Policy Making in Theory and in Practice

I have been very impressed by a recent doctoral research paper by Dr Laura Hilger. It combines the best academic thinking on optimal policy design with the recent real-world experience of several civil service policy teams. Some of the latter (though not all) were working under considerable pressure:

The context in which we have been making policy has been quite chaotic for a number of years. It doesn’t mean you can’t make good policy, it just means that you do have to be prepared to write a paper in two days, for a committee that doesn’t exist, and that no one’s ever heard of before. – Civil servant, DLUHC

The great value of Dr Hilger's paper is that she develops a descriptive model which can be used by the Policy Profession to plan and organise effective and efficient policy-making.

Dr Hilger's model has two main parts.

She first identifies six strands that are typically found within the policy design process. These are presented in the order in which they might ideally occur, but should be seen more as strands of work, or building blocks, that come together in different ways depending on the context.

She then demonstrates how these strands play out in practice, recognising that policy never happens the same way twice. The policy process needs to be adapted to the constraints within which each policy team is working.

Most of the rest of this Substack consists of text directly copied from the paper.

Here are the six strands in their ideal or preferred order:

1. Establish & Governance: This is an initial administrative and set up strand to establish the initial design team, put in place any advisory group, and establish intended governance practices before commencing design work. This is a crucial foundation to ensure there is a suitable team, advisors, and governance in place to enable a smooth design process.

2. Diagnose & Scope: Policymakers more precisely diagnose the problem and objective of interest, determine a necessary workplan for design, and take early actions supporting funding decisions and/or legislative process.

3. Understand & Inform: Evidence and policy (new, old, or existing) is used to better understand the policy problem in question and make a case for policy change.

4. Identify Options: An initial long list of possible solutions is assessed using pre-agreed criteria to develop a shortlist of the best options to tackle the problem.

5. Refine, Negotiate & Iterate: The shortlist is tested and negotiated with internal and/or external stakeholders and users to assess response to the options and their viability in practice. Adjustments are made to the options to make them more fit for purpose and better positioned to receive internal approvals.

6. Agree, Plan & Approve: The final recommendation is given to senior decisionmakers for final selection and approval; simultaneously, teams complete any final tasks (such as finalising funding or programme materials) and begin preparing for delivery.

Dr Hilger then adds detail to each of the policy strands so that practitioners can be reminded which questions to ask, what activities need to be planned, what outcomes to be sought, and so on. These strands are presented on a single page, to be easily accessible, and form the basis of a policymaker checklist, which can be found at the end of this Substack.

The rest of this Substack extracts some of the interesting background and observations that can be found throughout the research paper.

The six strands were seldom found in chronological order

While there was considerable consistency in the presence of six strands of activity, the way they came together in practice was wholly inconsistent. While an ‘ideal’ order existed, it was by no means the only way to do policy, even successful policy. Strands often changed order, went missing and/or happened in parallel to suit the needs of each situation.

The figure neatly demonstrates the wide range of practices that were presented to Dr Hilger:

A few common changes to the order of process were as follows.

Strands merged or in parallel. The most common order, if not chronological, was the merging of strands, or running them in parallel (in full or overlapping).

I think two and three are nearly always smushed together in my experience, because, you want to understand the problem we’re trying to solve. But actually, you quite often need to look at the evidence to be able to answer that question. – Senior civil servant, DLUHC

Strands go missing. It was also not uncommon to see certain strands disappear from a policy process. This was most common for strand three (Understand & Inform), so use of evidence seemed to be the first thing to be curtailed or eliminated when time was tight. This also happened in some cases with strand five (Refine, Negotiate & Iterate), whereby testing was not always included in practice, especially when rushed.

Repeat strands. In some cases, strands happened more than once in the process, often when looping back occurred and tasks were repeated as a result.

Other factors which disturbed the ideal flow of the model were the degree of prior prescription of the policy outcome, and its urgency/time available.

The Degree of Urgency and Time Available

There were a few scenarios that affected the pace at which officials need to work, including ...

• A genuine emergency.

• The need to work to a specific deadline.

• Manifesto commitments or other political imperatives.

• Degree of complexity, and

• Degree of prescription.

Urgency was a factor, but not the only one that determined how quickly policy design happened.

A common starting point for defining the process was the degree to which the policy solution was already prescribed vs needing to be designed.

When a solution was already prescribed, this was usually the result of either a specific manifesto commitment or a minister wanting a very specific thing – and in both cases, not open to alternative solutions. In such situations, a full process was rarely needed, as policymakers would simply have to design and implement the exact request. Such situations resulted in a relatively short and curtailed process, in many cases jumping straight to designing the requested solution, without any prior steps.

There were instances when a fuller (if quick) process was taken, if only to retroactively verify and justify the request before moving forward. This contrasted with processes that were not so clearly prescribed, which needed a design from scratch and, thus, required more time to go through the strands in more detail.

If a minister comes to us and says I’d like to find a way to improve housing affordability or whatever, then I think you have a quite a lot of space to go through that process. If, on the other hand, a minister comes and says, I would like to deliver a [particular] policy and it’s going to work in the following ways… then your room to go through that process is really boxed in. - Senior civil servant DLUHC

Ministerial Style and Pressure also made a difference.

Dr Hilger found some good examples of ministers and officials working very effectively together.

But ...

One consistent issue throughout the research was the impact of ministerial style on the process and, particularly, the tension between policy and politics that hindered effective policy design. There were many aspects to this, but nearly all policymakers at some point commented – usually negatively – on how a minister’s actions and expectations during design would affect the process and its outcomes.

One aspect of this was ministers – who are often not experienced in policymaking process – not understanding how policy gets made and, therefore, having unrealistic expectations of the process, its needs and the time required. While some situations were genuinely urgent or had a real reason to be rushed, in many cases impatient ministers would ask for policies to be designed more quickly than genuinely necessary, creating a false sense of urgency; thus, while not actually urgent, they were treated as such, with a rapid and/or curtailed process as a result. This often created tension in the process and led to many curtailed processes because of impatience.

Typically, ministers want everything to happen incredibly quickly, so underlying everything is a huge frustration from ministers that things happen so slowly. And ministers always want to be able to make announcements that are responding to things quickly. Which means that they want to be able to make an announcement, and everything always has to be new. – Senior civil servant, DLUHC

Further, and often linked to this, was when ministers came with a specific idea in mind, and would not be swayed from this even where there was evidence to demonstrate it was a bad idea. They just wanted that specific thing done and policymakers, as good civil servants, were duty bound to see it through, regardless of their own opinions or the evidence.

A key part of this was the need to deliver on manifesto commitments. These commitments usually had a high imperative to deliver, so there was often a degree of urgency to respond to them quickly. Ministers wanted to be seen as effective, so moved quickly to show progress and announce plans, often at the expense of rigorous and robust design process. This was exacerbated by the recent and frequent ministerial churn during the time of this research, with multiple ministers in quick succession each having their own priorities and wanting to quickly make their mark.

The minister’s like, ‘I want to do a X policy.’ And people think it’s a batshit crazy idea [because] they think it will have perverse outcomes, whatever else. But there is a real tendency in Whitehall from what I have seen for people to try and be as positive about it as possible and not turn around and say, ‘no, this is absolutely bonkers because of X, Y and Z.’ There is a tendency to try and make it work. – Senior civil servant, DfE

Ministers change an awful lot. If I look over the last three or four years, then the constant shifting administrations does have a destabilising effect. In 18 months, our lead minister has changed six times. So, on a contentious issue, you will have a range of ministers coming from different perspectives, some more focused on one set of concerns. When you're trying to move quickly, which is what we tend to do, I think that change is potentially destabilising for the policy teams. – Senior civil servant, DLUHC

Some ministers were not willing to consider alternative approaches or accept challenge.

There was widespread agreement amongst Dr Hilger's interviewees that the culture in Whitehall generally – and some ministers specifically – did not appreciate challenge and push-back. This created situations where simply delivering on ministerial requests sometimes counted as a success, rather than genuinely solving a problem with a viable solution. As a result, some policymakers adapted their approach and advice to ministerial wishes, and jeopardised the process by not challenging ministers' ideas and by offering inaccurate advice (this reducing their impartiality).

Dr Hilger summarises the consequences of working within various scenarios in this figure:

Urgency had Benefits

It is important to note that urgency was not always seen as being bad and does not necessarily result in a poor process or outcome. Even a rushed process, where it at least attempted each strand, could be successful. Indeed, policymakers specifically mentioned two positive features of urgent processes that were beneficial to the overall process.

Loss of excessive governance. Policymakers doing design processes are plagued by an excessive number of meetings with their team, various boards, advisors, committees, and others, as well as ongoing paperwork, all of which is time consuming. Rushed processes tended to have this stripped back to the basics, freeing up more mental energy and actual time to do design work.

Greater collaboration. Emergency policy situations tended to be all-hands-on-deck and often involve more collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, e.g. academics, as part of the process. Something which was often constrained in normal scenarios become a task of collective design, bringing all key perspectives into the process quite quickly. This can make emergency policy more collaborative and effective than normal, less urgent design processes.

Future policy teams should certainly consider how these positive features of some urgent policy situations could be embedded into general processes to improve overall practice.

There’s something about situations which mean that the kind of unnecessary bureaucracy is just thrown out the window and you actually get on and do stuff. – Senior civil servant, DHSC

Reactions to the Research

Following her own advice, Dr Hilger tested her initial conclusions, and the first draft of her model, on a wide range of civil servants. The overall reaction was extremely positive:

For someone who hasn’t worked in government, that’s an amazingly accurate reflection of the stages. – Senior civil servant, Evaluation Task Force

I think this is really, really interesting and fascinating. As you kind of went through each stage, I really recognised what you were talking about and where these strands fit in and how it all kind of comes together. – Senior civil servant, Treasury

One outcome from this testing was that people wanted the one-page model as a reference for their work. There were a number of helpful suggestions and reflections about changes that would be needed to overcome some problems in current practice, such as things happening too late. This helped Dr Hilger create a checklist for practitioners which can be adapted as necessary to fit the unique needs of different organisations.

Finally, before unveiling the checklist, I should stress that the research focussed on social policy design. Dr Hilger hopes to test her model in other policy areas though I must say that I fully expect it that it will be found to be equally valid across the whole policy spectrum.

You can read the full document here.

Dr Hilger would be delighted to discuss her research and checklist with anyone interested in it, and/or present her work to civil service teams. You can contact her by email.

Here is the checklist that resulted from the research and subsequent feedback:

Abbreviations:

PDT: Policy Design Team, PSED: Public Sector Equality Duty, HMT: HM Treasury, TOC: Theory of Change, M&E: Monitoring & Evaluation

Martin Stanley