In the policy literature, the regulatory intermediary’s role has been analyzed to understand how they help achieve normative regulatory goals, like knowledge sharing, capacity building, and effective coordination. Yet, the “politics of” and “politics by” intermediaries are under-theorized. Drawing from the bottled water regulations debate in India, this article theorizes the complex relationship between regulators, intermediaries, and regulatory targets in delivering a contested commodity (bottled water) for mass consumption. Employing an interpretative approach, the article politicizes the roles of intermediaries. Intermediaries emerge as “knowledge brokers” and crucial political actors, and do not merely remain rational economic agents fulfilling the interests of regulators. Intermediation by different intermediary actors does not always reduce information asymmetry and generate coherent outcomes, in terms of agenda setting and effective enforcement. Regulatory intermediaries do create new politics around regulations, which may or may not benefit the regulatory beneficiaries, different kinds of regulatory takers, or serve regulatory objectives. More socio-political studies are needed to understand the effect of intermediation in different regulatory spaces and regimes (especially when informality is conceived as a regular feature and a norm rather than a state of exception) and their broader influence on society and policy-making.
{"title":"From active collaborators to source of new regulatory politics: regulatory intermediaries in India","authors":"Aviram Sharma","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf033","url":null,"abstract":"In the policy literature, the regulatory intermediary’s role has been analyzed to understand how they help achieve normative regulatory goals, like knowledge sharing, capacity building, and effective coordination. Yet, the “politics of” and “politics by” intermediaries are under-theorized. Drawing from the bottled water regulations debate in India, this article theorizes the complex relationship between regulators, intermediaries, and regulatory targets in delivering a contested commodity (bottled water) for mass consumption. Employing an interpretative approach, the article politicizes the roles of intermediaries. Intermediaries emerge as “knowledge brokers” and crucial political actors, and do not merely remain rational economic agents fulfilling the interests of regulators. Intermediation by different intermediary actors does not always reduce information asymmetry and generate coherent outcomes, in terms of agenda setting and effective enforcement. Regulatory intermediaries do create new politics around regulations, which may or may not benefit the regulatory beneficiaries, different kinds of regulatory takers, or serve regulatory objectives. More socio-political studies are needed to understand the effect of intermediation in different regulatory spaces and regimes (especially when informality is conceived as a regular feature and a norm rather than a state of exception) and their broader influence on society and policy-making.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145472941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article assesses how accountability relations between intermediaries, regulators, and regulatory targets affect intermediary non-compliance. Regulatory intermediary theory (RIT) maps how intermediaries, who are given responsibility but often lack hierarchical accountability to regulators, have multiple roles in the process of regulatory compliance. Intermediaries need to comply with the tasks that they have been delegated to perform. However, beyond acknowledging the importance of complex actor relations, RIT lacks a clear theory of how these relationships may affect the realization of regulatory intentions during policy implementation. This article introduces the accountability regimes framework (ARF) to model the multiple formal and informal roles of intermediaries, identify accountability dilemmas, and theorize the conditions under which they trigger intermediary non-compliance. The ARF is applied to study “Prevent Duty,” an anti-radicalization policy which requires social science lecturers in British universities to report students deemed at risk of radicalization to the Home Office. Semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with intermediaries in May 2021 (N = 19) are analyzed using crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Results support the ARF’s core claims: in a politicized context of mandated, interpretive intermediation, the presence of multiple accountability dilemmas can trigger non-compliance, while their absence is related to compliance. Institutions can mitigate this intermediary non-compliance by providing training to intermediaries. Results additionally show that the mandated, politicized intermediaries may informally appropriate the regulator’s role of risk assessment. The ARF allows RIT scholars to understand intermediaries’ compliance as a problem of accountability.
{"title":"Explaining regulatory intermediaries’ compliance through the accountability regimes framework","authors":"Eva Thomann","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf029","url":null,"abstract":"This article assesses how accountability relations between intermediaries, regulators, and regulatory targets affect intermediary non-compliance. Regulatory intermediary theory (RIT) maps how intermediaries, who are given responsibility but often lack hierarchical accountability to regulators, have multiple roles in the process of regulatory compliance. Intermediaries need to comply with the tasks that they have been delegated to perform. However, beyond acknowledging the importance of complex actor relations, RIT lacks a clear theory of how these relationships may affect the realization of regulatory intentions during policy implementation. This article introduces the accountability regimes framework (ARF) to model the multiple formal and informal roles of intermediaries, identify accountability dilemmas, and theorize the conditions under which they trigger intermediary non-compliance. The ARF is applied to study “Prevent Duty,” an anti-radicalization policy which requires social science lecturers in British universities to report students deemed at risk of radicalization to the Home Office. Semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with intermediaries in May 2021 (N = 19) are analyzed using crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Results support the ARF’s core claims: in a politicized context of mandated, interpretive intermediation, the presence of multiple accountability dilemmas can trigger non-compliance, while their absence is related to compliance. Institutions can mitigate this intermediary non-compliance by providing training to intermediaries. Results additionally show that the mandated, politicized intermediaries may informally appropriate the regulator’s role of risk assessment. The ARF allows RIT scholars to understand intermediaries’ compliance as a problem of accountability.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"339 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145261589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deliberately terminating outdated, inefficient, or redundant policies has become increasingly important for governments operating under persistent challenges and constrained resources. Despite its growing relevance, policy termination remains undertheorized and empirically underexplored, particularly when considered as a strategic practice. As such, this research aims to advance a more comprehensive understanding of policy termination by explicitly examining its underlying strategy. It focuses on the five Flemish provinces, subregional entities in Belgium currently facing both withdrawal of competences and institutional pressure concerning their existence. The research design combines a document analysis of provincial council meeting reports with semistructured interviews conducted with provincial chairs and clerks. All data were systematically coded using established typologies of both policy termination and strategy. The findings show that while policy termination accounts for only a modest share of provincial decision-making, its occurrence across a wide range of policy domains suggests a degree of structural embeddedness rather than mere exceptionality. Furthermore, they reveal that policy termination is only occasionally pursued with strategic intent, yet a clear misalignment between aspirations and capabilities prevents it from functioning as a strategic governance practice at the provincial level. Theoretically, these findings reaffirm policy termination as a legitimate area of inquiry and establish connections between the fields of policy studies and strategic management. They also raise critical questions about the continued applicability of classical approaches to policy termination in today’s complex governance contexts. Practically, the findings offer actionable insides for provincial policymakers seeking to deploy a suitable strategy for policy termination.
{"title":"Policy termination as a strategic practice: insights from the Flemish provinces","authors":"Inke Torfs, Ellen Wayenberg, Corneel De Vos","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf031","url":null,"abstract":"Deliberately terminating outdated, inefficient, or redundant policies has become increasingly important for governments operating under persistent challenges and constrained resources. Despite its growing relevance, policy termination remains undertheorized and empirically underexplored, particularly when considered as a strategic practice. As such, this research aims to advance a more comprehensive understanding of policy termination by explicitly examining its underlying strategy. It focuses on the five Flemish provinces, subregional entities in Belgium currently facing both withdrawal of competences and institutional pressure concerning their existence. The research design combines a document analysis of provincial council meeting reports with semistructured interviews conducted with provincial chairs and clerks. All data were systematically coded using established typologies of both policy termination and strategy. The findings show that while policy termination accounts for only a modest share of provincial decision-making, its occurrence across a wide range of policy domains suggests a degree of structural embeddedness rather than mere exceptionality. Furthermore, they reveal that policy termination is only occasionally pursued with strategic intent, yet a clear misalignment between aspirations and capabilities prevents it from functioning as a strategic governance practice at the provincial level. Theoretically, these findings reaffirm policy termination as a legitimate area of inquiry and establish connections between the fields of policy studies and strategic management. They also raise critical questions about the continued applicability of classical approaches to policy termination in today’s complex governance contexts. Practically, the findings offer actionable insides for provincial policymakers seeking to deploy a suitable strategy for policy termination.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145261588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ideas meaning different things to different people have increasingly been studied as possessing a broad appeal, but it remains unclear how specifically policy entrepreneurs can utilize ambiguity to construct a coalition for policy change. Conceptually, this article unravels the different levels of ideas according to generality, based on which it identifies two ambiguity-building strategies: making problem definitions ambiguous to rally heterogeneous actors with different problem-solving interests or defining the problem clearly, while deliberately leaving the solution ambiguous to accommodate various policy proposals from diverse actors. Empirically, it compares and contrasts two South Korean governments where the ambiguous idea of childcare publicness was utilized differently. The crux of this research focuses on how these two different ambiguity-building strategies can affect the coalition’s size and cohesion, and thereby shape the policymaking process. In doing so, this article provides a richer understanding of ideational ambiguity as a non-monolithic property.
{"title":"What needs to be (un)ambiguous to construct a coalition for policy change? Evidence from South Korea’s “childcare publicness” reforms","authors":"Sunwoo Ryu","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf034","url":null,"abstract":"Ideas meaning different things to different people have increasingly been studied as possessing a broad appeal, but it remains unclear how specifically policy entrepreneurs can utilize ambiguity to construct a coalition for policy change. Conceptually, this article unravels the different levels of ideas according to generality, based on which it identifies two ambiguity-building strategies: making problem definitions ambiguous to rally heterogeneous actors with different problem-solving interests or defining the problem clearly, while deliberately leaving the solution ambiguous to accommodate various policy proposals from diverse actors. Empirically, it compares and contrasts two South Korean governments where the ambiguous idea of childcare publicness was utilized differently. The crux of this research focuses on how these two different ambiguity-building strategies can affect the coalition’s size and cohesion, and thereby shape the policymaking process. In doing so, this article provides a richer understanding of ideational ambiguity as a non-monolithic property.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145241987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Most research on the role of policy calibrations in fostering policy target compliance has focused on the calibration of incentives and deterrents; less attention has been paid to examining the deployment and calibration of a wider range of policy instruments with the intention of eliciting a greater degree of compliance from policy targets with heterogeneous motivations. This article addresses this gap in the literature by empirically testing multiple hypotheses on the relationship between the calibration of different kinds of policy instruments and policy compliance for policy targets characterized by different motivations. Using data from a vignette experiment set in the context of dengue control in Singapore, we measure policy targets’ economic, social, and normative motivations for compliance and relate these to changes in compliance intention resulting from changes in the calibration of authority-, treasure-, and organization-based policy instruments. Our research contributes policy-relevant recommendations on how policy tool calibrations can be employed to target different kinds of policy target motivations and increase overall policy compliance.
{"title":"Calibrations and compliance: the role of motivations in policy instrument design","authors":"Panchali Guha, Ishani Mukherjee","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf028","url":null,"abstract":"Most research on the role of policy calibrations in fostering policy target compliance has focused on the calibration of incentives and deterrents; less attention has been paid to examining the deployment and calibration of a wider range of policy instruments with the intention of eliciting a greater degree of compliance from policy targets with heterogeneous motivations. This article addresses this gap in the literature by empirically testing multiple hypotheses on the relationship between the calibration of different kinds of policy instruments and policy compliance for policy targets characterized by different motivations. Using data from a vignette experiment set in the context of dengue control in Singapore, we measure policy targets’ economic, social, and normative motivations for compliance and relate these to changes in compliance intention resulting from changes in the calibration of authority-, treasure-, and organization-based policy instruments. Our research contributes policy-relevant recommendations on how policy tool calibrations can be employed to target different kinds of policy target motivations and increase overall policy compliance.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145188341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study explores the varying patterns and dynamics of citizen engagement across policy fields and participation formats. It zooms in on the Norwegian context and focuses on those two fields where citizen involvement is most pronounced, that is the health sector and the planning field. Based on in-depth empirical analysis, it identifies three distinct modes of public involvement that differ in terms of key actors, influence channels, state–society relations, citizens’ roles, and the normative status of their claims. The study finds that the traditional corporatist mode is still prevalent in both health and planning, but complemented by the peer support worker-mode in health, and one-sided information exchange between civil servants and citizens in urban planning. It uncovers the underlying logics shaping the different participation patterns and examines the preconditions and interrelations between social diversity and policy impact in each mode, thereby addressing two of the most persistent shortcomings of citizen engagement. The empirical analysis draws on interviews with civil servants, stakeholders, and researchers, as well as documents like laws, policy guidelines, and committee reports. It builds on existing research on participatory governance, policy development, and knowledge-based policy-making, and it engages with and refines democratic theory with a focus on participation, representation, and inclusion.
{"title":"Modes of involvement: citizen participation in the Norwegian health and planning sector","authors":"Eva Krick","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf026","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the varying patterns and dynamics of citizen engagement across policy fields and participation formats. It zooms in on the Norwegian context and focuses on those two fields where citizen involvement is most pronounced, that is the health sector and the planning field. Based on in-depth empirical analysis, it identifies three distinct modes of public involvement that differ in terms of key actors, influence channels, state–society relations, citizens’ roles, and the normative status of their claims. The study finds that the traditional corporatist mode is still prevalent in both health and planning, but complemented by the peer support worker-mode in health, and one-sided information exchange between civil servants and citizens in urban planning. It uncovers the underlying logics shaping the different participation patterns and examines the preconditions and interrelations between social diversity and policy impact in each mode, thereby addressing two of the most persistent shortcomings of citizen engagement. The empirical analysis draws on interviews with civil servants, stakeholders, and researchers, as well as documents like laws, policy guidelines, and committee reports. It builds on existing research on participatory governance, policy development, and knowledge-based policy-making, and it engages with and refines democratic theory with a focus on participation, representation, and inclusion.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145127717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article introduces and conceptualizes the notion of malignity in policy sciences, examining how public policies can become misaligned with the public interest—whether by design or through the dynamics of the policy process. The special issue underscores the urgent need to reintegrate normative and ethical considerations into policy design, analysis, and implementation. In the context of democratic backsliding, administrative misuse, and technocratic drift, we call for greater attention to the “dark side” of policymaking, where policies are co-opted and distorted to serve marginal or private interests at the expense of democratic values and public interests. The issue advances a theoretical framework that defines malignity as the intentional diversion of state mechanisms away from the public interest. The contributions explore the features and mechanisms of malign policymaking and offer strategies for identifying, mitigating, and responding to its occurrence.
{"title":"Malignity in policy sciences: a theory and framework","authors":"Tim Legrand, M Jae Moon","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf016","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces and conceptualizes the notion of malignity in policy sciences, examining how public policies can become misaligned with the public interest—whether by design or through the dynamics of the policy process. The special issue underscores the urgent need to reintegrate normative and ethical considerations into policy design, analysis, and implementation. In the context of democratic backsliding, administrative misuse, and technocratic drift, we call for greater attention to the “dark side” of policymaking, where policies are co-opted and distorted to serve marginal or private interests at the expense of democratic values and public interests. The issue advances a theoretical framework that defines malignity as the intentional diversion of state mechanisms away from the public interest. The contributions explore the features and mechanisms of malign policymaking and offer strategies for identifying, mitigating, and responding to its occurrence.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144898331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael Howlett, Maria Tullia Galanti, Andrea Migone, Giulia Vicentini
In this article, we argue that in order to better understand how Policy Advisory Systems (PAS) have evolved during the 21st century, we need to reframe consideration of their nature. This requires recognizing that what could previously be relatively precisely described as a highly institutionalized system of advice provision is now often a hybrid, where the weight of institutionalized sources of advice is declining, and more agile and fluid interconnections between the state and non-governmental organizations exist within a more varied and expanded ecosystem of brokers and producers. These developments have sparked a third wave of advisory system studies, which focus greater attention on the quality of advice provided by PAS and their managerial aspects in this new, and other more traditional, contexts. The findings and research agendas of this third wave are the subject of the essays contained in this special issue.
{"title":"Management and quality: third-generation research into policy advisory systems","authors":"Michael Howlett, Maria Tullia Galanti, Andrea Migone, Giulia Vicentini","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf023","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we argue that in order to better understand how Policy Advisory Systems (PAS) have evolved during the 21st century, we need to reframe consideration of their nature. This requires recognizing that what could previously be relatively precisely described as a highly institutionalized system of advice provision is now often a hybrid, where the weight of institutionalized sources of advice is declining, and more agile and fluid interconnections between the state and non-governmental organizations exist within a more varied and expanded ecosystem of brokers and producers. These developments have sparked a third wave of advisory system studies, which focus greater attention on the quality of advice provided by PAS and their managerial aspects in this new, and other more traditional, contexts. The findings and research agendas of this third wave are the subject of the essays contained in this special issue.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144898400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many perspectives have been offered on what induces policy failures, which have been numerously called malignity, policy volatility, ill-intentioned policy behavior, abuse of public authority, prioritizing the interests of specific influential or identity interests, subverting policy goals and targets, and rent-seeking. Such a dark side of policy design is seen in India’s rollout of decentralization for natural resources. A discussion on malignant policy designs across states and sectors highlights the importance of understanding the political economy of institutional designs. This article points out that failing to account for the political economy of policy design for decentralization results in malignant designs. It also provides insights into developing policy designs to mitigate the influences of the erstwhile beneficiaries of centralization. The article brings insights from decentralization designs within a political economy framework and discusses mechanisms to mitigate malignant decentralization designs. It points to key policy design and implementation moments that create malignant behavior. It shares comparative instances where policies have been adapted to curb such behavior and strengthen devolutionary decentralization. It details how well-intended national policies towards devolutionary decentralization are intertwined with state and sub-state-level micro-politics of institutional design and decentralization.
{"title":"Malignity in decentralization of natural resource governance in India","authors":"Satyajit Singh","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf022","url":null,"abstract":"Many perspectives have been offered on what induces policy failures, which have been numerously called malignity, policy volatility, ill-intentioned policy behavior, abuse of public authority, prioritizing the interests of specific influential or identity interests, subverting policy goals and targets, and rent-seeking. Such a dark side of policy design is seen in India’s rollout of decentralization for natural resources. A discussion on malignant policy designs across states and sectors highlights the importance of understanding the political economy of institutional designs. This article points out that failing to account for the political economy of policy design for decentralization results in malignant designs. It also provides insights into developing policy designs to mitigate the influences of the erstwhile beneficiaries of centralization. The article brings insights from decentralization designs within a political economy framework and discusses mechanisms to mitigate malignant decentralization designs. It points to key policy design and implementation moments that create malignant behavior. It shares comparative instances where policies have been adapted to curb such behavior and strengthen devolutionary decentralization. It details how well-intended national policies towards devolutionary decentralization are intertwined with state and sub-state-level micro-politics of institutional design and decentralization.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144898401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Developments in the policy advisory systems (PAS) literature demonstrate how the traditional models designating key roles for internal public service actors have given way to include a greater diversity of external nongovernmental actors in advice provision. This is reflected in how sustained politicization and externalization trends impact PAS organization and actors’ influence, resulting in a more complex national PAS architecture and functioning. This pronounced hybridity of PAS, both in structure and logic, presents challenges for ensuring relevant and quality advisory content and managing its supply and dissemination effectively. In this article, Craft and Howlett’s model on features of policy advice content and the types of actors supplying it is used to observe the implications of PAS adaptation and change dynamics across different political-administrative contexts. The presence of different types of advice under the conditions of short-term/reactive (e.g., purely political or crisis advice) and long-term/anticipatory (e.g., protocol and routine steering, evidence-based advice) is a useful rubric for surveying how good governance standards and openness have been applied in developing quality policy advice content in both Westminster and non-Westminster contexts.
{"title":"Change is inevitable, quality is optional, and context matters: dynamics influencing the development of an optimal policy advisory system","authors":"Bernadette Connaughton","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puaf017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puaf017","url":null,"abstract":"Developments in the policy advisory systems (PAS) literature demonstrate how the traditional models designating key roles for internal public service actors have given way to include a greater diversity of external nongovernmental actors in advice provision. This is reflected in how sustained politicization and externalization trends impact PAS organization and actors’ influence, resulting in a more complex national PAS architecture and functioning. This pronounced hybridity of PAS, both in structure and logic, presents challenges for ensuring relevant and quality advisory content and managing its supply and dissemination effectively. In this article, Craft and Howlett’s model on features of policy advice content and the types of actors supplying it is used to observe the implications of PAS adaptation and change dynamics across different political-administrative contexts. The presence of different types of advice under the conditions of short-term/reactive (e.g., purely political or crisis advice) and long-term/anticipatory (e.g., protocol and routine steering, evidence-based advice) is a useful rubric for surveying how good governance standards and openness have been applied in developing quality policy advice content in both Westminster and non-Westminster contexts.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144898411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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