Identifying types of targets and what motivates targets
(policy-takers behaviour and compliance)
Most of the concerns raised above, when they have been examined, have
been analyzed in the case of policy-makers. But there is a large second
area of concern which also exists: that related to the adverse or
malicious behaviour of policy “takers”. This issue also has to do with
mendacity and/or Machiavellian behaviour on the part of policy-takers, a
subject often glossed over in studies of policy compliance and ‘target
behaviour’ (Howlett 2018).
Here the idea commonly found in the policy literature is that the only
real issue in policy compliance is merely a matter of “getting
incentives (and disincentives)’ right” (Howlett 2018). This not only
ignores aspects involved in the social and political construction of
targets highlighted above (Schneider and Ingram 1990a, 1990b), but also
minimizes the complex behaviours which go into compliance, most notably
considerations of legitimacy, but also related to cupidity, trust and
other social and individual behavioural characteristics as well as the
operation of a wide variety of descriptive and injunctive social norms
(Howlett 2019; Bamberg and Moser 2007; Thomas et al 2016).
Not the least of the problem with this view is that it has a notion of
policy-takers as static targets who do not try, or at least do not try
very hard, to evade policies or even to profit from them (Howlett 2019;
Braithwaite 2003; Marion and Muehlegger 2007). Such activities on the
part of policy takers, however, are key in determining the success of
various government initiatives ranging from tobacco control to bus fare
evasion (Delbosc and Currie 2016; Kulick et al 2016) and should be
‘designed for’ in the sense that determined non-compliance and gaming
should be taken into account in designing policies, along with many
other such behaviours, such as free-ridership, fraud and
misrepresentation (Harring 2016). As it stands, these are often thought
of as purely ‘implementation’ issues and left up to administrators to
deal with rather than forming an essential component of policy
formulation and design (Doig and Johnson 2001; Kuhn and Siciliani
(2013).
But understanding this behaviour on the part of policy takers is central
to better understanding policy tool selection and effectiveness.