Describing and delimiting the mechanisms which tools activate to attain their effects and impacts
Recently, developing a mechanistic approach to policy design has been proposed (Capano and Howlett 2019; Capano et al. 2019). Regarding underlying mechanisms, policy design (and thus policy instruments research) can be explanatory without the need for broad-reaching theories while providing a deeper understanding in terms of answers to the why and how questions and on how policy instruments can reach or not reach their effects, that is, on how policy instruments/mixes can directly encourage or structure policy targets’ behaviour to achieve the expected results. Consequently, a mechanistic approach to policy instruments could offer a better understanding, and possibly an explanation, of the potential links between policy design and its effects.
This approach implies that policy solutions should be seen as a set of policy instruments, the adoption of which is conducive to achieving the expected results. Accordingly, the key analytical point is how the adopted solution can be a genuine driver of the pursued outcome, that is, capable of generating the proper mechanisms and thus the causal chain. From this perspective, policy instruments and their mixes can be considered as “activators” of specific mechanisms conducive to the expected results. A mechanistic perspective could be a very promising way to understand policy dynamics and the development of policy mixes over time that also allow for the inclusion of outcomes.