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As a standard operating backdrop in the United Kingdom, for more than a decade austerity has become an increasingly dominant logic as to how policing can be delivered and (re)configured to do 'more with less'. Yet beyond simple rationalisation of public policing in line with market principles, a more complex and long-standing trajectory underpins relations between the police and commercial 'others' set within this climate. With austerity as a guiding 'code', it has accelerated rather than punctuated the evolution of public policing dispersal. Using path dependency theory, the paper argues that change across both law and policy via different forms of critical juncture has embedded commercial principles, while simultaneously reconfiguring the symbolic (and operational) status of the police and their relationship with the public. In turn, the paper highlights that such pluralisation, in a genealogical sense, has tilted police authority away from central state control to a more dispersed and commercial model – but on a long-term trajectory which long precedes austerity as part of path-dependent change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was the European response to the Covid-19 crisis coherent to the challenges posed by the pandemic? The paper argues that the response to the pandemic had little to do with the characteristics of the crisis at hand and was rather linked to pre-conceived priorities of key actors in Europe (particularly surrounding the need to foster the green transition). The pandemic was thus considered as the epitome of an exogenous shock, to which no clear long-term policy response could be given, if not one that strengthens on previous political economic plans. The paper contributes to the literature on crisis-management in the EU, arguing that the multiple streams framework's focus on ambiguity is a fruitful complement to the historical institutionalist emphasis on critical junctures, particularly when studying exogenous shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is well-established that exogenous shocks can trigger policy changes, political elites have often been depicted as the initiators of this process. This paper adopts an elite sociology perspective, extending beyond the exclusive focus on political elites, to uncover the pathway through which critical junctures foster policy changes. It employs a case study of the economic crises in Turkey spanning from 1999 to 2001 as an illustrative example. During this period, a significant shift occurred, moving from traditional statist economic policies to widespread neoliberal reforms. Our analysis reveals that this policy shift was not solely influenced by external factors, but facilitated by an intricate process of elite circulation within the economic bureaucracy. This process, which began in the 1980s and gained momentum in the 2000s, coincided with an influx of bureaucratic elites aligned with neoliberal principles and played a crucial role in shaping the trajectory of policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights occurred at a phase of endogenous critical juncture for Social Europe. By analyzing the Pillar's formulation and adoption process, we investigate to what extent the European Commission used the involvement of civil society and policy responsiveness to foster change in the modes of governance and legitimize stronger intervention in the social sphere, by re‐launching the methods of coordination introduced in the 1990s. Methodologically, we rely on a content analysis of EU policy documents before and after the public consultations, a content analysis of over 60 position papers and on interviews with policy actors. We find that despite increased openness and responsiveness, the Pillar initiative did not allow to alter the predominance of 'soft law' routes and patterns of intergovernmentalism characterizing the governance of EU social policy, a result that further qualifies the conditions that lead (endogenous) critical junctures to generate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented exogenous shock for the European Union (EU) and its Member States, one that demanded a joint response at the EU level rather than several differentiated responses at the Member State level. As such, the pandemic crisis opened up a "window of opportunity" for institutional change in the EU's financial assistance regime. This change pertains to the development of a set of rules governing the disbursement and withdrawal of funding to Member States in the context of crisis management. The paper thus aims to answer the following question: How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the EU's financial assistance regime? Drawing on a revisited historical institutionalist framework that allows for the examination of different types of institutional development, the paper argues that the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a "critical juncture" for the EU's financial assistance regime, resulting in a shift from intergovernmental coordination (with the European Stability Mechanism) to a form of limited supranational delegation (with the Recovery and Resilience Facility). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argentina's 2004 Migration Law spearheaded rights-based immigration policy reforms across Latin America. To deconstruct the policy process that enabled the passing of this 'revolutionary' law, we apply a mixed qualitative approach, based on secondary literature, and the analysis of 80 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. We argue that both structural and contingent regime dynamics shaped a window of opportunity for the reform to take place. We further show how key actors amongst civil society organisations, the executive and the legislative branches formed multi-sectoral coalitions and strategic alliances to turn this policy window into a critical juncture of lasting policy change. Ultimately, legislative reform was successful because it was framed as a human right, and not as an immigration issue. The paper contributes to scholarship on immigration policy determinants, ideational strategic alliances, policy windows and critical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the United Kingdom experiencing a series of 'lockdowns' in 2020 and 2021 that disrupted leisure and socializing, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a 'critical juncture' which has facilitated alterations to – and reflections on – drinking practices. Drawing on online semi-structured interviews and focus groups conducted between the first and second UK lockdowns, we highlight three stages in the development and maintenance of UK drinking practices using critical junctures as a theoretical framework. Firstly, we consider the antecedent conditions – such as dominant drinking cultures - that shape pre-pandemic drinking practices and form the backdrop against which changes to behaviors are made. Secondly, we explore the 'cleavage' or initial moment of disruption which gives rise to shifts in drinking practices and consider how this critical juncture stabilizes and is reproduced. Finally, we examine the possible 'legacy' of the critical juncture. The paper highlights implications for healthcare/policy including the importance of considering wider social context when seeking behavioral change. We also stress that alternative explanations – such as declining drinking rates and the growth of Temporary Abstinence Initiatives – must not be ignored when exploring people's shifting drinking behaviors, even during periods of unprecedented social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social, political, and economic change sometimes occurs during relatively brief periods in which previously relatively stable institutions are transformed and new approaches established. Historical institutionalists refer to these as critical junctures. Processes of incremental revision and evolution are also important, but if critical junctures sometimes produce enduring legacies, then these processes of rapid institutional change are an important topic for research and theory development. Planning history offers many examples of such relatively short periods of significant change that produced lasting and distinct outcomes in different jurisdictions. The study of critical junctures has been a major theme of comparative historical analysis and historical institutionalism for three decades. This has contributed to the development of robust conceptual frameworks detailing the structure and mechanisms of such change processes and associated research methods that are valuable for planning history and comparative urban research. This paper reviews this research, develops a conceptual framework relevant to planning history and urban governance, and points to processes of rapid institutional change characteristic of cities, suggesting that planning and urban institutions are particularly prone to critical junctures because of multi-level governance contexts, urban complexity, the impacts of urban disasters, and the challenges presented by urbanization and technological and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a longitudinal study during the Italian 'short twentieth century' (1919–1994). Our focus is on the behaviour of the political field (PF), the recruitment process of the ministerial elite and its impact on the stability of the political system (PS). The main aim of the paper is to build a descriptive and explanatory model that sheds light on the fragility of the PS in Italy. There are two main findings: PF is formed through waves of new forces (foundational elections) characterised by impermeable bonds (cohort effect). The instability of the PS is largely due to a lack of inclusiveness in the PF. The National Solidarity governments showed that an inclusive PF which gathers loyal and disloyal forces even at a critical juncture phase is able to counterbalance the exogenous challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented exogenous shock for the European Union (EU) and its Member States, one that demanded a joint response at the EU level rather than several differentiated responses at the Member State level. As such, the pandemic crisis opened up a “window of opportunity” for institutional change in the EU’s financial assistance regime. This change pertains to the development of a set of rules governing the disbursement and withdrawal of funding to Member States in the context of crisis management. The paper thus aims to answer the following question: How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the EU’s financial assistance regime? Drawing on a revisited historical institutionalist framework that allows for the examination of different types of institutional development, the paper argues that the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a “critical juncture” for the EU's financial assistance regime, resulting in a shift from intergovernmental coordination (with the European Stability Mechanism) to a form of limited supranational delegation (with the Recovery and Resilience Facility).

History matters. Yet, explanations about the contemporary dynamics around informal settlements in global South cities are often divorced from their historical antecedents. We argue that a retrospective approach is important in analyzing and understanding the current dynamics around informal settlements. Applying the historical institutionalism approach and the concepts of critical junctures and path dependency, this paper develops an institutionalist approach to exploring the messy and complex dynamics of urban informal settlements in Abuja, Nigeria. Using interviews, focus group discussions, document analysis, and participant observations, we identify four key critical junctures: the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) ACT of 1976; the Land Use ACT of 1978, the 1979 master plan of Abuja, and the attempted demolition of Mpape in 2012 and the resulting 5-year court case that ended in 2017. These critical junctures have created path dependencies that explain the contemporary state of the urban informal settlements in Abuja, particularly in relation to land rights and tenure (in)security. This study shows how inconsistencies in the formulation of policies and their implementation in the planning of cities are a result of historically embedded problems. Insights into such historical legacies are the first step to a comprehensive understanding and future planning of urban informal settlements. • History matters. Contemporary cities are shaped by legacies of the past as well as current governance circumstances. • The use of critical junctures and path dependency frameworks provides meaningful insights into the informalisation processes of informal settlements. • Informal settlements in Abuja are the result of the path-dependent actions of the state and non-state actors. • Insights into historical legacies are important for sustainable future planning and regularisation of urban informal settlements. • Future studies on urban informal settlements need to account for the historical antecedents and path-dependencies in their governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toronto has for 70 years been one of the fastest growing city-regions in North America, and over the last two decades has seen booming high-rise intensification. A distinctive land value capture (LVC) system and practice has emerged. This paper traces the contested evolution of Toronto LVC since 1946, including recent major changes to the rules, and makes three main contributions: First is the suggestion that at its core, LVC is an attempt to purposefully alter the distribution of the costs and benefits of urban property development between public and private actors, and should be considered a key metric to evaluate the social equity of property development processes. Second, conjunctural analysis has recently emerged as an approach to reading the intersection of political, economic, social, and ideological processes that come together to produce historical changes in specific cases. I argue that Historical Institutionalism (HI) is a valuable complement to the conjunctural analysis approach in its focus on the genesis of and contestation over specific sets of institutions. HI provides a set of midlevel conceptual frameworks and research methods to identify major institutions, the actors involved, and institutional change mechanisms, processes, and patterns. I bring together two hitherto separate traditions of thought about conjunctures, that arising from Gramsci through Stuart Hall, and that developed in HI, arguing that HI brings analytical clarity to the comparative analysis of conjunctures. Third, the Toronto case is revealing of processes of institutional change, mechanisms supporting path dependence, and the urban impacts of globally hegemonic ideological conjunctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 is widely framed as an outside-in process, not only enabled but also enacted by the Kremlin. Prevailing accounts privilege geopolitical analysis and place those developments in a broader narrative of tension and competition between the West and Russia. Such a narrative downplays the involvement of local actors and the importance of the choices they made prior to and during those events. This article revisits the period leading up to March 2014 through a focus on critical junctures, critical antecedents, a near miss, and the path not taken. It argues that a full account of Crimea's incorporation into Russia – while acknowledging Moscow's role – cannot ignore the local contingencies that preceded and shaped it. We understand the region's annexation as a key moment of institutional change in Ukraine and focus our attention on explaining how that outcome was determined, identifying the path to such a political outcome. Yanukovych's decision to "catapult" political-economic interest groups from Makeevka and Donetsk into the peninsula led to the marginalization of the local elite. Regime change in Kyiv and a slow and cumbersome response from the new authorities in February-March 2014 triggered, but did not cause, Crimea's exit option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historicising social housing delivery approach is extensively carried out for Western countries, but studies of social housing policy journey are less focused on developing nations and examining the policy development within resource-abundant Middle Eastern countries is even rarer. Applying a critical juncture approach through the historical institutionalism lens, this paper seeks to understand the evolution of social housing policies within the Saudi Arabian context. An in-depth policy review suggests that the institutional response in this sector has transitioned from a public-welfare perspective to a more neoliberal vision in recent times. The study also indicates a time-lag in policy development regarding social housing within the urban development process in Saudi Arabia compared to global movement. During the past few years, the government has begun to focus on social housing under the developmental housing program with a commitment to link these strategies to the Saudi Vision 2030. While this is a significant policy-shift in the service delivery approach, such vision could be workable as long as sufficient room is built in for other non-government actors to work within their specific protocols and frameworks as they collaborate to provide affordable and appropriate housing for the neediest groups of the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the war in Ukraine undoubtedly boosted Ukrainian national identification and prompted rapid alienation from Russia, another salient identity question prominent since Ukraine's independence has been the country's belonging to Europe, often challenged by the alternatives of Eurasian and Slavic supranational identities. This article explores different identity constructions in the Ukrainian national mass media and their interpretation of the war with Russia from the dawn of the conflict in 2014 to 2015. Respectively, the article maps immediate developments in the content and contestation of the European identity discourse as the crisis hits these identity constructions. This study found that the war has dramatically strengthened the influence of the identity construction that fully embraced Europeanness while increasingly muting its alternatives. In contrast, identity content was less prone to change; this significant decrease in contestation evidences the robust effect of 'big-bang' events in identity discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy change is not an instantaneous or linear process. In fact, change includes several mechanisms working in tandem and even against one another. This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on homelessness policy in Canada. In a sector that is already plagued with emergency responses – rather than long-term solutions – the pandemic has initiated a critical juncture where policy change is possible, but not guaranteed. Although the existing failures to alleviate homelessness in Canada make policy failings even more obvious, aspects of the pre-existing Canadian response to homelessness negate change. The pandemic, however, has led to temporary solutions and created a setting where long-term change is possible. Using over 150 primary sources, this article analyses mechanisms of change and path dependence in the pandemic response to homelessness. The presence of such mechanisms is tested in three major Canadian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many post-communist European party systems have experienced the rise of anti-establishment parties, not all have been equally vulnerable to challengers attacking both cultural and economic liberalism. This article borrows insights from scholarship on Latin American politics and develops a critical juncture approach to understanding the linkages between economic liberalization and political illiberalism in 15 post-communist democracies during the 1990-2020 period. It argues that contingent political dynamics during post-communist junctures shaped ensuing legacies by conditioning the long-term programmatic positions and variable electoral performance of "traditional" leftist parties. This path-dependent process culminated in variable electoral viability of illiberal parties with incentives for ideological differentiation and organizational capacities to adopt those economic positions that were most likely to be electorally rewarded. By focusing on variable incentives, resources, and constraints, the article challenges previous scholarship and advances and tests a novel theoretical framework based on a probabilistic approach to critical juncture analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By employing historical institutionalism, this article argues that anthropogenic risks (i.e., climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic) serve as a critical juncture for NATO in reorienting its sustainability strategies in response to climate fluctuations and potential insecurity arising from resource depletion. During the Cold War, NATO's main objective was to deter threats from states, mainly the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Alliance turned to non-state actors (e.g., Al-Qaida, Somali pirates, and Russian hackers). Then, climate change and COVID-19 emerged as global security risks from natural, environmental phenomena. NATO had incrementally sought to address the threats from climate change, but COVID-19 served as an impetus to acknowledge insecurity caused by neither states nor non-state actors. The pandemic represented the Alliance's first significant mobilization of military assets on a regional (i.e., European level), for a sustained period, in response to a unique risk. Based on this experience, NATO needs a sustainable strategy to acknowledge anthropogenic risks and to prepare for future climate-related fluctuations and insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic spin-off facilitators support high-tech academic spin-offs and help them to navigate various barriers and critical junctures during their growth stages. In this article we draw on stage-gate models, the path-dependency, and resource based view to identify start-ups' resource needs as perceived by both facilitators and by entrepreneurs. Using qualitative data based on in-depth interviews with 18 academic spin-off facilitators and nine spin-off founders, from three technical universities in the Netherlands, we explore the critical junctures and key support activities. The results show that founders appreciate milestones and direct interface regarding business support, business plan development, and legal support during the early growth stages. In all stages, in particular during the later stages, founders appreciate different type of network support (e.g., start-up network and industry) and when facilitators act as intermediaries to guide them in the network. This helps spin-offs to gain credibility and reach out to the market. This article adds to current research on academic facilitators and in particular incubators by providing a more comprehensive explanation for the low usage of the incubator's resources. By matching key resources and support activities that can navigate particular critical junctures, we try to promote the successful transition from one stage to the other. Our findings offer significant implications, both theoretical and practical, for academic entrepreneurship literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a feminist institutionalist perspective, this article engages in a comparative analysis of South Africa, one of the only post-transition democracies where women organized as a distinct interest group representing gender interests were able to negotiate and gain access to political power, and India, where women's participation was predominantly as 'nationalist women'. It argues that constitution drafting is a decisive critical juncture when descriptive representation can be translated very effectively into the substantive representation of women as equal citizens, provided women qua women and as gender-conscious agents are able to intervene to promote the cause of their effective political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• USOs face dynamic and iterative junctures each posing challenges which need to be overcome. • Micro-foundational dynamic capabilities can help explain USO survival and success. • Absorptive, adaptive and innovative capabilities can help USO sustainability. • USOs need to develop, deploy and integrate combinations of micro-foundational capabilities. University Spin-Offs (USOs) are important contributors to regional innovation, productivity and job creation; however, their failure rates remain very high. While studies have explored the factors affecting USO formation and success, scholars have highlighted the need for further research into the processes through which USOs can effectively reach sustainable returns by navigating several critical junctures. We posit that a micro-foundational perspective can contribute new knowledge on how USOs develop higher-order dynamic capabilities, which are essential to overcoming key challenges and leveraging opportunities. This paper explores how USOs develop the micro-foundational dynamic capabilities of adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities to successfully overcome formation's critical junctures and reach long-term sustainability. The findings identify how USOs develop, deploy and integrate various combinations of micro-foundational capabilities to navigate each critical juncture and reach thresholds of sustainability. In particular, as firm development progressed and critical junctures increased in complexity, USOs needed to deploy all three capabilities simultaneously and in an integrated manner. We identify the limitations of existing linear models of USO development and contribute to theory development through the development of a new, dynamic model that illustrates how USOs build micro-foundational dynamic capabilities cumulatively and iteratively to overcome critical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In periods of uncertainty or during critical junctures, scientific advice may be in high demand to provide legitimacy for political decision makers. This article outlines the evolution of expert forms of knowledge and the way those have shaped Baltic Sea region building, including its consultative and collaborative frameworks of agenda setting. The selected cases include HELCOM, the Copenhagen School of international relations and the Baltic Science Network. This article offers an explanation of how these epistemic collectives have produced consensual knowledge, generated legitimacy, and engendered agency of scientific research findings and knowledge-based decisions in national, transnational, and macro-regional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though scholars have made substantial contributions in connecting the fields of transitional justice and memory studies, important questions remain unanswered. The question of sequencing is one of them. How does a certain TJ mechanism condition the implementation of subsequent mechanisms and how together they shape memory narratives in a given society? This article builds on the case of Mozambique. Soon after the signing of the General Peace Agreement in 1992, the Frelimo-led government approved Amnesty Law 15/92 and with it, the past was to be left in the past. Such a choice was different from the one taken by Samora Machel—Mozambique's first president—between 1975 and 1982. By promoting a quasi-truth commission, Machel revisited Mozambique's colonial past and brought comprometidos ' actions into the open. This article finds that whether the government opened up about the past or sought to leave it behind, the result has been the same: the celebratory reproduction of the liberation war narrative. Resorting to path dependence and critical junctures, this study explains the ways in which such a narrative has become hegemonic throughout the last four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Republican support for the 1982 Voting Rights Act (VRA) extension is a puzzle for scholars of racial policy coalitions. The extension contained provisions that were manifestly antithetical to core principles of the "color-blind" policy alliance said to dominate the GOP. Recent scholarship has explained this puzzling decision by arguing that conservatives were confident that the VRA's most objectionable provisions could be undone by the federal bureaucracy and judiciary, while absolving Republicans of the blame of being against voting rights. This article suggests that the picture is more complicated. Applying the concept of "critical junctures" to the 1982 VRA extension, the article highlights the importance of actors' contingent decisions and reveals a wider range of choices available to political entrepreneurs than has been conventionally understood. Highlighting differing views within the Reagan administration, this article also identifies a wider range of reasons why Republicans supported the act's extension, including career ambition, party-building, policy agenda advancement, and genuine commitment, rather than simply a defensive stance as implied by recent histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article aims to improve understanding of institution formation in (former) liberal-democratic polities characterized by autocratization tendencies. We examine how the critical juncture created by the COVID-19 pandemic was used, as well as the interplay between antecedent, structural conditions and the particular combinations of political agency and contingency. By comparing the two similar cases of Hungary and Poland – the two European Union countries that have progressed the farthest towards illiberal transformation – and using documentary and interview evidence, we conclude that: (1) whereas Hungary exhibited significant institutional changes, Poland did not; (2) these differences in institutional outcomes can be significantly attributed to differences in certain critical antecedent conditions; and (3) the ability of key political actors – Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Poland's Jarosław Kaczyński – to control their own political camp seems to have exerted an unmistakable effect as well. Points for practitioners The build-up and entrenchment of institutions of illiberal rule in (previously) liberal-democratic contexts are encumbered by diverse political and institutional constraints. External shocks, such as the COVID-19 crisis, may offer an opportunity to bypass those constraints and to change institutions permanently. Our study concludes that the extent to which such historical windows of opportunity can indeed be used to achieve lasting institutional changes depends not only on the objective, historically given political and institutional constraints that illiberal reforms face, but also on their subjective ability to act in a controlled, coordinated and coherent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The nomination by Pres. Donald J. Trump of Michael Pack as the Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency that oversees the Voice of America (VOA) and other civilian international broadcasters, was politically controversial. Democratic senators feared that if confirmed, Pack would pursue a partisan political agenda through the broadcasters because he was a known associate of President Trump's former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon. This study shows that fears that a president could use government agencies to advance a partisan political agenda emerged long ago when the government first started establishing information agencies, such as the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and the Office of War Information (OWI). Such fears are likely to continue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]