Making Policy in a Complex World

• 1. Introduction – how to make sense of complexity; 2. Insights from multi-level, complex, and polycentric governance studies; 3. How to analyse and assess multi-centric governance; 4. How to hold people to account in multi-centric governance; 5. How to engage effectively within a multi-centric policymaking system; 6. Discussion and next steps.

'I am persuaded that Making Policy is one of the finest introductions to contemporary policy analysis. Cairney, Heikkila and Wood explain very clearly where the study of public policy-making processes is today. By doing that, they demolish several conventional wisdoms that are still predominant in comparative politics and mainstream political science. Among these conventional wisdoms are the stage-oriented imagery of policy processes, the unitary decision-maker, the centrality of elections as mechanism of accountability, and the notion that the chain of delegation correctly describes political realities. By adopting this Element in class, I realized how predominant these wisdoms still are in students with a degree in political science. By showing both theoretically and empirically how public policies are made in the real world, this Element truly opens the minds of the readers and prepares them to go further into the territories mapped by the other volumes, with the necessary background and curiosity.' Claudio M. Radaelli, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice