Explaining Cross-National Variation in Policy Growth: The Impact of Vertical Policy Integration

This paper analyses national patterns of policy accumulation. While policy portfolios have generally grown larger and increasingly complex all over the OECD world, policy growth has been much stronger in some countries than in others. This not only has consequences for citizens. It also imposes increasing implementation burdens on frontline bureaucrats. Against this background, this paper sets out to analyse whether and how public bureaucrats – particularly at lower levels of the hierarchy – are able to influence policy-making and the implementation burden that comes with it. Specifically, we explore whether countries’ ability to constrain rule growth depends on the extent to which policy formulation and policy implementation processes are vertically integrated. Our conceptualization of vertical policy integration (VPI) assumes that there are two logics that connect policy formulation and implementation. These are concerns over (1) effective policy design and (2) over the allocation of implementation costs. To assess whether vertical policy integration influences patterns the extent of policy growth, this paper analyses the growth of rule stocks in the areas of environmental policy and social policy in 21 OECD countries over the period between 1976 and 2018. By controlling for preference-based and institutionalist explanations as well as for functionalist and ecological arguments, the paper is able to analyze whether administrative structures that connect policy formulation and implementation are key to sustainable policy-making.