What reputational dividends in the media, if any, do federal agencies reap from collaboration with a highly reputable agency, such as the FDA? Utilizing a dataset covering 30 U.S. federal agencies over a period of 34 years (1980–2013), we estimate the short and long-term reputational effects of interagency collaboration. Collaboration is measured by the number of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in effect between each agency and the FDA, while agency reputation in the media is assessed using an automated measure of media-coverage valence (positive/negative tone) for each agency-year. To account for potential reverse and reciprocal causality, we utilize cross-lagged fixed-effects models. We find evidence of moderate rises in reputation in the media due to increased collaboration with the FDA. These effects persist significantly for two years following the end of the collaboration, before declining to null after four years. Employing similar analyses, we furthermore estimate reverse causality – of reputation in the media on the level of consequent collaboration – finding no evidence of such effects.

Replication Files

Resolving a complex policy problem often requires a mix of policy instruments and thus the identification of the most promising instrument combination. However, the relevant terminology of instrument interactions in a policy mix has not been standardized, hindering a straightforward identification of superior instrument combinations. To address this challenge, the chapter defines the terminology necessary for detecting three different possible policy instrument interactions—namely synergistic, counter-productive, and additive effects. It identifies two approaches to analyzing instrument mix effects: the “effect-based” and the “effort-based” methods. It then discusses the practical advantages and limitations of each approach and elaborates on key methodological issues that policy scholars and practitioners face at each step of developing a new policy mix. 

Studies concerning nonlinear political dynamics, such as regime change, focus on macro-level structural factors and political agency. Tipping points are pitched mainly at these levels, and scholars therefore devote less attention to meso-level factors. To bridge this gap, this article develops a verbal model focusing on the collapse of mechanisms that sustain mythical state institutions as drivers of such dynamics. A mythical institution enjoys a reputation for power and influence among the public based on widespread and persistent stereotypical beliefs that embody a collectivity’s sense of origin and tradition, high performance and stability, and/or vision and mission. The argument advanced here is that nonlinear political dynamics may occur when the collapse of such mechanisms reflects on the unquestioned legitimacy that the mythical state institution enjoys, creating massive embarrassment for the regime because its mythical institution’s status requires government intervention to prevent believers from “fleeing” and/or revolting. This, in turn, undermines or debunks this institution’s myth, thereby generating high levels of anxiety, fear, anger, or other (mixes of) emotions. Which emotional process dominates depends on which reaction is stronger at the moment in question. When the level reaches an affective tipping point, citizens begin to update their evaluations and consider new information. This leads to behavioral convergence (e.g., mass protest, mass emigration, violence), which is in turn accelerated when the regime’s counter-response is publicly perceived as ineffective, thus highlighting the irreversibility of this process. This argument is illustrated herein by examining the 1989 collapse of East Germany’s emigration restrictions system. 

Surprisingly, although the Israeli government adopted unregulated, unorganized, inefficient, uncoordinated, and uninformed governance arrangements during the first wave of COVID-19, the public health outcome was successful, a paradox that this theoretically informed article seeks to explain. Drawing on insights from blame avoidance literature, it develops and applies an analytical framework that focuses on how allegations of policy underreaction in times of crisis pose a threat to elected executives’ reputations and how these politicians can derive opportunities for crisis exploitation from governance choices, especially at politically sensitive junctures. Based on a historical-institutional analysis combined with elite interviews, it finds that the implementation of one of the most aggressive policy alternatives on the policy menu at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis (i.e., a shutdown of society and the economy), and the subsequent consistent adoption of the aforementioned governance arrangements constituted a politically well-calibrated and effective short-term strategy for Prime Minister Netanyahu.