Policy feedback and pathways: when change leads to endurance and continuity to change
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Policy feedback and pathways : when change leads to endurance and continuity to change. / Daugbjerg, Carsten; Kay, Adrian.
In: Policy Sciences, Vol. 53, 2020, p. 253–268.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Policy feedback and pathways
T2 - when change leads to endurance and continuity to change
AU - Daugbjerg, Carsten
AU - Kay, Adrian
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - The policy feedback literature was initially concerned with explaining how positive feedback could lead to self-reinforcing policy trajectories. More recently, policy scholars have devoted more attention to negative feedbacks which can result in self-undermining policy trajectories. This article moves beyond these two well-known pathways to policy endurance and change by conceptually outlining two additional pathways to endurance and change. We argue that positive and negative feedback may be observed simultaneously within the same policy trajectory. The existing literature fails to distinguish adequately between policy feedback processes operating at the ideational and instrument levels of policy. We outline a pathway to endurance in which negative feedbacks at the policy instrument level result in instrument change which can be a necessary condition for sustained positive feedback processes at the ideational level of policy. Somewhat counterintuitively, we argue a policy pathway in which positive instrument feedbacks undermine the ideational foundation of policy. With positive instrument feedback overshadowing negative feedbacks, misalignment between policy and the broader context, eventually undermining the policy, is likely to occur at some point. These new insights are important for policy planning with longer time horizons.
AB - The policy feedback literature was initially concerned with explaining how positive feedback could lead to self-reinforcing policy trajectories. More recently, policy scholars have devoted more attention to negative feedbacks which can result in self-undermining policy trajectories. This article moves beyond these two well-known pathways to policy endurance and change by conceptually outlining two additional pathways to endurance and change. We argue that positive and negative feedback may be observed simultaneously within the same policy trajectory. The existing literature fails to distinguish adequately between policy feedback processes operating at the ideational and instrument levels of policy. We outline a pathway to endurance in which negative feedbacks at the policy instrument level result in instrument change which can be a necessary condition for sustained positive feedback processes at the ideational level of policy. Somewhat counterintuitively, we argue a policy pathway in which positive instrument feedbacks undermine the ideational foundation of policy. With positive instrument feedback overshadowing negative feedbacks, misalignment between policy and the broader context, eventually undermining the policy, is likely to occur at some point. These new insights are important for policy planning with longer time horizons.
KW - Feedback
KW - Ideas
KW - Path dependency
KW - Policy change
KW - Policy instruments
KW - Policy paradigms
U2 - 10.1007/s11077-019-09366-y
DO - 10.1007/s11077-019-09366-y
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85076604921
VL - 53
SP - 253
EP - 268
JO - Policy Sciences
JF - Policy Sciences
SN - 0032-2687
ER -
ID: 234024977