Week 2- Working in the Policy World Flashcards
Define policy analysis
- Client centred advice relevant to public decisions and informed by social values
- Dissecting an issues systematically with a view to understanding its component parts and designing an appropriate, effective response to the underlying problem
What is the importance of client centricity in policy analysis?
- Client centricity highlights the need for policy work to account for and respond to the priorities of the employer
- Inclusion of social values balances client centricity with awareness of broader public values
- Highlights that making policy almost always entails taking positions on value-laden issues and designing actions to address them
How is the quality of policy advice determined?
Determined somewhat by soundness of analysis on which it is based and accuracy with which its elements are distinguished and described
What is the core of policy analysis?
Evaluation- a set of techniques and criteria with which to evaluate public policy options and select among them. Involves judgement and considerations including subjective, elusive values and objective criteria
Define policy advising
Stitching the parts back together again to create a coherent picture of the situation so that sound policy options can be designed and recommendations developed
What role do both policy analysts and policy advisers play?
In the public sector, both help governments develop, evaluate and implement policy options
Define discipline
Depends on the capacity to create distinctive new concepts, frameworks, theories and models that advance our understanding of policy related matters
How does policy analysis use disciplines?
- Rather than starting from a particular disciplinary framework, policy analysis moves from a presenting problem to select frameworks, and disciplines likely to devise a solution
- Multi disciplinary, interdisciplinary and pragmatic
Outline the tools and methods used in policy analysis
- Modelling and econometric approaches- precise measurement and objectivity, struggle to prove policy causation
- Models- abstract and theoretical but may be useful in improving understanding of real world phenomena and predicting consequences of policy change
- Stakeholder analysis, interviewing and qualitative methods- substantial primary data (costly) and provides deeper insights into people’s perceptions of issues than theoretical models
- Methods chosen pragmatically
Define normative in relation to public policy
- Contextualises analysis with a view to delivering and evaluating options for decision makers and citizens
- Concerned with values as well as information and evidence
- Confronts competing views about nature of problems and weigh consequences of different courses of action and value attached to outcomes
What do policy analysts do?
- Project the consequences of policy options and make explicit links with alternative values
- Draws on data, information, evidence and applies scientific methods
- Combines common sense knowledge with frameworks and skills associated with the professions
What have critical theorists and constructivists challenged?
The knowledge and evidence base used in policy analysis, the standing of participants in policy discussion and the authority behind decision making
What does Colebatch promote and why?
- Promotes social construction approach, where ‘policy’ and ‘problems’ are not naturally occurring, with an existence independent of participants in process
- Objective: to forge agreement among stakeholders
Outline the problem with the Australian education policy
- How could Australia provide affordable and equitable access to higher education?
- 1974-1988: Labour (Whitlam) govt abolished tertiary education fees
- Unsustainable (costs) as there was an increase in year 12 completion rates, but no increase in tertiary education places
What must the new education system do?
- Provide sufficient funding to expand higher education places
- Shift financial burden from all taxpayers more to the beneficiary
*System that does not unfairly favour the wealthy
- Encourage easier access for students to higher education