Policy design or organizational design: On the relevance of the study of public policy and administration
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Morten Egeberg |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12671 |
REVIEW
Policy design or organizational design: On the
relevance of the study of public policy and
administration
Morten Egeberg
1,2
1
Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
2
ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Correspondence
Morten Egeberg, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, PO Box 1097 Blindern, Oslo 03, Norway.
Email: morten.egeberg@stv.uio.no
1|INTRODUCTION
Whether the relevance and usefulness of a scientific discipline should be a major concern seems contested. To some,
scientific research is dedicated to knowledge per se and a human spirit of inquiry. Nevertheless, the theme of scien-
tific relevance is an enduring theme. This also holds for political science where ‘relevance’is occasionally placed on
the formal research agenda (e.g., Holmberg and Rothstein 2012; Stoker et al. 2015). However, arguably, relevance
relates to both providing ‘pure knowledge’on polity, politics and policy and to providing instruments for practical
problem solving in the political sphere. It would be wise to distinguish between the two: in my view, the relevance of
the discipline is indisputable regarding the first concern. Since political order probably constitutes the most important
societal component in our lives, it should be rather obvious that citizens in general need research-based knowledge
about its organization, recruitment, decision-making and outputs. In particular, this holds for professions like politi-
cians, public bureaucrats, political journalists, lobbyists and schoolteachers in social science. The second concern,
however, whether the discipline provides tools for practical problem solving, seems far more contested: to what
extent is the discipline equipped to deal with trivial as well as serious challenges such as climate change, migration or
pandemics (like Covid-19)? In the following, I will discuss two approaches that both aim at providing such tools,
namely a policy design focus and an organizational design focus. Both approaches mainly belong to the sub-discipline
Public Policy and Administration (PPA). I argue, inter alia, that the dominance of a policy design focus is highly sur-
prising since the dependent variables (effects to be achieved) in this case tend to be located outside the core area of
PPA research.
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12671
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2020 The Author. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Admin. 2020;98:801–804.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm 801
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