A Novel Approach for Assessing the Consistency of Policy-Mixes and Their Socio-Political Feasibility

Environmental and sustainability issues often span multiple sectors and objectives. Given their multi-faceted nature encompassing social, technical and economic elements a mix of policies are often required to address such challenges effectively. However, for a policy mix to function well, its constituent policies should be consistent with one another to avoid antagonistic interactions. The concept of consistency or coherency of policy mixes have gained increasing attention in recent years. Nevertheless, their operationalisation in empirical studies often lack formal assessment. Moreover, while the importance of designing consistent policy mixes is widely acknowledged, the political dynamics shaping these mixes remain largely unexplored. This represents a critical gap as the development of consistent and effective policy mix is contingent on the interest and power of key actors. Consequently, designing and implementing transformative policy mixes requires not only a systematic assessment of policy interactions and their effect on desired outcomes but also an analysis of actors’ interests and influence to evaluate the feasibility of implementation. Against this backdrop, we propose a novel approach to i) generate consistent policy-mix scenarios and ii) assess their socio-political feasibility in order to identify policy mix scenarios with lower conflict potential. Building on Kosow et al.(2022) we use Cross-Impact Balance (CIB) Analysis to assess interrelations among the different variants of policies and based on this identify consistent policy-mix scenarios. In addition, our approach integrates an actor analysis to elicit the interests (i.e. policy preferences) and influence potential of key actors with respect to each policy variant, allowing us to evaluate the conflict potential of different policy-mix scenarios. This combined analysis also reveals the most influential actors, emerging coalitions based on shared policy preferences and potential bottlenecks in the implementation process. As an empirical case, we focus on plastics management in Switzerland which represents a case at a regulatory crossroads due to ongoing policy processes concerning packaging and plastics governance. We identified nine policy instruments most relevant in the Swiss case and formulated three variants for each: one representing the status quo (the current state of the policy in question) and the other two representing incremental and radical changes. We defined reduced plastics use and increased circularity of plastics management as the main policy objectives and assessed the impact of each policy variant on these objectives, as well as on other policy variants included in the analysis, in consultation with experts. An online questionnaire was conducted to elicit the preferences and influence potential of key actors with regard to the nine policy instruments and their variants. Preliminary results reveal nine internally consistent policy mix scenarios that fulfil the objectives of reducing plastic use and increasing its circular management. Notably, in all these scenarios the resulting policy variants are different from the status quo, implying that substantive policy change is required to transform Swiss plastics management towards greater sustainability. Our analytical approach can be used to identify and prioritize the implementation of consistent policy-mixes with lower conflict potential, thereby supporting the identification of effective and feasible transition pathways towards sustainability goals.