This handbook provides a unique, systematic and comprehensive overview from leading experts in the field of the policy-making tools deployed at all the phases of the policy process. It covers the fundamentals of both new and established policy tools – from regulation and public enterprises to subsidies and information campaigns, as well as new tools, such as social impact investing, nudges, crowdsourcing, co-production and new digital governance and data analysis techniques.
The book consists of nine sections with five corresponding to the major research emphases of studies on policy tools across the stages of the policy cycle (agenda-setting, formulation, decision-making, implementation and evaluation). These are accompanied by overviews of key research and concepts, a discussion of how different kinds of tools can be usefully combined in simple or complex policy portfolios or mixes, and a concluding section on future research directions. Consolidating the state of knowledge and uniting classic foundational material with recent advancements in theory and practice in one location, the handbook is a defining volume in this field.
The Routledge Handbook of Policy Tools is essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners of public policy, public administration, and public management, as well as those interested in comparative politics and government, public organizations and the use of policy tools and instruments in individual policy areas from climate change to public health.
Part 1: Introduction
1. What is a Policy Tool? An Overview of the Tools Approach to Public Policy
Michael Howlett
2. The History of the Tools Approach in the Policy Sciences: Key Definitions and Problematics
Michael Howlett
3. Where Tools are Deployed in the Policy Process: Policy Instruments and the Policy Cycle
Michael Howlett
4. The Need to Understand and Integrate Procedural and Substantive Tools
Achim Lang
Part 2: Basic Concepts
5. How Tools Work: Policy Instruments as Activators and Mechanisms
Giliberto Capano and Michael Howlett
6. What Tools Do: Policy Targeting and Behaviour
Michael Howlett
7. Portfolios of Policy Tools: Types of Policy Mixes
Michael Howlett and Pablo del Rio
8. Understanding Primary and Secondary Relationships Among Policy Tools in Policy Mixes
Michael Howlett, M. Ramesh and Azad Singh Bali
Part 3: Agenda-Setting Tools
9. Agenda-Setting Tools in Theory and Practice
Richa Shivakoti and Michael Howlett
10. Formal Agenda-Setting Government Tools: Periodic Evaluations and Reviews
Valerie Pattyn and Pirmin Bundi
11. Tools to Promote Popular Mobilization and Social Advocacy: Social Identities, Policy Programs, Careers, and Education
Johanna Hornung and Nils C. Bandelow
12: Consultation Tools and Agenda-Setting
Bert Fraussen
13: Tools for Managing the Media: Monitoring, Branding and Messaging
Alex Marland
Part 4: Policy Formulation Tools
14. Policy Formulation Tools: New Perspectives
Elisa Helena Xiol Y Ferreira, Andrew Jordan and John Turnpenny
15. Indicators and Measures as Policy Tools
Markku Lehtonen
16. A tools-based approach to understanding and optimizing policy advice in and beyond policy formulation
Jonathan Craft
17. Tools for Structuring Policy Advice: Commissions of Inquiry and Task Forces as Policy Formulation Instruments
Carolyn Johns and Greg Inwood
18. Collaboration as a Policy Tool in the Policy Formulation and Other Aspects of the Policy Process
Saba Siddiki, Jonathan E Beagles, Nicholas Augustus Oesterling
Part 5: Decision-Making Tools
19. Supporting Decision-Making within the Policy Cycle: Techniques and Tools
Irene Pluchinotta, Katherine A. Daniell and Alexis Tsoukiàs
20. Scenario Analysis, Forecasting and Backcasting as Policy Tools
Martijn van der Steen
21. Formal problem structuring tools and multi-criteria decision analysis
Mika Marttunen, Judit Lienert, and Valerie Belton
22. Simulation Modeling as a Policy Tool
Bernardo Alves Furtado
23. Policy Experiments and Pilots as Tools for Decision-Making
Sreeja Nair
Part 6: Policy Implementation Tools
24. The Organizational Tools of Government: The "Forgotten Fundamental"
Michael Howlett
25. Implementing Regulatory Tools: Regulatory Tools and the Use of Authority
Eric Windholz
26. Treasure Tools: Using Public Funds to Achieve Policy Objectives
Bronwyn McIlroy-Young, Daniel Henstra and Jason Thistlethwaite
27. Information as a Policy Tool: The Role of Government Communication
Michael Howlett
28. Non-State Market-Driven Tools: Capacity Challenges in Non-State Governance Contexts
Ben Cashore
Part 7: Policy Evaluation Tools
29. Theoretical Framework for Public Policy Evaluation: Investigative Designs and Outcomes in a Global Setting
Lilian Ribeiro de Oliveira and Claudia Souza Passador
30. Policy Evaluation Instruments: Tools for Learning
Antje Witting
31. Tools in Internal and External Evaluations
Nihit Goyal and Michael Howlett
32. Administrative Procedure as a Tool for Participatory and Efficient Public Governance
Polonca Kovac
33. The Democratic Potential of Evaluation as a Policy Making Instrument: A Possibility or a Chimera?
Jill Anne Chouinard and Tamara Krawchenko
Part 8: Selecting and Mixing Tools
34. Policy Tools and (New) Governance Arrangements: Policy Mixes and Their Effectiveness
Michael Howlett and Jeremy Rayner
35. Measuring Policy instrument interactions in policy mixes: Surveying the conceptual and methodological landscape
Moshe Maor and Michael Howlett
36. Policy Tools and the Attributes of Effectiveness: Spaces, Mixes and Instruments
M. Kerem Coban and Azad Singh Bali
37. Changing the Composition of Policy Mixes: Lock-In, Path Dependency, and the Sequencing of Policy Tools
Michael Howlett
38. Changing Policy Tools on the Fly: Calibrating Policy Instruments
M. Ramesh and Michael Howlett
Part 9: The Future of Policy Tools
39. The Future of Policy Tools: Past Trends and Current Directions
Sarah Giest, Ishani Mukherjee and Michael Howlett
40. Collaboration as the Future of Organizational Tools
Anka Kekez
41. Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Regulatory Tools
Fernando Filgueiras
42. The Future of Financial Tools: Will Social Impact Bonds Yield Results?
Daniel Bromberg
43. The Future of Informational Tools with Big Data Informatics: Opportunities and Challenges for Evidence-Based Policy-Making
M. Jae Moon and Sabinne Lee
44. The Future of Behavioural Tools in Public Policy
Stuti Rawat and Michael Howlett
Biography
Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
"Comprised of 44 chapters and featuring a line-up of distinguished international scholars, this excellent handbook is the best and the most comprehensive overview available of the policy tools approach in public policy research. This is why all university students, academic researchers, and policy practitioners interested in policy tools should read it."
Daniel Béland, McGill University, Canada
"This comprehensive volume provides definitive analyses of the critical connections between choosing appropriate policy tools and achieving desired policy outcomes. Michael Howlett has assembled a stellar cast of international scholars. They demonstrate the critical challenges of designing policy mixes for important problems, while taking account of evaluation evidence and changing political contexts. They provide new insights into how emerging problems are being tackled through new techniques such as big data analysis, behavioural psychology and co-production."
Brian Head, University of Queensland, Australia
"This excellent volume advances understandings of how combinations of policy tools manipulate both the substance and the processes of policymaking. It provides a great service to anyone interested in using tools as an analytical framework. And it will be welcomed by everyone who is concerned with better understanding how the policy process works."
Jenny M Lewis, University of Melbourne, Australia
"The Handbook’s combination of the policy tools approach with the stages where the tools are deployed in the policy process - e.g., agenda setting, policy formulation and policy decision-making - has never been this comprehensively, systematically and successfully carried out before in the literature."
Evert Vedung, Uppsala University, Sweden
"The study of policy instruments traditionally constitutes a central topic of policy sciences. In the last decade, the research on policy tools accelerated very significantly. This important and complete book takes research on policy tools to a new level by organizing and synthesizing a large volume of new findings and perspectives."
Arnošt Veselý, Charles University, Czech Republic
