Policy ideas through the prism of knowledge regimes and framing

Policymakers are often confronted with problems that involve ambiguity and uncertainty (Zahariadis, 2003). In order to make sense of such problems and to identify possible solutions, they are on the lookout for policy ideas

Budgetary change in authoritarian and democratic regimes

We compare patterns of change in budgetary commitments by countries during periods of democracy and authoritarianism. Previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on democratic governments, finding evidence of punctuated equilibria. Authoritarian regimes may behave differently, both because they may operate with fewer institutional barriers to choice and because they have fewer incentives to gather and respond to policy-relevant information coming from civil society. By analysing public budgeting in Brazil, Turkey, Malta and Russia before and after their transitions from or to democracy, we can test punctuated equilibrium theory under a variety of governing conditions. Our goal is to advance the understanding of the causes of budgetary instability by leveraging contextual circumstances to push the theory beyond democracies and assess its broader applicability

Polarization of coalitions in an agent-based model of political discourse

Political discourse is the verbal interaction between political actors in a policy domain. This article explains the formation of polarized advocacy or discourse coalitions in this complex phenomenon by presenting a dynamic, stochastic, and discrete agent-based model based on graph theory and local optimization. In a series of thought experiments, actors compute their utility of contributing a specific statement to the discourse by following ideological criteria, preferential attachment, agenda-setting strategies, governmental coherence, or other mechanisms. The evolving macro-level discourse is represented as a dynamic network and evaluated against arguments from the literature on the policy process. A simple combination of four theoretical mechanisms is already able to produce artificial policy debates with theoretically plausible properties. Any sufficiently realistic configuration must entail innovative and path-dependent elements as well as a blend of exogenous preferences and endogenous opinion formation mechanisms

Logics, thresholds, strategic power, and the promotion of liberalisation by governments: a case study from British Higher Education

Liberalisation has become an increasingly important policy trend, both in the private and public sectors of advanced industrial economies. This article eschews deterministic accounts of liberalisation by considering why government attempts to institute competition may be successful in some cases and not others. It considers the relative strength of explanations focusing on the institutional context, and on the volume and power of sectoral actors supporting liberalisation. These approaches are applied to two attempts to liberalise, one successful and one unsuccessful, within one sector in one nation – higher education in Britain. Each explanation is seen to have some explanatory power, but none is sufficient to explain why competition was generalised in the one case and not the other. The article counsels the need for scholars of liberalisation to be open to multiple explanations which may require the marshalling of multiple sources and types of evidence

Computational and mathematical approaches to societal transitions

After an introduction of the theoretical framework and concepts of transition studies, this article gives an overview of how structural change in social systems has been studied from various disciplinary perspectives. This overview first leads to the conclusion that computational and mathematical approaches and their practical form, modeling, up till now, have been almost absent in the research and theorizing of structural change or transitions in social systems. Second, this review of the social science literature suggests numerous theoretical constructs relevant for transition modeling. Relevant concepts include the conceptualization of the micro-to-macro link, the importance of explaining both stability and change, quantitative and qualitative definitions of structural change, the use of dichotomies, synchronic and diachronic reasoning in explaining structural change, definitions of basic patterns of social change, the conceptualization of resistance to change and intentional and normative aspects of social change. This article employs these theoretical concepts to describe and discuss the models presented in this special issue in order to develop an understanding of what exactly entails a computational or mathematical approach to societal transitions

The role of horizontal resolution in simulating drivers of the global hydrological cycle

The role of atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) horizontal resolution in representing the global energy budget and hydrological cycle is assessed, with the aim of improving the understanding of model uncertainties in simulating the hydrological cycle. We use two AGCMs from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre: HadGEM1-A at resolutions ranging from 270 to 60 km, and HadGEM3-A ranging from 135 to 25 km. The models exhibit a stable hydrological cycle, although too intense compared to reanalyses and observations. This over-intensity is explained by excess surface shortwave radiation, a common error in general circulation models (GCMs). This result is insensitive to resolution. However, as resolution is increased, precipitation decreases over the ocean and increases over the land. This is associated with an increase in atmospheric moisture transport from ocean to land, which changes the partitioning of moisture fluxes that contribute to precipitation over land from less local to more non-local moisture sources. The results start to converge at 60-km resolution, which underlines the excessive reliance of the mean hydrological cycle on physical parametrization (local unresolved processes) versus model dynamics (large-scale resolved processes) in coarser HadGEM1 and HadGEM3 GCMs. This finding may be valid for other GCMs, showing the necessity to analyze other chains of GCMs that may become available in the future with such a range of horizontal resolutions. Our finding supports the hypothesis that heterogeneity in model parametrization is one of the underlying causes of model disagreement in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) exercises

Interest groups in multiple streams:specifying their involvement in the framework

Although interests inhabit a central place in the multiple streams framework (MSF), interest groups have played only a minor role in theoretical and empirical studies until now. In Kingdon’s original conception, organized interests are a key variable in the politics stream. Revisiting Kingdon’s concept with a particular focus on interest groups and their activities—in different streams and at various levels—in the policy process, we take this argument further. In particular, we argue that specifying groups’ roles in other streams adds value to the explanatory power of the framework. To do this, we look at how interest groups affect problems, policies, and politics. The influence of interest groups within the streams is explained by linking the MSF with literature on interest intermediation. We show that depending on the number of conditions and their activity level, interest groups can be involved in all three streams. We illustrate this in case studies reviewing labor market policies in Germany and chemicals regulation at the European level

Distinctive features of the microbiota associated with different forms of apical periodontitis

Microorganisms infecting the dental root canal system play an unequivocal role as causative agents of apical periodontitis. Although fungi, archaea, and viruses have been found in association with some forms of apical periodontitis, bacteria are the main microbial etiologic agents of this disease. Bacteria colonizing the root canal are usually organized in communities similar to biofilm structures. Culture and molecular biology technologies have demonstrated that the endodontic bacterial communities vary in species richness and abundance depending on the different types of infection and different forms of apical periodontitis. This review paper highlights the distinctive features of the endodontic microbiota associated with diverse clinical conditions