From evaluation to auditing and from programs to institutions: Causes and consequences of the decline of the program approach

In the wake of the “audit revolution” during the 1980s and 1990s, administrative systems across the western world have tended to gradually downplay evaluation as a component of the policy process. At the same time, auditing has dramatically increased in scope and depth, and has also, to some extent, come to fill the role in policymaking previously played by evaluation studies. This article reviews this development from the perspective of policymaking and institutional change or “drift.” Specifically, we look at the types of information and knowledge that are lost and gained as a result of these developments. We apply a cross‐national approach, drawing on the examples from the European and North American contexts.     

The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy: challenges of epistemic governance

Since 2012, a new movement of government departments, think tanks and high-profile individuals within the UK has sought to promote the increased usage of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in public policy. They promote RCTs as an evidence-based corrective for the inappropriate certainties of experts. Recent government reports and public debate around this initiative are reviewed and analysed within a framework for epistemic governance: normative insights into how knowledge for policymaking should be understood and governed drawn from science and technology studies and the policy sciences. The legitimacy of RCT evidence within policymaking is found to rest on the recognition of three key features: (1) how multiple meanings of evidence limit generalisability, (2) ensuring a plurality of evidence inputs, including those from other forms of research and expertise, and (3) building institutions for governing the use of RCTs in the public interest. Producing evidence for policymaking is a hybrid activity that necessarily spans both science and politics. Presenting RCTs as naively neutral evidence of what policy interventions work is misleading. The paper concludes by calling for more work on how the new RCT movement might engage with its own history in social and policy research on the value of experiments for policymaking.     

Mapping the use of knowledge in policymaking: barriers and facilitators from a subjectivist perspective (1990–2020)

Policy Sciences - The use of knowledge and evidence in policymaking is a recurrent topic of research due to its scientific and policy relevance. The existing and expansive body of literature has...     

The rise of public sector innovation labs: experiments in design thinking for policy

Governments are increasingly turning to public sector innovation (PSI) labs to take new approaches to policy and service design. This turn towards PSI labs, which has accelerated in more recent years, has been linked to a number of trends. These include growing interest in evidence-based policymaking and the application of ‘design thinking’ to policymaking, although these trends sit uncomfortably together. According to their proponents, PSI labs are helping to create a new era of experimental government and rapid experimentation in policy design. But what do these PSI labs do? How do they differ from other public sector change agents and policy actors? What approaches do they bring to addressing contemporary policymaking? And how do they relate to other developments in policy design such as the growing interest in evidence-based policy and design experiments? The rise of PSI labs has thus far received little attention from policy scientists. Focusing on the problems associated with conceptualising PSI labs and clearly situating them in the policy process, this paper provides an analysis of some of the most prominent PSI labs. It examines whether labs can be classified into distinct types, their relationship to government and other policy actors and the principal methodological practices and commitments underpinning their approach to policymaking. Throughout, the paper considers how the rise of PSI labs may challenge positivist framings of policymaking as an empirically driven decision process.     

Arenas as Institutional Sites for Policymaking: Patterns and Effects in Comparative Perspective

In comparative approaches to the policy process, policymaking institutions are usually considered at the level of political systems. Countries, however, may vary not only in systemic institutions but also in types of policymaking arenas within specific domains. Systematic attention to this variation in policy arenas at both levels may complement existing theories of the policy process that focus on other explanatory variables and may increase the comparative potential of these approaches. As an explanatory variable, arena variation makes a difference to policy results in that it may increase or decrease the potential for policy change sought by policy entrepreneurs.     

The Making of Policy: Institutionalized or Not?

This article attempts to build bridges in the formal study of policymaking across polities of different degrees of institutional development. It explores the reasons why policymaking is fairly institutionalized in some polities but not in others. It suggests extending standard models of institutionalized policymaking to allow for a wider set of actions, including the threat of violence or of damage to the economy. It engages the discussion of institutions as rules and institutions as equilibria, delivering multiple equilibria with different degrees of institutionalization. The likelihood of institutionalized policymaking increases as the cost of alternative political actions increases, as the damage these alternatives cause decreases, and as the economy becomes wealthier. In cases in which the distribution of de jure political power is more asymmetric, it is more likely to observe use of alternative political technologies as well as low degrees of institutionalization.     

Public Management Policymaking in Spain: The Politics of Legislative Reform of Administrative Structures, 1991–1997

This case study focuses on extending research knowledge about the politics of public management policymaking in Spain. The case involves legislating to change politically sensitive features of the central government and administration. The study explains such analytically significant event conditions as: an agenda‐setting process that made a policy issue of the formal, structural attributes of state administration, an alternative‐specification process that proceeded without complication, and a decisional process that lasted five years and in which political leaders' positions on the issue flip‐flopped. Broadly speaking, the case analysis demonstrates that when policy proposals take the form of legislation, the politics of public management policymaking in Spain are highly influenced by political stream factors, themselves reflecting Spain's parliamentary form of government and relations between statewide and regional political parties.     

Defining Asia Capabilities for Australia's Public Service

Twenty‐three years ago, questions posed in this journal asked whether and how the Australian public service was prepared to engage effectively in Asia. More recent meta‐analyses of public policy scholarship suggest that Western policy scholars and administrators continue to pay limited attention to Asian policymaking, despite the rise of Asia in the 21st century. This article contributes a research‐derived Asia capabilities framework for Australia's public service, distilled from a qualitative study with public administration leaders at Commonwealth, state, and local government levels. It taps scholarly literature in ‘cultural intelligence’, global leadership competencies, and training to provide a robust conceptual underpinning for the framework. The framework defines the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and experiences vital for Australia's public service to engage effectively with the region in a rapidly changing policy environment.     

The Role of Assessments and Institutions for Policy Learning: A Study on Swedish Climate and Nuclear Policy Formation

This study examines two challenges related to the integration of environmental concerns into public policymaking: how to shape institutions that facilitate policy learning in national policymaking processes, and how to create effective supporting assessment processes. A simple construct of policy learning is applied empirically; distinguishing what is learned in terms of conceptual and technical learning, and unpacking the process of learning into three elements: knowledge acquisition, interpretation, and institutionalization. Two empirical policy cases, climate and nuclear policy formation in Sweden, are analyzed over two decades, detecting patterns of learning and investigating what institutions have facilitated or obstructed them. The analysis is based on a study of actual policy outputs, an examination of reasoning and argumentation in policy documents, and evidence from testimonial interviews. Results indicate that climate policy has undergone fundamental learning processes whereas nuclear policy has been more intractable. Most learning has occurred in some agency and committee processes, while ministries and political levels have suffered from weak capacities and incentives to learn. Key drivers of learning included trust building among key agents coupled to international driving forces. Ultimately, institutional rules, capacities, and incentives are more important factors for enhancing learning than what types of assessments feed in.     

Considering Knowledge Uptake within a Cycle of Transforming Data,Information, and Knowledge

Knowledge uptake, having decision makers assimilate the ideas of experts, is recognized as an important stimulus to bringing about policy change. This is particularly true in the realm of environmental policymaking, which is characterized by knowledge intensity, complexity, and multifaceted concerns. Using examples from an innovative watershed management organization, this article presents a heuristic for understanding how knowledge uptake occurs within a cycle of organizational reasoning. This cycle is driven by activities that transform data, information, and knowledge and that link specialists with decision makers. The heuristic can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify breaks in the transformation process that impede mandate fulfillment and impair capacity building. Lack of appreciation of the dynamic relationship between data, information and knowledge leads to mistimed and ineffective policy interventions that do not result in the hoped for progress in science intended to underpin policy advances.     

The energy model muddle

It is well-known that modelers and policy analysts gain access to policymaking arenas based on what they know. Therefore, critics of models are quick to employ various types of technical standards when evaluating policy models in order to assess validity and reliability of claims to knowledge. This article argues that, in the effort to make models better, overreliance on technical standards misses the important political and policy reasons to model: models call attention to the modelers and to their advice about important policy problems of the day. In this sense, models are used as symbols, as claims to authority, whether or not the underlying knowledge is technically up to snuff. Drawing on the experience of energy policy models, this article explores the problem of models as knowledge versus models as symbols and it examines the muddle that conflicts between them produce.     

Different paradigms of evidence and knowledge: Recognising,honouring, and celebrating Indigenous ways of knowing and being

Debates over evidence-informed policymaking are predominantly structured from a western paradigm of ontology and epistemology. Other ways of being and knowing are neither privileged by the policy space nor the discipline, certainly not in the same way or to the same degree. This is changing, however, in the face of cultural recognition and with diversity and inclusion agendas and within the contexts of post-truth politics and the questioning of expertise. This article explores the contribution of Indigenous ways of knowing and being as providing valid, alternative forms of evidence that ought to inform the policymaking process. Australian experience suggests that Indigenous evidence and knowledge offers unique, substantive insights that are offered as ‘gifts’ to inform policy and public administration communities. This contribution is unrecognised and unincorporated into public administration at Australia and the world's peril given that Indigenous approaches offer new exciting ways forward for engagement, sustainability, and policy innovation. It should not be co-opted or presumed. Indigenous peoples need to be given self-determination avenues to decide what they wish to share or not, why, and how.     

Deadly divide: Malawi’s policy debate on HIV/AIDS and condoms

This paper examines the dynamics of condom policymaking in Malawi by analyzing debates, which took place in the Malawi National Assembly between the year 2000 and 2004. Using content analysis and key informant interviews, and situating the overall discussion within policy and science literature, we examine how scientific evidence is being applied in the policymaking process as it relates to the place of condoms within the context of HIV/AIDS prevention. The study not only shows the extent to which the policymaking process on condoms in Malawi largely embodies a tendency to blur the conventional divide between science and politics, but also demonstrates why controversy around condoms still persists at the highest level of government in a country with one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. It was found that even when people are dying, consensus in HIV/AIDS policymaking can be difficult to achieve in a policy climate characterized by a binary perspective to social problems, and where different actors compete for control over the policy terrain. The paper makes recommendations that may be helpful in facilitating a more inclusive HIV/AIDS policymaking process in Malawi.     

危机管理中政策制定的行政伦理建设研究

行政伦理建设是危机管理中政策制定研究的重要组成部分,行政伦理的建设情况直接关系到危机管理中政策制定的效率和质量,从而影响应对危机的成败。在危机管理的政策制定中,加强行政伦理建设将有利于维护危机中公民和国家的利益,提高政府制定政策的效率,促进危机管理中政策制定的目标实现,以及巩固危机管理中政府的权威和提高政府的公信力,因此,研究政策制定的行政伦理建设对危机管理具有深远的意义。     

The power of policy networks in authoritarian regimes: Changing environmental policy in China

In this article, I examine how civil society organizations (CSOs) in China created policy networks among government officials to change environmental policies. I contend that these networks work in similar ways to those in democracies, despite the focus in the literature on how policymaking in authoritarian regimes lacks societal participation. China adopted strict regulations to control CSOs by requiring registration with a supervisory agency. However, CSOs exploit the regulations to use the supervisory agency as an access point to policymakers whom they otherwise could not reach. I use case studies to demonstrate how the strategies used to construct policy networks determined their success in changing policy. This finding represents an initial step in theorizing bottom‐up sources of policymaking in authoritarian regimes given that these regimes all create mechanisms for government control over CSOs, have difficulty accessing good information for policymaking from society, and a policy process formally closed to citizen participation.     

Design Thinking in Policymaking Processes: Opportunities and Challenges

Design thinking has the potential to improve problem definition and mechanism design in policymaking processes. By promoting greater understanding of how citizens experience government services, design thinking can support public managers who desire to enhance public value. In Australia, as elsewhere, design thinking currently remains separated from mainstream policymaking efforts. This article clarifies the essence of design thinking and its applicability to policy development. Five design thinking strategies are discussed, all of which have lengthy histories as social science methodologies. They are (1) environmental scanning, (2) participant observation, (3) open‐to‐learning conversations, (4) mapping, and (5) sensemaking. Recent examples from Australia and New Zealand are used to illustrate how these strategies have been incorporated into policymaking efforts. The article concludes by considering how design thinking might be more broadly applied in policymaking, and the training and resourcing requirements that would entail.     

Policymaking for Vexatious Problems

Idealized policymaking may aspire to solve problems, but the nature of vexatious problems is to resist solution. In these cases, coping and its variants, like accommodation, avoidance, ambiguity, indirection, and improvisation may be more suitable than the pursuit of solution. Two illustrations concerned with the problematic city of Jerusalem demonstrate the possibilities and the pitfalls that may be associated with coping: (1) negotiations involving Israelis and Palestinians; and (2) tensions between religious and secular Jews.     

Constraining Executive Action: The Role of Legislator Professionalization in Latin America

What explains the failure of legislatures with strong constitutionally endowed powers to exert themselves over the executive in practice? We examine the role of legislator professionalization in strengthening the legislature's ability to constrain executive action, conceptualizing legislator professionalization as prior legislative experience and prior professional work experience. We argue that more professionalized legislators, through the skill and knowledge they bring to the policymaking process from prior experience, will be better equipped to challenge executive authority. In a sample of four Latin American countries from 1990 through 2010, we find that legislatures are more likely to curb executive decree issuance when individual legislators are strongly professionalized, controlling for constitutional powers and several other partisan and political factors. Our findings suggest that legislatures composed of more professionalized legislators can constrain executive action, especially in the context of a unified political opposition in the legislature.     

When does the multiple principals hypothesis hold? The politics of U.S. agency policymaking autonomy

When the bureaucracy's political principals hold different preferences for policy, does this increase the bureaucracy's policymaking autonomy? Existing theory strongly suggests “yes.” We, however, argue that this pattern will materialize only when the bureaucracy's principals are all on the same side of the political divide. (i.e., unified government). Using data gathered from the American states at two time points, we capture preference divergence by measuring the ideological distance between the bureaucracy's key political principals—legislators, governors, and courts—on the common left–right dimension. We measure policymaking autonomy through multi-faceted surveys of state agency leaders. In keeping with our argument, we demonstrate that greater preference divergence across the bureaucracy's principals is associated with increased agency policymaking autonomy under unified—but not under divided—government. The results shed new light on when, and why, the bureaucracy's political principals may provide an oversight check on the policymaking power of the modern administrative state.