Policy instruments at work: A meta‐analysis of their applications
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | Claudia Acciai,Giliberto Capano |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12673 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Policy instruments at work: A meta-analysis of
their applications
Claudia Acciai
1
| Giliberto Capano
2
1
Department of Social and Political Sciences,
Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze, Italy
2
Department of Political and Social Sciences,
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Correspondence
Giliberto Capano, Department of Political and
Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Strada
Maggiore 45, Bologna 40123, Italy.
Email: giliberto.capano@unibo.it
Funding information
Giliberto Capano received funding from the
Ministry of Education, University and
Research (MIUR), Grant/Award Number: PRIN
2015
Abstract
This article uses a systematic review of the main literature
in the field to shed light on different operationalizations of
the main classifications of policy instruments. Although the
literature offers a large number of instrument taxonomies,
many of them act as theoretical guidelines rather than oper-
ational concepts that can help to disentangle the different
features of governing actions. This article provides a review
of the most frequently used policy instrument typologies
and, through a meta-analysis, it analyses how instrument
typologies have been differentially adopted to explain real-
world phenomena. The results are a high degree of hetero-
geneity in citation frequency, the polyhedral nature of the
concept of policy instruments, a divide between typologies
focused on governmental resources and those focused on
drivers of expected behaviour, and ‘labellism’. Thus, what
emerges is the urgency of a process of convergence
towards a common framework.
1|INTRODUCTION
In public policy, there is a consolidated tradition of policy instrument analysis because, ultimately, these instruments
represent governance techniques by which governmental authorities wield their power to structure collective action
and thereby effect social change. Since policy tools represent the constitutive elements of public actions, they con-
tain useful information on the nature and effects of public action.
Thus, many conceptualizations, classifications and lists of instruments have been and continue to be proposed.
However, while the extensive body of literature evidences the relevance of the topic, the current literature lacks a
systematic analysis of the usage of policy instruments to achieve specific theoretical and analytical goals. This dearth
of clarity risks hindering the process of scientific cumulation in public policy studies because the presence of so many
Received: 14 September 2019 Revised: 12 February 2020 Accepted: 5 May 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12673
118 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Public Admin. 2021;99:118–136.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
conceptual options leads to persistent fragmentation of the field. To date, no analyses have focused on the practical
uses of policy instruments by scholars.
This article aims to fill this gap by conducting both a systematic review and a meta-analysis of the applications
of policy instruments' conceptualizations and classifications.
1
Thus, the ultimate goals of this article are to determine
the extent to which policy instrument typologies have been adopted to interpret real-world phenomena and whether
it is possible to identify a specific record of adoption patterns among existing policy instrument typologies.
This article is organized as follows. In the second section, we introduce the relevance of policy instruments for
public policy analysis and the different theoretical approaches that shape existing typologies. In the third section, the
methodology is presented, followed in section four by the findings of the meta-analysis. In section five, the results
are discussed, with emphasis on the most relevant empirical findings: the differentiated use of the typologies in
terms of the frequency of citations and empirical applications (analytical focus) and the concrete and persistent
‘labellism’in the operationalization of the most adopted typologies. Finally, some observations regarding the empiri-
cal relevance of the conceptual treatment of policy instruments are provided, calling for a process of cross-fertiliza-
tion among the different typological traditions.
2|TYPOLOGIES OF POLICY INSTRUMENTS: THEY ARE NECESSARY,
BUT HOW ARE THEY USED?
2.1 |Why a meta-analysis is needed
Policy instruments have become a fundamental topic in the public policy field. They are an essential heuristic device for
explaining public action and for predicting the behaviours and reactions of thetarget population. There is substantial agree-
ment in the literature regarding what policy instruments are. They can be defined as ‘anidentifiable method through which
collective action is structured to address a public problem’(Salamon 2002, p. 19), ‘a set of techniques by which governmen-
tal authorities wield their power in attempting to ensure support and affect or prevent social change’(Vedun g 1998, p. 21),
or as the means governments use ‘to deliberately affect the nature, types, quantities and distribution of the goods and ser-
vices provided in a society’(Howlett 2000, p. 415). All of the most commonly used and prominent definitions of policy
instruments agree that instruments refer to the capacity of governments to ‘get things done’. Their relevance to policy analy-
sis is being progressively recognized, and they have become some of the main research topics investi gated by policy
scholars (Howlett 2019) in both policy analysis and public administration research. On the one hand, policy instruments have
been analysed because they help us understand how and why policy dynamics develop, how and why governance modes
change over time (Le Galés 2011; Capano et al. 2015) and how policy actors aggregate around specific policy instruments
(Béland and Howlett 2016; Capano and Lippi 2017). On the other hand, a renewed policy desi gn perspective has focused
its attention on the different combinations of policy instruments and on the reasons for using different policy design styles
(Howlett and Rayner 2013, 2017; Schmidt and Sewerin 2018; Capano and Pritoni 2019; Capano et al. 2019).
Overall, as indicated by the most recent reviews of the literature (Howlett 2019; Vargas and Restrepo 2019;
Capano and Howlett 2020), an inventory of what we know and do not know about policy instruments shows that
there are many issues on which knowledge is still lacking. When considering the topics on which there is currently a
knowledge gap, we find that a map of the use of policy typologies could consistently improve our capacity to analyse
some of them. Specifically, we refer to issues such as ‘sectorial and national variations and patterns/styles in tools
use’,‘policy convergence’in terms of instrument adoption, ‘the linkage between tools and policy paradigms’, the
1
A systematic review is a procedure by which it is possible to provide an overview of a given phenomenon or field of research. In contrast, a meta-analysis
describes the quantitative procedures adopted to statistically combine research results (Cooper et al. 2009). By performing both, we aim to review the
existing scholarship in the field of policy instrument studies, analyse their content and classify them according to the use of policy instruments for
explaining real-world phenomena. Indeed, the combined use of systematic analysis and meta-review (Askie and Offringa 2015) allows a synthesis and
analysis of evidence regarding the effective application of policy instrument typologies and their contribution to explaining governing actions.
ACCIAI AND CAPANO 119
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