Policy Design and Policy Change: Time Strategies and Leadership

Policy change can occur accidently or as a result of a conscious process. Thelen, Hacker and others have noted several common routes or mechanisms through which change occurs, such as “layering”, “conversion”, “drift” and “replacement”. While studies of policy design have typically focused on ‘replacement’, in which an entirely new set of goals and means replaces an older one or, in the case of a novel policy area, creates an initial regime, it is also the case that other processes such as layering – in which new goals and means are added to existing ones , conversion – in which new actors and ideas are injected into old forms, and ‘drift’ - in which old policies are allowed to become estranged from their original purposes to serve new ones – are all capable of conscious manipulation and design. Panels in this section are intended to explore these change processes and the leadership strategies involved in their conscious use to affect policy change. Papers will provide empirical case studies of change and design processes as well as examine conceptual aspects of the subject.