Diagnosing Policy Conflicts: Insights from Applications of the Policy Conflict Framework

Abstract

Policy conflict is an inherent and enduring feature of public policymaking. Across policy domains and levels of governance, disagreements over goals, values, and authority generate conflicts that vary in intensity and form. While some policy conflicts produce negative outcomes such as polarization and stalemate, others can be constructive, fostering learning, innovation, and policy change. This seminar presents an approach to diagnosing policy conflict grounded in the Policy Conflict Framework (PCF). The PCF conceptualizes policy conflict as a set of interrelated cognitive and behavioral characteristics that vary across actors, contexts, and time. The seminar introduces key diagnostic dimensions of policy conflict—divergence in policy positions, perceived threats, and willingness to compromise—alongside observable conflict behaviors such as strategic action, framing, and contestation – and the outcomes of conflict. It also highlights how features of the policy setting, including policy issues, institutional venues, actors, and events, shape conflict intensity and the productive or nonproductive consequences of conflict. Drawing on empirical applications of the PCF, the seminar concludes by discussing the value of systematic and comparative policy conflict diagnosis for assessing the health of democracy.