Policymaking under Adversity

Yehezkel Dror

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351499293
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This groundbreaking study systematically treats recent policymaking trends, starting with a reconsideration of salient theoretical issues of policymaking and its study and culminating with a survey of current policy-related predicaments in various countries. Dror proposes that the task for social science research is to uncover underlying causes of policymaking inadequacies. Standard research methods, Dror states, have been unable to uncover the realities of important decisions made inside governments. In order to gain an understanding of pressing predicaments, he believes that policymakers need to examine the foundations of contemporary practices of present assumptions, and that they need a multiplicity of approaches to policymaking.After prescribing a set of requirements that policymaking must satisfy in order to adequately respond to challenges, Dror posits several improvements needed in education and in policy decision making. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography, including numerous important German works not found in other English-language studies. This book supplements the earlier basic theory and models propounded in Dror's Public Policymaking Reexamined by dealing with current trends. As a guide to public policy literature and related works, it will be invaluable to students and practitioners.

1

Scope, Concepts, Methods

Leitmotif

The overall problematics at which this book is directed is well put by a simile used by a historian in evaluating belated Roman response to financial crisis (MacMullen 1976, 116): “Government … reacted like a frightened child at the controls of a runaway express train, pushing all sorts of levers and knobs.”

The main questions to be probed in this book are whether and when such a simile presents a correct picture of policymaking, perhaps now with a jet plane, loaded with nuclear bombs, to be substituted for express train; what are the main features and causes of such “maze policy-behavior”; what can be done to improve it; and what consequences are to be expected from it.

Moving from pictorial images to the book as a scientific and professional endeavor, one needs to explore its scope, concepts, and methods somewhat before moving into the matter itself.

Need for Theoretic Perspective

Policy sciences (a concept I write in the plural, to recognize multiple contents, but treat grammatically in the singular, to underline basic unity) continues to lack adequate concept packages and significant theoretic conjectures. Although this book does not presume to arrive at an integrated general theory of policymaking, nevertheless an effort is made to put dispersed and disparate findings and ideas into a meaningful theoretic framework and to revise some widely accepted premises, with the help of adversity used both as a theoretic construct and as a pervasive feature of policymaking realities.

Most of the book looks at adversity as facing policymaking at present and in the foreseeable future. But this is only one situation out of a larger set, even if one of particular concern at present. Adversity in different forms has conditioned policymaking in nearly all historic situations and will do so in the future. Therefore, examination of policymaking as shaped by adversity and as trying to face up to adversity exposes universal characteristics of policymaking.

Because most of modern public policy research has developed during a unique period of economic growth between 1948 and 1973, the overwhelming importance of adversity in shaping policymaking has received inadequate attention. Recent economic problems may open up thinking and research to more realistic views and make the approach of this book more relevant to pressing concerns, but, in principle, the perspective proffered in this book does not depend on short-term economic upswings or downturns: Adversity in different forms being endemic to policymaking situations, studying policymaking under adversity does provide a needed theoretic perspective of broad applicability.

Adversity as a Prevailing Policymaking Condition

To repeat the crucial point made above: This book deals with actual features and required characteristics of policymaking as conditioned by adversity. All policymaking faces adversity, sometimes less and usually more so, but many policymaking studies have adopted a rather optimistic perspective, neglecting till recently the impacts of adversity. At present, under the influence of manifest realities, more attention is being paid to features of policymaking related to adversity (C. Campbell 1983; C. Carter and Pinder 1982; Chazan 1983; Cox 1981; Hood and Wright 1981; A.G. Jordan and Richardson 1979; Richardson 1982). Still, the subject is very undertreated, especially on a broad theoretical level.

One way to proceed is to design a pure-type construct, or set of constructs, of policymaking under serious adversity. Within such an approach, at least three pure-type constructs are needed: One, of policymaking under prosperity; a second, of policymaking under serious adversity; and a third, of policymaking in situations of acute calamity. The difference between policymaking under adversity, including serious adversity, and policymaking in situations of acute calamity needs attention: Serious adversity can include a propensity toward situations of calamity, but policymaking in situations of acute calamity follows different patterns and raises separate issues, as touched upon in part in some of the studies dealing with crisis management. (An extreme case is decision making by the Jewish councils put in charge by the Nazis of Ghettos, the so-called “Judenrat,” who faced the most extreme adversity one can imagine. See Trunk 1972).

Another way to approach the subject is a historic-comparative one, with examination of the central minds of governments at various periods and locations of serious adversity.

This book adopts a third approach, with some supplements from the first and second ones: Contemporary policymaking is treated as policymaking under adversity, with some revealing features all the more visible because of the transition from growing prosperity and rosy assessments of the future to worsening conditions and dark assessment of things to come. Concomitantly, some historic inputs are utilized and some elements of a pure type of policymaking under serious adversity are explored.

In dealing with adversity, main attention is paid to specific features of contemporary and emerging situations, as considered in chapter 2. Conceptually, the term crisis is reserved for situations of time-compressed and sudden imposing events up to calamity that require rapid decision making; the term adversity, as qualified and elaborated by various adjectives when necessary, refers to all forms of massive difficulties facing policymaking, other than crisis, as defined above. In this way, it is hoped that some of the ambiguity of the term crisis as used in the literature is avoided.

Responses of governance to adversity constitute an important subject scientifically, and a crucial subject applicatively. From a scientific perspective, periods of pressure and stress expose basic features of governance, inaccessible under relatively stable or incrementally changing conditions. In this sense, hard cases make indeed good science. Within a prescriptive orientation, periods of pressure and stress pose a supreme need for help: If applied social sciences in general and policy sciences in particular are of use only when the sun is shining or, at most, partly clouded, then their significance as aids to societal and governmental problem handling is very low indeed. This is a challenge taken up in the present book, all of which is oriented toward adversity-related features of policymaking.

“Central Mind of Government” as Focal Subject

A few studies on societies and governance under pressure exist, ranging from historic investigations of particular polities (Bois 1984; MacMullen 1976; Manning 1983; Pocock 1975; Salmon 1975; C. Starr 1982) and types of societies (Eisenstadt 1963), to contemporary investigations of governance under stress (Jänicke 1973a; Jänicke 1973b; Preisl and Mohler 1979), up to breaking points of democracy (Erdmann and Schulze 1980; E. Kaufman 1979; Linz and Stepan 1978). Attempts at adversity-related theory building also occur: on crisis (in the sense of waves of difficulties) as inbuilt in accelerated development (Almond, Flanagan, and Mundt 1973; Binder et al. 1971; Grew 1978); on decline as endemic to societal dynamics (M. Olson 1982) or as related to some historic processes (Rüstow 1981); on crisis (mainly in the sense of breakdowns in legitimacy) and its political outcomes (Zimmermann 1979); and more.

This book is different from most such treatments in its already-mentioned interests in a broad and theoretic approach to policymaking under adversity. Another main specific feature is its concentration on the central mind of government, a subject rarely studied in historic treatments of governance under adversity (MacMullen 1976, 48) and often handled as a black box in treatments of historic processes (Faber and Meier 1978) in modern political sociology and in much of political science.

The catchy term governability demonstrates the preoccupation of contemporary writings with the environments within which governments operate, neglecting another essential side of the problem, namely, the capacity to govern. In this book the emphasis is different, with high-level policymaking by central government, as a core dimension of the capacity to govern (a concept used by G. Graham 1960, but otherwise neglected), serving as the main object for investigation. In particular, the “central brain” of government, in the sense of top-level policymaking units and processes, serves as the focus of attention (as pioneered, in different forms, by Stafford Beer 1981, and Deutsch 1969). This perspective is related to the concept of “state” but is not sensitive to different traditions and perceptions of the role of the state in societal problem handling (Dyson 1980, esp. 270ff.), other than in specific settings, to be considered when salient to the subject under discussion.

The term central mind of government implies no individualistic-psycho-logical or organistic connotations. Central mind of government is used interchangeably with the concept of “central policymaking process-system,” both clustering around top-level decision making configurations in governments. Alternatively, one can speak about the higher echelons of the societal command and control system-process, or about the raison d'êtat (in a clinical and not pejorative sense, Meinecke 1957; modern treatments, such as Donelan 1978, are weak) of managing central components of governance. To avoid conceptual overload, the book sticks to the terms central mind ofgovernment and central policymaking process-system as denoting its main subject.

The central mind of government, or central policymaking process-system, is partly handled as a black box and partly opened up (as done in part in Goldwin 1980) with separate treatment of its main components and their interrelations, as necessary for the ongoing inquiry. It is recognized that in different countries and at different periods, various institutions and roles partake in the central mind of government. Thus, in the United States, some parts of Congress and the Supreme Court should be regarded as sometimes included in the central mind of government—depending on the policy issues under consideration and the period taken up (Sundquist 1981). Despite such complexities, used heuristically and subject to specification as needed in particular contexts, the concepts of central mind of government or central policymaking process-system serve adequately the limited purposes of this book. At the same time, the main findings, conjectures, and recommendations of this book are in no way derived from these concepts and stand independent from preferred terminology.

Embedment in Politics and Society as a Whole

There is need for comprehensive treatments of “politics under adversity” and, indeed, “societies under adversity,” beyond the growing number of available partial examinations and sweeping historic grand theories. In many respects, the present book can be looked at as part of an endeavor to investigate polities under much pressure and as a corridor into the broader issues of societies under adversity. But, there is a difference between “policymaking” under adversity and “politics” under adversity, however difficult to draw. While interactions between politics and policymaking are considered as far as necessary, the treatment of this book focuses more on formation of central political will, with accent on decisional aspects, though not exclusively so. Wider political and social processes are taken up as inputs, targets, constraints, and infrastructure but do not constitute main objects for inquiry by themselves. No claim is made that this is a valid distinction between distinct features of reality; sufficient that it is a pragmatically useful one for the world of discourse of this book (following a pragmatical approach to definitions, Ogden and Richards 1938).

Contemporary Study and Historic Perspectives

The study of contemporary and emerging situations is useful at most for narrowly understanding current realities and providing tinkering help. It carries serious shortcomings: short time spans prevent recognition of basic patterns; contemporaneity keeps perceptions captive to time-bound conceptions; myopia produces “fatal remedies” (Sieber 1981); and emotional attachments bias findings and treatments beyond the unavoidable.

This book tries to reduce such damages by following some deliberate strategies: To move beyond dangers of simple historicism in dealing with present realities (Meinecke 1965; Popper 1961; Troeltsch 1977), an attempt to develop broad and combinational theoretic frameworks characterizes the book. To contain perception constraints, historic perspectives and comparative materials are utilized, at least as heuristic aids and for inference by analogy. Methodological difficulties (Andreski 1965; Bonnell 1980; Przeworski and Teune 1970) are reduced by the limited ambitions of comparisons and, when dealing with the present, by converging use of contemporary history methods and some “interpretative” approaches (Rabinow and Sullivan 1979), together with examination of secondary material and some original field study, as mentioned later. And, to minimize biases consequent upon emotional involvement, a value-free stance of clinical concern is adopted as ideal, even though beyond reach. (For a theoretic-philosophic justification of this stance, see Dror 1983a, new introduction. Recent writings on this issue add little to its clarification; e.g. see Callahan and Jennings 1983.) Iterative movement between empiric findings, inductive and deductive analysis, theoretic generalizations, and prescriptive conclusions and recommendations may help to limit damage of errors, as does some compartmentalization between different dimensions of this book, despite intense interdependence.

With all such attempts to control weaknesses inherent in contemporary treatments of present situations, this book cannot presume to jump over its own shadow. Particularly vexing in attempts to move beyond the limits of contemporary phenomena is the fundamental question, whether present and emerging adversities and policymaking responses to them are similar in basic features to realities in other periods of strenuous pressures exerted on governance; or, whether contemporary situations are unique in crucial features, making any comparison with other periods a metaphor at best and posing strict boundaries to diachronic generalizations.

Strong arguments can be made in either direction. Thus, there is a world of difference between the equipment of the weakest contemporary government on one hand, and of the most successful historic polities, on the other hand. For instance, the Roman emperor at the climax of his achievements (Millar 1977) lagged behind present rulers in the most underdeveloped countries by order of magnitudes in information, in realistic tacit theories on social phenomena, and in policy instruments. This is true much more so in comparison to earlier forms of rulership (Frankfort 1958). But, policymaking then as now depends largely on the same or similar UR-components of governance, such as individual top decision makers, small groups, hierarchical organizations, and policy theologies of much doubtfulness (despite the absence of political ideologies in the modern sense, which developed in the sixteenth century. See D. Kelley 1982).

Preliminary study of historic material tends to lead to the provisional proposition that fundamental features of governmental decision making have demonstrated many constants since the emergence of states, going back in part to earlier forms of collective action. This seems to hold true also when governmental decision making did not take forms similar to modern policymaking patterns; and despite radical differences in internal and external conditions between then and now. Therefore, historic studies may have much to contribute to the understanding of policymaking and are essential for building up well-founded general theory (e.g. S. Checkland 1983 demonstrates potentials of historical approaches for public policy studies). Inter alia, historic-comparative study of the responses of the central minds of governments to adversity can provide knowledge far beyond the possible in studies limited to a very thin slice of time-space.

Further examination of such issues, including underlying problems of the philosophy of social sciences, such as nominalism versus essentialism, are beyond the scope of this book. But, a main connection with the present endeavor needs pointing out: One of the significant contributions of the study of contemporary policymaking under adversity to social sciences theory may lie in sensitization to deeply rooted causes of incapacities and in generation of concept packages and hypotheses sets that can serve for reprocessing historic data in theory-relevant ways. Such reprocessing (which requires also additional historic detection work, in line with J. Davidson and Lytle 1982), in turn, may help the construction of a general theory of societal command and control, sorely missing at present (D. Bell 1982, 7). Hopes and aspirations of this kind make it all the more necessary to base the study of contemporary policymaking under adversity on explicated concepts and propositions.

Recognition of the inherent weaknesses of contemporary studies leads to an additional conclusion: Any and all propositions on complex sociopolitical processes based on their examination within thin slices of time-space must be regarded as rather weak conjectures, till subjected to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Scope, Concepts, Methods
• Chapter 2. Policy Predicaments
• Chapter 3. Policymaking Responses
• Chapter 4. Potentials of Policymaking as an Adversity-Handling Mode
• Chapter 5. Policy Principles for Handling Adversity
• Chapter 6. Required Policymaking Qualities versus Incapacities
• Chapter 7. Policymaking Specifications, Realities, Deficits
• Chapter 8. Needed Breakthroughs in Policy Sciences
• Chapter 9. Approaches to Policymaking Redesign
• Chapter 10. Recommendations for Policymaking Improvement
• References
• Reference Index
• Subject Index