Paradigms in Public Policy

Policy action is driven, shaped and regulated by the ways in which cognitive frames and interests shape and define issues and analyses - and the involvement of particular authorities, experts, problem-definitions and solutions. To understand these processes is particularly important in the realm of democratic policymaking, where agents driven by divergent interests and alternative principles struggle to preserve or reform policy, law, and institutions. This book analyzes continuity and change in EU policy and provides a systematic understanding of the interactions between ideas, organized actors, and institutions in political, administrative and related social processes. The EU policy studies make up a rich empirical territory, ranging from food security and chemicals to energy, climate change, and gender.

Contents: Yves Surel: The Role of Cognitive and Normative Frames in Policymaking - Jane Jenson: Paradigms and Political Discourse: Protective Legislation in France and the United States before 1914 - Peter A. Hall: Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State. The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain - William D. Coleman/Grace D. Skogstad, and Michael M. Atkinson: Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture - Marcus Carson: Mad Cows, Pollutted Poultry, and the Transformation of EU Food Policy - Marcus Carson: From Freely Traded to Product-non-grata: Banning Asbestos in the European Union - Tom R. Burns/Dolores Calvo/Marcus Carson: The «REACH» Saga: A Revolution in Regulating Chemicals - Svein S. Andersen: The Emergence of an EU Energy Policy Paradigm -Tom R. Burns: The Irony of the EU Climate Policy: A Crooked Path to a Paradigm Shift - Dolores Calvo/Tom R. Burns/Marcus Carson: Toward a New Social Order? Mainstreaming Gender Equality in EU Policymaking.