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Michael Howlett The Criteria For Effective Policy Design Character and Context in Policy Instrument Choices.
Michael Howlett The Criteria For Effective Policy Design Character and Context in Policy Instrument Choices.
Michael Howlett
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
National University of Singapore
and
Department of Political Science
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC Canada
[email protected]
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Abstract
Recent studies of policy design have grappled with such issues as policy tool use, overcoming
historical policy legacies, the nature of policy mixes and issues around policy formulation and the
nature of ‘design’ and ‘designing’ in policy-making. These studies have begun to establish insights
into what makes a policy design ‘effective’ or likely to succeed in being adopted or implemented
or both. This paper draws lessons from both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ design work to establish
several basic criteria for effective design and designing. As the review of the literature shows, the
kinds of lessons that can be drawn from these studies fall into two categories: those dealing with
matching design activity to the context of policy-making and those which focus on the character
of the tools deployed in a design. The paper sets out both these elements and shows how they can
be combined to generate lessons, insights and practices for both policy scholars and practitioners
alike.
Policies come in complex packages and understanding the nature of the design criteria for creating
studies of policy design have grappled with such issues as policy tool use, overcoming historical
legacies, the nature of policy mixes and issues around policy formulation and the nature of ‘design’
and ‘designing’ in policy-making and have begun to establish insights into the question of what
makes a policy design ‘effective’ or more likely to succeed (Bobrow 2006; Howlett 2011;
Flanagan et al 2011).
That is, policies involve more or less complex sets of goals and the means to achieve them
– existing as what Milkman (2012) calls ‘policy bundles’, Chapman (2003) and Hennicke (2004)
‘policy mixes’ and Givoni et al (2012) ‘policy packages’. These are all are examples of complex
portfolios of tools expected to address some part of a set of policy goals. These mixes typically
involve much more than functional logics linking tools to a goal but also deal with ideological or
even “aesthetic” preferences in tool choices and goal articulation which involve trade-offs and
bargaining between actors in choosing one set of tools, goals and policies over another (Beland
2007; Williams and Balaz 1999). This makes their formulation or design especially problematic
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(Peters 2005; Givoni 2013; Givoni et al 2012) and is more difficult to do when instruments belong
The kinds of lessons that can be drawn for effective policy design from studies of policy
experiences and efforts with mixes and tools of different kind fall into two categories: those dealing
with matching design activity to the context of policy-making and those which focus on the
Given their nature, policy tools or instruments, or techniques used by government in order
to implement policy goals (Howlett 2005), have a special place in considerations and studies of
policy design. Each tool has its own particular ‘character’ and understanding this character is an
important aspect of designing programmes and packages likely to attain government goals. But
choosing policy tools and designing policy portfolios becomes more complex when, as is very
common in many policy-making situations, multiple goals and multiple sectors are involved in a
balancing the character of different types of tools is a challenge and how to achieve
‘complementarity’ and possibly useful ‘redundancy’ while avoiding excessive duplication and
counter-productive mixes (Grabosky 1995; Hou and Brewer 2010; Justen et al 2013a) is a key
question affecting programme design as is the question of how best to sequence or phase in
However, this activity of policy design or formulation is not just a matter of the character
of individual tools and mixes, but also of context. That is, design questions with which
contemporary scholars and practitioners grapple include issues such as avoiding both ‘over’ and
‘under’ design, or balancing ‘effort’ with the severity of a problem (Haynes and Li 1993; Maor
2012); how to enhance or alter mixes over time so that they are able to continue to meet old goals
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and take on new ones (van der Heijden 2011; Kay 2007); and how to assess the political feasibility
of policy alternatives as well as their technical merits (May 2005; Gilabert and Lawford-Smith
If policy design theory is to improve and better inform policy practice, then it requires
better understanding of both these dimensions of designs and designing, including both detailed
knowledge of tool requirements and effects, and also of the kinds of formulation processes and
contexts in which design takes place and instruments operate (Howlett 2011). This paper draws
lessons from both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ design work to establish several basic criteria for
effective design and designing. It sets out both elements and shows how they can be combined to
generate lessons and insights for better design among both scholars and practitioners alike.
Most older literature on policy tools focused on single instrument choices and fairly simple designs
(Tupper and Doern 1981, Salamon 1989, Trebilcock and Prichard 1983). Early students of policy-
making like Dahl and Lindblom, Edelman, Lowi and others, for example, had very flexible notions
of the multiple means by which governments can give effect to policy and of the reasons why
different kinds of tools were effective (Dahl and Lindblom 1953; Kirschen et al 1964; Edelman
While these studies provided only limited insights into the complex arrangements of
multiple policy instruments which are commonly found in all policy fields (Jordan et al 2011 and
2012; Givoni 2013), they did provide detailed considerations on the strengths and weaknesses, and
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development in post-war Europe. They grouped these into five general "families" according to the
resource used to effect change. These were: public finance, money and credit, exchange-rates,
Around the same time other authors like Dahl and Lindblom, for example, did not try to
develop an exhaustive list or categorization scheme for existing techniques of governance but
instead argued that the number of possible alternative instruments is virtually infinite. In order to
understand their variation, they argued they could usefully be ranged over five long continua with
various techniques lying between the poles of each continuum. The first continuum ranged
instruments according to whether they involved public or private enterprises or agencies; the
second according to whether they were persuasive or compulsory; the third according to whether
they involved direct or indirect controls over expenditures; the fourth according to whether they
involved organizations with voluntary or compulsory membership; the fifth according to whether
(pp. 9-16).
Both these kinds of lists were relatively arbitrary but all addressed a key issue in
programme design: attempting to distinguish between different tools based on their inherent
characteristics and impacts. This discussion dealt with an ongoing issue at the time in the field,
that of level of ‘substitutability’ of different tools (Howlett 1991). That is, whether different
instruments can perform similar tasks and are hence to some degree substitutable with eachother
or whether different instruments perform distinctly different tasks and thus are more unique.
Inventories and taxonomies which focused on the different resources used by different tools and
their different configuration and impact lead to the conclusion that instruments are not entirely
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substitutable. That is, instruments have particular capabilities and particular requisites and must
This lack of substitutability is the fundamental basis for policy design work. That is, if any
tool can perform any job then policy design is less problematic for a government than having the
administrative expertise required to ensure adequate staff and reporting arrangements are in place
to ensure an instrument is deployed properly and adjusted as necessary to attain its objective(s). If
each instrument is capable of addressing only particular kinds or aspects of problems, however,
then a large part of the task before governments and policy analysts is to establish the technical
specifications of each instrument in order to see which instruments are even theoretically capable
of addressing a given problem. Policy design is then about understanding the nature of the problem
faced by governments, the supply of governing resources available to deal with it and the
capabilities and requisites, or “character” of different instruments which can be deployed to affect
it. Understanding their unique characteristics thus serves to restrict the number of feasible and
available instruments and to greatly narrow the range of choice available to governments in any
given situation (Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012). Explaining an effective instrument choice, in
this second conception, is then a matter of determining the parameters of a given policy situation
and of matching the needs for action and with the supply tools available, tasks which can be done
Thus in 1989, for example, Linder and Peters attempted to summarize the findings of this
literature and in so doing described eight “attributes of instruments” which they felt affected
specific tool choices. These were: complexity of operation, level of public visibility, adaptability
across uses, level of intrusiveness, relative costliness, reliance on markets, chances of failure, and
precision of targeting (p. 56). In his later work, Peters (2000) reduced this number to seven and
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altered their content so that they became: directness, visibility, capital/labour intensity,
enforcement, and their ‘forcing vs enabling’ nature (p. 39). This was no doubt due to the conclusion
from further study that drawing a sharp distinction between ‘market-based’ and ‘state-based’ tools
is less useful than thinking about these as ‘modes of governance; while ‘chances of failure’ is also
a highly contextual item which does not ‘adhere’ to an instrument as a fundamental characteristic.
The other difference between the two lists is the addition of several sub-elements to “level of
intrusiveness” which, if removed, leaves five main instrument characteristics or appraisal criteria:
Targeting, visibility and intrusiveness, for example, are key criteria which must be
balanced against the more administrative preference for ‘automaticity’ or cost efficient (“low
maintenance”) implementation.
The discussion above highlights the role played in policy design by the characteristics of individual
policy tools. The literature on the subject has highlighted several key principles, which can inform
policy design considerations in this area. Three of these are listed below: parsimonious tool use;
moving up the scale of coercion in sequential instrument choices; and matching tools with targets.
The older literature on policy design suggested several maxims or heuristics which can be used to
head off common errors in policy-making. The first and oldest of these is to observe parsimony in
tool selection. An oft-cited rule in this area, for example, is that the optimal ratio of the number of
tools to targets is 1:1 (Knudson 2009) an axiom first put forward by Tinbergen (1952) who argued
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that the number of policy tools in any mix should roughly match the number of goals or objectives
set for the policy. This is a reasonable rule-of-thumb, for which Tinbergen provides some logical
justification in his discussion of information and administrative costs associated with redundant
Assuming that utilizing more instruments costs less than fewer, this maxim translates easily
enough into a basic efficiency calculus for the attainment of policy ends and in his work Tinbergen
analyzed what he termed the ‘normal’ case in which it was possible to match one goal with one
target so that one instrument could fully address its task and accomplish the goal set out for it.
Most observers, however, including Tinbergen, were and are well aware that combinations of tools
are typically used to address a policy goal, not a single instrument. As Tinbergen (1952 p. 37)
himself argued “A priori there is no guarantee that the number of targets always equals the number
of instruments” and (p. 71) “it goes without saying that complicated systems of economic policy
(for example) will almost invariably be a mixture of instruments”. This aspect of policy design is
A second principle of policy design found in the older literature on the subject was not only to be
parsimonious in the number of instruments chosen at a specific point in time to attain a goal, but
also dynamically or sequentially. In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, for example, Bruce Doern,
Richard Phidd, Seymour Wilson argued that different policy instruments varied primarily in terms
of the ‘degree of government coercion’ each instrument choice entailed (Doern 1981; Doern and
Phidd 1983; Doern and Wilson 1974; Tupper and Doern 1981). They argued that tool choices
should only ‘move up the spectrum’ as needed from minimum towards maximum.1
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This rationale is based on a cost-effort calculation linked to an appreciation of the
ideological preferences of liberal-democratic governments for limited state activity and on the
difficulties posed the exercise of state power by the relative political "strength" of the societal
actors able to resist government efforts to shape their behaviour. Assuming that all instruments
were more or less technically "substitutable" or could perform any task - although not necessarily
as easily or at the same cost - they argued that in a liberal democratic society, governments, for
both cost and ideological reasons, would prefer to use the least coercive instruments available and
would only "move up the scale" of coercion as far as was necessary in order to overcome societal
resistance to attaining their goal (Howlett 1991). Preferring "self-regulation" as a basic default, for
example, governments would first attempt to influence overall target group performance through
exhortation and then add instruments only as required in order to compel recalcitrant societal actors
to abide by their wishes, eventually culminating, if necessary, in the public provision of goods and
services.
Experience suggest that governments do not always seek to avoid coercive solutions,
but indeed, may at times seem to revel in taking a hard line from the start. While
there are undoubtedly many reasons for these heavy-handed responses, surely some
of the most important ones include the constituency or group at which the policy is
aimed, the circumstances in which the problem has appeared, and the nature of the
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Matching Tools and Targets
There is a significant behavioural component to policy design, tool use and choice which is critical
to policy success and failure (Weaver 2009b; Lynn 1986; Schneider and Ingram 1990; Shafir 2013)
and correctly anticipating this is a key component of effective policy design. That is, it is critically
important for policy-making that the behaviour resulting from policy activity and the expenditure
of governing resources matches that anticipated prior to deployment (May 2004; Kaine et al 2010;
Duesberg et al 2014).
Policy tool use and behavioural expectations are linked in the sense that the use of policy
tools involves implicit or explicit assumptions and expectations about the effect tool deployment
will have upon those impacted by it. In most cases, with the exception of those symbolic instances
where ‘over-design’ is welcomed, such as in areas such as national security or crime prevention
(Maor 2013; 2014; 2016), efficient policy designs are those that affect only those targets whose
behaviour it is necessary to change and with only the minimum necessary levels of coercion and
display.
Studies of policy designing, and many designs themselves, have often been developed with
only the most rudimentary and cursory knowledge of how those expected to be affected by and
instrument are in fact likely to react to it (Lewis 2007; Corner and Randall 2011; Taylor et al 2013;
Duesberg et al 2014).2 However, regardless of whether those targets are purely social constructions
with few empirical referents (Schneider and Ingram 1993 and 2005) or if they reflect more
objective assessment of the actual behaviour of relevant groups of policy actors, it is critical for
effective policy-making that actual target behaviour matches expectations and this is thus a key
aspect of effective policy design (Grabosky 1995; Weaver 2009a, 2009b, 2013, 2015; Winter and
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Hence much work in this area is often focused around the idea of ‘getting incentives right’
or calibrating incentives and disincentives, within financial tools in order to achieve expected
levels of compliance and outcomes rather than upon examining other, more normative or
policy-making developed in the 1980s reflected this economistic orientation with policy initiatives
in areas such as pollution prevention and professional regulation assuming a distinctly utilitarian
bent in so doing (Hippes 1988; Trebilcock 1983; González-Eguino 2011). This tendency has
changed somewhat in recent years, however, as scholars and practitioners alike, many under the
influence of behavioural economics, have come to appreciate that members of the public and other
policy actors often predictably behave in less than perfectly rational ways (Ariely 2010; Thaler et
Assessing behaviour and choosing tools accordingly is not a trivial issue in policy theory
and practice. Is it the best way to encourage and increase in birthrates, for example, to provide
subsides which might tip the balance of a woman’s or family’s calculations of affordability of
children? Or is it more effective to promote family-centred events and activities in public service
announcements and movie and television and other entertainment placements which promote the
notion of home life and the pleasures of children and family (Lichtenstein and Slovic 2008)? Or
both?
Policy tool considerations built around the first orientation can involve debates and
discussions around particular kinds of financial tools such as providing more widely distributed
and available subsidized daycare and better local schools rather than around how much of a direct
subsidy to a parent through the use of tax incentives or cash grants will promote higher levels of
childbirth and larger families (Woodside 1979). The second may involve activities such as movie
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theatre and TV public service advertisements and educational programmes in schools and
elsewhere rather than the actual provision of new services or subsidies. And whether both work in
Weaver (2009b p. 5), for example, has enumerated some of the various ‘compliance
problems’ or ‘barriers’ to compliance which governments face when putting their policies into
practice. These indeed include incentive and sanction problems where positive and or negative
incentives are insufficient to ensure compliance, but also monitoring problems where target
compliance may be difficult or costly to monitor; resource problems where targets lack the
resources to comply even if they want to; autonomy problems where targets do not have the power
to make decisions that comply with policy even if they want to; information problems where
targets lack information that would make compliance more likely, and attitude and objectives
problems where targets are hostile /mistrustful towards providers or programs. Addressing such
considerations requires more than one tool and how these tools interact in a ‘compliance regime’
Many significant issues related to the manner in which tool choices in bundles are made
and how tool bundles evolve over time affect the propensity for designs to avoid the twin shoals
of over and under-reacting to problems (Maor 2012; Howlett and Rayner 2007) while
incorporating better knowledge of both synergistic and counter-productive tool relationships and
interactions (Del Rio 2010; LePlay and Thoyer 2011; Grabosky 1995; Justen et al 2013b).
The character of individual tools then, both in terms of the modalities of their employment and
behaviours they invoke, are a key aspect of policy designs. However, as mentioned above, it is not
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just the character of individual tools, but of policy mixes which must be taken into account in the
Bundling or mixing policy tools together in complex arrangements raises many difficult
questions for students and practitioners when there are significant interactive effects among policy
tools some of which may be very difficult to anticipate or quantify using standard analytical tools
(Justen et al 2013a and 2013b; Boonekamp 2006; Yi and Feiock 2012). That is, in such mixes the
instruments are not isolated from each other and tools in such mixes interact leading to the potential
for negative conflicts (“one plus one is less than two”) and synergies (“one plus one is more than
two”) (Lecuyer and Bibas 2011; Philibert 2011). In such cases, different design principles are
There are also a series of questions about how exactly tools fit together, or should fit
together, for example, in a mix. Another set of design issues involves determining how many tools
are required for the efficient attainment of a goal or goals. The issue of potentially under or over-
designing a mix arises in many circumstances and is made more complex because in some
instances, for example, arrangements may be unnecessarily duplicative while in others some
redundancy may be advantageous in ensuring that goals will be met (Braathen and Croci 2005;
Braathen 2007).
This concern has animated policy design studies from their outset. Here the question of
tool complementarity looms large. As Tinbergen (1952) noted, additional tools – “supplementary”
or ‘complementary” ones – are often required to control side-effects or otherwise bolster the use
of a ‘primary’ tool. However, there are information and administrative costs associated with the
use of redundant tools which also have to be taken into account (Knudson 2009).
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It is also a situation which has a temporal as well as a spatial dimension. That is, across
time periods new instruments appear and old ones evolve or are eliminated. That is, design
analyses must extend beyond questions of tool synergies and optimal design to consideration of
how and why mixes change over time and how the processes of policy formulation followed in
adopting such complex designs take place (Larsen et al 2006; Kay 2007; Feindt and Flynn 2009).
The existing evidence shows that suboptimal situations are very common in many existing mixes
which have developed haphazardly through processes of policy layering (Thelen 2004; van der
Heijden 2011). This is a process in which new tools and objectives have been piled on top of older
ones, creating a palimpsest-like mixture of quite possibly inconsistent and somewhat incoherent
policy elements (Howlett and Rayner 2007; Carter 2012; OECD 1996). These kinds of
‘unintentional’ mixes can be contrasted with ‘smarter’ designs which involve creating new sets of
tools specifically intended to overcome or avoid the problems associated with layering but which
These processes and change dynamics again focus attention on the sequencing of
instrument choices within mixes (Taeihagh et al 2009 and 2013b) and especially upon the fact that
many existing mixes have developed without any sense of an overall conscious design (Daugbjerg
2009).
The impact of these kinds of studies is clear in the kinds of admonitions made to policy designers
and the effort to articulate clear principles of policy formulation and design linked to the
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Aiming for Coherence, Consistency and Congruence as Measures of Design Integrity and
Superiority
Much work on policy design and policy mixes has focused on the need for the various parts of a
mix or portfolio to be integrated for maximum effectiveness (Briassoulis 2005a and 2005b).
Policies are composed of several elements and some correspondence across these elements is
required if policy goals are to be integrated successfully with policy means (Cashore and Howlett
2007).
These include criteria such as "consistency" (the ability of multiple policy tools to reinforce
rather than undermine each other in the pursuit of policy goals), "coherence" (or the ability of
multiple policy goals to co-exist with each other and with instrument norms in a logical fashion,
the relationships within the shaded area in figure), and 'congruence" (or the ability of goals and
measures of optimality in policy mixes following this integrative logic (Lanzalaco 2011; Howlett
However, while clear enough in theory, empirical work on the evolution of policy mixes
has highlighted how these three criteria are often weakly represented in existing mixes, especially
those which have evolved over a long period of time (Howlett and Rayner 2006; Rayner and
Howlett 2009). That is, discussions of policy designs do not take place in an historical vacuum and
an issue which is especially vexing for design studies is the extent of the constraints imposed on
design by the temporal evolution of tool portfolios (Miller and Winterberger 1990).
Many existing studies assume, whether explicitly to implicitly, that any combination of
tools is possible in any circumstance. That is, that decision-makers have unlimited degrees of
freedom in their design choices. Empirical studies, however, have noted this kind of freedom in
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combining design elements is only to be found in very specific circumstances – what Thelen (2003)
terms ‘replacement’ or ‘exhaustion’ – when older tool elements have been swept aside or
abandoned and a new mix can be designed or adopted de novo. These circumstances are quite rare
and most existing mixes or portfolios have been found to have emerged from a gradual historical
process in which a policy mix has slowly built up over time through processes of incremental
(2003), Hacker (2004 and 2005) and others, term “layering”, “drift”, or “conversion” (Bode 2006).
This aspect of designing and design work is discussed further in the next section of the paper.
Recent design thinking and work on “smart regulation” has underlined the importance of
considering the full range of policy instruments when designing a mix rather than assuming that a
choice must be made between only a few alternatives such as regulation versus market tools
(Gunningham et al 1998).
However, a major issue for such studies is the fact that not all of the tools involved and
invoked in a mix are inherently complementary (Tinbergen 1952; Grabosky 1995; Gunningham et
al 1998; Gunningham and Sinclair 1999; del Rio et al 2011; Boonekamp 2006) in the sense that
they evoke contradictory responses from policy targets (Schneider and Ingram 1990a, 1990b;
1993; 1994; 1997; 2005). Some combinations, of course, may be more virtuous in providing a
reinforcing or supplementing arrangement (Hou and Brewer 2010). And some other arrangements
may also be unnecessarily duplicative while in others some redundancy may be advantageous
That is, as Grabosky (1995) and others suggested, some tools counteract each other – for
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example, using command and control regulation while also attempting voluntary compliance –
while, as Hou and Brewer (2010) argued, other tools complement or supplement each other – for
example, using command and control regulation to prevent certain behaviour deemed undesirable
supplementary effects while minimizing counterproductive ones. “Smart’ design implies creating
packages which take these precepts into account in their formulation or packaging (Gunningham,
Grabosky and Sinclair 1998; Gunningham and Sinclair 1999; Eliadis et al 2005).
While the character of individual tools and mixes is important, so is context (deLeon 1988).
Kirschen et al, for example, noted very early on that the key determinants of policy choice are the
economic objective pursued and the structural and conjunctural context of the choice. While the
criteria such as efficiency, cost or effectiveness; it would also be affected by the political
preferences of interest groups and governments, and a variety of sociological and ideological
constraints which would also inform tool choices and preferences (pp. 238-244).The economic
objectives of the governments they examined in post-war Europe, they argued, were determined
by the interaction of political parties and their representatives in government, administrators, and
interest groups. (pp. 224-236). The structural and conjunctural contexts created by the influence
of long-term economic processes and structures, and current economic conditions affected political
institutions and actors and through them, instrument choices (pp. 236-238).
Similarly, in his pathbreaking early works on public policy-making, for example, Harold
Lasswell (1954), a political psychologist by training, conceived of the main instruments of politics
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as involving, among other things, the manipulation of symbols, signs and icons which rely on
individual’s affections and loyalties to particular ideas and actors in addition to financial and other
kinds of incentives and disincentives subject to more utilitarian calculations. Lasswell noted the
extent to which governments could affect every aspect of policy-making through such
manipulations varied depending upon the circumstances and actors involved in any given context
and argued that a principal task of the policy sciences must be to understand the nuances of these
situations and calibrate their actions and their effects accordingly (Lasswell 1954 and 1971; Doern
This makes the question of instrument choice and design more difficult since, if political
choices predominate over effectiveness ones, then theoretically at least any instrument could be
utilized in any given situation regardless of the actual results of this deployment in terms of
instrument is chosen over another cannot be explained or conceived of as a technical matter. Rather
a host of other factors must come into play and different governments will choose different
instruments given their particular mix of partisan, electoral, legislative and other preferences
including their habits and historical modus operandi. The latter subject saw some earlier treatment
in studies on ‘policy styles’ which identified common patterns and motifs in the construction of
typical policy designs in different jurisdictions reflecting these concerns (Richardson et al 1982;
Howlett 2004). Contemporary studies have taken this work to heart in locating design decisions
within governance arrangements and existing policy regime preferences do much the same thing
(Howlett 2009).
Such decisions, however, even if politically driven are not random and context, like
character, can be systematically modelled and analyzed in its effects on the process of policy
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designing. In other words, the design of policy mixes can encompass the need to ensure a good fit
not only between packages of tools and government goals but also their institutional and
behavioural contexts at specific moments in time (Considine 2012; Lejano and Shankar 2013).
Existing work on the subject of policy portfolio design helps to address this issue by
differentiating between design spaces which are simple and more complex (Howlett 2004; Howlett
et al 2006; (Howlett 2011). Thus, for example it is possible to categorize policy mixes in terms of
whether they are single ‘level’ mixes and those with a more complex structure. That is, in addition
to the ‘horizontal’ issue addressed by many students of the subject – pertaining to the kind of
relationships existing between tools, goals and policies within a single level of government and
sector of policy-making – a second, ‘vertical’ dimension is often present. This vertical dimension
involves not just the number of instruments, goals and policies found in a mix, but also the number
of policy sectors they involve and the number of governments active in policy formulation in this
area (del Rio 2009; Howlett and del Rio 2015). Such a framework allows room for many more
complex interactions between bundle elements than typically envisioned or analyzed in existing
studies. That is, conflicts and synergies between tools, goals and policies can be identified both at
the horizontal level, for example between different types of instruments and goals within each
level of analysis, and/or at the vertical, that is, across and between different policy sectors and/or
administrative levels.
These variations have significant implications for both the number and type of actors
involved in policy design and the processes through which formulation unfolds, as well as for the
complexity of design itself. While some aspects of horizontal interactions can be addressed in
largely technical ways – so that, for example, some conflicts can be mitigated just by selecting
certain instruments over others – in more complex cases such analyses must be supplemented by
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other political, administrative and organizational logics and policy formulation processes become
more difficult.
Vertical design contexts cutting across sectors and governments require greater efforts
aimed at achieving administrative coordination and policy integration suitable to the complexity
of context which horizontal mixes generally do not. In the former situation relevant coordination,
for example, needs to be in place between different administrative levels and across policy
subsystems which do are not needed in simpler horizontal contexts. The configuration of elements
in a vertical mix must relate to preferences for different instruments favored in multiple sectors
and governments rather than just among a single set of actors (Freeman 1985; Howlett 2009). And
shifts in these preferences over time also require special handling and analysis (Briassoulis 2005a
and 2005b).
Other work has examined a second aspect of ‘context’, that is, the question of the ability
and intent of governments to undertake this kind of design activity. In this work, design “spaces”
are defined somewhat differently. Many commentators, pundits and jaded or more cynical
members of the public, for example, assume that all policy-making, as the output of a political
“irrational” in a design sense. Policy design studies, of course, acknowledge that not all policy
work is rational in an instrumental sense: that is, not all policy-making is logic or knowledge driven
and it is debatable how closely policy-makers approximate the instrumental logic and reasoning
which is generally thought to characterize this field (Howlett et al., 2009; Howlett and Mukherjee
2014).
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
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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.
In general, this work has suggested that a spectrum of design and non-design formulation
processes exists between policy processes informed by instrumental motivations and ones driven
by other logics. While the distinction between policy-driven and politically-driven processes is
clear, however, it is necessary to examine in more detail why one process emerges rather than the
other and, secondly, the conditions under which either can successfully achieve its goals.
Figure 1 presents a schematic illustrating how two different contextual aspects of policy-
making – having a design intention and the capacity to carry it out or not - create different policy
formulation spaces which enable very different policy design processes and outcomes to emerge.
This sets out a set of formulation processes lying between the intention and ability to undertake
purposive, instrumental policy design and the intention to meet more political goals coupled with
Figure 1. Types of policy formulation spaces: Situating design and non-design processes and
outcomes
Level of Government Knowledge and Other Constraints
High Low
Capable Policy Design Space Poor Policy Design Space
More
Relatively unconstrained Only partially informed or
Instrumental
formulation via design is possible restricted design is possible
Government
Formulation
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As Figure 1 suggests, the nature of the constraints on government intentions can negatively
affect both design and non-design processes and result in poor outcomes in specific sectors. While
in either the case of a design or a non-design situation high government capacity is a significant
pre-requisite for success, the same is true of a lack of capacity. For those favouring more rational
design process the worst situation is a politicized, religious or ideologically-driven policy process
with few governing resources. However even when these values dominate, capacity remains a
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
includes not only their ability to analyse but also to learn and adapt to changes as necessary (Wu
et al 2015).
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
22
be available at the level of the organization if their members’ ability to perform policy functions
as needed is to exist.
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 managers’ and analysts capability to perform their
policy work. Political support for both from both above and below is also 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
Just as was the case with single instrument and mix characteristics, it is possible to highlight
several design principles which flow from the analysis of design context above. These include the
question of goodness of fit of proposed designs with pre-existing governance preferences, and the
need for an accurate analysis of the degrees of freedom designers have to innovate.
Goodness of Fit: The Need for Designs to Match Governance Mode and Policy Regime Capacities
Contemporary design theory highlights the need for designs to respond to particular, context-
dependent features of the policy sector involved. In this sense, “goodness of fit” between tool and
context is a key concern in contemporary policy design considerations and can be seen to occur at
23
That is, design choices emerge from and must generally be congruent with the governance
modes or styles practiced in particular jurisdictions and sectors (Howlett 2009). That is, different
orientations towards state activity require different capabilities on the part of state and societal
actors and since different governance modes or styles rely on these to greater or lesser degrees,
policy designs must take into account both the desired governance context and the actual resources
Thus, for example, planning and ‘steering’ involve direct co-ordination of key actors by
governments, requiring a high level of government policy capacity to identify and utilize a wide
range of policy tools in a successful policy ‘mix’ or ‘arrangement’ (Arts, Leroy and van Tatenhove,
2006; Arts and van Tatenhove, 2000). Again, work on ‘policy styles’ and administrative traditions
(Kagan 2001, Richardson et al 1982, Freeman 1985; Knill 1998) have identified common patterns
and motifs in the construction of typical policy designs in different jurisdictions reflecting such
concerns (Kiss et al 2012; Howlett 2011 and 2009) and leading to preferences for particular kinds
of tools which make their design and adoption simpler than non-traditional ones.
Degrees of Freedom in Policy Designs: Matching Policy Designing and Policy Designs Over Time
Second, as noted above, empirical studies in many policy areas have shown that many existing
policy mixes were not ‘designed’ in the classical sense of conscious, intentional and deliberate
planning according to well established or oft-used governance principles but rather evolved
through processes of layering and others. As Christensen, et al. (2002) have argued, the issue here
is the leeway or degrees of freedom policy designers have in developing new designs given
existing historical arrangements of policy elements not, as above, tine the context of governance
preferences and policy styles but in that of path dependencies, policy legacies and lock-in effects.
24
That is, in addition to the requirements of “goodness of fit” with prevailing governance modes
with respect to policy design (noun), there are also constraints imposed on design (verb) activities
by existing trajectories of policy development. As Christensen et al. note, ‘these factors place
constraints on and create opportunities for purposeful choice, deliberate instrumental actions and
intentional efforts taken by political and administrative leaders to launch administrative reforms
(Considine 2012) or, to put it another way, to what degree they are ‘context bound” in time and
As this discussion has shown, over the course of the past 30 years, the study of policy
implementation instruments has advanced through the various stages of social scientific theory
construction and now contributes a great deal of knowledge to policy formulation and policy
Instrument selection and activation is a key component of policy design. And policy studies
is replete with many taxonomies and typologies describing policy instrument varieties and
grappling with the issue of the "rationale for tool choice', that is the theoretical, and practical,
kinds of tools. These insights have not been well integrated with policy design studies, however,
despite the latter’s emphasis on policy tools as the substance of design work.
This paper addressed this important aspect of policy design work and policy studies by
distinguishing between the context of policy designing and the character of the tools deployed in
25
a design. Many recent design studies have focused on issues related to policy-maker behaviour,
such as ideological predispositions or the lock-in effects of bureaucratic tools, but less upon the
characteristics of the tools, themselves, something earlier work on policy tools that authors such
as Salamon, Linder and Peters and others emphasized. Harkening back to this earlier work this
paper suggests that some aspects of the tool itself, notably its ability to be focused generally or
more precisely, is a significant determinant of choice. Some tools are more capable than others in
this area and these capabilities and limitations, it is argued, are essential considerations in
Understanding both character and context and combining them, it is argued here, provides
a formula for effective design, matching what could be done in theory with what can be done in
practice. This suggests that design element appraisals vary directly with the fluidity of the decision
context. When governance modes are changing, appraisals and design criteria will include
assessments of political risks and constraints that are not required if a mode is stable. If both
governance mode and policy regime are stable then decisions may be taken essentially on grounds
of micro-level factors such as visibility, automaticity, intrusiveness, cost, and especially in terms
Defining and thinking about designing polices and policy-making in this way is very useful
for policy design because it highlights how instrument choices are all about constrained efforts to
match goals and expectations both within and across categories of policy levels and elements
(Keohane 1998). As Renate Mayntz (1983) argued, “to approach the problems of effective
programme design”, it is “necessary first to identify the relevant programme elements and
characteristics which are the object of decision in a process of programme design” (p. 126).
Understanding the character of the basic types of instruments available to policy-makers and
26
establishing the criteria for assessing the advantages and disadvantages of their use in specific
contexts s essential knowledge allowing for the creation of new policy designs as well as the
Endnotes
1
They first placed only self-regulation, exhortation, subsidies, and regulation on this scale (Doern
1981) but later added in categories for "taxation" and public enterprise (Tupper and Doern 1981)
and finally, an entire series of finer "gradations" within each general category (Phidd and Doern
1983).
2
It is often simply assumed, for example, that policy ‘targets’ are rational self-maximizers,
calculating their best interests hedonically in deciding whether or not to comply with the demands
of government instruments and mechanisms such as regulation, laws and subsidies (Stover and
Brown 1975; Gevrek and Uyduranoglu 2015; Weaver 2014; Jones et al 2014; Duesberg et al 2014;
Araral 2014; Maskin 2008). Many studies of policy instruments, heavily influenced by economists,
for example, assumed both decision-makers and policy targets were motivated exclusively by
relatively narrow utilitarian self-interest maximization (Stokey and Zeckhauser 1978; Trebilcock
and Hartle 1982; Dewees 1983). Other studies often reflected this view in part because they
followed the lead of economists in focussing on the use of economic tools such as regulation,
public enterprises, or subsidies which more or less directly affected the type, quantity, price or
other characteristic of goods and services being produced in industrial and environmental policy
spheres, which could in fact be analyzed in largely economistic terms (Salamon 1989; Bemelmans-
Videc 1998; Peters and van Nispen 1998).
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