Policy Feedback and Policy Change
Year: 2010
Type: preprint
Abstract: The concept of policy feedback has become central to the study of policymaking. This paper seeks to advance the analysis of policy feedback in four principal ways. First, we argue that, despite a strong emphasis in the literature positive feedback, negative feedback effects are likely to be highly common and to have important implications for policy development. Second, we call into question the common notion of positive feedback as primarily stability-inducing and negative feedback as a driver of change. Third, we highlight the important ways in which feedback mechanisms and their effects are conditional on other features of the political and social context. Fourth, we argue that explanations that integrate negative with positive feedback effects – and that understand those effects as conditional – can help to explain both incremental and dramatic policy change. We contend that both negative and positive feedback effects can - under particular political and technical conditions - explain the transformation of policy regimes.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Authors: Alan M. Jacobs, R. Kent Weaver
Institutions: University of British Columbia, Brookings Institution
Language: English
Topic: Policy Transfer and Learning
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1576811684