Comparing Policy Designs in Water Protection: Micropollutants Policies in the Rhine River Riparian States

Recurring debates in policy analysis revolve around the question, ‘Which political solutions exist to solve a societal issue?’ There still exist situations in which policy makers understand what options exist for reducing an environmental problem, but refrain from adopting any of these options. Here, policy analysts go one step further by asking: ‘Why is little done politically to solve a specific societal problem when appropriate solutions exist and are known?’ In order to find answers to these crucial questions, policy analysis unravels the mechanisms behind policymaking with the ultimate aim of contributing to better policies. According to the classical definition by Thomas Dye, ‘[p]olicy analysis is what governments do, why they do it, and what difference it makes’ (Dye 1976). This definition demonstrates that policy analysis deals with three core topics: