Policy Integration and Multi-Level Governance: Dealing with the Vertical Dimension of Policy Mix Designs

Abstract

Multifaceted problems such as sustainable development typically involve complex arrangements of institutions and instruments and the subject of how best to design and operate such 'mixes', 'bundles' or 'portfolios' of policy tools is an ongoing issue in this area. One aspect of this question is that some mixes are more difficult to design and operate than others. The paper argues that, ceteris paribus, complex policy-making faces substantial risks of failure when horizontal or vertical dimensions of policy-making are not well integrated. The paper outlines a model of policy mix types which highlights the design problems associated with more complex arrangements and presents two case studies of similarly structured mixes in the areas of marine parks in Australia and coastal zone management in Europe-one a failure and the other a successful case of integration-to illustrate how such mixes can be better designed and managed more effectively.

Formalized Policy Entrepreneurship as a Governance Tool for Policy Integration

“…This could be understood as a stronger professional conviction of the formal policy entrepreneurial role; at its core, it is not about the personal agenda and personal capacity to convince others to do things, but to get the topics integrated in the processes of the political-administrative organization. In this sense the reasoning of the formal policy entrepreneurs lies close to the policy integration literature (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016;Howlett et al, 2017;Tosun & Lang, 2017) This linear narrative is strongly present, but not unanimous. Some respondents express a more appreciative approach to formal horizontal arrangements, and some see compensation for vertical flaws to be the core of the work as a formal policy entrepreneur, even though the degree of policy integration in the formal vertical organization may be high.…”

“…The classical approach to public administrative work can be referred to as formal-vertical, where strategies for efficiency and legitimacy go via hierarchy and clear sectorization of knowledge and expertise (Peters, 1998). In the processual approach to policy integration, the formal-vertical organization is the target of integration, where cross-cutting policies are naturally integrated in the formal-vertical organization (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016;Howlett, Vince, & Del Rio, 2017). (Processual policy integration in the formal-vertical organization does not necessarily mean that the cross-cutting policies are formally addressed, but rather that the appropriate strategies for integration are considered to be the formal-vertical organization).…”

Policy tools to address scale mismatches: insights from U.S. forest governance

“…Indeed, tailoring policy tools to specific settings often requires significant managerial and analytical expertise (Wu et al 2015). A related challenge is policy integration, ensuring policy goals and tools are both well matched to specific contexts, and coherent across multiple levels of governance (Howlett et al 2017). Policy tools designed to support flexible and adaptive decision making at local scales, for instance, may create challenges for coordination and long-term planning at higher levels of governance (Hill and Engle 2013).…”

Mechanisms for policy (dis)integration: explaining food policy and climate change adaptation policy in the Netherlands

“…Recent contributions to the debate on policy integration have recognized some of the weaknesses of previous studies and essentially taken a step back to provide conceptual clarity about what policy integration is and how it can be studied empirically. Recent publications have, for example, discussed how policy integration relates to similar concepts, such as coordination and coherence (Cejudo and Michel 2017;Tosun and Lang 2017), conceptualized policy integration as a multilayered process with specific measurements (Candel and Biesbroek 2016), provided suggestions for what optimal policy integration would entail (Jochim and May 2010;Varone et al 2013), and questioned the compatibility of pursuing different directions of policy integration (Egeberg and Trondal 2016;Howlett et al 2017). Whereas these publications have contributed to a better understanding of what policy integration could be and how it can be studied, considerable conceptual and methodological questions remain to be addressed in order to study policy integration through a processual lens (Jordan and Lenschow 2010;Tosun and Lang 2017).…”