103 Policy & Politics • vol 45 • no 1 • 103–18 • © Policy Press 2017 • #PPjnl @policy_politics Print ISSN 0305 5736 • Online ISSN 1470 8442 • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557316X14788776017743 Policy myopia as a source of policy failure: adaptation and policy learning under deep uncertainty Sreeja Nair, sreeja.nair@u.nus.edu National University of Singapore, Singapore Michael Howlett, howlett@sfu.ca Simon Fraser University, Canada A critical challenge policy-makers deal with in responding to problems concerns gaps and reliability issues with respect to
thus help dampen inflation. Policies which fail in such circumstances may do so for other reasons than knowledge limits; for example, due to poor implementation practices, malfeasance or many other similar less cognitive causes (May, 2014 ). The fundamental problem of an uncertain future, however, as Lindblom ( 1959 ; 1979 ) noted, is of a different order. This source of failure can be termed ‘policy myopia’ or the difficulty of seeing far enough into the future to discern its general shape and contour in enough detail to be able to properly anticipate and plan
First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer.
Policy successes and failures offer important lessons for public officials, but often they do not learn from these experiences. The studies in this volume investigate this broken link. The book defines policy learning and failure and organises the main studies in these fields along the key dimensions of processes, products and analytical levels. Drawing together a range of experts in the field, the volume sketches a research agenda linking policy scholars with policy practice.
Design approaches to policymaking have gained increasing popularity among policymakers in recent years.
First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this book presents original critical reflections on the value of design approaches and how they relate to the classical idea of public administration as a design science. Contributors consider the potential, challenges and applications of design approaches and distinguish between three methods currently characterising the discipline: design as optimisation, design as exploration and design as co-creation.
Developing the dialogue around public administration as a design science, this collection explores how a more ‘designerly’ way of thinking can improve public administration and public policy.
The articles on which Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are based are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
As many social inequalities widen, this is a crucial survey of local authorities’ evolving role in health, social care and wellbeing.
Health and social and public policy experts review structural changes in provision and procurement, and explore social determinants of health including intergenerational needs and housing. With detailed assessments of regional disparities and case studies of effective strategies and interventions from local authorities, this collaborative study addresses complex issues (Wicked Issues), considers where responsibility for wellbeing lies and points the way to future policy-making.
The Centre for Partnering (CfP) is a key outcome of this innovative review along with Bonner’s previous work Social Determinants of Health (2017).
3 BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: Further education, centralisation and the Youth Training Scheme Brian Walker This article attempts to analysethe policy formulation in respectof the two-year YTS, highlighting the exclusivity of the process despite an apparent high profile pluralist approach. The alleged politicisation of the Manpower Services Commission appeared to generate this policy myopia and at the sametime enableda large degreeof central government control of education, particu- larly the LEA Further Education sector, whose work has shifted as a result from a broad
approach to design. Notes 1 At least in countries with strong court systems such as the United States and Germany, the courts will indeed be policy designers. But their designs will generally be based on legal premises rather than on more detailed understanding of policy dynamics as one would hope from the other design institutions. 2 This is obviously hyperbolic, but may also be truer than some policy designers may recognise. This is somewhat akin to the ‘policy myopia’ described by Nair and Howlett (2017) . 3 But attempting to design for flexibility may
article introduces the idea of ‘policy myopia’ as a pressing source of failure in policy-making and explores the possibility of developing policies that learn to help mitigate its impacts. In their conceptualisation of myopia, Nair and Howlett note that while the problem of bounded rationality and short-term uncertainty is widely acknowledged as the central existential condition for all policy-making, the long-term problem of an uncertain, and sometimes unknowable, future is rarely acknowledged. As uncertainty deepens, so too does the probability of policy
) Policy myopia as a source of policy failure: Adaption and policy learning under deep uncertainty, Policy & Politics vol 45, no 1, pp 55–70. Ostrom, E. (2007) Institutional rational choice: An assessment of the institutional analysis and development framework, in P.A. Sabatier (ed) Theories of the policy process, 2nd edn, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp 21–64. Patashnik, E.M. (2008) Reforms at risk: What happens after major policy changes are enacted?, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Peters, B.G. (2015) State failure, governance failure and policy
those seen in North American and European welfare states after the Great Depression and the Second World War. Degrowth’s realisation demands nothing less than fourth-order paradigmatic change exemplified by: ‘a different systemic logic and thus [involving] much deeper institutional and ideational change’ ( Buch-Hansen and Carstensen, 2021 : 312). Moving beyond the economic, transformative climate policy requires radical changes in our democratic institutions. Graham Smith (2021) argues that policy myopia is built into representative democracy. This short
