Heuristics for practitioners of policy design: Rules-of-thumb for structuring unstructured problems

Abstract

This article is an attempt to bridge the divide between academics and practitioners. Informed by both design theory and the reality of policy work, its focus is on ‘problems’. From a practitioners’ perspective, policy design is both an intellectual and political process, an inevitable oscillation between ‘puzzling’ and ‘powering’, in which ‘messy’ or unstructured problems are re-structured from problems as webs of ‘undesirable situations’ to problems as specific, time-and-space bound ‘opportunities for improvement’. This requires a questioning habitus in practitioners of policy design. Using a socio-cognitive theory of problem processing, this paper shows how policy design is an iterative process of problem sensing, problem categorization, problem decomposition and problem definition. For each of these stages, appropriate rules-of-thumb for questioning and answering can be suggested that induce thought habits and styles for responsive and solid policy designs.

Problematizing ‘wickedness’: a critique of the wicked problems concept, from philosophy to practice

“…The key insight here is what dealing with policy problems means: problem structuring (Hisschemöller & Hoppe, 1996;Hoppe, 2017a). Stepping away from Rittel and Webber's rhetorical and hence scientifically inadequate wicked/tame dichotomy, we replace it with an analytically precise continuum from unstructured to structured problems as an index of degrees of problematicity (Hoppe, 2011, p. 66-76).…”

“…We argue that the wicked problem concept has no coherent conceptual basis because 1) the distinction between wicked and tame problems has been misinterpreted and is, at base, unsustainable, and 2) any effort to analytically define types of problems separately from the relationships between policy workers dealing with them is unjustifiable. Second, we provide a novel alternative conceptual basis for dealing with both criticisms via a new philosophy for thinking about policy problems in terms of a question-answer logic, synthesized with the policy work perspective and a dual reconceptualization of 'wickedness' (i) in terms of degree of problem structuredness (problematicity), and (ii) in terms of distance, primarily as a political differentiation (Hoppe, 2017a;Turnbull, 2013). 'Wickedness' is reconsidered as but one label among others for a large degree of problematicity along a sliding scale from low to high (cf.…”

Defining “Talent”: Insights from Management and Migration Literatures for Policy Design

“…In the special issue titled “Questioning Policy Design,” Colebatch (), Hoppe (), and Turnbull () posit another perspective on conceptualizing policy design, which could be generally summarized as “praxis” vs. “theory,” with the authors of this special issue arguing for the significance of policymaking practice informing all design activities. Their starting point is that design rarely occurs in a vacuum where prior knowledge, assumptions, and biases do not color the perspectives of the designers involved in the policymaking process.…”

“…This article begins with the analytical debates in which we situate our contribution-the extant literature on policy design, where a new design orientation is emerging (Howlett & Lejano, 2012;Howlett & Mukherjee, 2014) and receiving strong criticisms concerning its conceptual utility (Colebatch, 2017;Hoppe, 2017;Turnbull, 2017). In this section, we set out more clearly how our three central themes-"policy design," "talent identification and recruitment," and "immigration policy"-relate to one another.…”

Government Policy in Realizing Basic Education Metro

“…According to Dunn, the process of policy analysis is a series of activities in the process of political activities. Political activity is interpreted as a policy-making process and visualized as a series of interdependent stages [5]. Education aid funding is our country's policy program for the world of education.…”