Anexo I.4.4.A Adenda 1: Línea base flora y
TERCER TRIBUNAL AMBIENTAL N° de especies de
After having reviewed various types of explanation and having stated their inability to explain significant reforms in the German context, this section will pave the way for my proposed solution to the puzzle stated earlier. In doing so, I will firstly describe some recent approaches that have
The Puzzle of Institutional Stability versus Significant Welfare State Reforms
ventured beyond a sole focus on institutions in explaining welfare state reform - as my contribution also strives to do. Secondly, I will take a closer look at the contribution of idea-based explanations of change, and in a last step, explain why we should consider ideational leadership when explaining the politics of structural welfare state change.
1.6.1 Beyond Mainstream Institutional Approaches
Since the point of departure of this study is the dominance of approaches that emphasize the weight of institutions and related processes of path-dependence and lock-in, reform explanations can also be viewed in terms of their theoretical closeness or, conversely, their distance to institutionalist perspectives. While classifications of this kind are always, to some extent, subjective, we may roughly distinguish explanations, which allow for complementary factors whilst still (to a larger or lesser extent) acknowledging institutional factors, and those which, by looking explicitly at the influence of politics, wish to shed more light on the “how” of substantial welfare state change. Contrasting these two groups paves the way for my argument about explanatory factors that the previous typology of explanations did not contain, namely political actors and ideas.
A considerable body of welfare state scholarship echoes the resilience arguments of Esping- Andersen and Pierson. A first group of analysts ascribes considerable importance to the notion of institutional resistance, while formulating hypotheses based on other explanatory factors that may play a significant role in the politics of welfare state reform: their theorizing goes beyond Pierson’s (1996) limited discussion of strategies of blame avoidance with a view to effecting reform. The role of strategic configurations of party systems, corporatism and social pacts in shaping responses to reform pressures, may serve as examples here (Palier; Béland 2005; Starke 2006). Moreover, Pierson’s more recent insight that the politics of reform may differ, according to the type of welfare state regime in which it is taking place (Pierson 2001a), falls into this group.
The second cluster of studies goes one step further by challenging the dominance of institutions in explanatory approaches. These authors raise the question whether and, if so, how other political factors may play a considerable role in restructuring processes (although they vary in their claims on how important their influence is). Analyses of political agency and leadership strategies (Ross 2000a), party politics (Ross 2000b, Levy 1999, Green-Pedersen 2001), policy discourses (Cox 2001, Schmidt 2002a, 2002b), and opportunities for politicians to frame unpopular reform initiatives (Ross 2000a) belong to this category. In addition, a whole range of analyses seeking to explore significant changes in welfare provision has been inspired by the literature on policy learning and public policy analysis (Goldstein and Keohane 1993; Braun and Busch 1999; Blyth 2003). These latter analysts have also employed policy-learning concepts in theoretical and empirical accounts of welfare restructuring processes (Ross 2000a; Cox 2001; Schmidt 2002b). By doing so, they have contributed to shifting the focus in welfare state research from status quo analysis towards exploring the conditions under which structural reforms do occur. At the same time, they usually pay attention to institutional constraints without overstating their power. From these policy learning approaches, there is only a small step to another explanatory category, which has been the most recent addition to the literature (cf. Chabal 2003; Béland 2005), namely ideas.
1.6.2 Ideational Factors and Welfare State Change
Ideational factors usually refer to the role of ideas, norms and values in policy-making (see for an overview Hahm, Jung et al. 2004). In this context, it has been suggested that ideas may be
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instruments37 in political actors’ strategies to overcome reform blockades. For instance, politicians can use them to justify potentially unpopular restructuring measures by serving to overcome reform hurdles such as a parliamentary opposition reluctant to consent to a specific reform. Furthermore, ideas can serve as “road maps” to policy-makers, helping them to select feasible policy strategies out of a larger set of policy options (Thompson 1994). Moreover, they can ‘give content to preferences and thus make action explicable’ (Gallagher, Laver et al. 2001:702 ).
A growing number of analyses have, of late, focused on the role of framing and discourse in processes of retrenchment and other types of welfare state reform. This study is trying to make a contribution to this literature, as it addresses the role of ideas but considers them in conjunction with the role of political actors and their strategies (see for more detail Chapter 2). To mention a few noteworthy contributions to the framing and discourse literature, Ross looked into the conditions under which politicians can create public understanding for reforms. In her view, successful framing of issues can help politicians push through unpopular policy initiatives (Stiller and Van Kersbergen 2005). Similarly, Cox made a case that in the Netherlands and Denmark, policy-makers had been successful in creating a necessity for change, while in Germany, this condition was supposedly absent. He argues that politicians, who manage to create an “imperative for change”, will be the ones who are able to overcome path-dependency of existing policies and/or institutions (Anderson and Immergut 2005). Finally, Schmidt made an argument for the impact of cognitive and normative discourse on reform outcomes after studying and comparing economic adjustment processes in several advanced welfare states. She argues that such discourse may be an independent explanatory factor in the politics of adjustment, while welfare state reform will not succeed (as in Germany) if such a discourse is absent (Lehmbruch 2000).38
How would these approaches deal with the situation in Germany? Both Schmidt and Cox found, in their respective studies, the absence of a reform-facilitating discourse or a need for change, looking at the period before 2001. In this sense, these two perspectives explain stability rather than change. Regarding Ross’ argument about the condition of successfully framing issues, the question is whether her conditions - based on a case study of the UK under Prime Minister Thatcher - would also hold in the German context. For this, one would need to test her conditions, i.e. frame compatibility (with existing frames), issues which lend themselves to divisive framing, and the trustworthiness and credibility of framing actors, in specific reform processes preceding instances of significant reform. Only then could it be decided whether they have explanatory value, which is why the value of existing ideational approaches cannot be adequately assessed at this stage: it is, at best, mixed.
While the above explanations focus on the role of ideas in the guise of framing and discourse arguments, they also, more or less explicitly, indicate that it is hard to ignore the ways in which ideas get linked to political agency and how the transmission of ideas is carried out by political actors. I will return to this crucial question in Section 1.6.3. While some strive to clarify the influence of ideas, and consider more explicitly how they are linked to policy-makers who use
37
This use of instruments in the sense of argumentative “weapons” or “tools” is not to be confused with the more conventional notion of policy instruments.
38
A recent example of such research in countries other than Germany is Béland (2005). He has underlined the “crucial role of ideas and frames in the construction of reform imperatives and in the elaboration of a coherent reform agenda” in a study (in the context of of the UK and the US of “personal ownership and possessive individualism in the current neo-liberal attempt to restructure modern social policy and encourage the spreading of financial capitalism” (Béland 2005: 35) in the 1980s in the UK by Thatcher, and since 2003 in the USA by George W. Bush (2005: 35).
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them in order to push for reform (Ross, Cox), others are far less explicit on this (Schmidt). This point will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 2. What matters most for the present argument, however, is that some scholars recognize that ideas do play a role in welfare state adjustment, usually in connection with other explanatory factors. The challenge ahead is to learn more about how such processes work. How can we go about this?
1.6.3 Political Agency and Welfare State Change: Towards the Notion of Ideational Leadership
In answering this question, I aim to focus on a combination of explanatory variables on the input side of politics. Having seen that other variables are of little explanatory value in the German context (Section 1.5), including ideational approaches, I consider political agency and ideational factors together to be essential in explaining why institutional barriers to reforms can be overcome. Therefore, my proposition on ideational leadership (IL) implies that influential policy- makers, who make use of ideas to justify policy choice and/or as principles for policy selection, may convince resisting actors of the need for and appropriateness of reform, and are thus able to overcome institutional barriers.39 In the IL analytical framework, key political actors are senior politicians such as cabinet members (cf. Ross 2000b; Maier 2003; Béland 2005). They are assumed to possess the authority to take initiatives on reform proposals and see it as their responsibility to implement them. In addition, the framework relies on the assumption that instead of being pure office-seekers, some politicians tend to be more policy-oriented (Braun and Busch 1999: 342). This study will correspondingly focus on the impact of those policy-makers, who are mostly interested in making an impact on policy (policy-seeking), rather than being focussed on the benefits of office (office-seeking).
The choice for this proposition redirects attention to the relatively underexplored micro- or individual level of analysis, i.e. the role of political agents seen as individual politicians.40 This approach contrasts with the explanations described in Section 1.5, which are found at other levels of analysis (with the possible exception of the work of Cox (2001) and Ross (2000a), as their analyses also highlight individual decision-makers): at the macro-level, which corresponds to the welfare state regime, we can find economic explanations, including arguments about internationalization and globalization, related discursive arguments, and arguments about the influence of political institutions. With regard to the meso-level, which corresponds to the level of welfare state programmes or policies, we can find “politics matters” arguments that include the influence of party-political factors and welfare state institutions.
Regarding the IL approach, which puts individuals at the centre of investigation, rather than politics or institutional characteristics, I am trying to fill a lacuna left by meso- and macro-level approaches, by evaluating whether IL as an individual-level explanation can overcome reform resistance, thus shedding light on the adoption of unexpected reforms. To be more succinct, my intention in this study is not to develop a complex model that combines all possible explanatory
39
This proposition acknowledges that the capacity of policy-makers to do so cannot be seen in isolation from the influence of welfare and political institutions and the role of political parties.
40 Related questions that have recently attracted the interest of scholars are why these agents decide to embark on
electorally risky reforms in the first place (Stiller and Van Kersbergen 2005 and how political competition plays a role in actors’ choice of reform strategies (Anderson and Immergut 2005).
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factors. Instead, I consider it more rewarding to concentrate on one explanatory factor, IL, and evaluate its relative influence vis-à-vis a limited number of contrasting explanations.
There are three points that need clarifying with regard to the relationship between IL and other explanatory factors: Firstly, the IL framework recognizes the impact of (political) institutions, as they shape the (decision) rules of reform processes and, in turn, have the ability to block other actors who have a stake in the status quo of welfare programmes. IL-type actors need to engage in and overcome ensuing resistance. Secondly, in addition to the role played by institutions, I acknowledge the role of political parties in processes of policy change and the struggles with the course of reform that can result both within and between parties (which can form an important source of reform resistance). In particular, there is a possibility that strategic actions of political parties can reinforce (due to the effects of interacting with political institutions) reform obstacles. Germany proves to be a good example of this relationship: the interaction between federal institutions (which imply negotiated solutions) and political parties (which follow a logic of competition) may lead to reform blockades (Blondel 1987). Ideational leaders, in their efforts at structural reforms, will tend to face resistance from party-political sources. Thirdly, I assume that key policy-makers use ideas as “justifying aids” in order to overcome institutional and party-political obstacles. This implies, in relation to the various ontological assumptions behind the role of ideas in policy-making, that my approach recognizes the importance of interests in policy-making, as opposed to more social constructivist-inspired approaches where ideas are seen as logically taking precedence over interests. Finally, even though my focus lies with the micro- level of analysis, it is important to realize that studies of welfare state change employing meso- and macro-level factors have made significant progress in explaining welfare state reforms. However, the point I would like to make is that they cannot explain every single unexpected reform, and, in fact, tend to generate too many contrasting explanations for the same outcome (Stiller and Van Kersbergen 2005).
1.7 Conclusion
This chapter has outlined the puzzle that lies at the core of my project: the unexpected occurrence of structural welfare state reforms in the light of institutionalist approaches. More specifically, I have taken issue with the welfare state stability bias present in the work of Esping-Andersen and Pierson. In my eyes, their theorizing fails to explain adequately the occurrence of major welfare state reforms. Furthermore, despite the predictions of these theorists, advanced welfare states have seen major welfare state reforms in recent years. I have offered a definition of such major but not usually quantifiable reforms, labelled “structural reform”, by drawing upon earlier work on qualitative notions of welfare state change. To illustrate my argument about theoretically unexpected, yet major reforms, I have presented examples from Germany and other advanced welfare states. I have also explained that Germany offers an intriguing context for investigating the occurrence of structural reforms due to its combination of reform obstacles (political and welfare institutions), and salient reform pressures from multiple sources of strain (socioeconomic, fiscal, demographic). All of these factors combine in a perplexing mix of institutional obstacles on the one hand, and large incentives to tackle reforms on the other, while theoretically unexpected but major reforms have even occurred in Germany.
In a brief search for solutions to this puzzle, I have shown that different types of explanations (economic, institutional, party-political), when taken by themselves, cannot satisfactorily account for those reforms in the German context. Finally, I have reconsidered the role of political agency and the ways in which it can be linked to ideational accounts of welfare state change, by
The Puzzle of Institutional Stability versus Significant Welfare State Reforms
introducing a guiding proposition on ideational leadership (IL). The rationale behind IL is linked to the weaknesses of other explanations. Since macro- and meso-level explanatory factors - in the German context - seem to be more appropriate to explain stability than major reforms, the solution to the puzzle may lie in looking for explanations found at the micro-level of analysis, such as IL. The IL concept is based on the insight that it is problematic to ascribe an independent influence to ideas without taking into account what policy-makers do with them. Moreover, it is difficult to show such an autonomous influence empirically. This is because ideas are abstract constructs and cannot “move” around the policy-making arena in the way political actors do. It is more likely to see them linked to an agent in some way or another (Moon 1995; Helms 2000; Goldfinch 2001).
It is important to realize, however, that IL cannot be seen as completely detached from welfare institutions on the one hand, and political-institutional and party-political factors on the other (all of which simply cannot be disregarded or controlled when conducting case study type empirical research). Therefore, it is important to explore and observe how IL interacts with these factors, which, at least in the specific German context, appear to be more reform-obstructing than reform-enabling.