Policy Design: Just a Fad or a Fundamental Concept? (Or How to Deal with Policy Design in Interesting Times)

Abstract

The conditions necessary and required to develop institutional, administrative, and policy capacity needed to conduct policy design (with all its caveats) are painfully absent from the mainstream literature. To a certain extent, it is logical because in the political-administrative contexts investigated by main- stream literature, they do exist and are arguably taken for granted. The transition and developing countries remain under-represented in mainstream literature. The sectorial literature on water management, natural disaster mitigation, or emergency response planning provides some answers to that need, and points out the blind spot that exists in the mainstream literature in public administration: how to build institutional capacity for policy design in the public sector. What are the institu- tional conditions specific for applying design in the public sector (in its diversity)? Glimpses at the (few) studies that exist suggest a high level of inequality and depen- dence on local context, a strong top-down approach, and – in the best case scenario – an opportune happy conjunction of resources, usually united under a visionary leader with strategic capacity.