Takshashila Working Paper - Differentiating Unintended Consequences from Unanticipated - A Policy Framework

Executive Summary

The views of de Zwart (2015) related to the conflation of terms, “unintended consequences” and “unanticipated consequences”, the necessity to maintain their distinction and the need to take into account the “unintended but anticipated” consequences as a separate category are analysed.

The authors, while agreeing with de Zwart, also point out the need to recognise the quantitative aspects of consequences in addition to the qualitative aspects, and propose a modified framework, that can enable policy analysts to distinguish between unintended and unanticipated consequences in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. In view of the authors, this modified framework can be used as a tool in policy analysis, particularly in evaluating existing policies or while analysing the option of policy continuation or incremental changes in an existing policy.

Authors