Marketing Public Policy

Complexity, Hurts and Minefields

Basskaran Nair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138559967
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351362153
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Policy analysts and policy planners should start from the premise that obstacles, uncertainties and surprises are important features of policy-making. All public policies should be treated as complex problems, from the outset. Complexity theorists start from the premise that complex policies are ill-defined and ambiguous. There is often little consensus about what the problem is, let alone how to resolve it. Into the complexity of the wicked problem fray, Marketing Public Policy introduces the role of communication scholars and practitioners whose models and practices focus on people, processes, opinions and behaviour as causes of organisational complexity. Communication practice's role is to provide ideas on how to navigate, diagnose and interpret issues with a view to persuading the public to change its behaviour or opinions.

From the case studies presented in this book, we see that despite rationally excellent macro- and micro-planning of policies to win the hearts and minds of citizens, public policies still deteriorate into hurts and minefields. The case studies are drawn from China, Indonesia, India, the USA, the UK and Europe to show that policy-making is always a complex issue in any country, whatever the political structure, whether democracy or communism.

PART I

Complexity and communication theories

1

PUBLIC POLICY DYNAMICS

It’s communication in a complex world

To appreciate policy dynamics is to look at it from the perspective of ‘objective’ policy analysts: Policy issues are thrown up by the conflicts and tensions of human wants; policy politics dominate contemporary societies, as policy planners face counter-policies of activists and special interests groups; and these politicised wants take place in a world undergoing cataclysmic change, such as deglobalisation, technological change and nativism sentiments. Policy analysis is itself a form of cognitive mapping; policy-makers and their publics cannot be free of their own cognitive filters and prior preferences and bias. Complexity theories highlight the VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – world of politically motivated policy planning and execution. Any discussion on public policy dynamics, from incubation to implementation, uses as its reference a wide range of complexity theorists, primarily Horst W. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber,¹ James Horn,² and Jeff Conklin,³ and, in addition, Louis W. Koenig,⁴ Euel Elliott and L. Douglas Kiel,⁵ Mark Mason,⁶ Graham Room,⁷ and Reimut Zohlnhofer and Friedbert W. Rub.⁸

In this chapter, policy dynamics are explored by looking at a range of conceptual policy models. Mark Considine advocates that we need to appreciate concepts which express the fact that policy is often produced through patterned, path-dependent activity among a complex of actors.⁹ In the first section, the theoretical models capture the significance of individuals, interest groups and institutions, how they interact and how issues in the public domain find their way to become public policies. Some theories focus on the bottom-up flow of issues to become public policies while others focus on the top-down approach. The next section examines a range of complexity theories described as either critical junctures, ‘wicked problems’ or a ‘social mess’. The third section looks at communication models and practices mandated to pursue opinion and behavioural change as the key measurement of successful implementation. The final section is a case study, the Singapore White Paper on Population and Land Use; how the well-researched and well-thought-out policy paper to win the hearts and minds of the people became a ‘hurts and minefield’ policy outcome.

Understanding policy models

In policy dynamics, people’s wants and demands become policies only when they are directed at policy-makers and public officials, who decide to take them up as part of the policy process. How these wants and demands are modified or merged with others’ wants and demands are discussed in numerous, conceptual models about public policy and complexity. A few models are examined in this section. For instance, the bottom-up social science models such as the claims-making, interest groups and social learning theory models. The top-down policy-making models include incrementalism, the elites, and polyarchy models. These models are not competitive in the sense that none of them could be judged to be the ‘best’. While each concept is a thumbnail presentation in a silo, in reality, it exists in a combination: for example, rational policies are discussed with emotional theories, or claims theories with interest groups theories, and policy analysts have to see the interplay and overlap of these theories in practice.

The rational policy process assumes a systematic flow from problem identification (publicising societal problems), agenda setting (deciding which issues to be addressed), formulation (developing proposals to resolve issues), legitimation (persuading the public of the right thing to do, enacting into law), implementation (executive structures, communication strategies) and evaluation (impact studies, review and feedback, proposing future changes). This public policy model maintains that policy planners’ aim to achieve the maximum social gain to society, which is to the benefit of the people, should exceed the costs by the greatest amount.¹⁰ Page and Shapiro, in their (1992) book, The Rational Public, maintain that collective public preferences pursued as rational policy display a greater degree of stability and cogency, far exceeding the typical individual level of preferences.¹¹ From the complexity perspective, there are many barriers to rational decisions. For example, rational policy decisions are often stonewalled by the almost irrational reactions of the citizen-publics. People generally have ‘non-attitudes’ and do not have meaningful beliefs even on issues that have been in the public domain for substantial periods of time.¹²

Emotional theories focus on the role that emotions play in shaping policies, guiding attention and modulating how actively citizens take actions or perform no actions at all. Policy planners pay attention to three common emotions: (1) enthusiasm causes people to take a greater interest in politics and policies; (2) fear causes citizens to pay greater attention to what is happening, seek out more information, reconsider their options in the light of available information, avoid risky courses of actions, and prefer public policies focused on prevention and protection; and (3) anger causes citizens to stick to their convictions, eschew promises, spend less time thinking things through, embrace risks more readily, and prefer aggressive and punitive public policies.¹³ From the complexity perspective, emotions are extremely difficult to quantify. Often when the policy has been implemented, then the emotional outpouring, often as negative reactions to the public policy, appears.

Social learning theory, developed by behaviourists Albert Bandura¹⁴ and B. F. Skinner¹⁵ maintains that to bring about behaviour change, for example, safe sex or safe driving, there must be continuous reciprocal interaction and continuous feedback to the individuals. Individuals in other words have to practise behavioural changes personally, but are aided by continuous feedback from their environment, and rewarded for their efforts to accomplish the relevant task. The theory assumes that through communication of the accepted norms of behaviour, such as making the tasks easy to accomplish and encouragement, the individuals and the affected community of individuals will change. From the complexity perspective, it assumes self-discipline of the individual and the policy planners’ capacity to provide ‘continuous’ environmental support. Behavioural change being determined by self-discipline and appreciation of the consequences is easier said than done.

Claims-making theory examines people and the interest groups representing them to make claims about social conditions; it does not matter whether the conditions exist; it matters only that people make claims about them.¹⁶ Crime problems are social problems brought to public attention and to policy-makers through claims made by activists, public officials or the press. Claims-making attracts media coverage and that often results in receiving policy-makers’ attention. People learn to cooperate after they assess whether or not other people will assist them; the potential cooperators will find that working together is usually more in their interests than being in dispute.¹⁷ From the complexity perspective, policy planners cannot escape the constant bombarding of claims by citizens and the interest groups. Even if seemingly solved or satisfied, claims-making groups will return as all solutions are inherently subjective.

Interest groups theories: people come together for a common cause and generally have already developed strong emotions relating to the public policy. David Truman, in his (1954) book The Government Process,¹⁸ states that individuals with common interests band together to press their demands on government. Interest groups become essentially the bridge between the individual and the government. Interest groups have organisational strength and persistence to bring about changes through bargaining, negotiation and compromise. From the complexity perspective, excessive activism by such interest groups impacts negatively on policy implementation, creating complexity, ambiguity and polarisation. Vested interest groups sometimes believe they are the public, confusing their own opinions with public opinion.

The elite model examines the preferences and values of governing elites, generally drawn disproportionately from the upper socio-economic strata of society. Given the vested interests of the elites, changes in public policy initiated by them will be incremental rather than revolutionary. Active elites are subject to relatively little direct influence from the masses who are regarded by the elites as apathetic, largely passive, and ill-informed. Communication between elites and the masses, most of the time, flows downwards.¹⁹ From the complexity perspective, public policy does not reflect the demands of the masses but rather the prevailing values of the elites. However, when the masses feel deeply aggrieved at elite-driven policies that negate their livelihood, it engenders ‘people power’ activism.

Polyarchy theory is a variant of elite theory, influencing policy decisions. Charles E. Lindblom, an early writer on the polyarchy theory in policy and decision-making, notes the privileged position of business in the polyarchy model.²⁰ He introduced the concept of ‘circularity’, or ‘controlled volitions’ where the masses, even in democracies, are persuaded to ask from elites what elites wish to give them. There are similarities between polyarchy and elite theories. From the complexity perspective, any real public choices and competition are limited. In the polyarchy model, even with democratic governance, certain groups of elites – bankers, Wall Street investment community – gain crucial advantages, and collude with one another instead of competing.

The incrementalism model refers to incremental modifications to public policies in part due to imperfect information and the policy-makers playing it safe. Political scientist Charles E. Lindblom discussed this model, pointing out that the constraints of time, information and the costs of alternative policies prevent the identification of the full range of policy alternatives and the consequences. Incrementalism is conservative and tends to be politically expedient.²¹ From the complexity perspective, the constraints of politics and the uncertainty concerning fresh policy alternatives preclude any radical change. Comfortable and often complacent elite policy leadership prefers to pursue incrementalism.

The public choice model recognises that governments perform certain functions related to providing the public good, such as national defence, which the market cannot provide. In public choice policy-making, the leadership is preoccupied with the future; it aspires to anticipate and even to prescribe what the future should be, despite imperfect knowledge and information, limited human ability to conceive all possibilities latent in a complex social problem.²² All stakeholders – voters, politicians, bureaucrats, interest groups, elites, institutions – seek to maximise their personal benefits in politics as well as in the marketplace. While the stakeholders pursue self-interest, the public mutually benefits through this collective decision-making.²³ From the complexity perspective, politicians, especially during election campaigns, make policy promises to win elections, fail to offer clear polic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: the marketing of public policy
• PART I Complexity and communication theories
• PART II Communication practice
• PART III Issues management
• References
• Index