LIST OF PANELS

The  literature on policy design has made great strides in assessing the more macro-level aspects of policy-making such as governance arrangements and policy paradigms and the meso-level world of policy objectives and tools, while it has tended not to examine very closely the micro-level of policies.

Major figures in the field have occasionally touched on micro-level design issues but have typically quickly moved on and left a legacy of incomplete typologies and partial observations (Salamon 1989, 2001, 2002; Linder and Peters 1989; 2000; Ostrom 2005; 2010).  This theoretical gap makes it difficult to understand what policymakers can or should do when they decide how to address a policy problem (Capano and Howlett 2020). Is a radical policy change necessary to achieve a significant change in policy outcomes, for example, or is a partial/marginal change sufficient (Sewerin et al 2022)? And what precisely does a policy intervention entail, beyond general statement of intent, and what difference does it make? Inadequate answers to these questions make it difficult to gauge policy performance, which is measured in terms of the decision’s real impact on society and is a key concern for policy-makers and practitioners (Dunlop et al 2022).

Policy design research has, however, recently begun to deal with the 'micro' level of policy-making, that is, the creation and assignment of policy targets and the calibration of policy tools required to achieve them. This work has helped clarify somewhat the general content of this level of policy design and practice (Shaffrin et al.  2014; Howlett, Ramesh and Capano 2022;  Petek et al. 2021; 2022; Siddiki and Curley 2022) but has also raised many questions about how this content is actualized in practice.

Without a deeper  theoretical  and empirical perspective on the micro-dimensions of policy design many relevant  questions of policy making remain opaque. These include questions such as whether and how policy design really influences policy outcomes and performance? How much each of the  different dimensions (macro-meso-micro)  of policy design drive policy-makers decisions? And how the characteristics of the micro dimensions of policy design drive policy change.

References

Capano, G., & Howlett, M. (2021). Causal logics and mechanisms in policy design: How and why adopting a mechanistic perspective can improve policy design. Public Policy and Administration, 36(2), 141–162.

Dunlop, C. A., Kamkhaji, J. C., Radaelli, C. M., & Taffoni, G. (2022). Measuring design diversity: A new application of Ostrom’s rule types. Policy Studies Journal, 50(2), 432–452.

Howlett, M., Ramesh, M., & Capano, G. (2022). The role of tool calibrations and policy specifications in policy change: Evidence from healthcare reform efforts in South Korea 1988-2021. Journal of Asian Public Policy, online first 2 February.

Linder, S. H., & B. G. Peters. (1989). ‘Instruments of government: Perceptions and contexts’. Journal of Public Policy, 9(1), 35–58.

Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding institutional diversity. Princeton University Press.

Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond markets and states: Polycentric governance of complex economic systems. American Economic Review, 100(3), 641–672

Petek, A., Baketa, N., Kekez, A., Kovačić, M., Munta, M., Petković, K., Šinko, M., & Zgurić, B. (2021). ‘Unboxing the vague notion of policy goals: Comparison of Croatian public policies.’ European Policy Analysis 7(2), 451–469.

Petek, A., Zgurić, B., Šinko, M. et al. (2022).  From hierarchy to continuum: classifying the technical dimension of policy goals. Policy Sciences, early view 30 September

Peters, B. G. (2000). Policy instruments and public management: Bridging the gaps. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(1), 35–47.

Salamon, L. M. (ed.) (1989). Beyond privatization. The tools of government action. The Urban Institute Press.

Salamon, L. M. (2001). The new governance and the tools of public action: An introduction. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 28(5), 1611–1674

Salamon, L. M. (2002). The tools of government: A guide to the new governance. Oxford University Press,

Schaffrin, A., Sewerin, S., & Seubert, S. (2014). ‘The innovativeness of national policy portfolios – climate policy change in Austria, Germany, and the UK’. Environmental Politics, 23(5) (September 3), 860–883.

Sewerin, S., Cashore, B., & Howlett, M. (2022). “Beyond dichotomies in the analysis of policy change: Utilizing logics of policy change for understanding ‘vicious’ and ‘virtuous’ policy trajectories”. Policy and Politics, 50 (3), 442–459.

Siddiki, S., & Curley, C. (2022). Conceptualising policy design in the policy process, Policy & Politics, 50(1), 117-135.

This panel will only accept onsite presentations.

This panel invites research on any of these subjects aimed at adding to the state of existing knowledge  on the micro-level components of policy-making and policy design.

Policy design research has recently begun to deal with the 'micro' level of policy-making, that is, the creation and assignment of policy targets and the calibration of policy tools required to achieve them. It has often been noted, however, that many gaps and limits continue to exist in our knowledge of this level of policy tools, goals and objectives despite these subjects having been studied in the policy sciences for decades. This is a serious problem for both academic and practitioners who seek more comprehensive models and frameworks allowing them to better analyze, design and implement policies and their components.

A deeper focus on the micro dimensions of policy design, that is, on how goals are operationalized and policy instruments concretely designed  for delivering expected outcomes, is needed to generate new theoretical, analytical and empirical scholarly knowledge.

We invite policy scholars  to submit papers which reflect “whether” and “how”  the micro-level of policy design  is akin:
-       to "engineering", in the sense of being the technical translation of more general policy goals and tools to fit the actual situation on the ground in a policy-making instance or
-       to "bricolage", a kind to do-it-yourself customization of whatever is at hand in order to try to achieve whatever goals have been set out by policy-makers
 

We welcome:

-       theoretical papers aiming at improving the conceptualization of the micro-dimensions of policy designs and designing;

-       comparative empirical papers showing how a focus on micro-dimension of policy design can help drive a better understanding of  policy dynamics and policy effectiveness; and

-       case studies that can propose real added value in terms either of  theoretical  improvements or empirical evidence about how the micro-level of policy design works.