Abstract

Policy studies to date have focused almost exclusively on the “good” side of policy formulation, that is, dealing with concerns around ensuring that knowledge is marshalled towards developing the best feasible policy under the assumption of well-intentioned governments and accommodating policy targets. This work has not carefully examined nor allowed for the possibility that government intentions may not be solely oriented towards the creation of public value or that policy targets may indulge in various forms of “misconduct” – from fraud to gamesmanship – which undermine government intentions. Although self-interested, corrupt and other similar kinds of policy-making have been the subject of many studies in administrative and regulatory law, this work has generally been ignored or paid only lip service by policy studies. This is changing, however, as the question of the behaviour of policy targets in particular has increasingly become a source of interest among policy scholars. This article reviews these developments and behaviours in order to aid the process of improving policy designs to deal with this “dark side” of policy-making.

摘要

迄今为止，政策研究几乎完全集中在政策制定的“良好”方面，即在确保政府有良好意图并适应政策目标的情况下，确保将知识编组为制定最佳可行政策的问题。这项工作没有仔细检查，也没有考虑到政府意图可能不会仅仅针对创造公共价值，或者政策目标可能沉迷于各种形式的“不当行为”（从欺诈到游戏技巧）而破坏政府意图的可能性。尽管自私自利，腐败和其他类似类型的政策制定已成为行政和法规法研究的主题，但这项工作通常被政策研究忽略或仅口口相传。但是，这种情况正在改变。特别是关于政策目标行为的问题已日益成为政策学者们关注的焦点。本文回顾了这些发展和行为，以帮助改进政策设计以应对决策的“阴暗面”。