P25 Varieties of Bad Public Policy & Practice

Panel Members & Contact Details

Tamara Tubakovic, University of Melbourn, Australia. Email: ttubakovic@unimelb.edu.au 

Michael McGann, University of Melbourne, Australia. Email: mmcgann@unimelb.edu.au

Azad Singh Bali, University of Melbourne, Australia. Email: a.bali@unimelb.edu.au

Summary

This panel explores the concept of "bad" public policy—those that are not only ineffective but potentially harmful or malicious in intent—and seeks to understand their drivers, design, and impact. It invites conceptual and empirical contributions that examine how intent, state capacity, and institutional dynamics shape such policies, and how practitioners can recognize and respond to them. The goal is to deepen theoretical understanding and offer practical insights into the complexities of policy failure and the ethical dimensions of public administration.

Description

Public policies fall short or fail for a variety of different reasons. Some are well-designed but poorly implemented, some are poorly designed and poorly implemented, but a broad swathe fall between these categories. A recent wave of studies in public policy have focussed on the 'dark' side of public policy distinguishing between policy failure (Roberge et al 2025) and inherently 'bad' policies (Howlett et al 2025; Peters 2025). That is, public policies that are malicious in design and intent, and do not serve the larger public interest.

The idea that public policies and programmes can potentially harm people is not new (Pal and Weaver 2003; Heclo 1978) and echoes a refrain in recent empirical studies (Herd and Moynihan, 2019; Dowding 2020; Considine 2022; Ball 2025). Despite this, our understanding of 'bad' policy is theoretically nascent and raises several inter-related questions.

First, what are the drivers and determinants of 'bad' policy? How are these different from the 'politics of pain' (Pal and Weaver, 2003) or the differentiated impact of policy decisions across society? Second, how do we conceptualise and measure the intent of a public policy or programme? Intentions are notoriously difficult to measure as public actors have competing intentions that change at different points in time, and are easily masked. Third, how does state capacity influence such policy designs? Ultimately, the effectiveness of public policies is intermediated by existing capacity and the strength of state institutions (Wu et al 2015; Howlett and Ramesh, 2016). Does effective state capacity constrain malign policy intentions, or fuel public actors to realise them?

Finally, what value does a focus on 'bad' policy bring to our understanding and practice of policymaking, or factors that can undermine effectiveness of policies (Bali et al 2019; Hudson et al 2019; Roberge et al 2025)? What insights does it offer for practitioners and public sector managers who routinely engage with these elements of 'bad' policy (Peters and Pierre, 2022)? This is particularly important as several scholars have exhorted colleagues to develop a research agenda for learning from policy successes (Lucas et al 2024; Douglas et al 2019) rather than focus on the limitations of policy designs.

The panel invites a range of conceptual and empirical case studies papers that speak to these inter-related questions. Our collective goal is to advance our understanding of varieties of bad policy and importantly how practitioners can respond to such policies.

Relevance

The panel aims to inspire debate and dialogue among public policy and public management scholars on the drivers and determinants of "bad" policy beyond the usual factors that contribute to policy failure. The end-goal of this panel is to understand how practitioners can respond to such policies/programs. The increasing politicization of public managers and their work across the world has brought the issue into sharper relief. The proposed panel is thus directly related to the panel's focus on the future of public management – how public managers are responding to/engaging with elements of "bad" public policy. This is important to realizing public value under different governance contexts.