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International environmental governance by global and, especially, regional regimes is gaining attention in both political practice and academia. We study the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s (SAARC) regime for economic integration. Based on qualitative data for 1985–2017 from key regime and policy documents and interviews, we propose the following. Besides issue-related institutional design and the resulting regime structures, the policies and policy capacities developed within a particular regime make the regime an environmental one. We analyze the environmental policy SAARC developed within the formal institutional framework between 1985 and 2017. The results show that institutional design, particularly membership and control issues, is a highly political affair, given China’s ambition to join the agreement as well as the struggle between Pakistan and India for hegemony. In 2010, the SAARC Convention on Cooperation on Environment formally extended the regime’s scope. The preceding environmental policy and its related capacities were fragmented and strongly built on decentralized, issue-specific environmental SAARC centers in different member states. The 2010 Convention on Cooperation on Environment streamlined this environmental policy but reduced the issue-specific policy capacities of the regime. We conclude that the formalization of environmental regimes into stronger institutional designs does not necessarily lead to stronger environmental regime policies and capacities. The proposed conceptual distinction between regime structure and regime policy will enable future regime studies to combine international relations, policy analysis, and comparative government methodologies when examining the policies of regimes and their dynamics.

This article examines why and how a regulation on retail banking fees, commissions, and charges emerged in Turkey after a long period of regulatory forbearance. The article shows that when regulatory forbearance caused stasis, and the “statist”, exclusionary policymaking context limited consumer groups’ access to the policymaking process, consumer groups challenged the policy regime of the banking sector and the regulator by appealing to another state actor, the Ministry of Customs and Trade. The Ministry took advantage of an opportunity structure to pass a new consumer protection law which assigned a de facto mandate on the regulatory agency to regulate fees, commissions, and charges. The article argues that the regulatory policy change was a product of a policy regime change with the Ministry emerging as a veto player, as it redefined the institutional arrangements in the policymaking process, and imposed its preferences and its stricter policy approach. As such, the article contributes to our understanding of the conditions of how diffuse interest groups can trigger regulatory policy change, but more importantly policy regime change.

The literature on path dependence has emphasized positive feedback effects that make it difficult to shift from a policy regime once it is in place. This article argues that policy regimes may also have strong negative feedback effects that undermine the political, fiscal or social sustainability of an existing policy regime. The prospects for a shift in policy regime depend largely on the balance between positive and negative feedback effects; the availability of incremental reform options that can be used to patch the status quo; and the availability of politically and fiscally attractive regime transition options. The paper argues that differential survival rates of different public pension regimes in western industrial countries can be understood by the interaction of these three factors.

This study empirically applies the theory of institutional requirement for economic development to explain Korea's modern history of economic development. The study theoretically derives the argument that the economic discrimination (ED) policy regime \"rewarding high performance relative to low performance\" is the necessary condition for economic development, whereas the economic egalitarianism (EE) policy regime \"disregarding the differences of performances\" is the sufficient condition for economic stagnation. The paper then describes some details of the institutional evolution of Korean economy for the last 60 years and presents three testable hypotheses for Korea's development history. 1) Institution-led growth hypothesis. The rise and fall of Korea's economic growth was respectively led by the ED and EE policy regimes. 2) Corporate-led growth hypothesis. The rise and fall of Korea's economic growth was led by the rise and fall of the corporate sector growth instigated by the ED and EE policy regimes, respectively; and 3) Political cycle of economic growth: The rise and fall of Korea's economic growth was led by the political cycle of economization of politics and politicization of economy, respectively. These hypotheses are empirically verified by utilizing a new model of corporate production function. Policy implication is that Korea's current economic difficulties can only be cured by reversing the current anti-corporate EE policy regime to the corporate-friendly ED policy regime.

This paper provides a conceptual overview of economists' attempts to learn about the effects of taxes on extractive resources. The emphasis is on research methods and techniques, with no attempt to provide a comprehensive tabulation of previous empirical results or policy conclusions regarding preferred tax instruments or systems. We argue, in fact, that the nature of such conclusions largely depends on the researcher's choice of modeling framework. Many alternative frameworks and approaches have been developed in the literature. Our goal is to describe the differences among them and to note their strengths and limitations.

How are integrated policies implemented? In this paper we analyze two policies in Latin America aimed at securing integral care to children to show how the process of integration takes place over time. We study the process through which an ‘idea’ framed both the problem definition and the design features of the integrated policy over time; how the institutional arrangement continuously shaped the operation of the information flows, budget allocation and the relations among the organizations involved, and the role interests of different coalitions had on launching the strategy and, later, in keeping it integrated. We explain the design of care policies in Chile and Uruguay as integrated strategies, as they aligned several instruments from different sectors (health, education, and social development) to target children according to their specific, evolving needs. Based on official records, recent research and first-hand accounts of specialists and public officials, we conduct a comparative analysis of their implementation processes. We argue that their contrasting trajectories are not explained by differences in the policies’ design, but by variations in their policy regimes: how institutional arrangements, ideas and interests interacted with the policy to keep it integrated during the implementation. By doing so, we offer a more nuanced understanding of the forces that integrate or disintegrate a policy during their implementation. We employ a comparative case study approach for analyzing two integrated care policies for children in Chile and Uruguay, both testing existing theoretical conjectures about policy regimes and developing new ones about their role in implementing integrated policies and their adaptation over time.

International regimes, defined as sets of norms and rules around which members’ expectations converge, are providing structures for facilitating cooperation in a given issue area. Two main lines of environmental regime scholarship prevailed thus far: one on structural design aspects of international institutions and one on their effects and effectiveness. However, questions on how such effects are achieved in detail largely remain unanswered. Against this background, this study aims to analyze the institutional design conditions under which regional regimes produce strong or weak policies. We do so by qualitatively comparing, using a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), nine regional regimes across the world towards their ability of producing regime forest policies as an illustrative issue area. Three structural conditions were identified as being influential on regime policy: (i) The degree of formalization (ii) The existence of hegemonic/powerful member state(s) and (iii) Scope or issue specificity bearing the identity of a regime. Our results showed that no one condition on its own was necessary to produce either strong or weak regime forest policy. However, all three conditions, through three different configurations, created a robust pathway for producing strong regime policy. In addition, the combination that showed the presence of all three conditions was related to weak regime policy. These results open several prospects for future research on the relationship between regimes´ structures and regime policy.

Food security remains a persistent development challenge in Nigeria, particularly in Ebonyi State, where various policy regimes have yielded limited outcomes. This study investigates the Ebonyi State Food Security Regime (EFSR) through the lens of stakeholder participation and capability development. The problem lies in the mismatch between empowerment policies and their actual implementation outcomes—an issue rooted in political patronage, fragmented capacity development, and misaligned stakeholder engagement. The study aims to examine the moderating role of Agricultural Stakeholder Capability Development (ASCD) on the effect of Agricultural Stakeholder Capability Participation (ASCP) on food security outcomes in the state. Using a cross-sectional survey of 382 participants across six implementation agencies, moderation analysis was conducted via PROCESS Macro 3.5, with bootstrapping at a 95% confidence level. Results show that both ASCP and ASCD positively influenced food security. However, the interaction effect was significant only at low and average ASCD levels, indicating that when experienced farmers are involved, the marginal benefit of ASCD diminishes. It is concluded that the politicization of empowerment processes, limited coordination among agencies, and uneven ASCD contribute to the underperformance of EFSR. The study recommends a restructured, evidence-based ASCD approach tailored to specific stakeholder categories.