The role of policy capacity in policy success and failure

Introduction: policy capacity as a prerequisite of good governance Eorts at policy reform have been omnipresent in many developed and developing countries over the past several decades. Many of these eorts have featured waves of management reforms and administrative re-structuring, privatizations, de-regulation, re-regulation and the like (Ramesh and Howlett 2006). These types of reforms can be characterized as eorts to shift governance styles between dierent modes of governing (Treib et al. 2007). Initially, for example, the sentiment behind many reform eorts and coalitions in the 1980s and 1990s favoured transitions from government service delivery and regulation to more market-based types of governance regimes. Similarly in more recent years the tilt has shifted towards transitions from hierarchical and market forms of governance to more network-oriented governance relationships (Lange et al. 2013; Weber, Driessen, and Runharr 2011; Lowndes and Skelcher 1998).