Policy processes in times of crises: the common european asylum system

In public policy literature and, more specifically, policy process research, crises are considered turning points that move policy subsystems from stability to change and learning. This assumption is also at the basis of many European Union integration theories, with the EU founding fathers’ statement that the EU will be forged in crisis. In the last fifteen years or so, crises are also becoming the new stability in the EU, with shocks succeeding one another (e.g., the Eurocrisis, refugee crisis, and Covid-19, among others). However, this connection between crises, policy processes and EU policymaking is still underexplored. This collection of articles attempts to fill this gap. By relying on the theories of the policy process, crisis management literature and the methodological tools of network analysis, the papers investigate EU migration and asylum policies (i.e., the Common European Asylum System) from different theoretical, analytical, methodological and empirical perspectives. Starting with a systematic literature review of crisis in policy process research, the second article of the collection analyses crisis’ effects on policy core beliefs over a timespan of more than ten years. The third paper explicitly includes the concept of ideational power to policy process research, and it tests the influence of Member States’ narratives in responding to the European Commission’s proposal for reform in the aftermath of a crisis. The last contribution of the collection proposes a novel way to analyse and measure how beliefs are translated into the final legislation, taking the latest EU migration and asylum policies reform as its empirical case. Overall, this collection of articles theoretically, analytically, methodologically and empirically contributes to public policy and policy process research, to EU policymaking literature, as well as to crisis management research in public policy.