Tales From the Crypt

• DOI: 10.1177/0095399715594646
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• Date: 01 November 2015
• Author: Harald Sætren
• Subject Matter: Disputatio Sine Fine

594646AASXXX10.1177/0095399715594646Administration & SocietySætren
research-article2015
Disputatio Sine Fine
Administration & Society
2015, Vol. 47(9) 1134 –1141
Tales From the Crypt:
© The Author(s) 2015
DOI: 10.1177/0095399715594646
The Rise and Fall
aas.sagepub.com
(and Rebirth?) of Policy
Design—A Rejoinder
Harald Sætren1
Abstract
This rejoinder challenges and refutes the alarming decline thesis posited
by Howlett and Lejano in their Disputatio article in this journal in 2012.
Using their own data Source - JSTOR - updated to 2009 and search term
“policy design” as well as the more comprehensive Social Science Citation
Index in terms of journal coverage and supplementary search terms ‘policy
instrument’s and ‘policy tool’s we clearly demonstrate that policy design
research instead of languishing has continued to flourish in all academic fields
during the late 2000’ and early 2010’s at an exponential rate never observed
before.
Keywords
policy design, bibliometrics, decline thesis
In the Disputatio article by Michael Howlett and Raul P. Lejano (2012) in this
journal under the catchy main title “Tales From the Crypt,” the authors make
strong and disturbing claims regarding the demise of research on policy
design since the early 1990s based on—we are told—bibliometric research in
the JSTOR digitalized literature database. After subsequently charting the
1University of Bergen, Norway
Corresponding Author:
Harald Sætren, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen,
Bergen, Norway.
Email: harald.satren@uib.no

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Sætren
1135
origin and rise of policy design as an academic field of study, the authors
proceed to the next two main missions of their article: discussing why their
observed decline in policy design scholarship has happened and delivering a
call for the revival and renewal of this type of policy research. For those of us
who appreciate and recognize the importance of this field of research, the
good news about this alarming message regarding the decline and near death
of policy design research is—much like the proverbially rumored early death
of Mark Twain—that it is not only greatly exaggerated but also actually not
true at all!
The authors have no doubt formulated their decline thesis regarding policy
design scholarship in good faith having researched a well-known and suppos-
edly trustworthy source of research literature. Furthermore, the lead author is
one of the leading, most seasoned and respected scholars in this type of
research. Given these facts, how can we explain their grossly erroneous claim
contained in their dramatic article title with respect to the state-of-affairs
regarding policy design publications? The explanation is surprisingly and
almost shockingly simple: It is all due to some serious methodological aber-
rations! Or phrased differently, what you find depends to a large extent on
where you (re)search and how.
As to the where question, JSTOR is no doubt an invaluable source to
download many journal articles that are not easily available in this way from
other digitalized research literature databases (e.g., the Web of Science) due
to institutional and individual subscription limitations. Nevertheless, JSTOR
is not well suited to the mission of providing a systematic, comprehensive,
and updated state-of-the-art assessment regarding this field of study for two
main reasons. First, it is not comprehensive enough in terms of coverage of
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