Understanding complex policy mixes: conceptual and empirical challenges

Abstract

There is a growing disconnect in the literature between the theoreticalconceptual underpinning of policy mix studies and limited success in the development of common empirical approaches to systematically study real-world policy mixes. For applied research into policy mixes, this tension creates practical challenges, namely how to apply abstract conceptualisations of policy mix characteristics in a way that avoids conceptual stretching and how to systematically assess the constituent parts of a policy mix. Overcoming these challenges is necessary in order to produce generalizable empirical findings that have a relevance beyond a case-specific context. This chapter briefly reviews the stateof-the-art of the burgeoning theoretical and conceptual literature on policy mixes and highlights the persistent empirical challenges researchers and practitioners face when aiming to analyse and understand complex real-world policy mixes.

The effects of policy design complexity on public support for climate policy

“…Many important policy challenges, like climate change, pandemics, and digitalization, entail a high degree of complexity, both with respect to the policy problem itself and its solutions (Weber, 2017;Sewerin, 2020). In reality, effective policy solutions to 'super-wicked problems' like climate change (Levin et al, 2012, p. 124) typically require a fundamental transformation of socio-technical systems and take the form of complex policy packagesthat is, a holistic combination of several policy instruments, rather than single policy measures (Givoni et al, 2013;Howlett and Rayner, 2013;Kivimaa and Kern, 2016;Rogge and Reichardt, 2016;Schmidt et al, 2017;Bataille et al, 2018;Markard, 2018;Kern et al, 2019).…”

Interactions within climate policyscapes: a network analysis of the electricity generation space in the United Kingdom, 1956–2022

“…), with very few exceptions of studies employing a bottom-up approach (e.g., Schmidt and Sewerin, 2019). There are, however, calls to employ bottom-up approaches to unfold policy mixes and understand the policy-population addressing environmental issues (Sewerin, 2020). Scholars agree that there are empirical constraints in researching policy mixes due to the large-N of units of analysis when a policy mix is delineated from the bottom-up (ibid., Howlett and Del Rio, 2015).…”

“…Thus, engaging with large-N studies of policies affecting climate change mitigation allows us to unveil antithetical policy arrangements that would have otherwise been overlooked by solely focusing on top-down defined climate policy mixes. Empirically challenging (Howlett and Del Rio, 2015;Sewerin, 2020), large-N studies of policies require the pursuit of text-as-data methods. These provide the methodological tools to systematically analyse extended systems of policies and unfold the dynamics within them (Taeihagh, 2017;Biesbroek et al, 2022;Dugoua et al, 2022;Goyal et al, 2022;Sewerin et al, 2023;Adipudi and Kim, 2024).…”

“…Yet, these calls have limited empirical responses (e.g., Schmidt and Sewerin, 2019;Kosow et al, 2022). These empirical assessments, however, do not include multiple policies that limit the impacts under analysis due to empirical constraints in the study of large-N policy mixes (Howlett and Del Rio, 2015;Sewerin, 2020). As such, rather than siloing policies supporting or limiting mitigation, we respond to these calls by applying ecological epistemology to the study of institutions.…”

Attaining policy integration through the integration of new policy instruments: The case of the Farm to Fork Strategy

“…Recently, scholars of sustainability transition and environmental governance have acknowledged that policy mixes are needed in order to address complex policy problems (Howlett & Rayner, 2007; Kern et al, 2019; Rogge et al, 2017; Schmidt & Sewerin, 2019; Sewerin, 2020; Tosun & Koch, 2021). Over the last two decades, public policy scholars have taken an interest in policy mixes, that is, portfolios of different policy instruments (Gunningham & Sinclair, 1999; Howlett & Del Rio, 2015) that have a common goal (Kern et al, 2019) and whose instruments are complementary (Howlett & Rayner, 2007).…”