CPSA/CAPPA section on Public Administration

K17 - Workshop: Innovations in Policy Design: Nudges and Beyond (2)

Date: Jun 1 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location: Classroom - CL 317 Room ID:15768

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jeremy Rayner (University of Saskatchewan)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Michael Howlett (Simon Fraser University)

Explaining Divergence in Policy Development: Policy Feedback and the Development of Refugee Status Determination Procedures: Nicholas Alexander Rymal Fraser (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Previous studies have shown that receiving countries exert a considerable degree of discretion in adjudicating refugee clams. In many ways, there has been a convergence of deterrence measures and the use of bureaucrats to hear and decide refugee claims. Despite this convergence of policy instruments, there is a considerable variation in asylum recognition rates that few studies have addressed. Hamlin (2014) argues that it is the way in which refugee status determination (RSD) procedures are designed as policy instruments and settings that shapes the degree to which they grant protection to asylum-seekers. Similarly, Hamlin and Wolgin (2012) demonstrate that judicial and bureaucratic actors played a key role in the development of American RSD procedures through reframing the policy debate to include a more expansive definition of refugee. These studies provide a useful starting point for understanding how RSD procedures but do not address why many developed countries had similar RSD procedures in the 1980s but diverged considerably by the 1990s and 2000s. This paper seeks to explore the following questions: first, what political factors have shaped the institutional development of RSD in countries with higher and lower recognition rates? I use process-tracing to examine how the initial design of RSD procedures were largely preserved or radically reformed due to positive or negative policy feedback. My paper focuses on developed countries with legacies of generous or strict asylum recognition rates that started out with similar institutional designs of RSD including: Canada, the UK, Japan and South Korea.

Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act: Daniel Béland (University of Saskatchewan), Phillip Rocco (Marquette University), Alex Waddan (Leicester University)
Abstract: There is a large body of literature devoted to how “policies create politics” and how feedback effects from existing policy legacies shape potential reforms in a particular area. Although much of this literature focuses on self-reinforcing feedback effects that increase support for existing policies over time, Kent Weaver and his colleagues (Jacobs and Weaver 2015; Oberlander and Weaver 2015) have recently drawn our attention to self-undermining effects that can gradually weaken support for such policies. The following contribution explores both self-reinforcing and self-undermining policy feedback in relationship to the Affordable Care Act, the most important health care reform enacted in the United States since the mid-1960s. More specifically, the paper draws on the historical institutionalist literature on policy feedback to reflect on the political fate of the ACA since its adoption in 2010. Exploring policy design issues, we argue that, due in part to its sheer complexity and fragmentation, the ACA generates both self-reinforcing and self-undermining feedback effects that, depending of the aspect of the legislation at hand, can either facilitate or impede conservative retrenchment and restructuring.

Old Instruments Never Die: Cases of Policy Design: Luc Bernier (University of Ottawa), Patrice Dutil (Ryerson University), Taieb Hafsi (HEC Montreal)
Abstract: The current debate on policy instruments has been more on "soft" instruments, about nudging and related topics. More traditional instruments such as Crown corporations have been less often studied lately. Despite decades of privatization, this instrument still exists but it is not clear that the policies they are supposed to implement have kept pace. In a comparative study of Quebec, Ontario and the federal government on economic development tools such as Investissement Quebec and the BDC and their equivalent, this paper offers an analysis of instruments without policy. Instruments exist but for which policy? Not only are they operating in a very similar context, they also face policy neglect from their "ministère de tutelle". By looking at the different use done by the three governments under the same system, we think that there are interesting lessons to be learned about policy instruments. It is an interesting illustration that innovation might be less the issue than reinvention and redesign of policy.