There are few examples of where co-design has been applied to active policy development on the scale or level of complexity of England’s post-Brexit Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. ELM offers a fascinating ‘laboratory’ to analyse how co-design at this scale works in practice. This paper offers the first in-depth empirical assessment of the process from the perspectives of both the policy makers and stakeholders who were involved in the initial phase of ELM co-design from 2018 to 2020. Using interview data, we provide critical insights for both academics and government on 'pragmatic' applications of co-design to active policy development and reflect on what this tells us about the wider processes of policy development that may need to change in order to accommodate this more ‘democratic’ approach. Our analysis, which identified key barriers to co-design as articulated by institutional stakeholders and civil servants, revealed a mismatch between the principles and practices of ‘co-design’ in the initial development of ELM. These early-stage challenges included: (i) a lack of shared decision-making and empowering stakeholders to contribute to problem-definitions; (ii) confidentiality requirements that introduced barriers to information-sharing; (iii) insufficient transparency and feedback on what happened to stakeholder’s contributions in terms of policy development; (iv) an absence of detail on the schemes, including proposed approaches, payment rates, advice, baseline measures, the kinds of ‘outcomes’ expected, and monitoring mechanisms; and (v) a repetition of themes that participants had already discussed. Many of these mismatches may be common to other policy arenas. We argue that improved application of policy co-design in government will rely on wider changes to political processes and the institutional culture and practices within the civil service.

中文翻译：

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政策协同设计的理想和实践 – 制定英格兰脱欧后的环境土地管理 （ELM） 计划


在英国脱欧后环境土地管理 （ELM） 计划的规模或复杂程度上，很少有例子表明将协同设计应用于积极的政策制定。ELM 提供了一个引人入胜的“实验室”来分析这种规模的协同设计在实践中是如何运作的。本文首次从参与 2018 年至 2020 年 ELM 协同设计初始阶段的政策制定者和利益相关者的角度对该过程进行了深入的实证评估。使用访谈数据，我们为学术界和政府提供了关于协同设计在积极政策制定中的“务实”应用的重要见解，并反思了这告诉我们可能需要改变的更广泛的政策制定过程，以适应这种更“民主”的方法。我们的分析确定了机构利益相关者和公务员阐述的协同设计的主要障碍，揭示了 ELM 初始开发中“协同设计”的原则和实践之间的不匹配。这些早期挑战包括：（i） 缺乏共同决策和授权利益相关者为问题定义做出贡献;（ii） 给信息共享带来障碍的保密要求;（iii） 利益相关者在政策制定方面的贡献的透明度和反馈不足;（iv） 缺乏有关计划的细节，包括建议的方法、支付率、建议、基线措施、预期的“结果”类型和监测机制;以及 （v） 重复参与者已经讨论过的主题。其中许多不匹配可能是其他政策领域所共有的。 我们认为，政策协同设计在政府中的改进应用将取决于对政治进程以及公务员制度文化和实践的更广泛变化。