LIST OF PANELS

The Panel is organized by: 

Geert Brinkman,  Diana Pamela Villa Alvarez, Federico Vaz, Arwin Van Buuren and Jenny Lewis

Policy design has been evolving in the policy sciences since the 1950s. It originated in the intent of applying knowledge more systematically to policy formulation and thereby improving policy outcomes (Lasswell & Lerner, 1951). For a long time, this rational-instrumental logic underpinned thinking about policy design (Clarke & Craft, 2018). However, in the past few decades, a more creative-purposive take on policy design has been emerging as well (Hermus et al., 2020).

This new orientation to policy design draws methods, techniques and practices from graphic, product, interaction, and service design (Vaz & Prendeville, 2019; Villa Alvarez et al., 2022) and often goes by the names of ‘design thinking’ or ‘design-for-policy’ (Bason, 2014). Instead of taking a problem-to-be-solved or a solution-to-be-optimized as a starting point, this design orientation takes value-to-be-created as a starting point (Dorst, 2015). It revolves around reframing problems, coming up with innovative ideas, and learning towards solutions in progressive iterative cycles of trial-and-error in which the problem and solution co-evolve (Dorst & Cross, 2001). Rather than a rational-instrumental logic, a creative-purposive logic underpins this design orientation. As such, it is complementary to this traditional design orientation (Lewis et al., 2020) and thus seen as a promising alternative to address present day’s public issues (Blomkamp, 2018; Van Buuren et al., 2020).

For these reasons, public organizations around the world are experimenting with design-for-policy (Bason, 2014). This is often done in a protected environment such as a public sector innovation lab (McGann et al., 2018). However, to date, there is little evidence of long-term adoption of this design orientation in public organizations (Lewis, 2021; Villa Alvarez, 2022) and its impact on policy formulation (Lewis et al., 2020). Conversely, design-for-policy is often surreptitiously introduced as the operationalization of open policy agendas (Vaz Canosa, 2020). 

In light of this, multiple scholars have raised their concerns on whether this new design orientation fits within established policy design and public administation traditions found in most public organizations (Mintrom & Luetjens, 2016; Clarke & Craft, 2018; Howlett, 2020). One of the concerns is that the context within which design-for-policy is applied is insufficiently taken into account (Clarke & Craft, 2018; Howlett, 2020; Van Buuren, 2020). For instance, questions of how this design orientation may serve political agendas (Vaz, 2020) or deal with political constraints (Clarke & Craft, 2018; Howlett, 2020) remains unanswered. Additionally, the uptake of design-for-policy requires the development of particular individual and organizational capabilities (Malmberg, 2017), going beyond providing training (Wrigley et al., 2020). The need for ‘institutional work’ to develop design capability in public organizations is increasingly recognized (Bason 2010; Bason 2017; Junginger 2017; Vink et al., 2021). Yet, how this can be done is still unclear. Finally, it remains the question how abovementioned seemingly contrasting rational-instrumental and creative-purposive design orientations can co-exist symbiotically in public organizations.

The design-for-policy experiments in the public sector have gained a lot of attention, but they have also shown that to realize the potential of this new design orientation, more is needed than a set of methods, techniques and practices borrowed from another domain. They pose questions related to whether and how this design orientation may fit - or be made to fit - within established policy design and public administration traditions found in most public organizations. In this direction, this panel calls for both conceptual and empirical papers related to the following topics:

- The interplay between design-for-policy and the context within which this is applied and especially how this interplay can be made fruitful. For instance, identifying and/or addressing the tensions that arise when design-for-policy is confronted with politics, bureaucratic rules and routines or ensuring legitimacy and accountability.

- The required organizational arrangements or institutional adjustments for the adoption of design-for-policy, and how these can be realized.

- The necessary individual and institutional capabilities for the application, adoption and diffusion of design-for-policy, considering the different people and roles that are involved in this.