Measuring policy analytical capacity in renewable energy policy: Germany‐Japan‐US comparison

Abstract

Policy makers in the modern age must confront complex and expanding knowledge on a daily basis. It has been put forth that policy making requires increasingly higher levels of policy analytical capacity at the individual, organizational, and system levels. Analytical capacity can enable better policy design and facilitate policy learning. Previous studies mostly operationalized the concept at the individual or organizational level with survey instruments, but the lack of widely and regularly conducted surveys limits the applicability of this method. Here, we propose new indicators of policy analytical capacity at the system level, using publicly available data. Our metrics are based on the outputs such as academic journal publications, government and stakeholder publications, and think‐tank rankings. As an illustration, we apply this approach to the case of renewable energy policies in three countries: Germany, Japan, and the United States. Though each of the underlying metrics is susceptible to uncertainties and biases, a totality of the indicators presents a useful, proxy measurement of policy analytical capacity. The proposed approach can supplement the survey method by enabling longitudinal and geographical investigation into policy analytical capacity.

Perception and performance in environmental policy

“…Continuing the focus on renewable energy policy, the article by Sugiyama and Muto (2024) studies the analytical capacity of policy making and its relation to environmental policy performance in Germany, Japan, and the United States. Building on literature on policy capacity and design, the authors use academic knowledge production (as the number of energy policy‐related academic publications), government and stakeholder knowledge production (as the ratio of analytical reports by stakeholder organizations), and networking and international recognition (as global think tank rankings) as proxy measurements for policy analytical capacity.…”