‘Michael Howlett’s The Policy Design Primer usefully distils over forty

years of research and practice into a single, highly accessible volume.

The bad news is that a surprisingly large amount of public policy fails
to deliver what it promises. But armed with this book, students and
­practitioners are more likely to discover what works, when and for
whom – vital pre-requisites for more effective societal problem solving’.
– Professor Andrew Jordan, University of East Anglia, UK

‘How might governments choose the most appropriate tool for a­ chieving
desired policy goals and objectives? How might they ­uncover ­innovative
and durable solutions? Howlett’s The Policy Design Primer: Choosing the
Right Tools for the Job provides, in one place, the critical t­heoretical,
­conceptual and analytical tools for making informed ­decisions in a highly
complex and globalized world. The book is must reading for ­government
and bureaucratic officials seeking to manage complex problems that
­often demand, and can benefit from, drawing on procedural tools that
­integrate key stakeholders into public ­management design and ­practice,
and ­substantive instruments that can steer policy subsystems t­owards
­meaningful results. A tour de force in its integration of conceptual
breadth, analytical scope and practical insights’.
– Professor Benjamin Cashore, Yale University, USA
The Policy Design Primer

The Policy Design Primer is a concise and practical introduction to the

principles and elements of policy design in contemporary governance.
Guiding students through the study of the instruments used by gov-
ernments in carrying out their tasks, adapting to, and altering their
environments, this book:

• Examines the range of substantive and procedural policy instru-

ments that together comprise the toolbox from which governments
select specific tools expected to resolve policy problems,
• Considers the principles behind the selection and use of specific
types of instruments in contemporary government,
• Addresses the issues of instrument mixes and their (re)design in a
discussion of the future research agenda of policy design and
• Discusses several current trends in instrument use often linked to
factors such as globalization and the increasingly networked nature
of modern society.

This readily digestible and informative book provides a comprehensive

overview of this essential component of modern governance, featuring
helpful definitions of key concepts and further reading.
This book is essential reading for all students of public policy, admin-
istration and management as well as more broadly for relevant courses
in health, social welfare, environment, development and local gov-
ernment, in addition to those managers and practitioners involved in
­Executive Education and policy design work on the ground.

Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada ­Research

Chair (Tier 1) in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser
University, Canada. He specializes in public policy analysis, political
economy and resource and environmental policy.
Routledge Textbooks in Policy Studies

This series provides high-quality textbooks and teaching materials

for upper-level courses on all aspects of public policy as well as policy
­analysis, design, practice and evaluation. Each text is authored or edited
by a leading scholar in the field and aims both to survey established
areas and present the latest thinking on emerging topics.

Analyzing Public Policy, 2nd Edition

Peter John

Public Policy and Private Interest

Ideas, Self-Interest and Ethics in Public Policy
J.A. Chandler

The Public Policy Primer, 2nd edition

Managing the Policy Process
Xun Wu, M. Ramesh, Michael Howlett and Scott A. Fritzen

Designing Public Policies, 2nd edition

Principles and Instruments
Michael Howlett

Policy Styles and Policy-Making

Exploring the Linkages
Edited by Michael Howlett and Jale Tosun

The Policy Design Primer

Choosing the Right Tools for the Job
Michael Howlett
The Policy Design Primer
Choosing the Right Tools for the Job

Michael Howlett
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Michael Howlett
The right of Michael Howlett to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Howlett, Michael, 1955– author.
Title: The policy design primer: choosing the right tools for
the job / Michael Howlett.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Routledge textbooks in policy studies | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059423 (print) | LCCN 2019006616 (ebook) |
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(pbk: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429401046 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Political planning. | Policy sciences.
Classification: LCC JF1525.P6 (ebook) | LCC JF1525.P6 H7 2019 (print) |
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Contents

List of figures xi
List of tables xii
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xiv

Part I
Policy design in the modern state 1

1 Basic concepts and vocabulary 3

The tools orientation towards policy design: authoritative
instrumentalism 3
What is public policy? 4
What is policy design? 6
What is a policy instrument? 7
What is an implementation tool? 8
What isn’t policy design? 11
How do designs change? 12
References 13

2 Systematically studying policy design:

the logic of tool use 15
Knowledge limitations affecting policy design 16
Behavioural considerations 19
Improving policy designs through better linking tools,
mechanisms and targets 24
Conclusion: policy design as instrumental knowledge
mobilization 26
References 28
viii Contents
Part II
Policy tools – the building blocks of policy designs 31

3 Organizational implementation tools 33

Substantive organizational instruments 33
Direct government 34
Line departments 34
Central support agencies 37
Social and health insurance and pension plans 37
Quasi-governmental organizational forms 38
Public enterprises and other corporate forms 38
Organizational hybrids (alternative service delivery) 41
Partnerships, commissioning and contracting out 42
Commissioning 44
Contracting 45
Non-state and society-based tools: co-production
and certification 46
Certification 46
Co-production 47
Procedural organizational instruments 48
Network management tools 49
Staff or central (executive) agencies 49
Tribunals and other quasi-judicial bodies 50
Creating or reorganizing government agencies 50
Establishing analytical units 51
Establishing clientele units 51
Establishing government reviews, ad hoc task forces,
commissions, inquiries and public hearings 52
Legislative and executive oversight agencies 53
Conclusion: organizational tools – the forgotten fundamental
in policy design studies 54
References 56

4 Authoritative implementation tools 61

Substantive authoritative instruments 61
Direct government regulation 62
Laws 62
Direct departmental regulation and Independent
regulatory commissions 64
Indirect government regulation 66
Delegated professional regulation 67
Voluntary or incentive regulation 68
 Contents ix
Market creation and maintenance 70
Procedural authoritative instruments 70
Policy network activation and mobilization tools 71
Sectoral advisory councils 72
Public consultation, stakeholder and consensus conferences 73
Conclusion: regulation – a very flexible instrument 75
References 76

5 Financial implementation tools 80

Substantive financial instruments 80
Cash-based financial tools 81
Grants, subsidies and user fees 81
Tax- or royalty-based financial instruments 82
Tax- and royalty-based expenditures 82
Excise taxes 83
Cash or tax-equivalent financial tools 84
Preferential procurement 84
Favourable insurance and loan guarantees 85
Vouchers for public services 86
Sales of state assets at below-market prices 86
Procedural financial instruments 87
Financial policy network creation tools 88
Interest group creation 89
Financial network mobilization tools 90
Interest group alteration/manipulation/co-optation 90
Conclusion: treasure – an effective but depletable resource 92
References 93

6 Information-based implementation tools 97

Substantive informational instruments 98
Information dissemination tools 98
Exhortation and moral suasion 99
Information campaigns 99
Nudges and information-based choice architectures 101
Information and knowledge collection tools 103
Inquiries and commissions 103
Statistical agencies and units 103
Surveys and polling 104
Procedural informational instruments 104
Information release tools 105
Freedom of information and E- or digital government
legislation and other initiatives 105
x Contents
Information release prevention tools 106
Censorship 106
Official secrets acts 106
Privacy and data protection acts 107
Conclusion: information – cost-efficient but often ineffective 107
References 108

Part III
Principles for designing policies and programmes 113

7 Assembling and evaluating an effective

policy design 115
What makes a good policy process: evidence-based policy-making,
policy analytical capacity and their links to good policy design 115
What is a superior mix of tools: coherence, consistency and
congruence in policy designs 117
Principles of effective policy designs based on the
character of tools 118
Parsimonious tool use and the Tinbergen rule 118
Maximizing complementary effects and
minimizing counterproductive ones 118
Sequencing: moving up the scale of coercion in
instrument choices 120
Utilize coherence, consistency and congruence
as measures of the design integrity and
superiority of a mix 120
Avoiding over- and under-designing 121
Better matching tools and target behaviours in
compliance regimes 122
Designing and assessing policy prototypes
through experiments and pilot projects 123
Principles of policy design based on the design context 123
Promoting patching as well as packaging in
portfolio design 125
Goodness of fit: the need for designs to match
governance mode and policy regime capacities 125
Degrees of freedom in policy designs: matching
policy designing and policy designs over time 126
Conclusion: designing for resilience and robustness 126
References 128

Index 133
Figures

1.1 A spectrum of design processes 13

2.1 Context-related mechanism constraints 19
2.2 Links in the design chain – individual and group levels 20
2.3 Policy effectiveness as the relationship between
process, design and outcome 26
5.1 Spectrum of interest articulation systems 87
Tables

1.1 Components of public policies involved in policy design 5

1.2 A Resource-based taxonomy of procedural and
substantive policy instruments (cells provide
examples of instruments in each category) 8
1.3 Types of policy formulation spaces: situating design
and non-design processes 12
2.1 Cases of disproportional policy reaction and design 17
2.2 Tame and wicked problems 18
2.3 Policy-maker’s knowledge and comprehension matrix 18
2.4 Nature of compliance of policy targets 23
2.5 Perceptions of policy targets after Schneider and
Ingram (1993) 23
2.6 Behavioural needs for resource effectiveness 25
3.1 Tasks typically undertaken by government agencies 36
3.2 Examples of tasks undertaken by public enterprises
(Canada – twentieth century) 39
3.3 Analytical agency network managerial tasks 52
4.1 Six types of legal instruments 63
4.2 Requisites for regulatory agency independence 65
4.3 Types of voluntary regulation 68
4.4 Actions undertaken by procedural authoritative
instruments 71
4.5 Types of advisory committees 72
4.6 Purposes of advisory boards 73
4.7 US Advisory Committee Act (1972) criteria 73
4.8 Types of public consultation – design criteria 74
5.1 Average percentage of ‘seed money’ obtained by
groups from each source by group type 89
5.2 Source of funding for women’s groups (Canada) 92
Preface

This book introduces students to the principles and elements of policy

design in contemporary governance. It does so through the detailed
study of the implementation instruments used by governments in car-
rying out their tasks in adapting to, and altering, their environments,
and of the processes in government which lead to their selection and
enactment. These tools form the basic foundation or structure upon
which all policies and programmes rest. An essential component of
modern governance, the range of substantive and procedural policy
instruments together comprise the toolbox from which governments
select specific tools expected to resolve particular kinds of policy prob-
lems. The book begins with the discussion of the definition of policy
design and the principles behind the selection and use of specific types
of instruments in the process of policy formulation. After setting out
the details and strengths and weaknesses of different types of tools in
subsequent chapters, by way of conclusion, the issue of how best to
­design policy programmes is addressed.
Acknowledgements

The book could not have been written without the pioneering work
of the many scholars and colleagues who individually and collectively
spent a great deal of time and effort developing the empirical cases and
carefully building the many frameworks and models used throughout
the text. A special debt is owed to Rebecca Raglon for her patience,
support and encouragement.
Part I

Policy design in the

modern state
1 Basic concepts and
vocabulary

Transforming policy ambitions into practice is a complex process.

­According to Davis Bobrow’s (2006) apt phrase, policy design is ‘ubiq-
uitous, necessary and difficult’. But it is also surprisingly less studied and
poorly understood. Unfortunately, many efforts made by policy-makers
to address policy problems still fail. But these experiences have fortu-
nately led to a greater awareness of various obstacles that can present
themselves to effective policy designs. Efforts to overcome these obsta-
cles, in turn, gradually have fueled a better understanding of the char-
acteristics of the policy process through which design occurs.
Policy design itself entails the conscious and deliberate effort to define policy
aims and map them instrumentally to policy tools that are expected to achieve
those aims. In this sense, policy design is a particular type of policy
formulation, involving activities like collecting knowledge about the
outcomes of policy instrument use on policy targets and analyzing its
relevance to the creation and implementation of policies meant to attain
specific policy goals and aspirations.

The tools orientation towards policy design:

authoritative instrumentalism
The origins of policy design studies in the sense used in this book can
be traced to the very roots of the policy sciences in the 1950s and 1960s
which espoused the overall idea of affecting better outcomes of gov-
ernment actions through the organized application of knowledge to
policy-making (Wildavsky 1979). The academic enquiry of policy
­design – that is, self-consciously dealing with both policy processes and
substance from an instrumental perspective – emerged and flourished
throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Linder and Peters 1991).
In contemporary policy studies, ‘design’ is associated with both
the identification and analysis of policy instruments and their im-
plementation. Policy design in this sense has a substantive element
4 Policy design in the modern state
that comprises the technical arrangements of alternatives that could po-
tentially resolve a policy problem at hand, and a procedural component
linked to the processes and activities necessary to coordinate the activ-
ities of policy actors (Howlett 2011). The contemporary design orien-
tation in policy studies involves thinking about policy design b­ eyond
individual policy tool choices to the study of combinations of substan-
tive and procedural instruments and their interactions in sometimes
very complex policy mixes. It also has focused on detailed study of
the actual formulation processes involved in tool and design choices, as
these mixes are created and evolve over sometimes considerable lengths
of time.
This chapter provides an introduction to this body of work, setting
out the basic concepts and definitions used in the field. Subsequent
chapters examine the logic of policy design and the considerations and
experiences which are linked to the choices of specific kinds of policy
tools found in common designs.

What is public policy?

Public policies are government decisions composed of policy goals and
means at different levels of abstraction (Lasswell 1951). Policy goals are
the basic aims and expectations governments have in deciding to pursue
(or not) some course of action, while policy means are the techniques
governments use to attain those goals. Both these elements can be fo-
cused on a range of activities, from principles associated with govern-
ance arrangements such as free markets or regulation, to more concrete
day-to-day administrative programme specifications having to do with
topics such as the size of fines levied to discourage activities like litter-
ing or theft.
A typical policy contains some very abstract general ‘aims’ or
goals, such as, in the cases of criminal justice or education policy,
attaining a just society or an innovative one, along with a set of less
abstract ‘objectives’ actually expected to achieve those aims such as
reducing crime or providing lifelong educational opportunities to
members of the public. Further, those objectives themselves must
be set down as specific targets or measures which allow policy re-
sources to be directed towards their attainment, such as reducing
specific types of crimes such as autotheft or robberies to specific
levels within specified periods of time or increasing post-secondary
educational attendance or completion by some percentage within a
set temporal period.
 Basic concepts and vocabulary 5
Similarly, the means or techniques for achieving goals run from
highly abstract preferences for specific forms of policy implementation,
such as a preference for the use of market, government or non-profit
forms of organization in areas such as healthcare, education or crime
prevention, to the more concrete level of the use of specific governing
tools or mechanisms such as regulation, information campaigns, public
enterprises or government subsidies to alter actor behaviour in order to
promote or increase wellness, improve educational service delivery or
prevent crime. And this runs even further to the most specific level of
deciding or determining exactly how those tools should be ‘calibrated’
in order to achieve policy targets, such as providing a specific number
of additional police on the streets within a specified period of time, a
specific number of kindergarten teachers or a specific level of subsidy to
non-profit groups to provide home nursing services.
The principle ‘components’ of public policies involved in any policy
design, following this logic, are set out in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Components of public policies involved in policy design

Policy level

Governance mode: Policy regime: Programme settings

high-level abstraction programme-level specific on-the-
operationalization ground measures

Policy Policy General abstract Operationalizable Specific policy

component goals policy aims: policy objectives: targets:
The most general The specific meso- The specific, on-
macro-level level areas that the-ground,
statement of policies are aims of efforts
government aims expected to address to achieve
and ambitions in a in order to achieve objectives and
specific policy area policy aims aims
Policy General policy Policy tool choices: Specific
means implementation The specific types policy tool
preferences: of governing calibrations:
The long-term instruments to be The specific
preferences of used to address ‘settings’ of
government in programme-level policy tools
terms of the types objectives required to
of organizational implement
devices to be used policy
in addressing programmes
policy aims

Source: Howlett (2009).

6 Policy design in the modern state
What is policy design?
Within the policy sciences, ‘design’ involves the deliberate and con-
scious attempt to define these policy goals and connect them in a logical
or ‘instrumental’ fashion to policy tools thought to be able to achieve
them (May, 2003). Policy design, in this sense, is a specific form of pol-
icy formulation based on the gathering of knowledge about the effects
of policy tool use on policy targets and the application of that knowl-
edge to the development and implementation of each component of a
policy. It is an activity conducted by a number of policy actors in the
hope of improving policy-making and policy outcomes through the
accurate anticipation of the consequences of government actions.
Policy design extends to both the means or mechanisms through
which goals are given effect, and to the goals themselves, since goal
articulation inevitably involves considerations of feasibility, or what
is practical or possible to achieve in given circumstances considering
the means at hand. This is the bread-and-butter of policy analytical
work undertaken by civil services, think tanks, policy institutes and
policy schools which generally examine existing arrangements and
propose new or revised solutions felt likely to effectively achieve pol-
icy goals.
Not all policy formulation is disinterested or includes this design
orientation, however. In many situations, formulators may engage in
self-interested behaviour and engage in interest-driven trade-offs or
log-rolling between stakeholders or each other, or, more extremely,
might engage in venal or corrupt behaviour in which personal gain is
the paramount consideration in proposing and advocating for c­ ertain
kinds of actions and activities. These ‘non-design’ situations are well
known in practice but unfortunately are often ignored in studies focus-
ing exclusively on policy designs and designing.
It is also important to note that policy-making and especially pol-
icy tool selection are highly constrained processes even when goodwill
and a design orientation exists. The exact processes by which policy
decisions are taken vary greatly by jurisdiction and sector and reflect
the great differences and nuances that exist between different forms of
government – from military regimes to liberal democracies and within
each type – as well as the particular configuration of issues, actors and
problems governments face in particular areas or ‘sectors’ of activity –
such as health or education policy, industrial policy, transportation or
energy policy and social policy (Howlett et al. 2009). In some circum-
stances, policy decisions will be more highly contingent and ‘irrational’
or less instrumental than others, that is, driven by situational logics and
 Basic concepts and vocabulary 7
opportunism rather than careful deliberation and assessment. Such sit-
uations and possibilities must always remain at the forefront of policy
design studies.

What is a policy instrument?

The policy alternatives which policy designers create are composed
of different sets or combinations of policy tools, described in more
detail in Chapters 3–6 of this book. Other terms have been devel-
oped in the field of policy studies to describe the same phenomenon,
such as ‘governing instruments’, ‘policy instruments’ and the ‘tools of
government’, and while these sometimes are used to refer to different
things, they are more often used synonymously. These tools are the
subject of deliberation and activity at all stages of the policy process
and affect both the agenda-setting and policy formulation processes as
well as being the subject of decision-making, policy implementation
and evaluation.
Taken together, the tools of government comprise the contents of
the toolbox from which decision-makers must choose in building or
creating public policies. Policy design elevates the analysis and practice
of these policy instrument choices to a central focus of study, making
their understanding and analysis a key design concern (Salamon 1981,
2002). Instrument choice, from this perspective, in a sense, is public
policy-making, and understanding and analyzing potential instrument
choices involved in implementation activity is policy design.
Tool choice has both a supply and a demand aspect. Some tools may
be more popular with decision-makers than others – an aversion to
taxes and a preference for market solutions to governing problems wit-
nessed in many countries in recent decades being a good example – and
hence enjoy different levels of ‘demand’. On the supply side, these tools
rely on a set of governing resources for their effectiveness, including
‘nodality’ (or information), authority, treasure or the organizational re-
sources of government (see Table 1.2) and the availability of, for exam-
ple, ample treasure resources to provide subsidies to individuals or firms
affects their supply and selection.
It is also important to note that tools can have both ‘positive’
­attributes such as enhancing civil rights and democratic practices, or
‘negative’ ones such as favouring certain actors over others or pre-
venting and prohibiting certain kinds of otherwise desirable activities.
Thus, information-based instruments, for example, can both facilitate
the provision of information as well as suppress it, and can involve the
 8 Policy design in the modern state
Table 1.2 A
 Resource-based taxonomy of procedural and substantive policy
instruments (cells provide examples of instruments in each category)

Governing resource and target need

Information Authority Treasure Organization

Purpose Substantive Public Independent Subsidies Public
of tool information regulatory and enterprises
campaign agencies grants
Procedural Official secrets Administrative Interest Government re-
acts advisory group organizations
committees funding

Source: Adapted from Howlett (2000), based on Hood (1986).

release of misleading as well as accurate information (Goodin 1980).

In this sense it is important for designers to be aware that tools can
be ‘two-edged swords’ and used for both emancipatory and repressive
purposes.

What is an implementation tool?

Policy instruments appear in all stages of the policy process. Those
­affecting the agenda-setting, decision-making and evaluation stages of
the policy process, such as rules and funding affecting the media, those
limiting the remit of cabinets and executives and those promoting policy
learning and lesson-drawing, are very significant and important in public
management. However, most policy designs deal with plans for imple-
mentation, and thus the key sets of policy instruments of concern to most
policy designers are those linked to policy implementation in the first
instance, and to policy formulation in the second. In the first category,
we would find examples of many well-known governing tools such as the
public enterprises and regulatory agencies which are omnipresent in gov-
ernment and expected to alter or affect the delivery of goods and services
to both the public and the government itself. In the second we would
find instruments such as regulatory or environmental impact appraisals or
provisions for stakeholder consultations which are designed to alter and
affect some aspect of the nature of policy deliberations and the mention,
development, consideration and assessment of alternatives.
While all of these tools are interesting and important, the role
played by implementation instruments in policy design is the central
focus of this book. They are the core tools which affect either the
content or processes of policy implementation, that is, which alter the
way goods and services are delivered to the public or the manner in
which decisions about them take place. As Linder and Peters (1984)
 Basic concepts and vocabulary 9
noted, it is critical for policy scientists and policy designers alike to
­understand the basic vocabulary of design which is represented by these
tools. As they note, ‘whether the problem is an architectural, mechani-
cal or administrative one, the logic of design is fundamentally similar’.
The idea behind all of these types of design is to ‘fashion an instrument
that will work in a desired manner’. Examining policy problems from a
design perspective focusing on implementation tools, they argue, offers
a ­productive way of organizing thinking and analytical efforts around
them. (253).
Vedung (1997) usefully defined these instruments as ‘the set of tech-
niques by which governmental authorities wield their power in attempting to
ensure support and effect social change’. This definition can be seen to
include both ‘substantive’ tools, those Hood (1986) defined as at-
tempting to ‘effect or detect’ change in the socio-economic system,
and ‘procedural’ tools designed to ‘ensure support’ for government
actions.
Substantive implementation instruments can affect many aspects of pro-
duction, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Produc-
tion effects, for example, include ­determining or influencing:

1 Who produces a good or service – for example, via licencing,

­bureaucracy/procurement or subsidies for new start-ups.
2 The types of goods and services produced – for example, through
bans or limits or encouragement.
3 The quantity of goods or services provided – for example, via sub-
sidies or quotas.
4 The quality of goods or services produced – for example, via prod-
uct standards, warranties.
5 Methods of production – for example, via environmental standards
or subsidies for modernization.
6 Conditions of production – for example, via health and safety stand-
ards, employment standards acts, minimum wage laws, inspections.
7 The organization of production – for example, via unionization rules,
­anti-trust or anti-combines legislation, securities legislation or tax laws.

Consumption and distribution effects from substantive implementation

tool deployment are also manifold. Some examples of these are:

1 Setting the prices of goods and services – such as regulated taxi

fares or wartime rationing.
2 Affecting the distribution of produced goods and services – ­affecting
the location and types of schools or hospitals, forest tenures or leases,
for example.
10 Policy design in the modern state
3 Affecting the level of consumer demand for specific goods – for ex-
ample, through information release, nutritional and dangerous goods
labelling (cigarettes), export and import taxes and bans and similar
activities.
4 Altering the level of consumer demand in general – via interest
rate, monetary and fiscal policy.

Procedurally oriented implementation tools, on the other hand, affect production,

consumption and distribution processes only indirectly, if at all. They in-
stead affect the behaviour of actors involved in policy formulation and im-
plementation. In policy-making, policy actors are arrayed in various kinds
of policy communities or networks, and just as substantive implementa-
tion instruments can alter or affect the actions of citizens in the productive
realm, so too can procedural implementation instruments affect and alter
aspects of the policy-making behaviour of these actors. Such procedural
implementation tools are an important part of government activities aimed
at altering policy interaction within policy sub-­systems, but, as Klijn et al.
(1995) put it, they typically ‘structure . . . the game without determining its
outcome’ (441). That is, these tools affect the manner in which implemen-
tation unfolds but without necessarily ­predetermining its results.
Some of the kinds of policy activities that can be affected by the use of
procedural implementation tools (Goldsmith and Eggers 2004) include:

1 changing actor policy positions through subsidies, information or

co-optation
2 setting down, defining or refining actor positions through formal
consultation processes
3 adding actors to policy networks through the creation of interest
groups or thinktanks
4 changing access rules for actors to governments and networks through
altering formal or informal governing and policy-making processes
5 influencing network formation through activities such as confer-
encing and funding
6 promoting network self-regulation through the extension of rec-
ognition to specific processes and not others
7 modifying system-level policy parameters (e.g. levels of non-­
governmental organization market reliance through extension of
charitable donation laws or direct government funding for interest
group activities or services
8 changing evaluative criteria for assessing policy outcomes, success
and failure in laws , regulations and rules
9 influencing the pay-off structure for policy actors such as interest
groups by making information easier or harder to come by
 Basic concepts and vocabulary 11
10 influencing professional and other codes of conduct affecting policy
actor behaviour in regulations on the subject
11 regulating inter-actor policy conflict through government agencies
and tribunals in areas such as labour or human rights
12 changing policy actors’ interaction procedures by altering how
they interact with governments
13 certifying or sanctioning certain types of policy-relevant behaviour
through its recognition and sanctification by government actors and
rules
14 changing supervisory relations between actors by affecting the rules of
access of certain groups and not others to government officials and actors.

Policy designs typically contain ‘bundles’ or ‘mixes’ of several proce-

dural and substantive implementation tools and the relations between
these tools are sometimes complementary and sometimes not, a subject
of some importance in policy design to which we will return in subse-
quent chapters.

What isn’t policy design?

As mentioned above, policy decisions can be careful and deliberate in
attempting to find the best way to resolve a problem or can be highly
contingent and driven by situational logics and political or economic
self-interest. And decisions stemming from legislative bargaining or
electoral opportunism can also be distinguished from those which
result from careful analysis and assessment in deliberative forums
­created or used specifically for design purposes. In the latter situation
of ­well-­intentioned and public-spirited actors ‘policy design’ implies
a knowledge-based process in which the choice of means or the tools
through which policy goals are given effect follows a logical process of
inference from known or learnt relationships between means and out-
comes. Importantly, this includes designs in which means are selected
in accordance with experience and knowledge in which principles and
relationships may be incorrectly or only partially articulated or un-
derstood, the key criteria being knowledge-based deliberation in the
public interest.
When such propitious conditions are present, purposive design activ-
ity resulting in good alternative generation and assessment is possible, is
typically the case in the modern era at most times in most governments.
­A lthough having such deliberations does not guarantee ultimate suc-
cess, the chances of successfully eliminating problems and improving
conditions are greater than when these conditions are not present. In
purely self-­interested or non-evidentiary situations either poor designs
 12 Policy design in the modern state
Table 1.3 T
 ypes of policy formulation spaces: situating design and non-design
processes

Level of government knowledge and other constraints

High Low

Government More Capable policy design Poor policy

formulation instrumental space design space
intention Relatively unconstrained Only partially
formulation via design informed or
is possible restricted design
is possible
Less Capable political non- Poor political non-
instrumental design space design space
Relatively unconstrained Only poorly
non-design processes informed non-
are possible design is possible

Source: Chindarkar et al. (2017).

can ensue from incomplete knowledge and information or less techni-

cal and more overtly ­political forms of policy-making (“non-designs”)
which embody less evidence problem solution-related information and
knowledge are likely to occur.
Table 1.3 presents a schematic illustration of how these two different
aspects of policy-making – a design intention and the capacity to carry
it out – create different policy formulation spaces which enable very
different policy processes.

How do designs change?

Several common ways in which designs emerge have been identified
in the policy studies literature. Examples of brand new policy designs
are, of course, very few. Most policy initiatives rather deal with ­a lready
created policies with significant historical legacies, and can be h
­ ampered
due to reforms and revisions at various points in their history which
have attempted to address and correct problems which have emerged
as the policy has evolved over time. In this case, the introduction of
new elements may conflict with pre-existing policy components and
cause further difficulties (Carey et al. 2017). Although other policy in-
strument groupings could theoretically be more successful in achieving
policy goals, it may be very difficult to accomplish or even propose
wholesale changes, and designs instead often focus on reform rather than
replacement of an existing arrangement. ‘lock in’ often leads to layering
in which processes of (re)design alter only some aspects of a pre-existing
arrangement, adding new elements to an existing policy often without
 Basic concepts and vocabulary 13

Packaging
Tense
(“Pure Patching Drift Stretching Non-Design
Layering
Design”)

Figure 1.1 A spectrum of design processes.

Source: Howlett and Mukherjee (2014).

abandoning previous ones. This can easily lead to internal contradic-

tions emerging between tools and goals within policy mixes, and mixes
of policy elements can emerge over long stretches of time as a result of
successive policy decisions which are not necessarily logically integrated.
Students of policy formulation and policy design are thus very i­nterested
in how policy formulators, like software designers, rather than replace ex-
isting packages, instead often issue more modest ‘patches’ in order to correct
flaws in existing mixes or allow them to adapt to changing circumstances
(Howlett and Rayner 2013). Poor patching can involve policy ‘stretching’
(Feindt and Flynn 2009) where, sometimes operating over periods of dec-
ades or more, elements of a mix are simply extended to cover areas they
were not intended to at the outset. Such ‘stretching’ is problematic as small
changes in policy environments can create a situation where the elements
of a mix can fail to be mutually supportive, frustrating initial policy goals.
As Figure 1.1 shows, forms of policy formulation move from highly
intentional and instrumental design efforts to those which are more par-
tial and less intentional, such as ‘smart’ patching, and ultimately to those
which involve poor design such as ‘stretching’ and poor, or “tense”, lay-
ering. In cases such as these, formulation introduces progressively more
severe inconsistencies and incongruencies and tensions between policy
layers and policy-making, exacerbating the challenges faced by policy
designers. These and other topics are taken up in the following chapters.

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Chindarkar, Namrata, Michael Howlett, and M. Ramesh. “Conceptualizing
Effective Social Policy Design: Design Spaces and Capacity Challenges.”
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May, Peter J. “Policy Design and Implementation.” In Handbook of Public
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Hills, CA: Sage, 2003.
14 Policy design in the modern state
Feindt, Peter H., and Andrew Flynn. “Policy Stretching and Institutional
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2 Systematically studying
policy design
The logic of tool use

Policy design is a specific form of policy formulation based on the gath-

ering and application of knowledge about policy tools to the develop-
ment and implementation of programmes aimed at the attainment of
desired policy ambitions. In a time when policy-makers are often tasked
with developing large-scale innovative solutions to increasingly com-
plex policy problems, such as climate or demographic change, the need
for intelligent design of policies and a better understanding of the policy
formulation processes they involve has never been greater.
In general, as we have seen, a means-ends understanding of policy
formulation permeates the policy design orientation (Colebatch 2018).
Although, as Chapter 1 noted, policy-making does not always neces-
sarily lend itself to, or result in, purely instrumental thinking about
policy issues, this instrumental orientation is significant in that policy
formulators operating in accordance with its strictures are expected to
base their a­ ctions on analyses which are logical and knowledge- and
evidence-based (Bhatta 2002).
In this sense, the design of a policy, conceptually at least, can be di-
vorced from the vagaries of formulation and imaginary ­constructs and
schemes can be created by organizations such as think tanks and pub-
lic policy research institutes who develop and propose not necessarily
immediately realizable designs. These include, for example, proposals
made in the recent past, proposals for carbon taxes, healthcare accounts
and educational voucher systems. This is not an unusual a practice in
the design world, and is much the same phenomenon which occurs
daily with respect to, for example, building designs where an architect
develops an ideal or abstract design which is fully expected to be altered
to meet the needs and demands of clients, and in order to conform with
engineering principles, weather and soil conditions and local building
codes, among other constraints (Ingraham 1987).
Conceptually, such instrumentally oriented policy design processes, like
building designs and others, begins with an assessment of the materials
available for construction, in this case the abilities of different policy tools
16 Policy design in the modern state
or levers to affect policy outputs and outcomes, followed by considerations
of the availability of the resources or materials required to allow a policy
to operate as intended and the demand or desire for them to be used. As
Linder and Peters (1991) noted, this involves a series of analyses which em-
phasize ‘not only the potential for generating new mixtures of conventional
solutions, but also the importance of giving careful attention to tradeoffs
among design criteria when considering instrument choices’ (130).
Designing policies in this way is not simple. It requires an understand-
ing of how the use of specific kinds of instruments affects ­target group
behaviour and compliance with government aims (Weaver 2015), and
knowledge and consideration of the many constraints on tool use orig-
inating in the limits of existing knowledge and prevailing government
priorities and governance structures (Torgerson 1986). It also requires
both analytical and evidentiary capacity on the part of the govern-
ment as well as the intention to exercise it (Howlett 2015). ­Nevertheless
within policy studies the payoff from such activities is expected to be
large and well worth the effort on all but the simplest occasions.

Knowledge limitations affecting policy design

One constraint which policy designers face involves limitations on the
kinds of knowledge target of behaviour and future states of affairs which
they can compile without undue hardship. In 1957, Herbert Simon de-
veloped the concept of ‘bounded rationality’ to characterize the world
in which decision-makers operate, highlighting the gap existing be-
tween actual human choice processes and administrative theory which
often ignored cognitive and other knowledge limits on proposals for
policy and programme designs (Simon 1957). According to this view,
human beings never have full knowledge of the future nor the time and
resources which would allow them to consider all possible courses of
action and arrive a maximizing decisions. Instead, for Simon, they op-
erate within the bounds of the limits on their cognition in undertaking
any activity, including policy-making, meaning even the best designs
can be thought of as merely ‘satisfactory’ rather than optimal in nature.
This is not to say that policies are irrational and that the effort to
apply logic and evidence to policy-making activities is fruitless, but
rather to highlight the extent to which activities like policy design
are influenced by the pre-conceptions and heuristics which policy-
makers bring to their tasks. It also serves as a precautionary warn-
ing to erstwhile designers of the high likelihood their designs will
not work perfectly as intended but will encounter some unexpected
circumstances and impacts which, like extreme weather events in
engineering, must also be incorporated into designs to ensure their re-
silience and robustness in the face of adverse circumstances.
 Systematically studying policy design 17
Within this framework of knowledge limitations, what is it that policy
designers and designs seek to accomplish? Here, it is reasonable to suggest
that all policies are geared towards deploying state resources towards al-
tering the behaviour of some policy ‘target’ and that they usually seek to
do so in a ‘persuasive’ way (Redström 2006), that is, in a way that secures
maximum compliance of the targets with government aims with minimal
government effort.
Compliance is itself a complex subject, however, embodies a great
deal of uncertainty with respect to human behaviour and what kinds of
policy interventions affect it and in what ways (May 2004). Determin-
ing exactly why certain actors comply with government actions while
others do not or less so is a key aspect of contemporay design research
and is discussed in further detail below.
While it is often assumed that such government policy efforts can be
­effortlessly or ‘seamlessly calibrated’ to solve the fundamental issue at
stake with exactly the appropriate amount of effort and resources, like
knowledge limitation issues, compliance unknowns also result in a high
level of uncertainty that affects both policy designs and designers (Manski
2011). Empirical evidence, not surprisingly, suggests a complex pattern of
target responses to policy actions is common in which few efforts are well
calibrated to the problem at hand, while many either systematically
­under- or overreact to a problem, often oscillating between these two
states (Maor 2017). As ­Table 2.1 shows, in two of four possible cases, well-­
calibrated designs may occur, but there is always the possibility of two
other cases when disproportionate policy reactions over- or under‘shoot’
the severity of the problem and do not adequately match the nature of
the underlying problem. What’s more, such over and under-reactions can
be deliberate or accidental, meaning they may sometimes be planned and
part of design considerations and at other times not.
As Simon (1973) also pointed out many years ago, a third aspect of
uncertainty relates to the fact that social problems come in different
shapes and forms, and the extent of available knowledge and the ability
and desire of decision-makers to incorporate that knowledge into their
thinking varies across issue areas.
Table 2.1 Cases of disproportional policy reaction and design

Nature of policy design problem

Nature of policy Simple Large/Complex

response
Simple Proportionate design Under-design
(e.g. Automobile speeding) (e.g. Climate change)
Large/Complex Over-design Proportionate design
(e.g. National security) (e.g. Air traffic regulation)
 18 Policy design in the modern state
That is, some problems are ‘well-structured’ in the sense that their causes
and effects, and the means to deal with them, are relatively well known,
while others are ill-structured in the sense that knowledge of problems and
solutions is unknown or unrealized and the level of uncertainty with which
they can be grappled is much higher. This is the basis for the distinction
made in the 1970s by Rittel and Weber (1973) between ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’
problems (see Table 2.2) which also is a concern for policy design.

Table 2.2 Tame and wicked problems

Nature of knowledge of the problem

Known/Well-defined and Unknown/Ill-defined

Nature of understood
knowledge Known/well- Well-Structured (‘Tame Ill-Structured
of the defined and problem’) Problem
solution understood e.g. Automobile traffic e.g. Tobacco control/
control/street racing addiction
Unknown/ Ill-Structured solution Poorly structured
Ill-defined e.g. Homelessness (“Wicked Problem”)
e.g. Climate Change

Even more complex design challenges exist when both the level
of ‘objective’ knowledge of problems and the relative nature of
­decision-makers’ knowledge of that ‘fact-base’ are taken into account;
or if there is little agreement on the choice of variables to be included
in models (Chow and Sarin 2002) (see Table 2.3).

Table 2.3 Policy-maker’s knowledge and comprehension matrix

Nature of existing knowledge of a phenomenon

Aspects of the problem and Aspects are unknown

possible solutions are
known
Nature of Aware Known-known: Known-unknown:
decision- Key policy actors are aware Key policy actors are aware
makers’ of the known aspects of that certain aspects of the
awareness a phenomena phenomenon are unknown
of existing (INFORMED (PRUDENT AWARENESS)
knowledge of a AWARENESS)
phenomenon Ignorant Unknown-Known: Unknown-Unknown:
Key policy actors are Key policy actors are unaware
unaware of known that certain aspects of the
aspects of a phenomenon phenomenon are unknown
(UNINFORMED (IMPRUDENT
IGNORANCE) IGNORANCE)
 Systematically studying policy design 19
Behavioural considerations
Notwithstanding these epistemological challenges, the aim of most
public policy remains to invoke desired behavioural change in the ‘tar-
gets’ of government efforts through deployment of governing resources
in the form of substantive and procedural policy tools aimed at that
behaviour.
This process of behavioural change involves at least four linkages, all
of which are affected by contextual aspects present at the moment at
which instruments are invoked and behavioural mechanisms triggered.
These are: (1) the link between tools and the governing resources pres-
ent at any moment in time, (2) the link between these resources and the
mechanisms which tools activate, (3) the link between the mechanisms
and the actual behavioural changes which occur post-activation and
(4) the link between changes in behaviour and policy outputs.
All four of these linkages are susceptible to various barriers and im-
pediments to instrument choices, mechanism activation, reception
and impact, which make policy design and designing complex and
­error-prone activities. There are many such barriers and intermediating
factors, which include such factors as a preferred policy style and gov-
ernance mode which can affect preferences for certain tools over others;
the various capacity strengths and weaknesses which can limit the capa-
bility of governments to use particular tools or eliminate their use alto-
gether; possible countervailing demands and constraints on behavioural
change which can undermine the effect and impact of a mechanisms;
as well as various kinds of implementation and other issues which can
lessen, or enhance, policy outputs (see Figure 2.1).

e.g. Policy More, Less Policy

Regulations Capacities Changed Impact
Subsidies (NATO)

Tools Resources Mechanisms Behaviours Outputs

Policy and Resource Countervailing Implementation

Governance Endowments forces, habit, Issues
Styles, History, and heuristics,
Legacies, Availability Path
Ideologies and Dependencies
Institutions

Contextual Barriers and Contraints

Figure 2.1 Context-related mechanism constraints.

20 Policy design in the modern state
In general, two kinds of design-relevant policy mechanisms can be
identified: those which more or less directly affect actor behaviour and
those which involve learning and more reflective activities. Although
often assumed or ­regarded purely at the level of individuals, many of
these mechanisms also operate at the more collective or group level.
In this view, at the individual level, the mechanisms activated by
policy instruments in order to trigger policy change are characteristics
of human behaviour such as greed, fear, risk aversion, or the use of heu-
ristics and others which affect the logics of calculation and appropriate-
ness individuals take towards such issues as whether or not to perform
a crime, quit smoking, invest in a pension fund or donate to a charity
(see Figure 2.2).
These kinds of mechanisms are triggered or activated by ‘substantive’
policy instruments, and one of the main reasons one tool would be cho-
sen over another is often supply-oriented: that is, a government will uti-
lize specific kinds of tools deploying the resources it has in ample supply
or which can be easily replenished (Hood 1983). This is an important
insight. But in addition to ‘supply-side’ capacity issues, as discussed above,
‘demand-side’ considerations are also very significant in policy design.
That is, in general, each category of policy tool involves the use of a
specific governing resource expected to trigger or lever a specific char-
acteristic or receptor in a target, inducing a certain behavioural response.
Thus, the effectiveness of the deployment of such tools is linked not just
to resource availability – a precondition of their use – but also to the
existence of different ‘receptors’ on the part of policy targets which make
them respond in a predictable way to the use of this resource.
e.g. e.g. Nodality, e.g. Greed, More, Less Policy
Regulations Authority, Self-Interest Changed Impact
Subsidies Treasure and
Organizational
Resources

Tools Resources Mechanisms Behaviours Outputs

Styles, Capacities, Knowledge, Countervailing Implementation

History, Ideologies Ethics, and other forces, habit, problems and
Legacies, and other factors which heuristics, other similar
Ideologies and factors which impede or alter barriers
other factors impede the use the force or
which lead to of specific kinds activation
specific kinds of of resources of mechanisms
tool preferences

Contextual Barriers and Contraints

Figure 2.2 Links in the design chain – individual and group levels.
 Systematically studying policy design 21
Resources are used and tools deployed in order to secure better com-
pliance or adherence of populations to government aims and ambitions,
be it in the promotion of public safety and security or in the provision
of effective healthcare and social welfare. If perfect compliance with
governments’ aims existed automatically, of course, there would be lit-
tle need to undertake state activity beyond information provision in
that a government would only have to inform citizens of its ambitions
for perfect compliance to occur. But, of course, it does not. Desired
changes can be large or small, and the expectation of compliance can
be rapid or gradual, but in all cases, some changes in behaviour in a
direction congruent with government aims are expected to require the
utilization of other kinds of state resources.
Traditionally, much compliance theory in economics and elsewhere
has been based on a fairly superficial concept of target behaviour in-
volving ‘deterrence’ (Kaine et al. 2010) in which the primary type of
tool to be deployed to acheive a policy goal is a penalty. This is based
upon the hedonic idea that narrow self-interest and calculable utility
in enhancing pleasure and avoiding pain are the primary motivators of
compliance behaviour on the part of policy actors, with governments
enhancing pain through penalties (and often pleasure through subsidies)
in efforts to deter or encourage specific kinds of activity.
In practice, this means that compliance of policy targets with
­government intentions is often viewed as a problem equated with the
exercise of authority on the part of governments in the form of laws and
regulations designed to deter certain kinds of activity, sometimes cou-
pled with other kinds of incentives – often financial – that encourage
other kinds. Compliance-deterrence utility considerations can then be
extended to the calculation of the more precise calibration of such tools,
with incentives and disincentives set at such a level as to punish those
who might contest the legitimacy of such actions or seek to free-ride on
compliers and/or reward those who comply.
As suggested earlier, however, the situation is more complex than
a purely utilitarian perspective would have it, as even the most basic
activities of governance such as paying taxes and obeying rules involve
not just individual hedonic behaviour but also considerations on the
part of targets and the public concerning the legality and normative
‘appropriateness’ of government’s levying and collecting such taxes
(March and Olsen 1989). Moreover, different kinds of target groups and
individuals exist (and are perceived to exist) and can be and are treated
differently by governments in terms of government expectations of the
nature of their compliant or non-compliant behaviour (Schneider and
Ingram 1994).
22 Policy design in the modern state
Some targets, for example, such as businesses may be thought to
be influenced through means such as financial incentives or penali-
ties while others, such as parents, may be thought to respond better
to efforts at moral suasion and education. But the compliance situ-
ation is made even more complex by the fact that different targets
have different resources and capabilities and attitudes when it comes
to ­determining whether or not they will comply, and how, and to
what extent, they will not. These attitudes can be quite complex and
rooted in historical and culturally specific views of government inten-
tions and the moral and other aspects of compliant and non-­compliant
behaviour (Wan et al. 2015). These can include, for example, consid-
erations of the legitimacy and illegitimacy of government actors and
actions in specific fields such as constitutional, religious or privacy-­
related ones, but can also run into and involve desires on the part of
individuals and groups to earn praise, or avoid shame, or to avoid guilt
and social opprobrium for their actions.
This variation in target motivation and compliance behaviour makes
policy design a much more challenging activity than that surmised
from either a bounded-rationality perspective on policy knowledge or
a simple hedonic utilitarian perspective. Whether a proposed action
triggers behaviour linked to ‘affiliation’ or ‘conformity’ with govern-
ment wishes or results in ‘boomerang’ effects (encouraging the action
it is aimed at discouraging, or vice versa, such as sometimes happens
from, for example, the increased prominence or normalizing of smok-
ing or unsafe sexual activity featured in government anti-smoking and
public health campaigns) is critical but not well understood. And nei-
ther is the effect of the manner in which compliance can be affected
by the type of ‘message’ sent, urging compliance and its negative or
positive nature, the way it has been framed, as well as other factors
linked to the character of the underlying norm itself (see also Schultz
et al. 2007). What works with one individual or group may not work
with another, and it is not unusual for a range of governing resources
and tools to have to be deployed in order to deal with such complex,
‘target-rich’ environments.
In such circumstances, governments must determine not only
whether or not a target is likely to comply with government ac-
tions and intentions but also whether or the extent to which com-
pliance will be reluctantly or freely given. As Table 2.4 shows,
estimations and diagnoses about likely compliance behaviour can
usefully be linked to coercive versus persuasive actions on the part
of governments.
 Systematically studying policy design 23
Table 2.4 Nature of compliance of policy targets

Likelihood of compliance

High Low

High Model subjects Reluctant subjects

Requires little Requires education and
coercion, education persuasion
Willingness or persuasion
to comply Low Resistant subjects Combative subjects
Requires incentives to Requires a high level of
comply coercion and monitoring
to compel compliance

Source: Modelled after Scholz (1991).

How governments perceive targets and classify groups within them is

another critical aspect of policy design, but as Schneider and Ingram (1993
and 1994) have repeatedly pointed out, there are some limits to the ability
of governments to discern the true nature of these relationships. The ex-
pected behaviour of policy targets is often framed by government agencies
using the dual aspects of ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ s­tereotypes and whether
they are powerful or weak actors in society. ­These ­social constructions of
target populations are often created by politics, culture, ­socialization, his-
tory, media, literature, religion and the like. Positive constructions include
images such as ‘deserving’, ‘intelligent’, ‘honest’, ‘public spirited’. Negative
constructions include images such as ‘undeserving’, ‘stupid’, ‘dishonest’ and
‘selfish’ (See ­Table 2.5). Both constructions may be inaccurate but can lead
to the use of specific kinds of tools regardless of their actual impact.

Table 2.5 Perceptions of policy targets after Schneider and Ingram (1993)

Conception of social role

Positive Negative

Conception of Strong/powerful Advantaged Adversaries

power Subsidies and Regulation and
incentives controls
Weak/vulnerable Dependents Deviants
Moral suasion and Coercion and
exhortation punishments,
disincentives

Source: Modelled after Schneider and Ingram (1993).

24 Policy design in the modern state
In practice, therefore, the types of tools used to address problems involv-
ing these groups often vary directly according to their categorization, with
positively viewed targets receiving benefits and negatively viewed ones
‘burdened’ by costs. More coercive measures are often used against groups
perceived as ‘deviants’ rather than against other groups who might actually
be more resistant to government initiatives, while tools such as subsidies
and other kinds of payments might be most effective if used in dealing with
‘dependents’ but are often given instead to advantaged groups.
This discussion highlights the significant linkages which exist be-
tween both perceptions of and actual target behaviour and government
tool use. Accurately determining this requires research and clarity on
the part of government and the avoidance of stereotypes and simple es-
timations of target group attitudes and power. Of course, while there is
no denying that targets are politically and socially constructed, there is
also a significant ‘objective’ linkage in expectations governments have
about compliance. That is, advantaged groups are usually expected to
comply or have similar interests or share government aspirations in gen-
eral more than do deviants, and dependents are often able to evade
controls in the same way as do adversary groups (Pierce et al. 2014).

Improving policy designs through better linking

tools, mechanisms and targets
The fundamental design problem for governments then, is not just
determining a given governmental resource endowment or calculating
the range of prison sentences or the amount of fines and subsidies to
levy in some situation based on a utilitarian compliance-deterrence
logic, but rather to understand on which basis compliance is likely to
occur or not.
This is a design challenge which requires detailed empirical investiga-
tion and analysis in each case of tool deployment, and continued monitor-
ing over time to ensure these fundamental conditions have not changed
or been undermined by any action undertaken. Governments enjoying a
high level of trust, for example, may be able to undertake actions through
moral suasion, while those which do not enjoy that credibility will need
to employ other tools. But whether or not this high level of trust is being
maintained is a key determinant of policy effectiveness, and continual
monitoring and assessment is required to ensure this remains the case and
that existing tools continue to function effectively over time.
Table 2.6 presents some of the behavioural prerequisites which
­governing tools rely upon for their effects.
 Systematically studying policy design 25
Table 2.6 Behavioural needs for resource effectiveness

Tool type Resource applied Target behavioural pre-requisite

Nodality Information Credibility/trust – willingness to

believe and act on information
provided by government
Authority Coercive power/force Legitimacy – willingness to be
manipulated by government
invoked penalties and
proscriptions
Treasure Financial Cupidity – willingness to be
manipulated by gain/losses
imposed by governments
Organization Organization Competence – willingness to
receive goods and services from
government and enter into
partnership arrangements

Source: Howlett (2011).

In the case of information use, for example, tool effectiveness relies

both on the availability of knowledge and the means to distribute it
(­‘resources’) and on the target’s belief in the accuracy of the messages
being purveyed, or their credibility (‘receptor’). Similarly, the effectiveness
of the use of authoritative tools, as discussed earlier, depends not just on
the availability of coercive mechanisms and their enforcement, but also
on target perceptions of government legitimacy. Similarly, the effective
use of treasure resources depends not just on the availability of govern-
ment funding, but also on target groups’ financial need and e­ specially
their receptivity to government funding or their cupidity. Likewise, the
effective use of organizational tools depends both on the existence of per-
sonnel and other organizational resource and on target group perceptions
of government competence and fairness in the deployment and training of
personnel to provide services and rules (Howlett 2017).
These are important considerations in policy design and especially
in the calibration of policy tools. Thus, the use of authority-based tools
such as laws and regulations, for example, involves considerations of
legitimacy on the part of targets but must not overreach or overbur-
den the extent of legitimacy which a government enjoys. If a policy
measure does so, it most assuredly will require much monitoring and
enforcement activity in order to be even minimally effective, involving
large administrative costs and burdens which may well undermine its
own efficiency and effectiveness, as has occurred in the past in many
countries in areas such as cannabis or alcohol prohibition.
 26 Policy design in the modern state

Linkages between levels

Expected Relationship

Good/Success Poor/Failure

Capacity Brokers/Advisors
Outcomes (Implementation)

Functional/Technical ad hoc

Designs (Formulation)

Replacement Non-Designing/
Process/Designing (Formulation)
Log-rolling

Figure 2.3 P
 olicy effectiveness as the relationship between process, design and
outcome.

In general, contemporary design scholars argue that feasible and real-

izable alternatives will be generated through design oriented policy for-
mulation processes and that such alternatives will emerge triumphant
in deliberations and conflicts involved in decisions to adopt certain
tools and not others. In other words, policy effectiveness is a multi-level
­phenomenon in which process, design and outcome are linked closely
together (see Figure 2.3).
That is, the overall supposition of design studies in this field is one in
which there is an expectation that a superior process of policy formu-
lation (‘designing’) will lead to a superior set of policy instruments and
components (‘design’) which will, in turn, result in a superior outcome
than would be accomplished using some other kind of process – such as
pure bargaining or log-rolling. However, as was pointed out in Chap-
ter 1, there is no necessary link or guarantee that this will occur. The
kinds of knowledge and behaviour limits cited above generate many
uncertainties about the effectiveness of designs and measures taken to
implement them which are unavoidable and must be taken into account
in translating abstract designs into achievable on-the-ground ones.
Different tools have different capabilities in this regard and knowledge
of the strengths and weaknesses of the basic building blocks of policy
action in areas such as compliance and targeting is essential to anyone
attempting to fashion, or study, policy designing.

Conclusion: policy design as instrumental

knowledge mobilization
The modern policy studies movement began with the recognition that
public policy-making results from the interactions of policy-makers
 Systematically studying policy design 27
in the exercise of power, legitimate or otherwise. Although some of
these policy-making efforts may be arbitrary or capricious, most can
be viewed as representing the concerted and intentional efforts of ac-
tors attempting to have governments act instrumentally in a process of
policy design; that is, to achieve a particular policy goal or end through
the use and deployment of a set of relatively well-known set of policy
means developed over many years of state-building and experience.
Of course, these goals can be wide-ranging and often pose no
small amount of difficulty and complexity in both their definition and
­diagnosis. This means the formulation of solutions that are likely to
succeed in ­addressing them necessitates the systematic consideration of
the impact and feasibility of the use of specific kinds of policy means or
­instruments and the conditions of supply and demand around them.
Early work often depicted policy design as a specific kind of ­policy-
making in which knowledge of the policy impacts of specific policy
tools was combined with the practical capacity of governments to iden-
tify and implement the most suitable technical means in the effort to
achieve a specific policy aim. This activity was expected to occur ex ante
and independently of other considerations, such as political or personal
gain, which might also affect formulation processes and activities.
Later works examining instances of actual ‘design’ activity recognized it
as requiring a situation where there was both support for policy analysis and
design work on the part of policy-makers and also a low policy ‘lock-in’ on
existing policy and programme arrangements which made more sweep-
ing designs possible. Such favourable design circumstances were seen to be
rare and closely coupled with the presence of a high level of capacity and
expertise on the part of policy analysts and decision-­makers which could
mobilize knowledge effectively so that policy instruments were effectively
and efficiently matched to policy goals and targets.
In the present era, it is argued that when all such conditions are
present, purposive design activity is possible and preferable to other
forms of policy formulation, and that such circumstances can at least
be partially engineered through the promotion of knowledge-based
advice and in policy-making. This can be seen for example, recent
efforts at enhancing knowledge mobilization through the promotion
of ‘evidence-based policy-­m aking’ or the effort to enhance, develop
and mobilize the use of knowledge in policy-making efforts, notably
in health but extending to many other policy domains as well. When
these conditions are not, however, less technical and more overtly po-
litical forms of policy-making, the propensity for over- and under-­
design and less effective or ineffective policy outcomes are thought to
be more likely to ensue.
28 Policy design in the modern state
The fervent wish of proponents of the design orientation both then
and now, however, has been to reduce the latter instances to as few as
possible by promoting the kinds of orientations and dedication of re-
sources required for better-designed policies to emerge, those thought
to be more likely to solve pressing problems, correct social ills and serve
the public good (Azuela and Barroso 2012).
How this can be done on the ground and what are the characteristics
of the various types of tools which go into the make-up of policies are
the subjects of the four chapters found in the next section of the book.

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Bhatta, Gambhir. “Evidence-Based Analysis and the Work of Policy Shops.”
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Chow, Clare Chua, and Rakesh K. Sarin. “Known, Unknown, and Unknow-
able Uncertainties.” Theory and Decision 52, no. 2 (March 1, 2002): 127–38.
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Howlett, Michael. “Policy Analytical Capacity: The Supply and Demand
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Howlett, Michael. “Matching Policy Tools and Their Targets: Beyond Nudges
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Ingraham, Patricia W. “Towards More Systemic Consideration of Policy
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Linder, S. H., and B. G. Peters. “The Logic of Public Policy Design: ­Linking
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­A ndrew Pattison, and Holly Peterson. “Social Construction and Policy
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­Planning.” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155–69.
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Part II

Policy tools – the building

blocks of policy designs
3 Organizational
implementation tools

Organizational implementation instruments are a class of policy tools

that is amongst the oldest and most often utilized, a common feature of
government and governance in all countries and jurisdictions. This cat-
egory of tools includes a broad range of governing instruments which
rely upon the use of government and non-governmental institutions and person-
nel to affect policy output delivery and policy process change.
There is a wide variety of substantive organizational tools ­available to
­governments wishing to affect both the production and the ­consumption/
distribution of goods and services in society. These ­generally fall into
two main types, depending on the proximity of their relationship to
government and hence the ability of government to ­control the effects
of their utilization. Subtypes include direct government and quasi-­
governmental or societally based organizational tools. Procedural organ-
izational tools generally involve the organization and ­reorganization of
government agencies and policy processes in order to affect key param-
eters of governmental activity and that of the actors arrayed in policy
communities and networks which governments face in making public
policies.

Substantive organizational instruments

There are many types of substantive instruments which fall into this
category. Most involve (and rely primarily) on the use of government
personnel to achieve government goals, usually operating in structures
created and controlled by governments. ‘Direct’ government organi-
zations or classical administrative agencies of various kinds and names
form the backbone of this category, but it also includes ‘indirect’ or
quasi- or parastatal ones. One of the best-known examples of the lat-
ter is the state-owned or ‘public enterprise’ – which itself comes in
many shapes, sizes, colours and flavours (Bernier 2011). But other
34 Policy tools
non-state-based ones also exist such as co-production or certification
tools which also engage or supplant government personnel in their im-
plementation (Cashore 2004; Voorberg et al. 2015).
Most policy mixes contain at least one organizational tool, often at
the centre of a web or mix of other tools which serve to supplement that
instrument, extend its range or control for spill-overs and other prob-
lems associated with pure government administration. This is the case,
for example, which a health department which serves at the centre of a
network of other kinds of organizations like hospitals, clinics, pharma-
ceutical companies and the like engaged in health service delivery. The
general nature of each of these major types of organizational tools and
the reasons for their use are described below.

Direct government
The direct use of government agencies for substantive policy purposes
involves the ‘delivery of a good or service by government employees,
funded by appropriations from government treasury’ (Leman 1989;
­Leman and Salamon 2002). This is what is sometimes referred to as ‘the
forgotten fundamental’ within policy instrument studies, as its ubiq-
uitous nature is often ignored in studies which take it for granted and
focus instead on more esoteric kinds of tools.
Within this general type of direct government organizational tool,
there are several common forms or subtypes found in many jurisdic-
tions. These include the following.

Line departments
In most countries, government agencies undertake a very wide variety
of tasks on a direct basis. These services are provided at all levels of
government (central or federal, provincial, state or regional, as well as
urban or local) in slightly different configurations in different countries
but often through core departments or what are sometimes referred to
as ‘line’ departments in order to distinguish them from ‘staff’ agencies
which typically co-ordinate rather than deliver services themselves.
Unemployment, welfare or social security payments, for example, can
be the task of central governments in some countries and eras, and of
provincial or local governments in others but are commonly adminis-
tered by line departments or their functional equivalents.
Typically, these kinds of government agencies follow what is known
in the public administration literature as a Weberian ‘monocratic bureau-
cracy’ form of organization (Rudolph and Rudolph 1979). This is a type
 Organizational implementation tools 35
of organizational structure first systematically described and analyzed by
the ­German political sociologist Max Weber (1978) in his early twentieth-­
century work, Economy and Society. Weber argued that although bureau-
cratic forms of organization had a long history in ancient and medieval
empires and kingdoms, a significant change had occurred in the modern
era – roughly corresponding to the start of the French Revolution in the
late eighteenth century – when such organizations came to be viewed
as providing services to the public rather than being the property of a
monarch or emperor to do with as he or she pleased (Albrow 1970). The
main characteristics of these modern government agencies, in Weber’s
view, were:

• Personnel are appointed on the basis of a merit system of ap-

pointment, retention and recruitment.
• Office holders do not own the office in which they work, but
hold it subject to the provisions of the merit system.
• Offices tend to be organized in a hierarchical fashion, with a
relatively small span of control, and multiple levels.
• All activities in the agency operate according to the rule of
law – that office holders are not above the law and must operate
within its limits (including provisions for their accountability –
via some form of ‘chain of accountability’ – to representative
assemblies in modern liberal democracies who actually establish
and promulgate laws).
(Weber 1978)

Line departments have this ‘classic’ hierarchical Weberian monocratic

bureaucratic form and are thoroughly embedded in the legal forms of
governance associated with them. Such units are typically organized in
a pyramidal shape, linking offices of civil servants in various branches
and sections to a single department head, such as a department of health
or a department of highways. Sub-variations of this include the ‘minis-
try’, a form in which typically multiple pyramids of departments culmi-
nate in a single head (e.g. a ministry of lands, parks and housing), or an
‘agency’ which operates semi-autonomously from the policy-making
level (itself often termed a ‘ministry’) (Verhoest et al. 2012).
Regardless of the specifics, these forms of government organization
are the ‘workhorses’ providing most publicly provided goods and ser-
vices in most modern states (see Table 3.1 for an example of their use in
government service delivery in one such modern state, Canada).
In most countries, the size and number of government agencies have
grown dramatically over the past two centuries through the creation
36 Policy tools
Table 3.1 Tasks typically undertaken by government agencies

Task Examples

Facilitating commerce Mint, standards of weights and measures

bureaus
Managing public lands Commissioners of public lands, ministries of
lands and parks or environment or natural
resources
Constructing public works Departments of public works – airports,
highways
Research, testing and statistics National statistical agencies
Law and justice Courts, solicitor-general or attorney general
offices, corrections and prisons, policing
Technical assistance, record- Farm extension, ministries of agriculture,
keeping and libraries national archives, national libraries
Healthcare Ministries of health – hospitals. clinics,
dentists, nursing, home care.
Social services Ministries of welfare and social, family or
community services
Education and training Ministries of education, post-secondary
education colleges and universities,
technical and training institutes
Labour relations Ministries of labour and labour relations.
Marketing Tourism, ministries of small business,
ministries of trade and commerce
Defence Ministries of defence, army, navy, air force,
coast guard
Supplying internal Ministries of supply and services, Queen’s
government needs printers
Finance Ministries of finance and treasury boards
International affairs Ministries of external or foreign affairs

Source: Hodgetts (1973).

and expansion of ministries, departments and agencies in areas such as

defence, transportation and, later, social welfare, education and health
provision (Derlien and Peters 2008). These kinds of organizations can
be very large (the US Department of Defense, for example, has over two
million employees, including approximately 650,000 civilians but not
including many thousands more contractors and contract employees) and
can be subdivided into hundreds of separate branches, bureaus, sections
and agencies. They employ the most personnel and deliver by far the larg-
est percentage of state-provided goods and services in ­liberal-democratic,
and virtually all other, forms of modern government.
The ‘government employees’ employed in these departments are
typically civil or public servants. In most liberal-democratic countries,
these are unionized and well-paid positions, and although this is not
the case in many other countries where officials may supplement their
 Organizational implementation tools 37
wages illegally through various forms of corruption (‘kickbacks’, bribes,
‘service’ payments, expediting ‘fees’ and so on), in either case the use of
public servants to directly deliver public services is an expensive prop-
osition, which in itself discourages its use. How well these officials are
educated and trained and what kinds of facilities and information they
have to work with also affect their capacity, efficiency and perceived
competence and, along with cost, can play a significant role in their
placement within a policy design (Brunsson 2006). Countries or sectors
with well-resourced administrative systems regarded as highly efficient
and competent by their citizenry are more likely to feature direct gov-
ernment service provision in their policy designs than countries with
corrupt or inefficient civil services, given the advantages the former
hold for governments in terms of cost and ease of programme adminis-
tration compared to the latter.

Central support agencies

These are agencies which are similar in appearance to line departments,
but often act more like private companies, delivering services within
governments rather than to external constituencies. Some of these are
very old (like government stationers and printers), while others (like
government systems and information technology units) are much more
recent. Many of these agencies are quite large, and since they often
serve functions similar to private companies, they are, and have often
been, primary targets for government efforts to develop market modes
of governance in some sectors through contracting out or privatizing
government services – that is, they are simply turned into ‘firms’ sup-
plying government services by severing their funding through general
appropriations revenue and establishing autonomous boards of directors
and often some form of stock ownership. Cost issues are typically a
major factor influencing their inclusion, or exclusion, in policy designs.

Social and health insurance and pension plans

The social and health insurance and pension schemes used in many
countries for unemployment insurance, elderly income support and
healthcare are other government schemes which often feature the
use of organizational implementation tools. These are often bank or
­insurance-like financial institutions in which all individuals in certain
categories are mandated to make payments to a government agency
which acts, usually, as a deposit holder and a monopoly insurance
provider for that group (Katzman 1988). Some of these schemes,
of course, are amongst the largest areas of government expenditure
38 Policy tools
and are virtually identical in organizational form to direct govern-
ment department and agencies given their universal and mandated
­n ature – with the main difference being that programme funds come
from dedicated insurance payments rather than general tax revenue
and in many instances these organizations are run by an arms-length
governing board. These schemes are generally very high profile and
targeted to very specific kinds of outputs such as payments of spe-
cific kinds and amounts based on age or on the presence of a certain
health characteristic. They are often intended to be revenue-neutral,
although any short-term shortfalls in these schemes typically have to
be made up by governments and they may at various times collect
and hold very large amounts of premiums or deposits intended to pay
for future obligations. These funds also can provide very large pools
of capital which governments can use to finance infrastructure and
other kinds of investments or lend out to the private sector or other
governments. As such, they are very popular and found throughout
the world, although their exact configuration and extent of private
sector involvement can vary greatly from country to country (Moss
2002). Countries which do not have such schemes typically cite rea-
sons related to their inability to bear the ongoing costs of payments or,
in some cases, a desire to avoid intruding in already existing private
sector programmes providing similar kinds of insurance and payouts.

Quasi-governmental organizational forms

The second general type of government agencies have an essentially
bureaucratic organizational structure and also exist largely as W
­ eberian
forms of administration – although most are structured in a more
‘­business-like’ fashion, with fewer rules and regulations guiding their
behaviour than government departments and agencies and often some
form of autonomous or quasi-autonomous governance, and also very
often the ability to raise funds from outside general government tax
revenue. These include the following main types.

Public enterprises and other corporate forms

Public enterprises or ‘state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) are the most
common and well-known type of quasi-governmental substantive or-
ganizational tool. SOEs undertake or have undertaken a wide variety
of tasks in many jurisdictions (see Table 3.2).
Table 3.2 provides examples of the many public enterprises used in
Canada in the twentieth century, a country which has not been at the
forefront of the deployment of such tools but nevertheless deployed
 Organizational implementation tools 39
Table 3.2 E
 xamples of tasks undertaken by public enterprises (Canada –
twentieth century)

Task Example (Canada, twentieth century)

Housing Canadian Mortgage and Housing

Corporation
Finance Bank of Canada, Small Business
Development Bank, Caisse de Depot et
Placement de Quebec
Wartime Canadian Arsenals
production
Transportation Canadian National Railways, Via Rail, Air Canada/
Trans-Canada Airlines, St Lawrence Seaway Co., BC
Ferries, Northern Transportation Company Ltd.
Strategic Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, Petro-Canada
industries
Communications Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio-Canada
Cultural Canadian Film Development
industries
Corporation, National Film Board, National Museum
Corps
Utilities SaskTel, Hydro Quebec, Ontario Hydro, BC Hydro
Infant industries Petrosar, Athabaska Tar Sands, Canadian Development
Corporation
Sick industries Skeena Cellulose, BC Resources Investment Corporation
Property British Columbia Building Corporation
management
Regional Prince Rupert Coal Corporation, DEVCO, Cape Breton
development Development Corp.
Lotteries and vice BC Liquor Stores, Société des Alcools de Quebec,
Casino Nova Scotia, Lotto-Canada
Local utilities Translink, Edmonton Telephones
Marketing boards Canada Wheat Board, British Columbia Egg and Milk
Marketing Board, Freshwater Fish Marketing Board

Source: Vining and Botterell (1983).

many for many different purposes, from railways, airlines and regional
development initiatives of various kinds to energy security and defence.
There are many different definitions of public enterprises, with dif-
ferent levels of public ownership ascribed to each. Hence, for example,
in Canada, the Ontario Auditor’s Act defines ‘public enterprise’ as

a corporation which is not an agency of the Crown and having 50

percent or more of its issued and outstanding shares vested in the
government or having the appointment of a majority of its Board of
directors made or approved by the Lt. Gov in Council
40 Policy tools
thus including a specified level of ownership and a means of control
within the definition itself (Prichard 1983).
Perry and Rainey (1988) developed an exhaustive typology of these
kinds of enterprises by examining the different types of ownership,
sources of funding and mode of social control exercised over these or-
ganizations. The key feature of these organizations, however, is that
they are government-owned but have a corporate form and are not
administrative agencies. That is, they operate under separate legislation
or under general corporate legal principles, and government control
is exercised indirectly as a function of government share ownership
rather than through direction by a cabinet minister or agency head.
Typically this control is exercized through voting control over appoint-
ments to the company board of directors, who usually can be removed
‘at ­pleasure’ by the government. The board of directors then hires and
fires senior management so that government control is indirect and at
‘arm’s-length’, unlike the more ‘hands-on’ management and control of
direct government administrative agencies.
Some public enterprises can raise and borrow money on their own
authority, while others are limited in their sphere of independence
and must seek funding or permission from governments to borrow on
public or international markets. Similarly, some SOEs are free to set
whatever prices they would like for their products, while others must
seek government permission to alter prices and may be subsidized to
provide a good or service at below market value. While government
share ownership can drop below 50 per cent and still exercise control
if the remainder of the shares is widely held, it is more common for a
government to own 50 per cent or more of voting shares (in fact, it is
very common for them to own 100 per cent, sometimes through a so-
called ‘golden share’ provision in which there is only one share issued
and it is owned by the government). However, in recent years there is
a growing number of ‘mixed’ enterprises, with joint public-private or
multiple government ownership.
These companies can be exceedingly large, although they can also
be much smaller, in some cases limited to one or two factories or of-
fices. Sovereign wealth funds, holding the proceeds of oil and gas or
pension revenues in countries like Singapore and Dubai, for example,
are amongst the largest firms in the world in terms of assets and can
­control hundreds of billions of dollars in investments (Elson 2008),
while large public hydroelectrical or petrochemical utilities in coun-
tries like C
­ anada, Norway, Mexico, Iran and Venezuela also rank first
amongst companies in those countries based on size of assets controlled
(Laux and Molot 1988).
 Organizational implementation tools 41
The use of SOEs is common in corporatist forms of governance,
which prize their high levels of automaticity, intrusiveness and visibility
as well as their generally low cost and ability to be precisely targeted in
different sectors and policy areas and not distracted by issues in other
areas as are government agencies. However, there have also been many
efforts to privatize these companies, or move their ownership from the
government to the private sector, as some governments have attempted
to shift to more market modes of governance for ideological reasons or
to cut costs (Savas 1989).
These efforts have been successful in sectors where competition ex-
ists, such as marketing boards, product producing companies and prop-
erty management (Savas 1987; Laux 1993), but have generally foundered
in other areas where the privatized corporation has simply become a
private monopoly service provider. This has often been the case with
large-scale utilities such as water, electricity or public transportation
providers where natural monopoly conditions often exist which make
it difficult for new entrants to compete with established companies
who control, for example, bus routes, rail or water lines, and electric-
ity generation and distribution systems. In these cases, they have often
been re-nationalized or re-regulated through the creation of regulatory
oversight agencies and mechanisms (Leland and Smirnova 2009).

Organizational hybrids (alternative service delivery)

In recent years, numerous hybrid forms of indirect government organ-
izations have been developed and implemented in many jurisdictions
at least in part to deal with these difficulties in privatizing government
services. These have often been proposed in situations where govern-
ments would like to privatize or contract out government services but
where there is not a competitive market, thereby limiting the utility of
outright sale or divestment by a government.
Examples of these types of tools include the so-called ‘special
­operating agencies’ (SOAs) (Koppell 2003; Birrell 2008), which were
established in many countries in the 1980s and 1990s in an effort to
grant more autonomy to central service agencies and remove them from
day-to-day government control. This was typically done by ‘outsourc-
ing’ whatever services could be secured from a competitive external
marketplace, while allowing agencies that provide those goods and ser-
vices which could not be so relocated to charge real prices to purchasers
and to retain their earnings and make their own reinvestment decisions.
Such organizations were formed in many jurisdictions for example, to
replace government print shops and print or travel services.
42 Policy tools
A second type of hybrid is the ‘quasi-autonomous non-­governmental
organization’ or quango, an organizational form in which a non-­
governmental agency is established and given a grant of authority by a
government to provide a particular good or service (Hood 1986). These
are generally more independent than standard public enterprises and
can be very precisely targeted. Many airports, ports and harbours, for
example, are run by such ‘independent authorities’ which rely on gov-
ernments for their monopoly position but which are answerable to their
own boards for their activities rather than to the government itself. These
agencies are usually then able to charge their own prices for the goods
or services they provide, retain their earnings and raise funds on capital
markets for investments, removing these items from government books.
There can be serious principle-agent problems with these kinds
of agencies, however, which can affect their use. Maintaining the
­arm’s-length nature of the relationship of public enterprises and quan-
gos to government is difficult, and such agencies may not have enough
autonomy for governments to avoid the consequences of scandals or
other problems associated with them as might occur, for example, with
a failure of a prominent airport or harbour. That is, these relationships
can be either too close (day-to-day interference) or too distant (agencies
become distant and aloof powers unto themselves). Utilizing this form
of substantive organizational tool can be also very expensive and linked
to unpopular actions, with political and economic consequences for
governments – like tax increases, political scandals and high-­profile fi-
nancing and operational issues such as charging excessive landing rights
or baggage handling fees at airports or reserving choice landing and
boarding locations for preferred carriers. Many public agencies also do
not have to face the discipline of the market in terms of meeting share-
holder or investor expectations for profitability, and hence lack at least
this incentive to operate in a cost-efficient manner. These kinds of visi-
bility and cost issues generally discourage the inclusion of these agencies
in policy designs outside the areas and activities listed above.

Partnerships, commissioning and contracting out

More recent efforts on the part of some governments to offload legal and
financial responsibility for goods and service delivery and have existing
goods and services delivered through the private or quasi-governmental
sector – have evolved into several distinct forms of organization which
are more private than public, with the public sector acting mainly as a
(guaranteed) purchaser of goods and services provided by private com-
panies (Grimshaw et al. 2001).
 Organizational implementation tools 43
One typical form of such activity is ‘contracting out’ or outsourcing,
in which internal provision of some good or service is simply replaced
with a source external to government (Zarco-Jasso 2005). This can
be more complicated if a non-governmental provider does not exist
for a particular product or service, so that a government must first, or
simultaneously, create such a provider, often by providing long-term
purchase guarantees for specific products, from nuclear energy and iso-
topes to health services of various kinds. Outsourcing of highway and
railway maintenance in many countries in the 1980s and 1990s, for ex-
ample, involved government managers creating their own firms, which
then bid on and received government contracts to provide maintenance
services for those roads; those companies then immediately hired for-
mer government workers, and in some cases used former government
equipment, to provide the same service provided by the government in
the pre-contract era. The initial and expected future cost savings gov-
ernments expected to accrue through this process provided the impetus
for this form of activity.
More recently, this form of activity moved from the service to the
capital goods sector with the development of the so-called ‘P3s’ or
­‘public-private partnerships’ in which governments encourage private
sector firms to build and operate public infrastructure such as schools,
office buildings, hospitals and sports facilities, and even transportation
infrastructure such as bridges and roads, in return for a government
guarantee of a long-term lease or use agreement with the provider. The
net effect of this activity is to remove capital costs from government
budgets while retaining the service (Rosenau 1999). Different kinds of
these partnerships exist, such as collaborative partnerships with private
companies to build and operate hospitals or sports infrastructure to the
use of NGOs to control hospital admissions for the disabled. Operational
partnerships with companies and other governments to share costs for
many of the items discussed earlier also exist as do contributory part-
nerships where governments may provide partnership funding without
necessarily controlling the use of such funds, as occurs when matching
funds are provided by more senior government for local- or community-
based environmental improvement projects and programmes.
Although popular in some countries and sectors in recent years as
examples of ‘collaborative’ or ‘joined-up’ government, such schemes
often stretch the resources of non-profit or volunteer organizations and
can result in inefficient or incompetent delivery of goods and services
(Riccucci and Meyers 2008). Problems with private sector partners en-
countering financial problems with PPP contracts or their other activi-
ties jeopardizing a PPP project have also led to high profile failures and
44 Policy tools
government take-overs of contracts in mid-stream. These kinds of cost
and reliability issues have increasingly affected considerations of such
tools and restricted their inclusion in policy designs.

Commissioning
Commissioning is the most recently recognized collaborative tech-
nique which, as Taylor and Migone (2017) put it:

Generally refers to a more strategic and dynamic approach to public

service design and delivery with a clear focus on aligning resources
to desired outcomes and by injecting greater diversity and compe-
tition into the public service economy. By creating public service
markets, the expertise and resources of the private and not-for-
profit sectors can be harnessed and leveraged through new business
and delivery models.

Commissioning goes well beyond traditional procurement and out-

sourcing agendas with the aim of increasing service levels from both
private and community partners by involving ‘third sector’ actors, such
as NGOs, in both service target formulation and design (‘co-design’) and
service delivery (‘co-management’). The provision of stable funding and
the ongoing interactions with government funding agencies, it is argued,
allow the capacity of third-sector actors to be enhanced at the same time
that co-design and co-management ensure that outcomes match the ex-
pectations of clients rather than agencies (Bovaird et al. 2014).
Commissioning suffers from many of the same NGO capacity issues
raised above, however. Again, as Taylor and Migone (2017) note:

This means that the various organizations involved redefine their

relations with the public administration on one level, with the
­clients/users of the services on another and finally with each other.
A critical element in this relationship is the creation of high level
trust relations among the stakeholders. This trust will affect the
flow of information and help in the creation of a contestable envi-
ronment where multiple parties can move away from hindrances
to outcome-based approaches such as overly legalistic contracts,
enable the devolution of meaningful autonomy to those who are
ultimately accountable and responsible for the delivery of services.

As they note, however, in some cases, the new relationship will modify
established sets of interactions, such as when increased competitiveness
 Organizational implementation tools 45
of non-profit organizations results in decreased cooperation amongst
the providers or when service provision becomes the central focus of
NGO activity, replacing other kinds of membership activity, including
those devoted to recruitment and retention of members.

Contracting
Contracting is probably the most well-known organization-based
activity which involves government. All government contract for
services of course, from provision of military equipment to office
stationary. However in recent years many efforts have been made to
reduce the level of direct state involvement in the provision of public
services and the number of government personnel deployed to do so,
through the replacement of civil servants and internal procure-
ment processes with contractual arrangements with, usually, non-­
governmental organizations, primarily private businesses (Vincent
Jones 2006). Various forms of contracting out exist, such as the PPPs or
public-private partnerships discussed earlier. However other less rig-
orous forms of contracting exist in areas such as healthcare, education
and prisons, in which contracts may not involve large investments
and profit sharing, but rather simply remove major expenditure ar-
eas, such as penitentiaries, or minor ones such as janitorial services,
from government books, budgets and payrolls (Roehrich et al. 2014;
Thadani 2014). These activities are often undertaken in order to
avoid sub-optimal production of services by relatively expensive gov-
ernment workers and also to avoid payments of benefits and superan-
nuation to civil servants.
In the case of contracting, however, many supporters of the concept
have noted significant limitations which can prevent contracting from
functioning effectively. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics, for ex-
ample, was awarded to two economists who specialize in detailing the
significant flaws and limits of contracting in areas such as prisons and
healthcare (Holmstrom and Milgrom 1991). Their concern was with
the difficulty encountered by governments in enforcing quality con-
trol in such contracts when the nature of the service provided (i.e. its
quality) was dependent on difficult-to-monitor interactions between,
for example, patients and doctors or prisoners and prison guards. These
and other criticisms highlight the need to carefully negotiate realistic
contracts and deal with the information asymmetries and knowledge
gaps linked to public services, as well as other issues such as difficul-
ties encountered in cancelling contracts or preventing contractees from
simply reneging on their contracted obligations.
46 Policy tools
Non-state and society-based tools: co-production
and certification
Efforts at policy reform around substantive organizational tools have
been omnipresent in many developed and developing countries over
the past several decades and have often featured efforts to reduce the
number of state-based tools and shift their activities either towards hy-
brid instruments or, in some cases, away from state-based organizations
altogether. Many of these efforts have featured waves of management
reforms and administrative re-structuring, including privatizations,
de-regulation and re-regulation and the other activities cited above
(Ramesh and Howlett 2006). These efforts have also led to the artic-
ulation and promotion of several alternative modes of governing to
more traditional ‘hierarchical’ or state-led ones which still nevertheless
include governments as key organizational actors.
Many of these techniques are ‘market-based’ and constitute efforts
to replace government activity with private sector actions. However,
others are focused less on zero-sum notions of state-market relations,
but include more complex ideas about involving ‘civil society’ actors
more directly in ‘collaborative’ policy-making, administration and im-
plementation (Brudney 1987). These kinds of activities come in many
forms, but two which have received a great deal of attention in recent
years are ‘co-production’ and ‘certification’.

Certification
Certification is a term used to capture the activities of many non-state
actors involved in areas such as forestry, fisheries, organizing foods and
other similar areas in which quality control and enforcement of stand-
ards are accomplished less directly than is the case with traditional gov-
ernment supplied command and control regulation and government
agencies (Cashore et al. 2004). In these cases, for a variety of reasons,
from cost to ideology, ‘certification’ of standards is undertaken by civil
society organizations, such as the Forestry Stewardship Council or the
Marine Stewardship Council, which lack the formal authority to com-
pel business and industries to abide by regulatory standards but which
utilize (often negative) publicity, boycotts and other actions to encour-
age compliance of firms with set standards of behaviour, from netsize
and type in the case of the fishery to sustainable logging practices in the
forest sector.
These tools are often referred to as non-state market-based (NSMD)
tools (Cashore 2002) since they do not rely upon state authority for
 Organizational implementation tools 47
their power and legitimacy to regulate private sector activity, but rather
do so through market activities such as product labelling and producer
certifications which affect consumer behaviour and preferences, for
example, for organic produce or sustainably harvested timber, fish or
coffee, amongst others. It is debatable, however, if these kinds of efforts
could work without the ‘iron-fist’ of a threat of government regulation
lurking in the background.
It is also the case that such schemes rely heavily on the reputation
of the certifier for honesty, accuracy and precision. Certification only
functions effectively if trust exists between the public and the certifiers
and between the certifiers and the certified companies and govern-
ments. Concerns about second-class regulation or corrupt standards can
easily undermine years of work building up a certified brand. Similarly,
competing or dueling certifiers can also undermine existing schemes
and impede their effectiveness. If their reputation is damaged, as has
happened from time to time with products such as wine or olives in
which additives were added or cheaper products substituted for ex-
pected ones, such schemes can collapse and require either substantial
reform or government takeover, revealing their dependence on gov-
ernment organizations, ultimately, to serve as the guarantor of quality.

Co-production
Co-production is a short-hand term for a variety of governance ar-
rangements which involve citizens in the production and delivery of
public services, some of which have already been discussed above, such
as ‘co-design’ or ‘co-management’ (Brandsen and Honingh 2016). In
the USA, these ideas generated interest amongst public administration
scholars in the 1970s and the 1980s in areas such as storefront policing,
and experienced a revival in the decades after the turn-of-the-century
in many areas from education to environmental protection and high-
way beautification and litter control (Pestoff et al. 2006).
Originally, co-production was narrowly defined as the ‘involvement
of citizens, clients, consumers, volunteers and/or community organ-
izations in producing public services as well as consuming or oth-
erwise benefiting from them’ (Alford 1998: 128). Many governance
arrangements, even those thought to be purely hierarchical, such as
public schooling and policing, in fact combine aspects of hierarchical or
state-based governance with elements of civil society mobilization in
the form of activities such as neighbourhood watches or parent-teacher
associations. This involvement is often voluntary, meaning it existed as
a positive externality, reducing production and delivery costs of public
48 Policy tools
services. This made it very attractive to governments seeking cost re-
ductions in public service delivery, especially ones favourable to notions
of ‘social enterprise’ and enhanced community participation as an end-
or good-in-itself (Parks et al. 1981).
Like all other tools, however, co-production also has a downside as
a policy tool. In the case of co-production, it has long been recognized
that expectations of free labour from co-producers may not material-
ize (Sorrentino et al. 2018), and schemes to incentivize co-producers
through payments are susceptible to all of the usual harms of public
expenditures, including corruption, clientelism and goal displacement,
amongst others (Howlett et al. 2017).

Procedural organizational instruments

Substantive tools, of course, are only one of the uses towards which
governmental and non-governmental organizational resources can be
put. The second use is procedural. This involves the use of the organ-
izational resources such as personnel, staffing, institutionalization and
internal procedures to alter or affect policy processes in order to better
achieve general government aims or specific programme activities.
It bears repeating that these tools do not involve direct or indirect
goods and service delivery, as do their substantive counterparts, but
rather affect process-related activities; generally efforts aimed at cre-
ating or re-­structuring policy community structure and/or behaviour
through government leadership or ‘network management’ efforts.
In any policy process, policy managers need to work with the struc-
ture and operation of any network which already exists in the area; rec-
ognize potential new actors, limit the role of ineffective actors; balance
their time and resource commitments (money, technology, expertise,
etc.); maintain the focus of the network in achieving goals and build
trust between actors/reduce possible conflicts (Mandell 1994). In order
to achieve these ends, various kinds of organizational network manage-
ment tools can be used.
The key dimensions or tasks involved in the use of organizational
tools for these kinds of network management activities include the
identification of potentially compatible network actors, given the is-
sue at hand; limiting potential conflicts that would hinder flexibility;
recognizing legal requirements; balancing political objectives/conflicts
with policy objectives and assigning costs in implementation.
Several of the most common of these tools are described in the fol-
lowing section.
 Organizational implementation tools 49
Network management tools
There are many different types of procedural tools linked with the use
of specific government organizational resources which can affect vari-
ous aspects of policy subsystem behaviour in policy processes. Interest
in these tools has grown as many governments have moved in the di-
rection of more overt network management in many sectors in recent
years, often in the effort to encourage NGO formation or lead their
activities in certain directions rather than others.

Staff or central (executive) agencies

This is an old form of government organization, one in which a
small, coordinating government agency, rather than one which di-
rectly ­delivers services to the public, is created to centralize and control
agency initiatives in some area. Such ‘staff or ‘central’ agencies, u ­ nlike
‘line’ departments are generally created as a means to direct other
­administrative agencies and are often linked very closely to the politi-
cal executive (Bernier et al. 2005). In Westminster-style p­ arliamentary
systems, for example, older examples include Privy Council offices and
treasury board secretariats, while newer ones include presidential, pre-
mier and prime minister’s offices, ministries of state, communication
units, intergovernmental secretariats and various kinds of implemen-
tation units.
Although small (even most prime ministers’ offices until recently had
less than 100 personnel, most of whom handled correspondence), these
are units which exercise a great deal of control over other bureaucratic
agencies through their links to the executive and to the budgetary and
policy processes in government. They have seen much growth in recent
years as political executives have sought to re-establish control over far-
flung administrative apparatuses (Weller et al. 1997).
Unlike line departments, these staff or central agencies are flat, or
non-hierarchical, organizations typically staffed by one or two levels
of political appointees, although others employ permanent officials as
well. Key officials are chiefs of staff, principle secretaries and specialized
positions such as a clerk of the Privy Council or cabinet secretary. These
agencies play a major and increasing role in designing and coordinating
policies and policy-making, ensuring accountability to legislatures and
controlling the budgets, activities and plans of line departments and
ministries. Their small cost is a major design consideration, although
this is often offset by their high visibility and high level of intrusiveness
50 Policy tools
in the affairs of the government agencies they control or coordinate
which often do not like the additional level of approvals they represent
for their proposals, budgets and programmes.

Tribunals and other quasi-judicial bodies

These are a second type of tool created by statute which perform many
administrative functions, hearing appeals concerning licencing (e.g. of
pesticides), certification (of personnel or programmes) and permits (e.g.
for disposal of effluents). Appointed by government, they usually rep-
resent, or purport to represent, some diversity of interests and expertise
in complex technical, legal or political issue areas. In the framework of
administration, tribunals are directed toward securing compliance with
administrative edicts and the achievement of identified standards of be-
haviour by both governmental and non-governmental actors.
Administrative hearings are conducted by tribunals in a quasi-­judicial
fashion, often in order to aid the tribunal in its activities. These hear-
ings are bound by rules of natural justice, and procedures may also be
dictated by statutory provisions. The decisions of tribunals are designed
to be binding on the ministry in question, but may be subject to various
political, administrative and judicial appeals. Public hearings may be
statutorily defined as a component of the administrative process.
Tribunals often act as a mechanism with which to appeal administra-
tive decisions, but, in most cases, proceedings are held at the discretion
of a decision-making authority and public hearings are often ‘after the
fact’ public information sessions rather than being true consultative de-
vices (Fitzpatrick and Sinclair 2003). They can be precisely targeted and
are an important component of legal modes of governance which are
generally low cost and nearly invisible.

Creating or reorganizing government agencies

Another fairly commonly used procedural organizational tool is to establish
new government agencies or reform existing institutions in order to focus
or re-focus state and societal activities on specific problems or issue areas
(Durant 2008). Setting up a new government ministry for technology or a
new research council to promote advanced technologies like biotechnology,
e-technologies or other high technology sectors, for example, is a common
action on the part of governments wanting to target a new area of activity
for further development and identify and co-ordinate the societal actors
and businesses already involved in it. However, such actions are highly
visible and, if repeated too often, quite costly. They are also quite intrusive
and, as a result, are proposed, and used, only infrequently.
 Organizational implementation tools 51
Establishing analytical units
It is more common for governments to set up internal think tanks or
research institutes in order to provide policy advice to governments
(Phidd 1975), many of which can perform many of the same kinds of
network activities which would a new ministry or agency, but at much
less cost and with less difficulty involved in their budgeting and estab-
lishment. Many government departments and agencies, for example,
have established specialized policy units designed to generate studies
and reports which can influence or help persuade both government of-
ficials and non-governmental actors of the merits of government plans.
These agencies also often employ outside consultants to bring addi-
tional expertise and knowledge to policy formation, implementation
and evaluation (Speers 2007). The knowledge they generate is used to
inform internal policy-making processes and also to garner support for
government positions from outside groups.
New analytical units such as those policy shops created in many ju-
risdictions in the 1970s and 1980s in order to promote formal pol-
icy analysis and what is now referred to as ‘knowledge-based’ or
‘evidence-based’ policy-making are good examples of the use of this
kind of procedural organizational tool (Prince 1979). These agencies
can be precisely targeted and are generally low cost and have low vis-
ibility. However, their impact on policy-making can raise the ire of
­stakeholders and others who can find them to be rivals for government
knowledge and attention. Such considerations have dampened enthu-
siasm for such units in many jurisdictions and sectors and reduced their
appeal in policy designs in recent years.

Establishing clientele units

New administrative units in areas like urban affairs, science and tech-
nology flourished in many countries in the 1970s, as did new envi-
ronmental units in most countries in the 1970s and 1980s. These were
joined by units dealing with areas such as youth and small business in
the 1990s; and in the post-1990 period, other new units were developed
in countries like New Zealand, Canada and Australia to deal with ab-
original affairs, and promote bi- or multiculturalism, women’s rights
and human rights. Human rights units dealing with minorities and the
disabled are good examples of network mobilization and activation oc-
casioned by government organizational (re)engineering which raised
the prominence of these issues with governments and the public and led
to many new laws and initiatives in the years following their creation
(Malloy 1999).
52 Policy tools
Table 3.3 A
 nalytical agency network managerial tasks

1. Vertical and horizontal coordination

2. Overcome institutional blockages like federalism and divisions of power
3. ‘Mainstreaming’
4. Building commitments
5. Building legitimacy/developing visions and agreement on alternatives
6. Building coalitions
7. Structuring NGO activity, e.g. lobbying activities

Source: Mandell (2000).

In general, these agencies can be precisely targeted in order to under-

take the management functions shown in Table 3.3. They are very pop-
ular given their generally low cost and high visibility and effectiveness.

Establishing government reviews, ad hoc task

forces, commissions, inquiries and public hearings
A sixth common procedural organizational tool used by governments
is the establishment of a government review. These range from formal,
mandated, periodic reviews of legislation and government activity by
congressional or parliamentary committees and internal administrative
bodies to ‘ad hoc’ processes such as task forces or enquiries designed to
activate or mobilize network actors to support government initiatives
or investigate accidents or malfeasance of various kinds, often related to
judicial or administrative conduct (Marchildon 2007).
Ad hoc task forces and enquiries are typically temporary bodies, much
shorter term and often more issue-related than institutionalized advi-
sory committees. Ad hoc commissions are created as instruments to
consult a variety of interests with regard to economic and other areas of
planning activity. These range from the presidential or royal commis-
sions to those created at the departmental level.
Task forces have been created in many jurisdictions for planning,
consultation or conflict resolution concerning many specific issues. The
task force may be invoked by a government when there is an area of
conflict in which different groups have different interests and perspec-
tives or where they require information in order to arrive at a decision
or judgement.
The subject matter of an ad hoc commission is typically urgent, of
concern to more than one ministry and level of government, and is
the subject of some controversy. They are invoked at the discretion of
government and are subject to political, economic and social pressures.
Indeed, the very initiation of the commission is likely to be the product
 Organizational implementation tools 53
of pressure by public interest groups (Chapman 1973). Employment of
these instruments for this purpose can result in serious legitimation
problems for governments utilizing these policy tools, however, given
their high level of visibility (Sulitzeanu-Kenan 2007). Presidential and
royal commissions are the most formal and arm’s-length and, therefore,
are the most difficult for governments to control and predict, and hence
are used less often.
Public participation through hearings is the most common type of
public or network consultation in many sectors. Hearings vary by de-
gree of formalization and by when they occur in a policy process. The
most effective and influential are often flexible processes that are geared
towards policy formulation such as project reviews or environmental
assessments, but the most common are rigid processes that take place in
or after the implementation stage of a process, such as a formal policy
evaluation exercise (Dion 1973). Public hearings are often mandated by
legislation and most often occur after a decision has been taken – that
is, purely as information and/or legitimation devices. Actual instances
of open, truly empowered public hearing processes are rare (Rowe and
Frewer 2005).
Although sometimes used for other purposes such as informa-
tion collection or blame attribution, these tools are often also used to
­overcome institutional ‘blockages’ and veto points such as those which
are commonly found in federal–state or intergovernmental relations or
in interdepartmental jurisdictional struggles. They can also help bolster
the capacity of groups to become more involved in the policy process if
funding is extended to their participants, thereby promoting network
governance. They can be precisely targeted and are generally low cost.
However, their high level of visibility can cause problems for govern-
ments and results in their less frequent appearance in policy designs
than would otherwise be the case (Rowe and Frewer 2006).

Legislative and executive oversight agencies

This category of procedural organizational tools includes specialized
agencies with very different policy-making functions, like arm’s-length
independent auditor-generals or access to information commissioners.
These are units typically attached to legislatures, providing some over-
sight or control over executive branch activities. Many principle-agent
problems can be overcome through administrative procedures man-
dating oversight agency reviews of government actions, especially
if these are linked to funding and budgetary issues (McCubbins and
­Lupia 1994) and most governments have many such oversight bodies,
54 Policy tools
a phenomenon which itself can create problems with different investi-
gations and reports targeting the same issues and problems, sometimes
with different conclusions and recommendations.

Conclusion: organizational tools – the forgotten

fundamental in policy design studies
Practical experience and ideological predilections have shaped the sub-
stance of much of the debate on the use of the organizational resources
of government, with initiatives ranging from preferences for democracy,
popular participation and collaboration to concerns about budget defi-
cits and public sector inefficiencies in hierarchy-based s­ ystems leading
to similar efforts to modify or restrict the use of o ­ rganizational tools.
In recent years, a strong preference for shifts towards non-­h ierarchical
forms of governance, coupled with discontent with the results of
­market-based reforms in the 1970s to 1990s, has led to ­increasing atten-
tion being paid to more civil-society or networked forms of ‘collabo-
rative governance’.
It is true that organization-based implementation tools are generally
costly and have high visibility. This is because they rely on govern-
ment personnel funded by appropriations from general revenue raised
through taxes or royalties (although some are also funded from market
revenue stemming from the sale of goods or services). The use of tax-
based funding makes the use of public servants expensive in the sense
that governments tend to have a limited capacity to tax citizens to pay
for services and incur opportunity costs no matter which activity they
choose to adopt. It can also lead to governance failures, as the link be-
tween system outputs and inputs (expenditures and revenues) is usually
not clear, providing the opportunity for funds to be misallocated and
effort misspent, all in the fishbowl environment of public government.
Despite their real or perceived cost, and in spite of many efforts to
create or replace them with other forms of service and goods delivery,
as noted at the outset of this chapter, direct delivery of goods and ser-
vices by public agencies remains the ‘forgotten fundamental’ of imple-
mentation instruments and policy designs. ‘Old-fashioned’ government
agencies and line departments are still the most common and pervasive
policy instruments in most sectors. Even in the ostensibly most private
sector-oriented market governance systems (like the USA or, more re-
cently, New Zealand), direct government goods and service production
usually reaches close to 50 per cent of gross national product (GNP) –
that is, half of the dollar value of all goods and services produced in a
country in one year – while direct civil service employment typically
 Organizational implementation tools 55
hovers in the area of 15–20 per cent of the labour force, but can also be
much higher (Christensen and Pallesen 2008).
This organizational activity is somewhat sectorally focused, due to
large publicly provided expenditures on direct government activities
like the defence and the military which cannot be delivered by the pri-
vate sector, and/or items such as healthcare, social security, education
and pensions associated with the development of modern welfare states
and the extension of legal rights to these services to members of the
public. It also includes what statistical agencies refer to as the ‘MUSH’
sector – municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals – which, in
many countries, are established as autonomous or semi-autonomous
operating agencies of more senior levels of government. In many coun-
tries, MUSH sector agencies are amongst the largest employers since
the activities they undertake – such as education and healthcare, as well
as sewer, road and parks maintenance – are very labour-intensive. Many
of the recent innovations in organizational forms, ranging from special
operating agencies, to quangos, private-public partnerships and various
kinds of hybrid organizations, have emerged largely in the effort to
reduce the size of these existing organizations.
This has promoted the frequent appearance of experiments in
­a lternate instruments and policy designs, although much less often
in their realization in practice. Lost in the identification of alterna-
tive forms of organizational tools and service delivery by governments
around the world in a variety of sectors has been the understanding
of exactly what kind of governance arrangement is ‘collaborative’, and
especially under what conditions a preferred governance mode could
actually address a particular sector’s problems. Given that all collabo-
rative modes are vulnerable to specific kinds of failures due to inher-
ent vulnerabilities when governments reform or try to shift from one
mode to the other modes, policy-makers need to understand not only
the nature of the problem they are trying to address and the skills and
resources they have at their disposal to address it, but especially the
innate features of each potential alternative mode and the capabilities
and competences each requires in order to operate at a high level of
performance.
Notwithstanding this, significant areas of public expenditure and ef-
forts, such as healthcare and education, have generally proved immune
to privatization efforts given their overall cost structures, mandatory
service delivery nature and high levels of citizen support. Most suc-
cesses have come in either small-scale direct service privatizations or in
single-industry company privatizations which have generally not sig-
nificantly altered earlier tool uses (Verhoest et al. 2012).
56 Policy tools
Procedural organizational instruments have also been growing in
frequency of appearance, but for different reasons. Government reor-
ganizations are increasingly common, and these reorganizations and
the new agencies often created alongside them are intended to use
government organizational resources to re-focus government efforts
and interactions with policy community/network members rather
than directly improve the delivery of particular types of goods and
services (Peters 1992). The reorganization of existing departments and
agencies serves to re-position government administration within pol-
icy networks, often inserting government actors between competing
private actors in networks by, for example, creating consumer depart-
ments to sit between producers and (un)organized consumers (Bache
2010). These moves are often accompanied by the increasing use of
government reviews and inquiries, as well as consultative conferences
and other similar organizational forms for stakeholder and public con-
sultation, resulting in different mixes of these fundamental tools in con-
temporary policy designs than in the past.
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4 Authoritative
implementation tools

There are many types of ‘authoritative’ implementation instruments that,

like organizational tools, are a very common part, and often a central
feature, of policy designs. All involve, and rely primarily upon, the abil-
ity of governments to direct or steer targets in the directions they would
prefer them to go through the use of the real or perceived threat of state-­
enforced sanctions or coercion. While treasure resources, discussed in the
next chapter, are often used to encourage ‘positive’ ­behaviour – that is,
behaviour which is aligned with government goals – authoritative actions
can be used for this purpose but are often used in a ‘negative’ sense, that
is, to prevent or discourage types of behaviour which are incongruent
with government expectations (Ajzen 1991).
The use of the coercive power of the state to achieve government
goals through the control or alteration of societal (and governmental)
behaviour is the essence of regulation, the most common type of govern-
ing instrument found in this category (Mitnick 1978). With regulation,
the government does not provide goods and service delivery ‘directly’
through the use of its organizational resources but rather allows this
to occur in a controlled fashion through an intermediary – usually a
private company or market enterprise, but also sometimes SOEs or,
more commonly, NGOs such as churches, voluntary organizations and
association, trade unions and professional bodies (Scott 2001) – while
retaining the ability to control and direct those actors on a day-to-day
basis, often to the minutest detail.

Substantive authoritative instruments

In general, all types of regulation involve the promulgation of more
or less binding rules which circumscribe or alter the behaviour of par-
ticular target groups (Kiviniemi 1986). That is, regulation commonly
62 Policy tools
involves the ‘public administrative policing of a private activity with
respect to a rule prescribed in the public interest’ (Mitnick 1978).
These rules take various forms and include standards, permits, pro-
hibitions and executive orders among others. Some regulations, like
ones dealing with criminal behaviour, are laws and involve the police
and judicial system in their enforcement. Most regulations, however,
are administrative edicts created under the terms of enabling legislation
and administered on a continuing basis by a government department
or a specialized, quasi-judicial government agency with some level of
enforcement and supervisory powers (Rosenbloom 2007). In relatively
rare cases, the authority to enact, enforce or adjudicate regulations can
also be delegated to non-governmental organizations in various forms
of ‘voluntary’ or ‘self-­regulation’. All of these types are set out below,
and their strengths and weaknesses in policy designs are described.

Direct government regulation

Although citizens may not always be aware of their presence, regu-
lations govern the price and standards of a wide variety of goods and
services they consume, as well as the quality of the water they drink and
the air they breathe (Baldwin and Cave 1999). It is commonly a contin-
uing administrative process administered through specially designated
regulatory agencies (Reagan 1987) in which failure to comply with
government directives typically involves a penalty, sometimes financial,
but also often involving incarceration and imprisonment.
This type of instrument is often referred to as ‘command and con-
trol’ regulation and is very common in the social and economic spheres.
Criminal law, for example, is a kind of regulatory activity, as are ­common
laws and civil codes, which all countries have and which states develop
and implement, usually relatively non-controversially (May 2002).
It is sometimes difficult for governments to ‘command and control’
their targets if these targets resist regulatory efforts or if a government
does not have the capacity or legitimacy required to enforce their orders.
As a result of these difficulties, other types of regulation exist in which
rules are vaguer and the threat of penalties may be, at best, remote. These
different types of regulation are discussed in the following sections.

Laws
Law is an important tool of modern government and the very basis of
legal modes of governance (Ziller 2005). Several different types of laws
exist, however. These include distinctions often drawn by legal scholars
 Authoritative implementation tools 63
Table 4.1 Six types of legal instruments

1. Statutes
2. Delegated legislation between levels of government
3. Decisions of regulatory bodies and courts
4. Contracts or treaties
5. Quasi-legislation such as tax notices and interpretative bulletins
6. Reference documents such as background papers, other legislation and
standing orders

Source: Keyes (1996).

between private and public law; private, civil or tort law and common
law; public, criminal and administrative law and hybrids such as class
action suits which combine features of public and private law. These
different types of law vary substantially in terms of what kinds of situa-
tions they can be applied to, by whom and to what effect (see Table 4.1).
All of these laws can be thought of as ‘regulations’, since all involve
the creation of rules governing individual behaviour. However, in the
form it is usually discussed by policy scholars, ‘regulation’ is typically
thought of as a form of public law; although even then it can also ­involve
criminal and individual or civil actions (Kerwin 1999).
While laws can prohibit or proscribe many kinds of behaviour (and
encourage others either by implication or overtly), in order to move
beyond the symbolic level, they all require a strong enforcement mech-
anism, which includes various forms of policing and the courts. And
even here, a considerable amount of variation and discretion is possible
since inspections and policing can be more or less onerous and more
or less frequent, can be oriented towards responding to complaints or
actively looking for transgressions (‘police patrols’ vs ‘fire alarms’) and
can be focused on punishment of transgressions or prevention, in the
latter case often with a strong educational component designed to per-
suade citizens and others to adopt modes of behaviour more congruent
with government aims and objectives rather than punish them for each
transgression that occurs (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984). A desire for
100 per cent compliance on the part of governments requires a high
level of scrutiny, and thus some kind of ongoing, institutionalized gov-
ernment organization or agency: typically a line department such as a
police department or some other similar administrative bureau with
investigatory and policing powers.
All laws are intrusive, and many are highly visible. A significant prob-
lem with the use of laws in policy designs, however, pertains to cost and
precision of targeting. With respect to the first, while passage of a law is
usually not all that costly, the need for enforcement is. Laws have a low
64 Policy tools
degree of automaticity, as they rely upon citizen’s goodwill and per-
ceptions of legitimacy for them to be obeyed. Inevitably, this will not
ensure 100 per cent compliance and will thus require the establishment
of an enforcement agency, such as the police, customs agencies, immi-
gration patrols, coast guards and the courts. Precision of targeting is an
issue since most laws have general applicability and often cannot single
out specific groups or targets for differential treatment. These problems
have led to the use of alternate forms of regulation expected to reduce
these costs and allow for improved targeting of specific actors.

Direct departmental regulation and Independent

regulatory commissions
Direct administrative implementation of legislative rules is very common
in modern modes of governance. However, in the economic realm,
especially, it often raises concerns about corruption, favoritism and
patronage, that is, in the abuse of administrative discretion to either
ease enforcement in certain cases or administer it capriciously in oth-
ers. Checks on administrative discretion usually exist through the court
system, whereby those who feel they have been unfairly treated can
often appeal administrative decisions and seek to overturn them (­Edley
1990). This can be a very time-consuming and expensive process,
however, and several distinct forms of regulatory agencies with semi-­
independent, quasi-judicial status have been developed in order to avoid
governance problems associated with direct departmental regulation.
The most well known of these is the independent regulatory commission
(IRC). Although some early exemplars of this instrument can be found in
canal authorities in Great Britain and other European railway, highway
and transportation regulatory authorities of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the IRC, as it is currently known, stems mainly from concerns
raised in the post-Civil War (USA) regarding unfair practices in railway
transportation pricing and access. These led to the creation of an innovative
organizational regulatory form in the 1887 US Pendleton Act, which es-
tablished the US Interstate Commerce Commission, a quasi-judicial body
operating at arms-length from government which was intended to act au-
tonomously in the creation and enforcement of regulations and which re-
mained in operation for over 100 years (until 1995) (Cushman 1941).
Independent regulatory commissions are ‘semi-independent’ adminis-
trative agencies in the sense that, as was the case with public enterprises,
government control is indirect and exercised via the appointment of com-
missioners who are more or less difficult to remove from office ( Jacobzone
2005). Wu (2008) has listed 11 aspects of their organization, staffing and
function which make such agencies ‘independent’ (see Table 4.2).
 Authoritative implementation tools 65
Table 4.2 Requisites for regulatory agency independence

1. A n independent leader

2. Exclusive licencing authority
3. Independent funding
4. Private sector regulatees
5. Little movement of staff between industry and regulator
6. Consumer offices
7. Universal service offices
8. Notice and comment decision-making
9. Rules against gifts
10. Rules against conflicts of interest
11. Post-employment rules

Source: Wu (2008).

IRCs are quasi-judicial in the sense that one of their main activi-
ties is adjudicating disputes over the interpretation and enforcement of
rules – a task taken away from the courts in order to ensure that exper-
tise in the specific activities regulated is brought to bear on a case in
order to have more expert, timely and predictable results. Decisions of
independent regulatory commissions are still subject to judicial review,
although often this is only in terms of issues relating to procedural fair-
ness, rather than the evidentiary basis of a decision.
IRCs are relatively inexpensive, specialized bodies that can remove
a great deal of the routine regulatory burden in many areas of social
and economic life from government departments and the courts, and
are quite popular with governments wishing to simplify their agendas
and reduce their need to supervise specific forms of social behaviour on
a day-to-day basis (Wonka and Rittberger 2010). In the contemporary
period, independent regulatory commissions are involved with all as-
pects of market behaviour, production, distribution and consumption,
as well as many areas of social life. Many specialized forms of IRCs
exist, such as the use of ‘marketing boards’, or arm’s-length regulatory
bodies often staffed by elected representatives of producers and granted
specific rights to control prices and/or supply in areas from chicken pro-
duction to organ donations, thereby creating and enforcing pricing and
supply regimes on producers (Royer 2008). This has occurred primarily
in areas affected by periodic bouts of over- or under-supply and can be
found in areas such as bulk agricultural commodities like wheat or milk
whose supply is very sensitive to price fluctuations, and in areas such as
liver and heart transplants, which are subject to chronic supply shortages
(Weimer 2007). These boards typically act as rationing boards charged
with allocating supply quotas and setting prices in order to smooth out
supply fluctuations in the activity involved. They are very common,
66 Policy tools
for example, in wartime when many goods are in short supply and
­rationing goods from fuel to food often is a necessity.
IRCs, like more direct government regulation, have been the subject
of efforts at deregulation, as some governments attempted to move some
sectors towards more open market modes of operation. Some high-­
profile privatization and deregulation in transportation, telecommunica-
tion and financial industries in many countries occurred in the 1980s and
1990s as a result of these efforts however there has been no across-the-
board reduction in the use of more directive tools. Like privatization,
deregulation is nowhere as widespread as claimed by both enthusiasts
and critics. Even in banking, the most globalized business sector, there is
little or no evidence of an overall decline of regulation, and the market
and credit crises of 2008 have rather led to increased moves in a re-­
regulatory direction in many countries, from Iceland to the USA, as well
as at the international level. Indeed, regulations have been expanded in
many sectors to compensate for the loss of state control following privat-
ization of public enterprises ( Jordana and Levi-Faur 2004).
There are still some concerns about the use of this instrument in policy
designs, however, linked to considerations of cost and visibility. The cost
of enforcement by regulatory commissions can be quite high, depend-
ing on the availability of information, and the costs of investigation and
prosecution in highly legalistic and adversarial circumstances can also be
very large. Regulations also are often inflexible and do not permit the
consideration of individual circumstances, and can result in decisions and
outcomes not intended by the regulators. They can distort voluntary or
private sector activities and promote economic inefficiencies. Price reg-
ulations and direct allocation, for example, restrict the operation of the
forces of demand and supply and affect the price mechanism, thus causing
sometimes unpredictable economic distortions in the market. ­Restrictions
on entry to and exit from industrial sectors, for example, can reduce
competition and thus have a negative impact on prices. Regulations can
also inhibit innovation and technological progress because of the market
­security they afford to existing firms and the limited opportunities for
experimentation they might permit. For these and other reasons, they are
often labelled as overly intrusive by many firms and actors (Dyerson and
Mueller 1993) and efforts to avoid them through other forms of regulation
(see below) are very common, though, not always successful.

Indirect government regulation

One of these alternative forms of regulation is ‘indirect regulation’.
There are several different types of such regulation, however, which
vary in terms of their design attributes.
 Authoritative implementation tools 67
Delegated professional regulation
This is a relatively rare form of regulatory activity which occurs when a
government transfers its authority to licence certain practices and disci-
pline transgressors to non-governmental or quasi-governmental bodies
whose boards of directors, unlike the situation with independent regu-
latory commissions, they typically do not appoint (Elgie 2006).
Delegated regulation typically involves legislatures passing special
legislation, empowering specific groups to define their own member-
ship and regulate their own behaviour. Brockman (1998) defines it as:

the delegation of government regulatory functions to a quasi-­

public body that is officially expected to prevent or reduce both
incompetence (lack of skill, knowledge or ability) and misconduct
(criminal, quasi-criminal or unethical behaviour) by controlling
the quality of service to the public through regulating or governing
activities such as licencing or registration – often involving a disci-
plinary system (fines, licences, suspension or revocation) and codes
of conduct/ethics, etc.

This occurs most commonly in the area of professional regulation

where many governments allow professions such as doctors, lawyers,
accountants, engineers, teachers, urban planners and others to control
entrance to their profession and to enforce professional standards of
conduct through the grant of a licencing monopoly to an organization
such as a bar association, a college of physicians and surgeons or a teach-
ers’ college (Tuohy and Wolfson 1978).
The idea behind delegated regulation, as with independent regu-
latory commissions, is that direct regulation through government
departments and the courts is too expensive and time-consuming to
justify the effort involved and the results achieved. Rather than tie up
administrators and judges with many thousands of cases resulting from,
for example, professional licencing or judicial or medical malpractice,
these activities can be delegated to bodies composed of representatives
of the professional field involved, who are the ones most knowledgeable
about best practices and requirements in their field. Governments have
neither the time nor expertise required to regulate multiple interactions
between lawyers and their clients, teachers and students or doctors and
patients, for example, and a form of ‘self-regulation’ is more practical
and cost-efficient (Kuhlmann and Allsop 2008).
Scandal in areas such as business accounting in many countries in re-
cent years, however, can undermine confidence in a profession’s ability
or even willingness to police itself, and can lead to a crisis in confidence
68 Policy tools
in many aspects of delegated self-regulation (Tallontire 2007). Of
course, any delegation of government regulatory authority can be re-
voked if misbehaviour ensues.

Voluntary or incentive regulation

A second form of indirect or ‘self-regulation’ has a more recent history
than delegated regulation, and has been extended to many more areas
of social and economic life. This is typically a form found in market
governance systems in which, rather than establish an agency with the
authority to unilaterally direct targets to follow some course of action
with the ability to sanction those actors who fail to comply, a govern-
ment tries to persuade targets to voluntarily adopt or conform to gov-
ernment aims and objectives.
Although these efforts, like certification, often exist ‘under the
shadow of hierarchy’ (Heritier and Lehmkuhl 2008) – that is, where a
real threat of enhanced oversight exists should voluntary means prove
insufficient to motivate actors to alter their behaviour in the desired
fashion – they also exist in realms where hierarchies don’t exist, such
as the international realm when a strong treaty regime, for example,
cannot be agreed upon. A major advantage often cited for the use of
voluntary standard-setting is cost savings, since governments do not
have to pay for the creation, administration, enforcement and renewal
of such standards, as would be the case with traditional command and
control regulation whether implemented by departments or independ-
ent regulatory commissions. Such programmes can also be effective
in international settings, where establishment of effective legally based
governmental regimes can be especially difficult.
Moffet and Bregha set out the main types of voluntary regulation (see
Table 4.3) found in areas such as environmental protection.
These tools attempt such activities as inducing companies to ex-
ceed pollution targets by excluding them from other regulations or

Table 4.3 T
 ypes of voluntary regulation

1. Legislated compliance plans

2. Regulatory exemption programs
3. Government–industry-negotiated agreements
4. Certification
5. Challenge programmes
6. Design partnerships
7. Standards auditing and accounting

Source: Moffet and Bregha (1999).

 Authoritative implementation tools 69
enforcement actions, establishing covenants in which companies agree
to voluntarily abide by certain standards, establishing labelling provi-
sions or fair trade programmes, providing favourable publicity and treat-
ment for actors exceeding existing standards, promoting cooperation
over new innovations and attempting to improve standards attainment
by targeted actors through better auditing and evaluation. These are
all forms of what Sappington (1994) has termed ‘incentive regulation’.
The role played by governments in voluntary regulation is much less
explicit than in traditional regulation, but is nevertheless present. U
­ nlike
the situation with command and control or delegated regulation, in
these instances, governments allow non-governmental actors to regulate
themselves without creating specific oversight or monitoring bodies or
agencies or empowering legislation. As Gibson (1999: 3) put it:

By definition voluntary initiatives are not driven by regulatory re-

quirements. They are voluntary in the sense that governments do
not have to order them to be undertaken . . . [but] governments
play important roles as initiators, signatories, or behind-the-scenes
promoters.

While many standards are invoked by government command and con-

trol regulation, others can be developed in the private sphere, such as
occur in situations where manufacturing companies develop standards
for products or where independent certification firms or associations
guarantee that certain standards have been met in various kinds of pri-
vate practices (Gunningham and Rees 1997).
These kinds of self-regulation, however, like certification, are often
portrayed as being more ‘voluntary’ than is actually the case. That is,
while non-governmental entities may, in effect, regulate themselves,
they typically do so, as Gibson notes, with the implicit or explicit
­permission of governments, which consciously refrain from regulating
activities in a more directly coercive fashion. As long as these private
standards are not replaced by government-enforced ones, they repre-
sent the acquiescence of a government to the private rules, a form of
­delegated regulation.
That is, as a ‘public’ policy instrument, self-regulation still requires
some level of state action – ‘the shadow of hierarchy’ – either in support-
ing or encouraging development of private self-regulation or retaining
the ‘iron fist’ or the threat of ‘real’ regulation if private behaviour does
not change (Porter and Ronit 2006). This is done in order to ensure
that self-regulation meets public objectives and expectations, since any
possible savings in administrative costs over more direct forms of legal
70 Policy tools
regulation must be balanced against additional costs to society which
might result from ineffective or inefficient administration of voluntary
standards, especially those related to non-compliance.

Market creation and maintenance

Paradoxically, as it might seem from its title, another form of indi-
rect regulatory instrument used by government is the use of so-called
‘market-based’ instruments (Fligstein 1996). These refer to a particular
type of regulatory tool in which governments establish property rights
frameworks or regimes which then establish various kinds of limits or
prices for certain goods and services and allow market actors to work
within these ‘markets’ to allocate goods and services according to price
signals (Averch 1990).
Such schemes have often been proposed in many areas, especially
in environmental and resource policy, from land and water use and
bio-conservation (ecosystem services) to climate change-related emis-
sions control systems, and have also been used in areas such as fisheries
and taxi services, in the form of individual transferable quotas (ITQs)
or tokens (Townsend et al. 2006). They have also been on prominent
display in recent years in order to control greenhouse gas emissions
through instruments such as the ‘cap and trade’ systems created in the
European Union and other countries associated with the Kyoto Proto-
col and climate change mitigation efforts (Heinmiller 2007).
However, despite much publicity, few of these schemes have been
implemented given the difficulties of setting prices and limits on items
such as pollutants, problems with leakage and poor enforcement in
the system and dangers associated with their failure and the inability
of governments to bear the blame for problems with these systems,
despite their ostensibly arm’s-length character (Stavins 1998). Unlike
traditional regulation, these designs can have higher costs and be less
automatic than expected, and also are very difficult, if not impossible,
to target towards specific actors and groups.

Procedural authoritative instruments

Procedural authority-based instruments typically involve the exercise
of government authority to recognize or provide preferential treatment
or access to certain actors – and hence to fail to recognize others – in
the policy process, or to mandate certain procedural requirements in
the policy-making process in order to ensure it takes certain views or
 Authoritative implementation tools 71
perspectives into account. These instruments perform a wide variety
of functions very often in order to gain support or marginalize policy
opponents but also to ensure certain standards and standard practices
are followed in policy choices.

Policy network activation and mobilization tools

In terms of network management activities, many procedural author-
itative tools are involved largely in the ‘selective activation’ of policy
actors and/or their ‘mobilization’ through the extension of special rec-
ognition in a policy process. The key use of authority is in the extension
of preferential access to decision-makers or regulators for certain views
and actors and not others, or at least to a lesser extent.
These procedural authoritative tools attempt to ensure efficiency
and effectiveness of government actions through activation of policy
actor support. Networks may be structured, for example, through
the creation of various advisory processes, which all rely on the ex-
ercise of government authority to recognize and organize specific
sets of policy actors and give them preferential access to government
officials and decision-makers (Pierre 1998). These include advisory
councils, and many of the ad hoc task forces and inquiries, consul-
tations, and public hearings discussed in the previous chapter. These
are oriented towards extending special authoritative status to certain
societal interests or ‘stakeholders’, that is, those actors with a finan-
cial or some other forms of ‘stake’ in a particular state activity (Hall
and O’Toole 2004).
Phillips and Orsini (2002) list the types of policy process activities
which advisory committees undertake (see Table 4.4).

Table 4.4 A
 ctions undertaken by procedural
authoritative instruments

Problem identification
Mobilizing interest
Spanning and bridging activities
Claims-making
Knowledge acquisition
Convening and deliberating
Community capacity-building
Transparency, evaluation and feedback

Source: Phillips and Orsini (2002).

72 Policy tools
Several distinct types of authoritative network management tools can
be identified in this group. Prominent ones include the following.

Sectoral advisory councils

Advisory councils are the best example of procedural authoritative instru-
ments and are very common in market and corporatist governance arrange-
ments. These are more or less permanent bodies e­ stablished to provide
advice to governments – either political-executive or ­administrative – on
an ongoing basis. They are often established on a sectoral (e.g. industry-
specific such as an automobile trade advisory committee) basis, but
also can be topical (e.g. biomedical ethics) (Brown 1955). These commit-
tees play a major role in many areas, but are especially prominent in areas
of new technologies where they play a significant role in linking govern-
ments to various kinds of expert or ‘epistemic’ communities (Haas 1992).
The archetypal advisory council is a more or less permanent body
used to institutionalize interest group members in government delib-
erations. They are at least partially if not fully co-optive in nature and
intended to align the ideas and actions of the regulated group and the
government ministry to which they are attached. However, they can
also be more standalone and independent sources of expert advice to
governments such as science and technology councils, councils of eco-
nomic advisors and others (Heinrichs 2005).
Smith (1977) and Brown-John (1979) identify eight main types of
advisory committees commonly found in modern liberal-democratic
governments. These are shown in Table 4.5.

Table 4.5 Types of advisory committees

1. General advisory committees – to discuss policy alternatives generated by

government, comment on current policies, examine trends and needs and
suggest alternatives to status quo.
2. Science and technology advisory committees – to provide expert advice
in narrow specialist areas.
3. Special clientele advisory committees – to assist governments to make and
implement policies in special sectors of the economy or society.
4. Research advisory committees – lengthy research oriented to tackle large
questions.
5. Public conferences – e.g. citizens’ assemblies, national forest congresses.
6. Geographic-based advisory committees – to deal with geographic
particularities, e.g. in agriculture.
7. Intergovernmental advisory committees – to coordinate between
government levels.
8. Interdepartmental committees – to achieve vertical and horizontal
coordination in government.

Sources: Smith (1977) and Brown-John (1979).

 Authoritative implementation tools 73
Brown (1955) lists several purposes of such bodies which stress their
network nature (see Table 4.6).

Table 4.6 Purposes of advisory boards

1. Source of advice
2. A source of support for regulators
3. A means of popularizing a regulatory regime
4. A ‘listening post’ for industry and government to listen to each other
5. A means of reaching agreement and resolving conflicts between
government and interests
6. A n agency for special inquiries
7. A device for patronage
8. A set of ambassadors for an administrative agency

Source: Brown (1955).

These boards are generally very inexpensive and almost invisi-

ble. They can be precisely targeted and enhance the automaticity of
­government. They are also viewed, generally, as non-intrusive. As a
result, they have proliferated in all governments in recent years. This
proliferation has led in some countries to the passage of legislation to
control and standardize the number of advisory committees and their
behaviour. The US Advisory Committee Act (1972), for example, spec-
ifies membership and guidelines and standard operating procedures for
these types of committees (see Table 4.7).

Table 4.7 US Advisory Committee Act (1972) criteria

1. Written charter explaining role of committee

2. Timely notice of committee meetings in Federal register
3. Fair and balanced representation on committees
4. Sponsoring agencies prepare minutes of meetings
5. Open committee meetings to the public wherever possible
6. Provide public access to information used by the committee
7. Government given sole authority to convene and adjourn meetings
8. Committees terminated in two years unless renewed or otherwise
provided by statute

Source: Smith (1977).

Public consultation, stakeholder and consensus

conferences
In addition to more permanent bodies, governments can also organize
short-term and long-range mechanisms to provide input and legitimate
government policy-making. Increasingly, the role of the public in these
processes has been expanded to include participation in the design of
74 Policy tools
the consultation process as well as in making policy recommendations
to government. Sometimes mandated by legislation, appropriate levels
of government will often elicit public involvement in administrative
activities such as regulatory monitoring and environmental impact as-
sessment (Leroux et al. 1998).
Abelson et al. (2003) have noted that these participation efforts can
be classified by looking at the procedures, representation and infor-
mation involved and by looking at their outcomes. Key issues in the
design of consultative processes are first who is involved and who is
not (for example, whether elites or the public are involved; or whether
only stakeholders rather than the public, per se, are consulted) and
who makes this determination, for example, government or repre-
sentative groups.
Many of these efforts are structured as ‘stakeholder’ representa-
tive groups, but ‘stakeholder’ is a very poorly defined term. Glicken
(2000: 306), for example, defines it very broadly as: ‘A stakeholder is an
­individual or group influenced by – and with an ability to significantly
impact (either directly or indirectly) – the topical areas of interest’. It is
also critical what resources they have, such as access to funding, staff,
politicians, information or witnesses, and whether or not their recom-
mendations are binding. Dion lists several of these design criteria on
several conjoint continua in Table 4.8.

Table 4.8 Types of public consultation – design criteria

1. From the point of view of publicity: how private and secret these
consultations are, versus public, open and transparent.
2. From the point of view of official status: whether consultations are
unofficial, semi-official or official.
3. From the point of view of origin: whether the consultations are ‘organic’
(traditional) or ‘inorganic’ (imposed).
4. From the point of view of imperiousness: whether participation is
optional or compulsory.

Source: Dion (1973).

These consultations can cover an extraordinarily wide range of

t­opics – from constitutional issues related to voting systems and the like
to much more mundane ones such as city zoning changes. They are
typically organized by government agencies, although in some juris-
dictions, like Australia, consultants specializing in the organization and
delivery of consultation exercises have become much more prominent
in recent years (Hendriks and Carson 2008).
 Authoritative implementation tools 75
Conclusion: regulation – a very flexible instrument
The evolution of regulation as a key policy instrument in the toolbox of
modern government is a well-known story. From the development of
the principle of delegated legislation in the early years of the evolution
of the modern state to the first creation of specialized quasi-judicial in-
dependent regulatory commissions in the United States after the Civil
War, the gradual development of bureaucratic expertise and capacity in
the social and economic realms is a defining characteristic of the legal
and corporatist modes of governance found in many policy sectors and
regulations and regulatory agencies are a central feature in many policy
designs (Scherer 2008).
Debates about the merits of this development continues in many ar-
eas, however, especially those sectors which could be organized along
market lines. For example, a large literature exists on whether or not
regulations serve the public or the private interest (Stigler 1975) and
whether or not they contribute to economic efficiency by correcting
market failures or instead create new government ones (Wolf 1987).
The discussion has generated a plethora of studies about the merits of
particular types of regulation over others, the problems of regulatory
capture and other concerns related to the difficulties of legislative and
judicial oversight of regulatory activities (Gilardi 2002).
The early 1980s was a turning point in this debate on regulation in
many countries, as the idea that regulations were conceived and exe-
cuted solely in the public interest came under heavy attack from a wide
range of critics. Governments led by right-wing politicians in many
countries, like Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in
the UK, but also Labour governments in New Zealand and elsewhere,
further fanned popular sentiment against regulations and put deregula-
tion and the search for alternatives to traditional ‘command and control’
regulation at the centre of policy reform agendas designed to address
declines in productivity, persistent inflation and high unemployment
present at the time (Howlett and Ramesh 2006). Many governments
began at this time to experiment with alternate forms of regulation,
especially ‘voluntary regulation’.
Many ‘deregulation’ measures, however, are commonsense reforms
intended to iron out shortcomings, anomalies and obsolescence in ex-
isting regulations rather than a response to any particular systemic pres-
sure. The nature and extent of problems change, as do solutions available
to deal with them and in many cases regulatory regimes and regulations
have been reformed rather than rescinded. It must also be noted that
at the same time that some deregulation has occurred, re-regulation of
76 Policy tools
many sectors has also taken place. And, as the discussion in this chapter
has shown, an explosion of the use of procedural authoritative imple-
mentation tools has also occurred over this same time period.

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5 Financial implementation
tools

Financial substantive tools are not synonymous with all government

spending, since much of this goes to fund direct service delivery and
also support regulatory agencies (as well as to provide information,
which will be discussed in Chapter 6). Rather, such tools are specific
techniques of governance involved in transferring treasure resources to
or from actors in order to encourage them to undertake some activity
desired by governments through the provision of financial incentives,
or to discourage them through the imposition of financial costs.
Like organizational and authoritative tools, there are many different
permutations of these instruments and mechanisms. In fact, they can be
calibrated down to the decimal point, since they involve the transfer of
money, or goods and services with a calculable dollar value, between
governments and between governments and non-governmental actors
and organizations. And, as such, their exact configuration is virtually
infinite in variety. Nevertheless, like organizational and authority-based
tools, their basic types are few and categorizable according to what kind
of treasure resource they rely upon to extract expected behaviour from
targeted organizations, groups and individuals. Transfers can be either
in cash or tax-based, but also can be made through a wide range of ‘cash
equivalents’, for example, procurement, loans guarantees, insurance or
vouchers, amongst others. Both principal types and some of the many
alternate means are discussed in the chapter.

Substantive financial instruments

The use of treasure resources in policy designs to allow states to obtain
their substantive goals is very common and is compatible with most
modes of governance, especially market-based ones.
Modern ­liberal democratic states spend billions annually on many differ-
ent programmes ranging from healthcare to retirement savings involving
 Financial implementation tools 81
the use of these tools. However, in some areas, such as industrial ­activity,
some efforts have been made in recent years – for example, through
­provisions of free-trade treaties and the like which ban subsidies to busi-
nesses and lower or eliminate import duties– to restrict their use. These
efforts have been only partially successful, though, often resulting in the
transformation of cash-based incentives and disincentives to other forms of
financial tools, rather than their complete abandonment.

Cash-based financial tools

Grants, subsidies and user fees

Haider defines grants as ‘payments in cash or in kind (or charges) to
lower units of government, non-profits or profit-seeking companies,
NGOs (and individuals) to support public purposes’ (Haider 1989: 94).
All substantive grants are subsidies or ‘unearned savings to offset pro-
duction costs’ and are one of the oldest forms of financial tool through
which governments pay companies, organizations or individuals to do
(or not to do – like agricultural subsidies for not growing corn or wheat,
etc.) some (un)desired form of activity (Lybecker and Freeman 2007).
This is the ‘carrot’ in instrument and implementation models based
on the idea of the use of ‘carrots and sticks’ (sticks being regulations or
penalties by governments in their efforts to influence non-­governmental
actors) (Balch 1980). Many, many such schemes exist, from the use of
Feed-in-Tariffs to promote the use of renewable energy supplies such as
solar panels and wind power, to the payment of cash to parents to send
their children to school in various kinds of ‘Conditional Cash Transfers’
or CCTs found in countries from the Philippines to Brazil and Ghana.
User fees are the most straightforward financial disincentive (one of
the ‘sticks’ available to governments), as they, too, simply attempt to
affect target behaviour by increasing the cost of doing some action.
While straightforward in principle, however, in practice, their design
can be quite complex depending on exactly what it is that a government
wishes to accomplish through their imposition, for example, revenue
generation, goods or service rationing or some combination of the two,
and, as pointed out in Chapter 2, how non-governmental actors are
likely to react to such charges (Deber et al. 2008).
These kinds of cash-based tools use the direct transfer of treasure or
fiscal resources from governments to some other actor or vice versa in the
form of monetary payments. They vary along several dimensions. They
can, to cite only a few examples, be large or small, a single instance or
­multi-year in nature, tax deductible (which increases their size) or not,
82 Policy tools
used alone or in combination with other instruments (for instance, in
conjunction with the use of public enterprises in regional development
programmes or regulation in the effort to modernize factories to con-
trol emissions), matched or not by recipients or linked to some other
item (e.g. a per capita grant) (Leeuw 1998). They typically can be very
precisely targeted down to the level of the individual and the individual
firm or plant, and can be very precisely calibrated. They are also quite
visible as they appear in public accounts and are considered to be more
intrusive than information-based tools, but less so than authority- or
­organization-based ones. They can also be designed in such a way as to
enhance their automaticity, although this is more the case with tax- and
royalty-based payments, as discussed in the following section.

Tax- or royalty-based financial instruments

The second main type of substantive treasure-based implementation
instrument involves those which are based not on direct cash transfers,
but rather on indirect transfers mediated through the tax system, or, in
some countries, through the use of royalty systems designed to capture
natural resource rents. These tools are much less visible and often do
not require extensive budgetary approval since they involve not collect-
ing revenues rather than gathering them which often requires explicit
legislative approval. In these systems, a government can forego tax or
royalty income they would otherwise have collected from an individ-
ual, organization or firm, which serves like a subsidy, providing an
incentive to targets to undertake the activity by delivering favourable
tax treatment, or, in the case of tools which increase taxes on certain
kinds of activity, to not undertake that activity or to undertake less of
it (Surrey 1970).

Tax- and royalty-based expenditures

Tax expenditures or ‘tax incentives’ come in many kinds. Maslove
defines them as ‘special provisions in the tax law providing for pre-
ferred treatment and consequently resulting in revenue losses (or gains)’
(Maslove 1979). These can be ‘paid in advance’ and can be carried
forward for numbers of years, and, like cash-based schemes, can be
‘matched’ by other sources of funds, range in size and significance, and
can be used in conjunction with other instruments.
Different subtypes exist depending on ‘where’ government tax reve-
nue is forgone. Tax incentives generally involve deductions from corpo-
rate or personal income, meaning their actual effect on a target group
 Financial implementation tools 83
is determined by the marginal rate of taxation individual persons or
firms must pay. Their effect therefore varies from group to group and
activity to activity. Tax credits, on the other hand, are direct deductions
from taxes owed, not taxable income, and therefore their size is the
same regardless of the tax rates individual taxpayers face. Tax credits are
typically the only ones which can be ‘negative’, in the sense that they
can be used to push a taxpayer’s tax load beyond zero so that a refund
(or real cash transfer) may ensue. However, most tax expenditures will
only push a taxpayer’s taxes to zero, meaning their effect also remains
conditional on the amount of taxes targets pay (Woodside 1979).
These same kinds of schemes can also be developed with transfers
from non-tax-based revenue such as resource royalty payments or other
forms of economic rents. Governments can, for example, promote oil
and gas exploration by allowing energy companies to write off some
portion of their exploration costs against royalties they would otherwise
have to pay when they develop a well.

Excise taxes
Excise taxes are another treasure-based tool, one that acts as a disincen-
tive to individuals, organizations and groups to undertake specific ac-
tions and activities. Cnossen (2005: 2) defines these as ‘all selective taxes
and related levies and charges on goods and services’. They have several
general purposes: (1) to raise revenue for general purposes, (2) to offset
‘external costs’ associated with the activity, like the costs of dealing
with negative health outcomes from smoking, (3) to discourage con-
sumption and (4) to pay for public goods like roads and infrastructure
from freight and shipping taxes and charges.
Raising revenue through taxes is, of course, the oldest technique of
government practised, from taxes placed on road use by the Romans
to the tea tax US colonists rebelled against at the Boston Tea Party
and is exercised by every level of government, from the local to the
­national (Nowlan 1994). Using taxes to offset costs of production – to
pay for pollution clean-up or health consequences of tobacco use in or-
der to correct production or consumption ‘externalities’ like pollution
or carbon emissions which otherwise would be passed onto the general
public – is a much newer form (Pope and Owen 2009). A similar effort
involves the so-called ‘vice taxes’ collected in recent years for activities
such as gambling, alcohol consumption, lotteries or, more frequently in
the present era, various forms of ‘virtuous’ ‘green’ taxes such as those
designed to cover the cost of recycling car batteries or used oil or paint,
returnable bottle deposits or even carbon emissions, all designed to
84 Policy tools
offset the costs of the activities to external actors and society (Cnossen
2005). The use of motor fuel taxes to cover the cost of road construc-
tion or mass transit is an example of using specialized taxes to pay for
public goods.
Such taxes generally discourage the taxed activity by raising its price.
This, of course, can be a mixed blessing for activities such as public tran-
sit, and can often result in unintended consequences for items taxed in
order to raise revenues, both in terms of taxpayer resistance and upset,
and in the unintended encouragement of the increased use of non-taxed
items or substitute goods and services. They are generally inexpensive
to establish, although they require an extensive revenue collection and
enforcement presence to avoid evasion, and can be ­either highly visible,
if added onto prices, or almost invisible, if included with posted prices.
They can be targeted to specific kinds of goods and services and set up
to be highly automated. They are generally considered to be quite in-
trusive by those paying them, however, which is the main reason they
are often excluded from policy designs (Hofmann et al. 2014).

Cash or tax-equivalent financial tools

Both cash and tax or royalty-based transfers are relatively straightfor-
ward examples of tools which provide financial incentives and disincen-
tives to policy actors to undertake or refrain from undertaking specific
activities encouraged or discouraged by governments. However, such
encouragement and discouragement do not always require a direct or
indirect cash transfer. Governments are also able to provide financial
incentives through the much less direct use of their spending powers
to offset costs or provide additional benefits to policy targets. Several
of the more prominent of these tools are discussed in the following
section.

Preferential procurement
Preferential procurement involves the use of government purchases
to subsidize companies or investors which agree to abide by specific
provisions of government contracts. These can extend to preferential
treatment for firms which, for example, employ the disabled or women,
or ethnic or linguistic minorities, but also often extend to special
­favourable treatment for small business, national defence contractors
and regional development schemes in which investors receive govern-
ment contracts if they agree to locate factories or distribution or other
services in specially designated regions (Rolfstam 2009).
 Financial implementation tools 85
Procurement schemes play a major part in efforts by governments
to promote the ‘third sector’ or volunteer community- or group-based
delivery of public services discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 and are often a
part of corporatist governance arrangements (Dollery and Wallis 2003).
In many cases, it may be illegal or unconstitutional for a government
to directly deliver funding to such groups, especially if NGOs have
a religious or ‘faith base’ which can violate constitutional and other
legal limits separating church and state activities (Black et al. 2004).
­However, these groups may still be able to receive favourable treatment
such as in bidding for government contracts, often making procure-
ment an important part of their funding base and a de facto subsidy to
their other religious activities (Carmel and Harlock 2008).
Like direct cash subsidies, many trade agreements attempt to ban
procurement plans which favour national over international suppliers,
but these provisions do not extend to favourable treatment for margin-
alized groups or individuals or companies linked to national defence
and security. Such procurement schemes, of course, by extending fa-
vourable treatment to some contractors, also act as a disincentive to
non-favoured groups and firms which are discouraged from bidding
for contracts and other services to the extent of the subsidy provided
(McCrudden 2004). The main advantage of such forms of subsidy over
other forms of payments is their low visibility profile, which encour-
ages their use. They can be organized in many different ways, from
open-bidding to closed, and involve a variety of clauses and requisites
concerning qualification for them (Bajari and Tadelis 2001).

Favourable insurance and loan guarantees

Insurance or loan guarantees also act as a subsidy to the extent that gov-
ernment backing helps to secure loans, thereby raising the reliability of
borrowers, altering the types of borrowers who might otherwise fail to
qualify for loans or reducing interest payments and charges that individ-
uals and companies would otherwise have to pay (Maslove 1983). Any
difference in cost constitutes a subsidy to the party involved.
Such guarantees are very common in areas such as student loans and
housing, for example, in which governments agree to serve as the guar-
antor of loans to banks which otherwise would reject most students and
applicants as too risky. They are also common in areas such as technological
innovation and export development, whereby a government may provide
insurance to a d­ omestic firm to help it offset the risk of undertaking some
product development activity, or provide a foreign company or govern-
ment with assurance that a contract will be fulfilled by the supplying firm.
86 Policy tools
Some loans can also be made directly to individuals and firms on a
‘conditionally repayable’ basis; that is, whereby a loan turns into a grant
if the conditions are successfully met, for example, in constructing a
factory and operating it for a set period of time. These tools are almost
invisible, can be precisely targeted and are often considered to be less
intrusive than grants and direct cash or tax transfers, making them a
popular choice for policy designs in sectors which governments want
to encourage.

Vouchers for public services

Vouchers are ‘money replacements’ provided by governments to certain
groups in order to allow them to purchase specified goods and services
in specific amounts. These are typically used when a government does
not trust someone to use a cash transfer for its intended purpose, for
example, with vouchers for food (food stamps), child care or welfare
hotel/housing payments.
Some governments like Denmark and Sweden, however, also use these
to provide some freedom of choice for consumers to select particular
kinds of public services (usually education) in order to promote compe-
tition within monopoly provision systems or to allow equitable funding
arrangements between providers based on specific attributes – such as
schools provided by different religious denominations (Klitgaard 2008).
These can lead to grey markets (when food stamps, for example, are sold
at a discount to ‘undeserving’ recipients) and may not improve service de-
livery if there is little choice provided in the supply of goods and services
for which vouchers are issued (Valkama and Bailey 2001). As a result,
although often mooted, vouchers appear only rarely in policy designs.

Sales of state assets at below-market prices

Governments can also sell off or ‘rent out’ certain items – from the TV
and radio spectrum to old or surplus equipment, buildings and land
and resources (Sunnevag 2000). If prices are set below market rates,
then this is a subsidy to investors and businesses. Many privatizations
of formerly state-owned firms in collapsed socialist countries in the
1990s, for example, involved this kind of sale, including for lucrative
mineral and oil and gas rights, which made billions of dollars for the
many former officials who were favoured in these deals. Given the costs
involved, and their generally high profile, however, this tool also does
not feature very often in policy designs in countries which are stable
and solvent.
 Financial implementation tools 87
Procedural financial instruments
Treasure resources, of course, like organizational and authoritative
ones, can also be used to alter the nature of policy processes. Procedural
financial tools are generally used to attempt to alter or control aspects of
the interest articulation and aggregation systems in contemporary states
by creating or encouraging the formation of associations and groups
where this activity might not otherwise occur, or, more prosaically, by
rewarding government friends and punishing enemies through various
kinds of payment schemes or penalties.
Phillip Schmitter, in his comparative studies of European systems,
argued that the interest articulation systems in different countries form
a spectrum, ranging from ‘free market’, ‘competitive’ pluralism to
‘state-sponsored oligarchic corporatism’ (see Figure 5.1). In Schmitter’s
(1977) view, pluralism is a system of interest articulation in which in-
terest groups are ‘free-forming’, have voluntary membership and are
multiple and non-monopolistic/competitive. That is, more than one
group can represent individual members.
Corporatist regimes are the opposite – they require state licencing,
have compulsory membership and are monopolistic. Corporatism was
the official mode of social organization in pre-World War II fascist
countries, however, and in order to avoid this association and conno-
tation, modern studies tend to use the term ‘neocorporatism’ to dis-
tinguish modern forms of (liberal-democratic) corporatism found in
states such as Austria or Sweden, from older ones – though examples
also exist of this form in liberal-democratic states in crises, such as
during wartime or during the Rooseveltian New Deal in the United
States. Other variants also exist, for example, ­consociationalism –
where corporatist systems exist but divisions are on ethnic or reli-
gious grounds (Atkinson and Coleman 1992). Until recently, interest
mobilization and representation in North America was thought to be
largely pluralist whereby it was argued that interest group formation
was a quasi-automatic, ‘naturalistic process’ in which state activity
was minimal. The empirical basis for this assessment, however, was
lacking (Walker 1991).

Pluralism Neo-pluralism Societal Corporatism State Corporatism

(Freely associational) (State sanctioned)

Figure 5.1 Spectrum of interest articulation systems.

Source: Schmitter (1977).
88 Policy tools
Olson’s (1965) view of the ‘collective action problems’ interest
groups face in these different governance contexts is an important
insight helpful to understanding the rationales for the government use
of procedural financial instrument in these situations. Olson argued
that in any political system, some individuals have fewer incentives
and more disincentives to form and join interest groups than others –
for example, someone benefitting from some proposed government
action might have a stronger motivation to lobby for it, than would
someone who stood neither to gain nor suffer from it. As a result,
in a ‘free association’ system, there would be a tendency for specific
affected interests – for example, businesses negatively affected by
­regulation – to form groups and pressure governments, while other more
general interests – for example, to retain tough environmental stand-
ards on industry – would be poorly represented. Due to this unequal
distribution of the costs and benefits of political action in many issue
areas in pluralist systems, ‘general interest’ groups are thought to be
unlikely to form, or if they did, would be quickly captured by ‘special
interests’ who had more to gain from their existence and activities
(Strolovitch 2006).
Governments, however, can play a major, though little studied, role
even in pluralist countries in affecting this general pattern of inter-
est group behaviour by either encouraging or discouraging interest
group formation and activity (Toke 2000). These activities are little
publicized, but quite common. Governments can do this, for exam-
ple, by creating (or not) systems of associational rights which allow
groups to form, using their actions and resources to publicize events and
­issues, and providing funds for the creation and maintenance of groups.
­Procedural financial implementation tools are key ones used to affect
these kinds of interest group system behaviour.
These tools generally fall into two types, those which are used to
create or help support the formation of interest groups and those which
help to activate or mobilize them. The former can be thought as ‘net-
work creation tools’, while the latter can be considered as ‘network
mobilization tools’.

Financial policy network creation tools

Although their activities in this domain are often hidden from
view, governments are very often actively involved in the creation
and organization of policy networks. An important activity is the
use of government financial resources either to create the organiza-
tions which go into the establishment of a policy network – research
 Financial implementation tools 89
institutes, think tanks, government departments and the like – or to
­facilitate the interaction of already existing but separate units into a
more coherent network structure (Hudson et al. 2007).
Funding is very often provided to think tanks and other policy re-
search units and brokers by governments, either in the form of direct
funding or as contracts (Rich 2004). More controversial, however, and
at the same time not very well understood, is the role governments play
in funding interest groups (Anheier et al. 1997).

Interest group creation

Provision of seed money is a key factor in interest group creation (Nownes
2004). King (1991), for example, found that the percentage of groups that
received aid from outside groups in startups in the United States was 34
per cent for profit sector groups, 60 per cent for non-profit and 89 per cent
for citizens’ groups. Nownes and Neeley (1996) surveyed 121 national pub-
lic interest groups in the USA in the mid-1990s, and uncovered a pattern
of extensive foundation support in terms of how their origin was financed
(Table 5.1). While this survey revealed little direct government involve-
ment, it did show that foundations provided a large percentage of the fund-
ing for pressure group creation, and since these operate under special tax
treatment in the USA, this gives the US federal government a substantial
indirect role in interest group creation in that country (Lowry 1999).

Table 5.1 A
 verage percentage of ‘seed money’ obtained by groups from each
source by group type

Type of group (%)

Source Patronage Societal Personal Splinter Generic

disturbance disturbance entrepreneurial

Foundations 38 38 0 23 19
The government 0 0 0 0 0
Corporations 0 1 17 3 2
Other
Associations 32 11 3 0 2
Individuals 19 18 3 28 29
Personal funds 0 31 60 43 43
Othera 11 1 17 3 5
Total 100 100 100 100 100
n 10 12 6 16 16

Source: Nownes and Neeley (1996).

a
Includes loans, merchandise sales, fees for service and special events.
90 Policy tools
In other countries however, a much more direct role is played by
governments, sometimes also accompanied by a substantial indirect
role through foundations, but sometimes not. In Canada, for example,
Pal (1993) noted that many of the prominent national interest groups in
specific sectors, such as the Canadian Day Care Advocacy Association,
the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities among Women
and the Canadian Ethnocultural Council, emerged from conferences
and workshops organized by federal government departments in the
1980s and the 1990s and benefited from favorable treatment of dona-
tions as charitable or otherwise tax deductible expenses. Similar results
can be found in many other jurisdictions. This activity is generally
low profile and inexpensive, but can be considered intrusive and is not
all that easily targeted, making it a less popular instrument in policy
designs than network mobilization (see below). However, where in-
terest groups do not exist, governments may have little choice but to
facilitate their creation if they wish to ensure representation of these
interests and viewpoints.

Financial network mobilization tools

A second key type of activity undertaken by governments through the
use of procedural financial policy tools relates less to the creation of new
groups and networks than to the reorientation of older, already exist-
ing ones. Again, in the case of think tanks and other such actors, this
can be accomplished through various forms of government contracting
and procurement, notably consulting and commissioning (discussed in
Chapter 3 above) (Howlett and Migone 2013). A significant target for
this kind of funding is interest groups.

Interest group alteration/manipulation/co-optation

Cash funds or the tax system are used in many countries to alter inter-
est group behaviour. The aim may be simply to neutralize or co-opt
a vocal opponent of government (Kash 2008), but can also be a more
broad-based effort to ‘even out the playing field’ for groups which lack
the kinds of resources available to other groups (such as business) to mo-
bilize and pressure governments to adopt policies of which they approve
(Furlong and Kerwin 2004).
Most business groups, as well as many others, prefer ‘insider action’
and only revert to ‘outside agitation’ in order to attract new mem-
bers in a competitive situation with other groups (Binderkrantz 2005).
­Designing these programmes can therefore be quite complex (Phillips
 Financial implementation tools 91
and Hebb 2010). Governments often use this tool to counterbalance, for
example, extensive lobbying on the part of business interests.
This has been going on for some time although in the overall scheme
of things it is relatively new. In the USA, for example, Lowry (1999)
found that two main types of foundations exist – company-sponsored
and independent – and both take active roles not only in interest
group creation (discussed above) but also in funding interest group
­activities on a one-off or continual basis. In the United States, in 1992,
for example, he uncovered 463 grants made by 37 company founda-
tions and 125 independent foundations just to environmental groups,
$32.6 million from independent foundations versus only $1.5 million
from company-sponsored foundations. Again, given the favourable tax
treatment foundations enjoy in the USA, this gives the US govern-
ment a substantial indirect role in interest group activity as well as
their creation.
In other countries, as with interest group creation, foundations are
less important, and governments instead provide ‘sustaining’ funding
after groups are created. Stanbury (1993), for example, examined the
Canadian federal public accounts as early as 1986–87, and found 17
federal departments gave $185 million to over 500 groups (excluding
non-policy groups like those providing shelters for battered women).
Over 50 organizations in Stanbury’s sample were funded by a single
federal agency – the Federal Secretary of State – mainly in the area of
multiculturalism.
­ ederal Sec-
Similarly, Pal found a total of $80 million going from the F
retary of State to minority language groups over the period 1970–82,
$50 million in 1978–82 alone, while multicultural groups received
over $125 million from 1976 to 1988 and $94 million in 1983 to 1988.
­Women’s programmes received $63 from 1973 to 1988 and $46 m ­ illion
over 1984 to 1988 (Stasiulis 1988). Phillips (1991) found the Federal
Secretary of State to have spent $130 million over much the same
period on over 3,000 groups, with five major areas accounting for
about one-third of all recipients: 337 groups for official languages, 457
­women’s groups, 195 disabled groups, 160 aboriginal groups and 175
multicultural groups.
One hundred and sixty of these groups were defined only as ‘public
interest groups’ (or classical pressure groups) and received $24 million
from federal departments alone that year. Burt (1990) similarly surveyed
the sources of funding received by 144 women’s groups (24 per cent of
the estimated 686 such groups in Canada at the time) in the early 1980s,
and found the government was the single largest donor by far for most
types of groups, far outstripping membership dues (see Table 5.2).
92 Policy tools
Table 5.2 Source of funding for women’s groups (Canada)

Type of group (%)

Most important source of funds Traditional Status of women Service Shelter

Government 33 40 38 52
Dues 8 20 9 0
Fund-raising 17 7 2 11
Other n/a 42 33 51 37
100 100 100 100

Source: Burt (1990).

Similarly, in Europe, Mahoney and Beckstrand (2009) identified

1,164 civil society groups that received funding from the European
Commission in 2003–7. They shared in 120 million euros of funding
at the EU level and another 75 million in international-, national- and
subnational-level funding. These were primarily groups operating at
the EU level in areas such as youth, sports, education and cultural ac-
tivities in support of the EC mandate to develop a supra-national EU
identity and civil society.
This kind of funding is almost invisible, can be precisely targeted
and, although often considered intrusive, is quite common. As such it is
a growing area and a prominent feature of many contemporary policy
designs.

Conclusion: treasure – an effective but depletable

resource
The use of financial resources is one of the oldest forms of government
activity and instrument use. The use of substantive treasure-based im-
plementation instruments is quite common in many policy designs, and
in terms of size and impact, almost is as significant as direct government
service delivery or regulation.
The use of this resource, as Hood (1986) noted, however, is some-
times restricted by a lack of treasure resources, either because a coun-
try is poor and simply cannot generate revenue or, as has happened
in jurisdictions like California, for example, because of various meas-
ures which prevent or limit government access to substantial taxpayer
wealth. However, notwithstanding these limitations, in general, all
governments spend considerable sums encouraging certain activities
and discouraging others through the use of various kinds of fiscal and
monetary tools and techniques. An important trend in this area, noted
 Financial implementation tools 93
by Howard (1997), is towards the increased use of tax-based incentives
rather than subsidies. This is due to a number of reasons, including the
anti-subsidy trade treaties cited above, but often reflects concerns with
and preferences for (in)visibility and automaticity in designs.
As for procedural financial tool uses, as mentioned earlier, the use
of these techniques is also increasing at a substantial rate. Although the
exact mechanisms used vary from country to country, such as the use
of indirect foundations in the USA, compared to more direct govern-
ment allocations in many other jurisdictions, these tools are an under-­
studied and little-examined, but nonetheless critical, component of
many ­policy designs.

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6 Information-based
implementation tools

Information-based tools are those based on the last of the four categories
of resources set out by Hood (1986): ‘nodality’ or ‘centrality’ or, as defined
in Chapter 1, involved in communicating ‘knowledge’ or ‘­information’
to target groups or collecting it from them in the ­expectation that this
will alter their behaviour or better inform ­government policy-making.
These are the ‘sermon’ in the ‘carrots, sticks and sermons’ formulation
of policy instruments, alongside the ‘carrot’ of financial tools and the
‘stick’ or authority-based ones.
As Evert Vedung defines them, information-based policy tools are
‘efforts to use the knowledge and data available to governments to
­influence consumer and producer behaviour in a direction consistent
with government aims and wishes and/or gather information in order
to further their aims and ambitions’ (Vedung and van der Doelen 1998).
Exactly what is meant by the term ‘information’ or ‘communica-
tion’ varies from author to author, ranging from its association with
all forms of political activity to a very specific focus on one type of
action, like public service or political advertising (Firestone 1970). It is
also important to note that many new communication practices have
emerged in recent years, at least in part due to the development of new
information technologies, notably computerization, the internet and
the rise of social media, which have broadened the range and menu
of government nodality tools (Feldman and Khademian 2007). These
include the development and use of instruments which promote citizen
empowerment such as freedom of information (FOI) legislation, the use
of public performance measures, various forms of e- or ‘digital’ gov-
ernment and the increased use of government surveys and advertising
including in the use of platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, amongst
others (Margetts and Sutcliffe 2013).
And this definition, while useful, is limited in that it conceals or
elides the two different general purposes to which these resources can
98 Policy tools
be put. These are the familiar procedural versus substantive distinction
used throughout this book – whether these activities are intended to
serve as devices primarily oriented towards the manipulation of the
behaviour of policy actors in policy processes or as social and economic
ones involved in and affecting the production, distribution and con-
sumption of different types of goods and services ( Jahn et al. 2005).
Disentangling the two is necessary in order to provide a clearer analysis
of the role each plays in policy designs.

Substantive informational instruments

Following Vedung’s lead, we can define substantive government com-
munication policy instruments as those policy techniques or mecha-
nisms which rely on the use of information to directly or indirectly
affect the behaviour of those involved in the production, consumption
and distribution of different kinds of goods and services in society. As
Hood (1986) noted, these kinds of tools can be targeted at different levels
of society – individuals, groups and populations as a whole and accord-
ing to whether they are intended to collect or disseminate information.
The most high profile and thus most commonly observed and chron-
icled type of substantive implementation tool is the instrument focused
on the effort to alter consumer behaviour: the government information
campaign (Hornik 1989). This includes various campaigns waged by
governments to encourage citizens to, for example, eat well, drink
less, exercize more and generally engage in fewer vices and otherwise
­behave more responsibly, which are common in many countries. Com-
munication activities aimed at altering producer behaviour through
provision of product and process information to customers (labelling and
product information) are also very prominent ( Jahn et al. 2005).

Information dissemination tools

Information dissemination tools like public service advertising are
classic ‘persuasion instruments’ and are the most studied substantive
­information-based implementation tools. Adler and Pittle define these in-
struments as those ‘persuasion schemes [which] convey messages which
may or may not contain factual information which overtly seek to m ­ otivate
target audiences to modify their behaviour’ (Adler and Pittle 1984: 160).
These tools are used often, as they are fairly inexpensive. However, they
remain controversial, as the line between communications and intrusive
propaganda is one which is easily blurred and, like all advertizing of any
kind, their effectiveness is difficult to gauge (Gelders and Ihlen 2010).
 Information-based implementation tools 99
Exhortation and moral suasion
The most prominent type of substantive information tool designed to
persuade is the appeal from political leaders to various social actors,
urging them to follow a government’s lead in some area of social or
economic life. Stanbury and Fulton (1984) provide a list of ‘exhortation’
and ‘moral suasion’ activities, which include ‘pure political leadership
such as appeals for calm, better behaviour, high principles and whereby
voluntary action is urged under threat of coercion if refused’ (304).
Such forms of ‘moral suasion’ are often specifically aimed or t­ argeted
at individual producers or sectors and are typically used within the con-
text of an already existing regulatory regime. These can help govern-
ments regulate a variety of activities without necessarily creating new
legal instruments in order to do so. Many countries, for example, ad-
minister important aspects of their financial systems in this fashion, ask-
ing banks, taxpayers and other financial institutions to act in a c­ ertain
way (e.g. keep interest rates low, or allow certain groups to borrow
funds, or not engage in risky lending or borrowing behaviour), with
the implicit or explicit threat of direct government regulation if such
requests are ignored or go unfulfilled (Bardach 1989). Government
­requests are often very focused and can be quite secretive (for example,
in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 airline hijackings when the US
government urged credit card companies to provide records of suspi-
cious activities by suspected hijackers and most complied).

Information campaigns
Mass media and targeted information campaigns, on the other hand, are
much more visible, by definition, and tend to be aimed less at producers
than at consumers (Hornik 1989). Adler and Pittle (1984) describe these
tools as ‘notification instruments’ which ‘convey factual information to
the intelligent target. Implicit in the notification approach is the belief that
the target, once apprised of the facts, will make the appropriate decision’.
Some notification tools do attempt to be purely factual, ongoing and
passive in nature, such as nutritional labelling on foodstuffs or health
warnings on cigarettes (Padberg 1992; Baksi and Bose 2007). They
are usually enacted in regulations (i.e. disclosure is mandatory) and are
aimed at providing information to consumers allowing them to make
better decisions, or overcome information asymmetries between pro-
ducers and consumers, with the expectation that consumers will change
their behaviour in some way consistent with government goals – for
­example, reducing smoking, exercising more or eating nutritional foods
100 Policy tools
rather than snacks ( Jahn et al. 2005). Although the evidence of the ef-
fectiveness of such campaigns is mixed (Mann and Wustemann 2010;
Barreiro-Hurlé et al. 2010), this has not dampened their growth.
Other information campaigns are more active and less factual, but
have the same intent, that is, providing social actors with more infor-
mation about aspects of their behaviour and its advantageous or dele-
terious quality, urging enhancement of the former and diminishment
of the latter. The information transmitted through such information
instruments is not always so factual, however, but can be used to ‘sell’ a
government’s policies in the same way that other products are marketed
(Rothschild 1979). Such campaigns are often conducted at the mass
level and use a variety of mass-media delivery mechanisms (commer-
cials, broadcasts, newspaper and social media advertisements and the
like). High-profile campaigns in many countries to prevent drinking
and driving or those that encourage the purchase of war bonds during
wartime are good examples of the use of this kind of instrument.
This kind of mass campaign began with the emergence of mass me-
dia and is now common in most countries, including in most cases
an extensive ­social media component. Many national governments are
now the largest purchasers of advertising in their countries and far out-
strip national brands well known for their advertising overkill, such
as alcoholic beverage, soft drink companies as well as fast food chains.
The federal government of Canada, for example, has been the larg-
est advertiser in the country since 1976 (Stanbury et al. 1983), with
the larger provincial governments in the top ten as well. Ryan (1995)
noted that federal advertising expanded from $3.4 million in 1968, to
$106.5 ­m illion in 1992, a 3,000 per cent increase. Even inflation ad-
justed this amounted to a 665 per cent increase in 25 years.
Although they can be costly, such campaigns are generally less expen-
sive than many other alternatives, although the costs of non-­compliance
must also be taken into account (Pellikaan and van der Veen 2002).
Generally, governments will tend to include information tools and
­government communications in policy designs only when:

1 100 per cent compliance is not required for a policy to be effective,

2 government and public interests coincide (e.g. on health awareness)
so that government appeals are likely to be favourably received and
3 a relatively short-term crisis situation exists when other tools may
require too much lead time to be effective; where
4 it is otherwise difficult to impose sanctions and where
5 the issue in question is not very complex (technological or legal) in na-
ture but can be reduced to the level of advertising slogans (Rose 1993)
 Information-based implementation tools 101
Nudges and information-based choice architectures
In recent years, much attention has been paid to another similar use
of information provision as a governing tool which operates on a less
conscious basis. Growth in this kind of tool use has occurred largely as
a result of work in psychology and behavioural economics which has
identified and promoted the use of different kinds of ‘nudges’ or cues
to encourage or discourage certain kinds of behaviour, mainly in indi-
viduals and most often on a semi- or sub-conscious level (Thaler and
Sunstein2009). These cues are more subtle than traditional information
and media-based campaigns, and are often targeted at the unconscious
or semi-conscious level of individual behaviour or what has been called
“system 1” thinking (“fast, emotional, semi-rational thinking to dis-
tinguish it from more deliberative and rational ‘system 2’” thinking
(Kahneman 2013). These can include such micro-level interventions as
changing the default opt-in on organ donation forms to a default opt-
out for example, or painting walking path lines in subway stations that
lead to stairs rather than escalators in order to encourage exercise.
Sunstein (2015) identified ten important types of such “nudges”.
They are all efforts to alter citizen behaviour by altering the informa-
tional environment in which they operate through activation of ‘system
1’ or quasi-automatic cognitive responses. These include:

i Changing default rules such as making people opt out rather than
in to some scheme,
ii Simplification of the options presented to individuals, such as a
shortened contract,
iii Use of social norms to encourage people to conform to certain
practices, such as not littering or jaywalking,
iv Increases in ease and convenience such as making bike paths and
exercise areas common and easily accessible,
v Disclosure, that is, mandating the provision of certain kinds of in-
formation, like the real interest rate charged to credit card debt,
vi Warnings, graphic or otherwise, to discourage behaviour, such as
mandatory pictures of cancer victims on cigarette packages,
vii Pre-commitment strategies such as the provision of peer-supported
anti-obesity or alcoholism support groups such as Weight Watchers
or Alcoholics Anonymous,
viii Reminders of important activities such as children’s dental ap-
pointment or vaccination schedules,
ix Eliciting implementation intentions through various campaigns
such as voter registration drives or pension planning and
102 Policy tools
x Informing people of the nature and consequences of their own past
choices such as informing them of the amount they have spent on
electricity in past months or years on their current bill.

Many of these items deal with the design of bills, forms or mailings
of various kinds and are intended to provide use and cost information
about their behaviour to consumers, which might otherwise be difficult
or impossible for them to collect and which might alter their behaviour,
such as revealing what is their water or electricity use compared to their
neighbours.
Although the idea of ‘nudging’ received a surge of attention in recent
years, the effectiveness of such measures remains unclear as does their
application. Evidence suggests, for example, that they may have a role to
play in solving large-scale policy issues such as energy conservation but
only when they are exercised in tandem with other policy tools such
as financial incentives or penalties (Schubert 2017). And their impact
appears to vary by country and target population.
Moreover, there may be an unintended ‘behavioural spillover’ of
nudges (Galizzi 2014). That is, there is a risk of infantilizing and dimin-
ishing people’s autonomous decision-making capacities by constantly
manipulating them, as happened often in the business world around,
for example, multiple subtle changes to mobile phone plans. They are
also subject to diminishing returns and also to a concern regarding the
potential for abuse in the use of nudging to shape people’s choices in
pro-government ways (Hausman and Welch 2010). Governments may
also be unable to counter ‘nudge’-style tactics employed by private mar-
ket institutions which, for ­example, encourage people to spend rather
than save, or smoke or gamble rather than abstain, to name only a few.
Hagman et al. (2015) also find significant differences in the receptive-
ness of different populations to nudging activity. They find a high de-
gree of acceptance towards ‘nudge’ policies among a sample ­population
drawn from Sweden and the United States, but also a majority of the
respondents perceiving such policies to be intrusive to their ­freedom of
choice. Policies that the researchers classified as pro-social (i.e. focusing
on social welfare) had a significantly lower acceptance rate compared
to pro-self nudge policies (i.e. focusing on private w ­ elfare). In addition,
‘overt’ nudges, that is, those that target conscious, higher-­order cogni-
tive processes of ­decision-making were preferred by people over ‘cov-
ert’ nudges (i.e. those that target subconscious, lower-order processes of
decision-making). (Felsen et al. 2013).
Regardless of the information-based behavioural tool being em-
ployed, whether a nudge, shove or budge, in cases where incentives for
 Information-based implementation tools 103
non-compliance are high, such information-based tools may be u­ nlikely
to secure compliance by themselves. In such cases, policy-makers need
to think about both the barriers that may be preventing compliance and
how to match a variety of policy tools to the most important barriers,
taking into account the heterogeneity within the given population in
terms of their receptiveness to different tool uses.

Information and knowledge collection tools

Information collection is the key to many and better policies (Nutley
et al. 2007), and many implementation instruments exist to collect infor-
mation for governments and can contribute to enhanced ‘evidence-based’
policy-making. This extends to the use of licensing provisions in which
information may be collected before or after a licence is granted, but can
also involve the use of research and generation of new policy-relevant
knowledge through special forums such as inquiries and commissions.

Inquiries and commissions

One fairly common and high-profile means by which governments col-
lect information is the use of official inquiries such as a judicial inquiry
or executive commission. As discussed in previous chapters, these exist
on a spectrum depending on their relationship to government agen-
cies and according to their functions. Some inquiries and task forces
are largely internal to government and intended to mobilize network
­actors. Other kinds of commissions, however, are designed primarily to
collect information (Rowe and McAllister 2006).
Many judicial inquiries fall into this category and have a great deal of
autonomy from governments. They are a common feature of many gov-
ernments and enjoy a variety of different relationships with their commis-
sioners. Presidential and royal commissions, for example, are ­independent
and autonomous, although they still depend on government for budgets
and resources. Others are less ‘arms-length’ and expected to report back to
specific agencies on specific subjects, with no guarantee that their reports
will ever be released to the public. All of these devices can be used to sum-
marize existing knowledge or generate new data on a subject (Sheriff 1983).

Statistical agencies and units

Another such information collection and dissemination tool is the use
of statistical agencies which are specifically tasked with collecting data
on a wide variety of social activities of individuals, groups and firms.
104 Policy tools
These typically operate using internationally recognized standards for
classifying these activities and may rely more or less heavily on volun-
tary disclosure of information. These agencies may conduct surveys on
specialized topics and/or periodic censuses of national or subnational
populations (Anderson and Whitford 2018).
This information is often used to determine such factors as the level
of per capita grants transferred between governments, or the num-
ber and types of hospitals and medical facilities which should be built
and where these, and other public institutions like schools and offices,
should be located. National and other-level statistical agencies are ex-
pensive to establish and maintain, but once in operation, they can be
used to collect information on many subjects at relatively low cost and
often provide otherwise very hard-to-collect information to the public
as well as governments through, for example, time series databases on a
wide range of issues from housing to consumer savings rates.

Surveys and polling

In many countries, governments are now the largest purchasers of sur-
veys (Hastak et al. 2001), and many government agencies now under-
take surveys on a regular basis, as environmental scans both in order
to try to anticipate issues, and in order to determine public opinion
on agency performance (Rothmayr and Hardmeier 2002; Page 2006).
These include activities from in-person focus groups to traditional tele-
phone surveys to various kinds of topic modeling and sentiment analysis
linked to social media use. Governments are major users of all of these
media and techniques and use the information collected both to alter
and inform their policy designs and improve their implementation.

Procedural informational instruments

In order to pursue their preferred policy initiatives, governments can also
use procedural tools based on government information resources in or-
der to attempt to alter the behaviour of policy actors involved in policy-
making processes, just as they attempt to alter consumer and producer
behaviour through the employment of substantive ­information-based
tools (Burris et al. 2005).
Information-based procedural implementation tools are those
­designed to affect policy processes in a way consistent with govern-
ment aims and ambitions through the control and selective provision of
­information. These are ‘nodality’ instruments, as Hood (1986) noted,
because the information exchanged is valuable largely as a function of
 Information-based implementation tools 105
the government’s position as a key nodal link in a policy network. Some
of these efforts are aimed at promoting information release, while oth-
ers are aimed at preventing it.
Both European and American studies have found that governments have
increasingly employed a variety of these procedural information-based
instruments to indirectly affect the outcomes of the policy process in
ways that are consistent with their aims and objectives ( ­Johansson and
Borell 1999). The most commonly observed and chronicled category of
­procedural tool is the type which focuses on the use of general information
prevention or disclosure laws and other tools – such as access to information
laws – in order to provide policy network actors with the knowledge
required to effectively filter and focus their demands on government for
new policy measures or reforms to older ones. However, governments are
also very much involved in the use of communications on government
websites and through other means (Hood and Margetts 2007) to provide
additional information to policy network members in specific sectoral or
issue areas in order to both enhance their credibility and effectiveness but
also to promote specific kinds of policy-making such as evidence-based
rather than pure advocacy activity.

Information release tools

Stanbury and Fulton (1984) describe two common types of proce-
dural information release or disclosure tools: information disclosure (for
example, through formal freedom of information and privacy laws)
and consultation/co-optation tools, like public hearings, the discreet use of
confidential information such as planned leaks to the press or planned
public disclosure of government intentions.

Freedom of information and E- or digital government

legislation and other initiatives
FOI provisions allow access to an individual’s own records and those of
others – with numerous exemptions to protect, for example, trade secrets,
individual privacy or national security. Many of these exemptions are
benign (to protect other individuals from unnecessary disclosure) and
allowing access to documents and records of others – with numerous
­exemptions – again many benign and intended to protect individuals from
unnecessary disclosure. These legislative arrangements were a feature of
the centuries-old Scandinavian ombudsman system of administrative
control, for example, which attempted to provide information to citizens
on what a government was doing and then also provide a specialized
106 Policy tools
office – the ombudsman – to allow citizens to pursue complaints based
on that information. These were introduced in many other countries in
the 1970s and the 1980s (Bennett and Raab 2003) and are sometimes
accompanied by ‘whistleblower’ acts, that is, bills intended to protect
people who speak out about problems in the government’s bureaucracy.
Through such legislation, bureaucrats and employees are often offered
legal protection against reprisals for reporting government wrongdoing.
Both represent popular forms of procedural information tool design.
Various kinds of open data and e-government projects, often referred
to collectively as ‘digital government’, which move previously in-­
person service delivery online, also often have an information release
component to them, collecting data on users or providing additional
venues for users to obtain information on government programmes and
other options which can help to better inform their policy delibera-
tions, evaluations and discourses (Clarke et al. 2017).

Information release prevention tools

There is also a wide range of these kinds of tools designed to protect
certain kinds of information on government activities or in government
files and prevent its distribution to the public. These include protecting
not only information collected by governments but that which comes
into their possession (for example, from a foreign government or via
documents filed in court cases, and the like). These range from bans
on political parties and speech such as hate crimes legislation, to official
secrets acts with various levels of confidentiality and penalties imposed
for publicizing or releasing government secrets, especially, but not exclu-
sively, around areas such as national security. These kinds of tools exist
in every policy domain and are included in or effect every policy design.

Censorship
This has occurred in many countries during wartime but also in
­peacetime, for example, as media, film or theatre censorship. This latter
use has been slowly whittled away in most advanced countries, as indi-
vidual rights in democratic states have been ruled to trump government
or collective ones, but wartime prohibitions of this kind remain very
common (Qualter 1985).

Official secrets acts

Official secrets acts are a replacement for censorship in many areas of
government activity. They are often the most important statute relating
 Information-based implementation tools 107
to national security in many countries and are designed to prohibit and
control access to, and the disclosure of, sensitive government informa-
tion (Pasquier and Villeneuve 2007). Offences tend to cover ­espionage
and leakage of government information. The term ‘official secret’ varies
dramatically in meaning from country to country, but, broadly, ­a llows
governments to classify documents and prohibit release of different
­categories for sometimes very long periods (e.g. 50–75 years) if not for-
ever. All countries have some form of official secrecy, although the
legislative and executive basis for such laws varies quite dramatically
between countries.

Privacy and data protection acts

These acts exist in many jurisdictions as a counterpoint to access to
information laws in which various types of personally specific infor-
mation is excluded from such acts. Some jurisdictions have specific
­legislation devoted to this subject, usually with a focus on protecting
personal information in areas such as health, financial or tax matters
and with respect to criminal proceedings (Bennett and Raab 2003).
These instruments are also quite varied, but, in general, it is fair to
say that restricting information is low cost to initiate, but high cost to
monitor and maintain, while the reverse is true of information disclo-
sure. In terms of targeting, it is true of both sets of instruments that it
is very difficult to target either secrecy or disclosure on specific groups.
As a result, these actions are typically more difficult to set up and take
more time and effort than is often thought to be the case, although
they remain a frequent component of many policy designs especially in
­sensitive areas such as health.

Conclusion: information – cost-efficient

but often ineffective
As has been described earlier, there are many different kinds of gov-
ernment communication and information activities, and in the past
the lack of an effective taxonomy or framework for their analysis has
made generalizing about their impact and patterns of use quite difficult.
­Describing information-based policy tools in the terms set out earlier
helps to highlight the similarities and differences between different
instruments and helps develop a relatively parsimonious classification
of their major types which can facilitate national and cross-national
­studies of their use and impact.
Information dissemination activities remain relatively low cost in terms
of financial and personnel outlays, but compliance is a major issue and, as
108 Policy tools
in all advertising activities, evaluating the impact of these campaigns is
very uncertain (Salmon 1989a, b). Adler and Pittle (1984: 161), for exam-
ple, found ‘many of these programs require more careful planning, larger
expenditures and longer implementation periods than they usually receive’.
The assumption that greater knowledge always equals greater
­compliance with government aims, for example, is not always the case.
Alcoholism and drug abuse, for instance, are complex problems that
are not ‘rational’ in the sense that individuals continue to consume or
engage in them while knowing fullwell their destructive attributes (so-
called ‘demerit goods’) (Weiss and Tschirhart 1994) and greater knowl-
edge may not affect or alter behaviour in such cases.
Thus, while it may be the dream of many governments that sim-
ply monitoring and communicating with people will accomplish all of
their ends, this is not usually the case. The benefits to government in
using such tools, including the more recently described ‘nudges’ and
‘choice architectures’ they deploy, may thus be much lower than antici-
pated if such a high visibility instrument is perceived to have failed and
the blame for a continuing policy problem is focused squarely on gov-
ernments (Hood 2007). Such considerations are a prominent feature in
the design of policy alternatives envisioning the use of such tools, often
resulting in their use in combination with other tools rather than as the
sole tool deployed in a policy area of interest.

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Part III

Principles for designing

policies and programmes
7 Assembling and evaluating
an effective policy design

As was pointed out in the Introduction to this book, the pioneers of

policy design research in the 1980s and the 1990s argued that like other
kinds of design activities in fields such as manufacturing and construc-
tion, policy design involves (1) knowledge of the basic building blocks
or materials with which actors must work in constructing a (policy)
­object, (2) knowledge of the construction process itself and (3) the elab-
oration of a set of principles regarding how materials should be com-
bined in that construction (Schon 1984). A superior policy design, then,
is, at least in part, a matter of determining the parameters of a given
policy situation and of matching the needs for action, with the supply of
tools available, tasks which can be done well (‘good’ design) or poorly
(‘poor’ design).
In a policy context, this means understanding the kinds of imple-
mentation tools governments have at their disposal in attempting to
alter some aspect of society and societal behaviour set out in Chapters
3–6 and elaborating a set of principles concerning which instruments
should be used in which circumstances. It is to the second and third task
that this chapter is devoted.

What makes a good policy process: evidence-based

policy-making, policy analytical capacity and
their links to good policy design
As set out Chapter 1, all design efforts are based on theoretically in-
formed empirical analyses, through which it is expected that govern-
ments can learn from experience and avoid repeating the errors of the
past, as well as better apply new techniques to the resolution of old
and new problems (Sanderson 2002). Not all policies go through this
process but such evidence-based or ‘evidence-informed’ policy efforts
represent an effort to structure policy processes in such a way as to
116 Designing policies and programmes
minimize non-design spaces and incidences by prioritizing evidentiary
decision-making criteria and capacities. This is done in the expectation
that superior policies and results will emerge from such processes than
from ‘non-design’ ones (Head, 2016).
Attaining this standard of policy-making is not automatic, however,
but requires a high level of what Riddell (1998) termed ‘policy research
capacity’. He summarized the requisites of this analytical capacity as
lying in:

a recognized requirement or demand for research; a supply of quali-

fied researchers; ready availability of quality data; policies and proce-
dures to facilitate productive interactions with other researchers; and a
culture in which openness is encouraged and risk taking is acceptable.

That is, for evidence-based policy-making to be achieved, policy ac-

tors, including governments, require both the desire and the ability
to collect, aggregate, communicate and apply information in order to
effectively develop medium- and long-term projections, proposals for
and evaluations of future government activities. Organizations both
inside and outside of governments require a high level of human, fi-
nancial, network and knowledge ­resources in order to enable them to
perform the tasks associated with managing and implementing such an
evidence-based policy process.
But, even in the best of circumstances and with the best of intentions,
governments often grapple with complex problems involving situations in
which they must deal with multiple actors, ideas and interests in uncertain
and complex problem environments which typically evolve and change
over time. And, as Chapter 2 discussed, in many other instances govern-
ments may lack the intention to proceed deliberately through the devel-
opment and evaluation of policy analysis and policy decisions and design
considerations may be more or less absent from policy deliberations. Pol-
icy formulators or decision-makers, for example, may not have access to
the kinds of types of information they need to design effective policies or
may engage in purely interest-driven trade-offs or legislative or bureau-
cratic log-rolling between different values or r­ esource uses which negates
whatever evidence they may have at their disposal. Or, more extremely,
they may engage in venal or corrupt behaviour in which personal or par-
tisan gain from a decision may trump all other evaluative criteria regard-
less of the nature of the policy development process followed.
That having been said though, most governments have at one point
or another encountered poor results from non-evidence-based or weak
evidence-based policy processes which led to easily avoidable and
 Creating an effective design policy 117
forseeable errors and policy failures and most desire to enhance their
capacity and improve their formulation processes, moving into a more
positive design space whenever possible (Gleeson et al. 2011). This in-
volves them in identifying the potential use of a variety of tools such
as those set out in Chapters 3–6, and the use of analysis in the effort to
better match the potential of each tool to fit the job at hand.

What is a superior mix of tools: coherence,

consistency and congruence in policy designs
Having a superior policy-making process, however, tells us little about
how a mix should be designed and what kinds of knowledge and ev-
idence are required to assemble it. As noted in Chapter 1, however,
in the pursuit of better policies, a greater emphasis on the improved
design of tool mixes has been a feature of policy design research over
the past decade, and these studies have increased awareness of the many
dilemmas that can appear in the path of effective policy tool or ‘toolkit’
designs and policy-making realities.
As we have seen, mixes are combinations of policy instruments that
are expected to achieve particular policy objectives and which are gen-
erally seen as more efficient and effective than single instrument uses
(­Gunningham et al. 1998). Good policy designs are expected to feature
mixes in which there are few contradictions and to result from a logical
effort to match policy tools and goals based on theory and experience.
In assembling such designs, an intimate knowledge of the strengths
and weaknesses of individual tools is required along with an idea of how
they fit together and operate in a mix. Some instruments may work well
with others by nature – as is the case with ‘self-regulation’ set within a
regulatory compliance framework, for example (Grabosky 1995) – while
other combinations may not, such as, notably, independently developed
subsidies and regulation which often contradict each other and provide
mixed signals to targets. Other mixes may also have evolved in a certain
way which has undermined, or improved, their effectiveness, while oth-
ers may have never been very effective in the first place and remain so.
Concerns about how to make the most of policy synergies while
curtailing contradictions in the formulation of new or reformed pol-
icy packages have been a major topic of investigation within the d­ esign
orientation in policy studies (Hou and Brewer 2010; Howlett and
­Muhkerjee 2019). As we have seen, a major concern of those working
in contemporary policy design studies has been the process of policy
improvement: determining whether reform of combinations of different
policy instruments which have evolved independently and incrementally
118 Designing policies and programmes
can accomplish complex policy goals as effectively as more deliberately
customized portfolios and taking action accordingly in the form of the
elaboration and implementation of policy ‘patches’ (Howlett 2014).

Principles of effective policy designs based on the

character of tools
This literature on policy design has highlighted several key principles
for effective policy designs based on the ‘character’ or innate character-
istics of the tools set out in Chapters 3–6 and of mixes based upon them.
These principles can inform policy design considerations in this area.
Seven of these principles are listed in the following sections while other
principles linked more closely to the nature of the policy design context
are elaborated afterwards.

Parsimonious tool use and the Tinbergen rule

The older literature on policy design suggested several maxims or
heuristics which can be used to head off common errors in policy
design. The first and oldest of these is to observe parsimony in tool
selection.
An oft-cited rule in this area, for example, is that the optimal ra-
tio of the number of tools to goals is 1:1 (Knudson 2009), an axiom
first put forward by Tinbergen (1952) who argued that the number
of policy tools in any mix should roughly match the number of goals
or objectives set for the policy. This is a reasonable rule-of-thumb for
designers, for which Tinbergen provides some logical justification in
his discussion of information and administrative costs associated with
redundant tools in the area of economic policy. Assuming that utilizing
more instruments costs less than utilizing fewer, and that redundancy is
not a virtue, this maxim translates easily enough into a basic efficiency
principle for policy mixes.

Maximizing complementary effects and minimizing

counterproductive ones
Most observers, however, including Tinbergen, were and are well
aware that combinations of tools are typically used to address a pol-
icy goal, not a single instrument. As Tinbergen (1952: 37) himself ar-
gued, ‘a priori there is no guarantee that the number of targets always
equals the number of instruments’, and (71) ‘it goes without saying that
 Creating an effective design policy 119
complicated systems of economic policy (for example) will almost in-
variably be a mixture of instruments’.
Assuming most policies will be a mix of tools, a major issue for
both scholars and practitioners is tied to the fact that not all of the
tools involved and invoked in a mix are inherently complementary
(Boonekamp 2006) in the sense that they may evoke contradictory
responses from policy targets. Some combinations, of course, may be
more virtuous in providing a reinforcing or supplementing arrange-
ment (Hou and Brewer 2010). And some other arrangements may also
be unnecessarily duplicative, while in others some redundancy may be
advantageous (Braathen 2007).
A key principle of current policy design thinking is to try to max-
imize supplementary effects while minimizing counterproductive
ones. ‘Smart’ design implies creating packages which take these pre-
cepts into account in their formulation or packaging (Gunningham
et al. 1998).
Although a consensus does not exist on the terms and definitions
of all the possible conflicts, complementarities and synergies between
different tools and types of instruments (Oikonomou and Jepma 2008;
Oikonomou et al. 2011) it can be argued that the types of interaction
found between tools will vary such that in some cases there will be:

1 a strong conflict where the addition of an instrument (X) leads to a

reduction of the effect of a second instrument (Y) in the combina-
tion: 0 < X+Y < 1,
2 a weak conflict (partial complementarity) where the addition of
one instrument to another leads to a positive effect on the combi-
nation, but lower than the one that would take place if both were
used separately: 1 < X+Y < 2,
3 a situation of full complementarity where X adds fully to the effect
of Y in the combination: X+Y = 2
4 a situation of synergy where adding X to Y magnifies the impact of
the combination: X+Y > 2 (del Río 2014).

Such interactions can range from ‘no effect’ to ‘direct interaction’, with
effects ranging from ‘duplication’ (positive or negative redundancy) to
‘extended coverage’ (positive redundancy) (del Rio 2014). E ­ ffective
design involves avoiding strong conflicts, minimizing weak ones and
promoting complementarity and synergies. While this becomes more
difficult to do as the level of complexity of the design space increases, it
remains a central goal of policy portfolio design.
120 Designing policies and programmes
Sequencing: moving up the scale of coercion
in instrument choices
If policies are to entail a mix of tools, however, this raises the question
of whether they should all be adopted at one time or sequenced in some
fashion. A third principle of policy design which can be derived from
the older literature on the subject addresses these issues. This is the
idea that governments should be parsimonious in not only the num-
ber of instruments chosen at a specific point in time to attain a goal,
but also dynamically or sequentially. In the mid-1970s and the early
1980s, for example, G. Bruce Doern and his colleagues argued not only
that different policy instruments varied primarily in terms of the ‘de-
gree of government coercion’ each instrument choice entailed (Doern
and Wilson 1974) but also that tool choices should only ‘move up the
spectrum’ of coercion from minimum towards maximum, if and when
necessary.
This rationale is again based on a cost-effort calculation and is also
linked to an appreciation of the ideological preferences of liberal-­
democratic governments for limited state activity and upon recogni-
tion of the difficulties posed to the exercise of state power and policy
compliance by the relative political ‘strength’ of the societal actors and
their ability to resist government efforts to shape their behaviour. As-
suming that all instruments are more or less technically ‘substitutable’
or could perform any task – although not necessarily as easily or at the
same cost – Doern and his colleagues argued that in a liberal dem-
ocratic society, governments, for both cost and ideological reasons,
prefer to use the least coercive instruments available and only ‘move
up the scale’ of coercion as far as is necessary in order to overcome
societal resistance to attaining their goals (Howlett 1991). Preferring
‘self-regulation’ as a basic default, for example, they argued govern-
ments should first attempt to influence overall target group perfor-
mance through exhortation and then only add instruments as required
in order to compel recalcitrant societal actors to abide by their wishes,
eventually culminating, if necessary, in the fully public provision of
goods and services.

Utilize coherence, consistency and congruence as measures of

the design integrity and superiority of a mix
Much work on policy design and policy mixes has also focused on the
need for the various parts of a mix or portfolio to be integrated for max-
imum effectiveness (Briassoulis 2005). Policies are composed of several
 Creating an effective design policy 121
elements, and some correspondence across these elements is required if
policy goals are to be integrated successfully with policy means.
Measures of integration highlighted in the literature include crite-
ria such as ‘consistency’ (the ability of multiple policy tools to reinforce
rather than undermine each other in the pursuit of policy goals), ‘co-
herence’ (or the ability of multiple policy goals to coexist with each
other and with instrument norms in a logical fashion, the relation-
ships within the shaded area in figure) and ‘congruence’ (or the abil-
ity of goals and instruments to work together in a uni-directional or
mutually supportive fashion) as important measures of optimality in
policy mixes following this integrative logic (Kern and Howlett 2009;
Lanzalaco 2011).
That is, as del Rio (2009) has argued, design principles to promote in-
tegration in complex mixes require a broader view of the elements found
in policy mixes than is typically found in the literature on the subject.
Appropriate policy evaluation, appraisal and design cannot be conducted
in a narrow context. The focus should not be on the functioning of spe-
cific instruments with respect to a single criterion, but rather upon the
functioning of the whole policy mix and the conflicts and synergies that
exist with respect to multiple goals and criteria within it.
This is a particular challenge in situations featuring overlapping
policies and governments. What might be regarded as conflictive in
the interactions within an instrument mix might not be so problem-
atic when a broader picture of multiple policies or governments is
considered and vice-versa. That is, there is an issue of both horizontal
and vertical coordination involved in tool mix design in the sense
that tools and goals may conflict not only at one level of government
but also within policy regimes when these have, as they commonly
do, a multi-level aspect (Howlett and del Rio 2015). The existence of
different goals at different administrative levels complicates vertical
coordination and integration. Different benefits and costs for different
constituencies stemming from supranational policies or the existence
of federal governmental arrangements, for ­example, may complicate
considerations of political feasibility and different goals may create
winners and losers at different administrative levels and lead to un-
acceptable distributional effects. All of these factors must enter into
design considerations.

Avoiding over- and under-designing

Prima facie, simple Tinbergen-type single instrument, single-goal, ­single-
policy, single-government instrument mixes represent only one of
122 Designing policies and programmes
many possible types of instrument mixes. And this means that the
standard Tinbergen design maxim of ‘one goal – one tool’ proposed as
a suitable design maxim to address the issue of instrument optimality is
unlikely to be put into practice very often, and other principles need to
be developed to take its place within more complex designs.
The recent literature on ‘disproportionality’ in government responses
to problems is very useful in this regard (Maor 2017). As discussed in
Chapter 2 Governments often over- and under-react to the actual se-
verity of problems, sometimes intentionally for political or electoral
purposes (for example, to be seen as being tough on crime) or un-
intentionally (not accurately foreseeing the threat of an epidemic, for
example). Both situations lead to over- and under-designing and are
generally to be avoided (Maor 2017).
This means utilizing not only the number of tools required to rea-
sonably attain policy goals and achieve compliance with government
wishes and no more than that, but also to seriously consider a ‘fudge
factor’ or needed level of redundancy in order to deal with unforeseen
or under-estimated problems. While it may not be clear at the start
what the ‘correct’ number is and how large a factor to allocate, begin-
ning with a smaller number and adding tools as needed to ensure com-
pliance and monitoring the impact and effect of each additional tool can
help identify it while avoiding tendencies to over design or over-react
to immediate circumstances and exigencies.

Better matching tools and target behaviours in

compliance regimes
There also is a significant behavioural component to the design of pol-
icy mixes, which is critical to policy success and failure. That is, as
discussed in Chapter 2, it is critically important for policy-making that
the behaviour resulting from policy activity and the implementation of
policy tools and expenditure of governing resources matches that antic-
ipated prior to deployment (Duesberg et al. 2014).
Policy tool use and behavioural expectations are linked in the sense
that the use of policy tools involves implicit or explicit assumptions and
expectations about the effect tool deployment will have upon those im-
pacted by it whether this involves, as set out in Chapter 6, “system 1” au-
tomatic responses or ‘system 2’ deliberative ones. In most cases, with the
exception of those symbolic instances where ‘over-design’ is welcomed,
such as in areas of national security or crime prevention, efficient pol-
icy designs are those that affect only those targets whose behaviour it
is necessary to change and with only the minimum necessary levels of
coercion, expenditure and display.
 Creating an effective design policy 123
Policy designs themselves, however, have often been developed with
only the most rudimentary and cursory knowledge of how those ex-
pected to be affected by an instrument are, in fact, likely to react to it.
Regardless of whether those targets are purely social constructions with
few empirical referents or if they reflect more objective assessment of
the actual behaviour of relevant groups of policy actors, however, it is
critical for effective policy-making that actual target behaviour matches
expectations, and behavioural research is thus a key aspect of effective
policy design (Nielsen and Parker 2012).

Designing and assessing policy prototypes through

experiments and pilot projects
The use of pilot projects and careful evaluation of target nature and
compliance regimes is critical here (Weaver 2014). The development of
pilot projects or policy experiments in which new designs and ideas are
tried out and proven prior to their being ‘scaled up’ or ‘scaled down’
and put into widespread practice can be very useful in determining and
estimating the behavioural changes caused by policy tools and designs.
Such policy experimentation can be used to pre-test different pro-
grammes and policies for their likely impacts, process of implementa-
tion and stakeholder acceptability prior to launching these fully or on
a large scale.
Policy pilots form a common and important form of policy experi-
mentation and involve the introduction of major government policies
or programmes at a ‘controlled small-scale’ or phased manner, allow-
ing them to be tested, evaluated and adjusted before being rolled out
jurisdiction-wide. Planning ‘well-designed pilots’ alongside a fully
functioning policy can help test a policy’s performance along with
identification of emerging issues and help inform any necessary policy
adjustments (Swanson et al. 2010).
Pilots aid in policy appraisal and provide useful insights for deal-
ing with complex policy issues amid conditions of high uncertainty
(­Vreugdenhil et al. 2012). The small-scale and experimental nature of
pilots can ­encourage policy innovations, and policy-makers should, and
do, consider pilot projects and other forms of policy experiments in order
to test new policy and programme approaches (Nair and Howlett 2016).

Principles of policy design based on the design context

While knowledge of the character of individual tools and mixes is im-
portant in developing principles for policy design, understanding the
policy design context is equally so (deLeon 1988). Kirschen et al. (1964),
124 Designing policies and programmes
for example, noted very early on that the key determinants of the policy
choices examined in their pioneering study of post-WWII E ­ uropean
economic policy were the economic objective pursued and the struc-
tural and conjunctural context of the choice. While the choice of a
specific instrument could be made on essentially technical grounds, ac-
cording to criteria such as efficiency, cost or effectiveness, they found
it was also affected by the political preferences of interest groups and
governments, and a variety of sociological and ideological constraints
which would also inform tool choices and preferences (238–44). The
US pioneer of policy studies, Harold Lasswell (1954), too, noted that the
extent to which governments could affect every aspect of policy-making
through design manipulations varied depending upon the circumstances
and actors involved in any given context and argued that a principal task
of the policy sciences must be to understand the nuances of these situa-
tions and calibrate their actions and their effects accordingly.
Lasswell also noted that this design context has a temporal as well as a
spatial dimension, since many regimes have developed haphazardly over
time. That is, across time periods, new instruments appear and old ones
may have evolved or been eliminated. How the processes of policy for-
mulation followed in adopting such complex designs have unfolded and
how this has affected policy goals and instrument logics is a subject of
much interest in the design world (Larsen et al. 2006).
As set out in earlier Chapters, the existing evidence shows that sub-
optimal or poorly integrated situations are very common in many ex-
isting mixes which have developed through processes of policy layering
and stretching (Miller 1990; Bode 2006). These kinds of ‘unintentional’
mixes can be contrasted with ‘smarter’ designs or ‘packages’ which in-
volve creating new sets of tools specifically intended to overcome or
avoid the problems associated with layering but which may be difficult
to put into practice. All these processes and change dynamics again
focus attention on the need to properly sequence instrument choices
within mixes (Taeihagh et al. 2013).
Many existing studies assume, whether explicitly or implicitly,
that any combination of tools is possible in any circumstance. That is,
that decision-makers have unlimited degrees of freedom in their design
choices. Empirical studies, however, have noted that this kind of free-
dom in combining design elements is to be found only in very specific
circumstances – either development of a new portfolio in a new area of
concern, such as social media or internet related activity in the present
era, or what Kathleen Thelen (2003) has termed ‘replacement’ or ‘ex-
haustion’ when older tool elements have been swept aside or abandoned
and a new mix can be designed or adopted de novo. Most existing mixes
 Creating an effective design policy 125
or portfolios instead have emerged from a gradual historical process in
which a policy mix has slowly built up over time through processes
of incremental change or successive reformulation or ‘layering’ which
heavily impacts what can be done to alter or amend an existing instru-
ment mix (Capano 2019). This insight generates a second set of maxims
concerning effective policy design in these different design contexts.

Promoting patching as well as packaging in portfolio design

As we have seen in earlier chapters, at least two distinct design tech-
niques emerge from formulation efforts which may take the form of
policy ‘packaging’, that is the creation of new mixes or the more com-
mon form of ‘patching’ in which only selected aspects of existing mixes
are altered.
Recognizing the drawbacks of layering, conversion and drift as of-
ten promoting unintentional and poorly integrated mixes, many critics
have increasingly argued for the promotion of complex policy mixes
through replacement. However, multiple policy tool portfolios which
have evolved over a long period time through processes of incremental
layering, often cannot easily be replaced. Policy ‘patching’ is a more
realistic design modality in such contexts and, if done properly, with
a clear eye on promoting coherence and integration in complex envi-
ronments can achieve complex and ambitious policy goals in as efficient
and effective a way as those designs which are consciously created as
interlocking packages of measures (Howlett and Rayner 2013).

Goodness of fit: the need for designs to match governance

mode and policy regime capacities
It is also the case that design choices emerge from and must generally be
congruent with the governance modes or styles practiced in particular
jurisdictions and sectors. Goodness of fit between tool and context is thus
a key concern in contemporary policy design considerations and can be
seen to occur at several different levels (Brandl 1988).
That is, different orientations towards state activity require differ-
ent capabilities on the part of state and societal actors, and different
governance modes and styles constrain alternatives in certain ways,
promoting ‘favorite’ or preferred sets of tools such as, for example, a
preference for regulation over direct provision as exists in the United
States or, until recently, the opposite predilection in the case of many
European countries (Howlett and Tosun 2019). Similarly, planning and
‘steering’ involve direct coordination of key actors by governments,
126 Designing policies and programmes
requiring a high level of government policy capacity to identify and
utilize a wide range of policy tools in a successful policy ‘mix’ or ‘ar-
rangement’ which a government may not possess. This can lead to
specific kinds of preferences for particular kinds of tools which make
the design and adoption of policy packages simpler, less costly and
less time-­consuming than might otherwise be the case (Howlett and
Rayner 2013).
Policy designs must take into account both the desired govern-
ance context and the actual resources available to a governmental or
non-governmental actor in carrying out its appointed role.

Degrees of freedom in policy designs: matching policy

designing and policy designs over time
Third, as noted earlier, empirical studies in many policy areas have
shown that many existing policy mixes were not ‘designed’ in the clas-
sical sense of conscious, intentional and deliberate planning according
to well-established or oft-used governance principles but rather evolved
or were developed through a non-design process in the first place, or
both. As Christensen et al. (2002) have argued, the issue here then
becomes the leeway or degrees of freedom policy designers have in
developing new designs, given existing historical arrangements, path
dependencies, policy legacies and lock-in effects.
That is, in addition to the requirements of ‘goodness of fit’ with
prevailing governance modes with respect to the logic of policy design,
there are also constraints imposed on designs by existing ­t rajectories
of policy development. As Christensen et al. note, ‘these factors place
constraints on and create opportunities for purposeful choice, delib-
erate instrumental actions and intentional efforts taken by political
and administrative leaders to launch administrative reforms through
­administrative design’ (2002: 158). Determining how much room
to manoeuvre or degrees of freedom designers have to be creative
(­Considine 2012) or, to put it another way, to what degree they are
‘context bound’ in time and space (Howlett 2011), is a key for contem-
porary design studies.

Conclusion: designing for resilience and robustness

These principles around instrument mix content and context provide
some instruction and serve as rules of thumb which can help guide
­policy-makers to choose ‘the right tool for the job’. But there is always,
as Simon noted, some uncertainty around the future, and policy-makers
 Creating an effective design policy 127
and designers must be ready to deal with these unknowns. As the discus-
sion in Chapter 2 highlighted, there is often a high level of ­k nowledge
and other kinds of uncertainty in policy-making, and the modern policy
studies movement began with the observation that public policy-­making
not only commonly results from the interactions of policy-­makers in the
exercise of power rather than knowledge, and also with the recognition
that this does not always guarantee effective policies or the attainment
of desired results. Even in cases of well-thought-out and intentioned or
otherwise well-designed policies, failures commonly occur over time.
That is, even when policies are designed with a clear evidentiary basis
in a model process, they may still fail if they do not adapt to changings
circumstances and concerns, as policy implementation proceeds and the
policy is put into action (Nair and Howlett 2017).
The modern policy sciences are founded on the idea that accumulating
and utilizing knowledge of the effects and impacts of a relatively well-
known set of policy means developed through analysis and experience
over many years of state-building activity can more effectively mar-
shal and utilize them than is likely to occur with purely p­ ower-driven
non-design processes in highly uncertain policy contexts.
Studies of policy uncertainty and policy failure have emphasized the
need to have policies able to improvise in the face of an uncertain fu-
ture, meaning there is a need to design and adopt policies featuring
agility, improvisation and flexibility, that is, designs which feature ro-
bustness over many circumstances and are resilient in the face of chal-
lenges (Capano and Woo 2018).
By definition, these kinds of designs require redundant resources and
capabilities, and this need is in strong opposition to ideas about design
which equate better designs solely with efficiency and the allocation of
the minimum amount of resources, and to those which only emphasize
routinization and the replication of standard operating procedures and
programme elements. While these latter designs may be appropriate in
some circumstances where competition from other service providers
might provide a degree of system-level resilience and/or in well-known
or stable environments where surprise is unlikely, this is not true in
many public sector activities where government is the sole provider of
particular goods and services and future scenarios are unknown, con-
tested or unpredictable.
As studies of crisis management and other similar situations have em-
phasized, in these instances, robustness is needed and can be planned for
(Moynihan 2008). Similarly, the need to develop policies which can ad-
dress long-term issues such as climate change in the face of shorter-term
partisan, electoral and budgetary challenges, amongst others, has raised
128 Designing policies and programmes
to the forefront the need to design policy mixes which are ‘sticky’ or re-
silient in the face of new or mounting challenges ( Jordan and Matt 2014).
Studies of policy uncertainty, crisis management, policy learning and
policy capacity, for example, have all emphasized the need to design
some modicum of redundancy into most policies. This means to design
policies capable of maintaining the same performance in the face of any
type of internal/external perturbation in order to deal with surprise
and avoid policy failure caused by unexpected or unknown occurrences
which upset initial design specifications and assumptions.
On a substantive level, ‘robust’ policies are those which incorporate
some slack, allowing room for adjustments as conditions change. Ro-
bust policies, as in the case of a bridge or building, need to be ‘overde-
signed’ or ‘over-engineered’ in order to allow for a greater range of
effective, thus ‘robust’, responses across contexts and time. This can be
effective and even efficient over the long-term, for example, in the case
of ‘automatic stabilizers’ such as welfare payments or unemployment
insurance payments which maintain some level of spending and saving
despite a general economic contraction and ­remove some funds from
investment availability during boom times. Organizations can ­become
too lean and may eliminate elements that could be useful when cir-
cumstances change, thus restricting the ability of an organization to
respond to surprises. The ability to alter and adapt policies on the fly –
to ­improvise effectively – also requires some level of redundancy in
­procedural tools and components of policy mixes.
That is, these circumstances require not just robust policies but
also policy mixes that utilize procedural implementation tools to pro-
mote resilience. Maintaining policy robustness in such circumstances
requires a style of decision-making which allows response to surprises
to be improvised and implemented in an effective way as they occur
(Room 2013). Having procedural tools such as built-in policy re-
views, and mechanisms for outside evaluation and control including
provisions for future public hearings and information access, disclo-
sure and dissemination (Lang 2016) allow more significant adjust-
ments to changing circumstances to occur as policy implementation
unfolds and are key elements that need to be incorporated in any
policy design expected to last more than a few years.

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Index

Note: Bold page numbers refers to tables and italics page numbers refer to
figures.

Abelson, Julia 74 behavioural prerequisites 24, 25

ad hoc task forces 52–3, 71 ‘behavioural spillover’ of nudges 102
Adler, R. S. 98, 99, 108 Bobrow, Davis 3
administrative edicts 50, 62 ‘boomerang’ effect 22
administrative hearings 50 ‘bounded rationality’ 16, 22
advisory boards 73, 73; committees Brockman, Joan 67
52, 71–3, 72; councils 71, 72 Brown, David S. 73
alcoholism 108 Brown-John, C. Lloyd 72
analytical units 51 Burt, Sandra 91
archetypal advisory council 72 ‘business-like’ fashion 38
authoritative implementation tools:
direct government regulation ‘cap and trade’ systems 70
62–6; evolution of regulation cash-based financial tools 81–2
75–6; indirect government cash funds 90
regulation 66–70; market cash or tax-equivalent financial
creation and maintenance 70; tools 84–6
policy network activation and CCTs see Conditional Cash Transfers
mobilization tools 71–3; procedural (CCTs)
authoritative instruments 70–1; censorship 106
public consultation, stakeholder central support agencies 37
and consensus conferences certification 34, 46–7, 50, 68, 69
73–4; substantive authoritative ‘chain of accountability’ 35
instruments 61–2 Christensen, T. 126
authoritative instrumentalism 3–4; ‘civil society’ actors 46
procedural 70–2, 71; substantive civil society mobilization 47
61–2 civil society organizations 46
authoritative network management classical administrative agencies 33
tools 72 classic ‘persuasion instruments’ 98
authority-based tools 25 clientele units 51–2
Cnossen, Sijbren 83
Beckstrand, Michael Joseph 92 ‘command and control’ regulation
behavioural change 19, 123 62, 75
134 Index
commissioning 44–5 effective policy design: avoiding over-
commissions 52–3, 103 and under-designing 121–2; based
communication activities 98 on character of tools, principles
competitive external marketplace 41 of 118; based on design context
compliance behaviour 22 123–5; coherence, consistency and
compliance-deterrence utility 21 congruence in 117–18; degrees
compliance of policy targets 21, 22, 23 of freedom in 126; designing for
compliance regimes, tools and target resilience and robustness 126–8;
behaviours in 122–3 design integrity 120–1; governance
compliance theory 21 mode and policy regime capacities
‘Conditional Cash Transfers’ (CCTs) 81 125–6; maximizing complementary
consociationalism 87 effects and minimizing
consultation/co-optation tools 105 counterproductive ones 118–19;
contemporary design scholars 26 packaging in portfolio design
contemporary policy 3; design 117; 125; parsimonious tool use and
orientation 4 Tinbergen rule 118; policy process
context-related mechanism 115–17; policy prototypes through
constraints 19, 19 experiments and pilot projects 123;
contracting 45 scale of coercion in instrument
co-production 34, 47–8 choices 120; tools and target
corporatism 87 behaviours in compliance regimes
corporatist regimes 87 122–3
cost issues 37 e- or digital government legislation
criminal law 62 105–6
epistemic communities 72
data protection acts 107 evidence-based policy-making 27, 51,
decision-makers 7, 16, 17, 27, 71, 103, 116
116, 124 evidence-informed policy 115
‘degree of government coercion’ 120 excise taxes 83–4
degrees of freedom 124, 126 executive oversight agencies 53–4
delegated professional regulation 67–8 exhortation 99, 120
delegated regulation 67 extensive budgetary approval 82
del Rio, P. 121
‘demand-side’ considerations 20 favourable insurance 85–6
deregulation 66, 75 Feed-in-Tariffs 81
design integrity 120–1 financial implementation tools: cash-
‘digital government’ 106 based financial tools 81–2; cash or
direct cash subsidies 85 tax-equivalent financial tools 84–6;
direct cash transfers 82, 84 financial network mobilization
direct civil service employment 54–5 tools 90–2; financial policy network
direct government 34–8; central creation tools 88–90; procedural
support agencies 37; line financial instruments 87–8;
departments 34–7; organizations substantive financial instruments
33; regulation 62–6; social and 80–1; tax- or royalty-based financial
health insurance and pension instruments 82–4
plans 37–8 financial network mobilization
disclosure laws 105 tools 90–2
disproportionate policy reactions 17 financial policy network creation
Doern, G. Bruce 120 tools 88–90
drug abuse 108 financial substantive tools 80
 Index 135
FOI see freedom of information (FOI) information-based implementation tools
forgotten fundamental 34, 54 97–8; alcoholism and drug abuse
‘free association’ system 88 108; information and knowledge
freedom of information (FOI) collection tools 103–4; information
97, 105–6 dissemination tools 98–100;
free-trade treaties 81 information release prevention tools
Fulton, J. 105 106–7; information release tools
105–6; nudges and information-
general information prevention 105 based choice architectures 101–3;
‘general interest’ groups 88 procedural informational instruments
Gibson, Robert B. 69 104–5; substantive informational
Glicken, Jessica 74 instruments 98
‘golden share’ provision 40 information-based instruments
good policy designs 117 7–8, 105
government agencies 74; creating/ information-based policy tools 107
reorganizing 50–2 information-based tools 82
‘government employees’ 34, 36 Ingram, H. 23, 23
government information campaign 98 innovative organizational regulatory
government reorganizations 56 form 64
government reviews 52–3 inquiries 52–3, 103
grants 81–2, 86, 104 instrumental knowledge
mobilization 26–8
Hagman, William 102 insurance: favourable 85–6; social
Haider, Donald 81 and health 37–8
health insurance 37–8 inter-actor policy conflict 11
Hood, Christopher 9, 92, 97, 98, 104 interest group alteration/
Howard, Christopher 93 manipulation/co-optation 90–2
human rights units 51 interest group creation 89–90
ITQs see individual transferable
implementation tool 8–11 quotas (ITQs)
incentive regulation 68–70
‘independent authorities’ 42 King, David C. 89
independent regulatory commissions Kirschen, E. S. 123–4
(IRC) 64–7 Klijn, Erik-Hans 10
indirect government regulation 66; ‘knowledge-based’ policy-making 51
delegated professional regulation knowledge-based process 11
67–8; voluntary or incentive knowledge limitations, affecting
regulation 68–70 policy design 16–18
indirect regulatory instrument 70
individual transferable quotas large-scale policy issues 102
(ITQs) 70 large-scale utilities 41
information: campaigns 99–100; Lasswell, Harold 124
disclosure 105; dissemination laws 62–4; criminal 62; disclosure 105
activities 107; dissemination tools legal instruments, types of 63, 63
98–100; and knowledge collection legislative oversight agencies 53–4
tools 103–4; release tools 105–7 liberal-democratic countries 36
information-based behavioural Linder, S. H. 8–9, 16
tool 102 line departments 34–7, 49, 54, 63
information-based choice loan guarantees 85–6
architectures 101–3 Lowry, Robert C. 91
136 Index
Mahoney, Christine 92 executive oversight agencies
‘market-based’ instruments 70 53–4; market-based reforms
market-based reforms 54 54; network management tools
market creation and maintenance 70 49–50; non-state and society-
Maslove, Allan M. 82 based tools 46; procedural
media-based campaign 101 organizational instruments 48, 56;
Migone, Andrea 44 procedural organizational tools
mobilization tools 71–3 33; public expenditure 55; quasi-
modern liberal democratic states 80 governmental organizational
moral suasion 99 forms 38–45; substantive
motor fuel taxes 84 organizational instruments 33–4
multiple policy tool portfolios 125 Orsini, Michael 71
‘MUSH’ sector 55 over- and under-designing 121–2
‘overt’ nudges 102
national-level statistical agencies 104
Neeley, Grant 89 Pal, Leslie A. 90
negative constructions 23 parsimonious tool use 118
neocorporatism 87 partnerships 43
network creation tools 88 pension plans 37–8
network management: activities 48, Perry, James L. 40
71; functions 71; tools 49–50 Peters, B. G. 8–9, 16
nodality instruments 104 Phillips, Susan D. 71, 91
‘non-design’ situations 6 pilot projects 123
non-governmental: actors 69; Pittle, R. D. 98, 99, 108
agency 42; entities 69 policy: activities 10; effectiveness 26;
non-profit organizations 45 formulation process 7; formulation
non-state actors 46 spaces 12, 12; formulators 116;
non-state market-based (NSMD) goals 4; implementation 8; network
tools 46 activation 71–3; ‘patching’ 125; pilots
non-tax-based revenue 83 123; process 115–17; prototypes
‘notification instruments’ 99 through experiments 123; regime
Nownes, Anthony 89 capacities 125–6; tools 7, 122
nudges 101–3 policy actors 6, 10, 11, 21, 98;
behaviour of 104
official secrets acts 106–7 policy design 11–12; behavioural
‘old-fashioned’ government considerations 19–24;
agencies 54 change 12–13
Olson, Mancur 88 policy-making 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15,
Ontario Auditor’s Act 39 16, 26–7, 35, 46, 49, 51, 53, 70, 73,
organizational hybrids (alternative 97, 103–5, 116, 117, 122–4, 127
service delivery) 41–2 ‘policy research capacity’ 116
organizational implementation poor patching 13
tools: certification 46–7; portfolio design, packaging in 125
commissions, inquiries and public positive constructions 23
hearings 52–3; co-production PPPs see public-private
47–8; creating or reorganizing partnerships (PPPs)
government agencies 50–2; preferential procurement 84–5
direct government 34–8; Prima facie 121–2
government reviews and ad hoc principle-agent problems 53
task forces 52–3; legislative and privacy 107
 Index 137
private: actors 56; sector activities 47, Rainey, Hal G. 40
66; sector partners 43 regulation: ‘command and control’
procedural authoritative instruments 62, 75; delegated 67; delegated
70–1, 71 professional 67–8; evolution
procedural authoritative tools 71 of 75–6; incentive 68–70;
procedural authority-based indirect government see indirect
instruments 70 government regulation; traditional
procedural financial: implementation 70; voluntary 68, 68, 68–70, 75
tools 88; instruments 87–8; tools regulatory agencies 8; independence
87, 90, 93 64, 65
procedural informational renewable energy supplies 81
instruments 104–5 resilience, designing for 126–8
procedural information-based Riddell, Norman 116
instruments 105 Rittel, H. W. J. 18
procedurally oriented implementation robustness, designing for 126–8
tools 10 robust policies 128
procedural organizational instruments
48, 56 sales of state assets at below-market
procedural organizational tools 33, 50, prices 86
51, 53 Sappington, David E. M. 69
procurement schemes 85 scale of coercion 120
public: administration scholars Scandinavian ombudsman system 105
47; agencies 42; consultation Schmitter, Phillip 87
74, 74; enterprises 8, 38–41, Schneider, A. 23, 23
39; expenditure 55; hearings sectoral advisory councils 72–3
50, 52–3; instrument 7–8; self-regulation 67–9, 117, 120
participation 53 ‘semi-independent’ administrative
public design 6–7; tools orientation agencies 64
towards 3–4 Simon, Herbert 16, 126
‘public interest groups’ 91 ‘smart’ patching 13
public policies 4; instrument 69; Smith, Thomas B. 72
principle ‘components’ of 5 SOAs see special operating
public-private partnerships (PPPs) agencies (SOAs)
43, 45 social actors 99, 100
public servants 37 social insurance 37–8
public services: markets 44; vouchers society-based tools 46
for 86 SOEs see state-owned enterprises
(SOEs)
‘quasi-autonomous non- Sovereign wealth funds 40
governmental organization’ 42 special operating agencies (SOAs) 41
quasi-governmental organizational staff/central (executive) agencies
forms: commissioning 44–5; 49–50
contracting 45; organizational Stanbury, W. T. 91, 105
hybrids (alternative service state-based organizations 46
delivery) 41–2; partnerships, state-based tools 46
commissioning and contracting out state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
42–4; public enterprises and other 38, 40, 41
corporate forms 38–41 state-owned firms 86
quasi-judicial bodies 50, 64 statistical agencies and units 103–4
quasi-judicial status 64 subsidies 81–2
138 Index
substantive authoritative instruments Thelen, Kathleen 124
61–2 ‘third sector’ actors 44
substantive financial instruments 80–1 Tinbergen, Jan 118
substantive grants 81 traditional information campaign 101
substantive implementation traditional regulation 69, 70
instruments 9 traditional telephone surveys 104
substantive informational treasure resources 80, 87
instruments 98 tribunals 11, 50
substantive organizational
instruments 33–4 US Advisory Committee Act 73, 73
substantive organizational tools 42, 46 user fees 81–2
substantive policy: government US Pendleton Act (1887) 64
agencies for 34; instruments 20
substantive treasure-based Vedung, E. 9, 97, 98
implementation instruments 82, 92 ‘vice taxes’ 83
Sunstein, Cass R. 101 ‘virtuous’ green taxes 83
superior policy design 115 voluntary regulation 68, 68,
superior policy-making process 117 68–70, 75
‘supply-side’ capacity issues 20 vouchers for public services 86
‘system 1’ thinking 101
‘system 2’ thinking 101 Webber, M. M. 18
Weberian forms of administration 38
‘target-rich’ environments 22 Weberian ‘monocratic bureaucracy’
tax-based funding 54 34–5
tax credits 83 Weber, Max 35
tax incentives 82 Westminster-style parliamentary
tax- or royalty-based financial systems 49
instruments 82–4 ‘whistleblower’ acts 106
Taylor, Robert 44
Thatcher, Margaret 75 Wu, Irene 64