Identifying The Micro Foundations of Gender Policy Change in Policing Governance

• In Event: Authority & Authorities: The Gendered Dimensions of Policy Implementation

Abstract

The introduction of novel institutional arrangements are seen as important for promoting the opportunity for gender policy change in feminist scholarship. Feminist institutionalist scholars highlight the disruption of the existing gender order, the introduction of new actors and development of new or changed operating procedures and priorities where political arrangements are reformed. This feminist institutional scholarship enhances the analysis of the relationship between institutional change and policy outcomes adding a gendered lens (Krook and Mackay, 2010; Annesley and Gains, 2010; Waylen, 2017).
However there are areas where the analysis is under-developed in the current scholarship. We need to investigate the interaction between new actors and new rules, and the particular mix of formal and informal rules in play. The determinants of gender policy reform are dynamic and iterative (Gains and Lowndes, 2014). A focus on ‘rules in use’ is needed – the mix of formal and informal standard operating procedures that guide the way ‘things are done around here’ (Lowndes and Roberts, 2013). And rules in of themselves do not achieve change. Rather it is how rules in use are interpreted and enacted by actors which is important and the actors involved are unlikely to be only women or feminist women (Childs and Krook, 2009; Lowndes, 2014).
This paper builds on earlier research examining the prioritisation of policies addressing violence against women following the introduction of directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in the UK (Gains and Lowndes, 2018). This research highlighted the importance of the gender of executive actors, and also institutional rules around equalities duties. However, quantitative analysis was unable to fully uncover why these determinants made a difference, and how new actors worked with the changed policing governance arrangements.
To interrogate the dynamic and iterative relationship between gendered actors and gendered institutions this paper presents comparative case study research in six localities. We draw on over twenty interviews with the newly elected commissioners and other elite actors in six PCC areas in England to probe how formal and also informal ‘rules-in-use’ are interpreted and enacted by gendered actors. We find PCCs used informal networks to lobby for resources, drew on their directly elected status to call for and review evidence to challenge policing practices and exploited their ability to direct resources to initiatives and partnerships offering new forms of intervention. Our analysis uncovers the micro foundations of policy processes to address violence against women in these cases and in so doing makes a broader conceptual contribution to understanding the determinants of gender policy change. The paper also contributes to methodological debates about how best to research actors’ interpretation of institutional rules-in-use, including informal elements.

Annesley, C and Gains, F. (2010) ‘The Core Executive: Gender Power and Change’, Political Studies, 58 (5), 909-929
Childs, S. and Krook, M. L. (2009), ‘Analysing Women’s Substantive Representation: From Critical Mass to Critical Actors’, Government and Opposition, 44: 125–145
Gains F. and Lowndes, V. (2014) ‘How is institutional formation gendered, and does it make a difference?’, Politics and Gender, 10 (4) 524–548.
F. Gains and V. Lowndes (2018) ‘Gender, Actors and Institutions at the Local Level: Explaining Variation in Policies to Address Violence against Women and Girls’ Governance 31 (4) 683-699
M. Krook and F. Mackay (eds) Gender, Politics and Institutions, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Lowndes, V. and M. Roberts (2013) Why Institutions Matter: The New Institutionalism in Political Science, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Lowndes, V. (2014) ‘How are things done around here? Uncovering institutional rules and their gendered effects’, Politics and Gender, Vol. 10, 685-691
Waylen, G., 2017, Gender and Informal Institutions. Waylen, G. (ed.). London

Authors

• Francesca Gains, University of Manchester

• Vivien Lowndes, University of Birmingham