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Lecture Notes Sociology of Public Policy
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Sociology of Public Policy- Lecture NotesLecture One - The Social Construction of Social Problems and Agenda
Setting in Public Policy
[1] Public Sociology and Public Policy
The public role of Sociology:
Four functions according to Burawoy (these are characterizations,
ideal-typical, many people can fit in different categories):
● Professional sociology (for academic peers)
○ Substantial and methodological knowledge
○ Audience= other sociologists
○ Enrichment: professionalisation of sociology
○ Impoverishment: ‘become overly general and ingrown’
■ Not much involved with the society around them.
○ Has been affected by new public management and the retrenchment
imperative:
■ Stress publications in English and citation impact (more
citations is seen as better).
■ Smallest possible units of publications with multiple
authorship.
■ Emphasis on getting external funding.
■ Less policy-oriented research.
■ Loss of connection with pregnant social problems
● Write more about what peers want to read and less about
what society needs.
■ Less engaged with (Dutch) society.
● Cannot make students read Dutch literature in an
international group.
● Less focus on Dutch issues.
● Policy sociology (for policy makers)
○ In the service of the government (or other organisations that pay for
the research) (‘clients’).
○ Audience = policy makers
○ Raison d’être = provide solutions to problems or legitimate solutions
that have already been reached.
● Writing a report to confirm the government’s plan.
○ In the Netherlands: WRR and SCP
○ ‘valorisation’ increasingly influences the kind of questions and
conceptualisations of the discipline of sociology.
■ Tempted to investigate certain things and not investigate
others as you are paid to investigate the first.
● Public sociology (for citizens and the ‘public’)
○ Dialogue between sociologist and the public
○ Making public issues out of private troubles
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, ○ Collaborative relation with journalism
○ Audience is the public
● Critical sociology (for [self]criticism of peers)
Poses two kinds of questions:
○ ‘For whom’: only academic sociologist (‘knowledge for its own sake’)
versus a broader audience (‘serving clients or talking to publics)?
○ ‘For what’: solving an interesting academic or policy puzzle versus
critically reflecting on ’foundations of research programmes or on
the direction in which society should evolve.
○ Related to the Frankfurter school.
‘Durkeheimian’question: How do we avoid an anomic division of labor within the
discipline?
We avoid an anomic division of labour within the discipline by keeping the four
functions involved with one another. We need an organic division of labour that
forces collaboration.
Interdependent division of labour:
● “The flourishing of all is dependent upon the flourishing of each”
● “They each invigorate each other”
● “Organic division of labour”
● “You can contribute to public sociology by being a good professional
sociologist ... or a good policy sociologist ... or a good critical sociologist”
● “What have you done for the world today?
Constellations of power and interests:
The two filled in parts are the two extremes in sociology acc to Burawoy
[2] Power and agenda-setting in public policy
Steven Lukes: three dimensions of power:
1. Pluralism: power determines who prevails in decision-making →decision
making power.
a. Looks at concrete observable behavior over observable conflicts.
2. Agenda setting: power determines which issues are decided upon and which
are not→ about non-decision making power.
a. Non-decisions and potential issues.
2
, 3. Ideological hegemony: power is the ability to shape the wishes, fears &
desires of others.. without them even knowing! → propaganda & framing that
influences perceptions.
a. Even making people want things opposed to their own self-interest.
One-dimensional view:
● The power to choose from listed choices.
○ Who makes those decisions.
● Actually taken decisions and who took those decisions.
● Conflict between policy preferences that manifest themselves in political
action that can be observed by social scientists on the basis of behaviour by
political actors (‘behaviouralism’) (e.g. Robert Dahl).
“a focus on behaviour in the making of decisions on issues over which
there is an observable conflict of (subjective)interests, seen as expressing
policy preferences, revealed by political participation.”
Two-dimensional view:
● Also includes who chooses what is on the list of choices: the ability to
manipulate the agenda of what is being decided on.
● (e.g.. Peter Barach & Morton Baratz)
● Mobilisation bias: to prevent the issue from being brought up in the first
place.
“the extent that a person or a group – consciously or unconsciously –
creates or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts”
○ Actors create barriers to the list of choices.
Three-dimensional view:
● Also includes influencing the preferences of those over whom one wants to
exercise power (see also Marx’s ‘false consciousness; and Gramsci’s
‘hegemony’).
● Can prevent the breakout of conflicts.
● Helping people accept the current state of affairs because one is unable to
imagine an alternative.
“Latent conflict, which consists in a concentration between interests of
those exercising power and the real interests of those they exclude. These
latter may not express or even be conscious of their interests.“
3. The social construction of policy problems
What turns a harmful condition into a social problem?
Two perspectives:
● Realistic/objectivistic perspective: social problems are given facts and result
from the (objective) structure and development of society.
● Constructivistic: social problems are not given ‘objective’ facts, but a
consequence of conflicting social constructions.
3
, Constructivistic ‘Public Arena Model’:
● Stephen Hilgartner & Charles Bosk: attention for social problems is a scarce
‘resource’.
● Resource Mobilisation Theory (John McCarthy & Mayer Zald):
‘entrepreneurs’ (e.g. social movements, NGO’s, lobbyists) try to gain
recognition for ‘their’ issue.
● The public arena in which they try to get attention has a limited carrying
capacity, and this results in a competition between potential issues.
Why do some ills become an issue?
● Not simply because of the magnitude or gravity of the problem.
● Neither (solely) because on the media and their owners (capital).
● It is as much a consequence of a ‘survival of the fittest’:
○ It needs to be a novelty and there needs to be little saturation.
○ Dramatisation by policy entrepreneurs (instead of mere facts and
figures).
[4] Agenda setting and policy discourses
When are public policies enacted and implemented?
● Realists: if there is an objective harmful condition that is severe enough
(“the situation calls for action).
● Constructivists: if a powerfull or influential set of actors “make it happen”.
● (both realists and constructivists):
○ If concrete decisions are made by politicians.
○ If the civil service and other actors responsible for the
implementation actually implement those decisions.
When are policies not enacted or implemented?
● If the problem is seen as inevitable as ‘part of life’: fate, nature or a divine
phenomenon.
● If it is considered an individual problem: your own fault, your own
responsibility, the consequence of an individual choice that happens to have
adverse consequences.
● It is a problem that cannot be solved:
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