Replication material for \"Studying Policy Design Quality in Comparative Perspective\"

This article is a first attempt to systematically examine policy design and its impact on policy effectiveness in a comparative perspective. We begin by providing a novel concept and measure of policy design. Our Average Instrument Diversity (AID) index captures whether governments tend to reuse the same policy instruments and instrument combinations or produce policy solutions that are carefully tailored to the policy problem at hand. Second, we demonstrate that our AID index is a valid and reliable measure of policy design quality with a strong explanatory power for the outcome variables tested. Analyzing the composition of environmental policy portfolios in 21 OECD countries, we show that higher levels of AID are positively associated with a country's policy effectiveness in environmental matters. Based on this finding, we analyze, in a third step, the factors that lead countries to adopt more or less diverse policy portfolios. We find that the policy design quality is significantly improved when policy-makers are not bound by high institutional constraints and, more importantly, are backed by well-equipped bureaucracies.本文首次尝试以比较视角系统探究政策设计及其对政策效力的影响。首先，本文提出了一种全新的政策设计概念与测度方法。我们提出的平均工具多样性（Average Instrument Diversity, AID）指数，可用于衡量各国政府是倾向于重复使用同一政策工具及工具组合，还是针对当前面临的政策问题量身定制政策解决方案。其次，本文验证了AID指数是一种有效且可靠的政策设计质量测度指标，对所检验的因变量具备极强的解释力。通过对21个经济合作与发展组织（OECD）成员国的环境政策组合构成进行分析，本文发现，AID指数越高的国家，其环境领域的政策效力越强。基于上述发现，本文第三步探究了促使各国选择更具多样性或更单一的政策组合的影响因素。研究表明，当政策制定者不受高强度制度约束束缚，且更为关键的是，拥有治理能力完备的行政机构作为支撑时，政策设计质量会得到显著提升。