The criteria for effective policy design: character and context in policy instrument choice

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecent 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.