Policy feedback theory and dimensions of policy success: illuminating policy process and assessment using health and care policy in England
Assessing the success of public policies is particularly challenging when focusing on policies driving major, complex health system reforms. Such policies often have broad, ‘transformational’ aims involving new constellations of organisational arrangements and service provision configurations across...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/irpp, |
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| Hauptverfasser: | , , , , |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
| Veröffentlicht: |
International Review of Public Policy
2026
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| Schlagworte: | |
| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | Assessing the success of public policies is particularly challenging when focusing on policies driving major, complex health system reforms. Such policies often have broad, ‘transformational’ aims involving new constellations of organisational arrangements and service provision configurations across scales and contexts. McConnell’s framework of policy success provides a useful structure for assessing impact across success/failure spectrums within the dimensions of process, programme, and politics. However, this framework was designed around the assessment of the impact of discrete newly formulated and implemented policies. Major health system reforms, by contrast, are often the result of layers of politically mediated decisions and responses to previous policies over long periods, and as such assessing their success or failure is more complex. In this paper, we explore the value of combining McConnell’s framework with tenets of policy feedback theory (PFT) to support a more temporally dynamic approach to understanding policy processes and assessing policy. Focusing on the Health and Care Act 2022 in the English NHS, the introduction of Integrated Care Systems, and the legacy of preceding policies, we highlight PFT’s ability to support understanding of the recursive ways political conditions shape policy design and how policies subsequently reshape political landscapes. By exploring how positive and negative feedback behaves in different success dimensions, we illuminate the dynamics of policy stability and change across broader time periods. |
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