Policy-makers around the world have to find answers to these types of questions. While their responses can differ fundamentally, they all fall in the realm of public policy. Public policy, as Thomas Dye (1972) put it prominently, is “anything a government chooses to do or not to do”. In this blog, students of the seminar “Understanding Public Policy”, taught by Prof. Dr. Philipp Thaler, apply public policy tools to explain policy outcomes on controversial issues.
Acceptance or Rejection of Nuclear Energy: Switzerland and China after Fukushima
Valerie Yuqian Zhuang & Norman Kneubuehler
Large crisis or disasters often lead to significant changes in societies because their impacts challenge dominant ways of thinking and acting. Following the Fukushima accident, major concerns were raised about the use and reliance on nuclear energy, leading to a nuclear phase out strategy in Switzerland, while China maintained and further developed nuclear power plants. What explains these divergent reactions? The risks linked to nuclear power weighted heavier in Switzerland, where anti-nuclear movement played a significant role in mobilizing the public. China has been consistent in its support for nuclear power development, but the focus has shifted from speed to safety. |
21/01/2021, January 2021 |
Advancing abortion legislation in Uruguay: a turbulent tail of compromise
Alba Lourerio
Worldwide, an estimated 25 million unsafe abortions are carried out every year. Only in Latin America and the Caribbean, 96 out of 1000 pregnancies of women aged 15-44 are unplanned, and 44 out of 1000 women have an abortion leading to the highest rate in the world. In Uruguay, unsafe abortions comprised 40% of maternal deaths twenty years ago. Yet 30,000 unsafe abortions were still recorded in 2011. In the following year, Uruguay became the first South American country to pass legislation enabling safe abortions. In the polarized politics of abortion, Uruguay emerges as a blueprint for policy compromise |
12/01/2021, January 2021 |
From Condemnation to Legalization: the policy process of legalizing marijuana in the USA
Olivia Steinmann and Rabea Würth
Marijuana is one of the most commonly used drugs today. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (2020, p. 17), 188 million people around the world use marijuana. However, even though consumption is widely spread in many places around the world, it still remains largely illegal. The number of countries legalizing its use has been increasing though. In the USA it remains illegal, however, individual states have moved forward to legalizing it. The how and why of this development can be explained by major political actors advocating for the legalization and the general change in discourse on the drug marijuana.
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05/12/2020, December 2020
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Switzerland and U.K. Does direct democracy make radical policy change easier or harder?
Valeria Baldini and Katharina Reidl
On the 31st of January 2020, Great Britain officially left the European Union. From the day on which the UK electorate went to the polls, many perspectives have changed, and many debates have taken place. The BREXIT case is a novelty in the history of the European Union and has sparked an outcry on the use of referendums on both sides. This policy brief compares the use of direct democracy tools in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, showing the potential for radical policy changes that such tools can provoke.
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04/11/2020, November 2020
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Policymakers caught in the endless loop of healthcare and pension reforms
Nicolas Gehrig and Nolwenn Rumeur
Healthcare and pension systems of many countries are in deep need of reform. Yet, this remains a difficult task to achieve, as shown by the social unrest caused by proposed reforms in France, or the inability of the American government to pass comprehensive healthcare reforms. This can be largely explained by the constraints that policymakers face. Among them are the inability to process all aspects of a given problem, time constraints, limited financial resources and the need to appease the interests and conflicting values of many actors. As a result, policymakers are often forced to implement policy change through small steps, rendering radical policy change a difficult endeavor.
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03/10/2020, October 2020
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Why does it take so long until social movements gain the power to shape politics?
Anastasia Chernysheva and Benedetta Simonini
Throughout centuries, the road to gain power for social groups has been rocky. From labor unions to “Climate Youth” and women’s rights, social movements have shown that gaining political power and social recognition can be achieved by the expression of ideas. Strikes, protests, and public speeches are only a few examples of how these movements manifest their needs and ideas to shape politics. When ideas empower actors, policy changes can be the result. However, this development happens at different paces because ideas can be more or less coherent, powerful and widely shared. Furthermore, domestic contexts can influence these processes.
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02/10/2020, October 2020
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Swiss Migration Policy: A Neverending Story?
Aleksa Tatic
The recent developments in Swiss migration policy demonstrate that policy processes have an ongoing and continuous nature. The adoption of the initiative "against mass immigration" in 2014 aimed at providing a solution to unregulated immigration in Switzerland. However, it left important questions unresolved. The critically evaluated implementation of article 121 "Legislation in the area of foreigners and asylum" was in turn the beginning of a new policy and led the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) to launch the initiative “for a moderate immigration“ in 2020 to address these newly emerged questions.
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01/10/2020, October 2020
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