Policy programme cycles through old and new programmatic groups

Abstract

This article draws on the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) to tackle the question of how the dominance and decline of a specific policy programme in a policy sector can be explained. It starts from the observation that visionary policy programmes, defined as a set of policy goals and instruments that find their expression in subsequently adopted and interconnected policy reforms, may shape a sector’s policies over several decades. Linking policy programmes to programmatic groups that promote these programmes in search of boosting their careers and authority, the programme’s rising and declining dominance can be explained by the career trajectories of programmatic actors. By displaying empirical evidence for the argument from German health policy, the article shows that proponents of today’s change are opponents of tomorrow’s change since individual careers depend on the dominance of policy programmes.

Vergleichende Policy-Forschung: Herausforderungen, Fallstricke und Potenziale für die Zukunft

“…Instead, elaborate methodological strategies for measuring preferences on the individual level have been introduced, as the quantitative (Weible et al 2004;Zafonte and Sabatier 2004) and qualitative (Litfin 2000) work on belief systems in ACF demonstrates. Moreover, as evidenced by the recently introduced "programmatic action framework" (Bandelow and Hornung 2020), preferences can also be rooted in shared biographies of policy elites. These insights call for a more systematic integration of actors-and advances in social network analyses may even enable quantitative researchers to include actors and coalitions more plainly in their studies.…”

Public Policy Research—Born in the USA, at Home in the World?

“…The social identity approach itself emerged in Anglo-Saxon research (Haslam 2001 ; Hogg 2016 ). In public policy, it became a major tool of the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF), an approach that has its origins in French elite research (Bandelow and Hornung 2020 ; Hassenteufel et al. 2010 ; Hornung 2022 ).…”

The (mis)fit of policy programs to political institutions and its influence on programmatic action – How crisis has differently hit French and German health policy

“…At the same time, the creation of new institutions may help to implement policies and shield the new governance arrangements from alteration through other actors (Béland et al., 2020). This has been integrated in the PAF as a Program Institutionalization Hypothesis (Bandelow & Hornung, 2020).…”

“…Studies have identified the existence of programmatic groups in French defense policy (Faure, 2020; Genieys, 2010) and the health care systems of France, Germany, Spain, and the USA (Hassenteufel et al., 2010). While evidence confirms the occurrence of programmatic action in French and German health policy within a similar period of time alike (Genieys & Hassenteufel, 2015; Hornung & Bandelow, 2020), recent research shows that as opposed to France, the phase of programmatic action in German health policy seems to have ended (Bandelow & Hornung, 2020). The question is, what explains these divergent pathways of previously existent programmatic action in the two countries?…”