Abstract
The chapter synthesizes the theories in the previous chapter into the reform cycle. The cycle starts with changing economic and social conditions. These create a demand for new ideas, which need to be articulated by different policy entrepreneurs, who interact with and activate power resources and interests, which influence institutional and policy changes. Also statecraft is defined and three major kinds of reforms strategies are developed: Popperian, Kuhnian, and Machiavellian.
The reform cycle and the reform strategies will serve as hypotheses to be studied in the case studies. Moreover, remaining puzzles are identified: How and why liberal and welfare-enhancing policy ideas, rather than the opposite, become implemented, and how the collective action problem involved in reform is solved.
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Karlson, N. (2018). Reform Cycles and Reform Strategies. In: Statecraft and Liberal Reform in Advanced Democracies . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64233-8_5
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