Public Policy

A Comprehensive Introduction

Martin Potucek

• Publisher: Karolinum Press, Charles University
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9788024635569
• eBook ISBN: 9788024640075
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, synoptic, and easy-to-grasp account of the state of public policy as a field. Both a scholar and a Czech policy maker, Martin Pot??ek draws on his vast and diverse experience to offer descriptions of public policy's normative and conceptual foundations, stages, actors, and institutions, as well as fifteen of the most frequently used public policy theories. Featuring illustrative empirical case studies, this innovative guide shows how these theories can be applied to making public policy. With particular insight into the importance of cultural context and historical legacies for policy making in post-Communist Europe, Public Policy provides nuanced, expert insight into the difficulties of public policy discourse and reform.

PART A

A1

Public Interest and Public Policy

What is meant by public interest?

What is meant by public policy?

The emergence and development of public policy as a scientific discipline: A history

Relation of public policy to other disciplines

Defining public policy as a scientific discipline

Polity, policy, politics

Public policy as social practice

Founding fathers and followers

Future perspectives of the discipline

Review questions

Sources

Some time ago, William Dunn (1981: 8–19) argued that “the study of public policy is as old as Plato’s concern for The Republic” (as paraphrased by McCool 1995: 1). But even long before ancient philosophers, people had been trying to solve conflicts between interests and ways of satisfying them intuitively, on the fly. Albeit many armed conflicts arose, other struggles were, fortunately, solved peacefully.

Public policy in practice serves to prevent and solve conflicts, a natural trait of social life which is here to stay. Our lives and deeds depend on the lives and deeds of other people – and not only those. We are confined to societal frameworks that mediate and enable coexistence between people: money, law, organizations, language, culture. . . it is in these complex relations that our individual interests mix and intersect with those of other people, social groups, corporations, and/or states. Such interests are often conflicting, and there are many actors who will lose a lot if their interests fail to be reconciled. Economic and social crises, wars, coups and revolutions are, among other things, manifestations of a conflict of particular interests gone out of control.

Building on the basis of philosophy and other existing social sciences, public policy became established as a new scientific discipline in the second half of the 20^th century. Academics did not invent it as their new toy or source of income. The main reason public policy emerged was that the more responsible part of politicians and public officials felt the need to study the nature of these conflicts of particular interests systematically in order to derive recommendations on how to prevent such conflicts, avoid violent escalation, get them under control – and possibly even solve them, at least for the time being. The discipline serves to analyze and formulate policies – such policies that affect people’s lives in specific ways, whether by increasing their quality or by making them more difficult. Examples include transportation, health care, education, sports, housing, monument preservation, protection of nature, and a myriad other concerns.

Every day, politicians and public officials deal with problems that are not easy to solve. Is it reasonable to introduce mandatory vaccination of children against communicable diseases? While children themselves are often unable to express their opinion, many parents oppose such a policy. Should we abolish regulations that prohibit surface mining in defined areas? Such a measure would ensure new jobs and cheaper coal, but also annihilate communities where people have been living for centuries. Is it a good idea to build nuclear power stations? We are not sure how to deposit nuclear waste in a safe and permanent way. Are we better off building more kindergartens, or supporting industrial innovations? Should we devote our limited public resources to providing better pensions to seniors, or better salaries to civil servants? Or should we rather increase welfare benefits for children?

Before attempting to answer questions like these, we need to clarify how public interest can be defined.

WHAT IS MEANT BY PUBLIC INTEREST?

Leading American policy scientist Walter Lippman defines public interest as follows: “Living adults share, we must believe, the same public interest. For them, however, the public interest is mixed with, and is often at odds with, their private and special interests. Put this way, we can say, I suggest, that the public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently” (Lippman 1955: 42). The concept of public interest is undoubtedly of descriptive power but also of a high value loading.

As Lane (1993) notes, there is a constant tension between the term “public” with its relation to the whole and the term “interest” with its individualist connotation. For that reason, some theorists who rely on methodological individualism and philosophical objectivism reject the term “public interests” as misleading (Kinkor 1996).

In defining public interests, one can proceed procedurally or analytically. The procedural approach is typically applied in policy practice and the analytical one in the scientific discipline of public policy.

The procedural approach to formulating public interests in a democratic society conforms to certain rules regarding debating about what the public interest is and what it is not, of reaching a consensus on such a definition, and of pursuing public interests in practice. Community, civil society institutions, law and government provide procedural mechanisms for articulating, aggregating, coordinating and, if possible, also satisfying particular interests in a form in which it starts to be useful to speak of public interests. However, an important complication is caused by competition between the particular interests of the actors who necessarily take part in this process: politicians, officials, and interest group representatives. Formulation and realization of public interest becomes the subject of negotiation and, sometimes, social or political struggle. It is an intense historical, social and political process. Of course, conflicts emerge between competing “public interests” associated with the interests of different communities or social groups.

The analytical approach to formulating public interests relies on their shared characteristics:

• they pertain to the quality of life of a given society’s members, or other values they find important;

• they can be related to the quality or the effects of the function of society as a whole;

• they are embedded historically, in a given stage of civilization development, and may change;

• they enter an arena where they clash with differentiated individual, group and institutional interests and come to be identified, articulated, acknowledged, and satisfied. The decisions adopted affect the ways public goods are produced, distributed and used; the quality of life of large social groups; and the satisfaction of the functional needs of society as a whole;

• they are related to current social problems or possible futures;

• their realization often goes beyond the competencies of a single institution or an entire department of government, or even a nation.

The benefit of the social whole is shaped by the context of competing value orientations or visions of the world. Therefore, people’s place in it comes to be defined in divergent ways. This in turn gives rise to competing values underlying different public policies.

EXAMPLE:

In debates about public finance, parliaments often see a clash between “penny pinchers,” who associate public interest with balanced budgeting, and “investors for the future,” who believe it is in public interest to support education, science and the like, even at the price of a budget deficit, because they will bring a return in future.

Efforts to promote public interests are embraced by certain types of political orientation (as well as individual orientation, as long as such individuals are well-informed) – namely on advancing the community and solving its problems. In this sense, public interests aggregate the interests of individual members of the community – they arise from the individual level. Yet the same public interests may run against conflicting interests of other individuals or groups. Thus, public interests become the subject of frequent negotiation and occasional struggles as well. There are conflicts between competing “public interests” associated with the interests of different communities or social groups. This is the point where they become the domain of public policy, which studies the processes of identifying, formulating, presenting, recognizing and satisfying the public interest.

EXAMPLE:

The lessons humanity took from the rise of totalitarian regimes after World War I provide a good example of how a new global-level public interest emerged, was formulated, and prevailed. These regimes were established in spite of existing norms of international law or traditional political mechanisms of representative democracy at the national level. All this led to the largest humanitarian disaster in the history of mankind, World War II. When WWII ended, nations quickly agreed on introducing a newly defined public interest – the general criterion of human rights protection – into policy documents at the international (Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations (1948)) and European levels (Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms adopted by the Council of Europe (1950)).

However, public interests can also be generated on the basis of autonomous requirements of the function and development of larger social entities that arise from the evolution of the social division of labor and technology. Furthermore, they spread more and more across the frontiers of individual states.

EXAMPLE:

It in the interest of all humanity to prevent a nuclear disaster. The need to minimize the nuclear threat is another example of public interest extending across national borders.

EXAMPLE:

In the age before the Internet, there was no need to ensure people’s safety in the online environment. Online security exemplifies how public interests are determined historically, by a given stage of civilization development.

As another example, the rise of automobile transportation requires the construction of a public road network. That, however, may be in conflict with the interests of some groups, individuals or environmental protection. Should we authorize the construction of an expressway through a natur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Overview of the Public Policy Theories Presented
• List of Abbreviations
• Part A
• Part B
• Subject Index (Part A)
• Personal Index (Part A)