Plugging the gap between energy policy and the lived experience of energy poverty: five principles for a multi-disciplinary approach

In this chapter, we illustrate the value of a multi-disciplinary approach to energy poverty policy, drawing on insights from research into the lived experience of energy poverty in three European countries. We argue that understanding the lived experience of energy poverty is critical in designing energy policies, which are fair, effective and aligned with people’s daily lives. In addition, we contend that bringing together a range of disciplines to examine dimensions of the lived experience of energy poverty (such as housing, employment, education, social policy, health, energy etc.) is essential to give breadth to our understanding of this challenging, and multi-faceted condition. We propose five principles for policy design, informed by our multi-disciplinary understanding of the lived experience. These principles can be applied at a range of scales (local, regional, national and European) to help ensure that the energy poor are both well served, and represented, by energy policy

Party mandates and the politics of attention:Party platforms, public priorities and the policy agenda in Britain

This paper develops an attention-based model of party mandates and policy agendas, where parties and governments are faced with an abundance of issues, and must divide their scarce attention across them. In government, parties must balance their desire to deliver on their electoral mandate (i.e. the “promissory agenda”) with a need to continuously adapt their policy priorities in response to changes in public concerns and to deal with unexpected events and the emergence of new problems (i.e. the “anticipatory agenda”). Parties elected to office also have incentives to respond to issues prioritized by the platforms of their rivals. To test this theory, time series cross-sectional models are used to investigate how the policy content of the legislative program of British government responds to governing and opposition party platforms, the executive agenda, issue priorities of the public and mass medi

The politics of regulatory enforcement and compliance: Theorizing and operationalizing political influences

There is broad consensus in the literature on regulatory enforcement and compliance that politics matters. However, there is little scholarly convergence on what politics is or rigorous theorization and empirical testing of how politics matters. Many enforcement and compliance studies omit political variables altogether. Among those that address political influences on regulatory outcomes, politics has been defined in myriad ways and, too often, left undefined. Even when political constructs are explicitly operationalized, the mechanisms by which they influence regulatory outcomes are thinly hypothesized or simply ignored. If politics is truly as important to enforcement and compliance outcomes as everyone in the field seems to agree, regulatory scholarship must make a more sustained and systematic effort to understand their relationship, because overlooking this connection risks missing what is actually driving regulatory outcomes. This article examines how the construct of “politics” has been conceptualized in regulatory theory and analyzes how it has been operationalized in empirical studies of regulatory enforcement and compliance outcomes. It brings together scholarship across disciplines that rarely speak but have much to say to one another on this subject in order to constitute a field around the politics of regulation. The goal is to sharpen theoretical and empirical understandings of when and how regulation works by better accounting for the role politics plays in its enforcement

Introduction:strategy in EU foreign policy

The point of departure for the special collection is provided by the observation that the growing complexity of the crises in the neighbourhood and the internal ones faced by the Union provides a sense of urgency to any type of strategic thinking that the EU might embrace. Against this backdrop, the recent shift towards geopolitics and strategic thinking is contextualized and the understanding of key aspects of ways in which the shift is translated into strategies by EU actors is put forward. The analysis recognizes the recent developments within the institutional dimension of EU’s foreign and security policy, yet it confirms the fundamental meaning of the member states’ willingness to invest resources and harmonize their foreign policy strategies at the EU level

Understanding the (non-)Use of Societal Wellbeing Indicators in National Policy Development : What Can We Learn from Civil Servants? A UK Case Study

Gross Domestic Product is often used as a proxy for societal well-being in the context of policy development. Its shortcomings in this context are, however, well documented, and numerous alternative indicator sets have been developed. Despite this, there is limited evidence of widespread use of these alternative indicator sets by people working in policy areas relevant to societal wellbeing. Civil servants are an important group of indicator end-users. Better understanding their views concerning measuring societal wellbeing can support wider discussions about what factors determine indicator use and influence in policy decision-making. Taking the UK as a case study, we ask what views exist among civil servants in the UK about measuring societal well-being? To answer this question, we used a bootstrapped Q methodology, interviewing 20 civil servants to elicit their views about measuring societal well-being. Three distinct discourses emerged from our analysis: one that was concerned about the consequences of ignoring natural, social and human capital in decision making; one that emphasised opportunity and autonomy as key determinants of well-being; and one that focused on the technical aspects of measuring societal well-being. Each of these discourses has direct implications for the way that we integrate societal wellbeing into policy making and highlights the potential benefits of including end-users in indicator development and strategy