This article argues that differences in sociopolitical reputation can explain why interest groups fail or succeed in influencing policymakers and that therefore sociopolitical reputation is a useful addition to the conceptual toolbox of interest groups scholars. Focusing on pharmacies and their associations in Greece and Portugal between 2005 and 2021, this article uses the concept of sociopolitical reputation to explain why reform attempts to reduce pharmaceutical spending and increase competition in the pharmacy sector were successful in Portugal but not in Greece, even though pharmacists are a much stronger interest group in Portugal than in Greece and even though both countries were under significant exogenous pressure to introduce structural reforms in the wake of the Eurozone crisis.

Unilateral presidential action is thought to be limited by the ability of successors to easily reverse past decisions. Yet, most executive actions are never formally revoked. We argue that because of presidents’ unique position as chief executive, some actions create outcomes that make policy reversal more difficult or even infeasible. We develop a novel measure of policies with more immutable consequences and analyze the revocation of executive orders issued between 1937 and 2021. We find the degree of outcome immutability reduces the influence of political conditions on policy revocation. We further examine these dynamics in three cases in which presidents have substantial discretion – diplomacy, non-combatant detention, and police militarization. Scholarship has long highlighted the president’s first-mover status relative to other institutional actors as a key source of their power. Collectively, our argument and evidence demonstrate this applies to their relationship with successors.

Electoral accountability is widely considered to be an essential component for maintaining the quality of a polity’s institutions. Nevertheless, a growing body of research has found weak or limited support for the notion that voters punish political corruption, a central but partial aspect of institutional quality. In order to capture the full range of institutional dysfunction an electorate should be incentivised to punish, I further the concept of institutional performance voting, that is, voting on institutional quality as a whole. Using a novel data set on performance audit reports in Swedish municipalities between 2003 and 2014, I find that audit critique is associated with a statistically significant but substantively moderate electoral loss of about a percentage point for mayoral parties, while simultaneously associated with a 14 percentage point decrease in their probability of reelection.

The article presents two models of public policy evaluation: one named idealistic and the other named pragmatic. In the former, social progress occurs when changes in the form of how society is organised bring us closer to social institutions and public authority conduct considered ideal. In the latter, social progress occurs if the prevailing social state (postchanges) is taken to be better than the previous social state (prechanges), according to certain pre-established judgement criteria. It is argued that the adoption of different models is one of the main obstacles to clarity in the public debate on the implementation of public policies, namely, that of making the points of disagreement explicit. The article presents a defence of the pragmatic model, which is considered more compatible with the use of scientific criteria in order to assess the effectiveness of policies.

This article analyzes differences between United States and West German export controls. It shows that United States controls are more extensive and stricter than controls in West Germany. Three possible explanations for this variation in policy are considered. First, these two states differ in regard to their positions in the international system and in their choice of economic strategies. Second, the extent of domestic political support for strict export control policies varies between the two countries. Finally, West Germany lacks the institutional framework to adequately control its foreign trade. The evidence presented corroborates the first two alternatives, while institutional explanations receive relatively little support. The article then discusses the historical development of United States and West German export control policies and institutions. The analysis shows evidence of both change and stability. More specifically, the article questions the argument that institutions in foreign economic policy, once established, persist and resist change, instead of adapting to environmental changes. Several hypotheses are considered to explain why in the area of export controls changes in policy, and to some extent institutions, occurred more frequently in West Germany than in the United States.

Law-making in most parliamentary democracies is dominated by the executive. Yet so far, all research has focused on the parliamentary stage of law-making. Studies suggest that the changes to bills submitted by coalition governments are the result of coalition policies dealing with the agency loss caused by ministerial drift. This is puzzling because it is already easier and more effective for coalition parties to attempt to change the bills in the executive phase than in the parliamentary one. The article aims to close the knowledge gap, and it quantitatively explores the factors that facilitate changes during the understudied executive phase on case study of the Czech Republic. Analysis reveals that government bills are altered more during the executive phase than the parliamentary phase. While we find no significant impact caused by the distance to coalition compromise, the saliency of a bill for coalition partners has a negative influence on the ratio of changes.

Through the pooling and exchange of resources such as expertise and knowledge between network participants, European Administrative Networks (EANs) are expected to play a significant role in enhancing policy learning. Yet, scarce empirical evidence has been presented concerning the learning process taking place within EANs. This paper addresses this gap through the analysis of the Network of the Heads of European Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA Network). Based on a unique survey dataset, social network analysis and exponential random graph models are used to trace the interaction patterns within the network and test which factors shape them. The analysis highlights the relevance of national political factors – i.e. the preferences of national governments and ministries – in shaping the learning processes taking place in the EPA Network. While the network is an important venue for disseminating knowledge between directly and indirectly connected actors, learning processes are mainly limited to like-minded peers.