Book Review - Policy Problems and Policy Design

In his most recent book Policy Problems and Policy Design, public policy pioneer Guy Peters draws on more than five decades of experience to give a considered analytical outline and critique of policy problems and policy design. Drawing on empirical evidence he leads us to consider ‘new’, broader and more open approaches to policy design where “the challenges of design are little changed, but approaches to meeting them are.” (p.142). Peters argues for this new approach to policy design based on critiques of the old, more technocratic approach, for its narrow focus, reactive style, short-term-ness, its lack of consideration for context and its instrumentalism. In line with this is the current resistance amongst policy makers to evidence, matched only by the unprecedented amount of information available to them, making it “the best of times and the worst of times” for policy design (p.3) and highlighting the relevance of this book to a contemporary policy context.