European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 169

European Policy Analysis

1. Introduction

W

hen policymakers try to take up
and resolve a certain societal
problem, they are usually not
only guided by the fundamental problem
structure, the institutional framework
of their respective political systems, and
the broader societal context, but they
also find themselves in differentiated and
institutionalized policy fields that structure
their actions and interactions with other
policymakers. These include the “classic”
fields of national government action, such
as foreign policy, domestic policy, justice,
finance, and economic and social policy, in
which problems are processed as necessary
for maintaining the capacity of the state
itself. Also, more recent policy fields, such
as research and technology policy, energy
and environmental policy, or consumer
protection, are based on processes of
differentiation and institutionalization
that create order, predictability, legitimacy,
and relative autonomy by setting rules,
assigning responsibilities and obligations,
as well as defining procedures, which
organize
the
interactions
among
policymakers in these fields.

Regarding more recent issue areas,
such as climate change and sustainable
development, political actors face
overarching problem structures, which
require no less than major societal and
political transformations, at least over the
long term (Elzen, Geels, and Green 2004;
Haberl et al. 2011; Lange 2008; Markard,
Raven, and Truffer 2012; Pelling 2011).
Given the scope of the related problems,
policymaking
within
institutionally
demarcated, sectoral policy areas does
not appear to be a promising path of
problem solving (Adelle and Russel

2013). In fact, policy actors themselves
have acknowledged the institutionalized
boundaries of established policy fields as
an obstacle to the effective governance
of sustainability and climate problems
(OECD 2004; Swanson et al. 2004; Swanson
and Pintér 2007). Rather than establishing
a new sectoral department or dissolving
the boundaries of differentiated policy
areas, policy actors have begun to launch
“integrative” forms of problem solving,
that is, initiatives of policymaking that cut
across and relate various sectoral policy
areas. These integrative approaches are
frequently linked to a new understanding
of politics that departs from conventional
concepts of policies, programs, or plans,
and instead revolves around the notion of
“strategy.”

From the perspective of a
scientific observer, the emergence of these
allegedly integrative and strategic forms
of policymaking in practice raises several
questions. How can these activities be
conceptualized? How do they relate to and
differ from other forms of policymaking?
How can integrative and strategic
practices in contemporary policy systems
be analyzed in a differentiated manner?
In this paper, I take these questions as the
starting point for a conceptual inquiry
into “integrative political strategies” (IPS),
a class of policy phenomena that other
authors have grouped under various other
categories, such as “new pattern[s] of
strategy formation in the public sector,”
(Steurer and Martinuzzi 2005) “integrated
policy strategies,” (Rayner and Howlett
2009b) “integrated strategies,” (CasadoAsensio and Steurer 2014) or “multisectoral strat egies” (Nordbeck and Steurer
2015). My goals are twofold: first, I want
to add to the conceptual understanding of
IPS and provide a sound basis for analyzing

169