Chapter One set out heuristics that illuminated the underpinning and interlocking elements of policy design – power, vision and grammar – and contrasting policy designs, conventional and co-productive. It focused on the first of these elements – power – and how differing interpretations of power informs contrasting notions of policy design. This chapter builds on these heuristics to consider the vision and grammar of conventional policy designs. Vision reflects the recognition that policy design is political and value-based and provides a basis to inform, mobilise and channel action towards desired policy outcomes. If vision is the politics and values that inform the desired policy outcomes to be pursued, then grammar is the institutional practices employed in the pursuit of those goals.

The Introduction outlined some of the failings and consequences of conventional constituted policy design. In this chapter we develop the heuristic to try and explain the causes of these failings and consequences. Decisions are made about where to build new houses, waste incinerators, wind farms and roads which make citizens angry or suspicious of policy makers’ intentions. Public services seem to be stretched to capacity and fail to offer quality tailored care. Or there might be disparities in life chances and quality of life between those at the top and those at the bottom which make us worry that some are left behind. What is going wrong in cases like these? Is it that decision makers do not understand the situation well enough? Is it that decisions are made based on party politics? Is it that the loudest voices have dominated? How can we get a deeper understanding of these issues? Just as the specifics of good policy design vary depending on context, so do suboptimal policy designs – each problem has its own unique features. While this is true, it is also possible to identify some common aspects of conventional approaches to policy that hamper their problem-solving capacities. Figure 3 shows the most salient and problematic negative features of vision and grammar that characterise the limitations of conventional policy design. This chapter will look first at these specifics of vision in conventional policy design, then of grammar, in order to understand the characteristics which generate some of the limitations of conventional policy design.