Policy Regimes and Governance

1
Policy Regimes and Governance

• Ashley E. Jochim
• Peter J. May
• Center for American Politics and Public Policy
  University of Washington

2
What This is About

• Addressing complex problems that require
• Cohesion in policy approaches
• Coordination among different entities and across
  layers of government
• Governing with a different approach policy
  regimes

3
A Long-Standing Conundrum
4
In Policy Process Terms

• Problems and solutions span policy areas they
  are messy
• The ingrained aspects of their attendant
  policymaking subsystems tend to pull in different
  directions
• This undermines cohesive efforts to address the
  problem and efforts to implement coordinated
  actions

5
The Quest to Enhance Cohesion and Coordination

• Some recent approaches
• Governmental reorganizations creation of super
  agencies
• Joined-up Government in the UK as adopted
  elsewhere
• The Open Method of Coordination European Union

6
Why These Fall Short

• Governing entails
• More than institutional reforms focus of
  reorganizations
• More than managerialism focus of joined-up
  government
• More than agreement in principle focus of EU
  open coordination approach

7
Consider Policy Regimes

• Governance arrangements that foster unified
  actions among relevant subsystems to achieve a
  common purpose
• Boundary-spanning
• Overcome inertia of existing ways of doing
  business
• Propelled by a set of organic forces that meld
  policy, purpose, and politics

8
What Fosters Unified Action?

• Organic Processes -- a set of pressures upon
  players in different subsystems to act in unison
• Four unifying forces
• Issues
• Ideas
• Interests
• Institutions

9
How These WorkPollution Abatement Regime Example
10
Other U.S. Examples

• Community Empowerment Regime 1960s
• Drug Criminalization Regime 1980s
• Disability Rights Regime since the 1990s
• Welfare Personal Responsibility Regime since
  the 1990s
• Homeland Security Regime since 2002

11
Policy RegimesIssues to Ponder

• Emergence What conditions foster the
  development of policy regimes?
• Strength What contributes to the strength of
  regimes?
• Durability What affects the life span of a
  given regime?

12
Regime Emergence

• Conditions fostering regimes are no different
  than those that foster agenda and policy change
• Crisis-driven dynamics
• Agenda disruptions set in play forces for reform
  and demands for new ways of doing business
• Coalition-driven dynamics
• New coalitions sometimes movement based
  create pressures for widespread change

13
Regime Strength

• We consider strength in terms of the factors that
  contribute to it the degree of
• Ideational uptake Are the core ideas understood
  and embraced?
• Interest support Are the interests mobilized?
  Is conflict high?
• Institutional capacity Does the institutional
  design channel attention and resources towards
  the purpose of the regime?

14
Regime Strength
15
Regime Durability

• Regimes come and go
• Durability is not necessarily related to strength
  of a regime
• Macro-political forces are at work
• New political alignments affect their bases of
  support
• Reagan, pro-growth coalition and pollution
  abatement
• Crises fade and new ones emerge
• Hurricane Katrina and homeland security
• New ideas gain support
• Rehabilitation, treatment, and drug
  criminalization

16
Whither Policy Regimes?

• A panacea for governance?
• Our cases illustrate the challenges in fostering
  strong policy regimes rarely can this be done
• Nonetheless, policy regimes can foster desired
  policy cohesion and coordinated implementation
  efforts

17
Limits of Our Discussion

• Focus on the U.S. and American policy dynamics
• Policy regimes are not unique to the United
  States
• Nor are many of the underlying dynamics we
  discuss
• Our approach is conceptual
• Need for more research on the emergence,
  strength, and durability of policy regimes
• Identification of regimes and their contours
  needs refinement

18
What Does all of This Meanfor Thinking About
Governance?

• Governance scholars should think about broader
  forces at play
• Policy scholars need to move beyond subsystems as
  key foci to think about boundary-spanning issues
  and solutions
• Issues, ideas, interests, and institutions are
  building blocks of both policymaking and governing

19
Supporting Slides
20
(No Transcript)
21
Homeland Security as an Example

• Thinking in terms of policy regimes
• Need to think about the affected policy areas and
  subsystems
• Cohesion across these is the central challenge
• DHS is part of the institutional design
• Other powerful institutions are also involved
• Other critical forces at play in shaping
  governance in this complex area
• Agreement about homeland security
• Constituencies for it
• Attention to competing agenda items

22
Homeland Security Regime
23
Homeland Security as an Anemic Policy Regime

• The key idea of homeland security is not widely
  embraced
• No real constituency for homeland security per
  se
• Institutional misalignment at work
• Committee system in Congress and agency
  involvement were not aligned, nor are they today
• Powerful agency counter forces to the DHS

24
Why Such an Anemic Policy Regime?

• Not just an issue of being too early for an
  effective regime instability continues at
  present
• In trying to do too much, little is accomplished
  in terms of shared purpose, supportive interests,
  and unified institutions

25
What would make for a stronger regime?
A more focused regime with a more engaged
constituency and more facilitative institutional
structure

• A more tractable idea as a shared purpose
• extreme event emergency preparedness
• A more focused constituency
• State and local first responders
• A more effective federal coordinating entity
• A slimmed down Federal Emergency Management Agency