This research uses a transactions costs approach to examine recent developments in the public sector organisational arrangements. It explores the extent to which transactions costs or other factors drive the institutional choices that legislators make about policy implementation. The area of application is the adoption of 'new public management' (NPM) reforms in Catalonia for the governance of the public health care sector in the period from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. The methodology used combines qualitative and quantitative approaches in the analysis of data from both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources used here include thirty-eight in-depth and semi-structured interviews with key informants, non-published internal reports from major organisations and an annual survey of all health providers carried out by the Department of Health and Social Security of the Catalan government. The secondary sources include official publications and relevant academic journals and books on the subject. The study analyses both the policy formulation process leading up to a particular institutional design and the nature of the further implementation process in the Catalan health sector. First, policy precedents are identified and the resources and interests of the policy elites analysed as a basis for understanding the output of the reform formulation in 1990. Second, the analysis shows how transactions costs considerations shaped the stances taken by legislators and influenced the final institutional design. Third, a number of subsequent implementation short-falls are traced to some efforts at minimising transactions costs which turned out to be incompatible with NPM postulates. The analysis shows that the impact of politics, that is, the repeated interactions among policy elites controlling complementary resources, shape the way in which transactions costs and other considerations are approached in both policy formulation and implementation processes. A central theoretical lesson drawn from this research is that although transactions costs are difficult to measure, they are useful heuristic tools for analysing the rationale driving decision-making processes on institutional design. However, both the theoretical definition of transactions costs and their actual impact on decision making are mediated by power relations, that is, by politics.

The Introduction – together with the conclusion – provides a framework for the three substantial contributions of this PhD project. It begins with sketching a puzzle that motivates research on the political economy of structural reforms in Europe, namely the inconsistency between the commitment of governments to reform and the actual reform track record across the countries. It discusses the nature and findings of the relevant multidisciplinary political economy literature. Paper One addresses the puzzle why the first major post-war overhaul of the German political economy – the ‘Agenda 2010’ reforms – was undertaken in 2003 by a social-democratic government and not by any of the conservative governments that preceded it. It finds that the lack of government cohesion, the federal legislative system and corporatist structures remain important determinants for institutional stability and change in Germany. Paper Two develops a theoretical argument as to why corporatist European economies may live through extended periods of economic underperformance without significant reform. Building on this argument, it presents a formal model, from which it derives a set of determinants for structural reforms, and finally illustrates these by exploring the causes for reform in Germany and Sweden. Paper Three uses a new database on labour market reform to show that corporatist structures have an intermediating effect on the determinants of structural reform policies. It finds evidence that the interests of employer organisations and trade unions matter for the labour market reform trajectories in countries with corporatist features. Political partisanship and economic crises matter more in pluralist countries. Finally, the Conclusion summarises the findings of the three papers. Subsequently, it outlines the limitations and draws up some wider implications for the theories of institutional change and for public policymaking.

This thesis explores how constructivist insights could help us to form a more complete picture of lobbying in EU foreign policy-making, with a special emphasis on EU foreign policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It demonstrates that non-state actors (NSAs) such as business groups, NGOs, solidarity movements and think tanks, are important players in the EU’s foreign policy-making. By sharing the constructivist views on the embeddedness of actors and assuming that actors interact with each other in order to make sense of the world, this thesis investigates lobbying on the basis of three analytical dimensions; namely roles, frames and levels. It is shown that NSAs lobbying the EU play a consensual role, which is based on mutually legitimising social interactions that do not challenge the EU’s actorness and policies towards Israel and Palestine. When combined with the use of legal or technical frames, these consensual forms of interaction are conducive to a re-framing of EU policies towards Israel and Palestine. In contrast, confrontational forms of social interactions, combined with the use of political frames are more recurrent at the national level. Finally, this thesis analyses how the national level is used, when NSAs lobby the EU. It concludes that there is a partial Europeanization of lobbying carried out by NSAs based in member states. The EU and national levels tend, however, to remain quite disentangled from each other. The argument presented in this thesis is tested in three case studies (EU-Israel trade relations, the UN Report following the war in Gaza in 2008-2009 and the EU-Israel Agreement on pharmaceutical products), which represent important aspects of EU foreign policy and were frequently mentioned by NSAs and officials. Moreover, the national level is analysed in the cases of France, the United Kingdom and Germany, which are the three big member states of the EU and crucial players in EU foreign policy.

This study analyses the evolution of social assistance in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, and closely examines the four countries’ different experiences with Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) schemes. A process-tracing methodology uses data from secondary sources, archival material, and 46 interviews to construct an actor-centred model and pursue a multiple-causality, historical approach. Outcomes are shown to result from interactions among central governments, religious organizations, secular organizations and territorial actors; and also from destabilizing forces. It is assumed that social assistance beneficiaries are forced to rely on these actors, whose attitudes are found to vary significantly due to their different interests, subjective perceptions of fairness, and preferences. Case histories of the four countries show that the periods prior to the 1970s were marked by minimal central government interest; indifferent, hostile, and/or divided secular organizations; and governmental partnerships with religious organizations. In the post-1970s periods, destabilizing forces co-occurring with centre-left governments resulted in new policies and changes, with relevant actors/organizations gradually welcoming pluralistic social assistance systems. The existence and extent of GMI schemes has been the principal factor differentiating social assistance developments among the four countries in more recent decades: Portugal is the only country with a national GMI, Italy and Spain have solely regional schemes, and Greece has no GMI at all. Because GMIs cut across traditional social assistance categories and are often linked with overall welfare system restructuring, establishment of GMIs and their subsequent maintenance require the co-occurrence of destabilizing forces and strong pro-GMI coalitions. Portugal exhibits the highest level of pro-GMI consensus nationwide, Greece the lowest,while Italy and Spain occupy intermediate positions. The institutional empowerment of territorial actors in the latter two countries was a precondition to emergence of local schemes, while destabilizing forces and strong local pro-GMI coalitions greatly increased the odds for establishing and maintaining them.

Over the last two decades the shape of the European public administration has changed considerably; the EU has become much more strongly involved in the regulation of very dynamic and fluid market activities. One of the consequences of that has been an increasing reliance on EU regulatory agencies to perform the novel administrative tasks. While agencies can be beneficial for the EU, they also generate new problems. In particular, these bodies have limited resources and have to rely on (national and sector) external capacities to a significant extent. There is a risk here that if the important issues are mainly capacity-related and „liquid‟, it will be very difficult to ensure „checks and balances‟ in these institutional systems. The thesis examines this through case-studies (EU regulatory agencies) in medicines, chemicals, financial services and aviation. It finds that the problems in each EU agency are different and unpredictable. In such a context, having more external and static controls on the agencies will hardly improve things. An alternative „framework‟ (that of fluid administrative law) should be considered to deal with the challenges of the new administrative state. It promotes constant administrative law principles (internal process, external justification, commitment to pluralism and policy effectiveness) to coordinate the operation of the agencies, and offers institutional tools for the dynamic application of such principles. As the „solutions‟ for each agency should have to vary, the review of these bodies (which usually occurs every three years) could be used to address the required heterogeneity of the controls. In order to make the best use of that exercise, the creation of a new European agency to review the regulatory agencies and make proposals for each of them (according to the fluid law principles) might be envisioned.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, epidemic corruption hindered Russia's economic performance. At the grassroots level, low-level administrative agents preyed on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), exploiting Russia's ever-changing and loophole-ridden legal codes to extort rents from these relatively powerless firms who lacked the political connections necessary to protect themselves from these predations. In contrast to larger, better-connected firms, SMEs suffered from this "grabbing hand" of the state. They lacked the resources to engage in the "capture" and "elite exchange" models of business-state ties that characterized interactions at higher levels of the politico-economic hierarchy. While some firms benefitted under Russia's systemic corruption, SMEs tended only to suffer under it. This pervasive "grabbing hand" drove the consolidation of the SME interest toward the resolution of this common problem. But, given their individual weakness, SMEs' only means of systemic political leverage comes from pooling their resources into mechanisms of collective action. This presents a number of problems according to the theory of collective action as laid out by Mancur Olson. As a large, diverse, and geographically scattered interest, SMEs face significant organizational costs in achieving political outcomes when compared to smaller, sector-specific organizations. However, the Putin administration has put SME development and the reduction of corruption at the center of Russia's modernization program. Through the creation and empowerment of "peak" SME business associations, the administration has in effect subsidized these increased costs of collective action for the SME community. The synergy of interests between Russia's "power vertical" and the SME community has resulted in a push for a more professional, accountable, and transparent administrative apparatus. This dissertation explores the thesis that the common administrative obstacles facing the SME community has driven the emergence of an "encompassing interest" in administrative modernization, which is more likely to produce results given the support of Russia's powerful president.

The thesis develops a theory of legislative cooperation in bicameral legislatures. At its core is a distinction between two decision-making scenarios leading to a concurrent majority in the two chambers. In an inter-institutional scenario, the chambers oppose each other as unitary actors. In a trans-institutional scenario, the constituent actors enter into cooperation across the boundaries of their chambers. The central argument is that formateurs face a strategic decision on which of these two routes to take. They can stick to their intra-institutional coalition, or they can abandon it and propose a logroll across issues within a bill that is carried by a majority across the chambers. The thesis comprises three papers, united by the general topic of trans-institutional legislative cooperation, and each demonstrating the crucial role of the formateurs. The empirical analysis focuses on co-decision legislation proposed in the bicameral system of the European Union between 1999 and 2009. In particular, it draws on a new dataset on early-stage and final-stage coalitions in the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. This is based on an extensive analysis of more than 18,000 Council documents and 19,000 amendments in the EP presenting for the first time a systematic insight into early-stage coalitions. Three central findings emanate from the application of the theoretical framework to the new data. First, formateurs can obtain an outcome closer to their preferences by choosing between inter- and trans-institutional scenarios. Second, the transaction costs of exchanges across institutional boundaries are lower if formateurs’ preferences are similar. Third, the decisions of the formateurs potentially produce winners and losers as some actors are included and others are excluded from the coalitions. These findings build on and further develop theories of bicameral coalition formation and legislative organisation. They highlight that the strategic environment in which actors operate surpasses their individual chamber, and explain how this affects the process and outcome of decision-making. This leads to important empirical and theoretical contributions which raise normative implications.

Since Vladimir Putin first became Russia’s President in 2000, the state has played an increasingly active and interventionist role in the economy, including through its involvement in a large number of coercive takeovers of privately-owned businesses. The best known case is the Yukos affair, but there have been many other, less prominent takeovers. These have largely been explained as predatory acts by state officials seeking to enrich themselves or increase their power. This has contributed to the perception that Putin’s Russia is a kleptocracy, with the state given free rein to engage in economically-destructive attacks on property rights. This thesis studies a number of state-led coercive takeovers in Putin’s Russia, including the Yukos affair, and argues that they cannot be explained as predatory acts initiated by rent-seeking state officials. Instead, they were the work of state officials attempting to pursue economic development while countering perceived threats to state sovereignty. The Yukos affair resulted in the company’s de facto nationalisation and heralded a broader trend of expanding state ownership in the economy. But two other coercive takeovers studied here instead resulted in the companies being transferred to new private owners. In other cases where nationalisation was the clear goal, the state-owned companies who emerged as buyers chose indirect forms of ownership over their new assets. The varying ownership outcomes are found to have been determined by institutional factors which constrained the behaviour of the state, contributing to its preference for takeovers that were negotiated rather than entirely coercive, and turning each case into a bargaining game between state and targeted business owner. Thus Russia is some way from kleptocracy, not only because of the developmental aspirations of its political leadership, but also thanks to partial progress towards institutional checks on arbitrary state coercion.

In this research, a transdisciplinary synthesis and extension of design thinking is created, leading to a comprehensive and philosophically grounded “fit, stick, spread and grow” framework for analysing designs and designing as a social, technological and pedagogic process. Through this framework the [re]making of higher education is seen in a new light. The framework is built using insights from design research, architecture, innovation studies, computer science, sociology, higher education pedagogy studies, business studies and psychology. The research is further enriched and empirically grounded through case studies and design studies, in many instances co-developed with participant staff, students and alumni using techniques from “design anthropology”. The research is carried out at the University of Warwick, an example of a young, fast growing, self styled, entrepreneurial higher education institution. In addition professional designers (architects) and creative industry leaders are interviewed so as to put these cases in the wider context of design and business today. In Part One of the thesis, the University of Warwick is explored as a supercomplex organisation, following Barnett (2000). Supercomplexity has positive consequences for individuals with already well developed design capabilities in that they can more effectively exploit opportunities, but for the majority, it presents difficulties and disruption. This creates a design divide, related to the digital divide, which limits the spread and growth of vital innovations. Part Two moves on to the positive task of creating a framework that examines and defines the nature of design (using an assemblages approach adapted from Deleuze and Guattari), designing, designers (professional, guerrilla and everyday), designerliness and design capability (both individual and collective). It considers challenges in managing design capability (especially ad hocism in everyday designing) and strategies for more designerly designing (including Design Thinking, the Thick Boundaries approach and practices from the creative industries). Designing is shown to work most effectively when it achieves fit (with our practices, projects and concerns), stick (enduring over a reasonable time), spread (to further people, projects and concerns) and grow (extending our capability for further designing). The fit, stick, spread and grow framework is shown to be a simple but powerful set of concepts for easing the transition to designerliness by default and more evenly distributed design capabilities.

Governmental authorities are known for zealously protecting their ‘turf’, which is usually seen to inhibit them from coordinating their work with rival authorities. In the EU, however, national regulators often engage proactively in coordination with sister authorities in the forum of EU regulatory bodies. This is puzzling if one considers that this means that national authorities actively support EU bodies –potential rivals- in their work. The thesis hence examines what determines the coordinative behaviour of national regulators at a transnational level in the European Union. It analyses the engagement of UK and German authorities in transnational coordination in the regulatory regimes of drug safety, maritime safety, food safety, and banking supervision. The study demonstrates that coordinative behaviour is driven by strategic considerations of national regulators that want their coordination activities to add value to their own work, rather than being determined by their professional norms, functional pressures or the ‘shadow of hierarchy’, as stipulated in the EU governance literature. Their strategic assessments of whether they are getting something out of transnational activities are informed by the interpretative filters of the social relations they are embedded in at the domestic level. They are also fundamentally shaped by the institutional frameworks provided by the tasks of the EU regulatory bodies in which national regulators come together. This explains variation of coordination patterns across policy areas and national regulators, which the EU governance literature has not accounted for. The argument of the thesis implies that the engagement with coordination can be linked to an enhancement –rather than a loss– of bureaucratic autonomy. By identifying the determinants of coordinative behaviour at a transnational level, this thesis hence also seeks to contribute to our understanding of the conditions in which transnational administration functions. This, in turn, is vital for understanding of how capacity to manage cross-border risks is created in the absence of a ‘European’ state.