ABSTRACT
Almost two decades of research in public policy using the concept of policy network has resulted in considerable output.1 A great number of articles on policy networks can be found in major journals in political science and public administration and even more chapters in edited volumes, special issues of journals (Marin and Mayntz 1991; König 1998) or more specialized policy journals. Therefore, the concept can be regarded as being one of the major analytical concepts in the fi eld of public policy partly competing, partly complementing other major approaches like veto players/game theory (Tsebelis 1999), ideas (Weir 1992), or the advocacy coalition approach (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993). The concept has been used to analyze policy making and implementation at the local and regional (Melbek 1998; Schneider et al. 2003), the national (see, among others, Laumann and Knoke 1987; Rhodes 1991; Schneider and Werle 1991), the European (Bretherton and Sperling 1996; Héritier 1993; Nölke 2003), and the international level (Grundmann 1997; Reinicke 1998). Moreover, the concept has been applied in the analysis of policy making in many different industrial sectors such as nuclear energy (Zijlstra 1979), chemicals, and telecommunication (Schneider 1992), and policy fi elds such as environmental (Carpenter et al. 2003) or science policy (Grande and Peschke 1999).
