Bureaucratic entrepreneurship and morality politics: Dividing lines within the state

Based on a qualitative and quantitative research design, this article examines the implementation of a morality policy—the medical cannabis policy in Switzerland—to investigate three understudied aspects of bureaucratic entrepreneurship. First, moving away from mono-professional studies, the focus is on a policy characterized by a dispute between two groups of bureaucrats: physicians and jurists. Second, key conditions triggering bureaucratic policy entrepreneurship are identified, with a focus on mid-level administrative entrepreneurs. Third, vertical alliances between bureaucrats and politicians of the executive and legislative branches are examined and these processes are reflected in the wider perspective of the politics-administration dichotomy. Results show that law obsolescence, disputes between groups of bureaucrats and the need for political arbitration are favorable conditions for bureaucratic policy entrepreneurship. The study also shows that within the traditional separation of powers, bureaucratic entrepreneurship reinforces the executive power and creates dividing lines within the different branches of government

Three years of COVID-19 pandemic: Coping with crisis governance in the long term

This special issue of European Policy Analysis on COVID-19 policies follows two previous ones addressing that topic. The first one was published in the fall 2020 to examine the initial reactions of governments to the shock of the crisis (Colfer, 2020), and the second one in fall 2022, to analyze how governance processes had evolved with the prolongation of the crisis (Malandrino & Mavrot, 2022). This spring 2023 marks the 3rd year of the pandemic, which gives us even more hindsight to assess the questions raised by one of the most challenging public health events faced by nations worldwide in the recent past. This new special issues hence gathers contributions that address key transversal issues related to pandemic management: how to integrate scientific evidence into crisis management, and whether the inclusion of evidence even guarantees good outcomes. Is there a national administrative style that can help explain the output performance of crisis management? What does policy learning look like when the policy cycle happens within a reduced timeframe and under high political pressure? How legitimate are the policy instruments implemented during the pandemic in the public's eyes? The questions raised in this special issue are key not only to studying the crash test the pandemic has represented for governments and democracies but also to drawing lessons for future crises that wait around the corner. These crises will no doubt share some common characteristic with the COVID-19 pandemic: the need for arbitration between various policy requirements (e.g., somatic and psychological health needs, public health and the economy), the challenge of adopting sustainable governance principles in the general context of political short-termism, finding a balance between decisive public action and the requirement of democratic processes, the integration of scientific evidence into policy-making processes and the necessity of fighting against skepticism (e.g., corona-skepticism, climate-skepticism)

The local tackling of global issues: a governance paradox in federal states

This study focuses on a paradox of federalism. In disputed policy issues, subnational government units can initiate bottom-up policy change while the federal government remains inactive. This typically occurs in public health or climate change fields, where there might be a mismatch between the required and the effective scale of action. In such cases, subnational entities bear the costs of a politically risky action to produce a higher-level public good. Based on a study of tobacco control in 14 Swiss member states, we investigate why some subnational governments take the lead, while others adopt a wait-and-see attitude. We find a set of four configurations favourable to state activism (window of opportunity effect, reallocation effect, innovative identity effect, regionalisation effect) and four unfavourable (municipal resource burden effect, diffusion of responsibility effect, local autonomy effect, economic dependency effect). These bottom-up dynamics are crucial for understanding collaborative policy processes

Blame-avoidance and fragmented crisis management during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland

This article studies how the prolonged pandemic situation impacted crisis governance in the federalized governance system of Switzerland. It examines how in this acute crisis situation, the responsibility for decision-making fluctuated among governance levels, placing subnational states in a situation of uncertainty that caused a fragmented crisis management, and therefore suboptimal policy learning processes. The study is based on the case of COVID-19 governance in Switzerland, where, as in many other European countries, the management of the first pandemic wave was very centralized. However, the federal government avoided taking a strong lead during the subsequent waves. Consequently, pandemic management was marked by numerous fluctuations regarding who was in charge of the main COVID-19 decisions between the federal and subnational governance levels. A media analysis (February 2020–March 2022) and an analysis of the gray literature show that crisis governance and policy learning processes were scattered across levels of governance, which impeded the accumulation of knowledge and know-how. The article analyses how crises can give way to blame games between the levels of governance, thus hampering a coordinated crisis management and policy learning processes across the different stages of the pandemic

Évaluation : l’indépendance à l’épreuve de la relation entre mandants et mandataires

L’article suivant rend compte des résultats d’un atelier tenu à l’occasion du congrès 2015 de la SEVAL. L’atelier portait sur l’indépendance des évaluateurs et des évaluatrices du point de vue de leur relation avec les commanditaires de l’évaluation. Sur la base d’un exemple de mandat concret présenté par deux intervenants – l’évaluatrice ainsi que le conseiller d’État mandant de l’évaluation en question – les différents garde-fous contractuels, communicationnels et procéduraux aptes à garantir une pleine indépendance de l’évaluation ont été discutés. Il en est ressorti que quatre dimensions étaient cruciales pour le succès de la démarche : les conditions-cadres de l’évaluation, la récolte des données, les relations avec les évalués, ainsi que la phase de restitution des résultats

The Implementation of a Campus Police in Greece. A Breach of the Anti-authoritarian Historical Heritage of Greek Universities : Interview with Filippa Chatzistavrou and Yiorgos Vassalos

Émulations received Filippa Chatzistavrou and Yiorgos Vassalos for an interview on the events currently happening in Greek higher education institutions. Invoking law-and-order purposes, Greek authorities have recently decided to introduce a police corps to public universities. This breach in universities’ autonomy has prompted numerous criticisms and mobilizations of Greek students and university staff. Filippa Chatzistavrou and Yiorgos Vassalos shed light on these events and examine them in the context of the Greek financial crisis and the subsequent privatization trend. Publié: 2023-09-04 Comment citer: Chatzistavrou, F., Vassalos, Y. . et Mavrot, C. (2023) « The Implementation of a Campus Police in Greece. A Breach of the Anti-authoritarian Historical Heritage of Greek Universities: Interview with Filippa Chatzistavrou and Yiorgos Vassalos », Emulations - Revue de sciences sociales, 997. doi: 10.14428/emulations.interviews.05 . Numéro: Rubrique Entretien

Blood, sweat, and cannabis: real-world policy evaluation of controversial issues

The motivation of this article is to address the ambivalent position of policy analysis when it intervenes in the real-world policy process through policy evaluation. It tackles the underresearched question of the challenges faced by policy analysis in relation to applied research mandates. It argues that policy analysis is constantly at risk of instrumentalisation by politico-administrative players. The article is based on the evaluation of the medical cannabis policy in Switzerland as a case study. The results point out four specific challenges faced by applied policy analysis: political pressure, scientific integrity, access to sensitive data, and epistemic legitimacy. However, applied policy analysis can contribute to de-escalating controversies by presenting a bigger and contextualised picture of the considered political issues. Policy evaluation can identify deficient implementation processes, but also wider mismatches among legislative and societal processes. Hence, although evidence is subordinated to other factors in the decision-making process, evaluations provide an outside perspective, which can help solving controversies around policies. The article contributes to the literature on the politics of policy analysis by showing that confronting policy analysis with practical problems brings both scientific and policy benefits

Prisons en Afrique. Manifestation spatiale du pouvoir et ordre négocié

Émulations reçoit Marie Morelle, spécialiste du phénomène carcéral au Cameroun et à Madagascar. Cet entretien est l’occasion d’aborder des questions de régulation politique des inégalités sociales et de circula-tion internationale des modèles punitifs, mais aussi d’interdisciplinarité et de décentrement du regard Nord-Sud dans la production des analyses scientifiques. Marie Morelle est maitresse de conférences, HDR en Géographie, à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne (UMR Prodig). Elle est actuellement détachée à l’IRD au Cameroun et en accueil à la Fondation Paul Ango Ela. Ses travaux articulent géographie politique et géographie urbaine à partir d’entrées empiriques telles que la prison et la police, l’informalité économique et politique en Europe (France) et en Afrique (Cameroun). Elle est l’autrice notamment de La rue des enfants, les enfants des rues (CNRS Editions, 2007), Yaoundé carcérale, Géographie d’une ville et de sa prison (ENS éditions, 2019). Elle a dirigé avec Frédéric Le Marcis et Julia Hornberger l’ouvrage collectif Confinement, Punishment and Prisons in Africa (Routledge, sous presse), issu du programme « Économie de la peine et de la prison en Afrique » (ANR, 2015-2019)

Les interfaces de l’action publique : gérer, décider, contester

Ce numéro spécial a pour ambition d’opérer un retour sur une série de modalités de l’action publique qui, sous des formes récemment observées, ont occupé l’agenda de la recherche sociologique. Il interroge en particulier les mutations des modes de légitimation étatique dont ces formes renouvelées de l’action publique sont révélatrices. Ce dossier est né du constat que si l’État est une institution dont l’emprise sur la société demeure puissante, notamment à travers la concentration de moyens d’intervention conséquents et ce malgré la multiplication des discours sur le retrait de l’État, ses registres d’action ont connu des mutations substantielles dans la période contemporaine. Les frontières de l’État apparaissent particulièrement mouvantes lorsque ce dernier est observé à travers les actes de différentes catégories d’agents, d’institutions ou d’organisations qui le composent, parfois à ses marges. Ces tendances de fond concernent notamment les éléments suivants : délégation accrue de pans entiers de l’action publiqueà des acteurs non-étatiques et mise au point des outils de pilotage que ce mouvement requiert, émergence des politiques dites participatives et constitution concomitante des citoyens en véritables experts-relais des politiques publiques, ciblage accru des populations-cibles de l’intervention publique et processus de spécialisation institutionnelle. Il s’agit alors de comprendre la manière dont ces régimes d’intervention publique sont instaurés par l’État sur de multiples scènes de l’action publique, mais aussi comment ces régimes affectent, en retour, la substance même de l’État. Une telle approche se propose de saisir les négociations, détournements et oppositions dont ces nouvelles manières de faire le politique sont l’objet dans leurs localisations sectorielles