Catalina Vélez
II. Antecedentes de la Educación Intercultural en el Ecuador
As should be clear from chapter 3, I did not specify the explanatory mechanisms of decider salience and aid salience shocks ex ante. Rather, the theory of aid policy change I present in detail in section 4.3 of this chapter was developed via an inductive process. The building and refinement of the explanatory mechanisms at the heart of my theory of aid policy changed emerged from “inductively from close study” of the cases (Bennett and Checkel 2015a, Loc 413). As I “immerse[d] [my]self in the in the details of the case[s]” (Bennett and Checkel 2015a, Loc 527), I searched “for all kinds of information about the temporal unfolding of the causal-process [in order to] present a comprehensive storyline” (Blatter and Haverland 2012, 30, emphasis added) of aid policy change. As Welch (2005, 23) counsels, I needed to determine if there were “any patterns in the way in which decisionmakers perform the basic tasks of processing information and making choices that can constitute explanations…” of aid policy change.
As I grappled with how to craft analytical narratives129 about aid policy change, I began to
appreciate the explanatory utility of examining aid policy change through the ‘agenda lens’ (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014b). The appreciation of this ‘pattern’ of decisionmaker behaviour grew over time, beginning with my becoming acquainted with the concept of issue salience, initially via the work of Kai Oppermann130. This led me to engage more broadly with
the agenda-setting literature, notably the work of John Kingdon (1995) and frequent collaborators Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones (1991, 1993).
The agenda-setting literature provided the conceptual infrastructure on which to build the explanatory mechanisms that underpin the theory of aid policy change this thesis advances. Mechanisms-based explanations of complex phenomenon are becoming increasing popular, especially for qualitative scholars (George and Bennett 2005, 135; Bennett 2013; Bennett and Checkel 2015b; Checkel 2016). Part of the attraction of “theorising in terms of mechanisms”, argues Checkel (2016, 3), is that it “gives us more determinate, empirically accurate pictures of the social world.”
I adhere to the definition of ‘causal mechanisms’ advanced by Bennett (2013, 466): “‘ultimately unobservable physical, social, or psychological processes through which agents with causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts or conditions, to transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities,’
129 This term is taken from George and Bennett (2005, 211), who describe ‘analytical explanation’ as a distinct type
of process tracing which seeks to convert “historical narrative into an analytical causal explanation couched in explicit theoretical forms.”
130 In particular, Oppermann (2010), Oppermann and Viehrig (2011b), Oppermann and De Vries (2011) and
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Page99 thereby changing the latter entities’ ‘characteristics, capacities, or
propensities in ways that persist until subsequent causal mechanisms act upon it’.”131
Notice how this definition captures how mechanisms-based explanation aligns closely with the research priorities I have been discussing. Mechanisms-based explanations: apply within circumscribed domains (“in specific contexts or conditions”); are actor-specific (“agents with causal capacities”); and they prioritise explanation rather than parsimony132.
Beyond these characteristics, Bennett (2013, 461) highlights “two key functional roles” that mechanisms play. First, mechanisms “provide a framework for cumulative theoretical progress”. Second, mechanisms constitute “a useful, vivid, and structured vocabulary for communicating findings to fellow scholars, students, political actors, and the public.” This second role is especially relevant for my purposes. A key claim of this thesis is that scholars, policymakers and activists have had trouble understanding why aid policy changes because they have been looking in the wrong places. The vivid nature of mechanisms provides a powerful way of communicating the essence of an alternative conception of how aid policy dynamics function.
The twin mechanisms underpinning my theory of aid policy change are devices that trace “levels of attention to issues within government over time” (Baumgartner, Green-Pedersen, and Jones 2006b, 959). While employing such an approach is unique in the scholarship on aid, it is common in the agenda-setting literature. Green-Pedersen and Walgrave (2014b, 2) relate how the core of the policy-agenda tradition “consists of case studies showing that an understanding of agenda dynamics is crucial for understanding how and why decisions are made”. In the sense that this thesis examines agenda dynamics in the aid policy subsystem, it represents a contribution to the study of policy agendas.
The agenda-setting literature is heavily focused on domestic policy. The role of political attention in influencing foreign policy has been relatively ignored. According to Wood and Peake (1998, 181), this is “undoubtedly because foreign policy is fundamentally different from domestic policy and requires a different rationale for explaining the rise and fall of issue attention.” This thesis goes a step further, and distinguishes what it is that makes aid policy dynamics different than foreign policy dynamics more broadly. While this idea is not groundbreaking—“the idea that agenda setting and leadership dynamics differ across issues is an old one” (J. S. Peake 2016, 318)—the implications of this reality have not been have not explored in the realm of aid policy.
131 This block quote contains numerous inverted commas because Bennett creates this definition in part by relying
on previous work undertaken with Alexander George (George and Bennett 2005, 137).
132 “[O]ne of the main costs of focusing IR theorizing on causal mechanisms”, acknowledges Bennett (2013, 467) is
Chapter 4
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In the upcoming section (section 4.2), I explain how I selectively bring to bear some of key concepts and ideas from the agenda-setting literature in order to comprehend aid policy decisionmaking dynamics. Although it would have been possible, and likely illuminating, to frame my explanation of aid policy change around existing frameworks this literature offers, I have resisted doing so. (That said, in the comparative analysis at chapter 8, I discuss further how concepts already briefly mentioned, including policy entrepreneurship, policy gatekeepers and veto players relate to and partially overlap with the concepts I advance). Most clearly, I could have employed John W. Kingdon’s (1995) ‘multiple streams approach’, outlined in his classic Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, first published in 1984. Kingdon models how three categories of independent variables, which he terms the problem stream, the policy stream and the politics stream, come together at critical junctures to produce “windows of opportunity” for agenda setting133. His approach has been widely adopted to understand agenda-setting in
comparative policy analysis. In the thirty years since its emergence, it has been used to examine over 300 cases (Béland and Howlett 2016, 223), including aid policy (Travis and Zahariadis 2002). The fact that scholars continue to grapple with the framework testifies to its ongoing relevance (Béland and Howlett 2016).
There is considerable crossover with Kingdon’s approach in the theory I propose. For example, Kingdon’s identification of the role of policy entrepreneurs, “who are willing to invest their resources in pushing their pet proposals or problems” resonates closely with my explanation of decider salience134. That said, there are important distinctions between the theory I propose and
Kingdon’s multiple streams approach. Most significantly, my conceptualisation of aid policymaking operates from the inside-out. That is, I see change as being initiated by an individual decisionmaker after which domestic and international constraints mediate the ongoing change process. Kingdon views change as occurring via more of an outside-in perspective, whereby domestic and international constraints align at times to create opportune occasions for actors to exercise agency. Furthermore, my analysis of the issue area characteristics of aid (section 4.4) suggest that the realm of aid policy decisionmaking is rarely impacted by what Kingdon refers to as the ‘problem stream’—which relates to how the public senses government action is required to solve a policy problem. Instead, I argue that the low salience of aid means that the public does not pay attention to aid and, consequently, neither do political actors. (Note that I make a defence of these claims, which are controversial, later in
133 For a recent summary of this Kingdon’s multiple streams approach and its impact, see Béland and Howlett
(2016).
134 This highlights how I could have also chosen to frame my empirical material around the concepts of ‘norm
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Page101 the chapter, at section 4.4.1). Before mounting this argument, however, it is first necessary to relate how the politics of attention influences the political agenda and, in turn, drives policy change. It is this subject to which I now turn.
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