Understanding Successful Policy innovation: the case of Portuguese drug policy

Commentary
par
Moury, Catherine & Mafalda Escada

Date de publication

2022

Géographie

Portugal

Langue de la ressource

English

Texte disponible en version intégrale

Oui

Open Access / OK to Reproduce

Oui

Évalué par des pairs

Yes

L’objectif

In 2000, the Portuguese minority socialist government decriminalised the possession and consumption of drugs. This law made Portugal unique in having a formal system that directs the person using drugs to a panel under the purview of the Ministry of Health, as opposed to the Ministry of Justice, and hence constitutes an ‘Original Innovation’. In this article, we ask under which conditions such kinds of reforms are introduced and successfully implemented

Constatations/points à retenir

We argue that successful policy innovation in democracies will only occur and persist when six institutional and individual ‘stars’ are aligned: attention, motivation to innovate, a new solution, political strategies, quality and legitimacy of the decision-making process, and guarantees for full implementation. We then apply this framework to the Portuguese drug policy case through theory-testing/process-tracing.

Mots clés

Decriminalization/legalization
Policy/Regulatory
Advocacy