Institutional Change and the Affordable Care Act

Theoretical advances in the study of institutional change center around a productive paradox. Change agents can take strategic action to change institutions, and yet institutions display remarkable formal stability. We therefore expect that attempts to change institutions are an empirical regularity and that many formal change attempts will fail. In this talk, we conceptualize failed institutional change attempts as key moments in institutional development, propose a framework to analyze their effects on institutional trajectories, and distinguish them from negative cases.

Who Governs? The COVID-19 Pandemic, Trust and Evaluations of National and Local Government

The coronavirus pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges for governments around the world. These challenges have necessitated national policy responses such as lockdowns and government funding to avoid mass unemployment. However, national government responses have varied along with the numbers of cases and numbers of deaths and local lockdowns (e.g., tier systems in the UK and France), the responsibilities given to regional and local governments, and the divisions these circumstances have raised between national and sub-national identities and interests.
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