Policy Coherence Kit: A Python-based application for perceived policy coherence analysis

SoftwareX, vol. 36, pp. 103149

Abstract

With the rising socio-economic, environmental, and technological concerns, policy coherence has become a critical concept for addressing complex policy-related challenges that span multiple sectors and governance levels. There exist well-established analytical frameworks in the literature for assessing interactions between policies. However, an important shortcoming of these analytical frameworks is their limited practical application in conducting policy coherence assessments. In this context, this study presents a Python-based software toolkit with a graphical user interface for perceived policy coherence assessment, in which policy interactions are captured through expert-informed evaluations. The software addresses the policy coherence assessment through a structured examination of policy interactions, influence patterns, network-based metrics, entropy measures, and dimensionality reduction using principal component analysis. The software supports the full analytical workflow, from data input and matrix construction to network analysis and visualization, thereby facilitating the application of perceived policy coherence assessment in empirical contexts. Additionally, it incorporates large language model-assisted interpretation to support the explanation and contextualization of analytical results, while recommending maintaining a human-in-the-loop approach. Overall, the main goal of this study is to transform the established perceived policy coherence assessment framework into an accessible tool that enables bridging of the gap between the conceptual framework and its practical implementation.

Authors 3

1. Ali Ebadi Torkayesh corresponding Aachen Economics of Sustainability School of Business and Economics

   RWTH Aachen University · Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Economics of Sustainability, School of Business and Economics, RWTH Aachen University, 52072 Aachen, Germany

   Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Institute of Climate and Energy Systems, Jülich Systems Analysis (ICE-2), 52425 Jülich, Germany

2. Anahita Amiri
   Affiliation as printed

   Independent Researcher, Aachen, Germany

3. Sandra Venghaus Aachen Economics of Sustainability School of Business and Economics

   RWTH Aachen University · Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Economics of Sustainability, School of Business and Economics, RWTH Aachen University, 52072 Aachen, Germany

   Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Institute of Climate and Energy Systems, Jülich Systems Analysis (ICE-2), 52425 Jülich, Germany