Mapping the policy design research: a systematic literature review

Abstract

This article explores and synthesizes the literature on policy design, a subfield of policy analysis that has received increasing attention over the last few decades. During this period, it contributed to expanding knowledge on the functioning of public policies, implementation instruments, the rationality of decision-making processes, governance systems, social effects, etc. Despite the policy design’s importance, the current literature lacks a systematic analysis. Contributing to this agenda, this review aims to provide a field’s networking linkage,summarizing and classifying existing research through bibliometric and systematic reviews. To do so, data were collected on the Web of Science database covering the period from 1945 to December 31, 2020, capturing 493 articles in the initial search, and publications’ connectedness was analyzed by creating a network map with the frequency of assessments of a simultaneous citation using VOSViewer, and then each cluster was scrutinized applying qualitative methods to understand their relationship. As a result, 184 papers focused explicitly on policy design were selected and then clustered in nine different groups. It should be noticed that implementation instruments represent a very fruitful field of the design’s perspective, influencing five clusters, and other relevant topics concerning governance, means of interaction and representation, institutional analysis, and the policy design theoretical construction also appeared. Regardless of developing countries’ clusters, most studies empirically focused on China, evidencing that there is room for studies concerning Latin American and African contexts.