Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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Step three: Indicators help to evaluate the potential of respective CIA to
constrain or foster the implementation of a policy option. The institutional
indicators
6
are selected from existing indicator lists, perhaps modified, or new
proxies are elaborated.
7
Further, concrete assumptions on links and relationships
between a CIA and the respective set of indicators are made.
Step four: Combinations of the identified CIA and assessment of their relative
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explanatory power lead to thematic statements about an institutional fit or misfit
between policy options and institutional contexts. PICA outputs - which are
mainly qualitative in character - are grouped in thematic categories of institutional
compatibility and, thus, allow for drawing conclusions about an institutional fit
or misfit between policy options and institutional contexts.
Accordingly, this result of the PICA procedure is functioning as an early warning
system as it informs the policy maker very early of potential institutional incompat-
ibilities that may prevent the proposed policies from being actually implemented or
that make them less effective. The result of the PICA procedure can, thus, also serve
as a starting point for a subsequent analysis of the causalities of the institutional
incompatibilities foreseen and for imploring possibilities to change policies and/or
institutions to overcome these incompatibilities.
Stakeholders at national and regional level and scientific experts are important
sources of information throughout the whole PICA procedure. In particular, the
PICA expert team
8
that is commissioned to conduct the assessment will consult
systematically stakeholders and scientific experts to discuss the appropriateness
and completeness of the suggested CIA for the region or country, the selection and
evaluation of the institutional indicators and their respective values, and the evalu-
ation and categorisation of the selected CIA. Methods used for this interaction may
include semi-structured interviews, group interviews, and focus groups (Amblard
et al.
2008a, b
; Schleyer et al.
2007b)
. Further, PICA allows for a close interaction
with the policy maker(s) who commission the institutional compatibility assessment.
While this is particularly important in PICA Step one when the policy option has
to be described in all necessary detail and in PICA Step four when the PICA results
are presented and discussed, the policy maker has also the opportunity to interact
with the PICA expert team in all other phases of the procedure.
Focussing PICA Step One: Deriving Policy Types
In this section, the general classification system which is used in PICA Step one to
identify the generic structure of a policy option is presented. The policy types
6
Institutional indicators are here defined as variables and proxies that are used as
input
to the institu-
tional analysis within PICA. They do
not
represent the results and output of the institutional analysis.
7
About 100 institutional indicators have been compiled in the frame of the SEAMLESS project
(Schleyer et al.
2007a)
.
8
The PICA expert team is part of the SEAMLESS expert team that is carrying out the policy
assessment - on behalf of the policy maker - using SEAMLESS-IF.
