New development: Policy learning and public management—a match made in crisis

IMPACT

Policy-makers face significant challenges responding to technically complex, multidimensional, large-scale, and socially-embedded crises such as Covid-19. In this article, the authors call for policy-makers to expand the horizon on expertise at the policy design table. This is by including public management experts and practitioners as policy co-designers. With their in-field experience, situated knowledge of social contexts and public administration capacities, public management experts can provide critical insights into the design of crisis policy responses. This approach entails setting management and co-ordination frameworks that ensure the functional integration of insights from a range of multi-disciplinary experts into the policy learning process.

ABSTRACT

Epistemic policy learning is positioned as a key mechanism for informing policy design in crises of ambiguity and technical complexity. However, literature and, in most cases, practice have frequently viewed the expertise underlying epistemic policy learning as dominantly scientific or academic. Drawing on policy learning, policy process and public management theories, the authors argue that the multidimensionality and ambiguity of crisis conditions create multiple policy-making tensions that call for the integration of public management practitioners in a policy co-design capacity. This argument capitalizes on notions of situational synthesis and societal embeddedness, situated knowledge, and legitimacy. The authors further support their claims using empirical evidence on national responses to the Covid-19 crisis. In doing so they contribute to an empirically nuanced theoretical perspective to the interconnectedness of public administration and public policy. This argues for favouring a complementary (as opposed to a dichotomous) model of the politico–administrative relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• crisis governance
• epistemic learning
• policy learning
• public management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).