Making Policy Happen

Leslie Budd, Julie Charlesworth, Rob Paton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000158205
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

'Policy work' is increasingly conducted by public managers at different levels of seniority, and in a variety of settings. This significant collection of readings focuses on the discussion of how policy work happens, whether that involves bringing a policy-making process to fruition or the implementation of policy.

The ideas included here draw on many different academic disciplines including economics, political science, social policy, international relations, organizational behaviour and psychology. The book is divided into four key sections, each with an introduction by the editors, covering:

• understanding policy processes



• governance contexts



• instruments and discourses



• leadership in policy work.

This key text equips the reader with the fundamental knowledge and the essential ability required to critically analyze the key theoretical, conceptual and operational approaches to the development and management of public policy. Containing timeless papers that are the building blocks of understanding public policy, this important volume allows the reader to analyze new issues in appropriate contexts and one's own setting.

PART ONE
Understanding policy processes

1. INTRODUCTION
2. Theories of policymaking
   1. 1 EXPLAINING POLICY CHANGE
3. The implementation debate
   1. 2 IMPLEMENTATION STUDIES:TIME FOR A REVIVAL?
4. Policy networks
   1. 3 PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND POLICY NETWORKS: FOUNDATIONS OF A NETWORK APPROACH TO GOVERNANCE
5. The budgetary backbone
   1. 4 VILLAGE LIFE IN CIVIL SERVICE SOCIETY: DEPARTMENT-TREASURY BARGAINING
   2. 5 INHERITANCE BEFORE CHOICE IN PUBLIC POLICY

INTRODUCTION

IF ONE ASKED SENIOR officials in central or local government how policy is made, the strong likelihood is that their answer would include reference to a series of stages or phases. This might end in 'implementation' – or it might involve a cycle, in which implementation is followed by 'evaluation and review' leading back to (say) 'agenda setting'. Such an answer would almost certainly be predicated on the decisions of some authoritative, deliberative body; and it would assume a choice process oriented to the achievement of particular policy goals. Of course, such senior officials know perfectly well that things rarely happen quite like this; the processes are much more confused, uncertain and contested than such models imply. Nevertheless, they would find it hard to describe in any succinct and convincing fashion how policy really does emerge.

One way of thinking about the readings in this section is that they all challenge central elements in the conventional, rationalistic accounts of policymaking; and they introduce additional elements, or develop broader theories, concerning how policies actually happen.

In Reading 1, Peter John reviews the extensive literature on public policy theory. Relative newcomers to the social sciences may initially find the cascade of different concepts and perspectives daunting. But it provides a lucid introduction to the diverse range of theories that can be and are used to reconstruct what is happening in policy processes – many of which are referred to again in later readings. His purpose as a distinguished researcher is to prepare the ground for developing better (more comprehensive) theories – and he ends suggesting some ways in which an evolutionary theory might be formulated to explain the ways in which public policies change and develop over time. Of course, in the context of this volume, most readers will be more interested in whether they provide usable models and frameworks that can illuminate particular events and situations in their own experience. In this respect it may help to realize that most of the theories he mentions are variants, but on a larger canvas, of ideas that may already be familiar in an organizational context. He alludes to this in his discussion of institutions; and, likewise, the theory of policy streams and windows that he mentions was derived quite directly from James March's celebrated 'garbage-can'theory of decision-making in organizations (it focused on the way 'problems' become attached to 'solutions' in contexts where decisions are possible – with results that may be unexpected but are not therefore random or irrational).

Reading 2, by Susan Barrett, also provides a lucid review of a large body of literature. She reflects on three decades of theory development in implementation studies.This gives a valuable historical perspective on the way the field of policy studies has developed – partly under its own dynamic and partly in relation to developments in governance. Thus the 1970s were a time of innovation in policy studies, introducing more strategic approaches and a focus on the reasons for policy failure with implementation regarded as essentially a top-down process. Attention increasingly turned to the role of 'bottom-up' approaches during the 1980s and a greater understanding of interaction and iteration between the different stages. But then implementation studies were increasingly influenced by the 'new public management' in the 1990s and the focus shifted towards issues such as strategic management and change. With the complexity of partnership arrangements and an increasing number of agencies from different sectors involved in policymaking and implementation, Barrett suggests the time is ripe for a revival of interest in implementation – to incorporate concepts of change, networks and partnership.

Reading 3, on policy networks, departs even more radically from conventional notions of policymaking. The authors are leading proponents of a theory that claims, essentially, that policymaking makes more sense if it is seen, not as located in and around governments, but as being undertaken by and through policy networks and policy communities. In this reading, the authors succinctly set out the core concepts of policy network theory. It has its origins in 'bottom-up' implementation studies, but has gained greater prominence in recent years as part of the debates on governance.They explore the components of policy networks as a series of interactions through 'games' with sets of rules – a recurring motif in a number of theories.

Readings 4 and 5 focus on the importance of budgeting within the policy process. Without a budget there is no policy; indeed, one might even say that budgeting is where policy really happens. Reading 4 is extracted from a chapter in Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky's classic study of relations between the UK Treasury and other government departments. They examine the private face of public life, the hidden, informal workings of government. Particular arrangements and terminology will be different, of course, but what they describe is likely to resonate with anyone who has worked in large organizations. It focuses on the necessary role of political bargaining in relation to rational plans, and the need to contain the tensions involved in inherently conflictual relationships.The parallels between this discussion, and that of Klijin and Koppenjan's account of policy games, are obvious.

Richard Rose (Reading 5) discusses the importance of'inheritance'in the policy process, in other words the commitments and public expenditure plans developed by, and inherited from, previous governments. This, too, is derived from a classic study, one that posed important questions in a particularly ingenious way, making it possible to examine them empirically using data covering government actions over an extended period of time.The empirical data on which his argument is founded is now dated (as it focused on the period up to the mid-1980s) and this aspect has been substantially edited from this reading. However, the main conclusions about the nature and importance of inheritance in public policy are still highly relevant and provide a sobering reminder to managers and politicians about the scope for change in the exercise of their roles. But this is not to argue that policymakers are powerless and nothing makes a difference. Because he takes the long view, Rose also highlights the impact that even modest new programmes or adjustments to programmes can and do have over the long term.

Perhaps the most important thing about all these theories is that they offer some 'distance' and perspective on the vicissitudes of particular policy processes, a vantage point from which it is possible to see the shape of the woods even as one is struggling among particular trees.

Reading 1
Explaining Policy Change

Peter John

From: John, P. (2003) 'Is there life after policy streams, advocacy coalitions, and punctuations: using evolutionary theory to explain policy change?', The Policy Studies Journal, 31:4, 481-498

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny – and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).

(Stephen Jay Gould, The lying stones of Marrakech: Penultimate reflections in natural history, pp. 104—105)

TEN YEARS HAS ELAPSED since the last major advance in public policy theory. For it was in 1993 that two key books were published: Baumgartner and Jones' Agendas and Instability in American Politics and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith's Policy Change and Learning.[. . .] Both attracted a great deal of attention; they were complementary, and they set off research programs in the forms of detailed empirical research, edited collections of studies (e.g., Baumgartner & Jones, 2002), and extensive commentary in the rest of political science. Important work has emerged since, such as Jones's Politics and the Architecture of Choice (2001) and the collection of essays in Sabatier (1999), but nothing has changed the direction of thinking in the same way that the cluster of books and articles at the beginning of the 1990s did.

[. . .]

Theorizing about public policy

When considering about how to theorize about public policy, there are two things to bear in mind. One is the nature of theory in the social sciences; the other is the character of public policy. For empirical researchers, theory is a body or system of propositions about the causal relations that link together elements of the social, economic, and political worlds. These relations are regularized, having applicability over a range of cases, both in space and time. Theory in social science is usually based on claims about the nature of human action and power relationships, and seeks to provide a coherent and consistent account of reality. [. . .] Theories differ, of course, in their applicability; but they are linked by the aim to generalize, and in themselves they do not yield hypotheses. What theories do is to generate models, which are more restricted assumptions about social and political relationships from which hypotheses can then be derived and tested.

Researchers in the field of public policy want to understand why public decisions and their outcomes change, stay stable, vary from sector to sector, and differ in their consequences for the publics that consume and appraise them. It is a distinctive and problematic area of study, far more inclusive than others. [. . .] Public policy tends to include in its baseline all political activity and institutions –from voting, political cultures, parties, legislatures, bureaucracies, international agencies, local governments, and back again, to the citizens who implement and evaluate public policies. In addition, decision making varies vastly from sector to sector, a claim that is the core contribution of public policy studies to political science knowledge, but which complicates the task at hand. The problem is compounded by the absence of a clear chain of causation from public opinion to parties and bureaucracies and back again. As many writers on public policy have lamented (cf. Sabatier, 1999), there can be no "stages" model of the political process to provide a simple map because of the multiple sources of causation, feedback, and the sheer complexity of what is going on. [. . .] Coming up with theory that creates some simplicity or parsimony and that takes account of complexity is quite a challenge. The move to simplicity may simply impose a tautology or overextend a set of plausible and partial models of political action to the whole of the policy process. [. . .]

Importing theory from mainstream political science

One answer to the search for theory is to take ready-made ones already in use in political science, as they often have a policy dimension. The problem is that such theory may not be well adapted to the many faceted character of the policy process; moreover, many of these theories have difficulties of their own.

Institutionalism: old and "new"

The best candidate for such an approach is institutionalism. This is the idea that formal structures and embedded norms have an effect on human action. [. . .] In part, institutions are formal arrangements, such as electoral systems, the division of powers, and the salience of the higher courts; but there are also the practices embedded in formal organizational arrangements, which are sometimes called standard operating procedures. The former sense is better for empirical testing, and comes out with the hardly startling finding that institutions matter for policy outputs and outcomes (Lane & Ersson, 1999). Unless institutions are entirely circumvented by networks and power relations, they generally affect how policy is made as they influence the speed at which political systems attend to public problems, the efficiency with which they aggregate public preferences, and the way in which policies attract rent seekers and principals seek to control their agents (Strom, Milller, & Bergman, 2003). Given that institutions constrain public action and affect the costs and benefits of political participation, such an effect is to be expected. But does institutionalism explain policy change? In part, it does, but institutionalists find it harder to explain bursts of change, such as improvements in policy performance or the imminence of policy disasters, which are some of the crucial issues. Institutions can account for change when they adapt, especially in relation to one set of interests and policy concerns. [. . .] Institutional reform can also promote change, say, between levels of government. Moreover, it is possible that institutions themselves adapt. They may evolve according to their own rules, and so affect the choices of policymakers. In spite of these nuances, it is not certain that institutional approaches offer an all-encompassing theory of policy change, mainly because institutions are better at explaining the dampening rather than the amplifying of political processes. They are generally stable, which means they set out routines and constrain human action.

Socioeconomic change

Socioeconomic changes must play their role in explaining policy change in the form of shocks and influences on the political system. A lot of academic energy was spent on the socioeconomic causes of policy change before the 1980s, but then doubts about macro schemes of politics set in and systems theorists of all sorts fell out of fashion. It is possibly the case that the intellectual reaction against systems theory and functionalism has gone too far, and social science should start examining complex systems again, perhaps through the idea of coevolving social processes. But social scientists do not now accept the basic assumption that there is a transmission belt from society and the economy to the political system and its institutions, as the latter influences the former, and botli are highly variegated. [. . .]

Rational choice theory

Rational choice theory examines policy change, v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION TO BOOK
• PART ONE Understanding policy processes
• PART TWO Governance contexts
• PART THREE Instruments and discourses
• PART FOUR Leadership in policy work
• Index