Policy goals of sustainable forest management rely on a wide spectrum of policy instruments. The choice of instruments may depend on factors like country’s political, economic or social conditions, whereby changes in these conditions may require new solutions again. Also other kinds of changes, as for example climate change, can to a great degree influence successful goal achievement. Adequate and timely response to different changes requires, therefore, flexibility in governance and management, which necessitates continual (re)assessment of the applied measures. For this, it is usefull to have a framework for assessment and analysis of forest policy instruments that takes into account also the changeable conditions of the environment. As, so far, comprehensive analytical framework has not been defined in literature, the aim of this article is to explore and single out some elements of relevance, in order to understand how their logical combining could contribute towards framework development. The baseline for our assessment are instruments perceived as the “best practice”, analysis of which can be conducted in relation to different envisaged scenarios of change. In our paper, we consider the “stage” of (re)defining forest policy instruments as an integral part of a policy cycle, and we give attention to different definitions and classifications of instruments before we examine and select elements considered important for the analysis. A secondary type of material was used, classified and analysed throughout several interrelated phases. The criteria for assessing instruments (efficiency, effectiveness) are examined, and options/scenarios of change included into analysis of selected ones. All considered elements are synthesised in a table-form, together with application examples.