Taking Care of Policy in Times of Crisis: Comparative Lessons from Belgium's Longest Caretaker Government

When the financial crisis hit the Eurozone, Belgium, along with several other countries, postponed its consolidation policies until after the general elections. What followed was the longest caretaker rule that any stable democracy had ever experienced. This article analyses the phenomenon of policy continuity and change during this double crisis. It illustrates how the exogenous economic crisis overrode the endogenous political crisis, showing the extent to which international policy determinants expanded the remit of caretaker policy-making. At the same time, our analysis of the nature of caretaker conventions, the nature of multi-level governance, the permanence of administrative personnel, and the re-invention of parliament offers opportunities to draw lessons and deepen comparative research on policy termination and maintenance in the face of crisis

Belgium

The dual organization of Belgium’s federal state has created a complex institutional setting. Belgium has noless than six governments and six parliaments, of which five are active at the subnational level. In addition,each of the governments relies on its proper administration. In this entry, we describe the main features ofBelgium’s state structure and its politico-administrative setting. This description provides the backgroundto understand how and to what extent government continuity and urgent issues could be addressed duringthe country’s longest period of caretaker government (541 days) at the federal level in 2010–2011.The politics and administration of institutional chang

Denktanks in België: onbekend en onbemind?

De afgelopen jaren zien we een sterke toename van het aantal denktanks in verschillende landen. Ook ons land ontsnapt niet aan deze trend. Los van de denktanks die zich louter op de Europese Unie richten, hebben sinds 2000 een tiental nieuwe denktanks het licht gezien in België. In tegenstelling tot andere landen lijkt de rol van deze organisaties in ons politiek systeem echter eerder beperkt. In dit stuk bekijken we het fenomeen ‘denktank’ van naderbij en maken we een balans op van het huidige denktank-landschap. Wat maakt een organisatie tot denktank? Wat zijn de centrale kenmerken van denktanks in België? En waarom zijn ze niet méér aanwezig in het politieke en maatschappelijke debat?The politics and administration of institutional chang

Polder politics under pressure: the advisory roles of political scientists in the Netherlands

Political science in the Netherlands has a long tradition and a history of institutionalization. It developed as a broad discipline, together with public administration, and grew into separate research and education programmes. Does this segmented nature of political science appear in the external activities of those scholars concerned? Or is the overall consensus-style and neo-corporatist (‘polder’) advisory system in which political scientists are placed a more important determinant? What about developments in the policy advisory system itself, pressures on institutions and trends in the environment and their consequences for the supply and demand of scholarly political science advice? These are the central questions we examine in this chapter. We first present the development of the discipline in the country. Then we look at the main features and trends of the advisory system and the niche occupied by political scientists. As we will show on the basis of the survey results, political scientists in the Netherlands gauge their visibility and their social and political impact as relatively high, and a large majority of them engage in advisory activities. Our findings also highlight that the effects of the segmented structure of political science on the type of advisory role are relatively limited. The politics and administration of institutional chang

Trust, but verify? Understanding citizen attitudes toward evidence-informed policy making

In this article, we inquire to what extent different manifestations of trust are associated with public support for evidence informed policy making (EIPM). We present the results of a cross-sectional survey conducted in the peak of the second COVID-19 wave in six Western democracies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States (N = 8749). Our findings show that public trust in scientific experts is generally related to positive attitudes toward evidence-informed policy making, while the opposite is the case for trust in governments and fellow citizens. Interestingly, citizens' assessment of government responses to COVID-19 moderates the relationship between trust and attitudes toward EIPM. Respondents who do rather not trust their governments or their fellow citizens are more in favor of EIPM if they evaluate government responses negatively. These findings suggest that attitudes toward EIPM are not only related to trust, but also strongly depend on perceived government performance.The politics and administration of institutional chang

De impact van performance audits van het Rekenhof. Survey bij ambtenaren van de federale overheid.

The politics and administration of institutional chang

Designing for coordination: the case of regulatory management policy

Starting from the paradox that successive waves of reforms have jeopardized the functional coherence of better regulation as a horizontal policy, this chapter highlights the challenge of meta-design of different appraisal procedures and institutions. Indeed, among countries with a long tradition of regulatory management systems, there is an evident proliferation of diverse better regulation objectives pursued by oversight bodies with different mandates. In order to capture the institutional coordination design in specific countries, we identified different theoretical scenarios, ranging from hierarchical coordination to ad hoc, extemporaneous coordination. By way of example, this typology has been applied to analyze how in the UK and the Netherlands better regulation policy tools, procedures and institutions are coordinated. Our analysis revealed some major differences. We show that the UK government lies closer to the hierarchical coordination extreme than the Dutch government. The latter traditionally tends to rely on positive modes of coordination, although informally the neoliberal goal of business deregulation still has a central position in the practices of the Dutch government. Besides these differences, the two governments display similarities in the use of performance metrics to reduce business compliance costs. Yet, whereas business impact targets are established through legislation in the UK, the pivotal role of the Standard Cost Model in the Netherlands is rather informal. Neither of the countries seem to have developed a strategy of coordination in terms of problem solving, which would entail the deployment of particular appraisal tools and institutions depending on a specific issue at stake. The politics and administration of institutional chang

Overheid in transitie(s)? Beleidsrollen en -instrumenten in een transitiecontext

In het themanummer gaan we in op grootschalige systeemveranderingen (‘transities’) en de mogelijke rol die de overheid kan en moet spelen ten aanzien van transities. Vooraleer we putten uit de rijke ervaringen en praktijken in de verschillende beleidsdomeinen, die in de volgende bijdragen van het themanummer aan bod komen, schetsen we in meer algemene zin de (verschuivende?) rol van de overheid en veranderingen met betrekking tot de door haar gehanteerde beleidsinstrumenten. Terwijl meer dwingende, directe en hiërarchische vormen van overheidssturing minder populair lijken te worden en er vaker naar ‘softe’ sturing wordt gegrepen, blijft overheidssturing ook vandaag nog vaak een combinatie van hiërarchie, markt en netwerk. We ronden deze bijdrage af met enkele richtvragen over de rol van de overheid ten aanzien van transities, die we voorleggen aan onderzoekers betrokken bij verschillende beleidsrelevante steunpunten.The politics and administration of institutional chang

Policy learning type shifts during creeping crises: a storyboard of COVID‐19 driven learning in Belgium

Understandings of different policy learning types have matured over recent decades. However, relatively little is known about their nonlinear and interactive nature, particularly within crisis contexts. In this article, we explore how two of the most prominent learning types (instrumental and social) shifted and interacted during the COVID‐19 crisis. To do so, we created a policy learning storyboard of the Belgian COVID‐19 policy response over 2 years (from early 2020 to late 2021). Our analysis highlights the relationships between different epochs of instrumental and social learning throughout the crisis and their implications for policy change. Furthermore, while extant policy learning literature often posits that social learning unfolds over relatively long periods (spanning a decade or more), our empirical account shows that within certain conditions, creeping crises can lead to the creation of long‐term crisis policy‐making paradigms and goals. At this level, accelerated social learning can take place and lead to paradigmatic shifts within relatively shorter periods than in noncrisis conditions. Theoretically, our findings enhance our understanding of policy learning types and their relationships with policy change, particularly within crisis contexts.The politics and administration of institutional chang

Understanding evaluation use from an organisational perspective: a review of the literature and a research agenda

Why do some types of evaluation use prevail in certain contexts and not in others? The aim of this article is to advance knowledge about organisational factors of evaluation use, that is, determinants of evaluation use grounded in organisational theories. We critically review existing frameworks of organisational factors of evaluation use, highlighting key differences between them and pointing out discrepancies with empirical insights. We discuss the merits of two potential areas for future research that can help concretise theoretical stances: considering organisational legitimacy as a potential direct determinant of evaluation use and incorporating a dynamic perspective in organisational frameworks of evaluation use.NWOVl.Veni.211R.060The politics and administration of institutional chang