This article advances the theory of policy paradigms by investigating when paradigms are rigid, constraining alternative perspectives and policy options, and when instead they are more flexible, allowing actors to overcome paradigmatic restrictions and differences. Departing from the existing theories on policy paradigms, I conceptualize paradigm rigidity and flexibility as characteristics that develop endogenously within the policy-making process, shaped by the types of policy changes that are proposed and discussed and by the types of framing strategies policy actors employ to support their proposals. Policy paradigms can therefore have both rigid and flexible modes within the same policy area and in the same period. Conceiving paradigms in modes helps us better understand how policies change when there are competing paradigms and exogenous crises. I illustrate this empirically with an analysis of the debates surrounding four antitrust (competition) policy change proposals in the USA during the 1970s.

Digitalisation emerged as a central problem in global social governance in the past decade. ‘Digital transformation’ was expected to bring new social risks, requiring a redesign of the welfare state. This study examines the social policy responses of international actors on the digitalisation agenda in the 2010s and early 2020s. Inspired by sociological institutionalism, it shows different trajectories followed by UN agencies, the OECD and the World Bank in terms of addressing the social implications of this transformation. Despite these divergent organisational agendas, the article reveals the emergence of a new transnational policy paradigm, the ‘Schumpeterian consensus’, overcoming the antagonism between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ institutions from previous decades. In this paradigm, the ‘Schumpeterian investment state’ is seen as a mediator between the creative and destructive potential of technological change. Its social model encourages governments to invest in skills, universal social protection and flexicurity for the digital era.

How do experts judge the legitimacy of technical policy processes, and do their ideas change as these processes are opened to other stakeholders and the public? This research examines the adoption of public and patient involvement in pharmaceutical assessment in Canada. It finds tensions between scientific legitimacy that prioritizes rigor and objectivity, and democratic legitimacy that values inclusion and a broader range of evidence. In response to policy change, experts incorporate new ideas about democratic inputs and processes, while maintaining scientific policy goals. The research responds to calls for more precise measurement of ideas and ideational change and more evaluation of public and patient involvement in health policy. It helps us understand the significance of, and limits to, ideational change among experts in health policy domains that are highly technical and publicly salient. Understanding the way democratic and scientific legitimacy are negotiated in policy decisions has a wide applicability in health, but is particularly relevant during a global pandemic when evidence is being generated rapidly, decisions must be made quickly, and these decisions have a significant, immediate effect on the lives of all citizens.

The article takes fragility and resilience as distinct policy paradigms, and proposes a structured, focused comparison of how they informed and changed the EU approach to conflict and crisis management in time. The first section provides a cumulative synthesis of the debate on fragility and resilience in the international and European security discourse and practice on the background of which their comparison is built. By analysing the founding documents respectively endorsing fragility and resilience in the European context, namely the 2003 European Security Strategy and the 2016 European Union Global Strategy in addition to the existing literature on these topics, the two paradigms are examined in terms of (1) what understanding of the international system they advance; (2) where they identify the locus of the threat; (3) which role they attribute to the international community (4) and the type of solutions they proposed. In accordance with our results, we conclude that the two paradigms are not in competition, since they emerged from and reflected a contingent shift in global and local environments. Moreover, rather than providing a novel lens to better look at conflict and crisis situation, resilience is found to offer more insights into the EU's perception of its role in these contexts.

Health technology assessments (HTAs) are used as a policy tool to appraise the clinical value, or cost effectiveness, of new medicines to inform reimbursement decisions in health care. As HTA organisations have been established in different countries, it has become clear that the outcomes of medicine appraisals can vary from country to country, even though the same scientific evidence in the form of randomised controlled trials is available. The extant literature explains such variations with reference to institutional variables and administrative rules. However, little research has been conducted to advance the theoretical understanding of how variations in HTA outcomes might be explained. This paper compares cases of HTA in England and Germany using insights from Kuhn (1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) and Hall (1993, Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: the case of economic policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics 25, 275–296) to demonstrate how policy paradigms can explain the outcomes of HTA processes. The paper finds that HTA outcomes are influenced by a combination of logical issues that require reasoning within a paradigm, and institutional and political issues that speak to the interaction between ideational and interest-based variables. It sets out an approach that advances the theoretical explanation of divergent HTA outcomes, and offers an analytical basis on which to assess current and future policy changes in HTA.

While contestation between competing policy paradigms is usually considered to hamper the policy-making process, this article develops an argument explaining how paradigmatic contestation can also help policymakers obtain their preferred policies. Based on a typology of three paradigm situations – paradigm dominance, paradigmatic contestation and paradigm mixes – this article introduces three different types of strategies (paradigm stretching, banking on inconsistencies and commensurability framing) and explains why more strategies become available when a policy field moves from a situation of paradigmatic dominance to one of contestation and paradigm mixes. An analysis of the introduction and development of direct income payments in the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, subsequently illustrates how a shift in paradigm situation affected the European Commission’s discursive strategies and shaped the development of direct payments through consecutive reforms. Reflecting on sectoral and institutional variations, the article also discusses the applicability of these findings to other institutional settings and policy fields.

This article analyses whether the European Union’s (EU) Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) has been underpinned by a policy paradigm. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the debate on the existence and importance of paradigms in policy-making. It uses a causal mapping technique to reconstruct the beliefs behind three key policy documents in the SGP’s development, assessing to what extent these beliefs conform to two dominant economic policy paradigms. The analysis shows that the policy beliefs behind the SGP have been a mixture of economic policy paradigms, in which the emphasis placed on each paradigm has changed over time. This implies that internally coherent mixtures of policy paradigms are possible. This is likely also to be the case in many other areas of (EU) policy-making. Our findings have important implications for the debate on policy-change, as they suggest that paradigmatic change is likely to proceed more through gradual changes within mixes of paradigms than through radical paradigm shifts.

Since 2003 the rapid development of China's social policy has aroused much academic interest. This research places the development of social policy in China's political and economic context, focusing on the changing role of the state in making and implementing social policy. Based on the policy paradigm theory, this article builds up a framework to analyse the shift of social policy paradigms in post-Mao China, examining the changing role of the Chinese state in social welfare and social development. It argues that China's latest round of social policy expansion was driven by the social problems accumulated during the economic reforms, with change triggered by the SARS crisis, and its shape finally determined by the central political leadership led by Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao in a top-down manner.

Policy responses to the tumult of the global financial crisis of 2007–9 prompt a consideration of the critical dimensions in specifying policy change. UK monetary policy between 2007 and 2009 is characterised by a remarkable degree of innovation yet counts as a ‘normal’ period of policy making under the Hall (1993) framework of policy change, the enduring workhorse of the comparative public policy field. This exposes its lack of conceptual refinement in describing significant but within paradigm policy change. This paper traces this failing to the notion of a policy paradigm, both its scale and the ideational mechanisms which bind policy change. The paper develops the UK monetary policy case to consider the potential of the recently-minted concept of a thermostatic policy institution for the development of Hall's framework; but finds analytical limitations in coping with significant policy spillovers. Suggestions are made to meet this important challenge for future research in policy studies on the specification of policy change.