Policy success/policy failure: A framework for understanding policy choices

Some policies fail to achieve their goals and some succeed. More often than not, it is unclear whether a policy has been a success or a failure, sometimes because the goal was not clear, or because there were a multitude of goals. In this introduction to this special issue we discuss what we mean by policy success and failure, and assume that policy success or failure is ultimately the result of the decision-making process: policy success results from good policies, which tend to come from good decisions, which are in turn the result of a good decision-making process. We then set out a framework for understanding the conditions under which good and bad decisions are made. Built upon factors highlighted in a broad literature, we argue that a potential interaction of institutions, interests and ideology creates incentives for certain outcomes, and leads to certain information being gathered or prioritised when it is being processed. This can bias decision-makers to choose a certain course of action that may be suboptimal, or in other cases there is an absence of bias, creating the possibility for making successful policy choices.