Measuring performance & effectiveness of tool deployment and mixes
Governments design policies to reach specific goals, that is, to change the quality of the performance of the addressed policies. Governments reform education policy because they want more well-educated citizens and more citizens with degrees; they intervene in environmental policy because they want to pursue, for example, decreased pollution and better water quality, etc.
While the link between policy instruments and their outcomes is indirect and limited (Koontz and Thomas 2012) and policy performance is co-driven by many other factors, it remains the case that the main method through which governments can steer their policy systems is by adopting specific sets of policy tools that address the behaviour of specific targets and beneficiaries. Thus, the policy mixes that governments design could help to readdress the way policies function as well as their performance. However, we do not know much about this linkage between policy instruments and policy outcomes, although some recent research has shown that some policy instruments and some mixes are associated with better performance (Capano,et al 2019).