The Policy Playbook
Balancing principles and prescription in policymaking
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What this chapter gives you
A section from the final Policy Playbook PDF, regenerated from the source table of contents and prepared for online reading.
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Balancing principles and prescription in policymaking
What makes this dynamic? The dynamic element of this model is that risks at all levels throughout the model from strategic, to compliance, to tactical and enterprise need to be continually assessed and reassessed. Where the characteristics of the risk have changed this may mean that our interventions are no longer fit for purpose and therefore our policy settings, legislation, regulatory strategies and performance expectations may need to be changed or swapped out for new and more effective interventions. Without these kinds of changes our policies can become stale and anachronistic, responding to problems that no longer exist while failing to keep pace with new and emerging challenges. Balancing principles and prescription in policymaking Whether you are producing new legislation, an operational policy or even advice to a minister, you want to get the balance right when it comes to prescription and principles. Policy professionals and teams should avoid zealotry towards one or the other of these approaches, and should instead
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