Policy Integration and Multi-Level Governance: Dealing with the Vertical Dimension of Policy Mix Designs

By Michael Howlett, J. Vince, P. D. del Río. 2017

152 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Multifaceted problems such as sustainable development typically involve complex arrangements of institutions and instruments and the subject of how best to design and operate such ‘mixes’, ‘bundles’ or ‘portfolios’ of policy tools is an ongoing issue in this area. One aspect of this question is that some mixes are more difficult to design and operate than others. The paper argues that, ceteris paribus, complex policy-making faces substantial risks of failure when horizontal or vertical dimensions of policy-making are not well integrated. The paper outlines a model of policy mix types which highlights the design problems associated with more complex arrangements and presents two case studies of similarly structured mixes in the areas of marine parks in Australia and coastal zone management in Europe—one a failure and the other a successful case of integration—to illustrate how such mixes can be better designed and managed more effectively.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/929c398d49dab70d816dda075e59856b15d06be4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

1. J. Bergh
2. Stefan Drews

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. J. Bergh
2. Stefan Drews
3. G. Kallis
4. Daniel W. O’Neill
5. C. Spash

In Safety Research

1. T. Konc
2. Ivan Savin
3. J. Bergh
4. Joël Foramitti
5. F. Klein
6. Filippos Exadaktylos
7. Stefan Drews

Citations in the corpus

• Designing an effective climate-policy mix: accounting for instrument synergy (2021, background): “If, on the other hand, countries have very complex policy mixes, it might be difficult for them to judge, compare and match these (del Río, 2014; Howlett et al., 2017; Schmidt & Sewerin, 2019), in turn possibly discouraging them to implement strong regulation/pricing instruments (Weitzman, 2014).”
• Going around in circles? Conceptual recycling, patching and policy layering in the EU circular economy package (2019, background): “policy ‘coherence’ (Benson and Lorenzoni 2017) or ‘coordination’ (Jordan and Schout 2006) across multiple sectors and levels of governance (Howlett et al. 2017).”