The suboptimal size of municipalities is often a challenge for service delivery due to scale limitations. Intermunicipal cooperation (IMC) has expanded as an alternative to top-down amalgamations, offering a more flexible and typically voluntary approach. Many studies have been devoted to understanding the driving factors of IMC, providing static empirical evidence on the characteristics of cooperating municipalities. This article contributes to the literature with a dynamic analysis of the drivers of cooperation, using a Cox proportional hazards model over a long period and a very large sample of municipalities in Catalonia. This dynamic analysis unravels the direction of the causal relationship in complex relationships such as fiscal restrictions or political legitimation with cooperation. Furthermore, as we have data from eight relevant local services, we improve both the theoretical and empirical analysis of cooperation dynamics based on the characteristics of the services.

This paper examines how public demand and institutional contexts shape the substantive representation of LGBTQ+ populations across Europe. I argue that while positive social constructions of LGBTQ+ populations are a necessary condition for the advances of LGBTQ+ rights, issue salience can facilitate LGBTQ+ rights only if public opinion on LGBTQ+ is positive. Furthermore, I assert that translating social constructions of LGBTQ+ populations into policy outputs is mediated by the proportionality of electoral systems. I analyze policy scores, public attitudes, and online interest concerning LGBTQ+ topics. I find that positive social constructions are correlated with more inclusive LGBTQ+ rights across countries, and the positive impact of issue salience on LGBTQ+ rights is observed only in countries with positive social constructions. Additionally, the analysis of electoral systems provides mixed evidence regarding the role of proportionality.

In the USA states, there is substantial institutional variation among executive branch administrative officials, with state executive branch offices varying by their selection method. Prior scholarship has devoted little attention to the policy implications of this institutional variation. In this article, we explore the consequences of this administrative characteristic by examining state attorneys general. We develop the theoretical rationale that during periods of high crime, for states with an elected attorney general, there should be an increase in the state’s incarceration rate. Conversely, for states with appointed attorneys general, increases in crime will have little effect on the state’s incarceration rate. When analyzing the incarceration rates among all USA states across a seventeen-year period, we find some evidence to support our theoretical expectation. These results highlight the implications that executive branch design has on public policy and governance in several ways.

Anticipating policy instrument preferences can be an important step in policy design to address pressing sustainability problems. But studying preferences for policy instruments is a difficult task because sustainability problems involve a non-negligible degree of trade-offs and uncertainty. We therefore study the role of actors’ underlying ideologies (policy core beliefs) and risk attitudes in forming their preferences for different instruments. Combining the advocacy coalition framework with multi-attribute utility theory, both ideologies and attitudes toward uncertain policy consequences can influence instrument preferences. So far, policy studies literature has paid little attention to trade-offs between policy core beliefs or risk attitudes. Using Bayesian regression models on data from actors in Swiss pesticide risk reduction policy, we found that attitudes toward trade-offs and risk are indeed relevant to explain preferences for different regulatory and market-based instruments addressing agricultural pesticide use. Therefore, when designing policies for sustainability problems, considering the relative importance of policy core beliefs for different actors can help to find effective and broadly supported solutions. In addition, risk attitudes should be considered when policy design involves more coercive and stimulative policy instruments.

Comparative social policy research frequently deals, implicitly or explicitly, with time and timing in the development of welfare states. We identify three types of such temporal theorizations – i.e. stage models, timed orders, and periodizations – and analyze their relevance for global social policy development. We do so by employing sequence and cluster analysis to a new comprehensive dataset of social policy adoption in 164 countries over 140 years (1880–2019). While our analysis reveals certain common stages of social policy consolidation – from education mandates and health care systems over work-related protections to care services – we also find varying trajectories which challenge conventional regional clustering narratives. Moreover, our analysis highlights two periods which have so far not featured prominently in comparative welfare state research: The interwar years (1919–1929) and the period of decolonization (1949–1969).