Policy Content and Governance: A Perspective

In the scholarship and teaching of public policy, policy content has often been a neglected area, despite the fact that policy content is an important mediating factor in policy implementation, governance, structural arrangements, and coordination, among others. This, despite the presence of complex problems in the complex 21st century, requires multiple policies, in multiple governance arrangements, to solve these policy problems. This perspective article discusses the importance of studying these issues, in complement to other approaches, from a policy content perspective to allow for more precise analysis and examination of policy implementation and governance with the possibility of a more nuanced understanding of governance. From a policy design-as-content perspective, it is possible that hidden insights can emerge beyond studying policy as a ‘single dependent variable’, whilst the disaggregation of policy content into components, and interacting components across policies, could provide important insights for public administration scholarship and public administration and policy education.