Democracy and the policy sciences: A progress report

Editorial

Democracy and the policy sciences: A progress report     

Regulated restlessness: museums,liberal government and the historical sciences

The ways citizen participation and democracy are changing are poorly understood due to the dominance of theories inherited from the eioghteenth centruy: Democratic citizenship can be better understood if critical reflection is re-oriented around the games of concrete freedom here and now as recommended by Hannah Arendt, Ludwing Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Quentin Skinner. This orientation brings to light two distrinctive types of citizen freedom in the present: diverse forms of citizen participation and diverse practices of governance in which citizens participate.     

Understanding the education gap in immigration preferences across countries over time: A decomposition approach

The structure and dynamics of the education gap in immigration preferences are not well understood. Does the gap increase when the economy contracts? To what extent does the gap reflect labour market conflicts versus value polarization? Does the structure of the gap change with labour market and refugee shocks? I use European Social Survey data to decompose the gap into parts reflecting labour market position, social background, and value orientation, and explore how their importance in accounting for the gap change over time. I find no uniform trends in preferences or in the size of the gap, but the gap varies with the unemployment rate and the strength of trade unions. Moreover, positions in the labour market are more important for the gap in times of high unemployment, at the expense of the importance of value orientations. The results show the enduring importance of labour market conflicts for the gap.     

The narrative properties of ideology: the adversarial turn and climate skepticism in the USA

A central concern in policy studies is understanding how multiple, contending groups in society interact, deliberate, and forge agreements over policy issues. Often, public discourse turns from engagement into impasse, as in the fractured politics of climate policy in the USA. Existing theories are unclear about how such an “adversarial turn” develops. We theorize that an important aspect of the adversarial turn is the evolution of a group’s narrative into what can be understood as an ideology, the formation of which is observable through certain textual-linguistic properties. Analysis “of” these narrative properties elucidates the role of narrative in fostering (1) coalescence around a group ideology, and (2) group isolation and isolation of ideological coalitions from others’ influence. By examining a climate skeptical narrative, we demonstrate how to analyze ideological properties of narrative, and illustrate the role of ideological narratives in galvanizing and, subsequently, isolating groups in society. We end the piece with a reflection on further issues suggested by the narrative analysis, such as the possibility that climate skepticism is founded upon a more “genetic” meta-narrative that has roots in social issues far removed from climate, which means efforts at better communicating climate change science may not suffice to support action on climate change.     

政策执行研究三十年回顾--缘起、线索、途径和模型

政策执行研究领域自从1973年诞生以来,历经了三十年的发展,形成了三个转承、创生的研究途径和大量的理论模型,回应了公共管理当中的一个永恒主题:政策目标与政策实际效果之间差异的存在和如何消弭。     

Public Policy and Legitimacy: A historical policy analysis of the interplay of public policy and legitimacy

This article explores the interplay of local government policy and legitimacy from a broad postpositivist perspective where historical accounts and narratives are used in a complementary fashion. The basic assumption is that legitimacy is the product of satisfying felt needs and solving perceived problems. Health and social malaise problems and related policies of the past 120 years are analyzed in 50 Swedish municipalities. The analysis indicates that municipality policies respond to local problems only partly. Generally, local government policies responded dynamically to 'objective’ and perceived problems before the 1970s, but did not resolve the problems. Today’s legitimacy crisis could, to some extent, be explained by the discrepancy between high expectations created in the policy discourse and the central and local government’s incapacity to offer sustainable solutions to ongoing problems. It is suggested that if history is considered more seriously in public policy making it could help policy makers and citizens readjust expectations, illuminate the limits and prospects for public policy, and identify ways to restore legitimacy. Moreover, legitimacy could be restored if more realistic policies are worked out and if a new division of power between the levels of government is introduced.     

Priest and jester in the policy sciences: Developing the focus of inquiry

Conclusion Once the tension between priest and jester has been recognized, it becomes possible not only to keep it alive in developing the focus of inquiry, but also to seek a better balance (or imbalance) between the two. Yet, as Ron Brunner has pointed out (1984), an editor is rightly constrained by others - contributors, reviewers, colleagues. Helping to develop the focus of inquiry means not only taking initiative and staking out directions, but also responding to the spontaneous initiatives of others and encouraging them in their directions. That policy of a journal points to a desirable condition of inquiry and anticipates a desirable, even if hardly imaginable, condition of public life (cf. Schön, 1983, ch. 10).The most renowned of jesters, Lear's Fool, inhabits the margins of a world marked by delusion, disguise, deception, and betrayal; he would fain learn to lie, (I. iv. 173) but his wit, through riddle and paradox, instead persistently conveys an unwanted truth. The jester becomes not just a source of amusement to his master, but a pestilent gall (I. iv. 110). As an apparently ordered and rational world turns to chaos and excess, however, the Fool paradoxically remains constant (II. iv. 75–84). Those who will abandon and betray the old King are those who appear most coldly rational; indeed, it is the jester who is the most reliable of counsellors, enigmatically offering wisdom. The jester brings vitality and wit to make us laugh. Yet the comic mood of the jester's clowning only sets in sharper relief something else we know.The jester has a serious side and allows us - if we will but look and listen - to laugh at ourselves, to see ourselves as others see us, to take that crucial step in developing the focus of inquiry whereby we expose ourselves to ourselves. Douglas Torgerson

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The promise of expertise: Walter Lippmann and the policy sciences

Walter Lippman addressed over his lifetime many of the questions raised still in the policy sciences about the proper role for the social scientist in the policy process, the potential contributions of various disciplines to an understanding of the issues, the kinds of circumstances most likely to nurture excellent policy analysis and the means whereby both a narrow elite and a wider public can be well informed about critical subjects and policy options. This article examines Lippmann's intellectual formation to deal with these questions and his reflections on institutions designed to foster policy analysis as well as the proper training of a policy expert. The article concludes with an examination of Lippmann's career as a practitioner in the policy world, and especially as a bridge between different communities.     

Think tanks and strategic policy-making: the contribution of think tanks to policy advisory systems

Think tanks have proliferated in most Western democracies over the past three decades and are often considered to be increasingly important actors in public policy. Still, their precise contribution to public policy remains contested. This paper takes the existing literature in a new direction by focusing on the capacity of think tanks to contribute to strategic policy-making and assessing their particular role within policy advisory systems. We propose that strategic policy-making capacity requires three critical features: high levels of research capacity, substantial organizational autonomy and a long-term policy horizon. Subsequently, we assess the potential of think tanks to play this particular role in policy-making, using empirical evidence from structured interviews with a set of prominent Australian think tanks.     

Precedents,parliaments, and foreign policy: historical analogy in the House of Commons vote on Syria

Abstract

This analysis investigates the role of historical analogies in the influence that parliaments have in foreign policy. Our empirical focus is the UK Parliament’s unusual opposition to the Prime Minister on UK involvement in Syria in 2013. The vote challenges many conventional expectations about the role of parliament in security affairs. Important in this vote were lessons learned and strategically used from UK participation in the intervention of Iraq in 2003. This argument is developed theoretically based on research on historical analogies: parliaments, ‘learn’ (primarily negative) lessons about past foreign policy events which guide parliamentary preferences and procedures and can enhance parliaments’ role in subsequent foreign policy. The article contributes to research on analogies by extending the logic to lessons on process. This use of precedents can offer more structurally oriented perspectives that translate critical junctures into reforms in procedures and policy-making practices.     

Governance in Crisis and withering of the welfare state: the legacy of the policy sciences

The introductory essay to this special issue on Governance in Crisis has three objectives. Firstly, it tries to show that current dilemmas of governance in advanced industrial Western nations can be analysed within the common framework of the thesis of the withering of the modern welfare state. Secondly, it argues that the policy sciences have a legacy of problem-oriented and value-conscious scholarship, bestowed by Lasswell and others, which can and should be taken up in the analysis of the comprehensive problems of governance confronting advanced industrial nations. Thirdly, it considers the requirement that the policy sciences go significantly beyond a managerial perspective and take up the timely but challenging task of linking up problem-orientation to contextuality. Contributions to this issue are seen to constitute a promising step in this direction.     

Pretexts and US foreign policy: the war on terrorism in historical perspective

This article analyzes the way that US foreign policy élites have used pretexts to manage public opinion. Policymakers, it is argued, often seize upon threatening external events, and use these events to create a favorable political climate in which to “sell” policies of militarization and external expansion to the public. The article argues that the Bush administration has used the threat of terrorism as a pretext to implement a wide range of policies that had been decided upon in advance of the 9/11 attacks. It also argues that the recent uses of pretexts by the Bush administration have strong historical precedents: extended case studies of pretexts are presented for the events surrounding the Korea crisis of 1950 and the Afghanistan crisis of 1979–1980, as well as the more recent War on Terrorism.     

On the uses of econometric models: A guide for policy makers

This paper reviews the evidence on ex ante and ex post forecasting with econometric models, considering in particular the role of human judgment in improving forecast accuracy. The importance of human judgment in econometric forecasting and the general superiority of ex ante over ex post forecasts provide evidence of model misspecification, which casts doubt on the validity of econometric policy simulations. An inadequate basis for selection among alternative models with differing policy implications undermines further the utility of these models in policy analysis and in testing hypotheses. Despite this record of performance macroeconometric models thrive and are widely used in policy analysis. Some reasons for their survival and importance in policy are suggested, and guidelines for the use of econometric models in the policy process are given.     

A salt on the land: A narrative analysis of the controversy over irrigation-related salinity and toxicity in California's San Joaquin Valley

A narrative network analysis of the seeming paralysis of efforts to deal with the problem of toxic elements in agricultural drainage in California's San Joaquin Valley shows irrigation agencies to be caught in a dilemma. Despite pressures to reduce uncertainty about treatment methods, reducing this uncertainty risks increased political polarization over agricultural subsidies. As a result, policy-makers are reluctant to move in any action-forcing direction, and continue to order further studies. We sketch out those areas of contention that must be addressed if real progress is to be made, demonstrating that the issues are primarily organizational and political rather than technical. We also discuss our experience in presenting these findings, along with our recommendations for structural separation of drainage functions from present irrigation agencies, to the relevant policy audience.     

State institutions, political power and social policy choices: Reconstructing the origins of Nordic models of social policy

Abstract.  The origins of the Nordic social policy model(s) need to be viewed broadly and historically from its late nineteenth-century initiation to the immediate postwar period (1940s to the early 1960s), when a social democratic model began to consolidate. In reference to the alternate social policy traditions of British poor relief and German occupational insurance, this article analyzes the sociopolitical contexts that finally prevented Scandinavian states from developing similarly, instead enabling development of universalistic social policy. The historical narratives are arranged with respect to four analytical aspects: policy development; the configuration of state institutions; the strength of liberal, conservative and leftist power blocs; and intra-Nordic divergence in all these respects. Such an approach integrates state-centred and power-resources-focused analyses of Nordic welfare.     

Merging content analysis and the policy sciences: A system to discern policy-specific trends from news media reports

In this article we set out to bridge a surprising methodological gap between two time-honored research traditions – news media content analysis and the policy sciences analytic framework. Lasswell, a recognized pioneer of both the method and the framework, discussed the mutual benefits of each decades ago. But few researchers, if any, have formally linked the two. To that end, in this article we (1) make the case for using news media content analysis to inform research studies using the policy sciences analytic framework; (2) introduce an original content analysis categorical system for that purpose; (3) demonstrate that system with a study of 90 national news articles about the stratospheric ozone hole; and (4) compare our system to others used to examine news content. We report that our system, used by human coders, is well geared to describing and mapping trends in the social process surrounding the development of the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty during the intelligence gathering and promotion phases encompassed by our data sample. We argue that other content analysis systems fall short – in structure and purpose – of meeting the promise ours holds to the policy scientist.