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Nodality in Policy Design: The Impact of Ideas in Two Policy Sectors

Kathleen McNutt

Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy

University of Regina

Regina, Saskatchewan

S4S 0A2 Canada

kathy.mcnutt@uregina.ca

and

Jeremy Rayner

Department of Political Science

University of Regina

Regina, Saskatchewan

S4S 0A2 Canada

jeremy.rayner@uregina.ca

Prepared for the European Consortium for Political Research

Joint Sessions of Workshops, Workshop 2:

Ideas, policy design and policy instruments: casting light on the missing link

Münster, Germany

22-26th

March 2010

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1. Introduction

Confusion about the connection between ideas and policy has a long history. In part, the

confusion stems from the residues of positivism still to be found in contemporary political

science and policy studies. In this tradition, ideas are simply not the kinds of entities that explain

anything – they are dependent rather than independent variables – and any attempt to argue

otherwise is prima facie evidence of „idealism‟. In part, confusion also derives from the

slipperiness of „ideas‟ as a category and from subsequent attempts to transform ideas into

something that could fit into a deterministic explanatory scheme: ideational factors, cultural

variables, attitudes, beliefs, values, and so on. And confusion is increased rather than mitigated

by the development of a parallel, post positivist tradition that has sprung up largely in revolt

against this treatment of ideas with its own vocabulary of conceptual frameworks, réferentiels,

discourses, narratives and paradigms.

Network theorists treat ideas differently arguing that ideas, both novel and persistent, are

embedded in relational contexts among interdependent actors (Borgatti and Cross 2003). The

impact of policy ideas on outcomes and instrument selection is less about the appropriateness or

validity of an idea and more about which actor in the network is championing the idea. Various

network properties, including tie strength, network centralization and actor configurations

influence the flows of information and the production of new ideas (Burt 1992; Granovetter

1973). Actors with a central location in networks have more opportunities to access information

and a greater influence on the dissemination of novel ideas. These nodal actors are granted

privileged status as they are able to shape the supply of ideas by selecting to disseminate their

preferred options while ignoring ideas perceived as unfavorable.

It has been argued that managing networks as a means to influence actors, build

relationships, and manipulate discourse is becoming the preferred governing approach in many

modern policy settings (de Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof 1997; Klijn 1997; Klijn et al. 1995).

Network governance, policy networks and networking have received a great deal of attention in

the past quarter century. While the three are intimately connected they are different concepts

with network governance being a control strategy, while a policy network is a political

organizational outcome, and networking is an activity undertaken to garner social and political

resources. Network governance is defined as “the coordination of interdependent actors from

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public, private and societal sectors for the purposes of developing and implementing public

policy” (Hendriks 2008). In this paper we focus on network governance of policy development

(formulation) rather than the more common focus on implementation. Policy networks, on the

other hand, are sectorally-specific constellations of policy actors and/or organization with

historically embedded power relations, communicative practices and social behaviors shaping

the construction of a collective identity based on an interest in a particular policy area. Finally,

networking is the process of producing relational capital through interaction with other network

actors.

In policy systems where networks are relatively undeveloped, governance arrangements

that appeal to authoritative relationships are common. Policy design is technocratic with

standardized practices and institutional norms conditioning the policy response. As Schneider

and Ingram (1988) describe this process “policy design is less a matter of invention than of

selection” (63). However, in systems where policy networks dominate, policy ideas and policy

design are negotiated through discursive practices and contestation over problem definition and

solutions encourages policy learning. Ideas in the pre-decision process both shape actors

preferences and are shaped by preferential actors. In theory, at least, networks with access to a

more diverse supply of information will increase policy community understanding through

experience-sharing and knowledge-transfer compared with networks where the supply of ideas is

limited.

The aim here is to discover the part that ideas play in the adoption of policy outputs

(strategies and instruments) or what is later described as the “concrete impact of policy ideas” in

network governance arrangements. Ideas are commonly understood to be explanatory factors on

the same order as interests and institutions, giving us the well-known scheme of actors (with

interests), institutions (with goals) and ideas. Setting aside the implication that ideas must be

independent of policy instruments to play this role, note the lack of symmetry between the

independent variables. Actors have interests and institutions have goals (even if only the goal of

survival); but what do ideas have that could provide the same kind of explanatory power?

The answer, we claim, is not to try to solve this puzzle at all but to abandon an

instrumental approach to ideas altogether in favour of ideas as constitutive. Who actors think that

they are and, therefore, what they conceive their interests to be are constituted by the ideas that

they have about themselves and the world that they inhabit, and so it is, mutatis mutandis, for

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institutions. Now, it may be objected at once that those who propose explanations of policy

outcomes in terms of actors, institutions and ideas never imagine otherwise. They do not suppose

that ideas operate in some ghostly realm independent of the agents and institutions that embody

them. The distinction between actors, institutions and ideas, it will be claimed, is an analytical

convenience only. But part of our argument is intended to show just how difficult it is to

maintain this distinction once ideas are introduced into an explanatory scheme alongside actors

and institutions. The temptation is always to try to give ideas a causally independent or

instrumental role and, to this extent at least, the post-positivists are right that the role of ideas

will never be properly understood in such an explanatory framework.

A constitutive approach treats ideas as existing at a number of levels, with lower level

ideas partly constituted by the possibilities created at the higher level. Higher level ideas provide

a kind of toolbox from which lower level ideas can be drawn. We believe that this logic is

implied by approaches that use high level concepts such as paradigms, frameworks and

réferentiels. High level ideas provide a “way of thinking” about a problem, not only in the sense

of a source of ideas but also in the sense of an underlying logic which is also captured in

concepts such as storylines and perspectives. Thus, higher level ideas should not be thought of as

causing the adoption of lower level ideas but entailing them. Our basic unit of analysis at this

level will be the “design idea” found in the policy design approach (Schneider and Ingram 1988;

Linder and Peters 1984) and our aim will be to explain how effective network governance

generates and protects design ideas through the process of policy formulation.

In what follows, we will review the treatment of ideas in the policy design approach.

Next, we will sketch an account governance modes and the related governance strategies used to

coordinate actors during policy formulation, distinguishing these strategies from the more

familiar ones employed in policy implementation. We will focus on one of these modes, network

governance and its associated learning strategy, where ideas are accorded a particularly

prominent role and show, with the aid of two case studies, how the dominant instruments of

network governance during policy formulation – nodality and organization – help explain the

adoption of particular “design ideas”.

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2. Policy Design and Policy Outputs

Writing in 1988, Schneider and Ingram could claim with some plausibility that the

principles of policy design, understood as the logic by which a policy hopes to achieve its

objectives, remained uncharted territory. Those working in what subsequently became the policy

design tradition made two key moves that linked the design tradition to other developments in

the policy sciences and ensured its viability as a way of mapping this territory. First, they noted

that the contemporary emphasis on the messiness and creativity of policy making understated the

fact that policies are generally composed of a restricted number of elements in a standard set of

relations with each other. Second, they argued that the substantive features of these elements,

which they referred to as “ideas”, were often copied or developed by analogy from existing

designs that were thought to offer lessons for new designs, an activity that they referred to as

“systematically pinching ideas”(Schneider and Ingram 1988).

The first move connected policy design with other powerful efforts to simplify the

empirical chaos and general mystery of policy making as it is experienced by practitioners, for

example, the stages heuristic or the various classificatory schemes for policy instruments that

were being developed at the same time. It was thus relatively easy to build on these other efforts

to argue that a policy design included a problem definition, from which are derived the goals or

objectives of the policy, and a set of policy tools aimed at meeting those objectives and linked to

them in the policy design by a rationale or causal logic. Finally, there was the argument that

policies have targets, whose behaviours the policy intends to modify in a direction that the

designers believe will solve the original problem. Under the impact of the implementation

literature, the target populations were differentiated to include not just the objects of the policy

(“external targets”) but the implementers themselves (“internal targets”).

Ideas play a key role in every part of the policy design approach. First, despite the

temptation in rationalistic traditions to think in purely analytical terms, problem definition is, in

practice, a highly contested and overtly political process. Here the design tradition quickly linked

to discursive approaches that stressed the importance of framing and the narrative construction of

events. There was a well-known turn by Schneider and Ingram themselves towards the claim that

policy designs were partly adopted as a result of the social construction of target populations.

Above all, the design approach argues that the real key to policy design is the overall rationale or

logic of the design: the way that its designers imagine that the problem (as constructed) can

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affect the target populated (as constructed) by their choice of instrument(s). When Schneider and

Ingram refer to “systematically pinching ideas”, they rely on their sense of policy design as a

package involving a series of logically and causally related claims and assumptions. It is the

“package-as-idea” or, as we shall call it, the “design-idea” that is being appropriated.

Nonetheless, there is the potential for serious confusion here. “Design” is both a noun and

a verb, a process and an outcome. I can design a design. The design-idea is clearly the outcome

kind of design. If we actually want to study the role of ideas in producing policy outputs it is the

role of ideas in the design process that should be our focus. In other words, we should be

concerned with policy formulation rather than with the role of ideas in implementation and the

production of on the ground outcomes. We will refer to efforts to coordinate the design process

as governance strategies

3. Governance Arrangements, Governing Instruments and Governance Strategies

At its core, governing refers to the application of governing resources to shape outcomes.

At the system level, this kind of coordination is achieved by detecting information and effecting

behavior. Christopher Hood‟s (1984) analysis of policy tools suggests that government has four

social resources at its disposal that may be used as incentives and disincentives to manage policy

processes and outcomes. Free of institutional analysis and considerations of technological

capability, his cybernetic categorization of policy instruments into nodality, authority, treasury

and organization explains government as a force acting upon the citizenry and „society‟ as a unit

that responds to government cues (Hood and Margetts 2007).

Hood identifies four broad classes of policy instruments organized around the

administrative aim of each tool. Subsequent work that seeks to connect instrument choice with

outcomes has generally broken down the different instruments within each class. To understand

governance strategies, however, it is best to keep the classification intact. The first class of tools

is nodality, which refers to a government capacity to be centrally located in networks. The

second set of instruments is authority which represents the source of delegated legal and

administrative power. Treasure, the third social resource, is government‟s possession of money

and other fungible assets. Finally organization denotes “the possession of a stock of people with

whatever skills they may have (soldiers, workers, bureaucrats), land, buildings, materials,

computers and equipment, somehow arranged” (Hood and Margetts 2007, 6). These four

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instruments provide government with a variety of administrative capabilities that can be used

different ways and in different circumstances. The four broad classes are further subdivided into

two the two main control mechanisms: detectors and effectors. Detectors are the instruments

used by government to collect information and effectors are the instruments used to influence

societal behavior. Each of the four instruments classes can be used as both effectors and

detectors producing four policy tools for obtaining information and four for influencing

behavior.

There are however limitations to each of the capabilities. Nodality is limited by

credibility. In order for government to see the big picture, act as a figurehead, or operate as an

information clearing house it must be able to communicate messages to intended receivers

effectively, and thus must be perceived as credible by the target. Authority is limited by legal

standing. To use authority effectively governments must have delegated power to make laws and

regulate. Treasure is limited by fungibility. Government must have stocks of money to

effectively create incentives and disincentive. Organization is limited by capacity. Government

must have the capacity to act directly through its physical resource base. The choice of dominant

instruments will depend on the governance arrangements in place.

Many permutations and combinations of possible governance arrangements exist (van

Kersbergen and van Waarden, 2004) but recent studies have focused on four ideal types found in

many jurisdictions and sectors in liberal democratic states. These are the legal, corporatist,

market and network governance arrangements (Considine, 2001; Considine and Lewis 2003).

Each arrangement (see Figure 1 below) has a different focus, form of direction, governance

strategy, strategic instruments and design considerations.

[Figure 1 about here]

Our focus on governance strategies directed at policy formulation is reflected in the last two

columns of figure 1. The dominant governance strategies are the analogues of the dominant

“design ideas” developed by Schneider and Ingram. In their original version, the description of

these design ideas was heavily influenced by the implementation literature of the 1980s. Here we

re-describe them in terms of policy formulation. Note that the first three governance modes all

exploit the authoritative position of government with respect to social actors, albeit with different

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emphases. The authoritative strategy itself is based on a very specialized kind of nodality, the

occupation of the nodal point in a hierarchy from which all authoritative decision-making flows.

The alternatives generated by authoritative strategies tend to be measured against a criterion of

the state‟s own administrative capacity. The capacity building strategy in the corporatist mode

depends on the authority of government to designate certain organizations as the representatives

of key social interests and to bargain with them, building their capacity to perform this function

and to adhere to the resulting agreements where these capacities are lacking. Policy alternatives

will be judged against their political feasibility in the bargaining context. In the incentive

strategy, government uses authority to raise resources which are then employed to coordinate

actors through incentives.

In each of these governance modes, the ultimate aim of coordination is to generate policy

alternatives in the form of “design-ideas”, to choose amongst them, and to determine the logic of

an implementation strategy. In the fourth and final governance mode, however, ideas are not just

the outcome; they are the currency of coordination itself. In network governance, the dominant

instruments are nodality and organization, not authority. Of course, this is not to say that the

learning strategies characteristic of network governance leaves policy formulation to chance.

Administrative control of policy design in network settings is concerned with controlling the idea

search and selection process. Nodality is used as both a detector and effector, with governments

centrally located in networks better able to locate and gather information and to communicate

messages meant to shape behavior. Organization is also both a detector and effector in network

settings as government‟s policy analytic capacity is largely determined by its access to expertise,

while its control over outcomes is shaped by its capacity to organize actors‟ relations. By using

organizational instruments to coordinate relationships among policy actors and nodality to direct

the selection of policy alternatives government can have significant influence over actors‟ self

understandings, learning and policy preferences.

Adoption of a learning strategy, and network governance generally, is usually related to a

perception that problems are pressing and need timely action, but that “neither knowledge about

which actions would alleviate the problem nor widespread support for any particular action

exists” (Schneider and Ingram 1988, 77). As the network governance literature suggests, this

situation could arise as a result of the complexity of the policy problem itself or as a result of its

novel or cross-cutting character. A governance strategy based on one of the other governance

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modes is either impractical or has already produced unsatisfactory outcomes. Given the

immediacy of the problem, considerations of effectiveness will guide the choice of alternatives.

As policy problems increasingly take this form and governments correspondingly adopt

collaborative learning approaches to policy design, steering policy processes has become crucial

to modern governance. There are now few policy areas where networks of state and non-state

actors are not engaged in policy development processes. Nonetheless, there is also a pervasive

unease about both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of policy networks, with policy learning

more often promised than delivered. Understanding that ideas are the currency of network

exchange and the exchange is managed by nodal actors and institutions allow us to demonstrate

that formulation networks are characterized by a struggle over influence. The selection of

alternatives is ultimately driven by the possession of two very traditional resources, nodality and

organization.

4. Case Studies

The governance arrangements depicted in figure 1 and the governance strategies

associated with them are, of course, ideal types. Real world governance arrangements are

typically hybrids of one or more modes. Nonetheless, where network governance is the dominant

mode, the empirical question for formulation network research is who is coordinating the

network and how ideas are shared. Our claim is that, where we find network governance, we

will also find nodality and organization operating as mechanisms of coordination. Nodality is the

critical resource that will allow government to scan all ideas and put back into play its preferred

choices. Organization will enable government to maintain its nodal position but organization can

also provide some stability for design- ideas and protect them from competition. (Kohler-Koch

2002, 9)

To test this claim, we develop a paired-comparative case study design. We choose two

policy areas that exhibit the classic features of complexity, uncertainty and contestation that

typically cause governments to prefer learning designs and to attempt network governance:

climate change and gender equality. Both policy areas exhibit a high degree of

internationalization, with international agreements setting domestic policy objectives. We have

also chosen two jurisdictions that already exhibit problems of coordination across multiple levels

of government, with policy networks operating both horizontally and vertically, Canada and the

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European Union. While the EU has considerable experience with network governance, policy

networks are often poorly developed in Canada and, where they exist, organized at the provincial

rather than federal level. As a result, the federal government tends to operate with a combination

of authoritative and market strategies.

In all four cases, we expect to see a “design idea” adopted as the outcome of learning

approach involving network governance with a clear nodal actor possessing the organizational

resources to maintain nodality in the face of political challenge. Conversely, inability to

converge on a “design idea” or a commitment to business as usual will be related either to

networks that lack nodality or to the adoption of alternative, inappropriate governance strategies,

or both.

4.1 Climate Change

Climate change exhibits all the features that suggest the need for a learning design. In spite of the

rhetoric of certainty around the solutions proposed by various actors, especially climate change

scientists, the best policy instrument mix to meet Kyoto Protocol (KP) targets remains elusive.

States who have met their targets have generally done so as a result of factors largely unrelated

to the explicit mitigation policies that they have adopted. Nonetheless, the existence of

internationally-agreed targets puts a premium on policy effectiveness as a selection criterion.

Mention of the KP introduces the importance of internationalization in climate change policy

design. While it also remains unclear whether meaningful penalties will be applied to states that

miss their targets, at the very least states will be operating in the knowledge that other states,

especially their trade competitors, will be designing policy within the same general framework of

emissions reductions.

Climate change is also a cross-cutting issue where both multi-level governance and

horizontal intersectoral coordination are essential to ensure that gains made in one sector are not

lost in another or that policies directed at one sector do not create perverse incentives or

unexpected outcomes in another. Climate change policy cries out for an integrated strategy and

yet too broad a reach is likely to run up against capacity problems very quickly. Traditional

administrative structures are not necessarily well-adapted to either design or implement

ambitious multi-level, multi-sectoral climate change policies and, in particular, lead jurisdictions

and lead agencies are rarely clearly defined.

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4.1.1. The European Union

While EU climate change policy is a classic policy mix with a variety of policy

instruments and subsectoral climate change policies (Sorrell 2003), the central question must be

the role of ideas in making cap and trade the foundation of the mix. Described by the European

Commission (EC) as “an essential instrument for achieving the medium and long-term emission

reductions that are necessary to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations” (EC 2006, 2), cap and

trade was enacted in the EU framework directive on European Emissions Trading in 2003. The

EU scheme is intended as just the first step in the development of a global carbon market,

described as “a key instrument for tackling climate change” (ibid.).

In terms of policy implementation, cap and trade is clearly a mixed regulatory and

incentive instrument, regulations setting the hard caps, forcing emitters to internalize what would

otherwise be an externality in their production. Trading is intended to maximize the efficiency of

the scheme by pricing CO2 in a market that, in theory, reflects the changing cost of carbon

relative to other factors of production. However, when we switch attention to policy formulation,

that is, the process by which this particular policy output was adopted, the governance strategy

relied on an entirely different set of instruments, namely the exploitation of nodality and

organization characteristic of a learning strategy.

As is well-known, the EC‟s original proposal for tackling climate change was a carbon

tax, while emissions trading was a US-backed position at the international climate change

negotiations. The withdrawal of the US from the KP in 2001 precipitated a crisis. Agreement

amongst the remaining signatories was reached largely by watering down the EU‟s original

requirement that countries meet their obligations primarily through national measures and,

especially, the abandonment of its position that there be an upper limit on permissible emission

reductions through trading. With the failure of the carbon tax to become the key instrument,

victim of intense industry lobbying at both EU and member state levels (Schreurs and Tiberghien

2007), and the possibility of deadlock over similar measures requiring the unanimous consent of

Member States, emissions trading looked increasingly like an idea whose time had come. It fit

nicely with both the theme of competitiveness in EU policy making and the emphasis on the

“polluter-pays” principle in environmental regulation. As an environmental policy measure, it

would require only a qualified majority to be enacted, thus reducing the possibility of a blocking

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coalition of Member States frustrating enactment. However, while a cap and trade scheme

looked a plausible policy alternative, much still needed to be done before it became a “design

idea”.

Very little was actually known about emissions trading at the time. The US had some

experience with a sulphur dioxide cap and trade program that began in 1995 and some Member

States, notably Denmark and the UK, had begun experiments of their own. However, neither

provided the kind of guidance that would be needed to design a cap and trade policy of the scope

and complexity envisaged for an EU-wide CO2 scheme. The outcome was a learning strategy

conducted largely through networks. As Braun (2009) concludes: “it was the necessity for

learning – the exchange of knowledge – which was the point of origin for the emergence of an

(informal) policy network on emissions trading” (478). The nodal actor in this network was DG

Environment and the network was composed largely of consultancies, such as the Foundation for

Environmental Law and Development, environmental NGOs, including US NGOs such as

Environmental Defense who saw the EU as an ideal test bed and, to a lesser extent, companies

who were already experimenting with internal trading schemes or were trying to anticipate the

effect of cap and trade on their business:

On the basis of the European policy network on emissions trading that emerged in

the framework of the learning processes between DG Environment with experts

from consultancies, environmental NGOs and the business sector, staff members

from DG Environment were able to take up an important role as key players and

acted as policy entrepreneurs for the development of the European Emissions

Trading Directive (ibid)

Braun argues especially for the importance of policy entrepreneurs in a learning strategy. These

are the actors who are able to make most effective use of the resources that have been

accumulated by the network in terms of policy design. The policy entrepreneur is a familiar

figure in the policy literature (Kingdon 1995) but, of course, what Braun is describing here is the

combination of nodality and organization that is the key to understanding how learning strategies

work. Nodal actors both shape the institutional context in which policy is subsequently designed

and have what Braun calls a “strategic advantage” in negotiating with staff from other

institutions, in this case the other DGs, representatives of Member States, the EC working group

and so on. In a context where network governance strategies are taken very seriously as a mode

of both horizontal and vertical coordination (Knudson 2010), the ability to steer networks

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towards the adoption of a design idea is the key benefit of nodality. The organizational capacity

of DG Environment provided a significant advantage for the design-idea and protected it from

competing designs as formulation took place.

4.1.2 Canada

Canada provides a striking contrast to the EU. Though Canada supported the negotiation of the

UNFCCC (the Prime Minister of the day, a notoriously pompous orator, declared that the threat

posed by climate change stood “second only to nuclear war”) and eventually ratified the KP in

December 2002, domestic performance has failed to come close to meeting these commitments.

While the KP targets calls for annual emissions of 571 Mt of carbon in the 2008-2012 period,

annual emissions are actually running at over 725Mt and increasing. On almost every other

measure, whether per capita emissions or emission intensity, for example, Canada‟s performance

is lamentable. Inevitably, Canada‟s Kyoto negotiators took every opportunity to occupy the

moral high ground at the expense of non-ratifiers like Australia, so Canada now appears on the

world stage not only as a policy laggard but also as a hypocrite.

Canada also provides an excellent test case for the role of ideas because the obvious

explanation of this turn of events rests heavily on calculations of economic interest. Canada is

both a major fossil fuel producer and a heavy consumer of energy (energy production and use

account for around 80% of Canada‟s GHG emissions) so that meeting KP targets would always

be difficult. Explanations of why Canada ratified the KP at all usually appeal to the power of the

Prime Minister in the Canadian system and the pivotal role of Jean Chretien in that office.

Chretien‟s personal belief in the importance of international action on GHGs was sufficient to

ensure ratification even after Canada‟s major trading partner had abandoned the KP, it is argued,

but, once he was gone, sanity prevailed and no real efforts were made to ensure compliance.

The Chretien-centred account makes a tidy story but it ignores a good deal of the

evidence. The fact that Chretien was clearly in his last term of office at the time is an explanation

of his desire for a legacy project but it also weakened his ability to manage his Cabinet, which

was already gearing up for the competition to succeed him. At this point accounts usually point

to the salience of environmental issues as recorded by public opinion surveys and the desire of

the Liberal Party to exploit a potential wedge issue (the leader of the (opposition) Conservative

Party being on record as believing that the KP is a “socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth

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producing nations” (Harrison 2007, 110)). Beyond this, the explanation lies in a classic problem

of multi-level governance, with power generation and energy production lying squarely in the

legislative jurisdiction of the provinces under Canada‟s highly decentralized federal system.

With different provinces facing very different incentives for emissions reductions, it was always

going to be difficult to arrive at any kind of effective national policy framework and so it proved

(Macdonald 2009).

The policy outputs reflect this picture of events. Chretien‟s pre KP efforts relied heavily

on voluntary measures and information instruments, a position supported by the leading energy

producing province, Alberta, by industry and by the lead federal agencies, Environment Canada

and Natural Resources Canada. Two “national programs” based on these measures were

negotiated by a federal-provincial coordination body, the Joint Council of Ministers (JCM), in

1995 and 2000. Ratification of the KP brought an abrupt end to the JCM, with the energy

producing provinces walking out. Nonetheless, the federal government‟s response remained

remarkably timid, including a series of bilateral negotiations with provinces and sector

negotiations with key industries. In an effort to restore a consensus the federal government

entered into a commitment that, whatever regulatory measures were adopted for emission,

industries would never have to pay more than $15 tonne to continue to emit above the regulatory

standard (it is estimated that charges would have to reach $250 tonne to come close to attaining

the KP target through incentives). Despite a change of leader and then a change of government,

this commitment remains a central plank of federal climate change policy. When the

Conservatives came to power in 2006 they formally announced that the KP target would not be

met and eventually produced a policy based on “emission intensity” reductions.

In short, this is a very traditional, authoritative strategy based on government-to-

government and government-to-industry negotiations. Very little effort has been made to support

or steer expert networks, largely because scientific opinion in both the climate change and the

policy communities has been uniformly hostile to the federal government‟s approach. The result

has been an oddly assorted collection of information and incentive instruments that hardly merit

the title of a policy design at all, and certainly have none of the characteristics of a design-idea.

The really interesting feature of the Canadian case, and much commented on, has been

the development of network activity at the provincial and municipal level, building connections

across the border with US states and cities. (Rabe 2007; Litfin 2000). Both the Western Climate

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Initiative and a similar project in the eastern US aim to include Canadian provinces in an effort

to provide a level playing field for energy producers (Selin and VanDeever 2005). Provinces

have created their own mitigation policies, including carbon taxes, and even municipalities have

become involved. While NGOs aspire to steer these efforts, especially through the creation of

standards for voluntary schemes involving carbon offsets, both nodality and organization are

lacking. Similar problems have been observed in the case of municipal initiatives (Gore 2010).

The various schemes remain uncoordinated and of dubious effectiveness, graphically illustrating

the distinction between the creation of networks and network governance.

4.2 Gender Equality

For the last fifty years gender equality policy ideas have been proposed by the United Nations

(UN) and transferred to national government through international conventions and idea

diffusion campaigns (Joachim 2003; Zinsser 2002). The latest policy design idea for gender

equality is gender mainstreaming (GM), which is a “process of assessing the implications for

women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas

and at all levels” (UN 1997, 2). GM was adopted at the Fourth World Conference in Beijing and

was prioritized by the UN as the main mechanism for achieving gender equality and empowering

women (Moser and Moser 2005). While the approach has been rhetorically popular the outcomes

have been substantively weak with uneven implementation across jurisdictions (Rao and

Kelleher 2005; Roberts 1996).

Policy instruments used in the process of gender mainstreaming include gender-based

analysis, gender-responsive budgeting, critical engagement, and accountability mechanisms (UN

1997; Woodford-Berger 2004). The gender mainstreaming policy design idea treats the

commitment to applying such instruments as the responsibility of all key decision makers, as

opposed to the ministry responsible for women or womens‟ staff. Gender-based analysis is to be

used across all departments consistently, subject to scrutiny and management accountability.

Critical engagement goes beyond consulting and does not treat women as passive beneficiaries

of policy but rather as active change agents. Prioritizing gender equality in budgetary terms is

also been a major component of gender mainstreaming with gender budgeting advanced as an

integral part of changing existing policy processes with gender-targeted expenditure allocations

transforming gender equality priorities into practical measures economic and social.

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The UN has been the main institutional driver behind the global advancement of

women‟s initiatives, with global policy discourses shaping national decisions and

implementation agendas (Tinker 1981; Zinsser 2002). The UN promotes discursive practices

engaging both state and non-state actors in deliberative practices that promoting learning and

policy invention (Alter Chen 1995; Martens 2006; Thérien and Dumontier 2009). Often these

UN governed network “help to affect shifts in ideas, policies, priorities, and practices that are

initially seen as undesirable or problematic by state principals and even international

secretariats” (Thakur and Weiss 2009, 21). The UN is nodal in the global gender equality

network and uses this position to both collect information and diffuse design strategies that

legitimate the transnational network‟s policy demands at the domestic level (Weiss, Carayannis

and Jolly 2009).

The effectiveness of GM at the domestic level is often impaired by existing levels of

commitment to gender equality (Alston 2009; Beveridge, Nott and Stephen 2000). Two different

strategic approaches to GM are available: integrationist or agenda setting (Jahan 1995). The

integrationist approach seeks to incorporate gendered perspectives into existing government

departments and agencies assuming that underlying structures and relationships can remain enact

and will not impede progress towards gender equality. The second approach is agenda setting,

which views institutional transformation as key to reconceptualizing how gender equality is best

achieved. While both approaches target gender biases embedded in institutional structure, the

pace of change differs. From the bureaucratic perspective GM is a gender equality strategy that

is integrated into existing government institutions (True and Mintrom 2001). Alternatively from

an agenda-setting perspective GM is a realignment of gender equality goals focused on altered

gendered relations (Eveline and Bacchi 2005; Hafner-Burton and Pollack 2000; Woodward

2003).

The translation of GM ideas into practice is influenced by political institutions effecting

policy outcomes and social learning processes (Béland 2005; 2009) and by governance

arrangement effecting outcomes. Ideas are also influenced by the existing policy discourse with

problem constructions in the design phase limiting available solutions. As Bacchi (2000)

explains “it is inappropriate to see governments as responding to „problems‟ that exist „out there‟

in the community. Rather „problems‟ are „created‟ or „given shape‟ in the very policy proposals

McNutt & Rayner

17

that are offered as „responses‟” (48). In this second case study we examine how policy design

ideas on gender mainstreaming have been governed differently in Canada and the EU.

4.2.1 The European Union

Gender mainstreaming is the official gender equality strategy of the EU and its member states

(Ress 2005). Many European states adopted GM following the inclusion of gender equality as a

fundamental principle in the Amsterdam Treaty. The Council of Europe (1998) Group of

Specialists define GM as “the (re)organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of

policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels

and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policymaking” (15). GM design ideas have

been diffused throughout Europe; however, how ideas are translated by EU members varies

across different institutional cultures with existing normative commitments to gender equality

conditioning the treatment of GM ideas (Daly 2005; Walby 2005).

While a rhetorical commitment to gender mainstreaming exists across Europe recent mid-

term evaluations demonstrate how vulnerable gender equality strategies are to political will and

institutional reorganization. The main barriers to GM effectiveness are previous experiences and

long-standing ideas associated gender equality blocking institutions reform and a lack of political

will by decision makers (Booth and Bennett 2009; Woodward 2003). In addition, fuzzy

conceptualizations of GM design principles have led to poor instrument selection and variable

problem abstractions (Crespi 2009; Liebert 2002).

These factors have created many GM implementation problems (Beveridge, Nott and

Stephen 2000; Verloo 2005). For example in Hungary, policy makers have committed to gender

mainstreaming in principle, but have not developed an integrated, cross sectoral gender equality

strategy. As a result the Hungarian government implemented policy targeted at women and

focused on equal opportunities, as opposed to policy targeted at gendered relations on focused on

inequality (Krizsan and Zentai 2006). However, there are also cases that suggest positive

outcomes and substantive changes. In Sweden gender mainstreaming was introduced in 1994 and

continues to be incrementally institutionalized in government, with an accountability mechanism

improving the capacity of the women‟s policy machinery and opening up discussion on a number

of agenda setting initiatives and priorities set by women (Sainsbury and Bergqvist 2009).

McNutt & Rayner

18

Many EU states have developed institutional capacity through gender quality policy

machineries such as the French Ministry of Women, the Dutch Emancipation Council, and the

Spanish Institute of Women (Lovenduski 2008). Some jurisdictions have formally

institutionalized a mainstreaming approach as was the case in the United Kingdom when the

Gender Equality Duty (GED) was introduced in 2007, making GM legally enforceable and

requiring all public agencies to integrate gender into all stage of the policy process (Zalewski

2010). Still national top-down reforms remain situated in particular institution legacies and

policy discourses that tend to interpret gender equality within their own historical contexts

(Carney 2003; Roth 2007; Veitch 2005).

Despite GM‟s poor evaluation record in producing positive effects on gender equality at

the programming level, the idea of GM institutionalized by the EU appears to have been

successful as it did trigger policy learning and change. As gender mainstreaming “is supported

by only „soft‟ law as opposed to „hard‟ law interventions, that is, those that are advisory rather

than judiciabley enforceable”, encouraging its adoption has required non-coercive compliance

measures including shared policy objectives, collaboration and cross sectoral coordination

(Walby 2005, 7). Jacquot (2010) describe gender mainstreaming as a key example of the EU‟s

new mode of governance which derives its legitimacy from non-coercive processes, the inclusion

of civil society and information sharing. The EU promotes policy learning in formulation

processes by providing regularized interaction between governments the women‟s movement

and other civil society groups (Rolandsen 2008; Zippel 2004). It also prioritizes transnational

networking projects with preferred funding for projects that “contain provisions regarding

transnational cooperation and exchange of ideas among partner projects in member states” (Lang

2009, 329). Finally, the European Commission has created a network of civil servants (the

gender correspondents), to assist in implementing GM strategies across member states (Bruno,

Jacquot and Mandin 2006).

The EU‟s GM strategy for diffusing its policy design ideas has been largely based on a

network governance approach where the EU uses its nodality to promote policy learning and

standardize implementation. It has also used it organizational capacity to direct the formulation

of GM through regularized information exchange and information sharing. The EU has been

successful in broadening gender equality concerns beyond social policy to more issue areas;

however, it has not succeeded in transforming structural gender inequality, as policy problems

McNutt & Rayner

19

continue to be framed in existing institutionalized context (Lombardo and Meier 2008).

However, change is occurring as EU governance arrangements continue to strengthen

relationships with civil society and the transnational women‟s movement, creating opportunities

to introduce new ideas and encourage policy innovation.

4.2.2 Canada

Gender mainstreaming is a significant departure from previous Canadian gender equality

policy designs. The historical development of policy addressing gender inequality in Canada has

largely been implemented in reaction to global pressures emanating from the UN. The Canadian

Federal Government has created internal government machinery, developed analytic policy

capacity, introduced legal mechanisms and provided various types of program funding. Canada

also has an in principle commitment to improving the status of women (mid-term) and achieving

gender equality (long term) (Canada 1995). The official federal plan for gender equality in

Canada titled Setting the Stage for the Next Century: The Federal Plan on Gender Equality

(1995-2000) was released in 1995. The Plan committed all departments and agencies to use a

gender perspective in policy design, implementation and evaluation; undertake training

initiatives on gender-based analysis (GBA); develop progress indicators; collect and use gender-

disaggregated data; adopt gender-sensitive language; and evaluate GBA effectiveness. The Plan

relies heavily on GBA to produce remedies to existing inequalities and provide evidence for

responsive decision-making that will lead to better policy design, implementation and outcomes

(Status of Women Canada 1996). Although Canada does not have a government-wide policy

requiring GBA to be conducted, it has made both international and national commitments to

examining the differential impacts of government policies, programs, and legislation on both

women and men (Canada 1995; Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat 2007).

Gender based analysis plays two key roles acting in both a policy analytic capacity and as

a mechanism to challenge proposed programs. The policy function is primarily the responsibility

of individual departments, while the challenge function is the purview of central agencies.

Individual departments or agencies sponsoring new programs are expected review and report on

differential gender-based outcomes. The challenge function is carried out by three central

agencies (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the Privy Council Office, and the Department of

Finance) that are responsible for reviewing gender impacts in policy and budget documents prior

McNutt & Rayner

20

to Cabinet approval. While the Canadian Government treats GBA as synonymous with GM the

two approaches advance very different policy ideas. The goal of a GM strategy is to achieve

gender equality, with the problem defined as structural gender inequality. Alternatively, GBA

addresses gender-based policy inequality with the problem defined as poor policy designs

producing differential outputs between men and women. In Canada gender equality policy

designs are wedded to GBA to achieve gender equality outputs as opposed to mainstreaming

gender to achieve gender equality outcomes.

The Status of Women Canada (SWC) is the federal government‟s capacity building arm

tasked with GBA training, interdepartmental collaborations, and relationship building with non-

governmental, voluntary and private sector organizations. SWC is a principal liaison with foreign

countries and international organizations, working to advance Canada‟s domestic and foreign

policies and meet international gender equality obligations. SWC chairs two interdepartmental

committees that address gender equality, the first considers gender equality issues and the second

is focused on GBA capacity. In addition, a number of GBA units exist that focus on gender

equality; however, these units tend to be under resourced and understaffed and lack the authority

to ensure gender based policy goals are achieved (Standing Committee of the Status of Women

2005). Canada does not have any formal gender budget initiatives and where gender budget

analysis does occurs it is typically within the area of taxation as opposed to expenditures.

Responsibility for implementing and supporting the current gender equality mix lies

predominately with SWC, ministerial GBA units and central agencies.

The spread of GM policy ideas in Canada has not been led by the federal government but

rather by the UN who is the nodal actor in Canada‟s GM policy field. The federal government‟s

treatment of gender equality ideas has gone relatively unchanged for the part twenty years. Little

policy learning has occurred, which is partially explained by the disconnect between government

and the women‟s movement. Discourses suggesting that women have already reached equality

with men have enabled opponents to cast feminist policy objectives as advocacy-based lobbying

threatening the legitimacy of future gender equality claims (Newman and White 2006). Changes

in organizational capacity, specifically the reorganization and downsizing of the gender policy

machinery, have lead to weak policy coordination and internal department cooperation

(Hankivsky 2008) As a consequence, current institutional and gender equality policy capacities

are limited (Chappell 2002). Policy coordination is led by the federal government‟s tendencies

McNutt & Rayner

21

towards authoritative design strategies. The federal government has long associated gender

equality with procedural changes to administrative practices, as opposed to the GM idea that

seeks to realign policy goals around substantives changes to the policy process. As a result the

application of one GM instrument, GBA, is thought to be equivalent to mainstreaming, which

suggests that the translation of the GM ideas was shaped to fit existing institutional norms

through an integrationist strategy.

While many national and regional governments have adopted gender equality policy

tools, developing and implementing an integrated GM strategy requires substantive reforms to

existing procedures and institutional structures. GM advocates change to the policy process by

challenging existing policy contexts and destabilizing power relations that grant gender

privilege; however, the pace and nature of the change depends on how GM is incorporated into

existing policy mixes (Bacchi 2000; Borris 2005). Policy learning on gender mainstreaming in

Canada and European Union differ in terms of both governance arrangements and idea treatment.

In Canada learning is has been curtailed by the downsizing of the Status of Women and the

authoritative governance approach adopted. In the EU, where authoritative legitimacy is lacking,

a network governance approach has been adopted to encourage collaboration and cooperation on

policy design ideas.

5. Conclusion

Our aim in this paper was to demonstrate that the “design-idea” is an appropriate unit of

analysis for demonstrating how ideas are related to policy outputs, especially but not exclusively

in network settings. Cap and trade and gender mainstreaming are both design-ideas in this sense,

incorporating both specific policy instruments and a logic of design. Developing this account in

the context of network governance, we have argued that nodality in the network and the

organizational capacity to maintain it are the key strategic elements that allow actors to control

the flow of design-ideas and, thus, to steer formulation networks in the direction of a particular

policy output. Nodality is thus the explanation of the otherwise rather mysterious powers of the

policy entrepreneur.

As a complete account of the impact of ideas on policy outputs, it is, of course, lacking.

Nodal actors‟ influence on the content of design-ideas will be limited to the extent that they are

able to shape how problems are defined and solutions selected. Policy networks are historically

McNutt & Rayner

22

embedded, featuring institutionalized power relations and established communicative practices.

Whether the network exists at the global, national or regional level, network stability is derived

from system stability. Pressure on policy system, largely arising from internationalization

(Coleman and Perl 1999), new information communication technologies (Margetts 2009),

transnational advocacy coalitions (Keck and Sikkink), public-private partnerships and citizen

discontent (Bogason and Musso 2006) challenge traditional modes of governance and promote

network governance arrangements.

Network entropy, the network‟s basic dependence upon its environment, operates to

shape network behavior through systems level impulses producing complex forms of

coordination that resist market, corporatist or hierarchal organization. In fact, the evidence of our

case studies suggests that both the exogenous system-level dynamics shaping the network and

the network response influencing the system level dynamics will be heavily constrained by the

larger institutional context in which network governance takes place. To develop this argument

would clearly take us in the direction of the discursive institutionalism of Schmidt and Radaelli

(2004).

In their famous account of the need to place ideas in an institutional context, Schmidt and

Radaelli propose a distinction between communicative and coordinative discourse. They argue

that “single actor” political systems with statist policy making processes and majoritarian

politics, “where policy formulation is the purview of a restricted governmental elite” (198), will

generally employ discursive practices aimed at persuading a broader public of the value of policy

decisions already taken by that elite group. In jurisdictions where power is more dispersed,

especially in multi-actor, multi-level governance arrangements, discourse will have a

coordinative function, helping policy actors reach agreement amongst themselves and with their

own constituencies. Internationalized policy arenas and multi-level governance arrangements

like the EU are particularly prone to develop a rich coordinative discourse and a fairly thin

communicative one.

While not contradicting this basic distinction between the two kinds of discursive

practice, our case studies suggest that it can also be used to generate a significant hypothesis

about outputs. That is, rather than proposing, as discursive institutionalism seems to do, that

coordinative discursive practices are likely to develop in these complex policy arenas, it could be

argued that successful network governance of these policy areas requires the development of

McNutt & Rayner

23

these kinds of discursive practices. Failure to do so will lead to the development of ineffective or

purely symbolic policy mixes. Although more work needs to be done, our Canada-EU

comparison suggests that in Canada, where network governance is weakly developed, the

appearance of complex cross-cutting policy challenges is not accompanied by the appropriate

discursive practices either. There is a persistence of communicative discourse when coordination

is needed. Unable to coordinate multiple constituencies, government is forced to fall back on a

lowest common denominator policy that is not going to be blocked by any of these actors or

interests. The result is weak policy development, minimal policy learning and poor outcomes.

Similarly, the EU cases support the position of Kohler-Koch (2002) that it is not merely

the existence of networks that ensure the transmission of ideas between multiple levels and

sectors and their incorporation into policy. It is the existence of network governance and the

appropriate governance strategies and discursive practices that make the difference. Which

comes first, coordinative discursive practices or network governance, or whether one is merely a

critical component of the other, are questions that remain open for future research.

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Figure 1

Ideal-typical Governance Arrangements

Governance

Arrangements

Central Focus

of Governance

Activity

Form of State

Direction of

Governance

Relationships

Governance

Strategy

Strategic

Instruments

Design

Consideration

Legal

Governance

Legality -

Promotion of

law and order

in social

relationships

Legislation,

Law and Rules,

credible threats

of detection

and

punishment

Authoritative

Strategy

Authority and

Nodality

Administrative

Feasibily

Corporatist

Governance

Management -

of Major

Organized

Social Actors

Plans and

Agreements;

ability to grant

recognition to

interests

Capacity

Building

Strategy

Authority and

Organization

Political

Feasibility

Market

Governance

Competition -

Promotion of

Small and

Medium sized

Enterprises

Contracts and

Regulations;

ability to

enforce

property rights

Incentive

Strategy

Authority and

Treasure

Efficiency

Network

Governance

Relationships-

Promotion of

Inter-actor

organizational

Activity

Collaboration

in Networks;

information

exchange

through trusted

intermediaries

Policy

Learning

Strategy

Nodality and

Organization

Effectiveness

Source: Modified from Considine (2001); English and Skellern (2005); Howlett (2009);

Howlett et al. (2009).