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Public Policy and Governance summary
here a summary of all reading of the course in the year 2021
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PPG 1-2Chapter 1 Knill and Tosun
Positive view
Public policies are omnipresent in our daily lives. The study of public policies seeks to
understand the production and e ects of public actions. It highlights processes and decisions
that de ne the outputs of a political system and the broader e ects resulting from such policy
decisions.
So the core topics are policy outputs and policy e ects. Their study generally focuses on two
fundamental issues:
1. Policy variations. Refers to the explanation of di erences between public
policies.
2. Policy change. The central focus is on the explanation of stability and change.
What is public policy?
In political science, we generally nd three major subject areas:
1. Polity: Refers to the institutional structures characterising a
political system
2. Politics: Concentrates on political processes
3. Policy: Focuses on the content of policies
-> All of these dimensions play an important role in explaining public policy.
The term ‘public policy’ can be de ned as a course of action (or non-action) taken by a
government or legislature with regard to a particular issue. It is not possible to specify a number of
courses of action as de ning a ‘public policy’.
Policy-making can be seen as problem-solving, but also as a means of exerting power by one
social group over another.
The term ‘policy’ is used for activities of very di erent scope:
1. It is often used to cover a whole range of di erent measures in a certain sector.
2. A similar approach is used to describe public activities in policy sub elds.
3. Even within policy sub elds, distinctive policy issues or targets can be identi ed.
4. Usage of the term refers to its connection with regulatory instruments. While
policy targets refer to what a legal act regulates, policy instruments de ne how
they are regulated.
-> Public policy can thus refer to di erent phenomena.
There are several theoretical perspectives on the evolution of public policies: • Rationalist
approach:
Sees policy-making as a process of problem-solving. Rather than seeking to explain the policy
process, it prescribes an ideal conception of how policy-making should be. More a normative
(how policies should evolve) than a positive perspective (how policy can be explained) on policy-
making.
• Incrementalist perspective: Public policy is regarded as the political result of the
interaction of various actors possessing di erent types of information. It is rather a realistic
than an ideal description of how policy-makers come to their decisions.
• Radical view (garbage can model):
Assumes that usually the involved actors within an organisation go through the ‘garbage’
rst and look for a suitable solution.
Policy cycle: models the policy process as a series of political activities. It basically
consists of the following phases:
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, 1. Problem de nition and agenda-setting.
2. Policy formulation and adoption.
3. Implementation.
4. Evaluation (with the potential consequence of policy termination beëindigingor
reformulation)
Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision making. By Deborah Stone.
Constructivist view.
Introduction: Why This Book?
A paradox violates the most elementary principle of logic: something cannot be two di erent
things at once. A paradox is just such an impossible situation, and political life is full of them.
Examples are:
• Winning is losing and losing is winning. • Demonstration - debate or assault?
• Enemies or Allies?
• Are low prices good or bad?
Rationality project: the project of making public policy rational rests on three pillars:
1. A model of reasoning.
2. A model of society.
3. A model of policy making.
The model of reasoning is rational decision making. In this model decisions are made in steps:
1. Identify objectives.
2. Identify alternative courses of action for achieving objectives.
3. Predict the possible consequences of each alternative.
4. Evaluate the possible consequences of each alternative.
5. Select the alternative that maximises the attainment of objectives.
-> The rational decision-making model ignores our emotional feelings and moral institutions.
Chapter 1. The Market and the Polis.
A theory of policy politics must start with a model of political society:
Polis: the Greek word for city-state.
• In building a model of political society, it is helpful to use a market model. A market can
simply be de ned as a social system in which individuals pursue their own welfare by
exchanging things with others whenever trade’s mutually bene cial. Participants in a market
compete with each other for scarce resources. In the market model, individuals only act to
maximise their own self-interest. Self- interest means their own welfare.
•Because politics and policy can only happen in communities, community must be the
starting point of our polis. Public policy is about communities trying to achieve something as
communities. A model of the polis must assume collective will and
collective e ort. A community must have members and some way of de ning who is a
member and who is not. Membership is in some sense the primary political issue of a
community. A model of polis must also include a distinction between political community
and cultural community. Political community is a group of people who live under the same
political rules and structure of governance. A cultural community is a group of people who
share a culture.
-> In the market model, insurance is a nancial product that rms sell in order to make sell in
order to make a pro t and buyers buy in order to create economic security for themselves. In the
polis mutual aid is a good that people create collectively in order to protect each other and their
community.
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, • A model of political community includes altruism as a powerful human motive. Altruism means
acting in order to bene t others rather than oneself. The paradox of altruism is: when people act
to bene t others, they feel satisfaction, ful lment and a sense that helping others gives their lives
meaning.
-> In the polis, altruism can be just as erce as self-interest.
• In the polis there is a public interest. Public interest might mean several things. It could be
individual interests held in common. It could mean individuals’ goals for their community. Or those
goals on which there is a consensus. Public interest can also mean things that are good for a
community as a community. There is virtually never full agreement on the public interest, but it’s
still a characteristic of the polis.
-> The market also has a concept of public interest. But the di erence is that, in market theory,
the public interest is the net result of all individuals pursuing their self-interest. In the polis, people
ll the box intentionally.
• Situations where self-interest and public interest work against each other are known as
commons problems.
-> In the polis commons problems are common. In market theory, commons problems are
thought to be exception rather than rule.
- In the polis, the gap between self-interest and public interest is bridged by certain forces:
1. In uence. Inherent in communities. Actions and ideas are in uenced by others,
education, persuasion and socialisation. The boundary between in uence and
coercion is vague.
2. Cooperation. Cooperation must be central because of two reasons: politics
involve seeking allies and cooperating with them in order to compete with components and
cooperation is often more e ective than coercion. In the market model there is nothing but
pure competition.
3. Loyalty. Cooperation often goes hand in hand with loyalty. In the market model people are
‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’. In politics they are ‘enemies’ and ‘friends’.
• Organisations, rather than individuals, are the building blocks of the polis. Groups are important
in three ways:
1. People belong to institutions and organisations, even when they aren’t formal members.
2. Policy making isn’t only about solving public problems, but about how groups are formed to
achieve public purposes.
3. Groups are important because decisions of the polis are collective.
• In the ideal market, information is accurate, complete and available. In the polis, information
is ambiguous and incomplete. In politics it matters what people make of reports. Because
politics is driven by how people interpret the information, political actors strive to control
interpretations. Political actors very often keep crucial information secret.
• Passion. In the market, economic resources are governed by the laws of matter. In the
polis, it is about the ‘laws of passion’, because they describe phenomena that behave
more like emotions than like physical matter. One of these laws is that passion feeds on
itself. Another law of passion holds that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Another law is things can mean and therefore be more than one thing thing at once.
The polis is:
1. It is a community.
2. Its members are motivated by both altruism and self-interest.
3. It has a public interest; whose meaning people ght about and act upon.
4. Most of its policy problems are commons problems.
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, 5. In uence is pervasive, and the boundary between in uence and
coercion is always contested.
6. Cooperation is as important as competition.
7. Loyalty is the norm.
8. Groups and organisations form the building blocks.
9. Information is interpretive, incomplete and strategic.
• 10.It is governed by the laws of passion as well as the laws of matter.
• Power is the last characteristic, because it derives from all the previous elements. In the
polis change occurs through the interaction of mutually de ning ideas and alliances. Ideas
are the very stu of politics.
Introducing the Policy Process. By Birkland.
Politics and the Policy Process.
By examining public policy, it’s important to understand what ‘politics’ is. One way to conceive of
politics is as a process by which societies help gure out how to organise and regulate
themselves. Three essential aspects of politics are:
1. Competition to gain certain resources, sometimes at others’ expense.
2. The need to cooperate to make decisions.
3. The nature of political power.
Public policies address problems that are public, or that some people think should be public
instead of private. The study of public policy is the study of how we translate the popular will into
practice.
What is Public Policy?
The study of public policies is relatively new. There are many possible ways to de ne public
policy.
There is no single de nition of ‘public policy,' but there are key attributes:
• Policy is made in response to some sort of problem that requires action.
• Policy is made on the ‘public’s’ behalf.
• Policy is oriented toward a goal or desired state, such as the solution of a problem.
• Policy is ultimately made by governments, even if the ideas come from outside
government or through the interaction of government and non-governmental
actors.
• Policy is interpreted and implemented by public and private actors who have
di erent interpretations of problems, solutions and their own motivations.
• Policy is what the government chooses to do or not to do.
Policy: A statement by government of what it intends to do such as a law, regulation, ruling,
decision, order or a combination of these. The lack of such statements may also be an
implicit statement of policy. Policies take many di erent forms.
Ideas and Problems in the Policy Process.
Problem: A usually undesirable situation that, according to people or interest groups, can
be alleviated by government action. Compare with condition.
What makes Public Policy Public?
Classical liberalism: In political theory, the ideological system that emphasises individual
liberty and the ownership and acquisition of private property as a means to improve overall
wealth and happiness and discourage social strive. Liberalism is the political ideology on
which the American system is based. According to liberalism the people are sovereign.
Public policy is related to the public interest because it a ects all of us in some way. The
public interest is the assumed broader desires and needs of the public, in whose name
policy is made.
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