Policy Design – Page 2 – Policy Studies Journal Blog

by Chris Koski & Paul Manson

Climate change is by any definition a wicked problem with myriad potential policy tools and even more potential targets. Policymakers face difficult political choices when designing policies to combat climate change. Among these choices are who should bear the costs and benefits of various policy tool options. Policy tools can be carrots and sticks, and policymakers assign these differently based on who will receive either option. Previous attempts to address climate change at the federal level have largely relied on subsidies and guidance rather than rules and punishment. Winners in these choices have been those with power to influence outcomes.

Previous research on federal climate policy has sought to explain failure both in legislation and executive action. Why have efforts to establish a carbon market in the US failed? What was the source of demise for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (and can Biden breathe life into it)? Public opinion research has focused on understanding support for climate policies, including very specific proposals (e.g. cap and trade). Missing from this work is the general answer to the question: How do policy design features influence public support for policy?

Our article “Policy Design Receptivity and Target Populations: A Social Construction Framework Approach to Climate Change Policy,” recently published in Policy Studies Journal, addresses this question. Our work is situated in the literature on policy deservingness and the resurgence of interest in the social construction of target populations framework.

Using a national survey experiment, we assessed support for seven policy tools across the four archetypal target populations built on Schneider and Ingram’s Policy Design for Democracy. We find that climate policies are popular across all target populations. Contemporary federal climate policy focuses on carrots: de-emphasizing regulations, leveraging subsidies, and creating carve-outs for firms. In contrast, we find the public prefers sticks: policies that impose burdens – in our case, policies that mandate behaviors – for nearly all target populations, even the positively constructed groups who have power. The public still supports subsidizing most populations, but not those viewed as undeserving. Perhaps the most striking contrast between our findings and the federal policy discourse on climate change is that we find Americans are broadly hostile to giving groups exceptions to climate rules, a carrot they will not share with others.

Future work could consider a more complex, and realistic, view of policymaking, namely, that policies target bundles of populations with multiple tools. For example, the Biden administration has taken two distinct approaches to electric vehicle policies in the US, creating subsidies to purchase or lease EVs as well as proposing fuel economy standards that require automakers to increase fleet efficiency. Our current research and research we plan for the future hope to improve the relationship between design and public support for policy.

Editor’s Note: This article won the 2024 Theodore J. Lowi Policy Studies Journal Best Article Award. Congratulations to the authors!

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Koski, Chris and Paul Manson. 2024. “Policy Design Receptivity and Target Populations: A Social Construction Framework Approach to Climate Change Policy.” Policy Studies Journal, 52(2): 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12520.

About the Authors

Chris Koski is the Daniel B. Greenberg Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He is co-author of Means, Motives, and Opportunities: How Executives and Interest Groups Set Public Policy with Christian Breunig published by Cambridge University Press (2024).

Paul Manson is Assistant Research Professor with the Center for Public Service at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

climate change, deservingness, Policy Design, policy tools, social construction framework

by Shan Zhou, Xue Gao, Adam M. Wellstead, & Dong Min Kim

Concerns over climate change and the decreasing costs of clean energy in the United States have resulted in large public investment in alternative energy sources, such as solar power. While government officials have recently made widespread efforts to usher in this transition, public concern has emerged over social equity in government policies promoting solar energy. Evidence exists that low-income and minority communities are less likely to adopt rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems caused by cost barriers, information gaps, principal-agent issues, and income-targeted marketing by PV installers. Consequently, many recent policies promoting clean energy neglect distributional justice concerns or even increase inequities.

In response, different levels of government in the United States are taking action to address inequities through policy intervention. Despite these interventions being perceived as improvements over traditional alternative energy policies, a gap in the research exists surrounding how solar policies have been formulated and designed to incorporate equity concerns. This research addresses this gap by answering the following research question: How have social concerns about solar equity been incorporated in public policy design?

To answer this question, we constructed a nationwide dataset of solar equity policies, defined as policies and programs in the United States that promote equity in distributed solar deployment. The data set includes over 50 policies adopted across 24 states and Washington D.C. We then examined how justice and equity considerations manifested at three levels of policy design in practice, including macro-level policy goals, meso-level policy tools, and micro-level policy settings (i.e., target populations and eligibility criteria) and calibrations.

As illustrated in Figure 1, results suggest that policy actors attempt to address unequal distribution of benefits and costs regarding solar PV deployment, as issues of accessibility and affordability for diverse and disadvantaged groups are among the most common solar equity policy goals. Financial incentives that directly benefit disadvantaged groups and organizations serving underrepresented groups are the most common policy instrument utilized, and economic vulnerability (defined by income benchmarks) is often used to define target populations, but the benchmarks used varied over time and geographic area.

This research offers a valuable contribution by joining energy justice and public policy literature to provide a more detailed understanding of meaningful ways to analyze energy justice. It also confirms the argument of Curley et al. (2020) that policymakers use different types of tools to target different takers and advance different policy goals. Finally, it contributes to the policy design literature by applying Schneider and Ingram (1990) and Howlett and Cashore’s (2009) policy design elements to a comparative analysis of solar equity policies. Moreover, research findings in this paper can be particularly useful to policy actors interested in creating policies and programs that reduce solar inequities.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Zhou, Shan, Xue Gao, Adam M. Wellstead and Dong Min Kim. 2023. “Operationalizing social equity in public policy design: A comparative analysis of solar equity policies in the United States.” Policy Studies Journal 51 (4): 741–772. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12505.

About the Authors

Shan Zhou is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of public policy, social equity, and sustainability. She has extensive experience in analyzing the justice implications of clean energy policies and infrastructure development in both developed and developing countries (e.g., U.S. and China), using quantitative and qualitative research methods. She has also worked on policy design research promoting effective and equitable clean energy adoption.

Xue Gao is an Assistant Professor at the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. Her research focuses on the interplay between policy, politics, technology, and society in the energy transition process. Her research encompasses various aspects of the energy transition, including the policy-making process, evaluation of energy programs, innovation and entrepreneurship in renewable energy, and energy justice.

Adam M. Wellstead is a Professor of Public Policy with the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. His research interests include policy innovation labs, policy capacity, policy design, and public value.

Dane Kim is a PhD Candidate in Environmental and Energy Policy at Michigan Technological University. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering, both from the University of Southern California. His research interests include energy transition, energy policy, air pollution, governance, and data analytic research methods.

energy justice, Policy Design, policy goals and instruments, policy settings and calibrations, solar equity