Design and Scaling Up of Policy Experiments and Pilots: Lessons for the Water Sector

Abstract

The use of experimentation by practitioners and resource managers as a policy instrument for effective policy design under complex and dynamic conditions has been well-acknowledged both in theory and practice. For issues such as water resource management policy experimentation, especially pilot projects can play an important role in exploring alternate courses of action when faced with long-term uncertainty. While the political aspects of experimentation have been alluded to by several policy scholars, there is lack of empirical evidence that explores their interplay with other factors that may also be critical for scaling up of policy experiments. This paper presents a critique of factors that can influence scaling up of policy experiments, including pilots and draws lessons for experimentation in the water sector through a review of selected examples of water policy experiments and a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of pilots in multiple sectors. The analysis reveals that the design of policy experiments apart from being a technical process it is also highly driven by the interests, behavior and attitudes of the stakeholders, building on the argument that scaling up is a “craft rather than science” (Spicer et al, 2014). Presence of strong political support, synergies with ongoing policies and programs and regular monitoring and evaluation are found to be factors necessary for scaling up of pilots. When in combination, these three factors are revealed to also create a sufficient condition for scaling up.