POLICY DESIGN, SOCIAL REGULATION, AND THEORY BUILDING - LESSONS FROM THE TRAFFIC SAFETY POLICY ARENA

Despite the interest of political scientists in social regulatory poli cy implementation, only recently has the policy design movement begun classifying and assessing the comparative advantage of various policy 'tools' or implements. This study seeks to advance understanding of so cial regulatory policy tools by assessing their potential as a vehicle for developing midrange theories of policy design. Analysis of Michig an traffic safety data indicates that those pursuing policy design res earch should anticipate that: (1) enforcement effects vary across regu latory tools; (2) attributes such as ''birth order'' and ''precision o f targeting'' can condition the impact of various types of social regu latory tools differently; (3) success is conditioned not only by imple ment attributes, but also by implementation styles, contexts, and targ et populations; and (4) the comparative advantage of any tool can be a ssessed accurately only by considering its interaction with other impl ements across these disparate styles, contexts, and target populations .