European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 183

European Policy Analysis a central planning unit) may be less capable of solving certain problems than the prior, dispersed (i.e., nonintegrated) policy arenas. Third, from a procedural perspective, integration duration refers to the length of the process. Given the inherent temporality of policies (as previously explained), their integration can be restricted to a certain point in policy time, referring to a particular stage such as agenda setting or implementation (punctual integration), or it can extend over a longer policy period, covering multiple stages (enduring integration). Such a differentiation between punctual and enduring modes of PI (along with the acknowledgment of possible intermediate forms on the spectrum) critically implies that PI is not necessarily an all-encompassing phenomenon, but may end at some point in the course of policymaking. In sum, the two concepts that define the conceptual space for thinking about and analyzing PI—policy and int egration—are fairly complex and exhibit a diverse range of meanings. Together they constitute the “universe of policy integration”—the conceptual space of conceivable forms of PI constituting the analytical PI perspective. Thereby, the PI perspective emphasizes the multifaceted nature and potential complexity of policy integration, that is, the fact that different elements of policies can be integrated in different ways. This helps overcome the dominating narrow and politically biased understandings of policy integration and allows for a finer-grained empirical analysis of the multiple forms that policy integration can take on in practice. In fact, my own in-depth analysis of the German sustainability strategy has shown that policy integration is realized in a much more differentiated and nuanced way than established approaches of PI would have been able to take into account (Bornemann 2014). The reconstruction of the policy arrangement that has emerged from the German sustainability strategy reveals a highly differentiated and multifaceted pattern of policy integration, which combines several policy objects in multiple modes, on the levels of both understandings and manifestations. Thus, the study reveals that policymakers follow very particular pathways of integrative policymaking and yield highly differentiated forms of policy integration, which in some respects match the normative integration requirements of the sustainability idea. Overall, the PI perspective comes with a differentiated conceptual repertoire for analyzing the combination of policies within integrative–strategic policy fields. A systematic analysis of IPS from the perspective of policy integration opens the view for the multiple forms that integrative policy fields can take, that is, which (aspects of) policies are integrated and how this is done. 4.2. Political Strategy as Analytical Focus Although strategy is an emerging concept in political and policy studies (Mulgan 2010), many studies of strategy in the public sphere disseminate models of strategic management. This might reflect “a widely shared consensus on contemporary strategising in the public sector that emerged from decades of strategic management research” (CasadoAsensio and Steurer 2014, 457; see also Steurer and Martinuzzi 2005). However, the adoption of models of strategic 183