The contentious politics of policy failure: The case of corporate board gender quotas in Spain

Abstract

Drawing on the insights of studies examining opposition to gender equality policy, this article develops an actor-centric analytical framework of the contentious politics underpinning the entire policy process and suggests that resistance is a crucial meta factor explaining policy failure. Through a longitudinal study of corporate board gender quotas in Spain, it investigates the ways in which enduring conflict between support and opposition actors can lead to policy failure at the different stages of the policy cycle. The article shows that resistance by status quo actors can undermine policy legitimacy and weaken its design at the adoption phase. Subsequently, resistance can lead not only to a poor implementation and evaluation work, resulting in policy incoherence, but also to the reinstatement of old assumptions. Ultimately, resistance may bring about the dilution of the policy's core ideas, the reduction of its scope and the dismantling of its governing arrangements, thereby hindering its durability. Our empirical analysis also reveals that policy failures can trigger actors' policy learning and yield interest realignments of advocacy coalitions aimed at reformulating the policy to enhance its effectiveness.

Failed and successful attempts at institutional change: the battle for marriage equality in the United States

“…Indeed, to achieve displacement change actors need not only to be more powerful in terms of financial resources, mobilization potential, and alliances with key veto players than their opponents but also to be willing to compromise and accept religious exemption clauses. This compromise may weaken the new policy, as it allows status quo actors to water down policy proponents’ preferred institutional arrangements and thereby foster an ineffective compliance and debilitate its future implementation (Verge and Lombardo, 2019: 4).…”

Gender Equality Policy and Universities: Feminist Strategic Alliances to Re-gender the Curriculum

“…Passive resistance, expressed through nonactions and non-decisions, discontinues the validation of the policy through cumulative actions, which is facilitated by lax institutional oversight and by the absence of insider allies from within the policy sector (Waylen 2014). Also, more active forms of resistance such as the reintroduction of old assumptions or the evaporation of the aims, scope, or institutional arrangements of a policy critically impair implementation work (see Verge and Lombardo 2019).…”

“…Policy failures can trigger the policy learning of gender equality actors and foster the creation of a coalition aimed at reformulating the policy to enhance its effectiveness through concerted lobby activities, the production of reports that expose non-compliant behavior and challenge rationalizations for resistance, and discursive turns that re-politicize the problem and re-legitimize the policy's core ideas and instruments (Verge and Lombardo 2019). Several concepts have been used to describe the feminist coordination that seeks to affect the policy process, such as "strategic partnerships" (Halsaa 1998), "triangles of empowerment" (Vargas and Wieringa 1998), "feminist advocacy coalitions" (Mazur 2002), or "velvet triangles" (Woodward 2003).…”

A favor, contra, ou assim-assim? Posições e discursos de membros dos órgãos de gestão sobre limiares de representação legalmente vinculativos, mérito e igualdade

“…A tónica de oposição tende a ser fundamentalmente exposta pela elite dominante, dada a perceção de potencial ameaça às posições e relações de poder vigentes (Verge e Lombardo 2021). Não surpreende, portanto, que as posições de resistência sejam mais comuns entre os homens que ocupam cargos de poder (Meier 2008; Santos e Amâncio 2010a; 2010b; Murray, Krook e Opello 2012), podendo condicionar ou mesmo minar a legitimidade das medidas vinculativas e o respetivo potencial de efetividade (Verge e Lombardo 2021). Lombardo e Mergaert (2013) conceptualizam a resistência como um fenómeno que emerge durante um processo de mudança, designadamente na fase de implementação de uma determinada política de igualdade de género, em que a oposição dos atores expressa a tentativa de preservação do status quo.…”

“…Esta estratégia deve contemplar programas de sensibilização e de capacitação em torno das causas das assimetrias entre mulheres e homens em cargos de poder, visando a eliminação de estereótipos de género e a igualdade efetiva entre mulheres e homens nas organizações. Neste âmbito, afigura-se igualmente importante a ampla disseminação de infor-mação sobre os perfis de mulheres e homens em cargos de poder, favorecendo a desconstrução da retórica da meritocracia (Lombardo e Mergaert 2013;Verge e Lombardo 2021).…”