Design Principles for Policy Mixes: Cohesion and Coherence in ‘New Governance Arrangements’

Abstract

New Governance Arrangements (NGAs) have emerged as a lively topic in comparative policy studies and are often proposed as solutions to complex policy problems like environmental or health protection. However, assessing the merits and demerits of particular arrangements or instrument mixes is difficult. The paper proposes a variety of tools to tackle the often-overlooked problem of identifying and inventorying the instruments found in instrument mixes and assessing their likelihood to produce optimal results. A framework is developed for evaluating the likelihood of successful implementation of NGA's that exploits the fact that new policy development is almost always constrained by previous policy choices which have become institutionalized. The degree to which this institutionalization has occurred is seen as variable and the implementation to depend on a number of well-understood processes such as increasing returns and other kinds of positive feedback; sunk costs; and incremental policy learning. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated in the context of NGAs found in the forestry sector.

Going Beyond Instrument Interactions: Towards a More Comprehensive Policy Mix Conceptualization for Environmental Technological Change

“…Terms belonging to the latter group represent well-established ex-ante and expost assessment criteria applied in impact assessments and evaluations of single policy instruments, such as effectiveness, efficiency, equity or feasibility (del Rio et al 2012;IRENA 2012). In contrast, the former group comprises terms specifically used for characterizing the policy mix, such as consistency, coherence, credibility, stability or comprehensiveness (Foxon, Pearson 2008;Howlett, Rayner 2007;Kern, Howlett 2009;Majone 1997;Matthes 2010). These characteristics may impact the performance of a policy mix in terms of the standard assessment criteria, particularly regarding effectiveness and efficiency.…”

“…As a result, coherence is often simply defined using the term con-sistency (Hydén 1999;Picciotto et al 2004), but there is no uniform definition. 5 In contrast, the latter distinguishes consistency and coherence as different characteristics (Howlett, Rayner 2007;Mickwitz et al 2009a;OECD 2001), but again there is no agreement on the exact nature of this difference. However, the majority of these studies assert that coherence is more encompassing than consistency (Jones 2002;OECD 2003a).…”

“…More precisely, they can be seen as tools (Salamon 2002) or techniques of governance (Howlett 2005) that address policy problems (Pal 2006). They are introduced by a governing body (Sorrell et al 2003) in order to achieve policy objectives (Howlett, Rayner 2007)…”

“…Responding to this challenge, in recent years several scholars and practitioners in fields particularly relevant to eco-innovation (Kemp 2011;Rennings 2000) have called for a policy mix which combines several policy instruments (IEA 2011b;Nauwelaers et al 2009;OECD 2007). However, policy mix studies tend to be limited to examining instrument interactions (del Río González 2006;IEA 2011a) or the policy processes associated with designing such mixes (Howlett, Rayner 2007). Furthermore, the terminology applied in these studies is often ambiguous, particularly regarding the desired characteristics of a policy mix.…”

“…An alternative view was developed by Howlett et al who speak of consistency of instruments and coherence of goals (Howlett, Rayner 2007) and also introduce congruence among instruments and goals as a third category (Kern, Howlett 2009). …”