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Research that employs the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework offers a theoretically rich approach for diagnosing and assessing public policies. However, the complexity of the framework, and its related theories, can challenge researchers interested in its application. This article offers a novel synthesis of the IAD literature and recommendations for how scholars can use the IAD to enhance the practical relevance of policy design research. In presenting these insights, we focus on three general themes including the IAD’s emphasis on self-governance, the core concepts and diagnostic approach of the IAD framework, and lessons from IAD research on contextually-specific institutional design. We conclude with a discussion of the boundaries of the IAD framework and words of caution when drawing lessons about policy design.
Public policies are institutional arrangements that set the official rules of the game for society as we work together to provide public goods and solve complex social dilemmas, such as maintaining orderly and healthy communities, educating the public, protecting vulnerable populations, and sustaining natural resources. Designing policies to manage these complex social problems can be challenging. In part, this is because the institutional arrangements that comprise policies can be complex and may affect a diverse set of actors and issues in ways that may be uncertain or difficult to predict. Scholarship on institutional analysis, particularly from the research that employs the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, can offer useful tools to help understand and assess this complexity. Previous assessments and descriptions of the IAD framework, however, have not clearly explained how insights from the IAD can enhance the practical relevance of scholarly research on policy design.
As its name suggests, institutions are at the heart of the IAD framework. Institutions are the rules, norms, and shared strategies that structure human behaviour and choices, and are collectively created, adapted, monitored, and enforced (Ostrom, 2005). Thus, by ‘institutional arrangements’, we are not referring to bricks-and- mortar buildings or political venues. While institutions can be formalised, as written into policy documents, they often are defined by what people have agreed with one another about what they may, must or must not do in relation to other people or to their environment.
Numerous published efforts have compared and contrasted policy process theories. Few assessments, however, have examined the extent to which they are inclusive or diverse. Here we summarise lessons from previous assessments, paying attention to how Paul Sabatier’s science-based criteria have shaped the contours of the field. In looking at these contours, we explore evidence of diversity and inclusivity of policy process approaches in terms of methods, concepts, topics, geography and authors. We conclude with strategies to address challenges revealed by our examination: creating space for conversations among scholars of differing perspectives and approaches; building sustained and meaningful efforts to recruit and train researchers with diverse backgrounds; establishing research coordination networks that focus on policy problems; and creating better metrics to assess our diversity and inclusivity.
