Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on the authors and contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: Why is redesign of public policy needed?
- Chapter One Possibilities for policy design
- Chapter Two Conventional policy design
- Chapter Three Co-productive policy design
- Section One Challenges and change within conventional policy design
- Section Two Vision in co-productive policy design
- Section Three Grammar in co-productive policy design
- Chapter Four Debating co-productive policy design
- Chapter Five Governance for co-productive policy designs
- Epilogue Co-producing research
- References
- Index
Can crisis ever be good for policy design?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on the authors and contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: Why is redesign of public policy needed?
- Chapter One Possibilities for policy design
- Chapter Two Conventional policy design
- Chapter Three Co-productive policy design
- Section One Challenges and change within conventional policy design
- Section Two Vision in co-productive policy design
- Section Three Grammar in co-productive policy design
- Chapter Four Debating co-productive policy design
- Chapter Five Governance for co-productive policy designs
- Epilogue Co-producing research
- References
- Index
Summary
This contribution draws on insights into the policy process gained by the contributor as part of a research project – an organisational ethnography of a central government department – and later from working as a policy adviser in the same department. It focuses on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the crises that arise around animal health. The contribution shows how these crises introduce new rhythms and uncertainties into the policy process, disrupting the usual way of doing things, but also challenging the perception and usefulness of seeing the policy process in a linear, stagist way, where the role of different forms of expertise is clearly demarcated and proscribed.
Rather than focusing on where policy making went wrong during these crises, the emphasis here is first to see that crisis does not amount to failure. Instead, the crisis allows the recognition of the messy and chaotic nature of the policy process and the unforeseen and/or uncontrollable contingencies that affect policy outcomes. Second, it shows crisis as an opportunity to allow a more diverse range of voices and different forms of expertise into the policy process. The contribution concludes by exploring how the shifts in the policy process during a crisis have acted as a driver for more sustained change in the Department.
Defra's wide remit covers the kind of policy areas that have earned it the nickname ‘Department for Biblical Disasters’ (Rothstein and Downer, 2012): flooding, animal and plant disease, pollution, food shortages and so on. I focus on one area – animal health – as an example of how dealing with crisis is not only a normal part of business for policy makers in the Department, but can actually be beneficial for them. Defra has a statutory responsibility to deal with livestock diseases under the Animal Health Act 1981 and as part of the UK’s membership of the European Union and the World Organization for Animal Health. Livestock diseases are divided in policy terms into ‘endemic’ diseases, meaning those that are currently present at some level in the UK, and ‘exotic’ diseases, which are not normally present in the UK.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Designing Public Policy for Co-productionTheory, Practice and Change, pp. 53 - 62Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015