set of decisions placed in a different arena. The outcome of policy depends on the whole set of decisions. Thus, corruption at any of the arenas may hamper the policy outcome. Also, there is a significance of choice of arena where the highest emphasis can be given for instrumental implications.

8.5 INSTRUMENTS AS A COMPONENT OF POLICY DESIGN

Policy instruments have been studied in the USA as a policy design approach that synthesized both the “resources” and the “continuum” models for selection of instruments. The study identified a certain basic number of general categories of instruments based on governing resources. The study also identified a number of continua describing the kinds of choices governments made in selecting instruments. Linder and Peters (1989) have cited a few policy instruments commonly used by the governments shown in Table 8.2.

The choosing of instruments may vary from government to government depending on the nature, authority, and priority. Their intensity may also vary depending on the scale of application as shown in the continuum approach (Table 8.2). Thus, though different governments choose the same instrument, the output of policy may vary depending on the continuum scale. Therefore, the implementation design of policy instruments depends on the points of technical choices shown in Table 8.3.

Table 8.3 shows that the design criteria of policy instruments are related to the criteria of policy climate described before. Implementing all the criteria on a good scale may not be possible for designing policy

Table 8.2 Common Instruments Applied by Governments for Policy Implementation

Motives Instruments

Source: Linder and Peters (1989).

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instruments but the evaluation of policy instruments depends on the result of the combined effect of all the criteria. If some of the criteria are on a good scale, e.g., complexity of operation or reliance on market, the chances of failure would be automatically on a good scale.

However, Howlett (1991) reviewed Hood’s (1986) work on policy evaluation where he shared the idea of technical substitutability. Hood’s argument was that the design of policy instrument essentially depends on the four responsibilities/resources at the disposal of the government: Nodality/informational, Authority/coercive, Treasury/ financial, and Organization/institutional (NATO). These resources can be categorized as detectors or effectors, originating the eight differentiated categories of instruments presented in Table 8.4.

The categorizations of government resources presented in Table 8.4 clarify the resources presented in Table 8.2 that some of the policy implementation measures may be for detection and some other for effective control. Monitoring function uses the information from detection measures, and thus helps the effective implementation of policy.

Table 8.3 Criteria of Policy Design and Evaluation and Their Benign Scale

Source: Linder and Peters (1989).

Table 8.4 Categorization of Government Resources for Policy Implementation

Source: Howlett (1991).

However, instrumental evaluation is made to see specific points where the instruments are malfunctioning. Covering all the aspects of instrumental implication in evaluation may be costly and time consuming. There could be a limitation of availability of information particularly in evaluating policies of the past. Thus, instrumental evaluation depends on the purpose of policy implementation it is addressed for.

8.6 ADDRESSING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF INSTRUMENTS

Dias and Begg (1994) argued that evaluation of a policy and its implementing instrument depends on the type of policy and its relationship with the environment. Also such evaluation of instruments depends on whether the instruments used on environmental problems occur in the natural resource sector, and are national, regional and global issues. Common approaches through which environmental problems are addressed or instruments are implemented can be grouped as shown in Table 8.5.

In a policy, some of these approaches are encouraged to have appropriate information about the environmental issues, and thus decision on an appropriate instrument becomes easier for the government. The efficiency and effectiveness of instruments in achieving the target of the policy largely depend on the efficiency of the approaches used for addressing the problem. Also, the instrumental approach and efficiency depend where they are targeted. In the case of forest policy, the instrumental targets could be:

•domestic consumer,

•domestic investment,

•marketing quota and control,

Table 8.5 Approaches for Addressing Instrumental Issues in a Policy

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•revenue increase,

•foreign trade, and

•conservation.

The policy characteristics depend which of the targets has been emphasized. It is notable here that the targets of most past forest policies did not emphasize the environment (FAO, 1988). In those cases, an additional target of environmental management needs to be surrogated and then evaluations need to be done on how the environmental purposes have been served through other targets of the policy. Thus, the social dimension of the past forest policies could be evaluated to see how their execution ended up in the present physical and environmental condition of the forest.