LIST OF WORKSHOPS

This Workshop aims at gathering scholars interested in advancing the policy design framework. Policy design emerged as an analytical framework in the 1980s when a few notable scholars called for a reorientation of the research agenda in public policy to address both the complexity of the policy process and the necessity to bridge theory and practice to improve policy outcomes. The main driving force of this theoretical and methodological shift was the increasing diversity of actors involved in decision-making, essentially caused by the triple decentering of the State —upward, downward and outward— that governments are still dealing with, in a time of globalization, decentralization and civil society organizations blossoming. Yet the interest of the overall policy community for policy design is quite a recent phenomenon, as indicated by the number of articles published in high impact journals since the mid-2000s. As for mid-2019, more than 2000 journal articles were referenced in the Web of Science, mostly published since 2005, and the number of annual publications reached 270 in 2018. 

This brings in good and bad news at the same time. The good news is this trend is a sign of increasing awareness of the challenges and resources provided by a design approach to policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The bad news is many authors use the concept of policy design in a rather uncritical and descriptive way that lacks the minimum consistency with a clear theoretical background and robust methods. 

So is the interest for policy design a real shift in the discipline of policy studies or is it just a fad? The answer to this question is obviously not straightforward, but this Workshop proposal is based on the premise that there is actually a shift in policy studies. The Workshop will unfold along five sessions covering the following topics: 

Why do we need a policy design framework? 

What defines such a framework? 

What issues does it address unlike conventional frameworks? 

How does it contribute to a better understanding of substantial policy areas? 

Which are the main obstacles to effective policy design? 

While these questions are quite encompassing, the issues at stake may vary according to the ontological and epistemological statements made by the authors interested in addressing them. 

This Workshop will provide a setting for discussing the major approaches to policy design, and the challenges that confront designers and academics interested in design. We will attempt to bring together a group containing both established scholars and more junior scholars to provide a range of different perspectives on policy design. We will utilize the Workshop as a first step toward developing a major publication on design that should advance significantly this approach to policy. 

Policy design emerged as an analytical framework in the 1980s when a few notable scholars called for a reorientation of the research agenda in public policy to address both the complexity of the policy process and the necessity to bridge theory and practice to improve policy outcomes. The contemporary literature building on this framework is a testimony to the growing interest and the need to integrate major theories of instrumentation, institutional change, social construction of target groups and deliberative practices such as co-design into a single agenda for researchers and practitioners. 

This workshop will gather scholars who are willing to advance the policy design framework, regardless of their theoretical and methodological preferences. The discussion will be organized in five sessions covering the following topics:

Why do we need a policy design framework? 
What defines such a framework? 
What issues does it address unlike conventional frameworks? 
How does it contribute to a better understanding of substantial policy areas? 
Which are the main obstacles to effective policy design? 
Participants are expected to address at least one of these issues, based on their research and empirical findings. We encourage them to discuss the added value of policy design compared with conventional policy analysis frameworks regarding formulation, implementation and evaluation. The best contributions will be published in a major publication that seeks to advance significantly the debate. 

Please send a 400 word abstract including the core topic of your proposal and the main arguments to be developed in your paper. Selected papers should be ready by late May 2020, in order to allow us to prepare the working sessions and comments. Papers should be approximately 8000 words (not including bibliography and appendix) organized as follows: a brief introduction underpinning the relevance of the core topic and the central argument, a state of the art on this topic, a proposal relating the central argument with the improvement of the policy design framework, a concluding section linking the topic to the encompassing discussion about how policy design can improve our understanding of substantial policy areas and outcomes.

This Workshop will provide a setting for discussing the major approaches to policy design, and the challenges that confront designers and academics interested in design. We will attempt to bring together a group containing both established scholars and more junior scholars to provide a range of different perspectives on policy design. We will utilize the Workshop as a first step toward developing a major publication on design that should advance significantly this approach to policy. 

B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of Government at the University of Pittsburgh and was founding president of the International Public Policy Association. He is currently editor of the International Public Policy Review and Honorary Editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. 

Guillaume Fontaine is Senior researcher at the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador. He has published extensively on comparative policy analysis, democratic governance and policy design in Latin America, including The Politics of Public Accountability (with Cecilia Medrano and Ivan Narváez, Palgrave Mcmillan 2019).