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The article offers analytical tools for designing multi-actor implementation processes. It does so by proposing a design approach centred on causal mechanisms. Such design strategy requires designers to focus primarily on causal theories explaining why implementers commit overtime to implementing policies. The central proposal is that design procedures should be reversed, i.e. start by reasoning on the causal mechanisms explaining implementers’ behaviour and then go looking for design features. Several advantages of this approach related to designing, reforming, or transferring successful practices are discussed throughout the article. Finally, the article provides six extended examples of such mechanisms in different policy fields: actor’s certification, blame avoidance, earning brownie points, repeated interactions, focusing events and attribution of opportunity or threat.

This article investigates management systems in higher education organisations by analysing the 2009 Italian reform of performance management and its implementation within Italian universities. The research is based on a survey that covered about half of Italy’s public universities. Survey results provide an account of the state of management systems of Italian universities, confirming the assumption of their relative backwardness and the importance of specific preconditions (efficient organisation and effective control systems) for a good system of performance evaluation

In the social sciences, there is an emerging interest in process tracing as a method for improving rigour and transparency in within-case inferences. Recently, the method has been proposed as a possible enhancement of theory-based approaches to evaluation, but applications of the method remain rare. In an attempt to fill this gap, process tracing was used to evaluate the Universal Exposition held in Milano in 2015 (EXPO2015). Mega-events of this kind are perfect candidates for ‘testing’ the method; although their effects have been widely discussed in the relevant literature, claims about the causal contribution of mega-events are not straightforward, and a number of ambiguities complicate any clear assessment of their consequences. Two in-depth case studies of projects related to EXPO2015 – the East External Highway and Refettorio Ambrosiano – demonstrate the advantages and feasibility of process tracing and of the application of Bayesian logic to evidence search, collection and assessment. In particular, case study results show that Bayesian scrutiny may reveal unexpected weakness in apparently obvious inferences and increase reliability in assessing less straightforward causal attributions.