Policy design: who, what, how

What can help students designing? What brings them beyond merely experiencing complexity and building up frustration tolerance? How to pave the road for policy design without dodging its inalienable messy practice? I address these questions by summarizing policy design literature and synthesizing its main ideas. First I describe common ground in this broad literature, to see the forest through the trees. Second I point at differences and controversies in the same literature. These debates urge designers to take a position. In conclusion, I show how these two cross ‐ sections of the literature help students to see who policy designers are, what makes ‘good’ policy design and how to organize the design process.