Introduction

Policy design is all about creating and implementing effective policies. How to best link policy processes and instrument decisions to create effective outcomes, however, is a problem that has driven much thinking in the policy sciences over the last half century. In most of that work, it has been argued that effective policy processes lead to effective instrument choices, which in turn lead to effective outcomes. Exactly how such processes occur and why they should lead to effective choices of policy tools, or how effective policy tool choices lead to effective outcomes, is not well understood. This handbook contains many chapters that set out the results of research into these issues and the conclusions and recommendations for policy design drawn from it. This Introduction sets out a framework for understanding these different components of policy designs and designing as well as several criteria that can be used to assess the merits and demerits of each of these components of the design process. The framework is used to organize the presentation and order of chapters in the handbook, which is also set out here.