Assessing policy success and failure: targets, aims and processes

Philip Begley; Catherine Bochel; Hugh Bochel; Andrew Defty; Jan Gordon; Kaisa Hinkkainen; Ben Kisby; Steve McKay; Gerard Strange

doi:10.1080/01442872.2018.1557134

Assessing policy success and failure: targets, aims and processes

Philip Begley, Catherine Bochel, Hugh Bochel, Andrew Defty, Jan Gordon, Kaisa Hinkkainen, Ben Kisby^*, Steve McKay, Gerard Strange

^*Corresponding author for this work

Politics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Assessing policy success and failure is a significant challenge. This article seeks to address this by utilizing two case studies of legislation from the United Kingdom Parliament, the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the Academies Act 2010, so as to develop a nuanced understanding of how and in what ways policies have been successful, or otherwise. Drawing on these two case studies, and the work of a variety of authors, the article illustrates the complex nature of the challenge, but suggests that by identifying “targets”, “aims” and “processes” it is possible to make reasonable judgements about the relative success of a policy. It concludes that this framework therefore has considerable potential utility.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	188-204
Number of pages	17
Journal	Policy Studies
Volume	40
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2018.1557134
Publication status	Published - 4 Mar 2019

Keywords

evidence
legislation
policy failure
Policy success
UK Parliament

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10.1080/01442872.2018.1557134

http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/142911/

Cite this

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Assessing policy success and failure: targets, aims and processes

Abstract

Keywords

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