The Dynamics of Transformational Governance and Crisis Management - An integrated perspective on modes of policy change in the German socio-economic transformation agenda

Crisis is a foundational element in most established policy process theories. As an explaining factor, crises are used to theorize both how and why the much-observed policy stability can be altered to allow for incremental or substantial policy change. Nonetheless, advances in theory developments do not necessarily speak to each other. As a result, scholars express their demand to overcome existing “theoretical silos” (Weible, 2018, p. 367) in order to conceptually advance our understanding of crisis management from a policy process perspective. In this paper, we present an integrated concept based on different policy process theories to assess policy making during crisis in dealing with non-linear challenges. Conceptually, the modes of policy change are a synthesising typology based on different drivers and hurdles derived from literature and from theory-guided contributions to a special issue (Plümer and Schiffers, 2022). As a combination of factors from an institutional perspective, an actor centred perspective as well as a politics-of-change perspective, our integrated concept differentiates reactive versus proactive policy-making in an action dimension and linear change versus non-linear change in an outcome dimension. The resulting modes of policy change are incremental change, architectural change, transfor-mational governance, and crisis management. The concept contributes to a processual understanding of policy change by focusing on the actions and interactions of policy actors within an institutional setting that lead to a certain policy output. In order to elaborate and strengthen our integrated concept, the paper focuses on the empirical case of the German socio-economic transformation agenda by the “traffic-light” coalition government (social democrats, liberals, greens) which has been tapered following the “Zeitenwende” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Building on institutional, actor centred, and politics-of-change factors of dealing with change and crisis, we employ a three-step methodology. (1) We will identify the transformation agenda of the federal government by inductive issue mapping with quantitative text analysis. For this purpose, we examine the coalition agreement, cabinet and ministry documents, and party office documents. (2) On the basis of the identified policy issues, we will then assess the policy goals and instruments of key policy actors to implement reforms. We will use quantitative and qualitative text analysis using additional material from legislative consultation documents (e.g. scientific advisors, interest groups). (3) Finally, we will cluster areas of potential policy conflict and cooperation using interpretative qualitative analysis. The results will allow empirical insights into different modes of crisis management and governance in the cross-sectional field of transformation policy and further elaborate on our integrated concept. The paper contributes to a deeper exchange of policy process theories by highlighting the processual understanding of policy change and crisis.