Lesson 1 Flashcards
Explaining Public Policy and Policy-Making
What is Public Policy (Dye & Pal)?
- Whaterver governments choose to do or not to do.
- A course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a given problems of interrelated set of problems.
What is Public Policy (Aucoin)?
Public policy must be considered to encompass the actual activities undertaken by a government, whether or not a government’s objectives and strategies are explicit, or a congruent with its activities.
What is Public Policy (Andersen)?
A purposive course of action followed by an actor or a set of actors in dealing with a problem or matter of concern.
5 attributes of public policy
- Policy is made in the public’s name.
- Policy is generally made or initiated by government.
- Policy is what government intends to do (is purposive) on behalf of the public.
- Policy is what the government chooses not to do.
- Policy is interpreted and implemented by public and private actors.
Explain the policy making process cycle
The policy cycle is an idealised process that explains how policy should be drafted, implemented and assessed. It serves more as an instructive guide for those new to policy than as a practical strictly-defined process, but many organisations aim to complete policies using the policy cycle as an optimal model.
Stages in the public policy
- Agenda-Setting
- Policy formulation
- Decision-making / policy legitimation
- Policy implementation
- Policy evaluation
Four types of policies
- Regulatory policy
- Distributive policy
- Redistributive policy
- Constituent policy
What are the two theories of public policies?
- Classical theories
- Modern Theories
Theories about public policy can be developed in two different ways:
Theories of public policy can be deductive or inductive in nature
Deductive theories
Deductive theories are developed largely on the basis of the application of general presupposition, concept, or principles to specific phenomena.
Inductive theories
Inductive theories develop generalisations on the basis of careful observation of empirical phenomena and subsequent testing of these generalization against other cases.
Example of classical theories (positivism)
- Rational-comprehensive
- Incrementalism
- Bounded rationality
- Mixed-scanning
- Marxist analysis
Modern theories
Public choice, class analysis, pluralism, bureaucratic politics, policy networks and policy communities.
Definition of Rational-Comprehensive Theory
This theory is a strategy of optimizing and is based on the classical economic theory that assumes clear goals, complete information, and cognitive capacity to analyse the problem.
What does rational-comprehensive theory assumes?
- Assumes that policy-making is a rational, logical process of decision-making involving a number of discrete steps or stages.
- It assumes that there is one best solution to a problem and that policy makers must find it, select it and implement it.
- The rational-comprehensive model of decision-making assumed clarification of values and objectives distinct from the comparison of alternative policies, a means-end analysis, and a comprehensive review of every relevant factor to the decision.
The process in Rational Comprehensive Theory
(a) Identidy the problem: determine discrepancies between actual and desired outcomes
(b) Diagnose the problem: collect and analyse information that explains the nature of the problem.
(c) Define the alternatives: develop all the options that are potential solutions
(d) Examine the consequences: anticipate the probable effects of each alternative
(e) Make the decision: evaluate and choose the best alternative, the one that maximizes the goals and objectives
(f) Do it: implement the decision
Advantages of the Rational Comprehensive theory
- Stimulating administrators to get a little outside of their regular routine.
- It uses operations research, cost effectiveness analysis, and cost-benefits analysis.
- The idea is that it will provide a solution that produces the desired result with the most efficient use of resources.
Disadvantages of the Rational Comprehensive Theory
(a) Very costly in terms of time and other resources that must be devoted to gathering the relevant information. Often the costs and benefits of the various options are very uncertain and difficult to quantify for rigorous comparison.
(b) Time consuming
(c) Limit in human ability to know what will happen next
What is Simon’s Administrative Model of Decision-Making?
Herbert Simon’s Administrative Model of Decision-Making describes how people actually make decisions in organizations, recognizing that they don’t always act fully rationally. Instead, decision-making is shaped by bounded rationality and satisficing.
How does the Administrative Model: Bounded Rationality and Satisficing, as proposed by Herbert Simon, view the approach to problem-solving?
- People do not really spend huge amount of time searching for the ideal solution to a problem.
- Individual choice takes place in an environment of “given”
- The presence of givens and the innate limitations on human abilities provide boundaries that define the search for alternatives
- In the real world, when people determine that the status quo is no longer working, they begin their search for alternatives by starting with solutions that are very similar to the status quo and gradually move further and further away.
What are Herbert Simon-Bounded Rationality and Satisficing?
- Administrators look for satisfactory solutions, those that are ‘good enough’
- It does not seek the best possible policy, but rather searches for an optimal policy.
- It requires the difficult and stressful agreement on goals and objectives mentioned as a problem with comprehensive rationality.
What is Charles Lindbrom Incremental Model?
- Policies are changed incrementally as a result of “successive limited comparisons” between the status quo and some very close alternatives.
- Policy practitioners are not matching means to ends on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of all possible options, thereby distinguishing between facts and values. The reality is much messier and characterize by “muddling through”.
- The concept of incrementalism suggests that decision making is, and ought to take place through, a process of successive limited comparison.
What are the Incremental Model assumption?
- Means-ends analysis is inappropriate because objectives and alternatives emerge simultaneously
- Good solutions are those upon which decision makers agree regardless of objectives
- Options and outcomes are dramatically reduced by considering only alternatives similar to the current state of affairs
- Analysis is limited to differences between the existing situation and proposed alternatives
- The incremental method eschews theory in favor of successive comparisons of concrete, practical alternatives.
What are some criticism regarding the Incremental Model?
- Supports the status quo
- It assigned too great a role to established and powerful interest groups and does not recognize the need to protect those who are unorganized.
- The lack of goal-orientation
- Being undemocratic to the extent that it confines decisions-making to bargaining within a select group of senior policy makers.
- Promote short-sighted decisions that can have adverse consequences for society in the long run
What is Mixed Scanning Model?
It is a combination of both rationality and incrementalism. According to the theory, governments make two different kinds of decisions: fundamental and incremental.
What are fundamental decisions?
Fundamental or contextuating decisions are radical changes in policy
What are incremental decisions?
Incremental decisions are used either to pave the way for fundamental decisions or to fine tune fundamental decisions after some of their consequences have been identified.
What are the five distinctive features of mixed scanning?
- Organizational policy directs tentative incremental decisions
- Good decisions are consistent with policy
- Actions are experimental, reversible, limited, and typically not far from the problem
- Uncertainty and scarce information are the rule, not the exception
- A strategy of adoption determines a course of action by mixing theory, experience, and successive comparisons.
What is Public choice theory?
- Public choice is the economic study of nonmarket decision-making or simply the application of economics to political science.
- It is the study of politics using the methods and characteristics assumptions of economics.
- The basic block in policymaking or political action is the self-interest, utility-maximizing individual.
What is public choice theory in policy-making?
- In terms of public policy-making, public choice view the policy process as one in which a variety of actors engage in competitive rent-seeking behavior.
- In rent-seeking, each actor attempts to use the state to capture some portion of the social surplus (rents) that accrues from productive social labor.
- Each actor would prefer, if possible, to free ride, that is to obtain a share in the surplus resulting from the action of other parties at no cost to themselves.
What is policy community?
- Policy community is a cluster of interested groups organized around a particular policy.
- Policy community is therefore, a more inclusive category of all those involved in policy formulation.
- Policy community identifies those actors and potential actors drawn from the policy universe who share a common policy focus.
What is a policy networks?
- Policy networks is the interconnection between these actors, who constitute the community, is called the network.
- Network is, therefore, the linking process within a policy community or between two or more communities.
- A policy network is a ‘complex of organizations connected to each other by resource dependencies and distinguished from other complexes by breaks in the structure of resource dependencies’
- Public policies are made through the interaction within the group called the subgovernment.
What is pluralism?
- Pluralism is the theory that a multitude of groups, not the people as a whole, govern.
- These organizations, which include among other unions trade and professional associations, environmentalists, civil rights activist, business and financial lobbies, and formal and informal coalitions of like-minded citizens, influence the making and administration of laws and policy.
