The Integration and Coordination of Public Policies: A Systematic Comparative Review

Abstract

This article undertakes a systematic comparative review of research on policy integration and coordination. Specifically, it compares studies focusing on “policy integration” with those using “joined-up government” or “whole-of-government” as key analytical concepts. It discusses differences and similarities between the two groups of articles in terms of empirical and theoretical focus as well as research design, and concludes by suggesting that the existence of different strands of literature makes sense but more exchanges across them are both possible and welcome, so as to align organizational and policy-related factors for the analysis of the relations between policy sectors.

Keywords:

• policy integration
• joined-up government
• whole-of-government
• comparative review
• multiple correspondence analysis

Supplemental Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2018.1496667

Notes

1. For the differences between meta-analysis, research synthesis, and systematic review, and their respective objectives, see Cooper et al. (2009).

2. This distinction between integration and coordination differs from the one recently put forward by Cejudo and Michel (2017), but is compatible with it. Indeed, integration refers to policies oriented towards a “broader goal”, while coordination is similarly located at organizational level.

3. We carried out the search for articles on March 7, 2016.

4. These are: comprehensive planning, policy coherence, holistic government, joined-up government, whole of government, horizontal governance, holistic governance, policy integration, policy mainstreaming, and boundary-spanning policy regimes (Tosun and Lang 2017).

5. We excluded articles that draw on related yet different literature strands, such as science-policy integration, vertical policy integration (i.e. papers that only focus on the integration of policies between levels but not between sectors), or literature on donor coordination in international development cooperation.

6. Primarily, one of the authors coded the articles. A second author recoded a sub-sample of the papers to verify inter-coder reliability. Consequently, we adapted our coding procedure to make it more coherent and recoded the entire sample of articles for the variables affected by any change. We implemented the test for inter-coder reliability using Stata. A second author recoded 39 randomly selected articles (37.5 per cent of the sample). Average agreement between coders across the variables was 88.45 per cent (Min. 72.5 per cent; Max. 98.08 per cent), which is an acceptable level of agreement. Although this strategy does not necessarily help to increase validity, it improves the transparence and congruence of the coded variables (Exadaktylos and Radaelli 2009, p. 517; Krippendorff 2013).

7. Table 1 reports the count for the different variables in both groups without the weight that we applied in Figure 4. Thus, the share of references to negative institutional factors is higher in the PI group.

8. To continue with the analysis, in the following we focus only on the variables that contribute at least 1 per cent to the explanation of the inertia within the respective dimension.

9. The graphs show the account for each of the theoretical categories per article group. To take into consideration the different sample sizes for PI and JUG/WOG articles we inserted a weight when creating Figure 4. Notably, we weighed the articles in the second group (JUG/WOG) by 1.73, which reflects the relationship of 76 PI to 44 JUG/WOG articles in the sample.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philipp Trein

Philipp Trein ([email protected]) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Political, Historical, and International Studies (IEPHI) of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests cover comparative public policy, federalism and multilevel governance, and comparative politics. More information is available at: www.philipptrein.com.

Iris Meyer

Iris Meyer ([email protected]) is PhD candidate at the Institute of Political, Historical and International Studies (IEPHI) of the University of Lausanne. She holds degrees in political science and public administration from IEP Aix-en-Provence and the Universities of Freiburg and Speyer. Her current research focuses on the integration and coordination of public policies, with an empirical focus on housing policy in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Martino Maggetti

Martino Maggetti ([email protected]) is associate professor at the Institute of Political, Historical, and International Studies (IEPHI) of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research interests are mainly oriented towards regulatory governance and comparative public policy. More information is available at: www.maggetti.org.