“Donate your organs, donate life!” Explicitness in policy instruments

Abstract

Behavioural research suggests that the intensity with which policy instruments indicate a direction of desired behavioural change affects how target populations respond to them. However, comparative research on policy instruments focuses on their calibration, restrictiveness, density and formal intensity, but does not account for the degree to which they specify the particular policy goal. Moving beyond nudging and "command and control" approaches, this paper adds the dimension of explicitness to existing taxonomies of policy instruments. The explicitness of an instrument results from two questions: first, does the instrument specify a direction of behavioural change? Second, does the instrument attach valence to this behaviour? The paper proposes a stepwise measurement procedure and links explicitness with policy outcomes. A comparative case study of organ donor policy in Switzerland and Spain illustrates how accounting for the explicitness dimension can improve our understanding of policy instruments and their effectiveness.

What's the Problem? Multilevel Governance and Problem‐Solving

“…A recent collection of articles examined how structural factors affect problem‐solving (Trein, Thomann & Maggetti, 2019b) by specifically pointing out how multilevel arrangements can also generate new problems (Maggetti & Trein, ). In the present symposium, we argue that the attributes of policy problems are important for understanding the processes, outputs and outcomes of MLG settings (Peters, ; Thomann, ,b), and therefore, for their problem‐solving capacity. Problem‐solving in multilevel systems is particularly relevant with respect to problems which imply high degrees of uncertainty with regard to risks, technologies, and consequences of policies (Head, ).…”

“…On the one hand, policy problems vary in the extent to which there is agreement or conflict about underlying values and norms about means or ends of the policy. The most extreme manifestation of this can be with so‐called morality policies that concern fundamental questions about which no compromise is possible (Engeli & Varone, ; Mooney, : 675; Thomann, 2018b). The other dimension of “structuredness” is the extent to which certainty about the required and available knowledge needed to address a policy problem.…”

Anticipating and designing for policy effectiveness

“…While most of the earlier scholarship on policy tools was focused on classifying tools, and policy styles of governments across the world (Hood 1983;Peters and van Nispen, 1998), recent scholarship has also focused features of specific tools that increase their effects on policy targets. (Howlett 2018;Howlett and Rayner 2013;Howlett and del Rio 2015;Thomann 2018).…”

“…These include coordination (the extent to which changes in a policy are incorporated with the existing design architecture), coherence (the consistency of actions in addressing a given set of problems), consistency (the extent to which policy measures work towards the same goal), degrees of freedom (the leeway for designers to make adjustments or calibrate policy in the future), goodness of fit (the extent to which a design is compatible with the governance styles and political context), complementarity (the extent to which there are synergies between different elements of a policy mix), targeting (the extent to which distributive public policies account for errors of inclusion and exclusion), reversibility (the extent to which elements of a program can be changed), contingency (the extent to which designs accommodate contingent liabilities) and transitions (the extent to which the costs of changing a policy-mix are recognized). More recently, attributes such as adaptability, resilience, robustness, sustainability, explicitness and agility are argued to be central to 'good' designs (Capano & Woo, 2018;Folke, Hahn, Olsson and Norberg, 2005;Room, 2011;Thomann, 2018).…”

Assessing health reform: studying tool appropriateness & critical capacities

“…These taxonomies provided analysts a framework for describing and assessing the ways in which governments connect policy goals and means in their effort to improve outcomes which over time have fostered the emergence of a 'tools approach' to understanding problems (Hood, 2007). Recent research has focused not only on choice of individual tools but also how they are assembled together as 'policy mixes' or 'portfolios' to maximise complementarities amongst and between tools (Borras and Edquist, 2013; Flanagan, Uyarra, & Laranja, 2011;Howlett & Del Rio, 2015;Mohnen and Roller, 2005;Schaffrin, Sewerin, & Seubert, 2014;Sovacool, 2008); issues relating to policy coordination (Jordan & Lenschow, 2010;Peters, 2015Peters, , 2018; policy coherence and consistency of these mixes (Howlett & Rayner, 2007;Kivimaa and Virkamaki, 2014;Rogge & Reichardt, 2016); how they are sequenced and layered (Howlett, 2019); the 'intensity', and explicitness with which they affect change (Thomann, 2018;Howlett, 2018) and criteria to evaluate them (Howlett, Capano, & Ramesh, 2018;Capano & Woo, 2018;Mukherjee & Howlett, 2018;del Rio, 2018;Bali, Capano and Ramesh, Forthcoming). These studies go beyond describing broad institutional choices used to organise a sector or policy styles and implementation preferences of governments (Bemelmans-Videc, 1998;Hood, 1983;Linder & Peters, 1989;Salamon, 2002;Trebilcock et al, 1982).…”