Managing ideational complexity in public policies: the case of public research funding

Abstract This article examines how ideational complexity, i.e. the lasting presence of alternative policy frames in a policy domain, can be managed without leading to overt conflicts. By leveraging insights from the organisational literature, we suggest that, in most cases, alternative frames are kept apart within distinct policy instruments, while hybrid instruments are established only when required by the nature of the problem. We provide illustrative examples of how these strategies are employed in the case of public grant schemes for research funding. Our findings suggest that a) composite instrument mixes are an important resource to deal with ideational complexity, and b) the design of the instruments’ delivery package, and specifically its procedural and organisational dimensions, plays a central role in avoiding conflicts between policy frames. Accordingly, our analysis advances the unexplored issue of how the coexistence of alternative policy frames impacts policy implementation.