Do Programmatic Groups Promote the Successful Implementation of Policy Labs?

Emerged over the past two decades, policy labs are a relatively young phenomenon that is characterized by a strong orientation towards design thinking and often connected to an involvement of stakeholders (McGann, Blomkamp, & Lewis, 2018). Research on this topic is rising, yet there is need for more empirical evidence that informs explanations of how policy labs are successfully integrated in the process of policy implementation (Olejniczak, Borkowska-Waszak, Domaradzka-Widła, & Park, 2020, p. 105). The paper analyzes the example of the development of a housing estate in a local policy community in Germany that is designed to be a policy lab in and for itself and has reached the stages of implementation. Drawing on this example, the central research question asked is how the hurdles of bureaucracy can be overcome for policy labs to enter the stage of policy implementation. To answer this question, recent research on programmatic action and social identities supposes that the emergence of programmatic groups that comprise policy actors in various positions with various resources and identify with a certain policy program contributes to the successful adoption and implementation of this program (Hornung, Bandelow, & Vogeler, 2019). Following this view, the paper develops the argument that policy labs can be intendedly used by a programmatic group for implementing their already developed policy program and that policy labs generate programmatic groups and policy programs themselves. Methodologically, the analysis rests on interviews with key actors in the policy program connected to the policy lab under study. The results thereby also provide general implications for how policy labs are integrated into the administrational and bureaucratical structures. References Hornung, Johanna, Bandelow, Nils C., & Vogeler, Colette S. (2019). Social Identities in the Policy Process. Policy Sciences, 52(2), 211-231. doi:10.1007/s11077-018-9340-6 McGann, Michael, Blomkamp, Emma, & Lewis, Jenny M. (2018). The Rise of Public Sector Innovation Labs: Experiments in Design Thinking for Policy. Policy Sciences, 51(3), 249-267. doi:10.1007/s11077-018-9315-7 Olejniczak, Karol, Borkowska-Waszak, Sylwia, Domaradzka-Widła, Anna, & Park, Yaerin. (2020). Policy Labs: the Next Frontier of Policy Design and Evaluation? Policy & Politics, 48(1), 89-110.