Calibrations (substantial or procedural ones) – what they are and how they are selected
Calibrations are those contextual actions and decisions through which policymakers adjust the actual setting of policy instruments with respect to the target of interest. We know these kind of calibrations are the order of the day in policymaking, especially in the implementation stage when policies need to be delivered in an effective way.
So, calibrations are key actions such as increasing the number of policemen if there is a risk of a riot, increasing the number of beds in hospitals if there is an unexpected disease in the population, or altering some rules of subsidy distributions against poverty when the approved ones show inconsistency. Calibrations thus represent a huge set of instrument-based decisions that can be done at the central level when policy designers reconsider some aspects of the instrument-based setting through which the adopted policy instruments have been implemented. On the other hand, it can also be matter of action of the implementer and of street-level bureaucracy.
All in all, there should potentially be a wealth of empirical evidence about various kinds of calibrations, which involve routine adjustments of ongoing policies, if it would be used as an analytical lens in the huge amount of research done on policymaking; this has not yet to be done. This review would be important in order to understand what kinds of regularity exists when policymakers calibrate policies.