Policy Design, Social Regulation, and Theory Building: Lessons from the Traffic Safety Policy Arena

Abstract

Despite the interest of political scientists in social regulatory policy implementation, only recently has the policy design movement begun classifying and assessing the comparative advantage of various policy "tools" or implements. This study seeks to advance understanding of social regulatory policy tools by assessing their potential as a vehicle for developing midrange theories of policy design. Analysis of Michigan traffic safety data indicates that those pursuing policy design research should anticipate that: (1) enforcement effects vary across regulatory tools; (2) attributes such as "birth order" and "precision of targeting" can condition the impact of various types of social regulatory tools differently; (3) success is conditioned not only by implement attributes, but also by implementation styles, contexts, and target populations; and (4) the comparative advantage of any tool can be assessed accurately only by considering its interaction with other implements across these disparate styles, contexts, and target populations.