Policies and Perceptions: Using the Institutional Grammar Tool to Assess Policy Design, Appropriateness, and Coerciveness

A necessary pursuit in public policy scholarship is better understanding of the language of policies intended to structure behavior and the implications thereof. Currently lacking in this literature are methodological approaches that yield micro-level depictions of the linguistic elements constituting policies, while at the same time supporting analyses of macro-level governance questions, such as (i) what is the perceived appropriateness of policies; and (ii) are there differences between actual and perceived policy coerciveness? In this paper, these questions are answered in the context of U.S. aquaculture. Data were obtained through a coding of state level aquaculture policies in Virginia and Florida using the institutional grammar tool (IGT) and semi-structured interviews involving a Q-Sort exercise with thirty members of the aquaculture communities in the two study states. Overall, the findings from this research indicate that policies are likely to be perceived as being less coercive than they really are when policy directives are ambiguous, when they are perceived as being inappropriate, and when enforcement of policies is non-stringent. Further, another finding from this research is that perceptions of policy coerciveness vary based on the substantive focus of policy directives

Rules and decision making: assessing compliance through an institutional lens

In this paper, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is applied to organize an inquiry of regulatory compliance motivations. Compliance motivations are examined using questionnaire and interview data collected among members of the aquaculture community in Florida State. The findings indicate that regulatees are more likely to comply with regulations (1) when they perceive enforcement personnel as being knowledgeable; (2) when they have a desire to maintain a good reputation with their peers; and (3) when they possess a strong sense of guilt associated with non-compliance. This paper contributes to an understanding of compliance motivations in two ways; first, by examining the relative influence of motivations emerging from regulatory, community, and individual contexts, and second, by applying an institutional framework that supports the complementary analysis of motivations associated with each of these different realms

Assessing Policy Design and Interpretation: An Institutions-Based Analysis in the Context of Aquaculture in Florida and Virginia, United States

Recently in the field of policy studies, there has been a renewed interest in research that connects policy design with broader governance outcomes. As opposed to past studies of policy design that have characterized policies along broad categories of variables, however, recent studies have sought to systematically assess the language of public policies and resultant outcomes. This paper contributes to the existing and emerging literature on policy design by coupling a content analysis of polices governing the aquaculture industry in two U.S. states and interviews with aquaculture commu- nity members to understand policy design and perceptions of policy legitimacy, coerciveness, and enforcement

Conceptualising policy design in the policy process

The study of policy design has been of long-standing interest to policy scholars. Recent surveys of policy design scholarship acknowledge two main pathways along which it has developed; one in which the process of policy designing is emphasised and one in which the output of this policy designing process – for example, policy content – is emphasised. As part of a survey of extant research, this article discusses how scholars guided by different orientations to studying policy design are addressing and measuring common policy design concepts and themes, and offers future research opportunities. The article also provides a platform for considering how insights stemming from different orientations of policy design research can be integrated and mapped within the broader public policy process. Finally, the article raises the question of whether a framework that links different conceptualisations of policy design within the policy process might help to advance the field

Drawn to the Shadows: Does the Network Centrality of Government Actors Matter?

poster abstractNetwork governance has been a predominant theme in policy implementation scholarship over the last decade. This focus is especially pertinent to “wicked” policy problems that require cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary coordination, such as those often found in environmental policy. Although the emergence of this research has been accompanied by remarkable conceptual and empirical development, there remains debate over how the relative centrality of government actors (i.e., the “shadow of hierarchy”) within governance networks is associated with network outcomes. Using survey and interview data collected among participants of U.S. marine aquaculture partnerships, we examine how the relative centrality of governmental actors in governance networks facilitates or inhibits coordination behaviors and learning among individual network actors. We operationalize both the "prestige" and degree of closeness that government actors are perceived to have by other actors within a network. We then test the extent to which these measures of network actor centrality are associated with an individual’s coordination behaviors and learning outcomes

Comparing Formal and Informal Institutions with the Institutional Grammar Tool

Conference Paper"While the role of formal and informal institutions has been long recognized among common-pool resources scholars working under the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD), not much attention has been devoted to disentangling the relative influence of each one on social behavior. We explore this issue through the application of the grammar of institutions, semi-structured interviews, and Q-sort methods. The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, the paper seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the interplay between formal and informal institutions on policy compliance. We do so in the context of aquaculture policies in the State of Colorado, USA. Second, this paper seeks to continue to develop Crawford and Ostrom’s grammar of institutions as an analytical tool for systematic institutional analysis. The results from the case study are mixed. We found some respondents reporting strong alignment between informal and the formal institutions but others reporting weak alignment. Additionally, feelings of personal guilt or shame and fear of social disapproval, together, were cited as being more influential in shaping individuals’ decision making regarding compliance with formal institutions than was fear of monetary sanctioning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the unexpected relationships among different syntactic elements of the grammar thereby deepening the understanding of how the grammar of institutions can help in the examination of policy documents and explain human behavior.

Using the IAD's Institutional Grammar to Understand Policy Design: An Application to Colorado Aquaculture

This draft offers a preliminary analysis of an on-going project to develop guidelines for applying the IAD's Institutional Grammar to understand the content of policy design. We seek to understand the foundational elements of policy design by examining the individual institutional statements that constitute policies. The Institutional Grammar offered by the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is a valuable tool with which to systematically identify the institutions-in-form that govern behavior of people in collective action situations. Understanding how these statements are modified over time may be indicative of broader changes regarding how policy issues are framed, altered contextual factors, and new actors and sources of information entering the policy arena. In this study, we adapt the IAD's Institutional Grammar to code the major laws and regulations of Colorado State aquaculture, through which we identify the institutions-in-form that guide aquaculture activities in the State. We focus our discussion on offering insights regarding the applicability of the IAD's Institutional Grammar as it is currently presented, including theoretical limitations and suggestions for improved applications

Evaluating Change in Representation and Coordination in Collaborative Governance Over Time: A Study of Environmental Justice Councils

The brief provides a summary of Evaluating Change in Representation and Coordination in Collaborative Governance Over Time: A Study of Environmental Justice Councils, co-authored by Saba Siddiki and Graham Ambrose and published in the journal Environmental Management

Understanding inclusion in collaborative governance: a mixed methods approach

Who should be included in collaborative governance and how they should be included is an important topic, though the dynamics of inclusion are not yet well understood. We propose a conceptual model to shape the empirical analysis of what contributes to inclusion in collaborative processes. We propose that incentives, mutual interdependence and trust are important preconditions of inclusion, but that active inclusion management also matters a great deal. We also hypothesize that inclusion is strategic, with ‘selective activation’ of participants depending on functional and pragmatic choices. Drawing on cases from the Collaborative Governance Case Databank, we used a mixed method approach to analyse our model. We found support for the model, and particularly for the central importance of active inclusion management.Fil: Ansell, Christopher. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Doberstein, Carey. University of British Columbia; CanadáFil: Henderson, Hayley. The Australian National University; Australia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Regionales; ArgentinaFil: Siddiki, Saba. Syracuse University; Estados UnidosFil: ‘t Hart, Paul. Utrecht University; Países Bajo