Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Growing inequalities pose a huge challenge to change-resistant and status-quoist bureaucracy. Incrementalism and muddling through is hardly sufficient for progress and alleviating disenfranchised citizens. This indicates that policy making in developing world needs innovation direly. However, bureaucracy is ill-equipped to usher in big reforms and innovate due to various reasons ranging from structural issues, vested interests, absence of lateral entries from industry, negligible association with academia and so on. Innovation in policy making has not much focused in India. Policy making as an exercise exhibits incrementalism. However, big changes happen every now and then, which are termed as policy innovations. The paper explores the process of innovation in policy-making in India. The objective is to determine the precursors as well as the enablers of innovation in policy-making. An effort has also been made to discover disabling factors too by looking at failed innovations. The authors have followed a Grounded Theory approach as posited by Barney Glaser to develop a preliminary model to create a framework which would help policymakers to innovate in social policies. The authors took 5 in-depth interviews of policy experts and bureaucrats who have been involved in an innovative policy. This allowed the authors to come up with the conditions of successful diffusion of an innovative policy. Political will and leadership come out to be important enablers as well disablers for innovation. Techonology, demand for change from citizens as well as policy entrepreneurship emerge as strong enablers for innovation in policy. The paper concludes with recommendations for diffusing a policy innovation in a better way.