Policy Delay
Shoei-Po Lin*
Abstract
Policy delay is a common phenomenon in the policy making process and it is not a subject matter being studied by policy researchers. This paper attempts to bridge this research gap and motivate policy researchers to pay attention to this issue. Three themes are discussed here: causes, costs and benefits of policy delay. The first discourse is to seek the general causes of policy delay by using the model of human procrastination in order to warn policy makers to address the urgent problem encountered by the political system. The second topic is to give an in-depth analysis of the costs incurred by the political system owing to policy delay. Finally, the paper proposes that policy makers have to use extra time caused by policy delay to come up with better policy solutions.
Keywords: policy delay, policy efficacy, policy cost, density delay, time management
* Professor, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University.