Kerosi Blog

Handbook of public policy analysis: Theory, politics and Methods (notes)

For the next three months I will be reading this handbook on Public Policy Analysis by Mara S. Sidney, Frank Fischer and Gerald Miller (eds). 

The authors collectively recognize the important role played by universities in nation-building. 

Theories of policy Cycle 

Chronology of policy process 

• Agenda setting 
• policy formulation; 
• Decision-making; 
• Implementation 
• Evaluation 

Comprehensive analysis of problems

Inclusive collection and analysis of information; 

Search for best alternatives to achieve these goals; 

comprehensive evaluation of policies; 

Policies have been constantly reviewed, controlled, modified and sometimes even terminated; 

Policies do not develop in vacuum; 

New policies modify, change and supplement older policies; 

AGENDA SETTING 

• Actors within and outside government constantly seek to influence and collectively shape the agenda; 
• Start by dramatizing the problem; 
• Involve the experts 
• use media strategically 
• choice of institutional venues where problems are debated; 
• social actors force the governments to place an issue on the agenda by way of gaining public support;

1st October, 2019 

The New York Times is considered the national newspaper of record because weighty matters of state handled by the Senate would be reflected in the paper; 

Policy Formulation Design Tools

• identifying and crafting a set of policy alternatives to address a problem; 
• what are the costs and benefits of each options? 
• the author expects fewer participants to be involved in policy formulation as compared to agenda setting process; 
• policy formulation is often the ream of experts; 
• attention to policy formulation is embedded in the work of advocacy coalitions; networks, policy communities; 

Policy Design 

• why do policies succeed or fail? 
• inclusion of marginalized population in the policy design process; 
• local contextual knowledge has  a role to play in improving policy solutions and in advancing democracy;
• Scheider and Ingram call public policies “the principal tools in securing the democratic promise for all people.” 
•  The language and resource allocation tend to stigmatize disadvantaged groups, reinforce stereotypes, and send the message – to group members and to broader public that government does not value them; 
• policy implementation distributes benefits to some groups, while imposing burdens on others; 
• The judiciary is the government sphere most absent from scholarship on public policy analysis; 
• Researchers study the courts’ role in public policy making and implementation; 
• the traditional understanding of courts as interpreting rather than making law may serve as a barrier; 
• we can conceptualize courts cases as processes of policy implementation; 
• non profit sectors role in policy : NGOs are policy makers in their own right; 
• NGOs are increasingly acting as policy designers; 
• (Research topic: role of NGOs in policy formulation in Kenya); 

Implementing public policy – page 89; 

PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS; notes

• Various forms of neocorporatist patterns where governments cooperated with strong interest associations;
• The other strand does not pre-suppose consensus-orientation and arguing,
• The model of associative democracy which is based on the assumption that in modern societies, many non-elected actors, especially interest associations, have a crucial say in policy making;
• Rather than seeing this as a danger for democracy, the authors, suggest that actors, to the extent that they are representatives of certain groups of citizens and their common interests, can also add to the legitimacy of political decisions;
• The study of how policies are transformed into action;
• Processes of cross-fertilization could thus improve our understanding of implementation processes;
• The problem of over-complex theoretical models
• Careful comparative investigations of cases that have been selected with a view to systematically vary different policy types, institutional settings, countries and successful or failed instances of implementation, could complement these theoretical efforts;
• Different perspectives that are shaped by language, culture and symbolic politics;

 

DO POLICIES DETERMINE POLITICS: Hurbert Heinelt

• Theodore Lowi’s thesis: “Policies determine politics”
• Environment policy;
• Migration policy;
• Labor Market policy;
• What does policy making depend on in terms of politics?
• Political input: – demand and support from the public ;
• Political outputs; – laws, programs such;
• Processes from the political system remained unanalyzed;
• There are different types of policy arenas;
• The development of infrastructure, for instance, can improve the accessibility of regions, in relation to the exchange of products or the mobility of people as well as tourists;
• This applies for the expressions used and the notions to which they are related. e.g. the opening up of a debate about immigration policy in Germany in 2000 by the discussion about “Green Card.”
• The Green Card was related to its particular American context and to a demand driven and selective immigration policy;
• The world’s largest fair of computers, communication and ICT where he could be sure that this re-articulation of the immigration agenda would find not only support from his listeners;
• The debate is also picked up by the media;

AND it’s IMPACT ON DEBATES IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

• It is not the actual outcomes but the expectations as to what the outcomes can be that shape the issues and determine their politics;
• Perceived outcomes are determining politics;
• The proportion of households without children is on the increase;
• In housing policies rent allowance and legal protection of tenants can be complementary- i.e. instruments supporting tenants in the housing sector;
• Policy-politics interdependencies;
• Lowi offers a tool of microanalysis to explain or even to predict why a certain program characterized by one of the mentioned policy mechanisms is leading to particular policy processes;
• Policy sectors should not be seen as independent or unchanging but as contingent i.e. dependent on institutional structures as well as affected by the specific policy-politics relations; as well as “policy contingencies”
• Actor-centered institutionalism;
• Actors define what a policy is or should be;
• Actor-centered institutionalism
• Through definition of a problem becomes subject to political decision and therefore a task of a policy, but they do not totally determine decisions;
• International comparisons of public policies demonstrate major variations, they also point to some general policy specific institutional arrangements;

 

Differential or General Impact of a problem

Policy is analyzed as a process of solving problems;

Unemployment threaten every employee but actually affects only some people;

Unemployment is on the public policy agenda- beyond political rhetoric;

The perception that it’s one’s personal responsibility if one is unemployed is widespread in the UK;

In Germany the prevailing perception is that unemployment is a societal problem to be solved politically;

Individualizing and collective Policy Effects

• Passive labor market policy consist of providing cash benefits for the unemployed
• Active labor market policy focuses directly on improving “employability” or creating employment;
• Some problems are socially selective and other problems affect everyone;

 

PREDICTABILITY
– The effects of political decisions are harder to predict and the more contested the debate becomes on how to solve a problem;

• Political debates on how to combat unemployment;
• Independent agents which can hardly be influenced politically;

 

INTERDEPENDENCIES AND POLICY BOUNDARIES

• Labor market policy is independent on education, urban regeneration, or family policy;
• The pension policy is dependent on economic development only on the income side;
• Actors may enter or leave the arena;
• New linkages may evolve, loosen or even get cut; policy objectives may move, be newly established or even abolished;
• Linking a policy to other sectors can strengthen agenda setting;

 

POLICY INSTITUTIONS

• PP 116
• Policy is made through: majority, bargaining; hierarchy or arguing see Klausen et al 2005;
• Environment protection is usually characterized as a regulatory policy;
• Consumer protection regulates relations between producer, customer and standards of food safety;
• A main policy instrument for food safety is labeling;
• This leaves the decision of buying or not buying a certain commodity (GMO) to customer, and the institution through which individual consumer choices might lead to a particular outcome;
• Policy institutions= courts and public administrations;

 

POLICY, POLITICS, ADVOCACY & EXPERTISE

A Guide to the Advocacy Coalition Framework

• Christopher M. Weble and Paul Sabatier

 

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF);

• Is a policy making framework developed to deal with intense public policy problems;
• This is a lens to understand and explain belief and policy change when there is goal disagreement and technical disputes involving multiple actors from several levels of government, interest groups, research institutions and the media;
• The ACF has proven to be one of the more useful public policy frameworks;
• Domestic violence, drug policy and public policy;
• Despite the worldwide applications of the ACF in a variety of policy areas, we are observing a need for a more digestible version of the ACF for public and private managers;
• This chapter provides a field guide to the ACF. It is written for people without strong public policy or political science background who are interested in formerly applying the ACF to think critically about, or help understand and explain, policy processes;
• Liftin (2000), Canada, Climate change policy ;
• Kim (2003); Korea; Water Policy;
• Beverwijks (2004); Mozambique – Education Policy;
• Pp 124