An academic story of contemporary policy and policymaking problems

Many policy concepts try to sum up the same story about modern governance: complex policy problems do not respect traditional government boundaries, and require collaborative responses across government and between governmental and non-governmental actors. We can break this narrative into four elements.

1. A common setting, involving inevitable policy complexity, the absence of a single centre of policymaking, and the absence of one-best-way to make policy: there is no simple way to come together to solve complex problems.
2. A range of relevant characters, including leaders of organisations or networks, entrepreneurs and brokers seeking ways to foster innovation and cooperation, and many others essential to routine policy delivery: while inspirational actors matter, policymaking is a chorus not a solo act.
3. The plot involves adversity and increased urgency, comparing the need for effective collaboration with the sense that practical and political reality does not match necessity: we are in a hole, need to act more effectively, and time is running out.
4. We require a realistic but positive moral, involvingthe pragmatic recognition of limited progress but hopeful vision of renewed models of collective action: things may seem tough now, but we have ways to make them better and can build on progress.

Such narratives combine a descriptive statement (here is the policy problem) with a prescriptive statement (we need collaborative and joined-up responses), a cautionary note (policy processes do not deliver what we require), and perhaps a rejection of despair in favour of learning lessons (forewarned is forearmed).

A simple narrative of complex problems

I base the following narrative on a synthesis of concepts and approaches to policy analysis and design, theories of policy processes, and approaches seeking pragmatic and feasible solutions to policy and policymaking problems.

There are no simple solutions to complex problems.

Policy analysis tools need to recognise the wickedness or complexity of policy problems. There is always contestation to define the size, urgency, and cause of policy problems and the role of the state in addressing them. Problems do not respect jurisdictional boundaries. Few problems are amenable to simple one-shot solutions. Terms such as systems thinking and new policy design focus on the interconnectedness of problems and multi-faceted policy mix.

Policymaking is a continuous process to manage problems.

Governments are rarely in the problem-solving business. They oversee continuous problem management by many actors across and beyond the public sector, including civil servants, public sector professions, and public, private, and third sector organisations delivering policy.

There is no single centre of policymaking.

Complex policy problems transcend traditional boundaries and responsibilities, such as across government departments, levels of government, or governmental and non-governmental action. Terms such as polycentric governance, multi-level governance, and multi-centric policymaking describe the responsibility for action held in many centres or venues for action. This distribution of responsibility results from a combination of choice, such as enshrined in a constitution, and necessity, when governments seek cooperation to deal with the practical limits to their power or resources (such as their bounded rationality).

There is a need for policy coherence, but no single model for collective action.

This spread of responsibilities to address problems leads to multiple responses that lack coherence or integration. There is a pressing need to coordinate responses, but no single model. The absence of one centre of authority – in one political system or many – rules out a simple top-down response. The presence of multiple more-or-less autonomous organisations requires more voluntary collective approaches. Concepts to describe aspects of such aims include collaborative governance, institutional collective action, mainstreaming, whole of government responses, joined-up government, and policy integration.

There is not one best way to lead or participate.

Policymaking at this scale involves many actors who contribute a range of skills, attributes, strategies, and mindsets to foster broad aims such as innovation, leadership, professionalism, and collective action. Terms such as systems leadership reflect the limited value of hierarchical leadership models. Terms such as entrepreneur highlight exceptional actors able to identify windows of opportunity for change or overcome common obstacles to progress, while terms such as professionalism and followership emphasis the value of different kinds of – often long-term – participation beyond the idea of instant heroic action.

There are many essential principles of effective government.

Many aims or principles could drive the search for more effective government, including:

• Accountable and responsible, to maintain a clear link between citizen wishes and government promises, such as via regular high stakes elections.
• Future oriented, to anticipate and address problems early rather than lurch from crisis to crisis.
• Preventive, to intervene early to ward of social or environmental problems rather than lurch between crises or respond to acute problems when it is too late.
• Decentralised, to avoid damaging attempts to hoard power rather than cooperate.
• Co-productive, to encourage high citizen and stakeholder participation and deliberation, to collaborate to inform or make policy.
• Integrated, to produce coherent policies that are mainstreamed across government departments, all levels of government, or across policymaking and delivery.
• Evidence-informed, to ensure that policymakers understand state-of-the-art knowledge when making choices.
• Equitable, just, fair, to ensure that all participants are included, policy processes or procedures are fair, and that the distribution of outcomes does not produce unfair inequalities (also known as recognitional, procedural, and distributional justice).

Each principle is essential but also vague and subject to contested interpretation (e.g. when defining fair procedures and outcomes). Further, it is not straightforward to design a policymaking approach that does justice to each principle. For example, a short-term electoral imperative in the name of accountability may fuel a level of political competition that undermines long-term and future-oriented collaboration or a meaningful focus on coherent and integrated approaches.

A government-led response is not always the government’s preference.

There is variation of state intervention by sector, political system, and over time. In some sectors a central government is at the heart of the action, such as when establishing the regulatory framework and funding for public service delivery or social security. In other sectors, the role of central government is essential but less clear, such as when supporting businesses and individuals to transition from high to low carbon energy systems. In some political systems, high state intervention is taken for granted, while in others it is contested or rejected. This contest may be won or lost over time, to produce periods of more or less state intervention.

What we require from policy and policymaking does not match practical or political reality.

Narratives of required action emphasise what we need to do to address problems, such as to foster policy coherence via collaboration and whole of government approaches. Theory informed narratives of policy processes emphasise the gap between this requirement and practical reality, and the inevitable role of politics in which contestation is often more likely than cooperation. Statements to sum up elements of this problem include:

• Policymaker attention lurches from issue to issue, often before addressing the problem in a meaningful way.
• Policymakers must act despite uncertainty about the problem and likely effect of action.
• Policy actors compete to define and address problems, and cooperation is never guaranteed.
• Policy actors pursue their beliefs and protect their positions, often at the expense of collaboration.
• The distribution of policymaking responsibilities in political systems often reflects demands for political or territorial autonomy rather than a technocratic search for optimal policymaking.
• The ‘usual ways of doing things’ undermines new approaches. Rules, norms, and practices in one venue may conflict with another.
• There are good reasons to specialise to deal with technical issues, or close off policy communities to foster small-scale cooperation. Such defendable actions produce silos that make sense in their own context but undermine cross-community action. What makes sense in relation to one problem or community makes no sense in another.
• Technically political solutions can be politically infeasible, and vice versa.

Overall, the message is that it would be a mistake to treat policy and policymaking requirements as technical problems amenable to technical solutions. There are technical issues to address, such as to define clearly what policy is and how it contributes to required outcomes, but they only make sense through the lens of cooperation and contestation since there is never one best way to define problems or collaborate to seek solutions.

See also:

There are loads of links to 500 or 1000 Words post in the text above, including Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Multi-centric Policymaking (which summarises Making Policy in a Complex World). See the link to polycentric governance for more on Ostrom and the Bloomington School.

My plan is to take this basic narrative of complexity and work with colleagues to think it through in different contexts, focusing on how to shift from restating this problem to thinking more positively about solutions. For more on this endeavour, see for example: Positive Public Policy – A New Vision for UK Government, the nascent LPIP network, and co-produced work with NHS Confederation.

For further reading on positive public policy, see for example

• Douglas, S., Schillemans, T., ‘t Hart, P., Ansell, C., Bøgh Andersen, L., Flinders, M., Head, B., Moynihan, D., Nabatchi, T., O’Flynn, J. and Peters, B.G. (2021) ‘Rising to Ostrom’s challenge: an invitation to walk on the bright side of public governance and public service’, Policy Design and Practice, 4:4, 441-451 https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2021.1972517
• Mallory Compton and Paul ‘t Hart Great Policy Successes: How Governments Get It Right in a Big Way at Least Some of the Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Preview PDF