An ongoing challenge while designing policies pertains to their proportionality with the change that is likely or expected in a future policy context. This article conceptualizes proportionality as a feature of policy design to compare different policy strategies launched in response to current and expected changes in the policy context and contributes to comparative policy theory and practice. The conceptual framework is operationalized with climate change as a complex policy problem that challenges policymakers in designing proportionate strategies to enable adaptation to change in the climate and associated impacts. Under conditions of uncertainty, policy piloting provides an opportunity to experiment and test the design features of alternatives to status quo policies to function in a changed policy context. The theoretical discussion is supplemented with examples of policy pilots launched as a form of policy experimentation to address climatic risks to agriculture in rainfed zones of India. Policy design features in four settings of change in policy context, ranging from small-scale incremental to highly flexible adaptive responses, are compared using the framework of proportionality.
Nair, S
Designing Policy Pilots under Climate Uncertainty: A Conceptual Framework for Comparative Analysis
Journal Of Comparative Policy Analysis