Links of tools choices to ideational paradigms and paradigm changes
Policy paradigms, belief systems, and ideas matter when policy instruments are also at stake in policy change (Hogan and Howlett 2015) and their impacts on policy tools little known. Such paradigms provide general guidance to policymakers because their normative and cognitive dimensions structure the goals they pursue. But they also affect considerations of the appropriate tools for achieving those goals. The ideational turn in political science and public policy has generated relevant attention on how paradigms, beliefs and ideas can drive the choice of policy instruments.
However, the results are quite ambiguous and not definitive. Surely the concept of paradigm is useful to analyse policymaking from a macro-meso perspective and thus to outline general trends. In fact, when policymaking is analysed from a micro-perspective, different ideas, frames, and belief systems are usually competing and confronting each other in relation to the instrument choices. In addition, this variety of ideational drivers can be one of the causes of initiating or the institutionalization of policy mixes. For example, over time new paradigms/ideas/frames can and do emerge, but the older ones are not dissolved (Lieberman 2002; Oliver and Pemberton 2004). This can lead to obvious conflicts and confrontations affecting tool choices if different instruments are pursued in each approach. Thus, existing policy mixes can be generated by the layering of different paradigms/frames over time or by an agreement between different actors holding different cognitive and normative beliefs with respect to policy problems and the instruments chosen to deal with them.
All in all, we lack understanding of the real role of paradigms, frames, ideas, and beliefs when policy instruments are at stake; this can be considered disappointing if we recall the relevance of the “ideational turn” in public policy.