Various databases have been developed to track national climate policy efforts. These datasets facilitate comparisons across countries regarding policy activity, instrument choice, and policy effectiveness. This article evaluates these datasets to …
Government programs often fail because administrative actors receive insufficient financial and personnel resources for their implementation. Despite the importance of resource provision for policy implementation, we know very little about when and …
Research on the European Union over the years has significantly advanced our understanding of the domestic impact of EU policies. However, notable blind spots persist regarding the broader impact of EU legislation on national policy portfolios and …
Policy growth is a ubiquitous feature of modern democracies that has attracted increased attention in political science and beyond. However, the literature is characterized by considerable disagreement on why policy growth occurs. Existing …
This article analyses the role of political parties in policy accumulation. We study this relationship in the area of social policy. Our analysis builds on a large data set covering the size of policy portfolios (policy targets and instruments) in …
Democratic governments produce more policies than they can effectively implement. Yet, this gap between the number of policies requiring implementation and the administrative capacities available to do so is not the same in all democracies but varies …
Constant policy growth can overburden bureaucracies if implementation capacities are not expanded in lockstep with policy production. This development may undermine policy effectiveness and hence the long-term legitimacy of democracies. This article …
Democratic governments have constantly added new policies to existing policy stocks to confront societal, economic, and environmental challenges. This development has the potential to overburden public administrations in charge of policy …