ABSTRACT
As we have seen, policy instruments exist at all stages of public policy-making. There are specific instruments, like consultative mechanisms such as public hearings or investigatory commissions, which serve as agenda-setting instruments. And there are others, like the use of decision-making matrices and legislative committee systems which are used at the decision-making stage of the process. Even further, the use of auditors-general and other kinds of expenditure evaluation system are instruments used at the evaluation stage of the policy cycle (Heilman and Walsh 1992; Wu et al. 2010). While all of these tools are important, the foci of design activities, as the discussion in Chapter 2 has shown, are policy formulation and implementation (Hood 1986 and 2007; Linder and Peters 1991; Varone 1998; Varone and Aebischer 2001). It is at these two stages that the possible techniques to be used in realizing policy are first mooted and appraised, and then, finally, executed and put into practice (Goggin 1987).
