Many decades ago, Heidenheimer noted that the early 1970s began what he saw as the ‘launching decade of comparative policy studies’ (Heidenheimer 1985, 445). He was interested in some of the fundamental questions for comparative policy analysts, especially how to explain the many differences in the way in which nations handle the various policy challenges facing them. The concept of ‘policy style’ reflected that early period of comparative policy studies and was an attempt to answer the question, how do we explain often quite major cross-national variations in the way that nations handle what are essentially the same policy problems? The policy style concept arose out of a realisation by many policy analysts that nation states had their own characteristic ‘way of doing things’.
Thus, anyone who has travelled around the world cannot fail to be aware of different styles, such as in architecture, food, clothing, art and so on. It would be odd indeed if one can easily detect national characteristics in these areas yet could not detect them in national policy-making. If I may be autobiographical for a moment, as a young researcher I decided to branch out from the study of British policy-making and to conduct some interviews with policy-makers in Sweden. On day one I was, of course, aware that I was in a different country. I looked different. By the end of the first week of interviewing it had dawned on me that Swedish policy-makers were very different from British policy-makers in their approach to solving public policy problems. The Swedish approach was summed up by Anton as ‘…decision making which never seems rash, abrupt, irrational, or exciting’ (Anton 1969, 94). This is, of course, so Swedish, as any Volvo owner will know! Thus, Swedes seemed to make public policy just like they make cars, very carefully and thoroughly. It was the ‘Swedish way of doing things’ summed up by the Swedish word saklighet, literally translated as ‘matter of factness’ or ‘objectiveness’, or what Elder described as ‘… a cool objective and dispassionate approach to public policy’ (Elder 1970, 186).
In Britain, my earlier programme of policy case studies conducted with grant Jordan had convinced me that there was also ‘a British way’ of doing things. We had argued that ‘problems are handled similarly, irrespective of what government is in power. Agreement will be sought within the community of groups involved…(with) merged relationships between departments and relevant groups within individual policy areas’ (Richardson and Jordan 1979, 43). We believed, as Anton did in the Swedish case, that these procedural traits cut across all policy sectors. Thus, we thought we could answer Heidenheimer’s question ‘… to what extent can these habits and experiences be subsumed under consistent national models of policy-making (and) are these models applied similarly in most policy areas, or do the various sectors develop their own policy-making characteristics?’ (Heidenheimer et al. 1982, 317). Our answer was that yes, there are ‘standard operating procedures’ which nations adopt when policy problems reach the political agenda. (For a recent example of the use of the term ‘standard operating procedures’, see the comparative study of differing policy styles in international public administrations by Knill et al. Thus, they define ‘administrative styles’ as ‘…standard operating procedures that characterise the behaviour and decision-making of bureaucracies…under conditions of uncertainty and complexity, administrators and policy-makers develop routines in order to cope with shortages of knowledge, information-processing capacities and time…at the level of the organization, such coping strategies can consolidate into stable patterns of problem-solving behaviour,’ Knill et al. 2016, 1059, emphasis added.)
Since the original formulation of the concept of policy style there has been much debate about its utility in comparative public policy. On the one hand it was seen as not a new concept at all but merely another variant of (vague) cultural explanations—like culture, a ‘residual’ category. On the other hand it was seen by others as a testable theory in the sense that it has predictive value—once a national style has been identified, one can predict how new policy problems will be handled and, possibly, the kind of policy outcomes that would result. For example, regulatory style theorists would claim to be able to predict how, say, Germany and Britain would address environmental problems, with Germany likely to adopt the precautionary principle and Britain not, and Germany likely to adopt state regulation and Britain likely to adopt some form of self-regulation. At worst the concept of policy style is merely ‘armchair generalisations’ (a form of national stereo-typing, in fact) and at best a ‘systematic comparative tool’. In fact, concepts are neither true nor false: they are more or less useful and need to be judged by their usage. Whatever its weaknesses, the policy style concept seems to at least justify the adjective ‘useful’ in the sense that ‘policy style’ is now a generic term, used by many authors without reference to the original formulation. For example, the work by Knill et al. on administrative styles in international organisations (cited above) is underpinned by the concept of ‘style’ (in the sense of standard operating procedures) but has its own specification of what constitutes ‘style’. Thus, they specify ‘style’ according to three variables, namely ‘…an entrepreneurial style in policy initiation, a strategic approach to policy formulation and a mediating implementation style’ (Knill et al. 2016, 1057).
In the original typology of policy styles (designed to help explain variations in policy process only in Western Europe, it must be said) it was suggested that it is useful to describe policy processes according to two main factors. The first factor is a government’s approach to problem-solving. Some governments appeared to adopt an anticipatory/active attitude towards societal problems, whilst others have seemed to adopt an essentially reactive approach to problem-solving. The second main factor is a government’s relationship to other actors in the policy-making and implementing process. For example, how do governments ‘deal’ with the interest groups in society? Is government very accommodating and concerned to reach a consensus with organised groups, or is it more inclined towards imposing decisions notwithstanding opposition from groups?
These two factors should at least be generally accepted as central aspects of the policy system in any one country, even if readers would see other factors of equal importance. Certainly, it would be easy to justify extending the list, because selecting only two factors may fail to capture the richness, complexity and diversity of policy processes. For example, Premfors argued that degrees of centralisation, openness and deliberation should be added as central features of a policy process (Premfors 1981). He suggested six dimensions in his typology of policy styles, namely degrees of policy change (from ‘occasionally radical’ to ‘non-radical’); degrees of centralisation (from ‘highly centralised’ to ‘less centralised’); degrees of consultation (from ‘limited consultation’ to ‘quite extensive consultation’); degrees of openness (from ‘quite secretive’ to ‘secretive’); degrees of conflict (from ‘high’ to ‘quite low’), and, finally, degrees of deliberation (from ‘quite deliberative’ to ‘not very deliberative’) (Premfors 1981, 255). As he admitted, there were no doubt many other additional dimensions that might be added. His, and subsequent attempts to develop the policy style concept, were all intended to make the concept more fine grained, as each author sought to add in dimensions that their empirical findings (often relating to sectoral studies rather than whole system studies). For example, Kelemen and Sibbitt identify the American legal style as characterised by detailed rules, extensive transparency requirements, adversarial procedures for dispute resolution, costly legal contestation involving lawyers and frequent judicial intervention in administrative affairs (Kelemen and Sibbitt 2004).
As suggested above, the concept of policy style has often been used to explain differences in regulatory styles . As Vogel notes, countries tend to regulate, say, pollution, in much the same way (style) as they regulate other policy sectors (Vogel 1986, 101). Lundqvist had similarly noted the differing regulatory styles of pollution control in the US and Sweden, arguing that undisturbed by citizens’ suits and court orders, the Swedish administrators could engage in negotiations with polluters to find an acceptable formula for policy implementation (Lundquist 1980, 196). Halffman’s study of science policy came to similar conclusions about the existence of national regulatory styles. He argues that:
The evidence for the existence of these national approaches to regulation is overwhelming. The typical differences among countries that I have described are found, in one form or another, time and again, over several decades, and in a wide variety of policy fields, including occupational health standards, food additives, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, manure policy, waste policy, and even immigration policy. The patterns seem relatively stable over time and seem to persist even under pressure of harmonisation from international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) or the EU. (Halffman 2005, 426)
Halffman’s study, though comforting for policy style advocates like me, also presents a challenge, however. His fine-grained research turned up some puzzles and he notes that:
in the regulation of environmental hazards of chemicals, I found dif...