LIST OF PANELS

In the classical understanding of Public Policy, policies are the solution and not the problem. Public policies are developed in an attempt to respond to political problems – irrespective of how these problems are perceived and defined. Policies are designed to make our lives better. They reflect societal progress and modernization. Most citizens are happy not to live in a country that still trusts in the social policies of the 1870s, or the environmental policies of the 1950s. Although this does not exclude that policies might be ill-designed or badly implemented, it does not challenge the implicit baseline assumption that adopting new policies in a context of conflicting interests and institutional constraints on decision-making is per se is a virtue rather than a vice. Put simply, as already stated by Lindblom, a good policy is one that is agreed upon. 
Yet, this view overlooks that, at least in the long run, policies might make things worse rather than better. Policies may indeed be the problem rather than the solution and have the potential to undermine the legitimacy of modern democracies. One important source of such effects emerges from phenomena like policy accumulation, policy layering, rule growth, or policy complexity. Because the dismantling and termination of existing policies is highly unattractive from the perspective of vote-seeking politicians, policies pile up in modern democracies. Governments constantly produce more policies and rules than they abolish, leading to ever-growing and increasingly complex policy stocks. This is in turn has profound implications: constrained implementation capacities might be overburdened, a rational discourse on the pros and cons of certain policies is increasingly difficult in view of multiple policy interactions within complex policy stocks, and, as a result of these interactions, clear cause-effect attributions and hence policy evaluation is more and more difficult. These developments hence might undermine both the output and input legitimacy of modern democracies.
Against this backdrop, this panel seeks to address these policy-induced challenges more generally. We welcome papers that study the unintended consequences of policy production (emerging, for example, from policy growth, policy complexity or other sources) and analyze how these effects challenge the legitimacy of modern democracies. We look for contributions that adopt a more long-term and aggregate perspective in order to systematically assess the above questions.

In the classical understanding of Public Policy, policies are the solution and not the problem. Public policies are developed in an attempt to respond to political problems – irrespective of how these problems are perceived and defined. Policies are designed to make our lives better. They reflect societal progress and modernization. Most citizens are happy not to live in a country that still trusts in the social policies of the 1870s, or the environmental policies of the 1950s. Although this does not exclude that policies might be ill-designed or badly implemented, it does not challenge the implicit baseline assumption that adopting new policies in a context of conflicting interests and institutional constraints on decision-making is per se is a virtue rather than a vice. Put simply, as already stated by Lindblom, a good policy is one that is agreed upon. 
Yet, this view overlooks that, at least in the long run, policies might make things worse rather than better. Policies may indeed be the problem rather than the solution and have the potential to undermine the legitimacy of modern democracies. One important source of such effects emerges from phenomena like policy accumulation, policy layering, rule growth, or policy complexity. Because the dismantling and termination of existing policies is highly unattractive from the perspective of vote-seeking politicians, policies pile up in modern democracies. Governments constantly produce more policies and rules than they abolish, leading to ever-growing and increasingly complex policy stocks. This is in turn has profound implications: constrained implementation capacities might be overburdened, a rational discourse on the pros and cons of certain policies is increasingly difficult in view of multiple policy interactions within complex policy stocks, and, as a result of these interactions, clear cause-effect attributions and hence policy evaluation is more and more difficult. These developments hence might undermine both the output and input legitimacy of modern democracies.
Against this backdrop, this panel seeks to address these policy-induced challenges more generally. We welcome papers that study the unintended consequences of policy production (emerging, for example, from policy growth, policy complexity or other sources) and analyze how these effects challenge the legitimacy of modern democracies. We look for contributions that adopt a more long-term and aggregate perspective in order to systematically assess the above questions.