How can subnational governments develop and deliver distinctive policy agendas?

Abstract

The ways in which subnational governments develop and deliver distinctive policies is central to our understanding of effective multi-level governance systems. The existing literature focuses on institutional autonomy and the formal powers given to subnational governments but this is only one side of the story. Success also depends on the way in which policy actors deploy their powers, resources and legitimacy. This article presents an empirical analysis of two contrasting attempts to develop distinctive policy frameworks at the subnational level. It demonstrates the importance of looking beyond formal institutional powers and paying attention to policymakers’ political skills and visibility, as well as the strategies and tactics that they employ in deploying formal powers. It highlights, in particular, the need for subnational governments to focus on those issues where they can make a difference and to exploit their nodality within policy networks to foster collaboration with state and non-state actors who bring complementary resources. Points for practitioners A subnational government’s success in pursuing distinctive policy agendas depends on the issues it decides to focus on and the way it chooses to deploy the formal powers and resources available to it. There is little point in investing time and efforts in pursuing issues that national governments are unwilling to cede control over. However, where they are given a degree of autonomy, subnational governments need to exploit their pivotal position in policy networks to foster collaboration with a range of state and non-state actors who bring complementary resources.

‘A pilgrimage of camels’: Dairy capitalism, nomadic pastoralism, and subnational Hindutva statism in Rajasthan

“…However, a disruption of rangelands of the camel, a newly minted, state-approved dairy animal, in the name of their protection also becomes a way of drawing internal borderlands, and secure the BJP-ruled Rajasthan state within India. Even as Rajasthan is bounded by BJP-ruled Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, subnational state governments also have to ‘deploy their powers, resources and legitimacy’ through specific policies to solidify their legitimacy within the state (Connell et al, 2021: 1). The subnational securitization through the camel in Rajasthan is connected with the specific nature of the state's agricultural capitalism, and now dairying.…”

How does policy attention affect e-government performance? The role of resource allocation and public–private collaboration

“…The current literature concentrates on both the antecedents of attention, such as public preference and policy agenda (Lowery et al, 2010, Connell et al, 2022), and the action brought by attention, which is the focus of this paper. Scholars have discussed the relationship between policy attention and governments’ behavior activities such as public spending and the agency establishment and termination (Jones et al, 2009; Mortensen, 2009; Mortensen and Green-Pedersen, 2015), but have ignored action outcomes.…”

“…Different governments may pay different amounts of attention to an issue (e.g. e-government) because of diverse environmental pressures and organizational identities (Connell et al, 2022; Pan and Fan, 2023). In this case, amounts of policy attention can signal to subsequent actors the urgency with which a particular issue needs to be addressed.…”