European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 33

European Policy Analysis

the latter. More generally speaking, as
soon as potential policy change threatens
some actors or actor groups, they
start opposing these measures. Policy
formulation at the international level
follows other rules: the Swiss delegation’s
choices about what position to defend
in international negotiations does not
have direct policy consequences for any
of the delegation’s members. In sum, the
difference in the degree of belief conflict
at both levels might be heavily influenced
by different negotiation cultures, as well
as divergent degrees in bindingness of the
policy solutions adopted at either level.

for the explanation of policy outputs and
the adoption of policy tools (see also Pralle
2009 and the relevance of agenda-setting
and issue attention over time), the here
presented study has shown how crucial
it is to identify actors that participate in
both spheres, also taking into account
their political power and resources (see
Putnam 1988, 445). Participation on two
levels seems to be a necessary but not
sufficient condition. Actors should play a
central role in both processes, and defend
similar policy interests on the two levels
in order for them to be able to coordinate
actions and produce coherent outputs in
overlapping subsystems. We are aware,
however, that this is a descriptive analysis
and that the causal link between structures
and outputs should still be systematically
proven.

Furthermore, social network
analysis (SNA) has proven to be an
appropriate method to be applied to such
a multilevel decisional setting, as it gives
the researcher the possibility of drawing
relations among time and space and to
identify actors located within two or
more networks. The aim of this research
was to understand and lay-out structural
and attribute-based factors in overlapping
subsystems. In future research, and when
focusing on causal links, social network
analysis would also provide tools and
models for doing so.

The case of Swiss climate policy
and the discrepancy between the national
and international position and strategy is
rather special. In future research, it would
thus be of particular interest to investigate
actors’ configuration and a single actors
impact upon national and foreign
policymaking within the same multilevel
regime in a different context, for example,
that of countries with more homogenous

Conclusion

T

his analysis has shown that
investigating policy processes on
two different levels and over time
constitutes a challenge (see also Pralle
2009). Adopting a multilevel perspective,
considering that domestic structures
matter in such multisphere setting,
we investigated national and foreign
policymaking.

Overall, we observed a large
difference among both levels in the
structure of the policy process, actors’
arrangements, and in the (power)
position specific actors represent. Those
structural and individual differences are
very strong, leading to the conclusion
that they serve as an explanation for the
policy output discrepancies between
national and foreign policy formulation.
Domestic structures thus also matter in
foreign policymaking (Avery1996), but
are not replicated “telquel” on the higher
level. In addition to Madden (2014), who
convincingly demonstrated the relevance
of national institutions and veto-points
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