scholarly journals The Knowns and Unknowns of Policy Instrument Analysis: Policy Tools and the Current Research Agenda on Policy Mixes

SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401990056 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giliberto Capano ◽  
Michael Howlett
Keyword(s):  
Policy Design ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Policy Tools ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Instrument Analysis ◽  
Relevant Topic ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Policy Mixes ◽  
Policy Fields

Policies are made and pursue their goals through policy instruments. Furthermore, policy instruments have become a relevant topic in many policy fields due to their theoretical and empirical relevance. The study of this field dates back to Lowi and others who developed many typologies and theories in classic works by authors such as Hood, Salamon, Linder and Peters, Peters and van Nispen, Schneider and Ingram, Lascomes and Le Galès, among others. This is important work that is linked closely to current research on policy design but, despite much effort, many fundamental issues remain unknown or understudied with respect to the topic. It is time to take inventory of the knowns and unknowns about policy tools. The current article examines four clusters of basic issues in the field which require further research.

scholarly journals The State of Policy Instrument Analysis: Knowns, Unknowns and the Current Research Agenda

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Howlett ◽  
Giliberto Capano
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
The State ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Instrument Analysis ◽  
Relevant Topic ◽  
Policy Fields

<p><a></a>Policy instruments have become a relevant topic in many policy fields due to their theoretical and empirical relevance (overall, policies are made and pursue their goals through policy instruments). But many fundamental issues remain unknown or under-studied with respect to the topic. The current paper examines four clusters of basic issues in the field which require further research.</p>

scholarly journals The State of Policy Instrument Analysis: Knowns, Unknowns and the Current Research Agenda

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Howlett ◽  
Giliberto Capano
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
The State ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Instrument Analysis ◽  
Relevant Topic ◽  
Policy Fields

<p><a></a>Policy instruments have become a relevant topic in many policy fields due to their theoretical and empirical relevance (overall, policies are made and pursue their goals through policy instruments). But many fundamental issues remain unknown or under-studied with respect to the topic. The current paper examines four clusters of basic issues in the field which require further research.</p>

scholarly journals Improving poverty reduction in Europe: What works best where?

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chrysa Leventi ◽  
Holly Sutherland ◽  
Iva Valentinova Tasseva
Keyword(s):  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Income Poverty ◽  
Child Benefits ◽  
What Works ◽  
Effective Instrument

This article examines how income poverty is affected by changes to the scale of tax-benefit policies and which are the most cost-effective policies in reducing poverty or limiting its increase in seven diverse EU countries. We do that by measuring the implications of increasing/reducing the scale of each policy instrument, using microsimulation methods while holding constant the policy design and national context. We consider commonly applied policy instruments with a direct effect on household income: child benefits, social assistance, income tax lower thresholds and a benchmark case of rescaling the whole tax-benefit system. We find that the assessment of the most cost-effective instrument may depend on the measure of poverty used and the direction and scale of the change. Nevertheless, our results indicate that the options that reduce poverty most cost-effectively in most countries are increasing child benefits and social assistance, while reducing the former is a particularly poverty-increasing way of making budgetary cuts.

scholarly journals Do policy instruments matter? Governments’ choice of policy mix and higher education performance in Western Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giliberto Capano ◽  
Andrea Pritoni ◽  
Giulia Vicentini
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Policy Mix ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Mixes ◽  
Education Performance

AbstractGovernments pursue their goals by adopting various mixes of policy instruments. This article proposes a specific operationalisation of these mixes and applies it to the analysis of reforms that many Western European governments have pursued, as they have adopted a similar policy design in their higher education systems (HESs) over the last 20 years. In fact, although these policies have similar templates, performance indicators exhibit remarkable variation between countries. Thus, by applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis to a large data set containing all changes in policy instruments undertaken in the last 20 years in 12 HESs in Western Europe, this article explores the possibility that differences in performance across national HESs could be associated – ceteris paribus – with different policy mixes. This article finds not only that the common template has been applied through very different national policy mixes but also that only a few instruments are regularly linked to good teaching performance, regardless of the other components of the actual policy mix.

scholarly journals Patching vs Packaging in Policy Formulation: Assessing Policy Portfolio Design

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Howlett ◽  
Jeremy Rayner
Keyword(s):  
Policy Design ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Policy Tools ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Policy Mixes ◽  
Portfolio Design ◽  
Over Time

Thinking about policy mixes is at the forefront of current research work in the policy sciences and raises many significant questions with respect to policy tools and instruments, processes of policy formulation, and the evolution of tool choices over time. Not least among these is how to assess the potential for multiple policy tools to achieve policy goals in an efficient and effective way. Previous conceptual work on policy mixes has highlighted evaluative criteria such as "consistency" (the ability of multiple policy tools to reinforce rather than undermine each other in the pursuit of individual policy goals), "coherence" (or the ability of multiple policy goals to co-exist with each other in a logical fashion), and "congruence" (or the ability of multiple goals and instruments to work together in a uni-directional or mutually supportive fashion) as important design principles and measures of optimality in policy mixes. And previous empirical work on the evolution of existing policy mixes has highlighted how these three criteria are often lacking in mixes which have evolved over time as well as those which have otherwise been consciously designed. This article revisits this early design work in order to more clearly assess the reasons why many existing policy mixes are sub-optimal and the consequences this has for thinking about policy formulation processes and the practices of policy design.

Instruments for Policy Integration: How Policy Mixes Work Together

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110321
Author(s):  
Guillermo M. Cejudo ◽  
Cynthia L. Michel
Keyword(s):  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Tools ◽  
Policy Integration ◽  
Policy Mix ◽  
Specific Policy ◽  
Complex Problems ◽  
Policy Mixes ◽  
Integrated Logic ◽  
Over Time

To effectively address complex problems, different policy instruments must be integrated into policy mixes. A crucial task for the policymaker is to identify the set of instruments to be deployed and to integrate them into a policy mix. However, policy instruments not only need to be coherent in their design; their implementation also requires instruments that create interdependence and preserve the integrated logic of the policy mix over time. In this paper we identify the instruments that make integration work. We argue that for policy mixes to solve complex problems, instruments that secure the continued interaction of its components are needed. We show that three instruments serve this purpose: a policy frame, authority, and information. We use three cases where governments have attempted to solve complex problems through policy integration to illustrate our argument. With this paper, we advance our understanding of how integration works and, by doing so, we inform decision-makers about the specific policy tools necessary to achieve it.

scholarly journals A RECONSIDERATION OF THE DOCTRINAL FOUNDATIONS OF MONETARY POLICY RULES: FISHER VERSUS CHICAGO

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82
Author(s):  
George S. Tavlas
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Price Level ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Policy Uncertainty ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Policy Rule ◽  
Policy Rules ◽  
Monetary Policy Rules

There has long been a presumption that the price-level stabilization frameworks of Irving Fisher and Chicagoans Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints were essentially equivalent. I show that there were subtle, but important, differences in the rationales underlying the policies of Fisher and the Chicagoans. Fisher’s framework involved substantial discretion in the setting of the policy instruments; for the Chicagoans the objective of a policy rule was to tie the hands of the authorities in order to reduce discretion and, thus, monetary policy uncertainty. In contrast to Fisher, the Chicagoans provided assessments of the workings of alternative rules, assessed various criteria—including simplicity and reduction of political pressures—in the specification of rules, and concluded that rules would provide superior performance compared with discretion. Each of these characteristics provided a direct link to the rules-based framework of Milton Friedman. Like Friedman’s framework, Simons’s preferred rule targeted a policy instrument.

scholarly journals Transformation of Sociocultural Integration Policy and Inherent Political Theories in the United Kingdom: A Way Forward

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110074
Author(s):  
Samiul Parvez Ahmed ◽  
Sarwar Uddin Ahmed ◽  
Ikramul Hasan
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Integration Policy ◽  
The United Kingdom

The contemporary integration policies (Community Cohesion Agenda [CCA]) of the United Kingdom have been criticized for their foundational weaknesses, conceptual inadequacies, myopic views with regard to the complexity of the issue, lack of evidence, and so on. Vast majority of the studies conducted to verify this discourse have been done in the line of theoretical arguments of diversity management rather than exploring their connections to a target community in reality. This study aims at establishing a linkage between the growing theoretical arguments of the integration discourse with empirical data in light of the policy framework of the CCA. We have selected the fastest growing Bangladeshi community of the CCA-adapted Aston City of Birmingham as the representative group of the ethnic minority communities of the United Kingdom. Qualitative data collection approach has been followed, where primary in-depth interviews were conducted on various policy actors, social workers, faith leaders, and Bangladeshi residents of Aston. The entire policy instrument, starting from its broad purposes to operational strategies, has been severely challenged by both residents of the community and relevant policy-implementing bodies in Aston. CCA policies appear to be largely inclined toward the interculturalism/communitarianism ideology rather than to multiculturalism. However, the empirical evidence shows that the need for multiculturalism, to be more specific—Bristol School of Multiculturalism, as a political theory remains in the integration discourse in the context of the United Kingdom. Findings are expected to have implications on practitioners and policy makers in designing diversity management policy instruments by having a wider synthesized view on both theoretical argument and empirical data.

scholarly journals Towards a Circular Economy Taxation Framework: Expectations and Challenges of Implementation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonidas Milios
Keyword(s):  
Circular Economy ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Material Resource ◽  
Waste Hierarchy ◽  
Tax Relief

AbstractThe transition to a circular economy is a complex process requiring wide multi-level and multi-stakeholder engagement and can be facilitated by appropriate policy interventions. Taking stock of the importance of a well-balanced policy mix that includes a variety of complementing policy instruments, the circular economy action plan of the European Union (COM(2020) 98 final) includes a section about “getting the economics right” in which it encourages the application of economic instruments. This contribution presents a comprehensive taxation framework, applied across the life cycle of products. The framework includes (1) a raw material resource tax, (2) reuse/repair tax relief, and (3) a waste hierarchy tax at the end of life of products. The research is based on a mixed method approach, using different sources to analyse the different measures in the framework. More mature concepts, such as material resource taxes, are analysed by reviewing the existing literature. The analysis of tax relief on repairs is based on interviews with stakeholders in Sweden, where this economic policy instrument has been implemented since 2017. Finally, for the waste hierarchy tax, which is a novel proposition in this contribution, macroeconomic modelling is used to analyse potential impacts of future implementation. In all cases, several implementation challenges are identified, and potential solutions are discussed according to literature and empirical sources. Further research is required both at the individual instrument and at the framework level. Each of the tax proposals needs a more detailed examination for its specificities of implementation, following the results of this study.

Handling uncertainty in bioenergy policy design – A case study analysis of UK and German bioelectricity policy instruments

2015 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Purkus ◽  
Mirjam Röder ◽  
Erik Gawel ◽  
Daniela Thrän ◽  
Patricia Thornley
Keyword(s):  
Policy Design ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Study Analysis ◽  
Case Study Analysis
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