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Policy Sciences

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01-09-2014

Designing policies that intentionally stick: policy feedback in a changing climate

Authors: Andrew Jordan, Elah Matt

Published in: Policy Sciences | Issue 3/2014

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Abstract

Policy feedback is a widely used concept, but many who use it only focus on the positive and/or unintentional feedback effects of certain types of policy. The literature as a whole is therefore poorly equipped to make sense of the negative policy feedbacks that often appear in more regulatory areas such as climate change, where target groups are put under pressure to shoulder concentrated costs. Advocates of the ‘new’ policy design have an opportunity to address this gap by exploring how policy makers approach the design of policies that intentionally generate positive policy feedbacks and/or are resilient to negative ones. This paper contributes to that effort by identifying the conditions under which specific instrument designs are likely to have opportunity enhancing and/or constraining effects. It relates these expectations to a design situation where positive feedback seemed unlikely, and hence, the challenge of designing locked-in policies was correspondingly greater. It concludes by drawing on the findings of this exploratory case to investigate what the ‘new’ policy design can do better to explicate the temporal aspects of design.

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In fact, he relegated it to a footnote—fn59.

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A central theme of the ‘policy makes mass politics’ literature (Campbell 2012).

It is telling that Pierson (1993: 599) originally referred to ‘spoils’. Later, he admitted that ‘not all aspects of political life are subject to positive feedback’ (Pierson 2004: 49), and later, still (Pierson 2006: 124) urged analysts to explore other policy areas.

Here, it is understood as a ‘noun’ (Howlett 2014).

To quote Campbell (2012: 347), ‘they show the feed but not the back (or they just assume the back)’.

Although he was primarily interested in understanding what made policies resistant to dismantling, as opposed to intentionally more sticky.

For the purposes of our argument, we set aside climate adaptation policies.

Which are likely to be less amenable to intentional design.

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In the sense that the Commission continually pushes the European Union to a higher level of ambition in the international climate regime.

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Title: Designing policies that intentionally stick: policy feedback in a changing climate
Authors: Andrew Jordan
Elah Matt
Publication date: 01-09-2014
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Policy Sciences / Issue 3/2014
Print ISSN: 0032-2687
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0891
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-014-9201-x

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