Earlier attempts to innovate in public policy have focused on making policy and its services more efficient (e.g. New Public Management). Today, reemphasized by 21st century’s ad hoc or permanently present, sophisticated issues that policy needs to solve for - be they the governance of new technologies, a global pandemic, growing inequality, and their impact on society, or climate change - we witness yet another fundamental paradigm shift: calls upon policy to optimize for achieving greater public value (e.g. Mazzucato 2018, Bason 2018).

With the latter implying that ‘the public’, i.e. the policy recipients or “policy users”, be at the core of each policy decision to be made and to create for, the policy sector has turned to the design space to emphasize inclusion of user perspectives in its making. It has adopted approaches from design thinking, design research, service design to policy prototyping, to close the gap between itself and the policy recipients. Most of the research and practice in design for policy to date has focused, however, on design inserted as a tool or mechanism (e.g. to innovate) into existing policy-making approaches (e.g. policy cycle). The research presented in this thesis adopts a strategic stance and asks whether design can enhance policymaking in its core underlying function; that is the identification and creation of value for the public.

This PhD adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the examination of policy making, policy design and public value. Through three exploratory policy case studies at the international governance scene (semi-structured interviews, field notes and observations, survey) - the EU Policy Lab, the World Economic Forum C4IR, and a global, design-led governance initiative at a worldwide leading tech company (kept anonymous) - it highlights the role of design in filling knowledge gaps and addressing forward-looking challenges, applied to AI- and tech- related policymaking in particular. It looks at design as a matter of individual and collective value association and understands value and meaning based on individuals` (subject) value associations with regards to a particular policy topic or theme (object).

The PhD argues that design practice in policy making brings actors back to the center stage. It highlights the importance of actor perspectives and value ascriptions in shaping policy content. It finds that design helps integrate alternate lived realities into the creation of policy content. By actively seeking out and acknowledging non-, under-, or misrepresented realities and value associations, it promotes inclusivity in international policy-making processes. It helps to bridge gaps in understanding and promotes dialogue and collaboration, closing thereby bounded rationalities. That leads to a more comprehensive and accurate representation of the various actors` viewpoints involved, and thus the policy topic at hand. By engaging in design practice, policy decision makers gain a more nuanced understanding of different stakeholders and their viewpoints. By leveraging design, policy can demonstrate and propose tangible examples, ideas, and narratives that highlight the value to be generated through policy, for whom it is intended, and how it can be implemented. Design activates, legitimizes, and bridges traditional (horizontal) and emerging (vertical) actors in the international governance arena, thereby enriching the policymaking process.