Despite the fact that our knowledge on how policies are designed has substantially improved during the last two decades, prescriptive literature on policy formulation remains largely disconnected from these new findings. The article examines five major assumptions upon which policy formulation is still predominantly based: (a) there is one way policies are and should be formulated; (b) effective formulation of policies is more about the right application of methods than of the substance of a policy domain; (c) policy formulation is about choosing from mutually exclusive alternatives; (d) problem definition has priority over problem solution; (e) there is a clear distinction between policy formulation, adoption and implementation. This article shows why these assumptions are outdated and that they lead to many practical problems in the teaching of policy analysis. It is argued that policy formulation guidelines and training in policy formulation should be based on current policy design scholarship that stresses, for instance, the importance of local knowledge, deep understanding of actors’ perspectives and the need to formulate policy packages. The article concludes with preliminary recommendations on how to move forward, illustrated with concrete examples from practice.

中文翻译：

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重新设计的政策制定：对政策设计及其对教学影响的新理解

尽管在过去的二十年里，我们对政策设计方式的了解有了很大的提高，但关于政策制定的规范性文献在很大程度上与这些新发现脱节。本文考察了政策制定仍主要基于的五个主要假设：(a) 政策制定和应该制定的方式只有一种；(b) 政策的有效制定更多是关于方法的正确应用，而不是政策领域的实质；(c) 政策制定是从相互排斥的替代方案中进行选择；(d) 问题定义优先于问题解决；(e) 政策制定、通过和执行之间有明显区别。这篇文章说明了为什么这些假设已经过时，并且它们会导致政策分析教学中的许多实际问题。有人认为，政策制定指南和政策制定培训应基于当前的政策设计奖学金，例如强调当地知识的重要性、对行为者观点的深刻理解以及制定一揽子政策的必要性。文章最后给出了关于如何前进的初步建议，并通过实践中的具体例子进行了说明。