Designing Global Public Policies in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The rise of global initiatives in many policy sectors is an emerging phenomenon that deserves the attention of scholars interested in international relations, regional integration, and policy sciences, as well as practitioners seeking comparative examples beyond their national and regional borders. This chapter demonstrates the value-added of the design orientation in studying this phenomenon and the implications for the contemporary delivery of public services and goods. It begins by describing three waves of policy design studies and their insights for unpacking the relationship between instrument design and intended outcomes. The overview reveals a notable feature of the extant policy design approach: its empirical preoccupation with domestic-level developments, which inform but confine theory development. This chapter introduces the analytical steps required to operationalize policy design insights in examining global public policy and transnational administration. In so doing, it calls for a new metaphor for policy design that would incorporate the beyond-the-state dimension.