Co-authorship networks in Swiss political research

Co-authorship is an important indicator of scientific collaboration. Co-authorship networks are composed of sub-communities, and researchers can gain visibility by connecting these insulated subgroups. This article presents a comprehensive co-authorship network analysis of Swiss political science. Three levels are addressed: disciplinary cohesion and structure at large, communities, and the integrative capacity of individual researchers. The results suggest that collaboration exists across geographical and language borders even though different regions focus on complementary publication strategies. The subfield of public policy and administration has the highest integrative capacity. Co-authorship is a function of several factors, most importantly being in the same subfield. At the individual level, the analysis identifies researchers who belong to the “inner circle” of Swiss political science and who link different communities. In contrast to previous research, the analysis is based on the full set of publications of all political researchers employed in Switzerland in 2013, including past publications

a case study comparison of natural hazard prevention

Climate change affects increasingly the management of natural resources and has diverse impacts of environmental, social and economic nature. To take this complexity into account, climate change adaptation policies consider the principle of sustainable development. Sustainability is an integrative concept which should insure a long-term and multi-sectoral response to climate change. But the question appears if sustainable development is only retained at the conceptual level or effectively implemented in practice. This paper pursues this question by comparing three projects addressing natural hazard in Swiss mountains. The aim is to investigate how sustainable development is perceived by involved stakeholders and implemented in practice. Two dimensions are thus taken into account: the type of actors participating in these projects and their preferences and interests. The first dimension thus analyzes if diverse actors representing the environmental, economic and social arenas are integrated; the second dimension investigates if different interests and preferences in the sense of sustainability were incorporated in the design and implementation of climate change adaptation. Data were gathered through a standardized survey among all actors involved in the three projects. Preliminary results show that sustainability receives diverse weight and interest in the different cases

Treating Policy Brokers Seriously: Evidence from the Climate Policy

The advocacy coalition framework (ACF) pays special attention to "so-called” policy brokers when explaining policy change. However, this prominent policy approach neither clearly defines who the policy brokers are nor identifies under which institutional rules they have an influence on policy processes and outputs. This article thus formulates two theoretical hypotheses that complement the ACF and then proceeds to undertake the first empirical testing of these hypotheses within the Swiss climate policy (1990-2008). The empirical results show that, in the case under investigation, the strategic interest-based behavior of two policy brokers (i.e., one public administration and one political party), as well as two institutionalized veto points (i.e., optional referendum and parliamentary committee), are crucial factors explaining policy brokers' influence on policy process and chang

Public, Private, or Inter-Municipal Organizations: Actors’ Preferences in the Swiss Water Sector

To improve sustainable service provision, the public sector has been repeatedly subject to administrative reforms. Yet, the question arises of which types of organizations might be preferred. To address this, we systematically analyze which water supply organizations decision-makers and stakeholders, across different levels of government in Switzerland, prefer. We find that the actors prefer public organizations that involve coordination between municipalities and reject private organizations. Distinguishing between different actor levels reveals a distinct pattern, mainly related to the level of responsibility: the national (confederation) and regional (cantonal) actors only prefer coordination across municipalities, where local politicians lose a degree of control. In contrast, the local actors prefer those organizations where they can maintain democratic control the most. However, such organizations are not expected to perform sustainably, mainly because of lengthy decision-making processes, lack of access to external funds, and short-term financial planning. We, thus, conclude that, at the local level, there is potentially a trade-off between democratic values and performance

Actors and issues in climate change policy: The maturation of a policy discourse in the national and international context

Policy discourses are important platforms for political actors to express their preferences on certain issues and are usually linked to a specific policy subsystem. From a research perspective, they have the potential to indicate ideological coalitions, policy change and learning. Using discourse network analysis, we identify core policy actors, issues, and coalitions in Switzerland’s climate policy discourse and investigate how they have evolved over the past 15 years. In line with the policy process literature, we expected to see more stability than change in the discourse linked to the mature climate policy subsystem. However, our results have shown that policy discourses are more volatile than policy subsystems, and that national and international policy developments are able to trigger change, particularly in terms of the configuration of actor coalitions and the issues discussed

The role of actors' issue and sector specialization for policy integration in the parliamentary arena: an analysis of Swiss biodiversity policy using text as data

The role of the parliamentary arena and members of parliament (MPs) therein for both mainstreaming and cross-sectoral policy integration is largely unknown. Studying the case of Switzerland, this paper analyzes the integration of the biodiversity issue into policies of 20 different policy sectors over a period of 19 years to assess how two specific actor attributes—issue and sector specialization—increase the chances of MPs of engaging in both biodiversity mainstreaming and its cross-sectoral integration. The results based on a comprehensive collection of political documents from the parliamentary arena, and multilevel regression models show that an increase in MPs' sector specialization is associated with both a decrease in mainstreaming and a decrease in cross-sectoral integration activities. By contrast, an increase in issue specialization typically translates into biodiversity-related activity in a larger number of sectors. In the parliamentary arena, therefore, it is primarily a small group of “issue specialists” who take responsibility for the integration of crosscutting issues, such as biodiversity, into critical sectoral policies

Combining the Institutional Resource Regime (IRR) framework with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) for a better understanding of environmental governance processes: The case of Swiss wind power policy

This article demonstrates the analytical added value of combining the Institutional Resource Regime (IRR) approach with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). To this end, we use the example of Swiss wind power policy and demonstrate the necessity of combining the two theoretical frameworks so as to understand why a more supportive policy regime (market incentives, clearer environmental regulations, inter-sectoral coordination mechanisms) for Swiss wind power during the 2000s and 2010s, did not lead to an increase in the number of wind turbines in Switzerland. In order to evaluate the explanatory capacity of such a theoretical combination, we analyze and compare two cases of wind power policy implementation: the successful case of Mont-Crosin and the failure of Tramelan. More concretely, we first analyze each of the cases through the institutional lenses of the IRR framework. After assessing IRR explanatory capacities and shortcomings, we then test the explanatory added value of the ACF and demonstrate that policy beliefs and advocacy coalitions are central explanatory factors of wind power project siting success or failure. We conclude by discussing the theoretical potential of combining the two frameworks in a future research agenda

Fracking in the UK and Switzerland: why differences in policymaking systems don’t always produce different outputs and outcomes

We address a key puzzle in policy studies: why don't major differences in political systems and policy produce major differences in policy processes, outputs, and outcomes? We show why key aspects of fracking policy are similar in the UK and Switzerland despite the UK majoritarian government being ‘all out for shale' and Switzerland's consensus democracy favouring moratoriums. We use the ‘advocacy coalition framework' and new survey data to show why differences in UK and Swiss processes are subtle. In both cases, actors cooperate and compete with each other by sharing information within and across coalition