ABSTRACT
One of the key objectives of policy design is to be able to solve a problem, or at minimum reduce its adverse impact. However, not much is known about the capacity endowments that underpin such a design process. This chapter focuses on the policy capacities— understood as a set of policy skills and competencies—that are required to create more informed, sophisticated and ultimately more effective modes of policy deliberation and design as they respond to contemporary policy challenges. The chapter is organized in three sections. The first provides a broad review of the capacity literature. The second section responds to the ‘capacity for what’ question and argues that designs must accommodate certain attributes for them to be successful, which in turn require high capabilities across different dimensions. The third section describes the different types of capacities needed for more effective policy deliberation and design.
