The Public Policy Process

Michael Hill, Frédéric Varone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000364743
• Edition: 8
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Public Policy Process is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the process by which public policy is made. Explaining clearly the importance of the relationship between theoretical and practical aspects of policymaking, the book gives a thorough overview of the people and organisations involved in the process.

Fully revised and updated for an eighth edition, The Public Policy Process provides:

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• Clear exploration, using many illustrations, of how policy is made and implemented;

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• Examines challenges to effective policy making in critical areas – such as inequality and climate change – including the influence of powerful interests and the Covid-19 pandemic;

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• New material on unequal democracies, interest groups influence, behavioural policy analysis, global policies and evidence-based decision making;

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• Additional European and comparative international examples.

This text is essential reading for students of public policy, public administration and management, as well as more broadly highly relevant to related courses in health and nursing, social welfare, environment, development and local government.

Part 1 Policy theories

1 Studying the policy process

Synopsis

This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6) explores, after this introductory chapter, a range of theories that have been developed to explain all of, or key aspects of, the policy process. Then, Part 2 (Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13 and Chapter 14) looks at various aspects of the policy process, essentially developing and applying some of the main ideas from the first part. Connections between the theories in the first part and the discussions of the issues in the second part will be made in various ways, including summarising observations at the ends of chapters.

This introductory chapter looks at some important overall considerations about the study of the policy process. It explores the implications of the three key words in the title in reverse order. Thus, it starts with an exploration of what is implied in examining the policy process. That examines the relationship between the ‘descriptive’ aim of this book and the ‘prescriptive’ objectives that motivate much policy analysis. This leads on to a general exploration of the relationship between the study of the policy process and political science, and other social science disciplines, and some consideration of methodological approaches. Two policy examples are used at the end of this discussion to illustrate these points. They are then also used to illustrate the examination of what may be meant by policy. Here, it will be shown again that a distinction may be drawn between approaches to this concept that endeavour to use a very precise, and perhaps prescriptive, meaning and the stance taken in this book that political and ideological contests make that activity difficult and/or contentious. Finally, there is consideration of what is distinctive about the study of public policy. The examination of this topic involves a recognition of the extent to which there are problems with identifying a distinctive public sector, something which is emphasised in modern stresses upon the extent to which ‘government’ needs to be seen to have been replaced by ‘governance’.

Introduction

We are all critical of public policies from time to time. Most of us have ideas about how they could be better. When we engage in ordinary conversations about the defects of policies, we put forward, or hear advanced, various propositions about why they are defective. Those propositions tend to involve views about policy makers as ignorant or misled or perhaps malign. They often embody views that policies would be better if only different people had more influence on policy, including, of course, perhaps ourselves.

This book is based on the belief that before you can really start to suggest alternative policies to the ones we have, or to suggest alternative ways of making policy, it is essential to try to understand how policy is made. Many of the popular prescriptions for improving policy rest upon essential misunderstandings of the nature of the policy process. For example:

• views about the need for policy makers to be more aware of the ‘facts’ often disregard the way the facts are actually matters of dispute between different ‘interests’, ‘beliefs’ and ‘values’;
• suggestions for taking ‘politics’ out of policy making disregard the fact that politics is much more than simply the interplay of politicians;
• statements about the role of politicians (including many they themselves make) suggest that they have much more influence over the policy process than in fact they do. It may be said that there is both extravagant ‘claiming’ and ‘blaming’.

The view taken in this book is that the policy process is essentially a complex and multi-layered one. It is essentially a political process, but in the widest sense of that term. The policy process is a complex political process in which there are many actors: elected politicians, political party leaders, pressure groups, civil servants, publicly employed professionals, judges, non-governmental organisations, international agencies, academic experts, journalists and even sometimes citizens who see themselves as the passive recipients of policy.

To explore further what studying the policy process implies, it is appropriate to start with an examination of the place of this approach in the context of the many different approaches adopted to what can be generically called ‘policy analysis’. That then leads on to some more specific considerations about adopting a process perspective. From there, we can go to what that implies for the way public policy is examined in this book.

Description and prescription in policy analysis

Some policy analysts are interested in furthering understanding of policy (analysis of policy); some are interested in improving the quality of policy (analysis for policy); and some are interested in both activities (see Parsons, 1995, for an overview of the many approaches). Further, cutting across the distinction between ‘analysis of’ and ‘analysis for’ policy are concerns with ends and concerns with means.

The typology set out in Box 1.1 identifies a range of different kinds of policy analysis.

Box 1.1 Different kinds of policy analysis

Analysis of policy

• Studies of policy content, in which analysts seek to describe and explain the genesis and development of particular policies. The analyst interested in policy content usually investigates one or more cases in order to trace how a policy emerged, how it was formulated and implemented and what the results were. A great deal of academic work concentrates on single policies or single policy areas (social policy, environment policy, foreign policy, etc.).
• Studies of policy outputs, with much in common with studies of policy content but which typically seek to explain why levels of expenditure or service provision vary (over time or between countries or local governments).
• Studies of the policy process, in which attention is focused upon how policy decisions are made and how policies are shaped in action.

Analysis for policy

• Evaluation marks the borderline between analysis of policy and analysis for policy. Evaluation studies are also sometimes referred to as (regulatory) impact assessments as they are concerned with analysing the impact policies have on the population. Evaluation studies may answer descriptive questions (which intended impacts are observed?), causal questions (which factors explain the missing impacts?) and/or normative questions (which policy modification would improve the intended impacts?).
• Information for policy making, in which data are marshalled in order to assist policy makers to reach decisions. An important vein of studies of this kind manifests a pragmatic concern with ‘what works’, trying to ensure that policy and practice are ‘evidence based’ (Davies et al., 2000).
• Process advocacy, in which analysts seek to improve the nature of the policy-making systems through the reallocation of functions and tasks, and through efforts to enhance the basis for policy choice through the development of planning systems and new approaches to option appraisal. Much of the academic work in the sub-fields of ‘public administration’ and ‘public management’ has this concern.
• Policy advocacy, which involves the analyst in pressing specific options and ideas in the policy process, either individually or in association with others, perhaps through a pressure group.

Typology based upon ones offered by Gordon et al. (1977) and by Hogwood and Gunn (1981, 1984).

This book’s concern is with the policy process, the third of the varieties of policy analysis identified in Box 1.1. However, many studies of policy outputs contribute to our understanding of the policy process (see Chapter 10, Chapter 11 and Chapter 12). Similarly, evaluation studies give much attention not merely to what the policy outputs or outcomes were but also to questions about how the policy process shaped them. Much the same can be said of studies that seek to offer information for policy making, since ‘what works’ may be determined by the way the policy process works (see Chapter 14). Overall, it is often not easy to draw a clear line between ‘analysis of’ and ‘analysis for’ policy.

The desire to examine how the policy process works was in many respects a minor concern in the period between 1950 and 1980, when policy studies in their own right mushroomed dramatically. If the right policies could be found, and their design difficulties solved, then progress would be made towards the solution of society’s problems. Only a minority – radical analysts on the ‘Left’ who doubted that modern governments really had the will to solve problems, and radical analysts on the ‘Right’ who were sceptical about their capacity to do so – raised doubts and suggested that more attention should be paid to the determinants of policy decisions. While many of the leading figures in the development of policy analysis certainly moved between prescription and description – endeavouring to ground solutions in political and organisational realism – prescription was dominant in policy studies.

This book’s original predecessor (Ham and Hill, 1984) was comparatively unusual at that time in asserting that it was appropriate to concentrate on description, to explore the nature of the policy process. Our justification was the need to help to ensure that proposals about policy content, or about how to change policy, should be grounded in the understanding of the real world in which policy is made. Nowadays, that is a much less exceptional stance to take towards the study of policy. Rather, the problem may instead be that scepticism is so widespread that it is hard to make a case for the development of more sophisticated approaches to the policy process. That contributes to a widening gulf between the practical people – politicians, civil servants, pressure group leaders, etc. – whose business is achieving policy change and the academic analysts of the policy process – who aim to describe and interpret causal mechanisms at work in policy processes.

This book’s stance, then, is to assert that we must continue to try to understand the policy process – however irrational or uncontrollable it may seem to be – as a crucial first step towards trying to secure effective policy making. The stance taken here can be compared to one in which effective engineering needs to be grounded in a good understanding of physics. While – at least in the past – many successful engineers have operated pragmatically, using trial and error methods and accumulating experience with only an intuitive understanding of physics, the modern view is that the physics should inform their practice. When things go wrong, moreover, for example, when a bridge or a tailings dam collapses (e.g. Morandi viaduct collapse in Genoa, Italy, in August 2018; Brumadinho dam disaster in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in January 2019), questions will be asked about the extent to which the practice was based upon the relevant body of scientific knowledge.

However, as will be indicated below, there is a need to be cautious about the use of the word scientific in relation to the study of political and social life. In reality, much of the so-called knowledge of the policy process derives from the observations of practical people who are much more interested in prescribing than in describing. The aim here is merely to try to stand back critically from their eagerness to prescribe, leading often to either complicity with the goals of the powerful or, as Rothstein has put it, to ‘misery research’ (1998, pp. 62–63) reflecting how often what is prescribed fails to be realised.

Does a process perspective need to start with any assumptions about the shape it takes?

If you are engaged in one of the prescriptive forms of policy analysis, you are likely to be relating your activity to one of the stages of the policy process: helping agenda setting or policy formulation through the provision of information, advising how actors might seek to steer or control the implementation process or evaluating policy outcomes. But if you are engaged in description, you may even need to be sceptical about notions that policy development follows a staged process. There seem to be common-sense reasons why we should expect there to be stages in a policy process. Many human activities are staged in this way. Take for example going on a journey; you may typically:

• determine where you want to go;
• work out the best way to go there;
• go on the journey; and
• (perhaps) reflect on that process for future reference.

However, this activity does not always take that shape. You may go for a walk in which choices of the route and even the ultimate destination emerge as you engage in the process, dep...