Robert Henry Cox
Biographic Data
| ID | 331791 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Henry Cox |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert Henry |
| FAMILY NAME | Cox |
| SIGNATURE | COX R H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oklahoma |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 759 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
How framing strategies foster robust policy ideas
In this contribution, we identify how the framing strategies employed by policy and political actors make policy ideas robust. We examine the policy ideas of solidarity and sustainability to show how framing strategies that took advantages of the valence and polysemy of both ideas shaped them into robust policy ideas. Both ideas began as wide-ranging concepts designed to build coalitions in debates over a particular large-scale policy problem. Ro…
For want of a champion: Why the EU won’t be ready for the next public health crisis
This article argues that the EU response to the COVID-19 crisis follows a pattern much like its response to earlier public health threats. Though each time the EU commits to being prepared for the next cross-border threat to health, as the immediate crisis recedes, so does the momentum to build the necessary administrative capacity, leaving the EU unprepared to take a leadership role when the next public health crisis emerges. The literature on a…
Examining the geopolitical threat theory by comparing New Zealand’s and Finland’s soft power use
Employing a most-similar case design, the study examines Finland’s and New Zealand’s soft power actions to answer the question, why did Finland use more soft power than New Zealand during 1995–2010? The article focuses on geopolitical threat to reveal why Finland is such a high soft power user, and New Zealand is not, when these two countries should have exhibited similar levels of soft power use. The qualitative analysis finds that a strong perc…
Constructing Europe’s Collaborative Economy: Actors, Institutions, and Structural Contingency in Comparative Policy Analysis
This study examines the emergence of European regulations to govern the collaborative economy, a new sector of the economy made possible by digital platforms. The concept gained common usage among stakeholders and European officials, but only partially due to the efforts of ideational entrepreneurs to promote the concept. Contingent factors that were structurally embedded in the policy process also had an impact. Most notably, actions taken by au…
Democratic Governance in Taiwan
Resistance, Innovation, and Improvisation: Comparing the Responses of Nursing Home Workers to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Canada and the United States
Comparing the situation of workers in nursing homes in two Canadian provinces and two states in the USA, this study draws on narrative accounts from frontline workers and finds that despite variation in the severity of the outbreaks they experienced, nursing home workers in each jurisdiction demonstrated three types of responses to pandemic policy changes that are theorized as resistance, innovation, and improvisation. Data for the study was comp…
Globalization and the eroding value consensus on governance
Ideas as coalition magnets: Coalition Building, Policy Entrepreneurs, and Power Relations
One of the most common ways by which ideas influence policy outcomes is by facilitating the construction of a political coalition. The ideas that have this capacity we call coalition magnets, and this contribution explains how coalition magnets open a path for policy reform. The key components of a coalition magnet are the ambiguous or polysemic character of the idea that makes it attractive to groups that might otherwise have different interests…
Valence, Policy Ideas, and the Rise of Sustainability
This article introduces to policy studies the concept of valence, which we define as the emotional quality of an idea that makes it more or less attractive. We argue that valence explains why some ideas are more successful than others, sometimes gaining paradigmatic status. A policy idea is attractive when its valence matches the mood of a target population. Skilled policy entrepreneurs use ideas with high valence to frame policy issues and gener…
The Politics of Policy Paradigms
Hegemony and Counterhegemony
Counterhegemony is a notion developed by Antonio Gramsci (1995) to define the way people develop ideas and discourse to challenge dominant assumptions, beliefs and established patterns of behavior. In the context of globalization, counterhegemony is employed to explain some of the criticism of, and mobilization against, globalization. It is the intellectual foundation for much of the anti‐globalization movement.
Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research
This volume surveys the resurgence of the social scientific study of ideas in politics. Leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics.
Social Movement Rhetoric
Tributes to Michael Barzelay and Joseph Wong
A Tribute to Graham Wilson
A Tribute to Bert Rockman
The Path‐dependency of an Idea: Why Scandinavian Welfare States Remain Distinct
Examining reforms that have taken place in the 1990s, this article explores the hypothesis that the most distinctive characteristic of the Scandinavian model today is the “stickiness” of its reputation, rather than the institutions and policies that make up the model. Borrowing the concept of path‐dependency from institutional analysis, the article argues that because there is a strong commitment to the idea of a Scandinavian model, there is a te…
The Politics of Pension Reform: Institutions and Change in Western Europe
The Social Construction of an Imperative: Why Welfare Reform Happened in Denmark and the Netherlands but Not in Germany
This article seeks to explain why Denmark and the Netherlands made dramatic progress reforming their welfare systems in the 1990s and why Germany had a relatively slow start. Some possible explanations found to be incomplete are institutional differences in welfare programs, the uniqueness of circumstances (for example, German unification), and the balance of political power in governing institutions. An important part of the puzzle is an increas…
Liberalising trends in welfare reform: Inside the Dutch miracle
English One of the most dramatic changes in the character of welfare states is the shift from public programmes that provide benefits for specific categories of need or entitlement, to programmes that encourage individuals to place part of their income in special savings accounts. This article argues that in countries where the welfare state has historically been defined in collectivist terms, the impact of the new savings schemes creates the pot…
From Safety Net To Trampoline: Labor Market Activation in the Netherlands and Denmark
In recent years Denmark and the Netherlands have made dramatic shifts from passive to active labor market policies. Though often portrayed as a necessary response to high levels of structural unemployment, such changes are more than a mere technical adjustment of welfare programs to a changing economic climate. They represent new ideas about the goals of public policy and the social rights of citizenship. This article surveys the politics of labo…
The Consequences of Welfare Reform: How Conceptions of Social Rights are Changing
The idea of the welfare state is commonly grounded in the principles of social rights, universality and solidarity. Over the past twenty years, welfare reforms have challenged the salience of this conceptualisation. This article argues that changes such as austerity measures, pension reform, administrative decentralisation and efforts to revive the obligation of citizenship have fostered a more discursive conception of social rights. When rights …
The Consequences of Welfare Retrenchment in Denmark
Mitteleuropa: History and prospects
The Federal State and the Breakup of Czechoslovakia: An Institutional Analysis
Journal Article The Federal State and the Breakup of Czechoslovakia: An Institutional Analysis Get access Robert Henry Cox, Robert Henry Cox University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Erich G. Frankland Erich G. Frankland University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Volume 25, Issue 1, Winter 1995, Pages 71–8…
The Social Construction of an Imperative: Why Welfare Reform Happened in Denmark and the Netherlands but Not in Germany
This article seeks to explain why Denmark and the Netherlands made dramatic progress reforming their welfare systems in the 1990s and why Germany had a relatively slow start. Some possible explanations found to be incomplete are institutional differences in welfare programs, the uniqueness of circumstances (for example, German unification), and the balance of political power in governing institutions. An important part of the puzzle is an increas…
Ideas as coalition magnets: Coalition Building, Policy Entrepreneurs, and Power Relations
One of the most common ways by which ideas influence policy outcomes is by facilitating the construction of a political coalition. The ideas that have this capacity we call coalition magnets, and this contribution explains how coalition magnets open a path for policy reform. The key components of a coalition magnet are the ambiguous or polysemic character of the idea that makes it attractive to groups that might otherwise have different interests…
Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research
This volume surveys the resurgence of the social scientific study of ideas in politics. Leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics.
Valence, Policy Ideas, and the Rise of Sustainability
This article introduces to policy studies the concept of valence, which we define as the emotional quality of an idea that makes it more or less attractive. We argue that valence explains why some ideas are more successful than others, sometimes gaining paradigmatic status. A policy idea is attractive when its valence matches the mood of a target population. Skilled policy entrepreneurs use ideas with high valence to frame policy issues and gener…
From Safety Net To Trampoline: Labor Market Activation in the Netherlands and Denmark
In recent years Denmark and the Netherlands have made dramatic shifts from passive to active labor market policies. Though often portrayed as a necessary response to high levels of structural unemployment, such changes are more than a mere technical adjustment of welfare programs to a changing economic climate. They represent new ideas about the goals of public policy and the social rights of citizenship. This article surveys the politics of labo…
The Path‐dependency of an Idea: Why Scandinavian Welfare States Remain Distinct
Examining reforms that have taken place in the 1990s, this article explores the hypothesis that the most distinctive characteristic of the Scandinavian model today is the “stickiness” of its reputation, rather than the institutions and policies that make up the model. Borrowing the concept of path‐dependency from institutional analysis, the article argues that because there is a strong commitment to the idea of a Scandinavian model, there is a te…
The Consequences of Welfare Reform: How Conceptions of Social Rights are Changing
The idea of the welfare state is commonly grounded in the principles of social rights, universality and solidarity. Over the past twenty years, welfare reforms have challenged the salience of this conceptualisation. This article argues that changes such as austerity measures, pension reform, administrative decentralisation and efforts to revive the obligation of citizenship have fostered a more discursive conception of social rights. When rights …
The Politics of Policy Paradigms
How framing strategies foster robust policy ideas
In this contribution, we identify how the framing strategies employed by policy and political actors make policy ideas robust. We examine the policy ideas of solidarity and sustainability to show how framing strategies that took advantages of the valence and polysemy of both ideas shaped them into robust policy ideas. Both ideas began as wide-ranging concepts designed to build coalitions in debates over a particular large-scale policy problem. Ro…
The Consequences of Welfare Retrenchment in Denmark
The Federal State and the Breakup of Czechoslovakia: An Institutional Analysis
Journal Article The Federal State and the Breakup of Czechoslovakia: An Institutional Analysis Get access Robert Henry Cox, Robert Henry Cox University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Erich G. Frankland Erich G. Frankland University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Volume 25, Issue 1, Winter 1995, Pages 71–8…
Liberalising trends in welfare reform: Inside the Dutch miracle
English One of the most dramatic changes in the character of welfare states is the shift from public programmes that provide benefits for specific categories of need or entitlement, to programmes that encourage individuals to place part of their income in special savings accounts. This article argues that in countries where the welfare state has historically been defined in collectivist terms, the impact of the new savings schemes creates the pot…
Resistance, Innovation, and Improvisation: Comparing the Responses of Nursing Home Workers to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Canada and the United States
Comparing the situation of workers in nursing homes in two Canadian provinces and two states in the USA, this study draws on narrative accounts from frontline workers and finds that despite variation in the severity of the outbreaks they experienced, nursing home workers in each jurisdiction demonstrated three types of responses to pandemic policy changes that are theorized as resistance, innovation, and improvisation. Data for the study was comp…
Why It Is Difficult to Teach Comparative Politics to American Students
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Alternative patterns of welfare state development: The case of public assistance in the Netherlands
Among the numerous studies of the development of welfare states, less attention has been paid to the smaller European democracies. In an attempt to address this problem, this article investigates the development of public assistance programmes in the Netherlands. The historical record shows that the development of the Dutch public assistance programme has been more contentious than the development of similar programmes in other countries. An expl…
For want of a champion: Why the EU won’t be ready for the next public health crisis
This article argues that the EU response to the COVID-19 crisis follows a pattern much like its response to earlier public health threats. Though each time the EU commits to being prepared for the next cross-border threat to health, as the immediate crisis recedes, so does the momentum to build the necessary administrative capacity, leaving the EU unprepared to take a leadership role when the next public health crisis emerges. The literature on a…
Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe. Gregory M. Luebbert
Can Welfare States Grow in Leaps and Bounds? Non‐Incremental Policymaking in the Netherlands
The rapid expansion of the Dutch welfare state in the 1960s is described as an example of non‐incremental policy growth. The reasons for this include: the largeness of policy change; the willingness of policymakers to consider new programs that marked dramatic departures from older programs, the commitment of policymakers to the goal of universalizing programs rather than introducing satisfycing measures; and the disruption of the traditional mod…
Alternative patterns of welfare state development: The case of public assistance in the Netherlands
Among the numerous studies of the development of welfare states, less attention has been paid to the smaller European democracies. In an attempt to address this problem, this article investigates the development of public assistance programmes in the Netherlands. The historical record shows that the development of the Dutch public assistance programme has been more contentious than the development of similar programmes in other countries. An expl…
Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe. Gregory M. Luebbert
Can Welfare States Grow in Leaps and Bounds? Non‐Incremental Policymaking in the Netherlands
The rapid expansion of the Dutch welfare state in the 1960s is described as an example of non‐incremental policy growth. The reasons for this include: the largeness of policy change; the willingness of policymakers to consider new programs that marked dramatic departures from older programs, the commitment of policymakers to the goal of universalizing programs rather than introducing satisfycing measures; and the disruption of the traditional mod…
The Development of the Dutch Welfare State: From Workers' Insurance to Universal Entitlement
Creating Welfare States in Czechoslovakia and Hungary: Why Policymakers Borrow Ideas from the West
Political change in Eastern Europe meant that a policy reform was soon to follow. The initial expectation was that reform would stem from efforts to emulate the Western democratic countries, and that policymakers in Eastern Europe would borrow from the West. In this study it was found that in Czechoslovakia policymakers were attempting to borrow policies primarily from Britain and Sweden, whereas in Hungary the primary models were Germany and Aus…
Why It Is Difficult to Teach Comparative Politics to American Students
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Federal State and the Breakup of Czechoslovakia: An Institutional Analysis
Journal Article The Federal State and the Breakup of Czechoslovakia: An Institutional Analysis Get access Robert Henry Cox, Robert Henry Cox University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Erich G. Frankland Erich G. Frankland University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Volume 25, Issue 1, Winter 1995, Pages 71–8…
Mitteleuropa: History and prospects
The Consequences of Welfare Retrenchment in Denmark
From Safety Net To Trampoline: Labor Market Activation in the Netherlands and Denmark
In recent years Denmark and the Netherlands have made dramatic shifts from passive to active labor market policies. Though often portrayed as a necessary response to high levels of structural unemployment, such changes are more than a mere technical adjustment of welfare programs to a changing economic climate. They represent new ideas about the goals of public policy and the social rights of citizenship. This article surveys the politics of labo…
The Consequences of Welfare Reform: How Conceptions of Social Rights are Changing
The idea of the welfare state is commonly grounded in the principles of social rights, universality and solidarity. Over the past twenty years, welfare reforms have challenged the salience of this conceptualisation. This article argues that changes such as austerity measures, pension reform, administrative decentralisation and efforts to revive the obligation of citizenship have fostered a more discursive conception of social rights. When rights …
Liberalising trends in welfare reform: Inside the Dutch miracle
English One of the most dramatic changes in the character of welfare states is the shift from public programmes that provide benefits for specific categories of need or entitlement, to programmes that encourage individuals to place part of their income in special savings accounts. This article argues that in countries where the welfare state has historically been defined in collectivist terms, the impact of the new savings schemes creates the pot…
The Politics of Pension Reform: Institutions and Change in Western Europe
The Social Construction of an Imperative: Why Welfare Reform Happened in Denmark and the Netherlands but Not in Germany
This article seeks to explain why Denmark and the Netherlands made dramatic progress reforming their welfare systems in the 1990s and why Germany had a relatively slow start. Some possible explanations found to be incomplete are institutional differences in welfare programs, the uniqueness of circumstances (for example, German unification), and the balance of political power in governing institutions. An important part of the puzzle is an increas…
The Path‐dependency of an Idea: Why Scandinavian Welfare States Remain Distinct
Examining reforms that have taken place in the 1990s, this article explores the hypothesis that the most distinctive characteristic of the Scandinavian model today is the “stickiness” of its reputation, rather than the institutions and policies that make up the model. Borrowing the concept of path‐dependency from institutional analysis, the article argues that because there is a strong commitment to the idea of a Scandinavian model, there is a te…
A Tribute to Bert Rockman
A Tribute to Graham Wilson
Social Movement Rhetoric
Tributes to Michael Barzelay and Joseph Wong
Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research
This volume surveys the resurgence of the social scientific study of ideas in politics. Leading scholars from a variety of subdisciplines in political science and sociology provide a general overview of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues raised by social science research on ideas and politics.
Hegemony and Counterhegemony
Counterhegemony is a notion developed by Antonio Gramsci (1995) to define the way people develop ideas and discourse to challenge dominant assumptions, beliefs and established patterns of behavior. In the context of globalization, counterhegemony is employed to explain some of the criticism of, and mobilization against, globalization. It is the intellectual foundation for much of the anti‐globalization movement.
Valence, Policy Ideas, and the Rise of Sustainability
This article introduces to policy studies the concept of valence, which we define as the emotional quality of an idea that makes it more or less attractive. We argue that valence explains why some ideas are more successful than others, sometimes gaining paradigmatic status. A policy idea is attractive when its valence matches the mood of a target population. Skilled policy entrepreneurs use ideas with high valence to frame policy issues and gener…
The Politics of Policy Paradigms
Ideas as coalition magnets: Coalition Building, Policy Entrepreneurs, and Power Relations
One of the most common ways by which ideas influence policy outcomes is by facilitating the construction of a political coalition. The ideas that have this capacity we call coalition magnets, and this contribution explains how coalition magnets open a path for policy reform. The key components of a coalition magnet are the ambiguous or polysemic character of the idea that makes it attractive to groups that might otherwise have different interests…
Globalization and the eroding value consensus on governance
Political science (28 works) · Law (21 works) · Law (16 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Welfare state (10 works) · Welfare (9 works)