Abstract
Policy design has returned as a central topic in public policy research. An important area of policy design study deals with effectively attaining desired policy outcomes by aligning goals and means to achieve policy design fit. So far, only a few empirical studies have explored the relationship between policy design fit and effectiveness. In this paper, we adopt the multilevel framework for policy design to determine which conditions of policy design fit—i.e., goal coherence, means consistency, and congruence of goals and means across policy levels—are necessary and/or sufficient for policy design effectiveness in the context of policy integration. To this end, we performed a qualitative comparative analysis of Dutch regional transport planning including all twelve provinces. Outcomes show no condition is necessary and two combinations of conditions are sufficient for effectiveness. The first sufficient combination confirms what the literature suggests, namely that policy design fit results in policy design effectiveness. The second indicates that the combination goal incoherence and incongruence of goals and means is sufficient for policy design effectiveness. An in-depth interpretation of this counterintuitive result leads to the conclusion that for achieving policy integration the supportive relationship between policy design fit and policy design effectiveness is less straightforward as theory suggests. Instead, results indicate there are varying degrees of coherence, consistency, and congruence that affect effectiveness in different ways. Furthermore, outcomes reveal that under specific circumstances a policy design may be effective in promoting desired policy integration even if it is incoherent, inconsistent, and/or incongruent.
Highlights
How to develop policy designs that effectively address policy problems has been an ongoing topic of research for decades
This study applied the multilevel approach to policy design to determine which conditions of policy design fit—coherence, consistency, and congruence—are necessary or sufficient for policy design effectiveness in the context of policy integration
The first configuration confirms that the presence of policy design coherence, consistency, and congruence is sufficient for policy design effectiveness
Summary
Even though policy design thinking has expanded considerably over the years, a key component has always focused on bringing about intended policy outcomes by consciously matching goals and means (Howlett & Mukherjee, 2018a) because a good fit between goals and mean is said to minimize incompatibilities and exploit synergies, so as to improve policy design effectiveness (Rayner et al, 2017) In this setting, policy design fit is considered to be the sum of coherence of goals, consistency of means, and congruence of goals and means (Van Geet et al, 2019a, 2019b). To further mature as a field, policy design studies would benefit from methodological innovations and a stronger emphasis on the application and operationalization of the field’s theoretical principles (see e.g., Rogge et al, 2017; Schmidt & Sewerin, 2018) This applies to the relationship between policy design fit and effectiveness which, to date, has undergone limited empirical testing (Rogge & Schleich, 2018). This article aims to bridge this research gap by investigating to what extent policy design fit is needed for policy design effectiveness
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