Search

In policy diffusion research, considerable focus has been placed on the mechanisms and motivations underlying diffusion, yet there is a notable dearth of analysis linking the diffusion process with policy outcomes. This prompts an important inquiry: Who fares better in terms of policy outcomes—the pioneer or the late mover? Our study investigates China's River Chief System policy and classifies cities as either pioneers, followers, or laggards according to their position in the diffusion process. Our quantitative analysis of 142 cities indicates that pioneers achieve the most favorable policy outcomes, while laggards are associated with the least favorable results. Further examination of the political incentives driving pioneer advantage suggests that pioneers are driven by political aspirations, followers are driven by political signaling, and laggards are driven by political pressure. This research deepens understanding of policy diffusion by elucidating the interplay between diffusion sequence and policy outcomes, and offers significant insights for policymakers aiming to formulate effective diffusion strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, a range of efforts have been made to incorporate practices drawn from industrial and participatory design into elements of the public policymaking process. Our interest lies in the field of co-design in policymaking. This emerging field has seen considerable emphasis placed on informing policy development with knowledge and insights from those living with specific problems and existing policy settings. Following the extant literature, we define co-design in policymaking as a participatory and design-oriented process which creatively and actively engages a diverse pool of participants to define and address a public problem. Evidence to date suggests co-design in policymaking can be especially useful in broadening participation in policy development, encouraging creative speculation about how policy choices might shape future outcomes, and prototyping policy approaches to assess their feasibility and desirability. But evidence continues to emerge regarding the barriers in many public sector settings that preclude co-design practice from greater engagement with – and influence upon – long-established, tightly-held processes of policy development. Through critical assessment of existing literature, we summarise the current state of co-design in policymaking. We then suggest promising ways policy practitioners and researchers could contribute to making co-design an embedded practice in policymaking, well-used and well-recognised for the unique contributions it can make to policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although causal evidence synthesis is critical for the policy sciences—whether it be analysis for policy or analysis of policy—its repeatable, systematic, and transparent execution remains challenging due to the growing volume, variety, and velocity of policy-relevant evidence generation as well as the complex web of relationships within which policies are usually situated. To address these shortcomings, we develop a novel, semi-automated approach to synthesizing causal evidence from policy-relevant documents. Specifically, we propose the use of natural language processing (NLP) for the extraction of causal evidence and subsequent homogenization of the text; causal mapping for the collation, visualization, and summarization of complex interdependencies within the policy system; and graph analytics for further investigation of the structure and dynamics of the causal map. We illustrate this approach by applying it to a collection of 28 articles on the emissions trading scheme (ETS), a policy instrument of increasing importance for climate change mitigation. In all, we find 300 variables and 284 cause-effect pairs in our input dataset (consisting of 4524 sentences), which are reduced to 70 unique variables and 119 cause-effect pairs after homogenization. We create a causal map depicting these relationships and analyze it to demonstrate the perspectives and policy-relevant insights that can be obtained. We compare these with select manually conducted, previous meta-reviews of the policy instrument, and find them to be not only broadly consistent but also complementary. We conclude that, despite remaining limitations, this approach can help synthesize causal evidence for policy analysis, policy making, and policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how certainty and timing of evidence introduction impact the uptake of evidence by policy-makers in collective deliberations. Little is known about how experts or researchers should time the introduction of uncertain evidence for policy-makers. With a computational model based on the Hegselmann–Krause opinion dynamics model, we simulate how policy-makers update their opinions in light of new evidence. We illustrate the use of our model with two examples in which timing and certainty matter for policy-making: intelligence analysts scouting potential terrorist activity and food safety inspections of chicken meat. Our computations indicate that evidence should come early to convince policy-makers, regardless of how certain it is. Even if the evidence is quite certain, it will not convince all policy-makers. Next to its substantive contribution, the article also showcases the methodological innovation that agent-based models can bring for a better understanding of the science–policy nexus. The model can be endlessly adapted to generate hypotheses and simulate interactions that cannot be empirically tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1951, Harold Lasswell defined the ability to clarify value goals as integral to a policy analyst's job. But graduate education in public policy analysis has paid insufficient attention to the skills needed to investigate and clarify value disputes. In turn, practicing policy analysts don't have ready access to a set of methods for normative analysis that serves Lasswell's vision of a contextualized, holistic, and interdisciplinary policy science. I start by describing calls for more emphasis on social equity in policy analysis and explore the complementary relationship of empirical, fact-based analysis and normative, value-driven analysis. I then propose seven competencies that policy analysts should be expected to master. They need to understand how normative issues arise in and adjacent to the classical model of policy analysis. They need to master a vocabulary for normative analysis and understand how humans make moral judgments, recognizing the distinction between moral rationalism and moral intuitionism. To engage in moral rationalism, practitioners need to be able to use the tools of analytic political philosophy. When it comes to moral intuitionism, they need to recognize the emotion-driven foundations of moral judgement and personal values. Finally, policy analysts also need to know where to find the values that are relevant to their analysis. Mastery of these competencies will allow analysts to better serve what Laswell describes as the intelligence needs of policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several scholars have observed persistent gaps between policy responses to complex, ambiguous and politicized problems (such as migration, climate change and the recent Covid-19 pandemic) and evidence or 'facts'. While most existing explanations for this 'evidence-policy gap' in the migration policy field focus on knowledge availability and knowledge use by policymakers, this article shifts the focus to processes of knowledge formation, exploring the questions of what counts as 'evidence' for migration policymakers and what are the sources of information that shape their understandings of migration policy issues. It does so, by developing a network-centred approach and focusing on elite US policy-makers in the field of irregular and asylum-seeking migration. This 'heuristic case' is used to challenge existing explanations of the 'evidence-policy gap' and to generate new explanations to be tested in future research. Our findings—based on qualitative and quantitative data collected in 2015–2018 through 57 elite interviews analysed applying social network analysis and qualitative content analysis—challenge scholarly claims about policymakers' lack of access to evidence about migration. We also challenge claims that migration-related decision-making processes are irrational or merely driven by political interests, showing that policymakers rationally collect information, select sources and attribute different relevance to 'evidence' acquired. We instead highlight that knowledge acquisition processes by elite policymakers are decisively shaped by dynamics of trust and perceptions of political and organizational like-mindedness among actors, and that political and ideological factors determine what qualifies as 'evidence' in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and practitioners agree that dealing with complex policy problems poses a challenge of policy integration. In other words, we need to understand how to integrate new problems into existing policies and create linkages between existing policy systems. Up to now, the scientific literature has focused on policy integration predominantly from a policy design perspective. This special issue puts the focus on political aspects of the policy integration process. The papers examine the politics of policy integration from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The results underline the importance of issue salience, political leadership, actor consultation and policy implementation for the political process toward more policy integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the parliamentary arena and members of parliament (MPs) therein for both mainstreaming and cross-sectoral policy integration is largely unknown. Studying the case of Switzerland, this paper analyzes the integration of the biodiversity issue into policies of 20 different policy sectors over a period of 19 years to assess how two specific actor attributes—issue and sector specialization—increase the chances of MPs of engaging in both biodiversity mainstreaming and its cross-sectoral integration. The results based on a comprehensive collection of political documents from the parliamentary arena, and multilevel regression models show that an increase in MPs' sector specialization is associated with both a decrease in mainstreaming and a decrease in cross-sectoral integration activities. By contrast, an increase in issue specialization typically translates into biodiversity-related activity in a larger number of sectors. In the parliamentary arena, therefore, it is primarily a small group of "issue specialists" who take responsibility for the integration of crosscutting issues, such as biodiversity, into critical sectoral policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on policy integration has become an important part of public policy scholarship by analyzing how policymakers create linkages between policy subsystems to deal with complex policy problems. To develop this research program further, it is crucial to know how policy integration relates to broader theoretical and methodological developments in the field of public policy studies. This article reviews the empirical literature on policy integration in the last 10 years focusing on concepts, theories, research design, and methods, drawing upon a sample of 413 articles. Results show no systematic patterns in how these four dimensions combine in policy integration research. Above all, stages and theories of the policy process appear to be incorporated in policy integration studies only to a very limited extent. These findings point to four new directions for policy integration research: (1) Striking a balance between conceptual richness and consolidation regarding "policy integration"; (2) An increased focus on the evaluation of integrated policies; (3) More attention to actor-oriented and explanatory theories; (4) The potential for combining qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars conceive policy integration (PI) as a top-down process steered by governmental bodies and consider the formulation stage to be the decisive step for achieving PI. Adopting a different stance, this article hypothesizes that PI can also occur throughout the implementation stage thanks to "integration entrepreneurs" who are able and willing to bring together policies that were designed in silos. I test this hypothesis by analyzing the evolution of federal legislation intended to curb urban sprawl in Switzerland over four decades (1980–2020) and investigate three major urban renewal projects that concretely reduced urban sprawl in the cities of Zurich, Bern and Geneva. In line with my hypothesis, these urban renewal projects succeeded thanks to an ex post integration of several policies that occurred during the implementation stage. This integrative process was an unintended outcome of the transformation of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) from a federal government institution into a state-owned company. Since then, the SBB has become an "integration entrepreneur" who brings together three federal policies that were previously poorly integrated: the spatial planning policy, the railway policy and the agglomeration policy. Case study evidence thus shows that PI can also happen unintentionally, namely through coordination mechanisms that were not foreseen by policymakers at the formulation stage. This finding challenges the top-down sequential approach of the policy process that is dominant among PI studies and calls for more research on the role and the strategies of "integration entrepreneurs" throughout the implementation stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers insights into the institutional arrangements established to coordinate policies aiming at the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Drawing on the literature on policy design, we highlight institutional arrangements as elements of policy design spaces and contend that they fall into four categories that either stress the political or problem orientation of this activity: optimal, technical, political, and sub-optimal. We use original data on 44 major economies and greenhouse gas-emitting countries to test this expectation. These data capture various properties of national coordination arrangements, including the types of coordination instruments in place, the degree of hierarchy, the lead government agency responsible for coordination, and the scope of cross-sectoral policy coordination. The dataset also captures the degree to which non-state actors are involved in coordination and whether coordination processes are supported by scientific knowledge. Using cluster analysis, we show that the institutional arrangements for the horizontal coordination of climate policy do indeed fall into the four above-mentioned categories. The cluster analysis further reveals that a fifth, hybrid category exists. Interestingly, the political orientation dominates in the institutional arrangements for the horizontal coordination of climate change mitigation, whereas the problem orientation is more important in the arrangements for the horizontal coordination of climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers in public policy and public administration agree that policy integration is a process. Nevertheless, scholars have given limited attention to political aspects that facilitate or impede integration. This paper aims at filling that gap, by looking at how different theories of the policy process can help in explaining the process of policy integration as shaped by policy subsystems. By building on insights from theories of the policy process, we develop pathways regarding adoption and implementation in policy integration that account for the politicization and the role of actors and subsystems in the policy process. Our main argument is that policy integration is in permanent political tension with the sectoral logic of policymaking, which predominantly happens between actors in subsystems. Policy integration is, thus, not a single moment when those tensions are solved once and for all, but a political process that requires deliberate efforts to overcome the pull toward sector-specific problem definition, policymaking, implementation, and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers agree on the importance of policy integration in the analysis of responses to complex problems, yet they often use this concept to indicate integrated policy programmes (IPPs) as opposed to policy integration in practice (as performed by actors). Describing how IPPs are reshaped, while they are being implemented opens new research venues in the study of the policy integration process and its effects. This article theorises the '(in)congruent implementation' of IPPs and illustrates its theoretical contribution with the case study of the local implementation of the national 'Security Decree' in the Italian cities of Bologna and Pesaro. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to the study of the political aspects of policy integration. In particular, it suggests that three factors—the misalignment of state and local policy frames, the incommensurability of different subsystems' interests, and local politicians' risk avoidance strategies—might be led to the process of reframing national integrative intentions from the bottom up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of participation by indigenous peoples in Latin America in the political process of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI). Although the benefits of participation have been largely taken for granted, this article shows that participation makes the policy integration process even more complex. By selecting two cases of clean energy infrastructure projects (a wind power plant and a natural gas pipeline) in Mexico, whose policy processes included an indigenous consultation, this article traces the competing problem definitions in public policy debates and the resulting policy frame in relation to sustainable development. The goal is to assess the ways that indigenous consultation functions as a procedural EPI instrument aimed at boosting participation from a public that is largely composed by indigenous communities in the decision-making stage. This article contributes to the existing literature on policy integration in two ways: (1) it explores the role of participation by non-state actors in the policy integration process, especially in highly politicized policy areas such as energy and the environment, and (2) it identifies the limitations of applicability of policy integration literature, particularly in contexts where state–society interactions are radically different compared to Western countries, including Latin American countries inhabited by indigenous groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing a new South American case study, this paper seeks to advance the research agenda on processes of policy integration by developing a better understanding of how nascent subsystems become integrated into mature ones and the role that changing beliefs of advocacy coalitions play in fostering policy integration. The paper examines environmental policy integration in Uruguay's forestry sector since the 1990s and is based on an inductive qualitative analysis of policy documents, sector reports, parliament hearings and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. This demonstrates that environmental policy integration has increased continuously since the 1990s, accelerating particularly during the 2000s. We can derive three insights that specifically address this path of integration: a change in the policy beliefs of the dominant advocacy coalition, international salience of the minority coalition's beliefs and participatory policy processes that foster interactions between opposing coalitions. Despite this, the two advocacy coalitions have crystallized with fundamentally different deep core beliefs about what a sustainable forestry sector should be. While one coalition argues that commercial tree plantations are sufficiently regulated in environmental terms, the other coalition maintains that the way that the pulp industry has developed in Uruguay is fundamentally unsustainable and therefore seeks to change the forestry sector as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction, influence, and strategic use of narratives to influence policy decisions have garnered increased scholarly attention over the past decade as the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has matured within the policy studies field. Our prior analysis extended the NPF scholarship to examine electoral policy narrative construction during the 2018 elections. We found that the NPF can apply to electoral politics, but there are differences in how electoral policy narratives are constructed according to candidate party, gender, and electoral outcomes. Analyzing the narratives from both Republican and Democratic campaigns in U.S. House swing districts, here we assess whether policy issues can be differentiated based on their use of evidence and examine narratives to understand if there are systematic differences of construction according to policy issue type. The findings suggest that narrative use of evidence by congressional campaigns varies strategically and systematically by policy issue. Overall, the article presents a novel application of NPF analysis across policy domains while proposing a relationship between evidence and the setting and moral of the story element of narrative form based on issue type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging body of scholarship suggests that "Western" notions of policy analysis may not be relevant in "Eastern" jurisdictions, and that non-Western countries, particularly in Asia, may have their own local policy analytical style or tradition. However, in many Asian countries, little is known about the work that public sector policy analysts do. Using data from a survey and focus groups, this article investigates policy analysis and analytical capacity in the provincial government of West Java, Indonesia. We find ample signs of policy analytical activity as it would be understood by Western scholars, with little evidence of any specific Asian style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of knowledge and evidence in policymaking is a recurrent topic of research due to its scientific and policy relevance. The existing and expansive body of literature has been scrutinised in various ways to grasp the dimensions of knowledge utilisation in policymaking, although most of this research has a monosectoral focus and is based on very general criteria of analysis that do not completely account for the complexity of policy making. This paper overcomes this limitation by enlightening the epistemological divide in the field between an objectivist and a subjectivist perspective and by distinguishing two different focuses in this literature: a focus on knowledge for policy making and a focus on knowledge in policy making. Based on this analytical distinction, the paper presents an original and unprecedented systematic, intersectoral metareview by considering the thirty-year period between 1990 and 2020 (approximately 1,400 were selected for fine-grained analysis). This metareview offers a broader and more detailed map with a clear idea of the distribution of interest in the topic among the different policy fields, a better classification of the theoretical/empirical content and research goals that scholars adopt and a novel and, above all, more fine-grained perspective on the types of conditions that favour or disfavour a significant role of knowledge in policymaking. Ultimately, and above all, this metareview identifies three highly relevant components of policy making that can facilitate or constrain the use of knowledge in policymaking more than others: values/ideology/beliefs, actors' relationships, and policy capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been revived scholarly interest in policy capacity recently. While it is widely assumed that capacity is important for policy performance, it is difficult to separate its impact from the effect of policy instruments to establish whether capacity can produce an independent and positive effect on target group behavior in relation to achieving policy objectives. Undertaking a critical case study where policy performed well despite the use of weak policy instruments, this paper analyzes whether policy capacity can have a positive independent impact on policy performance. The Danish program to increase the proportion of organic food served in public sector kitchens demonstrates that policy capacity can independently influence policy performance. It can compensate for the weakness of soft and indirect policy instruments and bring about policy performance that goes beyond what can be expected, given the limited ability of the instruments to stimulate behavioral change. A high level of capacity was achieved by drawing on resources possessed by interest groups. While interest groups' and other private actors' positive contribution to policy capacity is recognized, only a limited number of studies have analyzed how such actors contribute to capacity generation. Therefore, this paper applies a sectoral perspective in which policy capacity is understood as the ability to pool and coordinate relevant resources available within a policy sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in policy feedback processes in energy transitions has grown rapidly in recent years. However, while it has provided interesting accounts of the mechanisms of stability or change, the policy feedback framework begs the question of why policy feedback dynamics vary so widely across cases. Existing accounts have tended to focus on the influence of ideas on policy design and on the role of interest groups. By contrast, the role of background institutional context in shaping policy feedback processes has been understudied. In this article, I develop a framework for identifying relevant types of institution that potentially shape policy feedback across different analytical stages of the feedback cycle. This approach is illustrated through the example of support policies for solar PV, where it is argued that a relatively small set of political, political economy and social institutions are likely to be important. The argument is then applied through a comparison of the evolution of solar PV policy in the UK and Germany, and the role of institutional context in explaining divergent policy pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution investigates how combinations of instruments, often called policy mixes, enhance policy learning processes at different levels. It analyzes the European Union's (EU) Covenant of Mayors (CoM) that is underpinned by a set of learning instruments, to promote local action for sustainable energy and climate. The piece offers an original framework to explore whether and how the Covenant enhances learning at the level of European institutions and among local governments. Drawing on an extensive documentary review and elite interviews in four countries (Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK), the analysis shows that the CoM instrument mix has enhanced certain elements of learning within the actors leading the Covenant as well as many of the local governments within and outside the EU, but only if certain conditions operate, such as political leadership, individual motivation and knowledge and regional coordination mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy design has returned as a central topic in public policy research. An important area of policy design study deals with effectively attaining desired policy outcomes by aligning goals and means to achieve policy design fit. So far, only a few empirical studies have explored the relationship between policy design fit and effectiveness. In this paper, we adopt the multilevel framework for policy design to determine which conditions of policy design fit—i.e., goal coherence, means consistency, and congruence of goals and means across policy levels—are necessary and/or sufficient for policy design effectiveness in the context of policy integration. To this end, we performed a qualitative comparative analysis of Dutch regional transport planning including all twelve provinces. Outcomes show no condition is necessary and two combinations of conditions are sufficient for effectiveness. The first sufficient combination confirms what the literature suggests, namely that policy design fit results in policy design effectiveness. The second indicates that the combination goal incoherence and incongruence of goals and means is sufficient for policy design effectiveness. An in-depth interpretation of this counterintuitive result leads to the conclusion that for achieving policy integration the supportive relationship between policy design fit and policy design effectiveness is less straightforward as theory suggests. Instead, results indicate there are varying degrees of coherence, consistency, and congruence that affect effectiveness in different ways. Furthermore, outcomes reveal that under specific circumstances a policy design may be effective in promoting desired policy integration even if it is incoherent, inconsistent, and/or incongruent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance of several cross-cutting challenges, such as food security, climate change, and sustainable development, calls for integrative policy approaches. However, efforts to better theorize the drivers of integration beyond listing explanatory factors remain weak. Viewing integration as a process of policy change for dealing with complex problems, this study argues that policy integration analysis can benefit from an advocacy coalition approach (ACF) to address this theoretical gap. It illustrates the analytical framework by empirically investigating the drivers of policy (dis)integration in Brazil's subnational water policy introduced in the 2010s. The level of conflict between coalitions, adjustment of policy beliefs, coordination within and across coalitions, and existence of venues for interaction and policy-oriented learning were presented as factors that can foster or hinder the integration of public policies. Moreover, the study discusses the potential to acknowledge in ACF the mechanisms for coordinating policy actors and instruments, which would facilitate the analysis of the policy processes of cooperation. It also demonstrates that recent droughts in Northeast Brazil have been increasingly related to the local impacts of climate change, contributing to reframing water management as a cross-sectoral climate and water governance issue. The analysis was based on a literature review, semi-structured interviews, and social network analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ex ante analysis to predict policy outcomes is common practice in the world of infrastructure planning. However, accounts of its uses and merits vary widely. Advisory agencies and government think tanks advocate this practice to prevent cost overruns, short-term decision-making and suboptimal choices. Academic studies on knowledge use, on the other hand, are critical of how knowledge can be used in decision making. Research has found that analyses often have no impact at all on decision outcomes or are mainly conducted to provide decision makers with the confidence to decide rather than with objective facts. In this paper, we use an ethnographic research design to understand how it is possible that the use of ex ante analysis can be depicted in such contradictory ways. We suggest that the substantive content of ex ante analysis plays a limited role in understanding its depictions and uses. Instead, it is the process of conducting an ex ante analysis itself that unfolds in such a manner that the analysis can be interpreted and used in many different and seemingly contradictory ways. In policy processes, ex ante analysis is like a chameleon, figuratively changing its appearance based on its environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effectiveness has been understood at three levels of analysis in the scholarly study of policy design. The first is at the systemic level indicating what entails effective formulation environments or spaces making them conducive to successful design. The second reflects more program level concerns, surrounding how policy tool portfolios or mixes can be effectively constructed to address complex policy objectives. The third is a more specific instrument level, focusing on what accounts for and constitutes the effectiveness of particular types of policy tools. Undergirding these three levels of analysis are comparative research concerns that concentrate on the capacities of government and political actors to devise and implement effective designs. This paper presents a systematic review of a largely scattered yet quickly burgeoning body of knowledge in the policy sciences, which broadly asks what capacities engender effectiveness at the multiple levels of policy design? The findings bring to light lessons about design effectiveness at the level of formulation spaces, policy mixes and policy programs. Further, this review points to a future research agenda for design studies that is sensitive to the relative orders of policy capacity, temporality and complementarities between the various dimensions of policy capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several of the most respected policy scholars, including H. Simon, J. W. Kingdon, G. Peters and M. Howlett, have observed a long time ago that decision makers often form their views on policy solutions irrespectively of concrete policy issues, and that their views on policy means often "chase problems." This proposition labeled in this article as "autonomy of policy instrument attitudes" (APIA) claims that individuals have stable attitudes toward policy instruments that are relatively independent of their perspectives on given policy problems and policy goals. Despite its growing popularity, the APIA literature is fragmented and lacks coherent theoretical framework and review of available empirical evidence. First, APIA is conceptualized in terms of attitudes and differentiated from similar concepts. Second, the core theoretical literature on APIA is summarized with emphasis on its possible explanations. Four distinct individual-level mechanism of APIA is then distinguished: beliefs-based, values-based, heuristics-based and affect-based. The paper concludes with an overview of available empirical evidence and with some recommendations for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of policy options is often unavailable or only available from non-governmental research organizations ("think tanks") that may have explicit or implicit political biases. This paper experimentally examines how voters respond to policy analysis and how the response varies when the analysis is produced by a nonpartisan organization versus a liberal or conservative organization. The key result is that individuals, on average, are responsive to all types of analysis, but most strongly responsive to analysis produced by nonpartisan organizations. Analysis from an ideologically slanted organization is less effective because individuals tend to ignore analysis that is produced by a partisan organization that does not share their own ideology. The results suggest that increasing the amount of information that the public receives based on nonpartisan analysis may increase the diffusion of information on policy features into the public and reduce polarization in public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the institutional dynamics of policymaking in a crisis. Crises have been termed a "perceptual category," events that at least seem to be threatening to society economically or physically or both. A crisis often calls forth public policy responses, but the events themselves are often clouded by uncertainty and ambiguity. Still, policymakers, especially if the perception persists, believe that they must do something in a crisis even when the crisis would likely be ended by market or other social forces. Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework is utilized as a means of organizing and describing the key variables of crises and the policymaking that ensues from it. This is shown using the example of legislative policymaking during the 2007 US energy crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses issues raised in Perl et al. (Policy Sci, 2018. 10.1007/s11077-018-9334-4), specifically the tensions between policy sciences' search for ways reliably to link results to inputs and activities and the evidence they present for their conclusions that the three main approaches to analysis of policy processes do not focus upon this aspect of policy-making and are so well placed to cope with the 'post-fact' political era. The paper disagrees, arguing that this argument rather suggests that a main prop of modern political legitimacy—that policy can be reasonable and rational, and so not necessarily partisan—is under serious challenge, threatening a retreat to a politics of force and manipulation. The paper argues that this is best understood by appreciating that any empirical foundations of policy logics are not and never have been derived through a search for predictive power, no matter what is believed and taught, and told to those who pay for policy work, but are rather evidentially founded metaphors: theories. Correspondingly, in the norms of mainstream policy science, we cannot find any attempt to establish for a given empirical field whether there is or not adequate regularity to support assertions of (albeit with uncertainty) known outcomes. Given this, recent major failures of policy science's expectations to bear fruit, despite assertions that evidentially based policy is reliably predictive, suggest that (amplified by academic interest in subjective aspects of knowledge construction) populist and popular shifts to reckless treatment of 'facts' appear as a not unreasonable reaction to 'bad situations that policy-makers said would not happen'. The apparent success, reported by Perl et al. of the three main approaches to analysis of policy processes, then appear as somewhat irrelevant to those who pay for policy advice, if policy science is seen, not as a predictive science, but as one amongst many sources of political authority and so political order. The wise response by policy workers is then to reduce the 'over-sell' so as to restore their authority, in part by arguing that predictive power may be impossible (or would spend too much of the limited budget), so the mode of engagement should be non-instrumental action, and/or place far greater emphasis upon ensuring that those who are the objects of policy work are given adequate voice (lest they vote for Trump or Brexit). In that these options would imply less inconsistency, it would increase the authority of policy analysts, ceteris paribus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of language in policy debates, with particular emphasis on narratives. Policy narratives serve as strategic tools that, among other things, can shift public opinion in favor of policy preferences. One narrative element that has received little attention thus far from policy scholars is analogy, though analogies frequently appear in policy stories. This study applies insights on analogical reasoning from the fields of cognitive and political psychology to the literature on policy narrative. I argue that analogies are best classified as a component of the story's plotline, and explore the potential micro-level impacts of analogies on policy attitudes. Using the Narrative Policy Framework, I examine the empirical effects of exposure to analogy on public opinion related to nuclear power using data from a national-level survey of 2544 US adults conducted by the Marist Poll. In a split-sample design, respondents were exposed to narrative prompts that discussed nuclear power generally or with reference to past accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and/or Fukushima, and then asked about their views on nuclear energy. The results indicate that the effects of analogizing are limited, as participants that hear negative analogies do not have attitudes that are significantly more negative toward nuclear power. However, there are interesting interaction effects between analogy exposure and partisanship, suggesting the existence of partisan entrenchment on the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From “alternative facts” to “fake news,” in recent years the influence of misinformation on political life has become amplified in unprecedented ways through electronic communications and social media. While misinformation and spin are age-old tactics in policy making, and poor information and poorly informed opinion a constant challenge for policy analysts, both the volume of erroneous evidence and the difficulties encountered in differentiating subjectively constructed opinion from objectively verified policy inputs have increased significantly. The resulting amalgamation of unsubstantiated and verifiable data and well and poorly informed opinion raises many questions for a policy science which emerged in an earlier, less problematic era. This article examines these developments and their provenance and asks whether, and how, existing policy making models and practices developed and advocated during an earlier era of a sharper duality between fact and fiction have grappled with the new world of “truthiness,” and whether these models require serious revision in light of the impact of social media and other forces affecting contemporary policy discourses and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to recent calls for more theoretically driven advancements of the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA). It does so by bringing networks theorizing into dialogue with the MSA; highlighting the inclusionary and exclusionary power of networks for determining problem frames and issue recognition. Subsequently, the paper argues that the addition of networks provides a clearer articulation of the role of institutions in steering problem stream processes, which have often been neglected within the MSA at the expense of a focus on agency. The paper puts forward two propositions. The first is that an issue is more likely to be recognised as a problem if it is considered compatible with the ‘appreciative system’ of the network's dominant coalition. The second proposition is that the more organisations a network consists of and the more varied these organisations are, the more likely it is that the dominant coalition alters a condition’s category if there are changes in the problem stream. These propositions are explored through a comparative analysis of recognition of quality of life as a problem in two local level transport sector networks in the UK. Support for these propositions in the findings suggest that the introduction of networks into the MSA can reduce ambiguity and therefore fortuity in relation to problem recognition; second, that the power of the policy entrepreneur can be facilitated or constrained by the institutional context; and third, that comparing multiple issues and their interactions is important for further advancement of the MSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is time to imagine a new policy sciences. The policymaking world has moved on since its first design. So too has our understanding of it. The original policy sciences were contextualized, problem-oriented, multi-method, and focused on using scientific research towards the realization of greater human dignity. We introduce a new policy sciences that builds on such aims. We describe the need for realistic depictions of 'rational' and 'irrational' choice, multiple theories to portray the multifaceted nature of complex contexts, and the combination of applied and basic research. To set this new agenda, we build on two foundational strategies: identifying advances in the psychology of decision-making and describing how policy theories depict policymaking psychology in complex contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper articulates the disproportionate policy perspective and uses it to mount four challenges for the new policy design orientation. First, in contrast to the new policy design thinking, disproportionate policy options may be systematically designed, and at times, successfully implemented. Second, in contrast to the new policy design thinking, there are certain conditions under which policymakers may tend to develop effective response, with cost considerations becoming only secondary in importance if at all (read, policy overreaction), or cost-conscious response, with effectiveness considerations becoming only secondary in importance if at all (read, policy underreaction). Third, in contrast to the new policy design thinking, disproportionate policy options may be designed for purposes other than implementation (e.g., to be used as signaling devices or as context-setters). Fourth, in contrast to new policy design thinking, there are certain conditions under which the emotional arena of policy may be equally, if not more, important than the substantive one. The paper concludes that so far the literature on new policy design has not responded to the emergence of the disproportionate policy perspective, but a robust research agenda awaits those answering this paper's call for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience and robustness are exciting concepts for policy researchers. Their broad use in other disciplines has motivated social scientists and policy researchers to adopt them in analyses. In the present paper, we review definitions of these concepts and the primary theoretical and empirical challenges presented by resilience and robustness as lenses for improving the understanding of policy process and policy design. The results reveal that the two concepts differ in their potential value for public policy analysis. Despite its diffusion and 'charme', resilience does not appear to be useful and may be misleading, whereas robustness exhibits great potential with respect to both analysis and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy instruments are a fundamental component of public policies. Policy instruments are often a result of mediation within the policy design process, whenever decision makers reshape existing instruments without introducing any real innovation. This results in imitation, layering and ambiguity in tool choice selection, and raises the theoretical problem of the logic according to which decision makers choose certain specific policy instruments rather than others. Decision makers may have different reasons for choosing certain specific instruments, although these reasons should be connected to the two main purposes of decision-making, that is, the search for effectiveness and the construction of a shared sense, a common acceptance. Thus, the choice of instruments is a question of potentially conflicting drivers that decision makers have to cope with within a specific decisional situation, when asked to solve those problems that have arisen. This paper examines this question and offers an analytical framework based on the two main factors in terms of which the selection of instruments is channelled and assessed: legitimacy and instrumentality. The boundaries created by how decision makers perceive these two dimensions mean that only four selection patterns can be chosen by decision makers: hybridization, stratification, contamination or routinization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long-standing debate about the proper application of democratic versus technocratic approaches to decision-making in public policy. This paper seeks to clarify the debate by applying Michael Walzer's notion of 'spheres of justice,' wherein both democracy and technocracy could be seen as distinctive approaches to justice that need to be protected from the domination of the other. The paper shows how the debate on democracy versus technocracy has evolved in both theoretical and applied settings in a manner that reflects the 'domination' of one approach by the other. It elaborates the argument through several concrete examples drawn from comparative politics, public policy, and public management. It then explores how the 'spheres' approach implies the need for an interpretive mechanism in order to mediate the competing notions of justice in particular policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a framework for better managing policy messes and draws implications for bad and good mess management in policy analysis and management. The framework has three foci: (1) the cognitive space in which policy messes develop, particularly in terms of gaps between macro-designers and micro-operators; (2) the unique domain of competence within that space where professionals manage the resulting messes by virtue of their skills in recognizing system-wide patterns, formulating locally specific contingency scenarios and translating both patterns and scenarios in highly reliable services; and (3) the ability of those mess and reliability professionals to be reliable in their domain and with these skills by maneuvering across different performance modes as conditions dictate-just-in-case, just-on-time, just-for-now or just-this-way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of policy integration in the governance of cross-cutting policy problems has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Nevertheless, the concept of policy (dis)integration is still under theorized, particularly regarding its inherent processual nature. The main argument of this paper is that policy integration should be understood as a process that entails various elements that do not necessarily move in a concerted manner but may develop at different paces or even in opposite directions. To study such dynamic integration pathways, the paper proposes a multi-dimensional framework. Drawing on existing literature, the framework distinguishes four dimensions of integration: (1) policy frame, (2), subsystem involvement, (3) policy goals, and (4) policy instruments. For each of these dimensions, we describe different manifestations that are associated with lesser or more advanced degrees of policy integration within a governance system. Apart from offering an innovative theoretical approach that does justice to the dynamic and oftentimes asynchronous nature of integration processes, the framework allows for holding decision-makers accountable for promises they make about enhancing policy integration. Simultaneously, it is argued that the merit of lower degrees of integration should not be underestimated, as these may sometimes be the most feasible or appropriate for the governance of a cross-cutting problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from recent OECD (OECD Science, technology and industry scoreboard. OECD Publishing, Paris, ) and Cornell University et al. (The global innovation index 2014. World Intellectual Property Organization, Fontainebleau, ) national innovation reports to explain Australia's poor innovation performance. We adopt a realist approach and apply the technique of retroduction to identify potential causes. While our account is only preliminary, we contend that this technique provides the resources to uncover plausible causes for further, more detailed, causal analysis. We conclude that the retroductive method is one that can be applied to aggregated statistics more generally and could be used by analysts and policy makers in any jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When policy scholars assess the effects of federalism on climate change mitigation, they often look at countries that rejected binding commitments (in particular, the USA) and find that federalism enabled sub-national entities to partly fill national regulatory voids. In accordance with a similar case study on Austria, we find the exact opposite for Switzerland, a country that committed itself to an 8 % cut in 1990 greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. To reveal the detrimental effects of federalism, we focus our case study on the integration of climate change concerns into building policies, a policy field fully in the hands of Swiss sub-national authorities known as cantons. Apart from a few pioneer cantons, we found mainly federal departments concerned with integrating climate change mitigation into cantonal building policies and cantonal as well as federal actors struggling with the numerous pitfalls of Swiss federalism in their own ways. On the one hand, various federal departments tried repeatedly to facilitate a nationwide greening of cantonal building policies, and their interventions often resulted in lowest common denominator solutions that were difficult to improve once in place. On the other hand, Swiss federalism gave a few pioneer cantons the freedom to green their building policies early on, but their policies hardly diffused to other cantons. Resembling our main finding of the Austrian case study, we conclude that the 15 % emission decline in the Swiss building sector during 2008-2012 compared to 1990 levels happened despite, not because of Swiss federalism. This warrants caution against high hopes in assuming that decentralised or polycentric governance can fully compensate for failed national (or international) climate policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a diachronic comparative case study of three successive efforts by Norwegian governments over several decades to move central agencies in Oslo, Norway, to other locations outside the capital region. The key research question is how to explain the unexpected success of the latest governmental relocation program of the 2000s, in view of two previous spectacularly dismal efforts. How was it possible to realize this highly contested policy program against apparently quite adverse odds? We use a modified extended version of the MS framework through three full policy cycles to demonstrate how a remarkably audacious policy entrepreneur in cabinet position employed manipulation strategies within an open policy window to fashion a legislative optimal policy program design by organizing adversely affected stakeholders out of the policy formulation process, thus ensuring its adoption and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of knowledge in the policy process remains a central theoretical puzzle in policy analysis and political science. This article argues that an important yet missing piece of this puzzle is the systematic exploration of the political use of policy knowledge. While much of the recent debate has focused on the question of how the substantive use of knowledge can improve the quality of policy choices, our understanding of the political use of knowledge and its effects in the policy process has remained deficient in key respects. A revised conceptualization of the political use of knowledge is introduced that emphasizes how conflicting knowledge can be used to contest given structures of policy authority. This allows the analysis to differentiate between knowledge creep and knowledge shifts as two distinct types of knowledge effects in the policy process. While knowledge creep is associated with incremental policy change within existing policy structures, knowledge shifts are linked to more fundamental policy change in situations when the structures of policy authority undergo some level of transformation. The article concludes by identifying characteristics of the administrative structure of policy systems or sectors that make knowledge shifts more or less likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing two theories of morality policy, Policy Types and the "Two Worlds" of religious/secular party systems, we describe and attempt to explain the empirical patterns for five morality policy issues (abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, assisted reproductive technology/stem cell research, and same-sex marriage) across 24 Western democracies since World War II. What is the content of policy adoption? Are some countries consistently more permissive or restrictive on morality issues? How long do these issues stay on the political agenda? These issues have been on the agendas of all of the countries for varying time periods, with some being older in vintage (death penalty, abortion, euthanasia) than others (ART/stem cells and same-sex marriage). The general tendency has been toward greater permissiveness, but there still remains considerable policy diversity. While there has been substantial change on morality policies in Western democracies since World War II, the change is more thorough in some jurisdictions and in some regions more than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans face enormous and growing ecological and social problems. Knowledge and methods of inquiry are necessary to understand and address these problems. Although this seems obvious, arguments rage over which methods are reliable and whose perspectives and epistemology (disciplinary or otherwise) are best suited to address problems. To compound matters, knowledge is fragmented in its organization, classification, production, and use in academe, in the professions, and in society. A practical conceptualization of interdisciplinarity in the interests of integration is needed to address the multiple perspectives, epistemologies, and fragmentation inherent in these problems. Here, we offer a conception of integration that fosters an interrelated dynamic system of healthy people, society, and nature. Next, we look at 'knowledge'-its classification, levels, and challenges. Following that, we review a model of integration almost a century old that has been abstracted into a practical, interdisciplinary meta-framework that organizes both diagnostics and prescriptive inquiry. Finally, educating about integration is a subject of central concern in many colleges and universities today, one that we discuss in terms of goals, student competence, educational designs, practical challenges, and how to address them. Our entire endeavor is couched in terms of the overarching goal of seeking the common interest of human dignity in healthy environments for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most academic research on public policy achieves little influence in government. The disconnect reflects the different ways researchers and government learn about policy. In social policy, typically, scholars make rigorous but narrow arguments about how to improve social conditions while saying little about politics or government. Policymakers, however, reason in broader, integrative ways and pay more attention to program experience and institutions. Evaluations have influence in part because they serve the governmental style. By reasoning more like policymakers, scholars could have greater influence. But to make that connection, the teaching of public policy and academic incentives must change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberative policy analysis (DPA) is one of the significant developments in the trend of post-positivist policy analysis. However, the question of how to practice is a thorny issue hindering its development and dissemination. More particularly, the organizational aspect for the practice of DPA has never been well explored. Taking an organizational perspective, this article proposes a novel concept of 'think tank 2.0' (TT2.0), which is designed to host deliberative analysts and to integrate the policy inquiry with public participation, deliberation, and dispute resolution. The article begins with a hypothetical example to showcase what DPA means and how it works. The following section presents a brief review of the principles of DPA, and a call for developing DPA institutes on account of the complexity of conducting deliberative analysis. Next, the article brings the conceptual framework of TT2.0 and its two models: an external model describing the relations among TT2.0 and other policy actors and an internal model structuring the roles within a TT2.0 and their division of labor. Finally, the article discusses some varieties of TT2.0 in operation and suggests several strategies for devising and operating TT2.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy literature has long recognized the inherent need for a program to fit the unique conditions found in a certain context. We present a theory of institutional contextualism that focuses on the mechanisms by which actors adapt a policy design to fit a situation. We conceptualize institutions as phenomena that are constituted by a constant dialectic between text (the general blueprint) and context (the particular setting). The first half of this dialectic, which is the diffusion of the constitutive text or norm onto the institutional setting, has been discussed in the literature. Our research focuses on the second half, and we delineate, in concept, mechanisms for fitting the program to the local context. We then use a case study of improvised microfinance programs in Tamil Nadu, India, to illustrate how this occurs in reality. The research underscores the unexamined link between effective governance and contextual fit and offers a typology of mechanisms for fit that should inform future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]