Toward a Theory of Political Strategy in Policy Analysis

Abstract

Policy makers use political strategies when implementing public policies. This is the result of an increasing number of empirical studies—especially from research on unpopular welfare state reforms. However, an overarching theoretical framework systematizing the existing work is still missing from the literature. The present article tackles this shortcoming. Our approach starts from the assumption that the electoral consequences of policies result from the combination of two dimensions: the popularity of a policy and the attribution of responsibility for that policy. Drawing on theories of electoral support and political behavior, we unfold a catalog of strategies according to how they operate to influence these two dimensions.

Support for Policies on Entrepreneurship and Self‐Employment among Parties and Coalition Governments

“…The translation of citizen interests into policy positions and issue area saliencies of parties and governments can, however, depend on the experience citizens have with patterns of party competition in general and party policy profiles in particular (see e.g., König and Wenzelburger ). The latter should be less developed in younger democracies.…”

Anticipatory and reactive forms of blame avoidance: of foxes and lions

“…Note that it is the perceived, and not necessarily the actual threat, associated with an event that creates an action situation and entices officeholders to engage in BAB (Wenzelburger, 2011(Wenzelburger, , 2014. For example, a government enjoying widespread electoral support or operating in an environment in which the attribution of responsibility is comparatively difficult can well implement an unpopular policy without 'feeling threatened' by that policy (König and Wenzelburger, 2014). Actors may not feel threatened by an event if they consider their electoral or institutional position to be very safe.…”

“…An important type of blame management strategies are presentational strategies (Hood, 2011), which intend to shape public impressions and frame the public debate about A BW . The literature contains detailed descriptions and categorizations of presentational strategies that actors can apply during reactive blame games, ranging from justification (McGraw, 1991;Green-Pedersen, 2002), discourse (Schmidt, 2001), rhetoric (Cox, 2001), and framing (Ross, 2000;Druckman, 2001;Boin et al, 2009), to persuasion and priming (see König and Wenzelburger 2014 for an overview). Moreover, blamed actors can try to demonstrate commitment by launching inquiries (Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2010) or propose symbolic reforms to resolve A BW and tackle its consequences (Brändström, 2015).…”

“…Heightened interest in the phenomenon of BAB and its implications across different fields of political science has also made the concept of blame avoidance increasingly fuzzy (König and Wenzelburger, 2014) and has produced a scattered and diffuse literature (Hood, 2011). One of the major complications in the study of BAB is that different schools associate different phenomena with the term 'blame avoidance' and, consequently, study aspects that are only partly related when addressing this type of elite behavior and the consequences thereof.…”

Moral Societal Renewal or Getting the Country Back to Work: Welfare State Culture as a Resource and a Constraint for Policy Discourse

“…In addition to this resulting core sample for an in‐depth analysis, further official publications/speeches concerning the governments’ welfare policy agenda were studied to gain a more comprehensive understanding and to be able to contextualize the results from the analysis. To structure the material, the analysis uses categories that cover the range of accounts, frames, arguments, etc., for justifying unpopular reforms which can be found in the pertinent literature (Kangas, Niemelä, and Varjonen ; König and Wenzelburger ; Schmidt ; Wenzelburger ; Vis and van Kersbergen ). These categories are justifications that are based on (1) benefits from policy versus (2) costs of status quo , (3) necessity, (4) consensus/consent, (5) norms, values, and normative rightness, (6) general interest and national cohesion, and (7) fairness.…”