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Sorting through the garbage can: under what conditions do governments adopt policy programs?

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  • Fritz Sager
  • Yvan Rielle

Abstract

The paper aims at explaining the adoption of policy programs. We use the garbage can model of organizational choice as our theoretical framework and complement it with the institutional setting of administrative decision-making in order to understand the complex causation of policy program adoption. Institutions distribute decision power by rules and routines and coin actor identities and their interpretations of situations. We therefore expect institutions to play a role when a policy window opens. We explore the configurative explanations for program adoption in a systematic comparison of the adoption of new alcohol policy programs in the Swiss cantons employing Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The most important conditions are the organizational elements of the administrative structure decisive for the coupling of the streams. The results imply that classic bureaucratic structures are better suited to put policies into practice than limited government. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2013

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  • Fritz Sager & Yvan Rielle, 2013. "Sorting through the garbage can: under what conditions do governments adopt policy programs?," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 46(1), pages 1-21, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:policy:v:46:y:2013:i:1:p:1-21
    DOI: 10.1007/s11077-012-9165-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    5. Fritz Sager, 2009. "Governance and Coercion," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57, pages 537-558, October.
    6. Fritz Sager, 2009. "Governance and Coercion," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(3), pages 537-558, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sager, Fritz & Bürki, Marietta & Luginbühl, Jennifer, 2014. "Can a policy program influence policy change? The case of the Swiss EnergieSchweiz program," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 352-365.
    2. Sabine Saurugger & Fabien Terpan, 2016. "Do crises lead to policy change? The multiple streams framework and the European Union’s economic governance instruments," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 49(1), pages 35-53, March.
    3. Michael Howlett & Ishani Mukherjee, 2014. "Policy Design and Non-Design: Towards a Spectrum of Policy Formulation Types," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 2(2), pages 57-71.
    4. Rui Mu & Junting Jia & Wancong Leng & Maidina Haershan & Jiwei Jin, 2018. "What Conditions, in Combination, Drive Inter-Organizational Activities? Evidence from Cooperation on Environmental Governance in Nine Urban Agglomerations in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-16, July.

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