Strategy design for New Public Governance and horizontal initiatives

Governments deploy comprehensive strategies to address complex social problems with various New Public Governance and horizontal initiatives. Minimal attention, however, has focused on developing evidence-informed strategy design for such initiatives. Using a systematic literature review, five strategy design principles were identified: 1) proper selection of interventions; 2) system enablers; 3) a guiding purpose; 4) substantive political commitment; and 5) joined-up governance. Three case studies including document review and interviews tested strategy design principles. Empirical work supported, expanded, and further refined these principles. Application of these principles would likely contribute to improving the success of horizontal strategy initiatives. Real-world political pressures and public administration constraints can be somewhat alleviated through learnings from well-designed strategies and experiences.