ACCUPOL started from the observation that modern democracies are potentially caught in a responsiveness trap. On the one hand, it can be considered a major asset of democratic governments that they are responsive to societal demands. Citizens claim cleaner environments, better social protection, more and better education, more transparency, or more individual freedoms. Governments typically respond to these demands by adopting new policy outputs, such as laws, regulations or programs. As existing policies are dismantled or terminated only very rarely, over time policy outputs continuously pile up in modern democracies. Policy accumulation hence constitutes a central, yet unexplored feature of modern democracies, regardless of the country or policy sector under study.
Yet, merely adopting new policies reflects nothing but symbolic politics if the respective policy outputs do not also reduce the problems that they are supposed to solve. This essentially requires an expansion of administrative capacities since policy accumulation directly translates into the accumulation of administrative burdens. Therefore, there is the risk of an increasing gap between accumulating policies and stagnating or even declining implementation capacities. This scenario indicates the potential responsiveness trap of modern democracies. Any escape therefrom presumes that policy accumulation and implementation capacities must remain in a concerted balance – either by keeping policy accumulation at a ‘sustainable rate’ or by expanding implementation capacities.
It was the central objective of ACCUPOL to systematically investigate both theoretically and empirically whether the above-mentioned responsiveness trap exists and to what extent it can be overcome. In a first step, ACCUPOL thoroughly uncovered and described the phenomenon of policy accumulation empirically. Collecting data on social and environmental policy accumulation in 21 OECD countries over a period of 45 years, the project shows that patterns of policy accumulation vary over time, across sectors, and across countries. Second, ACCUPOL examined the factors that explain the variation of accumulation rates across sectors and countries. In this regard, the project demonstrated the pronounced impact of vertical policy-process integration. The more policymakers have to take account the implementation requirements in drafting new measures and the better implementation actors are involved in policymaking, the higher are the chances that policy accumulation remains at a moderate level and is met by appropriate capacities for policy implementation. Third, ACCUPOL studied in detail how implementers cope with capacity limitations.
