2017/03/01 by Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee · 2 citations
Environmental Science · #Environmental and Social Impact Assessments
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/capa.12209
openalex publication_date 2017/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Policy design: From tools to patchesPolicy design involves the purposive attempt by governments to link policy instruments or tools to the goals they would like to realize.The study of policy design focuses on these tools, their advantages and disadvantages and better understanding the processes around their selection and deployment in order to improve policy-making efforts and outcomes.The roadmap for the development of this approach to the policy sciences stretches from early works in public policy studies around the identification of policy tools and the classification of instrument types in the 1960s and early 1970s (Design 1.0), to present-day studies that strive to effectively formulate effective and context-appropriate policy alternatives given the specific historical legacies and political realities in which policy selection and implementation takes place (Design 2.0).Canadians have been leaders in both eras, with many well-known works on policy tools as well as more recent works on policy design written by Canadian authors.This contribution sets out five key sets of articles in each era in this field, featuring a major work in the discipline and a matching article from Canada in each time period examined.We have chosen to organize the discussion below chronologically featuring the two major policy design "eras" and the major theoretical developments that have defined them.Design 1.0: the identification of policy tools