It Takes More Than Courage : Guidelines for Strategic Policy Reform

Reform-minded politicians know—or soon learn—that in a democracy even the best-laid plans and policies never work out quite the way they were intended. Also, policy processes rarely unfold in a predictable linear fashion, and they often lead to diverse and unforeseeable consequences. Still, many of the problems that cause reforms to fail could be spotted and eliminated beforehand. This volume is designed to help politicians do just that.

The authors of It Takes More than Courage provide guidelines for planning reforms, creating and expanding options for implementing them, and determining the status of a particular reform throughout the process. Moreover, they discuss several examples of recent reforms in practical terms, asking:

• What went right?

• What went wrong?

• How could the reform process have been planned better?

• What are the key elements needed for a reform process to succeed?

Frank Frick is director of the Future of Employment/Good Governance program, Thomas Fischer is executive director of the Brussels office, Joachim Fritz-Vannahme is director of the Future of Europe program, and Kirsten Witte is director of the Improving Community Life program, all at Bertelsmann Stiftung.