Policy growth comes with multiple challenges for policy implementation. Congested policy portfolios increase the likelihood of interactions and contradictions between different policy objectives and instruments. Moreover, policy growth can lead to difficulties during implementation when many public and private organizations must cooperate and manage increasing complexity and overlapping responsibilities. Consequently, policy growth should ideally be accompanied by maintenance activities, namely institutional reforms aimed at (1) preventing policy contradictions, or (2) improving administrative coordination. We test this relationship through a comparative analysis that examines the level of policy growth and maintenance activities in 13 OECD countries in environmental and unemployment policy over 35 years. We find that policy growth and maintenance activities are not systematically linked but occur independently, even when controlling for the influence of moderating factors such as government effectiveness or the presence of veto players. Consequently, modern governments seem to struggle with managing the downsides of policy growth.

中文翻译：

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比较视角下的政策增长和维持


政策增长伴随着政策执行的多重挑战。拥挤的政策组合增加了不同政策目标和工具之间相互作用和矛盾的可能性。此外，当许多公共和私人组织必须合作并管理日益增加的复杂性和职责重叠时，政策的增长可能会导致实施过程中的困难。因此，理想情况下，政策增长应伴随着维护活动，即旨在（1）防止政策矛盾或（2）改善行政协调的机构改革。我们通过比较分析来检验这种关系，该分析考察了 13 个经合组织国家 35 年来环境和失业政策的政策增长和维持活动的水平。我们发现，即使在控制政府效率或否决权参与者等调节因素的影响时，政策增长和维持活动也不是系统性地联系在一起，而是独立发生的。因此，现代政府似乎正在努力应对政策增长的负面影响。