Public Policy

A New Introduction

Christoph Knill, Jale Tosun

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781137573308
• eBook ISBN: 9781350311909
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

A comprehensive introduction to public policy and the policy cycle, the fully revised second edition of this popular textbook offers a practical guide to the topic while remaining underpinned by cutting-edge research. Bringing together analysis of classic works alongside the most recent developments in the field, this book is guided by the following three crucial questions: What is public policy? Who participates in making and putting public policy in practice as well as in assessing its success? And when and how does public policy change over time? In answering these questions, the book covers everything from the central institutions and actors of policy-making to implementation, evaluation and governance. Drawing on examples from across the world, the new edition expands on themes that were previously covered only marginally, including the underexplored connection between public policy and political economy, as well as placing more emphasis on climate change and practical advice on doing policy analysis. For undergraduate or postgraduate students studying on courses focussed on public policy or the policy cycle or process, this textbook is the essential guide to the subject. The book is also suited for those studying public policy in the context of politics or public management and administration. New to this Edition:
- A revised conclusion containing guidance on how to do policy analysis.
- Extended discussion of climate policy and politics.
- Consideration of the effects of Brexit, the rise of populism and the impact of the loss of faith in globalization for international organizations.
- More on policy process theories, comparative public policy, the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of public policy studies and new methodologies such as the evaluation of policy measures by means of social media data.

1 Introduction

Public policies are omnipresent in our daily lives. Newspapers, the television, the internet and social media provide a constant supply of information on public policies, from the regulation of genetic engineering or blood alcohol limits for the operation of a vehicle to the financing of infrastructure projects like new roads or the level of income tax. Many people may not be aware that a great deal of information on politics is actually about ‘who gets what, when, how’, as famously described by Harold D. Lasswell (1936), one of the founders of policy research. The opening sentence of the book by Lasswell that carries this title posits that politics is the study of ‘influence’ and ‘the influential’.

This book offers an introduction to public policy (‘who gets what, when, how’), defined in Lasswell’s sense by concentrating on how politics (‘influence’ and ‘the influential’) determines public policy. In other words, we provide an exploration of how public policy comes about and how it is changed by drawing from concepts and theories in comparative politics (see Caramani 2020a).

For example, why do some governments provide specific welfare schemes (‘what’) to single mothers (‘who’) whereas others abstain from doing so? Why is the retirement age for females in Turkey 58 years but 64 in Switzerland (‘when’)? And why are welfare benefits means-tested in the United Kingdom but universal in Sweden (‘how’)? These examples show that public policy affects almost every aspect of our daily life. They also show that there exist differences between countries that can only be explained by policy-making processes taking place there. In other words, public policy cannot be understood without reference to policy-making, which refers to a series of decisions made by public actors such as governments, parliaments and public administrations, which are, however, affected by other public actors as well as private actors such as interest groups.

Learning more about public policy and the making of it must be seen as an important complement to all other themes addressed by the discipline of political science. Concerning much more than the analysis of political institutions, government behaviour, political parties, interest groups or elections, the study of public policies covers the whole process of public decision-making (John 2006). It also includes the feedback policy-makers receive on their decisions (Mettler and SoRelle 2017), for example in the form of changes in welfare politics and levels of trust (see, e.g., Kumlin et al. 2018).

The study of public policies seeks to understand their production and effects. Students of public policy are interested in the processes and decisions that define the outputs of a political system, such as higher education policies, social services, environmental regulations, the administration of the health system or the organization of a police force. But policy research also highlights the broader effects resulting from such policy decisions. To what extent do environmental regulations result in environmental quality improvements? What are the effects of budget cuts in the university system on educational performance? To what extent do changes in the organization of the public health system affect health levels?

Table 1.1 Basic research topics of public policy analysis.

If policy outputs and policy effects are the core topics of public policy, their study generally focuses on two fundamental issues: policy variation and policy change (see, e.g., John 2003; Knill et al. 2012; Tosun 2013a; Weible and Sabatier 2017). Policy variation refers to the explanation of differences between public policies across sectors and countries. To what extent does policy-making differ in relation to, say, health policies, on the one hand, and environmental or transport policies, on the other? And how can these differences be explained? Which factors account for similarities and differences in public policies between countries? As we will see in Chapter 2 when discussing the concept of policy styles (see Richardson 1982, 2018a, 2018b), there is an ongoing debate in the literature as to whether and to what extent the shape of public policies is affected by sector- or country-specific factors (see Table 1.1).

With regard to policy change, the central focus is on the explanation of stability and change. Often public policies remain highly stable over time, although their functionality and effectiveness have constantly been questioned, as has been the case, for instance, for the agricultural policy of the European Union (EU). Despite some changes such as the ‘greening’ of agricultural policy, the 2013 reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy has re-established income support for farmers as a core element (Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2016; Feindt 2017). But studying policy stability too can be intellectually stimulating, since observing no changes to existing public policy does not mean that it was not affected by a policy-making process (see Dodge and Lee 2017).

How can we explain the sometimes surprising stability of public policies? At the same time, policies can be subject to swift and fundamental transformations. In the field of climate policy, for instance, the last few years have brought some significant changes in both developed and developing countries, in the sense that the number of climate policies has grown significantly and the policies adopted cover both the mitigation of climate change and measures to adapt to it (Dubash et al. 2013; Lachapelle and Paterson 2013; Fankhauser et al. 2015, 2016; Lesnikowski et al. 2016; Fleig et al. 2017). Why do stable periods of decision-making sometimes give way to flux and unpredictability?

In responding to these questions, public policy analysis often adopts a comparative research perspective and examines policy changes not only over time, but also across countries and different policy sectors such as environmental or social policy (see Adam et al. 2017; Tosun and Workman 2017). In this context, one particular area of interest is whether cross-country variations in public policies remain stable or conversely become more or less pronounced over the course of time. For example, the internationalization of certain issues such as environmental protection has resulted in an increasing cross-national similarity of policy arrangements (Holzinger et al. 2008a, 2008b).

It is the objective of this book to introduce the major analytical concepts, theories and state-of-the-art tools of public policy analysis. In so doing, the book is designed to reach well beyond a mere description of public policies and the political processes producing them. It aims to invoke curiosity for analysing ‘empirical puzzles’ on the basis of well-informed theoretical considerations, sound research designs and informative data.

This chapter provides an entrée to the study of policy-making in five steps. First, we need to get a basic understanding of the nature of the subject under study. What is a public policy, and how can it be defined? Second, we outline the central analytical questions that have to be addressed in order to learn more about the processes, structures and problems characterizing the making of public policies. Third, we explain the challenges policy-makers face in modern societies. Fourth, we outline the three central research questions guiding this textbook. Finally, this chapter concludes with an overview of the book’s structure.

WHAT IS A PUBLIC POLICY?

In this section we elaborate on the characteristics of public policies to prepare the ground for the concepts, theories, methods and data to be presented in this book.

Polity, Politics and Policy

In political science, we generally find that there are three major subject areas that cut across the different subdisciplines: polity, politics and policy. While polity refers to the institutional structures characterizing a political system, the study of politics concentrates on political processes, such as party political cleavages and voting behaviour in legislative bodies. The analysis of public policy, by contrast, puts the content of policies centre stage. Rather than focusing on institutions or processes, the research interest is on the analysis of the outputs of a political system, i.e. the decisions, measures, programmes, strategies and courses of action adopted by the government or the legislative body (e.g. parliament).

The focus on public policies does not imply that polity and politics are not taken into account. On the contrary, these dimensions play an important role in explaining policy change as well as policy differences across countries. So an important question of public policy analysis concerns the policy implications of a country’s political institutions (its polities). Do polities have a crucial impact on policy-making? Which polities perform better regarding the solving of a howsoever defined societal problem?

Likewise, the decision-making processes (politics) in a country are important for public policy choices. In this regard, a prominent argument is that countries reveal distinctive policy styles, i.e. more or less stable patterns that characterize the policy process (politics), which in turn affect the nature and design of their policies (Richardson 1982, 2018a, 2018b; Knill et al. 2015; Howlett and Tosun 2018). By reversing this assumed causal relationship, Theodore Lowi (1964) developed his classic distinction of different policy types, arguing that different policy areas tend to be characterized by different politics which involve at times more and at times less conflicting interactions between political actors. Legislative studies have also shown that the characteristics of members of parliament (e.g. gender) can matter for how they vote on policy proposals (see, e.g., Debus and Hansen 2014).

So, even if our analytical focus is on the study of public policy, the polity and politics dimensions play an important role either as factors explaining public policies (see Richardson 1982, 2018a, 2018b; Knill et al. 2015; Howlett and Tosun 2018) or as phenomena that are determined by policy types (see Lowi 1964). Policy studies must not exclude the dimensions of polity and politics when describing and explaining policy decisions.

Elements of a Public Policy

Having introduced the linkages between polity, politics and policies, we still have to clarify what the term ‘public policy’ actually means. In the scholarly literature, there is a general consensus that a public policy can be defined as a course of action (or non-action; see Bachrach and Baratz 1962) taken by a government or legislature with regard to a particular issue. Although this definition is very broad, it emphasizes two constitutive elements. First, public policies refer to actions of public actors (typically governments), although societal actors might to some extent be involved or participate in public decision-making, which corresponds to the basic idea of governance (see, e.g., Kohler-Koch and Rittberger 2006). Second, governmental actions focus on specific issues, implying that the scope of activities is restricted to addressing a certain aspect or problem (such as air pollution control, animal protection, internet content or the liberalization of the telecommunications sector).

Although this general definition seems straightforward, there is considerable variance in its concrete specification. With regard to public actions, for example, some authors insist that the presence of a policy requires the adoption of a larger number of related legislative and administrative activities (see Knoepfel et al. 2007: 24). Other scholars adopt a narrower definition and consider single governmental decisions or legal acts as public policies. This perspective has been prominent in the study of changes to welfare state expenditure (for an overview, see Green-Pedersen 2007). In this book, we will argue that the extent to which the presence of a public policy requires only one type of action or a system of (interrelated) actions – also known as policy bundles or policy mixes (see, e.g., Howlett and Mukherjee 2018) – strongly depends on the issue at hand. Sometimes a single legal act might be very encompassing and entail a broad range of different activities, while at other times it might only constitute one out of several important elements of a public policy. It is hence not possible to specify generally a threshold number of courses of action as defining a ‘public policy’.

In addition, we find different conceptions with regard to the nature of public policies as issue related. On the one hand, such policies are seen as governmental activities made in response to given societal or political problems. In other words, policy-making is conceived as a problem-solving activity (Lasswell 1956; Birkland 2010: 7–11). On the other hand, policy-making can be regarded as a means of exerting power by one social group over another (Knoepfel et al. 2007: 21–2). According to this perspective, the existence and particular design of policies are intended to protect the interests of certain groups, while disadvantaging others. For example, studies of political clientelism deal with this aspect, i.e. the distribution of selective benefits to individuals or clearly defined groups in exchange for political support (see Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007). It is certainly true that ‘all governments … give greater weight to the preferences of those citizens with more political power than to the preferences of those with less political power’ (Miller 2004: 20). However, this does not mean that public policies represent ends in themselves. While the design of a given public policy might reflect the differential power resources of social groups, this need not call into question the requirement for a specific problem to exist or to be perceived in order for the policy-making process to be initiated. As a consequence, the problem-solving and power perspectives on public policy-making seem in practice to be compatible with each other.

Differences in Scope: Sectors, Targets and Instruments

So far, we have gained a basic understanding of the central elements that constitute a public policy. However, this still leaves us with a broad range of activities that might constitute public policies. This can be illustrated by the fact that the term ‘policy’ is used for activities of very different scope.

First, it is often used to cover a whole range of different measures in a certain sector, such as environmental policy, social policy, economic policy or fiscal policy. Used in this way, the term grasps more than one legal act or political programme that belongs to the whole range of legal and administrative activities that are related to a particular distinctive policy field.

Second, a similar approach is used to describe public activities in policy subfields. In most instances, it is possible to classify the public activities in a field along certain subthemes that cover functionally related measures. With regard to environmental policy, for example, sub-sectors refer to water policy, clean air policy, climate change policy and waste policy. In social policy, examples of subsectors include pension policy, unemployment policy and child benefits (Knill et al. 2012).

Third, even within policy subfields, distinctive policy issues or targets can be identified. Taking clean air policy as an example, such targets include industrial discharges of different pollutants, urban air quality and c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Editor Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Foreword to the Second Edition
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Nature of Public Policies
• 3 The Context for Policy-Making: Central Institutions and Actors
• 4 Theoretical Approaches to Policy-Making
• 5 Problem Definition and Agenda-Setting
• 6 Decision-Making
• 7 Implementation
• 8 Evaluation
• 9 Governance: A Synoptic Perspective on Policy-Making
• 10 Public Policies beyond the Nation State
• 11 Policy Change and Policy Convergence
• 12 Conclusions: Theoretical Insights and Practical Advice
• References
• Index