Institutionalising Political Monitoring as Part of Policy Design

Building upon my recent publication "Political Monitoring as an Analytical Concept" in Publius: The Journal of Federalism, this paper will first reiterate the importance of the concept of political monitoring to the study of institutions of governance. The conceptualization of political monitoring builds upon the psychological notion that people change their behavior if they believe someone is watching them. Second, the will discuss theoretically how and why policy design might incorporate political monitoring in order to produce specific outcomes. Third, it will present empirical evidence from several illustrative examples to demonstrate how the institutionalization of political monitoring affects policy outcomes.