This is a summary of the course public policy and governance from the bachelor politicologie/political science at the UvA. Most of the summary is in English. However, one book was in Dutch and is therefore also summarized in Dutch. I passed this exam with an 8.2, so I'm sure you will pass with this...
Summary The Policy Paradox - Deborah Stone. Policy Analysis 630033-B-6
Public Policy and Governance (PPG) Notes for all Readings + Lectures
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Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
Communicatiewetenschap
Public policy and governance
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Public policy and Governance
Lectures
Lecture 1:
We can conclude that public policy can be found everywhere. All problems in the society can
be solved by changing/making public policy. According to Thomas Hobbes: ‘life would be
nasty, brutish and short’ without public policy. Public policy helps us to:
1. Set goals and incent solutions.
2. Allocate means to achieve solutions. The mean is called a policy instrument. There are
three basic policy instruments:
a. Money; raise taxes for example.
b. Rules and regulations
c. Communication meant to convince us that, for example, we should change our
behavior.
3. Coordinate efforts to work on solutions.
4. Divide the tasks between the government and the non-government. Give, for example,
organizations a specific task to solve a specific problem.
5. Make government predictable. It is important that government is predictable, because
it should be clarified what the limits of the governments are. This way, a dictatorship
is prevented.
6. Influence behavioral change.
Two perspectives on public policy (Knill & Tosun):
1. Positivists:
I. Positivists focus on facts and proof. There is no way of making policy if there
are no facts.
II. Bounded rationality; the rationality of human’s is limited. We are not able to
take all the available information into account. Not all possible solutions and
dimensions can be overseen. Policy is not purely rational.
III. Actors behave according to their self-interest. If you are a rational human
being, you will try to maximize your self-interest.
IV. Institutional constraints on human behavior. Rules are examples of institutional
constraints. For example, if a certain organization makes rules about how the
beef should be produced. It is very hard to change these rules once people are
used to it.
V. Importance of resources. Examples of resources are time and money. These
resources are the focus of positivists when analysis a public process.
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, VI. Technocratic aspects prevail. The idea that many aspects of policy making
processes are unpolitical processes.
VII. Rely on scientific expertise. Positivists like proof and facts, so they rely for this
on science.
VIII. Positivists are interested in causality. They like to know the results of certain
public policy.
2. Constructivist (stone):
I. Constructivists don’t believe there is one truth, fact or proof. Everything
depends on how people interpret it. Facts may be interpreted in different ways
by different people, so there is not one truth.
II. All aspects of policy are in debate.
III. Information is never complete: guesses, hunches, expectations and so on.
Policy making is often guessing and not systematic and rational.
IV. Strategy: manipulation of information.
V. In communities’ self-interest and altruism co-exist. People do not only behave
in their self-interest, but also in the interest of others. Implementation and
policy evaluation are policy processes.
VI. Interpretations are more powerful than facts.
There is no competition between positivism and constructivism.
Lecture 2:
Conceptualization of public policy.
1. Public: something opposed to private. Accessible to all members of the community.
Public as a collective that gathers to deal with matters of public concern. The
characteristics if publicness:
I. It can be physical: a park, public library and so on.
II. It can be a social category: a collectivity of citizens or a public event.
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, III. It can be a concern.
IV. It can be an opinion: collective beliefs.
John Dewey’s definition of public: ‘All those who are effected by the indirect
consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those
consequences systematically cared for’. In this definition, transaction means a mutual and
reciprocal influence of individuals on each other. Examples of publics:
I. Social movements. For example, Femen in Ukraine.
II. NGO’s. For example, friends of the earth.
III. Citizen’s initiatives. For example, an initiative in Amsterdam to give boxing
lessons to troubled children.
IV. Democratic governments
Stone uses the word community instead of the word community. When we say public
concert, Stone uses the word public interest. There will never be full agreement on
policies, hence the polis is very political: communities struggle over the public interest.
Commons problems according to Stone: Commons problems are situations in which
self-interest and public interest work against each other in the polis. An example is: people
want good public schools, but they also want to pay little taxes. Most policy problems are
commons problems, due to broader effects the intended. The outcomes of commons
problems depend on power struggles. Levers of power are influence, corporation, loyalty
and strategic control of information.
2. Policy. We should distinguish:
I. Polity: ‘institutional elements of political system such as constitutions, rule of
law and electoral systems’.
II. Politics: ‘Who gets what, when and how?’. This is a good definition, because it
holds the competition of resources in the ‘what’ element. It also holds the ‘at
others expense’ part in the ‘Who?’ element. It also holds the nature of political
power in the ‘how?’ element. This definition goes beyond the government, but
rather takes a broad view in what counts as politics.
The key attributes of public policy:
I. Policy is made in response to some sort of problem that requires attention.
II. Policy is made on the public’s behalf.
III. Policy is oriented towards a goal or desired state, such as the solution of a
problem.
IV. Policy is ultimately made by governments, even if the ideas come from outside
the government or through the interaction of government and non-
governmental actors. Governments have the monopoly on making regulations
and laws and that is why it ultimately is a task for the government.
3
, V. Policy is interpreted and implemented by public and private actors who have
different interpretations of problems, solutions and their own motivations.
VI. Policy is what the government chooses to do or not to do.
Definition of policy by Birkland: ‘a statement by the government – at whatever level –
of what it intends to do about a public problem’.
Definition of policy by Knill & Tosun: ‘A course of action taken by a government or
legislature with regard to a particular issue’.
The public element is missing in the latter definition, whilst the first definition
focusses on statements instead of actions. The definition combining these two
perspectives: ‘a statement by the government – at whatever level- of what it intends to
do about a public problem and the courses of action it undertakes to realize these
intentions.
Three perspectives on public policy processes:
1. Rational perspective:
- State clear goals.
- Analyze all possible means/policy instruments (such as money &
communication) on costs and benefits.
- The most efficient alternative according to the costs and benefits is chosen.
Critique on this is that people have limited individual information processing
capacities, which makes a rational perspective impossible. Goals are also often not
clearly clarified beforehand. Lastly, policy making is not a neatly ordered process.
2. Incremental perspective:
- Policy-makers have a bounded rationality.
- Because of this bounded rationality, people only take a limited amount of new
information into account when forming policies.
- Policy changes very gradually, in small steps. When you have a certain goal,
you should try to reach this by taking small steps in a period of time, instead of
making one very big adjustment.
- This type of reasoning works very well for relatively simple existing policy
problems.
3. Garbage can perspective:
- Policy making is a chaotic incomplete process.
- Preferences are not held but they revealed through action. Preferences are a
result of action.
- Action reflect immediate responses instead of well-defined goals. Policy is a
process. We do not define goals beforehand.
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