When “symbolic” policy is anything but

Policy design and feedbacks from California's human right to water law

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6330766
AutoresJenny Linder Rempel (0000-0003-3916-2405, Energy & Resources Group University of California Berkeley California USA, autor correspondente), Kristin Babson Dobbin (0000-0001-8499-6850, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management University of California Berkeley California USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume53
Fascículo3
Páginas701-722
Data de publicação2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPolicy Studies Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0190-292X • E-ISSN: 1541-0072
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/psj.12564
PMID40799315
OpenAlexW4403463483
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas44

Despite the reality that advocates frequently expend significant resources to pass symbolic policies, this policy design has often been neglected by policy studies scholarship. We combine policy design and policy feedback theory to examine this oft overlooked policy design in practice using the case of California's human right to water law (Assembly Bill 685, or AB 685). Through semi‐structured interviews, archival research, and document analysis, we reveal how grassroots advocates deliberately and effectively pursued AB 685 to build power across the water justice movement and catalyze narrative change about drinking water access, while also building state responsiveness on the topic. These interpretive policy feedback effects then accelerated the policy's resource effects through formal policy changes in funding allocations, administrative structures, and regulatory systems. Collectively, feedbacks from AB 685 have transformed the sociopolitics of drinking water access. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, the policy's ambiguity proved key to building the broad coalition necessary to accomplish these changes, and it facilitated work across policy venues and governance scales through time, which is critical to enacting transformational change. Based on these findings, we argue that symbolic policies merit attention as a potentially advantageous policy design for social movements seeking social change and transformation

Ambiguity · Grassroots · Law and economics · Policy analysis · Political science · Politics · Public policy · Public relations · Scholarship · Sociology · Transformational leadership · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies