IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/policy/v57y2024i1d10.1007_s11077-024-09521-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Designing policies that could work: understanding the interaction between policy design spaces and organizational responses in public sector

Author

Listed:
  • Giliberto Capano

    (University of Bologna)

  • Benedetto Lepori

    (Università Della Svizzera Italiana)

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to contribute toward bridging the gap between policy design and implementation by focusing on domains, such as education, healthcare and community services, where policy implementation is largely left to the autonomous decision of public service providers, which are strategic actors themselves. More specifically, we suggest that two characteristics of policy design spaces in which policies are designed, i.e., the level of ideational coherence and the prevailing function of the adopted policy instruments, generate systematic patterns of responses in terms of the extent of compliance with policy goals, the presence of strategic gaming and possible defiance. We illustrate our model through a contrastive case study of the introduction of performance-based funding in the higher education sector in four European countries (France, Italy, Norway, and the United Kingdom). Our analysis displays that policy designs chosen by governments to steer public systems have different trade-offs in terms of responses of the public organizations involved that are essential to effectively implement governmental policies. The model we are proposing provides therefore a framework to understand how these interactions unfold in specific contexts, what are their effects on the achievement of policy goals and how policymakers could exploit their degrees of freedom in policy design to reduce unwanted effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Giliberto Capano & Benedetto Lepori, 2024. "Designing policies that could work: understanding the interaction between policy design spaces and organizational responses in public sector," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 57(1), pages 53-82, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:policy:v:57:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s11077-024-09521-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11077-024-09521-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11077-024-09521-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11077-024-09521-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:policy:v:57:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s11077-024-09521-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.