Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments

The second edition of this highly regarded book provides a concise and accessible introduction to the principles and elements of policy design in contemporary governance. It examines in detail the range of substantive and procedural policy instruments that together comprise the toolbox from which governments choose tools to resolve policy problems and the principles and practices that lead to their use.

Guiding readers through the study of the many different kinds of instruments used by governments in carrying out their tasks, adapting to, and altering, their environments, this book:

• Discusses current trends in instrument use linked to factors such as globalization and the increasingly networked, digital and collaborative nature of modern society;
• Considers the principles and practices behind the selection and use of specific types of instruments in contemporary government and the future research agenda of policy design studies and practices;
• Evaluates in detail the merits, demerits and rationales for the use of specific organization, regulatory, financial and information-based tools and the trends visible in their use including recent efforts to develop and deploy new tools such as nudges and choice architectures, co-production and crowd-sourcing;
• Addresses the issues surrounding not only individual tools but also concerning the evolution and development of instrument mixes, their relationship to policy styles and the challenges involved in their (re)design.

Providing a comprehensive overview of this essential component of modern governance and featuring helpful definitions of key concepts and further reading, this book is essential reading for all students of public policy, administration and management.


About the Author

Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University specializing in public policy analysis, political economy and resource and environmental policy.