BRM samenvatting
Stone- Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making; Introduction, CH1
Introduction
-politicians have two goals:
*policy goals
*political goals (gaining power)
-rationality project
*aspiring to make policy with rational, analytical and scientific methods
-3 aims of the book
*arguing that the rationality project misses the point of politics
>aiming to construct a mode of policy analysis that recognizes the dark, self-interest side
of political conflict, but also sees politics as a valuable creative process for social harmony
*arguing that the categories underlying rational analysis are defined in political struggle
>aiming to construct a mode of policy analysis that recognized analytical concepts,
problem definitions, and policy instruments as political claims themselves
*starting from a model of community where individuals live in a dense web of relationships,
dependencies, and loyalties; where they care deeply about others and fight for a public
interest
-the project of making policy rational rests on 3 pillars
*a model of reasoning
*a model of society
*a model of policy making
-the model of reasoning is rational decision making, decision making should follow steps
*identify objectives
*identify alternative courses of action for achieving objectives
*predict the possible consequences of each alternative
*evaluate the possible consequences of each alternative
*select the alternative that maximizes the attainment of objectives
-political reasoning is reasoning by metaphor and analogy
-the model of society is the market
*society is a collection of autonomous, rational decision makers who come together when
they want to make an exchange
-the model of policy making is a production model
*policy should be created in stages
CH1
-polis: city-state
*an entity small enough to have very simple forms of organization yet large enough to
embody the essential elements of politics
-market: a social system in which individuals pursue their own welfare by exchanging things
, with others whenever trades are mutually beneficial
-market economy
*participants compete for scarce resources
*individuals act only to maximize their own self-interests
-self-interest: their own welfare
*this does not mean acting selfishly
*it might include the well-being of their family and friends
-politics and policy can only happen in communities
-community is the starting point of the polis
-public policy is about communities trying to achieve something as communities
-a model of the polis must assume collective effort and collective will
-a model of the polis must also include a distinction between political community and
cultural community
*political community: a group of people who live under the same political rules and
structure of governance
*cultural community: a group of people who share a culture and draw their identities from
shared language, history, and traditions
-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
-integration focuses on what values and behaviours immigrants must espouse in order to
become citizens
-in the polis mutual aid is a good that people create collectively in order to protect each
other
-altruism: acting in order to benefit others rather than oneself
-paradox of altruism: when people act to benefit others, they feel satisfaction, fulfilment,
and a sense that helping other gives their lives meaning
-without an appreciation of altruism, we can’t fully understand how policy gets implemented
at the street level, nor can we understand the currents of resistance and civil disobedience
that make up the morel underground
-in the polis there is a public interest
*public interest:
>individual interests held in common
>individuals goals for their community
>those goals on which there is a consensus
>things that are good for a community as a community
-commons problems: situations where self-interest and public interest work against each
other
-in the polis the gap between self-interest and public interest is bridged by some potent
forces
*influence
>influence sometimes spills over into coercion, the line between them is fuzzy
*cooperation
>in the polis this is every bit as important as competition
, ^politics involves seeking allies and cooperating with them
^cooperation is essential to power
*loyalty
-groups are the building blocks of the polis
*people belong to institutions and organizations
*policy making is about how groups are formed, split and re-formed to achieve public
purposes
*decisions of the polis are collective
-the pluralist theory hold that all important interests have the capacity to form interest
groups and that these interest groups have relatively equal chances to make their voices
heard in the political system
-in the polis information is ambiguous, incomplete and often strategically shaded or
withheld
-politics is driven by how people interpret information
-political actors strive to control interpretations
-the polis
*a community with ideas, images, will, and effort quite apart from individual goals and
behaviour
*its members are motivated by both altruism and self-interest
*it has a public interest, whose meaning people fight about and act upon
*most of its policy problems are common problems
*influence is pervasive, and the boundary between influence and coercion is always
contested
*cooperation is as important as competition
*loyalty is the norm
*groups and organizations form the building blocks
*information is interpretive, incomplete, and strategic
*is governed by the laws of passion as well as the laws of matter
-power is a phenomenon of communities
*its purpose is always 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
-figure page 35
Hoogerwerf- beleidsvoorbereiding: het ontwerpen van beleid
-beleidsvoorbereiding: het proces van het verzamelen en analyseren van informatie en het
formuleren van adviezen met het oog op een te voeren beleid
-beleidsontwerp: het uitdenken, beargumenteren en formuleren van beleid
*het is een denkproces
*het ondergaat de invloed van machtsuitoefening
