Global climate change: defining the policy problem

The U.S. appears to be misdefining the policy problem posed by the threat of global climate change, and is therefore not likely to find satisfactory policy solutions.The dominant definitions of the policy problem - alleging certain scientific, economic, and political barriers to effective policy - circumscribe the search for policy solutions. But those solutions meet neither practical criteria of rationality nor the test of practical experience. We seem to be trapped within problem definitions that reflect and reinforce the convergence of powerful interests with elements of the culture.The problem may be a culture that fails to integrate science-based technologies for mastering nature with ethical or political constraints on their use. and therefore jeopardizes its own sustainability. If so, then reasoned action begins with political leadership that challenges selected elements of the dominant culture and directs attention to alternatives - thereby opening up the search for solutions.     

The lessons of learning: Reconciling theories of policy learning and policy change

Several different explanations of policy change based on notions of learning have emerged in the policy literature to challenge conventional conflict-oriented theories. These include notions of political-learning developed by Heclo, policy-oriented learning developed by Sabatier, lesson-drawing analyzed by Rose, social learning discussed by Hall and government learning identified by Etheredge. These different concepts identify different actors and different effects with each different type of learning. Some elements of these theories are compatible, while others are not. This article examines each approach in terms of who learns, what they learn, and the effects of learning on subsequent policies. The conclusion is that three distinct types of learning have often been incorrectly juxtaposed. Certain conceptual, theoretical and methodological difficulties attend any attempt to attribute policy change to policy learning, but this does not detract from the important reorientation of policy analysis that this approach represents.     

Reaganism,pluralism, and the politics of pesticide regulation

A key priority of the Reagan Revolution was an attack on the system of health, safety, and environmental regulation that arose in the 1970s. This article evaluates Reagan's regulatory reforms through the lens of one particularly important case study, the regulation of pesticides. This case will be used to explore two issues: (1) an empirical question about the magnitude of policy change achieved by the Reagan administration in the area of environmental regulation; and (2) a conceptual and theoretical question about the dynamics of subgovernments or issue networks, and their relationship to policy change. The analysis reveals that while the Reagan administration has produced important changes in both policy style and substance, in comparison to the changes that occurred around 1970, they have been relatively modest. Reagan's reform efforts failed largely because the President only controls a subset of the relevant components of the policy regime. Environmental interests were strongly entrenched in regime elements beyond Reagan's immediate control - in particular Congress, the courts, and the ruling public philosophy - and were thus able to thwart many of Reagan's initiatives.     

Usable information for policy: An appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in law in 1990 (P.L. 101–606) with a mandate to provide policymakers with usable information. The law gave a White House Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES) responsibility to implement the program with respect to its policy mandate. In 1994 CEES was replaced, in part, because it failed to provide usable information. This article, documenting the development of the program's policy mandate and CEES implementation of the USGCRP, finds a performance shortfall. The shortfall is attributed to a breakdown in the legislative process, participant perspectives, and the structure of post-World War II science policy. The purpose of the article is to explain the CEES performance shortfall in hope that its successor can improve USGCRP performance with respect to its legal mandate based upon the lessons of experience.     

The ethical poverty of cost-benefit methods: Autonomy,efficiency and public policy choice

The principle of efficiency holds as the basic standard of market decision-making. Routinely however, it has been applied as a standard of judgement to public choices as well. This essay proceeds on the basis of four assumptions. First, that efficiency, outside the market context, has two manifestations (Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Cost-Benefit Methods) which are made distinct by one's concentration on judging the most cost-effective means to policy ends otherwise arrived at, and the other's use of efficiency to judge both the means and end of policy choice. Second, that although efficiency is a fit primary decision standard within a competitive market a principle with more distinctly moral weight is needed to judge ends outside of markets. Third, that one possible source of this moral weight is individual autonomy or freedom that is a fit ethical principle upon which to set the ends of public policy. Fourth, that the use of cost-benefit methods rather than cost-effectiveness analysis implies that it can satisfy the requirements of both efficiency and autonomy. If the efficient policy choice also provided protection of individual autonomy then cost-benefit methods could be used for the analysis of public policy ends, but if it fails to have a deeper moral justification then the role of efficiency in the public sector must be limited only to its judgement of cost-effective means to policy ends arrived at by a non-efficiency standard. I will argue that the autonomy of individual choice in a market is a thin and morally impoverished ethical standard of judgement that adds no additional moral weight to market efficiency for the judgements of policy ends. This conclusion limits efficiency to the consideration of public means alone, eliminating cost-benefit methods as a fit approach to policy analysis while simultaneously promoting cost-effectiveness analysis and the search for an independent moral standard for the assessment of public ends.This essay was originally prepared for the 1989 meeting of the APSA in Atlanta and I wish to thank all those who read and commented on my work at that time. In addition, I would like to thank those who participated in its evolution to this form: Douglas MacLean, Mark Sagoff, Brian Barry, Alan Donagan, Russell Hardin, Maurice Wade, Andy Gold, Thomas Reilly, Diana Evans, an anonymous reviewer at Policy Sciences and its two editors, William Ascher and G. Brewer.     

University centers for the study of public policy: Organizational viability

The central problems of creating and maintaining a university center for the study of public policy stem from the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the policy design process and the tensions in academic circles between pure and applied research.The nature and costs of interdisciplinary communication are such that the unguided, steady state for the organization is a series of disciplinary groups roughly similar to the disciplinary structure of the larger, academic environment. Internal policies and practices designed to maintain interdisciplinary as opposed to disciplinary communications structures are discussed in some detail.Problems caused by the relationship between pure and applied research usually stem from a failure to understand their necessary and mutually-reinforcing connections.The inherently interdisciplinary nature of public policy and the largely disciplinary supply of possible faculty and staff means that, regardless of the internal structure of the particular university the policy unit is located in, the unit is forced to simultaneously maintain a set of relationships with the various disciplines both within and without the university. It is argued that the nature of these external (to the policy unit) interdependencies are the key to the long run viability of the policy unit. The theoretical effects of varying degrees of autonomy for the unit with respect to budget, faculty appointments, and curriculum on viability are examined. Finally, the key role of students in stimulating a meaningful and lasting interdisciplinary dialog among the faculty is discussed.A paper such as this represents a combination of the author's personal experience and background in organization theory. I have been extremely fortunate in having been associated with three excellent, interdisciplinary institutions: Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie-Mellon University; the Rand Corporation; and the Institute of Public Policy Studies, the University of Michigan. My teachers and colleagues will recognize many of their ideas in this paper. Also reflected are continuing discussions on this topic with Graham Allison, Otto Davis, John Jackson, James March, Richard Neustadt, Herbert Simon, Aaron Wildavsky, and Sidney Winter among others. Peter Bouxsein and Jack Walker provided insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Any lack of perspective is the author's unique contribution. Partially developed analysis in this paper illustrates (unintentionally) the arguments in the last paragraph of section C.1.     

The dynamics of financial globalization: Technology,market structure,and policy response

The development of increasingly transnationalized (globalized) financial markets raises several key issues for the analysis of politics, public policy, and the national state. This article suggests that financial globalization increasingly constrains policymakers and circumscribes the policy capacity of the state. After looking briefly at a range of approaches to the process of financial globalization itself, the author suggests that technological change is the main independent variable, by reducing transaction costs and dramatically increasing the price sensitivity of financial markets across borders, while at the same time making possible a range of economies of scale. These very developments have a knock-on effect throughout the domestic and international economies. They in turn make obsolescent the political economies of scale — the governance structures — which have characterized economic policy in modern nation-states, undermining the capacity of the state to produce public goods. At the same time, globalized financial markets interact with rapidly changing interest group structures and divided state structures, especially through regulatory arbitrage. Without the development of transnational regimes capable of regulating global financial markets, the structural basis of the national state itself is being undermined, and Polanyi's Great Transformation is over.     

Positivist beliefs among policy professionals: An empirical investigation

A group of scholars argue that mainstream policy analysis ispositivistic in its theory and practice. This paper reports the resultsof an e-mail survey that was conducted to investigate the extent,dimensions, and determinants of positivist beliefs among policyprofessionals. The survey results show that policy professionals aremore positivistic in their abstract beliefs and less so in their beliefsabout the role of politics and analysis in the policy process.Educational background is the most important factor determining beliefs:The economists and mathematicians/scientists are most positivistic intheir beliefs, while political scientists are least positivistic. Also,practitioners take more positivistic positions than academics. Overall,the largest percentage of the respondents see the postpositivistfacilitator role as the proper role for policy analysts,but there is also a significant percentage of those who prefer thepositivist problem solver role.     

Implicit theories in policy discourse: An inquiry into the interpretations of reality in German technology policy

Interpretations of reality are an important, sometimes even decisive, dimension of the policy process. This essay seeks to demonstrate this point in the field of technology policy. Empirical research shows that government support for technology transfer in Germany is based on a concept of technology that is shared by neither companies nor academic researchers. These different concepts become reified interpretations of what technology means. They are referred to here as implicit theories. Interviews with academic researchers and business people demonstrate how inquiries into the realm of policy theories can be carried out.     

Food safety regulation: is the Delaney clause the problem or symptom?

The Delaney anticancer amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 is a prominent example of zero risk legislation. The relevant clauses prohibit a finding of safety for any relevant substance found to induce cancer in humans or animals. It is argued that the Delaney approach to safety regulation is not only misguided, but that relaxation of the law - for example, to permit substances that pose insignificant cancer risks - would produce only marginal improvement in regulation. A major shift in regulation that permits some form of cost-benefit analysis is the only way to move toward rational policy choices.Professor of Economics, Rutgers University. I am grateful to William Ascher, Richard A. Merrill, and two referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Knowledge in the policy process: Incorporating new environmental information in natural resources policy making

Efforts by both natural and social scientists have brought significant new bodies of information to bear on natural resources policy making. Among these have been new insights in conservation biology and landscape ecology, new methods for valuing intangible resource benefits, and new frameworks for resource accounting. The use of these new sources of information is analyzed from a Lasswellian policy process perspective, with illustrations from recent experience with U.S. national forest planning. A distinction is made between the impact of new information on ordinary as contrasted to constitutive policy making. This experience suggests that these new sources of information may increase emphasis on sustainable, multiple benefit use of resources, but they can also shift power away from non-expert actors, undermine rights arguments, polarize debates over appropriate resource use, and delay timely decisionmaking.     

Growth controls: policy analysis for the second generation

The 1970s spawned a first generation of growth controls which featured explicit (or implicit) restrictions on residential housing construction. These restrictions were typically implemented in small, affluent, and predominantly white suburban communities. Policy analysis responded by focusing almost singlemindedly on how such supply-side restrictions might increase housing prices and drive out the poor. The 1980s and 1990s have, however, given birth to a more comprehensive second generation of controls which many major cities and metropolitan areas are considering. This generation ties commercial and industrial as well as residential development to the reduction of the negative externalities and congestion costs associated with growth. To fully evaluate this second generation, policy analysis must take into account not only housing price effects and the rate of job creation but also the full range of amenity effects associated with differing rates of growth and attendant levels of traffic congestion, air pollution, and other public bads. We develop a framework for such second generation growth control analysis using San Diego as an example.     

Implementation as communicative action

Many social problems can only be solved through some form of governmental involvement. In this article, a model is formulated for policy implementation. The various criticisms against a top-down model of implementation can be taken into account by conceptualizing implementation as communicative interaction between policy actors and their target groups, each characterized by distinct rationalities (section 4) with important consequences for the likelihood of learning and behavioral change (section 5). As explained in section 3, communicative action is being used to underline that we go beyond the top-down vs. bottom-up distinction, thus doing justice to empirical findings and adopting a post-positivist epistemology. Normatively, this expresses a critical approach to implementation as the continuation of politics with different means.The need for such an approach is illustrated by two case stories (section 2), one about fresh dairy packing in the Low Countries, the other one about nuclear missiles in the United States. Examples from these stories are used in sections 4 and 5 to clarify our model.     

Between science and politics: assessing the risks of dioxins in Canada and the United States

Conclusions The history of U.S. and Canadian risk assessments for dioxin is an increasingly familiar tale of debates within the scientific community played out in the political arena. Uncertainty among scientists creates the possibility of large disparities between different governments' policies. However, the pattern of differences that emerges reflects the context in which science policy decisions are made within each agency and within each country. The political environment has implications not just for how mandated science is received, but for how it is conducted.Many features of the dioxin case are consistent with observations by others. In the cases of formaldehyde, alachlor, alar, and amaranth, EPA relied on mathematical models to assess the risks of potential carcinogens, while Health and Welfare Canada relied on the more traditional safety factor approach.³⁵ This body of evidence is suggestive of national styles of transscience. Features of the U.S. style include explicit rationales for regulatory decisions, reliance on consistent and explicit risk assessment principles, and public debate over scientific aspects of public policy. The Canadian style is exemplified by closed decisionmaking, case-by-case review, and the absence of public discussion of the scientific basis for government decisions.The differences between FDA and EPA in this case study suggest an important caveat, however. The U.S. style is most clearly reflected in the implementation of the non-discretionary environmental, health and safety statutes passed by the U.S. Congress since 1970. More closed and traditional styles of regulatory decisionmaking may survive within the U.S. as vestiges of a more deferential past.Even less than pure science, trans-science is not a universal enterprise. When scientists do reach agreement, it can be a powerful force that can even overcome political and national differences (Haas, 1989). However, when science is uncertain, as is typically the case in assessing the risks of toxic chemicals, there is more room for political factors to shape the way different countries interpret science in making policy decisions.     

Contending discourses in the electric and magnetic fields controversy: The social construction of EMF risk as a public problem

The issue of adverse health effects from electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) has been brewing for the last decade or so. While the epidemiological evidence persists in linking proximity-to-powerlines to a few forms of cancer, exposure and dose remain undefined, and no clear mechanism of action has been identified. Despite this scientific ambiguity, there are frequent calls for governmental action; and yet, there is no unanimity on what action is appropriate, even among those asserting that something ought to be done. This article analyzes the various ways that the EMF problem has been socially constructed through distinctive forms of public discourse and the sources of contention among these different forms. It should appeal to interpretive policy analysts and to those interested in the valuative assumptions behind policy claims. Those oriented exclusively to the technical side of EMF may find the interpretation offered here somewhat unsettling, however, since it relativizes many of the factual claims surrounding the issue. Attention is also given to the ways that multiple EMF discourses are accommodated in the absence of scientifically conclusive evidence.     

Human capital report cards for American states

A theoretical and empirical basis for comparing stocks of human capital in the American states is developed. Human capital report cards are measurement tools allowing states to benchmark their production and retention of the knowledges, skills and abilities required by economic development and public education policy making. A prototype report card is created from 12 indicators — seven of which theoretically capture a basic dimension of human capital and five of which measure complex human capital. Principal component factor analysis reveals that for the 50 states in the 1980s the concept of human capital is a multi-dimensional construct rather than a unidimensional one and that basic and complex factors do in fact distinguish the major cleavages among human capital measures. A further finding is that the relative positions of the 50 states can be plotted on the two dimensions with practical payoffs accruing to state and local planners.     

International institutions and the framing of domestic policies: The Kyoto Protocol and Canada's response to climate change

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol establishes an international institutional framework for domestic responses to climate change that links emission targets for developed countries to international market mechanisms. Although these flexible mechanisms allow developed countries some leeway in how they meet their commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, the protocol also establishes a normative framework that directs domestic policy responses along certain paths. Applying insights from sociological institutionalism and constructivism in international relations, this article argues first, that the climate change regime reflects and further institutionalizes the prevailing international normative structure in the environmental issue area, characterized as liberal environmentalism. Second, these norms, as embodied in the climate change regime, have enabled and constrained climate change policy development in Canada, one of the worlds largest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita. International norms can shape or redefine domestic interests, enable policies in conformity with those norms, and create normative pressures for change by linking with extant domestic and foreign policy norms. Uncovering this international institutional-domestic policy interaction resolves the paradox of Canada's promotion of commitments and mechanisms consistent with its domestic interests and institutional constraints, but eventual commitment to action well beyond what those constraints dictate. This commitment continues despite Kyoto's uncertain future. The findings also point to lacunae in the literature on regime compliance and effectiveness more broadly, especially its dominant rationalist variant.     

The senate agriculture committee produces a homeostat

Agricultural policy making between 1960 and 1973 is examined drawing on Herbert Simon's conception of procedural rationality. The basic structure of current agricultural policy evolved during the period studied. The paper suggests that policy and policy making interact narrowing the search for a law until it achieves a combination of provisions that is an equilibrium. The computational routines used in calculating consequences of provisions of legislation are extracted from the text of committee hearings and analyzed as a system of inequalities. The paper also discusses what satisficing means in this policy making process.     

Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: From theoretical inquiry to practical cases

This article examines the case for a participatory policy analysis. An idea advanced mainly by democratic and postpositivist theorists is increasingly becoming a practical concern. Criticizing conventional conceptions of science and expertise, theorists advocating participatory democracy argue that the conventional model of professionalism based on a practitioner-client hierarchy must give way to a more collaborative method of inquiry. While such arguments have largely remained in the domain of utopian speculation, recent experiences with a number of wicked policy problems have begun to suggest the viability, if not the necessity, of participatory research methods. Through two case illustrations of a wicked problem, the so-called Nimby Syndrome, the essay seek to demonstrate that collaborative citizen-expert inquiry may well hold the key to solving a specific category of contemporary policy problems. The article concludes with some observations on the possibilities of bringing participatory research more fully into mainstream policy science.     

Science and the climate change regime

Given rapidly increasing losses from extreme climate events, the world community already has a common interest in action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, this common interest is not well served through continued promotion of either mandatory (legally-binding) policies or do nothing policies by various participants in the regime established by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The common interest would be better served by a third way, comprised of voluntary no regrets policies that are commensurate with the limited political power of the regime and already have succeeded on small scales in reducing vulnerabilities to extreme climate events and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Both mandatory and do nothing policies, as well as the regime itself, have depended upon scientists for political support in the past. But scientists might better serve the common interest of the world community through support of a third way in the future.