The Politics of Trying Again: Repetitive Patterns in Inclusive Reform

• In Event: Race and Public Policy

Abstract

The debate about institutional change typically focuses on two alternative temporal patters: punctuated and gradual change (Fernández-i-Marín et al. 2022; Adam et al. 2022). This paper introduces repetition as an alternative, overlooked, pattern. Based on four city governments’ attempts over decades to embed ethnic and racial inclusion in their work, I show how institutional reform agendas that require sustained political and administrative commitment are liable to go through repetitive cycles. A reform initiative is launched, then dissipates through resistance or neglect, only for a new reform initiative to emerge and dissipate in turn. This paper proposes that repetition is a sui generis temporal pattern with independent effects on the institutions that engage in it. This is particularly pronounced in equity-driven reforms, but is also relevant to other policy areas. Therefore, understanding the reasons for and effects of repetition is central to understanding the politics of institutional reform.
The paper develops a novel theory of repetition based on the in-depth case studies of the equalities departments of Birmingham, Turin, Lisbon and Riga city governments. It retraces their attempts at inclusive policymaking by triangulating data from interviews, participant observation, and official documents, and draws theoretically from historical and feminist institutionalism (Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Krook and Mackay 2011; Mackay 2014; Pierson 2015). The theory of repetition is developed in four parts. First, I identify four drivers that explain the prevalence of repetition in processes of inclusive institutional reform: the stubborn nature of the problem, the stubborn nature of the institution, the nature of the change agents, and repetition’s self-reinforcing nature. Second, I identify two overlapping logics of change deriving from repetition: an increasing returns logic, which drives sedimentation effects, and a decreasing returns logic, which drives erosion effects. Repetition creates forms of path dependence that facilitate future cycles of inclusive innovation by easing internal resistance and creating easily re-deployable administrative practices. At the same time, repetition erodes inclusive initiatives through fatigue, disillusionment, and reinforcement of box-ticking and self-serving bureaucratic cultures. Third, I look at the transnational diffusion of ‘best practices’ through the lenses of repetition, demonstrating how this ‘repetition elsewhere’ serves to both amplify and speed up sedimentation and erosion effects. Finally, I look at the repetitive cycles of institutional reform from the outside, engaging with the point of view of stakeholders to answer the question ‘is trying again and again worth it?’
The paper advances understandings of institutional change in theory and practice: (1) It overcomes a widespread tendency to focus on individual reform initiatives, pointing to the longer temporality of reform processes, contributing to a recent strand in public policy research that looks at the ‘forest’ rather than only the ‘trees’ (Knill and Steinebach 2022, 603). (2) It encourages other scholars not only to apply ‘repetition’ beyond the inclusivity policy area but also to identify other temporal sequences and consider how reform attempts are shaped by the type of sequence they are part of. (3) In line with an emerging ‘forward-looking’ scholarship on designing policies to produce positive change (Sewerin, Cashore, and Howlett 2022), the paper provides useful new conceptual tools for both scholars and practitioners to navigate what is otherwise an often dispiriting field.

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Author

• Licia Cianetti, University of Birmingham