Samenvatting
Summary PPG Revision Exam 1
- Instelling
- Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Complete summary of PPG lecture slides, notes and readings for the first half of the course. I made this summary last year and got an 8.6 in the exam
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Voorbeeld 3 van de 16 pagina's
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Voorbeeld van de inhoud
Public Policy and Governance RevisionLecture 1 - Why Public Policy?
Policy helps us to:
- Set goals and invent solutions e.g. climate change goals
- Allocate means to achieve solutions: practical
- Coordinate efforts to work on solutions e.g between government actors, private enterprises and NGOs
- Divide tasks between government and non-government actors
- Influence Behavioural change
2 Perspectives on Public Policy: example of ready meals
1. Positivist/rationalist - Knill & Tosun
- Positivist perspective, assumes that policies are designed and implemented under conditions of bounded
rationality and that policymaking is a mainly technocratic process
- Bounded rationality (Simon): the idea that when individuals make decisions, their rationality is limited by the
tractability of the decision problem, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the time available to make the
decision.
- Focus on facts and proof (rely on scientific evidence)
- Interest in causality
- Positivists behave according to interest e.g. in a private enterprise, focus on cost reduction
- Positivists behave according to institutional constraints e.g. regulations embedded in old regulation (path
dependency)
- Positivists assume that policymaking is a technocratic exercise: it is based on rational decisions (technocratic =
relating to or characterized by the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts e.g.
EU)
2. Constructivist - Stone remember you need stones to construct anything!!
- Constructivist, assumes that policies are largely made of language as such policy making is always open to multiple
interpretations and hence open to political claims-making
- Constructivists like Stone argue that there are multiple interpretations of reality. All aspects of policy = debate. Stone
would argue that there is always strategic behaviour in public policy & the manipulation of information
- Information is never complete: Stone argues that politicians are making educated guesses based on the political
values that they adhere to, they then make assumptions
- She argues that interpretation is more important than facts (polar opposite to Knill & Tosun)
- constructivist approaches to the study of public policy emphasize the complexity of social and empirical reality and
the need to situate empirical enquiry in a broader interpretive framework
Both perspectives on public policy have merit, they can be equally powerful and both apply. There may be some issues which are more
technocratic while others are more political
Knill & Tosun
- the study of public policies concerns the whole process of public decision making and seeks to understand the production and
effects of public actions
- Paper outlines two opposing views on the causal relationship between policy-making decisions and interactions with polity and
politics:
I. Politics affects the nature & design of policies
II. Policies drive political conflicts between actors
- General consensus in the literature that a public policy can be defined as a course of action (or non-action) taken by a
government or legislature with regard to a particular issues
- Public policy is a term that can refer to different phenomena, from the whole range of legal and administrative activities in a
given policy field or subfield to concrete policy targets or - even more specifically - distinctive instruments
- Knill & Tosun outline 3 perspectives on the policy-making process: rational, incremental & garbage can
- The classical cycle approach of different policy stages that can be integrated into a process model: the “policy cycle”:
1. Problem definition and agenda setting
2. Policy formulation and adoption
3. Implementation
4. Evaluation (with the potential consequence of policy termination or reformulation)
- Here the policy cycle model is interpreted as a sequential development hence following closely the idea underlying the
rationalist approach
Stone
- Stone describes a Polis, a hypothetical political community:
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,Public Policy and Governance Revision
1. It is a community with collective ideas, images, will, and effort: Membership in a community defines social, economic
and political rights
2. Its members are motivated by both altruism self-interest: difficult/impossible to measure
3. It has a public interest whose meaning people fight about and act upon
4. Most of its policy problems are common problems: Situations in which self-interest and collective interest work
against one another
5. Influence is pervasive and the boundary between influence and coercion is always contested
- Gap between self interest and public interest can be bridged by influence, cooperation and loyalty. Influence
sometimes spills over into coercion
6. Cooperation is as important as competition
- Cooperation more effective: authority depending solely on the use of force can’t extend very far
7. Loyalty is the norm
8. Groups and organisations form the building blocks
9. Information is interpretive, incomplete and strategic
- information is ambiguous, incomplete and often strategically shaded and sometimes deliberately withheld.
Interpretation > facts and political actors strive to control interpretations
10. It is governed by the laws of passion as well as the laws of matter
1. Rationalist
- defines an ideal conception of how policies should develop
- The rationalist approach conceives of policy making as a process of problem solving. It entails a normative
(how policies should evolve) on policy making.
- Based on Lasswell: he argued that ideally the policy process should be based on different steps that follow
a logical sequence:
I. intelligence (collection and processing of all relevant knowledge and information)
II. promotion ((identification and support of selected alternatives)
III. prescription (imposition of a binding decision, invocation (policy enforcement)
IV. termination (abrogation of policy)
V. appraisal (evaluation of policy effects against the backdrop if initial objectives and intensities).
2. Incrementalism
- Based on the work of Lindblom. Public policy is regarded as the political result of the interaction between
various actors possessing different types of information. These actors need to make concessions and
therefore policy-makers primarily concentrate on aspects that are less controversial and more technical.
This process of “partisan mutual adjustment” can only lead to one outcome: incremental policy chance
- This is a less idealistic, and more realistic theory. It implies that actors act with bounded rationality: the idea
that in decision making, the rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive
limitations of their minds and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision (Simon)
3. Garbage Can Model
- Based on the work of Cohen et al: disconnects problems, solutions and decision makers from each other
- This model argues that decisions do not follow an orderly process from problem to solution but are the
outcomes of several relatively independent streams of events, namely problems, solutions, choice
opportunities and participants. Solutions exist and develop independently of problems
Lecture 2
The public element of public policy: something that isnt private. Characteristics of publicness:
- It can be physical e.g. park
- It can a social category e.g. collectivity of citizens (BLM)
- It can be a concern e.g. a common interest
- Public can also be an opinion e.g. expressed through news outlets
Dewey: “all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have
those consequences systematically cared for” e.g the need to deal with poverty through redistributive programmes
Examples of publics: social movements, NGOs, citizens initiatives, democratic governments & sometimes private actors
Stone uses the example of the polis, it is very political. Public concern = public interest
She says that public and private interest conflict in the polis e.g. the construction of coal-powered plants
Most problems are commons problems = self interest and public interest coming together. Most policy problems are commons
problems due to broader effects than intended
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, Public Policy and Governance Revision
- Can also be public vs public as well as governments themselves can produce commons problems e.g. climate change goals.
May be conflicts between different levels of government (local and national) or regarding wind farms (NIMBYISM)
- Commons struggles are power struggles
- Public policy can be seen as a way of overcoming these commons problems
- Levers of power: influence, cooperation, loyalty, strategic control of information (Stone)
Polity: institutional elements of political system e.g. constitution, rule of law etc
Lasswell defined politics as: “who gets what, when and how”. Thus it is seen as a competition over resources. Definition beyond
government (aspect) and broad in what counts as politics
Birkland
- Public policy is something that is orientated to a problem (consider the means to achieve a goal)
- He defines public policy as a statement by the government of what it intends to do about a public problem
- He is focussed on statements
Knill & Tosun
- Define public policy as a course of action (or non-action) taken by the government or legislature with regard to a particular
issue
- They don’t emphasize public, but focus on actions
- Knill & Tosun discuss policy variation and policy change: we focus on policy change in this course
Policy sciences are problem and solution orientated = how can we change government to get to the right solution
3 Processual perspectives on policy:
1. Rational
2. Incrementalism
3. Garbage Can
Rational
- Stae clear goals, analyse al possible costs and benefits and choose the most efficient alternative
- Example: 1953, Dutch flood so the US military did a risk assessment to calculate the height of dijks to prevent further flooding
and then this was implemented
- Kingdon & Stone are critical of this due to:
I. Bounded rationality (Simon)
II. Goals aren’t that clear in politics. You may need to make compromises to get a policy passed e.g. ObamaCare:
negotiations with the Republican party had to be made
III. They argue that the policy making process is rarely, if ever, as neat as rational perspectives allude
Incrementalism
- Looked at limited new information and determined that politicians make small adjustments to policy
- Incrementalism is best as we can draw on a breadth of experience
- Examples include policies such as transport policy where any changes are generally building on a breadth of knowledge that
officials already have, and there is nothing radically new
Garbage Can Model
- Policy making as partial, fluid, chaotic, anarchic and incomplete
- Preferences are revealed through action, within action people start to respond
- Cohen et al argues there are 4 streams influencing policy decisions. This was based on a study of universities:
1. Problems: have a problem and look for a solution
2. Solutions: have a solution and look for a problem
3. Participants: flow in and out, carrying problems or solutions
4. Choice opportunities: when it occurs, used as a dump for favourite problems and solutions
- Kingdon observed the garbage can model in the US congressional meetings
Kingdon
- Discusses four common approaches of processes: origins, rationality, incrementalism and garbage can
- Origins: A concentration on the origins of initiatives does not make for very complete theory about agenda setting or
alternative specification. I reach that conclusion for three reasons: (1) ideas can come from anywhere; (2) tracing origins
involves one in an infinite regress; and (3) nobody leads anybody else. Policies are usually the result of fertile soil
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