Partisan effects and policy entrepreneurs. New Labour’s impact on British law and order policy

Under successive New Labour administrations British law and order policy experienced a significant shift. The literature, however, falls short to empirically substantiate whether this change can be attributed to the ideological preferences of the party in power – neither on the aggregate-level nor in terms of a causal mechanism. This study develops a novel partisan effects mechanism linking the notion of policy-seeking party elites with the notion of policy entrepreneurship. The applied mixed-method research design confirms a partisan link in two ways: On the aggregate-level, the first systematic analysis of the complete law and order legislation from 1990 to 2014 allows to assess the significant policy change as well as its correlation with partisan effects. On the micro-level, a qualitative analysis traces these effects within the political process of a single piece of legislation highlighting policy entrepreneurs as a causal mechanism of partisan effects.