Institutional design

Abstract

Within public administration and policy sciences the concept of policy networks nowadays is well accepted. Not much attention has been paid so far to strategies aimed at institutional design. Therefore, in this article, we develop a conceptual framework to study institutional design more thoroughly. We do this by specifying the nature and variety of institutional rules that guide the behaviour of actors within networks. Given this categorization of rules, we identify possible strategies to change network rules. Next, we focus on the strategic context of attempts to influence the nature of institutional rules: the process of institutional design. We conclude with suggestions to apply the conceptual framework to empirical research into the forms, impacts and implications of attempts to change the institutional features of policy networks.

Key words:

• Institutional design
• networks
• network management
• rules
• institutions
• complex decision-making

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sandra van Thiel and the anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1 A well-known essay is by Ostrom (1986) on position rules, entry and exit rules, scope rules, authority rules, aggregation rules, information rules and pay-off rules. The disadvantage is that some important rules, like rules that determine professional standards or identity of actors, are missing.

2 They resemble the idea of regulating rules (see Searle 1971; Duintjer 1977).

3 For a more extensive discussion of the strategies see Koppenjan and Klijn (2004: ch. 10).