Does Strategic Direction make a Difference? The Role of Policy Strategies in Energy Policy Design

The ex ante assessment of policy design is often understood as a question of how different policy elements fit – or fail to fit – together. The literature on endogenous change in policy mixes is clear that the elements that make up mixes will change over time in unplanned or un-designed ways. Long periods of endogenous change under the influence of processes such as layering, drift and conversion can significantly alter the internal relationships of a complex policy design. Using evidence from the energy sector, where long time frames and complex policy mixes are common, this paper assesses the extent to which policy strategies can maintain the key relationship amongst elements of a policy mix over time. The paper first discusses how to identify policy strategies using the Howlett and Cashore approach to policy elements. We identify what kinds of policy elements are included in policy strategies and whether the original “goodness of fit” between policy elements is improved by broad strategic direction in the form of strategies, framework documents and road maps. While we would expect that strategies tend to focus on policy goals and implementation logics, there is evidence that some strategies go much further. The paper then tracks the emergence, persistence and effects of these strategic designs over time in the energy policies of Germany, the UK, Austria, New Zealand and Canada, using a database of policy elements originally developed to track policy intensity in the energy sector between 1998 and 2010. We develop a typology of strategies based upon the degree to which they incorporate multiple policy elements and their design function in managing paradigmatic or incremental change. While policy strategies can certainly fail there is evidence that strategies are a potentially important tool in long term policy design.