutions into consideration when exploring the politics of policy making in different geographies?

As two researchers working on public policies in a country with a statist policy style, we observe a particular type of policy entrepreneur, time and again, driving major policy reforms in diverse policy sectors. In this geography, the typical entrepreneur is either an insider, such as a bureaucrat, or an outsider invited into policymaking. This led us question the intuitive assumptions we make on not only the identity of the entrepreneurs, but also the apparently diverse institutional constraints they face in reform processes in different geographies. In “Institutions in the Politics of Policy Change”, we propose adopting a fine-grained approach to institutions where we signpost key formal and informal institutions that fundamentally structure the politics of major policy reforms worldwide.

In exploring the politics of these reforms, we go back to square one and draw on the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA). MSA helps us unpack how a policy entrepreneur, facing a perceived problem, sets the agenda by seizing a window of opportunity to push a policy solution when the political climate happens to be right. The original conceptualization of the MSA does not differentiate between different institutional contexts underlying peculiar whodunnit stories centering around policy entrepreneurs in different geographies. Structuring politics, diverse constellations of institutions determine “who can play, and how they play” in the politics of policy reform in different ways across geographies.

In our Journal of Public Policy article, we address: Who has positional advantages when defining problems, providing solutions, and setting agendas in a given setting? How do institutionalized past policies shape positionally advantaged actors’ choice sets and behavior across geographies? How do electoral systems shape the way policy entrepreneurs seek consensus in decision-making? How do veto points and policymaking routines determine where policy windows open and how long they should remain open? How does the organization of the state shape where policy entrepreneurs emerge and operate?

In addressing these questions, we illustrate how formal political institutions distribute power among key policy actors, determine the autonomy of and the level at which policy communities operate, shape the ways in which policymakers respond to the national mood, impose how long windows need to remain open, and determine who is invited in and frozen out of the policymaking process. We also show how informal rules shape which key actors perceive and define problems, bias these actors’ preferences, filter viable policy solutions, shape the national mood, determine the location of policy windows, and favor some actors as entrepreneurs against others. We invite comparativists to this conversation about the intricately different ways formal and informal rules, which inevitably structure the politics of policy reform in different geographies worldwide, through shaping problems, solutions, politics, policy windows, and policy entrepreneurs.

– H. Tolga Bolukbasi, Bilkent University and Deniz Yıldırım, Bilkent University

– The authors’ Journal of Public Policy article is available open access.