Policy Analysis in Australia

Head, Brian, Crowley, Kate, Head, Brian, Crowley, Kate, Brian Head, Kate Crowley

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781447310273
• eBook ISBN: 9781447347491
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Policy Analysis in Australia offers a distinctly Australian interpretation of policy scholarship with eighteen chapters strongly reflecting the outstanding contributions of Australian scholars to the field of public policy. It provides a coherent overview of the strengths and opportunities for policy analysis in Australia.

It recognises that government agencies are no longer regarded as the sole source of sound policy analysis, and takes a broad view of policy analysis capacity, both within institutions at all levels of government, and beyond government in the media, political parties, business, and non-government associations.

It provides a valuable contribution to Australian scholarship about policy analysis in academic, professional, teaching and learning contexts, and is a key addition to research and teaching in comparative policy analysis and policy studies more generally.

ONE

Policy analysis in Australia: context, themes and challenges

Kate Crowley and Brian Head

Introduction

This chapter introduces the Australian contribution to the International Library of Policy Analysis series (Policy Press) edited by Michael Howlett and Iris Geva-May. Policy analysis in Australia provides a broad range of perspectives on the location, scope, challenges and quality of policy analysis in Australia. It accounts for the diverse sources of policy analysis and advice, both within and outside government, and the diverse institutional settings in which analysis and decision-making are undertaken. Unlike books that critically assess Australian policy development and policy outcomes in different fields (eg social, economic or environmental policy), this volume focuses on the nature and quality of the various organisational processes and locations for the production and distribution of policy ideas and policy analysis. It considers the policy capacities of the various organisations and forums in which policy development, deliberation and review are undertaken. In a variety of circumstances, both within and beyond government, policy analysis is treated as the 'application of intellect to public problems' (Pal, 2006, p 14).

This chapter provides an overview of the various contexts for 'policy advising' and policy capacity within and beyond government in Australia. We discuss some of the key forms of policy analysis, in both academic and practitioner contexts. We distinguish a number of broad approaches to the academic study of policy, recognising that much scholarly work is directed towards education rather than towards policy practitioners and debates about policy options. We also identify the main themes covered by the expert contributors to later chapters of Policy analysis in Australia. These themes include: the evolving challenges for policy-advising and policy inquiry processes within the public sector (at three levels within the federation); the diversification of sources of advice, including the growing role of ministerial advisors, consultants, think tanks and media-enabled channels of opinion; the strengths and weaknesses of parties, trade unions, business associations and community organisations in developing and disseminating policy advice; and the role of scholarly research and teaching within these broad policy processes.

Explaining policy and policy analysis

Policy analysis techniques

The provision of 'policy advice' is common to all systems of government, but the nature of advisory systems is highly variable and depends on several political and institutional factors (Craft and Howlett, 2013). For example, the main sources of advice, and their influence and legitimacy in the political system, will vary in accordance with how public institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and forums for democratic discussion have evolved in different countries. Historical traditions across national boundaries also vary in terms of the professional skills of analysts and advisors, and the techniques used in considering policy options. For example, in the US, a specific approach and methodology for conducting 'policy analysis' gradually evolved over several decades, and became reinforced through graduate training programmes (Meltsner, 1976; Radin, 2000; Bardach 2005). While noting that there are important alternatives to this mainstream view, especially the constructivist and communicative approaches (see Fischer, 2003; Fischer and Gottweis, 2012), the dominant US approach has largely been characterised by two important dimensions: one concerning the conception of the policy system; the other concerning the analytical techniques recommended for policy analysis.

First, the policy system, at least since the 1950s (see Lerner and Lasswell, 1951), has been conceived as involving several stages: identifying problems, clarifying objectives, consulting stakeholders, selecting and debating solutions, implementing programmes, and reviewing programme effects. The utility of the stages theory (or policy cycle) has been much debated in terms of its ambiguous status as a descriptive, normative or heuristic account of the policy process. Some of the Australian debates are summarised in Edwards (2001), Everett (2003), Bridgman and Davis (2003), Howard (2005) and Colebatch (2006a). Second, the analytical techniques for 'policy analysis' deployed in the US are generally strongly quantitative, privileging economic cost–benefit analysis and/or the use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in evaluation. To some extent, this emphasis reflects the intention of analysts to influence policy choices, rather than to reflect on the various processes that underlie debate. By contrast with the US, the term 'policy analysis' is less widely used in Australia and does not necessarily have this strong association with positivist and quantitative methods. In the US, policy analysis has become an area of applied professional employment, with graduate training in 'policy analysis' widely available for several decades (Radin, 2000). However, in Australia and many other countries, providing policy-analytical advice has not been seen as a distinctive professional role to the same extent (see Chapter Seventeen).

It is common in policy studies to make a distinction between studies of policy (the academic-explanation focus, describing policy practices and explaining past policy developments) and studies for policy (the applied-professional focus, producing briefings and options analyses intended to assist practitioners or influence decision-makers). The policy work produced in public bureaucracies, think tanks and stakeholder organisations are mainly in this second camp. In the US, there is a substantial body of work with an applied-professional focus in which the needs of practitioners are central and specific analytical techniques are prominent. In Australia, there has been less orthodoxy about the analytical methods and professional skills required for applied policy work, though economic approaches are important and programme evaluations have recently gained more ground. In Australia, the academic study of policy has produced a wide range of historical and contemporary explanations of policy developments, but academic policy studies have seldom been heavily engaged in practitioner-oriented analyses of current options.

It is not quantitative methodology that has captivated Australian academic policy studies, but a range of other, predominantly qualitative, approaches including:

(1) institutionalist accounts of policy structures and processes, more recently including governance-oriented accounts that consider networks and policy communities;

(2) case-study accounts of policy and policy change, including the role of ideas, stakeholders and leaders in policy development and debate, comparative cases, implementation studies, and so forth;

(3) political-economy accounts of economic processes, and the power structures and constraints that shape the context for broader policy development, including debates about economic rationalism;

(4) interpretivist and experiential studies of policy work, focusing on the perceptions and practices of policy actors inside and outside government; and

(5) normative, critical and deliberative theories of the policy process that emphasise the significance of civic inclusion, participation, communication and transparency for the quality of decision-making.

First, institutionally framed analyses have arguably been predominant in the academic study of policy development and the politics of policy change (across economic, social and environmental policy domains). As public policy studies gradually became more differentiated from public administration (Spann and Curnow, 1975; Weller, 1980; Wanna, 2003), policy studies remained anchored in a political science approach to the exercise of power and authority by governmental and interest group actors. This orientation was evident in the 1974 essays in Public policy in Australia (Forward, 1974) and Emy's (1976) text on Public policy, and reached a more systematic level beyond the late 1980s as the demand increased for textbooks that combined internationally recognised policy frameworks with Australian policy examples and institutional contexts (see Davis et al, 1988; Bell and Head, 1994; Parkin et al, 1994; Fenna, 2004; Althaus et al, 2013).

Second, case studies of policy change have been regularly undertaken by a wide range of scholars, often drawing upon the 'power, institutions and actors' approach in political science to explain such change. Three tendencies have been noteworthy, namely: (1) studies of the policy consequences of regime change (ie new policy directions attempted following a change of government) (eg Head and Patience, 1989; Aulich and Evans, 2010); (2) studies of policy reform in specific fields such as environmental policy (eg Dovers and Wild River, 2003; Crowley and Walker, 2012); and (3) studies of specific policy crises, failures and fiascos (eg Botterill, 2001; McConnell et al, 2008; Lewis, 2010). Case-study material is also prominently used in the postgraduate education of policy students.

Third, political-economy accounts of power and policy choices have developed from a strong base in studies of industry-sector policies, especially the ongoing debates on industry assistance policies (eg Glezer, 1982; Warhurst, 1982; Capling and Galligan, 1992; Stewart, 1994; Cockfield and Botterill, 2012) and broader economic policy issues that have been fundamental to growth and redistribution (Bell and Head, 1994; Bell, 1997, 2003). The question of how 'economic rationalist' policy frameworks were rapidly, if unevenly, accepted on both sides of politics as the orthodox position has also been analysed, debated and recently revisited (Pusey, 1991; Miller and Orchard, 2014; Stokes, 2014).

Fourth, Colebatch (2006a, 2006b, 2009 [1997]) and others have pioneered an internationally significant interpretivist or constructivist strand of policy studies that gives prominence to how policy actors interpret their roles and contexts, frame problems, and pursue options (Bacchi, 1999, 2009), and how policy actors' work is embedded in social practices that are both rule-bound and interpersonal. A particular theme has been the nature of 'policy work', examined from the viewpoint of individual actors, rather than in terms of rational or evidence-based systems (Colebatch, 2006b, 2014; Colebatch et al, 2010). There are clear links between this work and the interpretivist school in Europe (eg Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003; Colebatch et al, 2010; Hoppe, 2010) and in the US (eg Fischer, 2003). It has been claimed that the Australian version of constructivism in policy studies is 'pragmatic' rather than doctrinal (Boswell and Corbett, 2014).

Finally, Australian political theorists have argued that policy analysts should appreciate the theoretical underpinnings of applied policy studies (Goodin et al, 2006), balancing analytical techniques with a 'reflective' understanding of the hidden assumptions underlying policy intervention studies – for example, welfare economics, public choice and social interests (Bobrow and Dryzek, 1987). Stewart (2009) argues that values underlie all policy debates, and that these normative and ideological assumptions need emphasising. These messages are very consistent with the substantial literature centred on feminist policy issues in Australia (eg Sawer, 1990; Bacchi, 1999; Chappell, 2002). Dryzek (2010) has also argued that the normative aspects of democratic inclusion should be taken more seriously in designing better frameworks for considering major social and environmental policy challenges, highlighting the importance of participatory deliberative processes.

Policy analysis in Australia

The field of policy studies is well-established in Australia. Policy and administration 'is now a relatively mature field, with a number of journals, a strong professional association, representative scholars in almost every Australian state and territory, and a national school, the Australia and New Zealand School of Government' (Ahmed and Davis, 2009, p 212). Policy studies, they argue, has evolved over the past century from studies of government to governance, shifting from the analysis of public administration as an apolitical, bureaucratic activity, to public policy today as politicised, contested and highly complex. The analysis of policy has lagged behind government practice, such as the reflective assessments of the reform programme of the Whitlam Labor government in the 1970s. By the time policy studies emerged as a distinct field in the 1980s, the economic reforms of the Hawke Labor government were well under way. Australian policy directions were fundamentally reoriented by economic rationalism, prompting critical policy scholarship and institutional reflection throughout the 1990s (Hede and Prasser, 1993; Considine, 1994; Bell and Head, 1994) as the public policy agenda became realigned along Anglo-American free market lines. Pusey (1991, p 227) sparked controversy by claiming that the new paradigm had largely eclipsed the older social welfare paradigm.

Other policy analysis approaches emerged by the end of the 1990s, with some scholars shifting away from the study of actors and institutions towards the study of stages in the policy process and policy design options (Ahmed and Davis, 2009, p 220). Others rejected the rationalist emphasis upon policy stages, and either persisted with the study of actors, institutions, strategies and case studies (Fenna, 2004; Considine, 2005), albeit with a wider 'governance' emphasis, or explored more individualist and constructivist interpretations of public policy (Colebatch, 2006a, 2006b; Bacchi, 2009). In Australia, as elsewhere, there is a growing embrace of post-positivist policy analysis.

Although the formal discipline of public administration was partly displaced by the emergence of public policy within the discipline of political science, the managerial and accountability concerns of public administration have remained very much alive. This is reflected in the strength and standing of the key journal, the Australian Journal of Public Administration. As government hollowed out from the 1980s and as 'new governance' networks emerged, it was inevitable that Australian policy analysts would become focused upon performance, capacity, pathways, coordination, accountability and service delivery. Concern with policy failure and the incompetence of governments in prosecuting their policy agendas is a strong theme, with new challenges concerning the role that policy analysis can and should play in improving performance (Banks, 2014).

While there is a healthy scepticism in Australia about the utility of rationalist approaches to policy design, at the same time, there is an increased concern to improve the efficacy of public policy settings. Australia is therefore at the crossroads identified by De Leon and Vogenbeck (2007, p 3): 'complex public problems, a commensurate increase in analytic charters and policy analysts within and beyond government, but a general abandonment in political circles of rational, analytic thought'. Despite the distaste for rationalist interpretation by many scholars, it is likely that the new priority accorded to improved policy processes and design, evidence bases, and implementation processes will persist in the mix of analytic approaches. Similarly, the decentring shift from government to governance has not led to a wholesale abandonment of analysis of (or concern with) the role of the state, and leading Australian scholars have pioneered the 'resilient state' thesis (Bell and Hindmoor, 2009).

Locating policy analysis and advice

Although the preoccupations of policy scholars have moved on from analysing the impact of neoliberal principles on public policy, the contributors to this volume affirm the continued influence of this ideational shift over the last three decades (see also Miller and Orchard, 2014). They show that neoliberal reform has extensively changed not only the character and capacity of the public sector itself, but also the advocacy capacity, organisational form and policy-analytic capacity of the non-government sector, with serious implications for the activities of network governance. The authors show that the diminished policy capacity of government is now paralleled by an increased expectation of policy analysis expertise and evidence-based argument from the non-government sector, and from associations, inquiries and bodies beyond government. The authors here follow the Policy analysis series by identifying: a complex advisory landscape with a diminished capacity within government; complex policy-advising contexts beyond government; and political parties and NGOs that are struggling with political and procedural demands for policy analysis.

The 'policy-advising' context

Patrick Weller provides an overview in Chapter Two of the ways in which the role of the policy professio...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• List of abbreviations
• Australian states and territories; Australian governments from 1972; and map of Australian states and territories
• Notes on contributors
• Editors' introduction to the series
• Foreword by Peter Shergold AC
• Preface
• 1: Policy analysis in Australia: context, themes and challenges
• Part One: The 'policy advising' context
• Part Two: Analysis and advice within government
• Part Three: Policy analysis beyond executive government
• Part Four: Parties and interest groups in policy analysis
• Part Five: Policy analysis instruction and research