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Policy Design and Non-Design in Policy-Making Policy Formulation and the Changing Dynamics of Public Policy

Giliberto Capano SNS

and

Michael Howlett

NUS & SFU

Background Paper Workshop on

“Design and Non-Design in Policy-Making: When and How Policy Design Matters” ECPR Jt. Sessions of Workshops

March 31- April 3 University of Warsaw

Warsaw Poland

Draft 3

March 4, 2015

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Abstract This paper addresses the differences between more, and less, analytical and instrumental policy formulation and decision processes and the likelihood of each occurring in a particular policy context. By engaging in a discussion of the intention to engage in policy design, the paper develops a continuum of several formulation processes that can exist between ideal instrumental and problem-solution driven policy design and other more contingent and less intentional processes. Coupled with capacity issues, the papers begins to draw out the implications of these variables for understanding good and poor policy design processes and outcomes.  

Introduction: Policy Design, Non-Design and Social Policy Studies Past and Future Public policies are the result of efforts made by governments to alter aspects of their

own or social behaviour in order to carry out some end or purpose and are comprised

of complex arrangements of policy goals and policy means. In this view policy design

involves the effort to more or less systematically develop efficient and effective

policies through the application of knowledge about policy means gained from

experience, and reason, to the development and adoption of courses of action that are

likely to succeed in attaining their desired goals or aims within specific policy

contexts (Bobrow and Dryzek 1987; Bobrow 2006; Montpetit 2003).

Exactly what constitutes a design, what makes one successful and what makes

one design better than other are important questions. As Linder and Peters (1991)

argued, policy design can be thought of as a spatial activity. That is, as:

a systematic activity composed of a series of choices . . . design solutions, then, will correspond to a set of possible locations in a design space . . . this construction emphasizes not only the potential for generating new mixtures of conventional solutions, but also the importance of giving careful attention to tradeoffs among design criteria when considering instrument choices.

That is, designing successful policies requires thinking about policy-making in such a

way as to fully take into account the many purposes which polices can serve and the

nature of the multiple levels of policy elements or components which make up a

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typical policy: that is, to understand the ‘design space’ (Hillier, Musgrove and

O’Sullivan 1972; Hillier and Leaman 1974; Gero 1990) or context in which policy

formulators and decision-makers work.

This is significant because the ends and purposes attempted to be attained

through such designs are multifarious and wide- ranging and different policies can be

more or less systematically designed. That is, not all policies are ‘designed’ in the

sense set out above and can rather evolve through less “rational” processes such as

political bargaining and/or have their content informed by activities such as self-

interested lobbying rather than disinterested analysis.

The exact processes through which policy designs emerge and are articulated

vary greatly by jurisdiction and sector, and appear to reflect factors such as the great

differences, and nuances, that exist between different forms of government – from

military regimes to liberal democracies and within each type – as well as the

particular configuration of issues, actors and problems various governments, of

whatever type, face in particular areas or sectors of activity – such as health or

education policy, industrial policy, transportation or energy policy, social policy and

many others (Ingraham 1987; Howlett, Ramesh and Perl 2009).

Attempts to understand the basic conditions for design (vs non-design) and to

answer the questions posed above have animated design studies and research in the

policy sciences over the past half century. This workshop addresses the significance

of contextual and other factors involved in policy-making and instrument choices and

their impact in terms of creating propitious or inauspicious circumstances for design

efforts.

This paper in particular addresses the differences between more, and less,

analytical and instrumental policy formulation and decision processes and the

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likelihood of each occurring, in a given policy context. By engaging in a discussion of

the intention to engage in policy design, the paper develops a continuum of several

formulation processes that can exist between ideal instrumental and problem-solution

driven policy design and other more contingent and less intentional processes. The

implications of this, coupled with a concern for policy resources or capacity, for

understanding good and poor policy design processes and outcomes are then

discussed.

The Old and the New Policy Design Literature

Policy design as a field of inquiry has had a checkered history. A design orientation

focusing on rational instrument decisions engendered a large literature in the 1980s

and 1990s under the guidance of such prominent figures in the US, Canadian,

European and Australian policy studies community such as Lester Salamon, Patricia

Ingraham, Malcolm Goggin, John Dryzek, Hans Bressers, Helen Ingram and Anne

Schneider, G.B. Doern, Stephen Linder and B. Guy Peters, Renate Mayntz,

Christopher Hood, Eugene Bardach, Evert Vedung, Peter May, Frans van Nispen and

Michael Trebilock, among others.

After this promising beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, however, the field

languished in the 1990s and 2000s as work in the policy sciences focused on the

impact on policy outcomes of meta-changes in society and the international

environment (Howlett and Lejano 2012; Howlett 2011). Both globalization and

governance studies of the period ignored traditional design concerns in arguing that

changes at this level pre- determined policy specifications. Although some writings on

policy design continued to flourish in specific fields such as economics, energy and

environmental studies (see for example, Boonecamp 2006, del Rio 2010a and 2010b),

in the fields of public administration and public policy the design orientation was

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largely replaced by a new emphasis on the study of institutional forms and

decentralized governance arrangements. As a result of these processes, for example,

many commentators suggested that implementation practices had become more

participatory and consultative over the last several decades (Alshuwaikhat and

Nkwenti 2002; Arellano-Gault and Vera-Cortes 2005) replacing previous top-down

formulation processes dominated by government analysts with more ‘bottom-up’

ones; that is, ones less amenable to design by state elites.1

However more recent work re-asserting the role of governments both at the

international and domestic levels has re-vitalized design studies. This work

appreciates that an uninformed emphasis on globalization and the merits of de-

centralized governance arrangements had a serious negative impact on policy design

research. The idea that changes in governance modes entailed both alterations in the

abilities of various state and non-state actors to prevail in policy formulation disputes

and decisions, as well as shifts in the choices and types of policy instruments used to

implement public policy which are at the core of policy designs and designing (March

and Olson, 1996; Offe, 2006; Weaver and Rockman, 1993; Scharpf, 1991), suggested

that design was largely functional and automatic.2

  More recently, however, the government-to-governance thinking behind these

models has been challenged by studies which revealed the continuing high profile and

important role played by governments both in contexts of social ‘steering’ and in

more traditional areas of policy activities (Capano 2011; Tollefson et al 2011; Howlett

et al 2009). These studies have found that even in ostensibly high-network areas of

activity such as social policy and health, governments (or more generally, public

institutions) still have the prime responsibility for governing society and choosing

governance techniques and policy content although they may choose to modify the

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way they perform this role if they feel the need to be more effective in dealing with

stakeholders, or they wish to avoid paying an excessive political costs for their actions.

A New Emphasis on the Need to Accurately Assess and Understand the Design Space

Accurately describing and understanding the nature of the policy design ‘space’

or context thus remains a crucial activity for policy designers and students of policy

design. Much of the original design literature in the 1960s and 1970s focused

attention on ‘technical’ analysis. That is, upon efforts to assess the functional

capacities of specific policy tools and how they could be applied to achieve policy

goals in abstract or imagined unconstrained policy-making circumstances. The newer

design literature keeps this focus but adds to it the need to also assess contextual

factors involved in tool choices and use, especially political ones (Schon 1992; Gero

and Kannengiesser nd; Gero and Kannengiesser nd; Baliga and Maskin 2003; Maskin

2008).

That is, designers must avoid simply advocating ‘stock’ solutions unless this is

called for by the limited nature of the space available for new designs. Rather they

should ‘consider the range of feasible’ options possible in a given circumstance and

package these into sets of ‘competing strategies’ to achieve policy goals (May 1981).

As David Weimer (1992: 373) has argued, ‘Instruments, alone or in combination,

must be crafted to fit particular substantive, organizational and political contexts’.

The new design orientation focuses attention on the construction over time of

policy packages operating in complex multi-policy and multi-level design contexts

such as those found in most policy-making areas which are expected to address

multiple goals and objectives (del Rio & Howlett, 2013). And the field is interested in

better describing the nature of the bundles of tools which can be used to address

policy problems and to help understand the interactive effects which occur when

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multiple tools are used over time (Doremus, 2003; Howlett et al., 2014b, Howlett,

2014; Jordan et al. 2011; 2012).

Re-focusing on the issue of policy design in this way is a promising effort to

better understanding the processes through which policies are formulated and

implemented and see how their content is continuously chosen and developed. From

this point of view the “new” policy design wave in public policy is a fruitful way

through which different theoretical and empirical streams in political science can join

together on a specific strategic research theme related to the nature of policy advice

and decision-making dynamics both in theory and practice. In fact to understand how

policy design matters in policy-making means to read from a multi-theoretical

perspective on the different stages of the policy-making trying to understand how

institutional arrangements, governance modes, institutional behaviors (above all those

of governments and parliaments), institutionalized patterns of actors’ relations,

conflicting policy ideas interact each other in designing the content of agendas,

political decisions, implementation strategies.

Seen from this point of view, to call for a renewed focus on policy design

means to call for a convergence of those streams of research, both in political science

and in public policy, which study how political and policy decisions are made and

implemented, that is, in other words, how the policy design space is delimited and

fulfilled.

What is the Difference between Policy Design and Non-Design?

Within the policy sciences, “design” has been linked both to policy instruments and

implementation (May, 2003) and to the impact of policy ideas and advice on policy

formulation (Linder & Peters, 1990). It is usually thought to involve the deliberate

and conscious attempt to define policy goals and connect them in an instrumental

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fashion to tools expected to realize those objectives (Gilabert & Lawford-Smith,

2012; Majone, 1975; May, 2003). But not all policies are ‘designed’ in this sense, nor

are all designs good nor do they all necessarily lead to superior outcomes.

Understanding the differences between design and non-design and what causes or

leads to good or poor designs is a key question in the new design orientation.

What is Policy Design?

Policy design can be thought of as a specific form of policy formulation based

on the gathering of knowledge about the effects of policy tool use on policy targets

and the application of that knowledge to the development and implementation of

policies aimed at the attainment of specifically desired public policy outcomes and

ambitions (Bobrow, 2006; Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Montpetit, 2003; Weaver, 2009,

2010).

Policy designs thus can be seen to contain both a substantive component—a

set of alternative arrangements thought potentially capable of resolving or addressing

some aspect of a policy problem, one or more of which is ultimately put into

practice—as well as a procedural component— a set of activities related to securing

some level of agreement among those charged with formulating, deciding, and

administering that alternative vis-à-vis other alternatives (Howlett, 2011).

Design hence overlaps and straddles policy formulation, decision-making and

policy implementation and involves actors, ideas and interests active at each stage of

the policy process (Howlett et al 2009). However, it also posits a very specific form of

interaction among these elements, driven by knowledge and evidence of alternatives’

merits and demerits in achieving policy goals rather than by other processes such as

bargaining or electioneering among key policy actors.

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Conceptually, a policy design process begins with the analysis of the abilities

of different kinds of policy tools to affect policy outputs and outcomes and the kinds

of resources required to allow them to operate as intended (Hood, 1986; Salamon,

2002). This instrumental knowledge is contextual in the sense that it requires a special

understanding of how the use of specific kinds of instruments affects target group

behaviour and compliance with government aims. It thus includes knowledge and

consideration of many constraints on tool use originating in the limits of existing

knowledge, prevailing governance structures, and other arrangements and behaviours

which may preclude consideration of certain options and promote others (Howlett,

2009a, 2011). It requires both analytical and evidentiary capacity on the part of the

government as well as the intention to exercise it.

What is Non-Design?

Such a means-ends understanding of policy-making permeates the policy

design orientation but, of course, is only one possible orientation or set of practices

which can be followed in actual policy formulation and result in policy-outputs

(Colebatch, 2006; Tribe, 1972). It highlights the complex processes through which

policies emerge and raises the issues of how to distinguish between design and other

formulation and decision-making processes (Gero, 1990; Schön, 1988). In the design

case, policy formulators are expected as much as possible to base their analyses on

logic, knowledge and experience rather than, for example, purely political

calculations and forms of satisficing behaviour which also can serve to generate

alternatives (Bendor, Kumar, & Siegel, 2009; Sidney, 2007).

Policy design studies, of course, acknowledge that not all policy work is

rational in this instrumental sense. That is, not all policy-making is logic or

knowledge driven and it is debatable how closely policy-makers approximate the

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instrumental logic and reasoning which is generally thought to characterize this field

(Howlett et al., 2009).

In contrast to those who view policy-making as intentional and instrumentally

rational, for example, many commentators, pundits and jaded or more cynical

members of the public assume that all policy-making, as the output of a political

system and decision-making process, is inherently interest-driven, ideological and

hence irrational in a design sense. This is a very common assumption in many policy

studies and constitutes a form of non-design, interpreted from a technical or problem-

centered design perspective.

With respect to non-design, however, it bears repeating that the modern policy

studies movement did begin with the recognition that public policy-making results

from the interactions of policy-makers in the exercise of power, legitimate or

otherwise (Arts & van Tatenhove, 2004; Lasswell, 1958; Stone, 1988). Although some

of these efforts were noted to be arbitrary or capricious, most were viewed as

representing the concerted efforts of governments to intentionally act in an

instrumental way; that is, to attempt to achieve a particular policy goal or end through

the use of a relatively well known set of policy means developed over many years of

state-building experience (Lasswell & Lerner, 1951). Transforming policy intentions

into practice is a complex process and crafting the best possible policy in a

programmatic or instrumental sense is not always a government’s prime concern. In

some circumstances, it can be expected that policy decisions will be more highly

contingent and ‘irrational’ than others, that is, driven by situational logics and

opportunism rather than careful deliberation and assessment. (Cohen et al. 1979;

Dryzek 1983; Kingdon 1984; Eijlander 2005; Franchino and Hoyland 2009).

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This high level of contingency in some decision-making contexts has led some

critics and observers of policy design efforts to suggest that policies cannot be

‘designed’ in the sense that a house or a piece of furniture can be (Dryzek and Ripley

1988; deLeon 1988). However, many other scholars disagreed with this assessment.3

Paraphrasing Hugh Heclo (1978), governments not only power but also puzzle, and

thus they can be genuinely committed to solve collective problems also though real

policy design.

In some policy decisions and formulation processes “design” considerations

may be more or less absent and the quality of the logical or empirical relations

between policy components as solutions to problems may be incorrect or ignored

(Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1979; Dryzek, 1983; Eijlander, 2005; Franchino & Hoyland,

2009; Kingdon, 1984; Sager & Rielle, 2013). This includes a variety of contexts in

which formulators or decision-makers, for example, may engage in interest-driven

trade-offs or log-rolling between different values or resource uses or, more extremely,

might engage in venal or corrupt behaviour in which personal gain from a decision

may trump other evaluative criteria.

These “non-design” situations are well known in political science but have not

been well studied in the policy sciences and the extent to which such considerations as

political gain or blame avoidance calculations outweigh instrumental factors in policy

formulation is a key question (Hood, 2010) which studies of social policy-making are

well suited to illuminate.

Understanding Design and Non-Design Policy Spaces

In general it is clear that a spectrum of design and non-design formulation

processes exists between policy processes informed by instrumental motivations and

ones driven by other logics (see Figure 1). While the distinction between policy-

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driven and politically-driven processes is clear, the exact boundary between them is

not and it is necessary to examine in more detail why one process emerges rather than

the other and, secondly, the conditions under which either process can successfully

achieve its goals.

Figure 1 – A Spectrum of Design and Non-Design Processes

The Requisites for Good (and Poor) Design and Non-Design: A Capacity Approach

The nature of the constraints on government intentions can negatively or

positively affect both design and non-design processes and result in good or poor

outcomes in specific sectors. In both the cases of design and non-design situations

high government capacity is a significant pre-requisite for success, and the same is

true of a lack of capacity and it’s impact on policy failure. For those favouring more

rational design process the worst situation is a politicized, religious or ideologically-

driven policy process with few governing resources which is a ‘design’ space

expected to generate very poor results. However even when design values dominate,

Politics and Governance, 2014, Volume 2, Issue 2, Pages X–X 9

Figure 2. A spectrum of design and non-design processes.

5. Conclusion: Distinguishing Design from Non-Design-Based Formulation

Transforming policy ambitions into practice is a com-plex process and intentionally creating the best possi-ble arrangement of policy elements is not always the first item on a government’s mind, nor necessarily within its reach. Many noble efforts of policy formula-tors have failed due to poor design capacity or the ina-bility or lack of desire on the part of decision-makers to alter elements of existing policies or create new ones in a logical, instrumental, fashion (Cohn, 2004; Howlett, 2012). These experiences have led to a greater aware-ness of the various obstacles that can present them-selves to policy design efforts and have gradually fueled a desire for better understanding the unique character-istics of policy formulation processes and the spaces and contexts in which design efforts are embedded.

As the discussion here has shown, both design and non-design processes vary along several important di-mensions. For design situations—that is those charac-terized by a government desire to systematically match ends and means in the attainment of public policy goals, the processes vary according to the nature of the resources available for design purposes and the con-straints imposed by policy legacies. The former often determine the quality of the design effort and impact the design itself while the latter generate contexts in which processes such as patching and stretching un-fold. In a more non-design world where the intention to instrumentally design is lacking, constraints on out-comes also exist as do different processes which vary in their distance from the design ideal of public value and

service and improving the public good through better in-formation and knowledge utilization and improved management efforts (Holmberg & Rothstein, 2012; Rot-berg, 2014).

Students of policy design must be aware of these different formulation contexts, processes and out-comes and be able to properly and accurately assess the situations governments are in or want to be in while developing policy options and when making rec-ommendations and providing advice to governments. More systematic study of the formulation contexts and processes set out above can help move this area of pol-icy design studies forward.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants at the Panel on “Issues in Policy Formulation Theory & Prac-tice” at the IPSA 23rd World Congress of Political Sci-ence held in Montreal, PQ Canada on July 19–24, 2014, for their feedback on an early draft of this paper.

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare no conflict of interests.

References

Ackerman, B. (1981). Clean Coal/Dirty Air: Or How the Clean Air Act Became a Multibillion-Dollar Bail-Out for High-Sulfur Coal Producers (Vol. 23). New Haven: Yale University Press.

Arts, B., & Van Tatenhove, J. (2004). Policy and power:

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capacity remains a critical pre-requisite for successful policy formulation and

implementation.

Figure 2 presents a schematic illustrating how these two different aspects of

policy-making – having a design intention and the capacity to carry it out or not -

create different policy formulation spaces which enable or lead to the emergence of

very different policy processes and outcomes. This sets out a set of formulation spaces

taking into account the intention and ability of governments to undertake purposive,

instrumental policy design or to meet more political goals when faced with the

presence or absence of significant policy resource constraints or tool lock-in affects.

Figure 2. Types of policy formulation spaces: Situating design and non-design processes and outcomes

Level of Government Knowledge and Other Constraints

High Low

Gov

ernm

ent F

orm

ulat

ion

Inte

ntio

n

More Instrumental

Capable Policy Design Space

Relatively unconstrained formulation via design is possible

Poor Policy Design Space

Only partially informed or restricted design is possible

Less Instrumental

Capable Political Non-Design Space Relatively unconstrained non-design processes are possible

Poor Political Non-Design Space Only poorly informed non-design is possible

Policy capacity is defined here as a set of skills, competences, resources, and

institutional arrangements and capabilities with which key tasks and functions in

policy process are structured, staffed and supported. Many noble efforts of policy

makers in both a design and non-design sense have failed due to lack of capacity to

make policies in a systematic instrumental manner whether the intention is technical

excellence or more partisan goals. These experiences have led scholars of public

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policy to focus on the challenges involved in formulating policies in terms of the

capabilities, competences and capacities of governments and their NGO counterparts

and civil society actors. Having the necessary skills or competences to make policy

are crucial to policy and governance success. However they also rely on their

availability and the availability of adequate resources to allow them to be mobilized.

These resources or capabilities must exist at the individual, organizational and

system-levels in order to allow individual policy workers and managers to participate

in and contribute to designing, deploying, and evaluating policies. It includes not only

their ability to analyse but also to learn and adapt to changes as necessary.

Just like ‘intention’, policy capacity is a complex topic as government

competences and capabilities are unevenly distributed across a range of individual,

organizational and systemic activities and actors. Analytical competences allow

policy alternatives to be effectively generated and investigated; managerial capacities

allow state resources to be effectively brought to bear on policy issues; and political

capacities allow policy-makers and managers the support required to develop and

implement their ideas, programs and plans. The skills and competences of key policy

professionals, such as policy-makers, public managers, and policy analysts, play a key

role in determining how well various tasks and functions in policy process but require

various kinds of resources if they are to be exercized fully or to the extent they are

needed. But resources must also be available at the level of the organization if their

members’ ability to perform policy functions as needed is to exist.

Finally, system level capabilities include the level of support and trust a public

agency enjoys from its political masters and from the society at large as well as the

nature of the economic and security systems within which policy-makers operate.

Such factors are critical determinant of organizational capabilities and thus of public

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managers’ and analysts capability to perform their policy work. Political support for

both from both above and below are vital because agencies and managers must be

considered legitimate in order to access resources from their authorizing institutions

and constituencies on a continuing basis, and such resources must also be available

for award in the first place. The nine components of policy capacity involving these

three sets of skills or competences and the three locations of resources or capabilities

needed for their exercize are set out in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3 – A Matrix Model of Policy Capacity

Level

Dimension

INDIVIDUAL

ORGANIZATIONAL

SYSTEMIC

Analytical

Analytical Capacity

Knowledge of policy substance and analytical techniques and communication skills

Technical Capacity

Capability in data collection; Availability of software and hardware for analysis and evaluation; Storage and Dissemination of operational information (eg. client need, service utilization; budget, human resources.); E-services.

Knowledge System Capacity

Availability and sharing of data for policy research and analysis; availability, quality and the level of competition of policy advisory services in and out of government; presence of high quality educational and training institutions and opportunities for knowledge generation, mobilization and use access to information

Managerial

Managerial Capacity

strategic management, leadership, communication, negotiation and conflict resolution, financial management and budgeting

Administrative Capacity

Funding, staffing, levels of Intra- and inter-agency communication, consultation, and coordination.

Governance Capacity

Levels of Inter-organisational trust and communication; Adequate fiscal system to fund programs and projects;

Political

Political Acumen Capacity

Understanding of the needs and positions of different stakeholders; judgment of political feasibility; Communication skills

Political Resource Capacity

Access to key policy-makers; Effective Civil Service bargain. Politicians’ support for the agency programmes and projects.

Legitimation Capacity

Level of public participation in policy process; Public Trust; Presence of rule of law and transparent adjudicative system

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This is true in general, and specifically in policy sectors where formulation

challenges are particularly daunting in dealing with problems which are multi-faceted,

intertwined, and rooted in a diverse range of individual, social, and economic

conditions, ideological and religious predilections and often highly politicized (Bode

2006). As pointed out above, addressing such problems often results in construction

of bundles or packages of tools over time that attempt to simultaneously address

multiple goals in overlapping and multi-level and multi-sector contexts requiring high

levels of capacity which may not exist. However, many policy formulation efforts in

deviate from the instrumental logic and reasoning expected of policy design processes

because they deal with more intractable problems in the context of

poor/contested/ideologically driven knowledge of causal relations and poorly funded

and resourced organizations. This is especially the case when solutions proposed

touch on deeply held values and norms that inhibit formulation and implementation

efforts at the systemic level.

The Dynamics of Design and Non-Design

While such a framework helps to make sense of multiple possible design

spaces and their outcomes, it is also important to stress the dynamic nature of all of

these processes. That is, key non-design aspects of many policies are negative

stretching and tense layering over time, especially when attempting to manage large

policy systems which require implementation across different levels or areas such as

between federal and local or rural and urban jurisdictions and authorities. In policy

areas such as health and urbanization, for example, national and sub-national or

regional and sub-regional policy goals are set using frameworks that overlook unique

local needs or ignores the externalities arising out of isolated policy design. The

resulting institutional stretching and poor layering of policies contributes to weak

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outcomes. The contextual constraints in these cases may be so strong that designing

policies often take forms only distantly related to solving the problem the

policymakers set out to address. When tools are used in combination, as they often are,

there are additional complexities which not only promote synergies and

complementarities but also contradictions and conflicts in expected and unexpected

ways. In addition, the operations and effectiveness of the tools are affected by the

surrounding social, political, and economic conditions. This undermines an intentional

policy design orientation and it is common in many jurisdictions for policymakers to

be guided by political calculations in addressing problems.

In combination with weak capacity in many of the cells of Figure 3 this tends

to drive formulation efforts into the bottom right quadrant of Figure 2. Solving

difficult problems has meant that policy making needs to continually evolve and

innovate. But this is difficult if not impossible to do in a poor political design space.

Moving from a poor political non-design space to one more favorable to successful

action is needed for this to occur.

As Figure 2 shows, however, both capable and poor policy and political

formulation processes exist depending on the capacity context of policy-making and

the intention of government in enacting policy. Thus movement towards more

successful policy innovation requires at minimum a boost in capacities, which can

shift formulation into to a competent non-design space, and/or a shift in the desire on

the part of policy-makers to be more intentional and instrumental which can shift

policy-making into an intentional design space.

Capacity improvements are thus a sine qua non for improvement in social

policy formulation. This is because design in complex multi-actor multi-level

situations requires not only an understanding of the problem at hand, the features of

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the tools relevant to addressing them and how they operate when used individually

and in combination with other tools but also the organizational and systemic resources

and support which allow those individual level skills and competences to be

exercized.

It is not surprising therefore that many approaches to policy reform around the

globe focus on building capacity for better policy design through decentralization and

the cretaion of closer operational links between national and sub-national or regional

and sub-regional actors. But, as Figure 2 shows, this is not enough if a government

wishes to alter existing practices in a more systematic, instrumental fashion. That is,

this also requires the adoption of a design orientation towards policy-making, shifting

the formulation space towards the upper two quadrants.

A principle driver of such an orientation in a policy sector is the desire on the

part of many actors to adopt a more integrated approach towards policy rather than

implementing incremental changes or creating siloed policy patchworks. When

problems such as elderly care span across sectors, for example, this requires

coordinating the health sector, labor market policies as well as the pension system,

and others, into an integrated design approach that systematically mixes policy

instruments in a way which is likely to result in optimal outcomes as compared to ad

hoc layering. Efforts at intermeshing of social policy and social regulation, for

example, are parts of such movements. While regulation has been a traditional policy

instrument for addressing market failures arising out of negative externalities

particularly in the area of environmental policy, it is much less common when

addressing market failures in the provision of merit goods such as education, health

care and housing. Social regulation is designed to impose certain choices on

consumers especially where governments believe that the consumption is sub-optimal.

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A design orientation that consciously targets equity as well as efficiency through

consumption and behavioural changes is required if such moves are to be

accomlpished effectively.

What Does an Enhanced Design Orientation Look Like?

This all begs the question of what an enhanced design for policy looks like in

practice. Systematic design of policy comprises two sets of activities – designing the

policy and designing the policy process – each comprising a set of related but distinct

activities.

Designing a policy involves:

• Understanding and conceptualizing the problem at hand and assessing its

depth and breadth.

• Surveying the range of tools available to address the main causes of the

identified problem.

• Gathering knowledge about the effects of the different tools on policy targets

and the application of that knowledge to the development of policies aimed at

achieving goals.

• Estimating the resources necessary for putting the tools into effect.

• Ex ante evaluation of the policy options against the common criteria of

effectiveness, efficiency, equity, sustainability, and implementability

Designing the policy process is at least as complex and involves distinct activities at

each stage of policy-making. These include:

• Agenda-setting. It is about (1) Problem recognition: the government

recognizes that there is a problem which requires public action, and (2)

Problem Structuring whereby the government defines what the problem is in

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terms of breadth and depth and what would need to be done to solve it.

Designing the agenda-setting process needs to ensure that the information

related to the problem are collected, categorized and analyzed; the problem is

examined from different perspectives; all key stakeholders within and outside

the government are consulted and their’ divergent perspectives and the factors

shaping them are understood. There should be a certain degree of “steering”

of the agenda-setting process so that the policy deliberations are not stalled or

veer off course and lead government agencies must be established that can

identify areas of convergence and divergence among issues.

• Designing the policy formulation process involving setting up processes to

ensure that alternative policy solutions are comprehensively identified,

classified and compared. Here is it vital to ensure that the range of alternatives

are broad but not unwieldy. There should be room for considering new

solutions in comparison to the old or existing solutions. The bias for status quo

needs to be overcome. This can only be achieved if there is scope for new

ideas and actors to enter the process, as well if a government is capable of

maintaining its strong instrumental intentionality.

• Decision-making must be based on some acceptable criteria and supported by

available and shared conceptions and interpretation of what good “evidence”

is.

• Implementation has to be carefully designed and communicated, and must

offer appropriate incentives to the implementers. Here the lessons of Pressman

and Wildavsky (1973) and Sabatier and Mazmanian (1981) still remain very

relevant.

  21  

• Evaluation needs to be carefully done and integrated into the policy itself. The

criteria for evaluation must be spelled out in advance and there must be

constant monitoring of performance if the implementers are to engage in

evaluation rather than gaming the process. Learning through monitoring must

be the desired process of evaluation and should be clearly incorporated into

policy at the fomulation stage.

Conclusion: Moving Policy Design Forward in Theory and Practice

As Junginger (2013) recently argued, at the present time we continue to know

too little about many important aspects of policy design work, especially about the

nature of the kinds of policy formulation activities which bring about either a design

or a non-design process. As she put it, we know very little about “the actual activities

of designing that bring policies into being—of how people involved in the creation of

policies go about identifying design problems and design criteria, about the methods

they employ in their design process” (p. 3). This highlights the continued need to

better understand the mechanics of policy formulation involved in developing policy

alternatives in this sector and in most others (Linder & Peters, 1988; Wintges, 2007;

Turnpenny et al 2009).

A roadmap for a new “policy design orientation” exists in studies undertaken

in recent years into the formulation of complex policy mixes in fields such as energy

and environmental policy, among others (Howlett, 2014; Howlett & Lejano, 2013;

Howlett, Tan, Migone, Wellstead, & Evans, 2014). The research agenda of this new

design orientation is focused on questions which an earlier literature on the subject

largely neglected, such as the trade-offs existing between different tools in complex

policy mixes and how to deal with the synergies and conflicts which result from tool

interactions; as well as the different means and patterns—such as layering - through

  22  

which policy mixes evolve over time (Thelen, 2004). Policy practices themselves,

including design ones, also evolve over time and the study of fads and fashions in this

area – like public enterprises and regulation in the 1930s to 1950s, privatization and

de-regulation in the 1970s to 1990s or contracting out and public-private partnerships

after 2000 (Ramesh and Howlett 2006) – are also bona fide subjects for future

research which will be explored in this workshop.

Endnotes

                                                                                                               1  These studies embodied their own notions about what sorts of institutional arrangements and processes constituted desirable and attainable designs and usually treated these as inevitable quasi-automatic processes, therefore requiring only ex-post analysis (Rhodes 1996; Kooiman 1993 and 2000). Ironically, these studies largely ignored the contextual and potentially irrational elements of policy-making and design. That is, in this literature, policy is typically seen as the outcome of decentralized, democratized processes involving the actions and interests of multiple public and private stakeholders and therefore is less ‘designed’ than ‘emergent’, but is still ‘rational’ in the sense that ‘form is expected to follow function’ so that policies match their contexts.  2  Although ‘networkization’ could just have been seen as a new contextual design challenge (Agranoff and McGuire 1999), for many authors the alleged weakening of the centrality of the state as an author of policy was accompanied by a waning in interest in the authorship (or design) of policy.  3  Another strand in the literature did not ignore the irrational elements of policy-making but argued that formulation and decision-making activities could be analytically or practically distinguished and divorced from each other In their many works on the subject in the late 1980s and early 1990s for example, Stephen H. Linder and B. Guy Peters (1988) argued that the actual process of public policy decision-making could, in an analytical sense, be divorced from the abstract concept of policy design, in the same way that an abstract architectural concept can be divorced from its engineering manifestation in theory if not in practice. Such a distinction, they argued, allowed policy design (noun) to be separated conceptually from policy design (verb) and allowed for the development within policy studies of a design orientation even if the ultimate decision on policy content was less overtly rational (Schon 1988, 1992).  

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