Operationalizing adaptive policymaking

• Adaptive policymaking (APM) is a theoretical approach that takes into account the limits of futures methods.
• This paper closes the gap between theory and practice through the design, application, and evaluation of an APM workshop for a specific case.
• The APM workshop was conducted with actors who would be expected to participate in the policymaking process for this case.
• The paper shows that the actors considered the workshop useful for designing adaptive policies.
• The paper identifies four additional methodological challenges for APM that should be addressed in future research.

Adaptive policymaking (APM) is an approach for designing policies under conditions of deep uncertainty. As such, it explicitly takes into account the limits of futures research methods. Although it was proposed over ten years ago (in 2001) and many cases of its use in designing policies for various policy domains have been published, APM is still considered a theoretical approach. In this paper we aim to close the gap between theory and practice by: (1) presenting an operationalization of APM aimed at developing dynamic adaptive policies with experts, (2) applying the operationalization to a real world policy problem involving traffic safety technology, (3) reporting not only on the resulting dynamic adaptive policy, but also on the workshop with experts that was used to develop this policy, in order to provide guidance to others interested in designing and implementing adaptive policies. The workshop was conducted with actors who would be expected to participate in the policymaking process for this technology. In an assessment of the workshop, the participants concluded that the adaptive policy that was developed is a promising step toward the large scale implementation of that specific traffic safety technology (intelligent speed adaptation) in the Netherlands.