Samenvatting The Policy Paradox van Deborah Stone
Chapter 1 The Market and the Polis
A simple model of political society consists of the word polis (city-state), because it’s small enough to
have simple forms of organization but it’s big enough to embody the essential elements of politics.
Also the market model is important, because of it’s predominance in policy discussions. The contrast
between the models of political- and market society illuminate ways the market model distorts
political life.
Market: a social system in which individuals pursue welfare by exchanging things with others
whenever trades are mutually beneficial. People compete wicht each other for scarce resources.
In this model people act only to maximize their own self-interest. This stimulates people to be
resourceful, creative, clever and productive. This competition raises the level of economic well-being
of society.
Community:
Public policy is about communities trying to achieve something as communities. A model of the polis
must assume collective will and effort, although there’s almost always conflict in a community. Two
types of communities:
- Political community: a group of people who live under the same political rules and structure
of governance.
- Cultural community: a group of poeple who share a culture and draw their identities from
shared language, history, and traditions.
The political community contains different cultural communities. Cultural diversity creates a profound
dilemma for policy politics: how to integrate several cultural communities into a single political
community without destroying their identity and integrity. Membership in a community gives
social,economic and political rights. Strongest bond to hold a community together: a mutual aid that
people create collectively to protect each other and the community.
Altruism:
‘Acting in order to benefit others rather than oneself’. It’s a powerful human motive. It’s a big part of
peoples lives and we take it for granted -> the rationality paradigm makes altruism almost invisible.
Paradox: acting to benefit others, gives satisfaction, fulfilment and that helping others gives meaning
to life. The self-interest paradigm makes altruism therefore impossible. In the polis people have
self-interest en altruistic motivations.
Public interest:
- Individual interests held in common, things everyone wants for themselves
- Individuals goals for their community; conflict between goals.
- The goals on which there is a consensus. In this case the public interest is not permanent.
- Things that are good for a community as a community.
The concept of public interest is to the polis what self-interest is to the market. They are both
abstractions whose specific contents we do not need to know in order to use them to explain and
predict people’s behaviour; people behave like they’re trying to realize the public interest or
maximize their self-interest.
Common Problems:
Special problem in the polis: how to combine self-interest and public interest, or how to have both
private benefits and collective benefits. Common problems emurge when self-interst and public
interest work against each other. There also called collective action problems because it is hard to
motivate people to undertake private costs or forgo private benefits for the collective good. In market
theory, commons problems are thought to be the exception rather than the rule. Most
,actions in the market do not have social consequences. In the polis, by contrast, commons problems
are everything. The gap between self-interest and public interest is bridged by:
- Influence: it’s inherent in communities. Actions are influenced by others and influence can
lead to collective behaviour. Influence spills sometimes over into coercion, which is an idea
about what motivates behaviour.
- Cooperation: it’s as important as competition, because politics involves seeking allies and
cooperating with them in order to compete with opponents and it’s essential to power. In the
market model there is only competition and there’s only negativity about cooperation.
Nevertheless it’s the norm in the polis and necessary for power.
- Loyalty: cooperation needs tob e enduring -> cooperation goes hand in hand with loyalty.
Groups:
Groups are the building blocks of the polis:
1) People belong to institutions and organizations, even when they aren’t formal members.
2) Policy making isn’t only about solving public problems but about how groups are formed,
split, and re-formed to achieve public purposes
3) Groups are important because decisions of the polis are collective.
Information:
In the polis information is ambiguous, incomplete, often strategically shaded, and sometimes
deliberately withheld; interpretations are more powerful than facts. What we know, is wat we believe
to be true and what we believe about information depends on who tells us and how it is presented.
Political actors want to control interpretations. Information in the polis depends on interpretation and
is subject to strategic manipulation.
Passion:
In the market, economic resources are governed by laws of matter: resources are finite, scarce and
used up when they are used. In the polis, economic resources are governed by laws of passion. An
important law is that passion feeds on itself. Another law is that the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts. The last law: things can mean and therefore be more than one thing at once. In the
polis, where people count and think, wish, dream, and imagine, meanings can run wild, and they
matter.
Power:
It’s purpose is to subordinate individual self-interest to other interests. It operates through influence,
cooperation, and loyalty, and through strategic control of information. It’s a resource that obeys the
laws of passion rather than the laws of matter.
In the market model, change is driven by exchange, which is in turn motivated by the individual quest
to improve one’s own welfare. In the polis change occurs through interaction of mutually defining
ideas and alliances (which shape the ideas people espouse and seek to implement).
Ideas:
- They are the very stuff of politics people fight about, fight for them, and fight against them.
Moreover, people fight with ideas as well as about them.
- Every idea about policy draws boundaries. It tells what or who is included or excluded in a
category. Ideas and alliances are intimately connected.
- The interaction between ideas and alliances is ever-changing and never-ending. Problems in
the polis are never ‘solved’ in the way that economic needs are met in the market model.
Polis:
, 1. It’s a community or perhaps multiple communities, with ideas, images, will, and effort quite
apart from individual goals and behavior.
2. It’s members are motivated by both altruism and self-interest.
3. It has a public interest, whose meaning people fight about and act upon.
4. Most of it’s policy problems are common problems.
5. Influence is pervasive, and the boundary between influence and coercion is always contested.
6. Cooperation is as important as competition.
7. Loyalty is the norm.
8. Groups and organizations form the building blocks.
9. Information is interpretive, incomplete, and strategic.
10. It’s governed by the laws of passion as well as the laws of matter.
Chapter 2 Equity
Different ways to look at equal distributions:
- Equal slices, but unequal invitations
- Unequal slices for unequal merit, but equal slices for equal merit
- Unequal slices for unequal ranks, but equal slices for equal ranks
- Unequal slices, but equal social blocks
- Unequal slices, but equal meals
- Unequal slices, but equal value to recipients
- Unequal slices, but fair competition with equal starting resources
- Unequal slices, but equal statistical chances of winning cake
- Unequal slice, but equal votes
🡺 Paradox: equality often means inequality, and equal treatment often means unequal
treatment.
🡺 Equality: to denote sameness and to signify the part of a distribution that contains uniformity.
🡺 Equity: to denote distributions regarded as fair, even though they contain both equalities and
inequalities.
Dimensions of equality:
1. Membership: challenge 1 is to define a definition of memberschip in a community. Defining
the members for equal treatment is the core of a political controversy. Political communities
differentiate because of property and political rights. Immigration and citizenship policies
define membership; criteria for admitting new members and making them eligible (rarely all
or nothing).
2. Merit: challenge 2 represents the ideal of reward for individual accomplishment (how to
indentify, quantify and built into policy/how much credit an individual ought to get). The idea
of reward for individual achievement provides the major justification for income inequality ->
lopsided distribution. Merit is therefore a good idea. Hard work and innate talent play
important roles in individual achievement, but they’re not everything. Public- and private
investments, policies, and cultural, social and economic opportunities all contribute to an
individual’s capacity to do great things.
3. Rank: challenge 3 is a claim for redistribution based on rank. For distributing resources there
are differences between segments of a larger group and that resources should be allocated
on the basis of these subgroups; horizontal and vertical equity (economical).
Horizontal equity: equal treatment of people in the same rank
Virtual equity: unequal treatment of people in different ranks.
Distribution can be challenged very easily and it’s questionable if lines between ranks are
correctly draws.
, 4. Group-based distribution: challenge 4. Some divisions in society are relevant to distribute
equity and that membership in a group is based on these divisions should sometimes
outweigh individual characteristics in determining distribution. In a liberal individualist
societie group-based distribution is proposed as a remedy for previous violoations of merit-
or rank-based distribution. The obvious analogy in contemporary politics is affirmative action,
a policy of giving preference to members of groups that have been the victims of historical
discrimination. This action conflate (rarely) with quotas (reserving a portion of an item).
o Rank-based distributions assign people to groups according to more or less
fine-tuned individual measurements.
o Group-based distributions assign people to groups on social divisions having nothing
to do with individual qualifications or performance.
Challenging the equity of a group-based distribution:
- Reflects the definition of relevant groups some meaningful social reality?
- Ascriptive identity characteristics don’t correspond to the actual experience of disadvantage
or discrimination, but group-based distribution is for compensating people for disadvantages.
- Race and gender are criteria for distribution.
Argument for affirmative action: can lead to a diverse membership in which people socialize
with other social groups and learn about/value different experiences and outlooks.
5. Need: challenge 5 is about redefining the boundaries of the item. Redefining of boundaries
for a more global vision, can lead to expansion across types of goods or time. Expanding
boudnaries is a redistributive strategy, because the narrowly defined item needs to
compensate for inequalities in a larger sphere. Redefining is a choice about how expansively
to define the item.
6. Value: challenge 6 is about redefining the value of that item to the individual; standardized
value to a customized value. The values of goods derives from the quality of relationships
rather than tangible or material properties. Conflicts of ‘value’ are especially intense in social
policy. Education and medical care are ‘delivered’ through relationships and derive much of
their value from the quality of relationships and the ability of the provider to tailor the
service tot he needs of the individual.
7. Competition, 8. Lotteries, 9. Elections:
Theses challenges focus on the process of distribution. Process is a key dimension of equity
because in the polis, policy decisions are carried out by real people. The processes of
distribution can create or destroy things of value. Process is important, because our notion of
fairness includes not only a fair end result but also a fair decision-making process.
Simple Definition Same size share for everybody
Complications in the Polis
Dimension Issue Dilemma
Recipients 1. Membership (the Unequal invitations/equal
boundaries of slices
community)
2. Merit-based Equal merit/equal slices;
distribution unequal merit/unequal
slices
3. Rank-based Equal ranks/equal slices;
distribution (internal unequal ranks/unequal
subdivisions of society) slices
4. Group-based Equal blocs/unequal slices
distribution (major
internal cleavages of
society)
