Dealing with the Dark Side of Policy-Making: Managing Behavioural Risk and Volatility in Policy Designs

Abstract

Policy studies to date have focused almost exclusively on the “good” side of policy formulation, that is, dealing with concerns around ensuring that knowledge is marshalled towards developing the best feasible policy under the assumption of well-intentioned governments and accommodating policy targets. This work has not carefully examined nor allowed for the possibility that government intentions may not be solely oriented towards the creation of public value or that policy targets may indulge in various forms of “misconduct” – from fraud to gamesmanship – which undermine government intentions. Although self-interested, corrupt and other similar kinds of policy-making have been the subject of many studies in administrative and regulatory law, this work has generally been ignored or paid only lip service by policy studies. This is changing, however, as the question of the behaviour of policy targets in particular has increasingly become a source of interest among policy scholars. This article reviews these developments and behaviours in order to aid the process of improving policy designs to deal with this “dark side” of policy-making.