Abstract

Policy process scholars have had a long standing interest in the topic of policy evolution; seeking to understand what precipitates policy evolution, when policy evolution occurs, and the political and other consequences thereof. Relatively under-attended in current policy evolution research, however, is understanding of how the language of policies changes across time. Such micro-level assessments of policy design evolution convey information about the substantive aspects of policies that are adjusted over time. Considering adaptation in policy design features such as targets, regulated actions, incentives, among others, is essential insofar as changes in these policy design components shape how policies are implemented on the ground, and ultimately which outcomes they produce. Furthermore, micro-level assessments of policy design, drawing on these and other components, readily contextualize within a variety of policy design typologies, which can further aid in the contextualization of substantive policy evolution. We avail the opportunity to fill the noted gaps, through analyzing changes in the text of net metering legislation in four US states. This analysis will shed light on how practitioners design policies by layering new policy text within the context of existing policy. To do this, we leverage Ostrom’s (2011) Rule Types and the Institutional Grammar (Siddiki and Frantz, 2023) to operationalize micro-level policy change at the rule- and intra-rule-levels over time. More specifically, this paper takes a comparative case study approach to examine: (1) how can micro-level policy design features be systematically operationalized across cases and time periods, and (2) are there common patterns in the types of rule configurations and syntactic components of legislative texts that change over time (i.e. are substituted, added or removed).

In this paper, we use Rayner and Howlett’s (2009) conceptualization of policy layering as a theoretical frame for examining policy evolution. While the concept of policy layering – defined as “new goals and instruments … simply added to an existing regime without abandoning previous ones” (p.103) – is salient to the practical designing of policies at the macro- and meso-levels, a precise methodology for tracking and operationalizing this concept of policy layering as a form of policy evolution evidenced in the text of legislative amendments, has not been identified to our knowledge. As such, we propose three means for evaluating policy evolution over time. First, the examination of constitutive or regulative rule changes. Constitutive rules are defined as statements used to parameterize features of systems in which actors interact; whereas regulative rules are defined as statements that describe expected behavior for actors in the presence or absence of constraints. By observing the layering of constitutive and regulative provisions in policy, the scope of policies and the behavioral opportunities and constraints captured in the change of policy design can be evaluated. Second, regulative provisions and their adjustments can be organized in accordance with their corresponding functional properties, or the specific types of information they are meant to convey. Finally, using the Institutional Grammar, specific changes within provisions can be examined.

Citation

Siddiki, S., M. Gregoire-Zawilski, and G. Ambrose. 2023. “Understanding Policy Evolution Using the Institutional Grammar: A Case of Net Metering Policies in the United States.” 2023 APPAM Fall Research Conference.