Procedural tools and how they relate to mixes
Policies have a substantive element that comprises of the
technical arrangements of alternatives that can potentially resolve the
policy problem at hand – and a procedural component that entails
all the processes and activities necessary to coordinate the activities
of policy actors in charge of formulating, making decisions and
administering the alternatives (Howlett 2011).
That is, policy actors are arrayed in various kinds of policy
communities, and just as they can alter or affect the actions of
citizens in the productive realm, so too can they affect and alter
aspects of policy-making behaviour (Knoke 1987; 1991; 1993). Procedural
implementation tools are an important part of government activities
aimed at altering policy interaction within policy sub-systems (Klijn et
al. 1995). An essential component of modern governance, the range of
procedural policy instruments comprises at least half the toolbox from
which governments select specific tools expected to resolve policy
problems.
These two aspects of policy designing, however, have not received equal
treatment from students of the subject. Procedurally oriented
implementation tools have received much less attention than substantive
ones, even though several procedural techniques, such as the use of
specialized investigatory commissions and government reorganizations,
are quite old and well-used and have been the objects of study in fields
such as public administration, public management and organizational
behaviour (Schneider and Sidney 2009).