Analyzing Social Policy

Multiple Perspectives for Critically Understanding and Evaluating Policy

Mary Katherine O'Connor, F. Ellen Netting

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118044193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Sozialpolitik

From formulation to implementation, an approach to the analysis of social policy through the lens of research

Analyzing Social Policy prepares professionals and students to make better informed decisions related to identifying and understanding the intricacies and potential impact of social policymaking and enactment on their organization as well as their individual responsibilities, goals, and objectives.

Authors Mary Katherine O'Connor and F. Ellen Netting thoroughly examine various approaches to the analysis of social policies and how these approaches provide the knowledge, multiple perspectives, and other resources to understand and grasp the nuances of social policy in all its complexity.

Comprehensive and based on research, Analyzing Social Policy explores:

• An overview of the practice of social policy analysis
  
  

• The role of research in guiding policy analysis
  
  

• The idea of policy analyses as research
  
  

• Themes, assumptions, and major theories that undergird rational models of policy analysis
  
  

• Nonrational themes, assumptions, and major theories informing nontraditional interpretive and critical approaches to policy analysis
  
  

• Strategies for applying selected models and approaches when engaging in policy analysis as research
  
  

Providing practitioners and students with a set of tools that can be used to enhance an understanding of what constitutes policy as well as acceptable standards for critical analysis of policy, this resource enables policy advocates—regardless of their level—to be political, strategic, and critical in their work.

Chapter 1

An Overview of Social Policy Analysis

In this chapter, we provide background information and define terms needed for the reader to move through and understand the content of this book. We begin with what we think is necessary groundwork to the understanding of our approach, followed by a case example of how policy and practice are interconnected. We then examine what constitutes a policy, especially what are called social policies. We will look at different forms of policy and then at multiple policy levels (i.e., local, state, national, and international), recognizing that these levels may be public or private and that the lines across sectors are often blurred. We will examine ways in which policy analysis may be conceptualized, including conceptual frameworks and theories of policy process, as well as the differences between policy models and approaches. We do this in order to make sense of the primary ways used to analyze policy, thereby preparing for our position regarding policy analysis as research, the conceptualization of which is laid out in Chapter 2.

Our focus is on social policy analysis, not public (government) policy analysis in its most general form. There are hundreds of books on public policy analysis in general (e.g., Gupta, 2001; Heineman, Bluhm, Peterson, & Kearny, 2002; Lejano, 2006; Patton & Sawicki, 1993; Sabatier, 2007) to which the reader can be referred. Popple and Leighninger (2008) discuss just how broad the term policy analysis can be, referring to writers who have described policy analysis as a“babel of tongues” or a “slippery slope”; one could learn how to do it but could never fully define it. They adapt a definition by the Canadian political scientist Leslie Pal that is inclusive of a range of approaches: “policy analysis is the disciplined application of intellect to the study of collective responses to public [in our case social welfare] problems” (Popple and Leighninger, p. 43).

This is why this book is being written—analytical skills are needed to determine the usefulness of a particular policy response. A social problem, then, is the context for social policy analysis, and since most policies do not include a full analysis of why they are being proposed, or even a statement of the problem they are designed to address, having the skill to analyze the underlying social problem is vitally important. Blau (2007) points out that most practitioners encounter situations in which they “must live and work according to the definition of social problems as other, more powerful people construct them. That is not always easy, because the definition of a social problem shapes the social policy designed to address it” (p. 8).

We are defining social policy analysis as a systematic study of chosen courses of action within unique contexts with goals of preventing and addressing social problems. Unpacking this definition reveals that

• Policy analysis, like research, is systematic and intentional.
• Policies (as courses of action) can be made in a vast array of contexts through public (governmental) and private (nonprofit and for profit) auspices.
• These unique contexts include any level of decision making (as broad as the U.S. Congress and as narrow as a local agency).
• Our focus is on problems that influence quality of care or quality of life for individuals and groups.

The policy practitioners who would be involved in analyzing policies are those who are involved in or concerned about the human service delivery system across a broad scope of arenas and contexts.

Necessary Groundwork

In this section, our focus is on the analytical skills that are needed to understand policy at any stage of development, recognizing that without those skills the practitioner has little hope of figuring out what political, interactional, or value-clarifying approaches to take. In other words, without analytical skills the practitioner is disempowered to advise others or to take action. This does not mean that analysis is a “step” or that it stops when one gets in the middle of a policy process. Analysis is ongoing, and when continuing analysis reveals new insights, policy practitioners may need to alter what they are doing or advocate for changes in policies. They can do this when the analysis is based on two important elements of knowledge and skills: critical thinking and political philosophy.

Critical Thinking

No rigorous or even-handed policy analysis is possible without the basic building block of critical thinking. Paul and Elder (2009) suggest that critical thinking is an art for “analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it” (p. 2). When critical thinking is called an art it might be rejected as not sufficiently rigorous for the purposes of research and analysis. On the contrary, we see the process as intensely rigorous and complex. Critical thinking is a set of activities, a frame of mind, and a set of attitudes that allows for the examination of assumptions, goals, questions, and evidence. These are all basic to the creation of a social policy. To thoroughly understand a social policy, one needs to use reasonable and reflective thinking focused on what to believe and what not to believe through the self-conscious monitoring of strategies (in this case, policy analysis approaches and models) being applied to the problem or policy that is the focus of analysis.

For us and for others (see Rehner, 1994), critical thinking is part of problem solving, not just an assessment of claims or arguments. This means that it is not focused solely on discovering mistakes in thinking such as those identified by Gambrill and Gibbs (2009)—for example, ad homonym arguments, where the person rather than the argument is criticized; begging the question, where certainty is alleged based on illogical reasoning, unfounded generalizations, trick questions or ignoring the issue; sweeping generalizations, where the unique or the specific becomes the rule; straw person arguments, where the point is misrepresented in order to refute it; or psychological persuasion, where pressure from tactics such as pleasing, liking, fearing, threats, or labels are used to persuade. Our understanding of critical thinking is broadened to allow for a deep understanding of issues through a dialogic process that requires reflective or analytic listening, active and independent pursuit of clarity of expression, and a search for evidence and reasons with the certain inclusion of alternative points of view.

To employ the type of policy analysis we are proposing here, the analyst must engage in the process with fair-mindedness, seeing the interplay between various beliefs and ideologies and having the capacity to test those beliefs. That sort of testing requires a good deal of self-knowledge about personal strengths and limitations regarding reasoning and decision-making capacity as well as the courage to be an independent thinker, fully capable of questioning what others accept. Basically, this type of critical thinking requires the ability to depart when necessary from the perspectives of the “experts” in order to generate and assess multiple perspectives. It also requires the nimbleness required for shifting one's own patterns of thinking when needed.

Rehner (1994) has extended critical thinking to include critical reading and critical writing, both of which are essential to powerful policy analysis. Critical reading is not a passive pursuit of simple descriptive understanding. Rather it is a process of meaning making through an interaction with the written word based on recognition of personal experience aimed at discovery of patterns in order to build relationships among the ideas—a process that considers the situation, the ideology, the culture, history, and the time in which the text was written. Critical reading of the sort needed to address a written policy requires going beyond one's personal reaction to what is written based on personal preferences to critical judgment of the text. This critical judgment requires identifying the author's purpose. In the case of policy, it would involve identifying the intent of the policy. Critical judgment also includes identifying the reader's purpose, which in this case would be the goal of the policy analysis. Then, for full critical reading, there needs to be a shared meaning between the reader and the text about what words are saying. This requires attention to word choice, connotations, patterns, figures of speech, tone, biases, or methods of persuasion. What is both present and absent are needed to identify shades of meaning for the analytic process.

The activist policy analyst will also engage in critical writing. This involves a nonlinear recursive moving forward and backward in the writing process so that the writing itself becomes a tool for organizing and clarifying thinking. Moving backward and forward rather than starting at the beginning and establishing a middle and then an end in a linear fashion allows the opportunity for more learning. That type of learning establishes the potential for more persuasiveness; the final product is clear because the writer is clear. The recursive process allows the writer to recognize and clearly and strategically articulate (or not) assumptions because the writer is clear about what he or she is attempting to accomplish, about personal and professional attitudes, and about what the writer wants to convince the reader.

Political Philosophy

In the policy arena, a deep understanding of the history and intellectual basis of different political and ideological belief systems is also necessary. Thus using critical thinking in combination with knowledge of political philosophy may help the reader to engage in the work that follows.

For hundreds of years, philosophers have examined the role of government within various societal contexts. As far back as 378 BC, Plato asked how an ideal society would be governed in order to meet the needs of its vulnerable citizens. Aristotle, Plato's student, analyzed society as though he were a physician, prescribing remedies through a hierarchical, aristocratic, and undemocratic form of government. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes focused on the social contract, the individual power given over to the ruler (or society) to oversee the actions and behaviors of people who were seen as depraved and self-interested by nature, but who agreed to be civil, based on the rules set down by the larger society to control them. John Locke continued this focus, examining governmental authority as depending on a contract of mutual consent between rulers and citizens, with government depending on law (not force) to maintain order. Years later John Stuart Mill, a severe critic of Locke's emphasis on majority rule, assumed a utilitarian view that the rightness of any action should be determined by its consequences. Mill thought that majority rule should be limited and sometimes trumped by minority interests, and that government should not intrude in the private lives of citizens These early philosophers raised many of the questions policy analysts ask today regarding the role of government, where power belongs, what structures should be formed to oversee the formulation and implementation of policy, how minority interests are viewed, and how to address social problems (Reamer, 1993).

No mention of political philosophy would be complete without referencing the work of Karl Marx. Marx's criticism of capitalism focused on how human labor had been transformed from a creative activity to a unit of production, replacing the worth of a human being with the abstract concept of human work. Marx questioned a worldview that commodified labor from human worth to monetary value (Marx, 1887). This was a radical notion that is discussed in Chapter 7, which focuses on critical theory. Other critical philosophers such as John Rawls (1971) stimulated a great deal of thought about distributive justice. Building on the concept of the social contract that establishes a just society, Rawls proposed that if individuals operated under a “veil of ignorance” in which they did not know who was advantaged and who was disadvantaged, they would create a moral principle that protected the disadvantaged; they would be benevolent. In a just society, Rawls argued, there could be some differences in wealth and assets, but only if those who are not as well off benefited in some way. Rawls reacted to utilitarian philosophers who assumed that a just society is concerned with equity of distribution according to maximizing the total of a group's utility, satisfaction, or happiness. He viewed as unfair any approach that benefited the greatest number of people but still did harm to citizens who were not in the majority. Rawls's work has served as a starting point for other philosophers to counter some of his arguments and look for new ways to envision the welfare state.

Thus, political philosophy is concerned with basic concepts and the systems of beliefs that inform the way in which one views the roles of various societal sectors in addressing the needs of people. Mullaly (2007) discusses four sets of views: neo-conservative, liberal, social democratic, and Marxist. Each view envisions human nature, society, the nation-state, social justice, and social change in a different way. A neo-conservative philosophy views human nature as self-interested, society as a series of individual interests, the nation-state as a necessary evil to maintain law and order, individuals as responsible for looking out for themselves, and social change as slow and evolutionary (p. 79). A liberal philosophy sees human nature as moral and rational, society as loosely collective, the nation-state as protective of natural rights, redistribution of resources as important to social justice and social reform as valuable as long as it does not fundamentally change the society (p. 97). A social democratic philosophy views human beings as social animals and communal by nature, the nation-state's role as balancing the interests of different groups with equality of conditions as a social goal, and social elements as transformative but in an evolutionary way (p. 123). Finally, a Marxist philosophy views human beings as communal, with production being the basis of the nature of society. The nation-state is viewed similarly to the social democratic view, but with social justice meaning a classless society and change being much more revolutionary than the other three views (p. 143).

Political philosophy influences how one views every aspect of policy. If one believes that the role of the nation-state is to control, then policies will be controlling and highly regulatory. If one believes that change must be kept to a minimum, then policies will limit how much change can occur. If one believes that society should be transformed in order to address the needs of vulnerable groups, then policies will be designed with transformation in mind. What is critically important is that multiple ways of viewing human nature, society, and the role of the state come together in the stew that we refer to as “politics.” Furthermore, policy analysts must be savvy enough to recognize that the politics surrounding policy formulation and implementation are deeply rooted in diverse political philosophies, whether they are played out in an organization, in a community, or in a broader policy-making arena.

We are assuming that the reader is someone who wants to understand policy, not simply to jump into the fray, feeling the adrenaline rush of engaging in a political process, or merely moving with the tide. We also assume that the reader is someone who recognizes that policy affects every aspect of life, who is most likely a practitioner whose job description includes many more tasks than policy analysis, and who often feels the direct or indirect impact of policy decisions in daily practice. “If practitioners and beneficiaries, professionals and recipients, workers and clients apply the skills to analyze the processes whereby policy comes into being, they are empowered” (Flynn, 1992, p. 1). This is our purpose here—to offer relevant analytical tools for the empowerment of practitioners.

Practitioners who engage in clinical work are immersed in policy, yet most may not consider themselves “policy practitioners.” Thus, we begin with a case example that illustrates just how immersed practitioners are. This example was contributed by one of our doctoral students who is a true pracademic (a practitioner who is also an academic) and has years of clinical experience. Immediately after presenting the case, we will focus on definitional concerns.

Initiating an Involuntary Commitment

Jayne is a 30-year-old woman who has been in therapy for two years with Constance. She has been diagnosed with major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Jayne and Constance have a solid working relationship, and Jayne has made progress in disclosing her history of abuse and in forming a trusting relationship. Jayne's social support is minimal in that she has no family inthe state and she has only two close friends who are currently out of town. She recently lost her job.

Jayne had previously been hospitalized for attempting to commit suicide by overdosing on prescription medications. Earlier in the year, she changed her medications from name brands to generic brands and over the last few weeks her depression has worsened. She has just confessed to having stopped taking some of her medications due to the cost. Since she is now unemployed, she simply cannot afford them.

During her session, Jayne verbalizes suicidal ideation with a plan to overdose on medications. When Constance further explores her feelings and plans, Jayne expresses ambivalence about following through on the plan, but she is unable to commit to a contract for safety. Constance explores the risk factors present, which include the availability of medications that she could use in the suicide plan, the lack of her support systems in the area, the loss of her employment, the change in her medications, and her inability to contract for safety. The use of hospitalization is disc...