Policy design complexity and policy outputs: theory and methods

This paper describes an approach for rigorously measuring and analyzing the complexity of policy design as it relates to policy implementation and outputs. Here, policy design is defined as the content, or text, comprising public policies. We argue that complexity in policy design shapes the incentives and constraints of actors charged with implementing a policy to comply with the policy and produce intended outputs. While scholars have made considerable strides in analyzing the relationship between policy design and outputs, the role of complexity in policy design remains understudied. We first introduce theoretically based hypotheses regarding the relationship between complexity in policy design and policy outputs. We then introduce an approach to rigorously measuring and operationalizing policy design complexity for the purpose of analyses testing these hypotheses, focusing on the substantive meaning of syntactic component linkages within and between policy provisions.