Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture

Abstract

This article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerges. Drawing on the conceptual tools of policy feedback and policy networks, this article describes an alternative route to paradigm shift in which change is negotiated between state actors and group representatives. Discussions of change are largely confined to sectoral policy networks and the result is a more managed series of policy changes that culminate in a paradigm shift. This argument for a second, cumulative trajectory to paradigm shift is developed by examining agricultural policy change in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Combining Policy Network and Model-Based Scenario Analyses: An Assessment of Future Ecosystem Goods and Services in Swiss Mountain Regions

“…Even though the indicators for network closure revealed ambivalent results, the policy network still incorporates characteristics of a "policy community" (Smith 1990, Coleman et al 1996 consisting of close and stable memberships, which typically includes the main responsible government ministry or agency in the policy subsystem and a few privileged producer groups and their interest organizations. Policy communities share an ideology about how major policy issues in the sector should be addressed.…”

“…At the network level, we measured the network's density and centralization to assess to what degree its overall structure is dependent on the position of the most central actors. These two indicators were used in previous studies to identify and characterize a so-called "policy community" in national agricultural policy sectors (Smith 1990, Coleman et al 1996. At the level of individual actors and their relationships (ties), we used the degree of reciprocity and transitivity as additional indicators for network closure.…”

Further reflections on the temporality of energy transitions: A response to critics

“…Socio-institutional explanations would refer more to the shifts in allegiance of social groups like policymakers or wider publics, whose defection from old to new systems may lead to major changes in policies or discourses. In political science, this is conceptualized under the heading of shifts in policy paradigms (Hall, 1993;Coleman, 1996), which refers not only to new policy instruments, but also to new policy goals and problem definitions.…”

The innovativeness of national policy portfolios – climate policy change in Austria, Germany, and the UK

“…Here, 'bottom-up' processes of increasing returns and policy learning through incremental changes of the meso-level of policy instruments finally reach a tipping point for a more radical change in the instrumental logic at the highest policy level (Pierson 1993, Coleman et al 1996, Howlett and Cashore 2009, Daugbjerg and Sønderskov 2012. Symbolic innovations play no role, since changes in the instrumental logic occur by the incremental adoption of new 'layers' of innovative instruments (Streeck andThelen 2005, Béland 2007).…”

“…Third, cumulative incrementalism describes a number of approaches all criticising process sequencing on the basis of empirical cases where 'shocks do not always result in institutional change, and institutional change does not always come from such shocks' (Van der Heijden 2010, p. 231, Genschel 1997, Pierson 2004 but rather as a result of cumulative adaption (Coleman et al 1996, Capano 2003, Lee and Strang 2006, Cashore and Howlett 2007. Here, 'bottom-up' processes of increasing returns and policy learning through incremental changes of the meso-level of policy instruments finally reach a tipping point for a more radical change in the instrumental logic at the highest policy level (Pierson 1993, Coleman et al 1996, Howlett and Cashore 2009, Daugbjerg and Sønderskov 2012.…”