Political rootlessness, rather than capacity and subsystem support loss? Probing why policy derived from internationally popular norms may terminate easily

Abstract Policy studies suggest that policy termination is rare, just as stability is common. Yet, international relations studies suggest that national policies based on international agreements terminate easily. What makes the difference? Widespread discontinuation of national action plans (NAPs) for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a case in point. NAPs are national strategic plans—and hence, national policies—for combatting AMR. More than 170 countries produced them in the years following global agreement to combat AMR in 2015, seeming to represent great success for new international norms. However, this article shows that 51% of countries with NAPs on record have terminated them, and terminations appear to be increasing. It probes plausibility of two conventional termination reasons and one novel: lost policy capacity, policy subsystem support loss, and the new one, domestic political rootlessness. The article shows that the last is clearly plausible in the AMR NAP case. This finding advances policy termination theory by illustrating how policies lacking firm roots in domestic institutions and policy subsystems—such as some originating in internationally agreed norms—can be easily abandoned by national governments once international attention and pressure move elsewhere.