European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 45

European Policy Analysis

complex problems to which ready-made
solutions are not available. They are subject
to high uncertainty which is created not
only by the complexity of the underlying
problems but also by the uniqueness of
the situation in which “agents can have no
conception as to what possible outcomes
are likely, and hence what their interests in
such a situation in fact are” (Blyth 2002).
And, finally, they are often time-pressed
and have to reach far-reaching decisions
within rather short time periods. The
topic of the present paper fits at least
partly in this description. Clearly, the
political actors within the COM were
not particularly time-pressed when they
decided to set in motion the process of
enlarging the European single market to
pension products. However, other features
of the crisis context as portrayed earlier
were clearly relevant. Uncertainty about
the development of the financial market
was evidently an issue, especially with
regard to the development of the interest
rate level and the related consequences
for the turnover of private pension
plans. And complexity was not only a
challenge because of the multifaceted
nature of the financial and euro crisis,
but also because of the policy itself. The
substantial complexity that comes with
the structure of pension regimes and the
involved variety of products was very
likely an additional challenge. How do
these features of the crisis situation impact
on the policy process?

Drawing on Wenzelburger and
Wolf ’s framework that weighs crisisrelated aspects of policy output theories, the

multiple streams approach and punctuated
equilibrium theory (Wenzelburger and
Wolf 2015), one can theoretically expect
that the features of a crisis situation open
a window of opportunity which can be
used by skilled political entrepreneurs to
put certain policies on top of the agenda
and to put pressure on the decision maker
to deal with them. However, whether a
policy issue is successfully linked to the
crisis depends much on the “framing
contests” (‘t Hart/Tindall 2009), in which
some political entrepreneurs try to attach
a certain policy problem to the crisis,
whereas others seek to downplay the issue.
If the policy issue is successfully linked to
the crisis and highly politicized, it moves
on the decision-making agenda of the top
political level and major policy change
is probable. The direction of this change
depends much on which actors have
access to the decision-making arena. As
the crisis situation is characterized by high
complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty,
political entrepreneurs such as lobbyists,
interest groups, or other stakeholders who
are close to the political actors have a good
chance to insert their policy proposals
into the decision-making process and
affect the policy output. In contrast, if an
issue is not politicized, it remains in the
subsystem and many stakeholders in this
field will move on to incrementally change
the policy.

What do we learn from this
theoretical argument for our empirical
case at hand? First, and very clearly, the
problems that were generated by the
financial crisis and its consequences (low

9

The goal of this framework drawing on several theories is to avoid a “particularistic variable-centered
approach” as criticized by Blatter et al. (2015, 4)—and all too familiar in the literature.

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