Drawing on our extensive research and experience, ICLAD supports all four steps of legislative problem solving with specialized tools, resources, and techniques that provide a holistic approach to lawmaking.

Step 1: Identify a social problem and the behaviors that constitute the problem.
Participants in the lawmaking process often hold deeply divided ideas about legislative priorities, policies, and spending. Frequently, ICLAD's methodology re-focuses their attention on difficulties that everyone can acknowledge as problems in need of solutions. It shifts the lawmaking discourse—from a battle in which some win and some lose to a search for fact-based solutions that benefit everyone.

Step 2: Explain the causes of the behavior.
Why do people engage in behaviors that create social problems? Usually, they face constraints that cause them to act in problematic ways, so simply commanding them to stop changes nothing. ICLAD's methodology offers a seven-part framework for determining why people do what they do. As a result, politically diverse groups can find politically neutral solutions that remove constraints—so people can start acting constructively.

Step 3: Find solutions that address the causes of the behavior, and decide how to implement them.
Rather than relying on predetermined solutions—or recommending laws created for other jurisdictions—ICLAD's methodology reveals solutions that target local causes of behavior. The methodology integrates the entire process of policy formation and lawmaking—from identification and cost-benefit analysis of possible solutions, through designing an implementation mechanism, to drafting the detailed provisions of the law.

Step 4: Monitor and evaluate the success of solutions, and solve new problems as they arise.

Even a perfect law would operate within a constantly changing world, so solutions need effective monitoring and ongoing evaluation. ICLAD's methodology gives legislators the facts they need to assess whether a proposed bill seems likely to solve a problem, and then it prepares all participants in the lawmaking process to determine whether the legislation works over time.

 

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Read the story behind ICLAD's legislative problem-solving theory and methodology.