Handbook of Public Policy Analysis

Theory, Politics, and Methods

Frank Fischer, Gerald J. Miller, Frank Fischer, Gerald J. Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351564366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The study of public policy and the methods of policy analysis are among the most rapidly developing areas in the social sciences. Policy analysis has emerged to provide a better understanding of the policymaking process and to supply decision makers with reliable policy-relevant knowledge about pressing economic and social problems.

Presenting a broad, comprehensive perspective, the Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods covers the historical development of policy analysis, its role in the policy process, and empirical methods. The handbook considers the theory generated by these methods and the normative and ethical issues surrounding their practice.

Written by leading experts in the field, this book-

Deals with the basic origins and evolution of public policy

Examines the stages of the policy-making process

Identifies political advocacy and expertise in the policy process

Focuses on rationality in policy decision-making and the role of policy networks and learning

Details argumentation, rhetoric, and narratives

Explores the comparative, cultural, and ethical aspects of public policy

Explains primary quantitative-oriented analytical methods employed in policy research

Addresses the qualitative sides of policy analysis

Discusses tools used to refine policy choices

Traces the development of policy analysis in selected national contexts

The Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics, and Methods describes the theoretical debates that have recently defined the field, including the work of postpositivist, interpretivist, and social constructionist scholars. This book also explores the interplay between empirical and normative analysis, a crucial issue running through contemporary debates.

Part I

Historical Perspectives

1	The Policy Sciences at the Crossroads Peter deLeon and Danielle M. Vogenbeck

INTRODUCTION

From the time of Harold Lasswell’s (1951) first articulation of the policy sciences concept, the benchmark of their field of inquiry was relevance to the political and social worlds. Responding directly to the questions posed by Robert Lynd’s (1939) Knowledge for What? and John Dewey’s relentless pressing of pragmatism (deLeon and Vogenbeck 2006), both its salient theories and real-world applications were at the center of the policy sciences. It was, in many ways, seen by the academic and the administrator as the ultimate culmination of the town and gown orientation.

Seemingly, as the world’s problems have become increasingly complex, this orientation should be likewise even more central, as it tries to resolve the problems pressing society and its governments. And, indeed, over the past few decades, virtually every governmental bureaucracy or agency (as well an numerous nonprofit groups) has established some sort of analytic charter and attendant desk (especially those dealing with policy analysis and/or evaluation) to underpin its administrative decisions and agenda (see Radin 2000). At the same time, however, others have described the general abandonment in political circles of rational, analytic thought, with policy scholars often voicing the perception that their work is not being utilized. Donald Beam (1996, 430–431) has characterized policy analysts as fraught with “fear, paranoia, apprehension, and denial” and that they do not “have as much confidence … about their value in the political process as they did 15 or 20 years ago.” Heineman and his colleagues (2002, 1 and 9) are equally distressed in terms of access accorded policy research and its results:

… despite the development of sophisticated methods of inquiry, policy analysis has not had a major substantive impact on policymakers. Policy analysts have remained distant from power centers where policy decisions are made …. In this environment, the values of analytical rigor and logic have given way to political necessities.

More recently, author Ron Suskind described a meeting with an official of the George W. Bush White House; that official’s comments directly affect the ways in which policy scholars address their stock and trade:

The aide said that guys like [Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really operates any more,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do.” (Suskind 2004, 51)

To this observer, a prescriptive policy analysis was being subverted to a descriptive and mostly irrelevant historical or after-the-fact analysis.

Still, to be fair, the history of post-WW II American public policy represents numerous important achievements. In many ways, the American quality of political life has benefited directly and greatly from public policymaking, ranging from the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan (that effectively halted the march of European communism after WW II) to the GI Bill (that brought the benefits of higher education to an entire generation of American men and, with it, the broad dissemination of higher education into the fabric of the American society) to the original Medicare/Medicaid policies (1964) to the American civil rights movements to an flowering of environmental programs to (literally) men on the moon. However, as Derek Bok (1997) has pointed out, American expectations and achievements have hardly produced universal progress compared to other industrialized nations, with crime, the environment, health care, and K-12 education being only four of the United States’ shortcomings, thereby recalling Richard Nelson’s (1977) trenchant question, “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we solve the problems of the urban ghetto?” All of which leads one—roughly fifty years after Lasswell’s initial articulation of the policy sciences—to ask a series of critical evaluative questions as to their continued vitality: Why are some examples of policy research more successful than others? Or, is there a policy sciences’ learning curve? What represents a success and what is its trajectory? Can we calculate the respective costs and benefits? And, ultimately, how do we evaluate the policy sciences in terms of both process and results?

To understand the validity of these concerns, it is necessary to place them in the context of the development of the policy sciences. This chapter examines the political, methodological, and philosophical underpinnings in the development of the policy sciences to trace out their role in the contemporary political setting. It also permits us to propose ways in which the policy sciences might be amended.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE POLICY SCIENCES

For the sake of the discussion, let us quickly set out the central touchstones of the policy sciences approach.¹ The policy sciences approach and its advocates deliberately distinguished themselves from early scholars in (among others) political science, public administration, communications, psychology, jurisprudence, and sociology by posing three defining characteristics that, in combination, transcended the individual contributions from those more traditional areas of study:

1. The policy sciences were consciously framed as being problem-oriented, quite explicitly addressing public policy issues and posing recommendations for their relief, while openly rejecting the study of a phenomenon for its own sake (Lasswell 1956); the societal or political question—So what?—has always been pivotal in the policy sciences’ approach. Likewise, policy problems are seen to occur in a specific context, a context that must be carefully considered in terms of the analysis, methodology, and subsequent recommendations. Thus, necessarily, the policy approach has not developed an overarching theoretic foundation.

2. The policy sciences are distinctively multi-disciplinary in their intellectual and practical approaches. This is because almost every social or political problem has multiple components closely linked to the various academic disciplines without falling clearly into any one discipline’s exclusive domain. Therefore, to gain a complete appreciation of the phenomenon, many relevant orientations must be utilized and integrated. Imagine, if you can, policy research in urban redevelopment (or, for that matter, international terrorism) that did not entail a constellation of disciplinary approaches and skills.

3. The policy sciences’ approach is deliberately normative or value oriented; in many cases, the recurring theme of the policy sciences deals with the democratic ethos and human dignity.² This value orientation was largely in reaction to behavioralism, i.e., “objectivism,” in the social sciences, and in recognition that no social problem nor methodological approach is value free. As such, to understand a problem, one must acknowledge its value components. Similarly, no policy scientist is without her/his own personal values, which also must be understood, if not resolved, as Amy (1984) has discussed. This theme later achieved a central role in the policy sciences’ movement to a post-positivist orientation (see, among others, Dryzek 1990, and Fischer 2003).

Beryl Radin (2000) and Peter deLeon (1988) have both described the institutional and political evolutions of the policy sciences.³ Although they are not in obvious opposition to one another, their respective chronologies offer contrasting emphases. Radin (2000) argued that the policy analysis approach knowingly drew upon the heritage of American public administration scholarship; for instance, she suggested that policy analysis represent a continuation of the early twentieth century Progressive Movement (also see Fischer 2003) in particular, in terms of its scientific analysis of social issues and the democratic polity. Her narrative particularly focused on the institutional (and supporting educational) growth of the policy analysis approach. Radin suggested a fundamentally linear (albeit gradual) progression from a limited analytic approach practiced by a relatively few practitioners (e.g., by the Rand Corporation in California; see Smith 1966) to a growing number of government institutions, “think tanks,” and universities.

Following the introduction and apparent success of systems analysis (which many see as the direct precursor of policy analysis) in Secretary Robert McNamara’s Department of Defense in the early 1960s (see Smith 1966), its applications spread out into other government agencies, such as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the mid-1960s, with the explicit blessing of President Lyndon Johnson. Although systems analysis never again enjoyed the great (and, to be fair, transitory) success that it did in the Defense Department (see Wildavsky 1979), the analytic orientation soon was adopted by a number of federal offices, state agencies, and a large number of analytic consultant groups (see Fischer 1993, and Ricci 1984). Thus, Radin (2000) viewed the development of the policy analysis as a “growth industry,” in which a few select government agencies first adopted an explicitly innovative analytic approach, others followed, and an industry developed to service them. Institutional problems, such as the appropriate bureaucratic locations for policy analysis, arose but were largely overcome. However, this narrative pays scant attention to three hallmarks of the policy sciences approach: there is little direct attention to the problem orientation of the activity, the multidisciplinary themes are largely neglected, and the normative groundings of policy issues (and recommendations) are often overlooked. As such, Radin’s very thoughtful analysis described the largely successful institutional (but basically apolitical) process of formal policy research finding a bureaucratic home in governments.

DeLeon (1988) offered a parallel but somewhat more complicated model in which he links analytic activities related to specific political events (what he terms supply, that is, events that supplied analysts with a set of particular conditions to which they could apply their skills, a learning activity, if you will) with an evolving requirement for policy analysis within government offices (demand, i.e., a growing requirement for analytic skills). In particular, he suggested a series of five political events as having been pivotal in the development of the policy sciences, in terms of lessons learned:⁴

The Second World War. The United States assembled an unprecedented number of social scientists—economists, political scientists, operations researchers, psychologists, etc.—to apply their particular skills to further the Allied war efforts. These activities established an important precedent, illustrating the ability of the social sciences to direct problem-oriented analysis to urgent public issues, in this case, assuring victory over the Axis powers. Indeed, Lasswell and his policy sciences collaborator Abraham Kaplan spent the war studying propaganda techniques employed by the Library of Congress. These collective efforts (and their apparent successes) led directly to the postwar establishment of the National Science Foundation (admittedly more concerned at first with the physical sciences) and the Council of Economic Advisors, as well as research facilities such as the Rand Corporation (Smith 1966) and the Brookings Institution (Lyons 1969). However, in general, while the supply side of the policy equation was seemingly battle-tested and ready, there was little on the demand side from the government, perhaps because of the post-WW II society’s desire to return to normalcy.

The War on Poverty. In the early 1960s, largely fueled by the emerging civil rights demonstrations and the new visibility of major nonprofit organizations (e.g., the Ford Foundation) on the U.S. political scene, Americans finally took notice of the pervasive, demeaning poverty extant in “the other America” (Harrington 1963) and realized that as a body politic they were remarkably uninformed. Social scientists moved aggressively into this knowledge gap with enthusiasm but little agreement, producing what Moynihan (1969) called “maximum feasible misunderstanding.” A vast array of social programs was initiated to address this particular war, with important milestones being achieved, especially in the improved statistical measures of what constituted poverty and evaluation measures to assess the various anti-poverty programs (see Rivlin 1970), and, of course, civil rights (i.e., the 1964 Civil Rights Act). Walter Williams (1998), reminiscing about his earlier days in the Office of Economic Opportunity (O.E.O.), has suggested that these were the “glory days” of policy analysis. Other O.E.O. veterans, such as Robert Levine (1970), were more reserved, while some, such as Murray (1984), went so far as to indicate that with the advent of the antipoverty, anticrime, and affirmative action programs, the American poor was actually “losing ground.” At best, policy analysts were forced to confront the immense complexity of the social condition and discover that in some instances, there were no easy answers. DeLeon (1988, 61) later summarized the result of the War on Poverty as “a decade of trial, error, and frustration, after which it was arguable if ten years and billions of dollars had produced any discernible, let alone effective, relief.”⁵

The Vietnam War. The Vietnam War brought the tools of policy analysis to combat situations, a massive analytic exercise that was exacerbated by the growing domestic unrest as to its conduct and, of course, the loss of lives suffered by its participants. The war was closely monitored by Secretary of Defense McNamara’s office, with on-going scrutiny from Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon;⁶ these participating personnel, in the words of David Halberstam (1972), were “the best and the brightest.” But it became increasingly obvious that analytic rigor—specified in terms such as body counts, ordnance expended, and supplies moved —and rational decision making were largely rendered irrelevant by the growing public sentiment against the war often critically described in the American media, and finally reflected in the 1972 American presidential elections. Too often there was evidence that the hard and fast numbers were being purposively manipulated to serve military and political ends. Moreover, even on its relatively good days, systems analysts were not intellectually able to encompass the almost daily changes in the war’s activities occurring in both the international and domestic arenas. At the time, Colin Gray (1971) argued that systems analysis, one of the apparent U.S. advantages of defense policymaking, turned out to be a major shortcoming of the American war effort and was a partial contributor to the ultimate U.S. failures in Vietnam. Finally, and most tellingly, Defense Department analysts could not reflect the (respective) political wills necessary to triumph, or, in the case of this war, outlast the opponent. Cost-effective approaches against the North Vietnamese did little to diminish their war-fighting capacity (see Gelb and Betts 1979), until U.S. troops were finally literally forced to abandon the nation they had sacrificed over fifty thousand lives to protect.

The Watergate Scandal. The most troubling activities surrounding the re-election of President Richard Nixon in the 1972 campaign, his administration and the Committee to Re-elect the President’s (CREEP) heavy-handed attempts to “cover up” the tell-tale incriminating signs, and his willingness to covertly prosecute Vietnam war protester Daniel Ellsberg led to impeachment charges being leveled against an American President, which were only averted because President Nixon chose to resign in ignominy rather than face congressional impeachment proceedings (Lukas 1976; Olson 2003).⁷ The undeniable evidence of culpability in the highest councils of the U.S. government led to the clear recognition by the public that moral norms and values had been violated by the associates of the president with the almost sure connivance by the president himself. These unsanctioned activities of government, e.g., the amassing of illegal evidence (probably through unconstitutional means) undermined the public norm and constitute...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Historical Perspectives
• Part II Policy Processes
• Part III Policy Politics, Advocacy, and Expertise
• Part IV Policy Decision Making: Rationality, Networks, and Learning
• Part V Deliberative Policy Analysis: Argumentation, Rhetoric, and Narratives
• Part VI Comparative, Cultural, and Ethical Perspectives
• Part VII Quantitatively Oriented Policy Methods
• Part VIII Qualitative Policy Analysis: Interpretation, Meaning, and Content
• Part IX Policy Decisions Techniques
• Part X Country Perspectives
• Index