‘Design for policy’ from below: grassroots framing and political negotiation

Abstract

Whilst design politics is an increasingly topical focus in the design field, in practice, design for policy has been normatively presented as a people-centric approach to public policymaking devoid of political or ideological agendas. Up to now, design for policy has exclusively been conceived as embedded within governmental structures, thus adopting a technocratic, internal, and top-down approach to, and understanding of, public policymaking. We argue that most often, this understanding and practice of design for policy establishes and mediates public problems from the standpoint of the government body addressing those problems. In this paper, we take a new and distinct point of departure to design for policy in which design is implicated in the practice of policymaking from below through processes of collective action. Design for Policy from Below moves from an intra-governmental lens to a negotiated exchange between social actors and government. In turn, this informs strategic collective action required to gain political support and leverage efforts to pressure power structures to acknowledge and adopt policy frames and options. To this end, we examine the conflictual power dynamics and negotiation-based approaches to influencing government policymaking processes and model the messy interplay between government-led policymaking and the activities of social innovators aiming at changing policy outcomes. Finally, we synthesize these insights into a conceptual model offering a novel viewpoint on how we can more critically understand the politics at play in design theory and practice engaged with policymaking.

The Fate of Social Modernity

“…Historical learning for human progress is relevant at yet another level of collective action. Indeed, a further historical precondition for socially progressive policies to thrive has been pressure from below, meaning organised interaction by citizens with a stake in welfare policies attuned to the vision of social modernity (Steinert and Pilgram 2003;Vaz et al 2022). As already noted, Western democracy is anything but equilibrated concerning people's access to mass media conveying political messages and to the public debate more generally.…”

Transforming the European Union's phosphorus governance through holistic and intersectoral framings

“…Possibly due to the societal preoccupation with carbon governance, current socio-political research is lacking an elaborated analysis of the discursive framings of phosphorus that can bridge stakeholder controversies and drive bottom-up momentum for inclusion of phosphorus on the political agenda through appropriate issue framings that can define the policy options for transforming its governance (Vaz et al, 2022).…”