Attitude Change and Policy Decisions: The Case of Norwegian Alcohol Policy

In a democracy, political decisions ought to be based on public opinion. In practice, however, the mechanisms connecting voter preferences and public policy are complex, and it appears that public opinion may be partly policy-shaping and partly shaped by policy. In this article, some of these mechanisms are discussed. The article presents, first, three models of public reactions to policy decisions. These models are then applied in an analysis of the liberal trends in Norwegian alcohol policy as well as attitudes towards this policy. The results are consistent with a "consumer model", where citizens evaluate public policy according to their preferences, as well as a "support model", where they tend to follow and support decisions made by political leaders. A "discontent model", where implementation brings about less acceptance of a policy, is not supported by the data.     

POLICY RESPONSES TO CITIZEN ATTITUDES

Though many studies have provided only limited support for the idea of policymaker "responsiveness," the present study indicates that constituents do have some impact on public policy decisions, though not directly. With the aid of data on decisionmaking of country property appraisers in Florida, I was able to demonstrate that constituency preferences affect policy decisions indirectly through the effect of decisionmaker attitudes, thus suggesting an intervening model of decisionmaking.
Specifically, I found that constituency tax preferences impacted on property appraiser tax attitude and through it on the property assessment ratio. More importantly, I was able to isolate some of the potential factors which accentuate those relationships posited by an intervening model of decisionmaking. In particular, I found that the more policymakers (the property appraisers) were immersed into their social and political context or engaged in "social interaction" activities the more likely they and their own attitudes were to be influenced by prevailing constituency tax sentiment.     

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.     

Recommending a scheme of reason: Political theory,policy science,and democracy

It is the task of policy science, as of political theory generally, to recommend a scheme of reason that will presumably result in better public decisions. This may seem profoundly undemocratic, for in a democracy, should not the people be free to think precisely as they please? Yet all political theory intimates an idea of political reason and unreason. The problem then is which ideal of reason to teach in the name of a policy science of democracy. Herein I compare three common schemes of reason: utilitarian calculation, liberal rationalism, and practical reason. My conclusion is that there is no reason to suppose that the capacity for the more public-spirited forms of deliberation is less widely distributed in the population than calculated self-interest, and that either liberal rationalism or practical reason, or some combination of the two, is more compatible with democracy than utilitarian calculation.     

The Negotiated Economy: Ideal and History*

In the negotiated economy an essential part of the allocation of resources is by definition conducted through institutionalized negotiations between independent decisionmaking centres in state, organizations and corporations. Institutionalized creation of consensus via campaign institutions and forced compromise via negotiating procedures and decisions are central characteristics of the negotiated economy. The article includes evidence to the fact that the present Danish economy is a negotiated economy. During a long historical process, a multi-centred and pluralist political structure has been formed and simultaneously the discursive and institutional basis for co-ordination of decisions made in autonomous organizations has been created. It is shown how today's wages policy, labour market policy, public expenditures policy and industrial policy are characterized by negotiation-based economic processes. It is argued that this historical development has far-reaching theoretical consequences. The institutional conditions presupposed in traditional economic theory for the ideal of optimal allocation of resources is enshrined in the constitutional interpretation of the distinction between the authority of the sovereign state and civil society. As a result of the evolvement of the negotiated economy these institutional conditions no longer exist. This development has made a myth of the ideal of optimal allocation of resources and challenges the interpretation of rationality in traditional economic theory.     

The paradox of policy analysis: If it is not used,why do we produce so much of it?

This article explores the apparent paradox that our society invests heavily in policy analysis when empirical studies, political science theory, and common wisdom all suggest that analysis is not used by policymakers to make better policy decisions. It offers a critique of the traditional view of policy analysis and presents an alternative view derived from contemporary literature on the policy process and decisionmaking. The alternative view suggests that there are legitimate uses for analysis other than the problem‐solving use originally envisioned but apparently rarely attained. The two views imply different patterns of use of analysis by legislative committees—a contrast that I subject to an empirical test. An examination of quantitative data on policy analysis use by congressional committees from 1985 to 1994 lends support for the alternative view. The research has two implications. First, despite its scientific origins, policy analysis may be a more effective instrument of the democratic process than of the problem‐solving process. Second, the profession of policy analysis may be in better shape than many who are calling for fundamental changes to its practice seem to believe. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Types of knowledge utilization of regulatory impact assessments: Evidence from Swiss policymaking

Ex ante policy appraisals, such as Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs), are promoted because they are expected to inform decisionmakers and, thus, to lead to better quality regulation. Such instrumental use is not the only possible use of RIAs. Ex ante policy appraisal can affect the policy process in various ways. However, a consolidated theory on the conditions for utilization of RIAs in the policy process has yet to be developed. In order to explore these conditions, we analyze three case studies of Swiss decisionmaking processes and apply concepts from knowledge utilization literature. In conclusion, we find that policy arenas matter more than the institutional context and design of RIA procedures. In line with previous literature, political use seems to be a prevalent type of utilization. Yet we find that, under specific conditions, RIAs also provide a basis for the optimization of policy designs (instrumental use), help improve interagency relations (policy‐process use), and may change how a policy issue is understood (conceptual use).     

Interagency information sharing: Expected benefits,manageable risks

The sharing of program information among government agencies can help achieve important public benefits: increased productivity; improved policy-making; and integrated public services. Information sharing, however, is often limited by technical, organizational, and political barriers. This study of the attitudes and opinions of state government managers shows that more than 8 in 10 judge information sharing to be moderately to highly beneficial. It also reveals specific concerns about the inherent professional, programmatic, and organizational risks. The study proposes a theoretical model for understanding how policy, practice, and attitudes interact and suggests two policy principles, stewardship and usefulness, to promote the benefits and mitigate the risks of sharing.     

Historical perspective and better regulatory governance: An agenda for institutional reform

Compared to economics, sociology, political science, and law, the discipline of history has had a limited role in the wide‐ranging efforts to reconsider strategies of regulatory governance, especially inside regulatory institutions. This article explores how more sustained historical perspective might improve regulatory decisionmaking. We first survey how a set of American regulatory agencies currently rely on historical research and analysis, whether for the purposes of public relations or as a means of supporting policymaking. We then consider how regulatory agencies might draw on history more self‐consciously, more strategically, and to greater effect. Three areas stand out in this regard – the use of history to improve understanding of institutional culture; reliance on historical analysis to test the empirical plausibility of conceptual models that make assumptions about the likelihood of potential economic outcomes; and integration of historical research methods into program and policy evaluation.     

Getting One's Way in Policy Debates: Influence Tactics Used in Group Decision-Making Settings

This study moves beyond traditional approaches to public administration and public policy decision making to consider how interpersonal influence tactics affect policy decisions in group decision-making settings. Decision makers reported their own use of interpersonal influence tactics to achieve policy objectives, as well as those used against them. Responses were compared to individual decisions made over the course of policy-formulation meetings. The results indicate that the most popular techniques were inspirational appeals and rational persuasion. The most effective techniques for influencing participants varied according to the type of decision to be made: During the visioning process, coalition tactics and inspirational appeals proved most effective; for more concrete decisions about current issues, rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, and consultation influenced decisions.     

The role of expectations and promises in land use decisionmaking

Land use disputes are often at their center disagreements about the expectations of different parties, public and private, concerning permissible land uses and activities. Expectations are influenced by numerous factors, from broad economic and social trends to specific public planning policies and decisions. One source of land use expectations are promises issued by public planning and decisionmaking bodies. Two types of promises arise: explicit promises (e.g. statements of intention found in an officially-adopted comprehensive plan, publicly issued resolutions, etc.) and tacit promises (e.g. created by a series or pattern of public decisions, or by the clear unwillingness of the public to take actions in the past where opportunities existed to do so). It is argued that public officials and planners should be concerned with promises and that they should be given some degree of moral consideration when debating and resolving land use conflicts. Other things being equal, public planning agencies and decisionmaking bodies ought to acknowledge that the expectations of individuals are influenced by such promises and seek to respect them. Private land use expectations based on public promises are not sacred, however, as many situations arise where land use officials are confronted with conflicting moral demands. Situations where public land use promises may need to be overruled or qualified are considered. At a minimum, public land use officials have an obligation to clarify expressions of land use policy so that the formation of false private land use expectations is minimized.     

Does personalization of officeholders undermine the legitimacy of the office? On perceptions of objectivity in legal decisionmaking

Public legitimation of legal decisionmaking can be promoted through various strategies. We examine strategies of legitimation that are premised on personalizing the public image of legal agents. A personalized public administration emphasizes individual decisionmakers and seeks legitimacy through familiarity with the character, identity, and virtues of individual agents, whereas a non-personalized public administration projects an ethos of technocratic decisionmaking, seeking legitimacy through institutional objectivity and impartiality. We conducted an experiment to examine the efficacy of personalization strategies in the context of a politically charged legal affair: the criminal cases involving the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. We focus on people's perceived objectivity of the office of the Israeli attorney general (AG), given exposure (vs. no exposure) to different types of personal information about the AG, and while manipulating the salience of contrasting decisions concerning Netanyahu (indicting him on several counts of corruption versus exculpating him in others). We find that exposure to personal information about the AG decreased the perceived objectivity of his office, compared to no exposure to personal information, regardless of the type of information, decision salience, and respondents' political leanings. Our findings, therefore, support the legitimating potential of the non-personalization of decisionmakers, and show that it pertains to people positioned as both “losers” and “winners” with regard the political impact of the decision. The study further reflects the capacity of nonabstract real-world, real-time, analyses to shed light on the drivers of public trust in legal decisionmaking in politically polarized contexts—an issue of pertinence in many contemporary democracies.     

Public Policy Failure or Historical Debacle? A Study of Eritrea's Relations With Ethiopia Since 1991

Public policy transcends the domain of domestic policies and encompasses or even determines the type of relations that countries build with each other. It is well known that policies are nothing but decisions of governments as formal authorization on the given issue at hand. In other words, policy is a sum total of decisions made by the authority and hence it involves what governments actually do and not what they intend to do. Public opinion is a powerful criterion especially in democracies. It is provided in the constitutions and the people's role in policymaking is confirmed through this. Political parties, mass media, newspapers, and such others claim to represent public opinion. Rationality is another criteria in policymaking in which the leadership takes supposedly rational decisions on different issues of concern particularly those relating to foreign affairs. The criteria on political and economic situation depends on the actions of politicians, the legacy of the past, the nature of government organizations/institutions, and the constraints posed by domestic economic situations and conditions. Although policymakers enjoy complete independence from external control, unfortunately Third World countries such as those in Africa are not free to make their policies due to various reasons such as interdependence, and the domestic political and economic situations, compelling them to take a cue from external factors or power centers. The many conceptual models of public policy offer a wide variety of understanding on how they can be applied to different countries and to different situations. In fact, most policies are a combination of rational planning, instrumentalism, interest group activity, elite preferences, systemic forces, game planning, public choice, political processes and institutional influences. However, at times we find not all of these may be applicable to all countries. It in effect depends on the rational calculations of the countries in question how they would make or have their policies consonant with their national interests. The case of Eritrea and Ethiopia is a classic example that fits into the above paradigm and in which to enquire how their policies varied in spite of being friendly neighbors but later turning into hostile foes. What went wrong and how? Was it a product of their policy failures or was it due to historical debacles? This article therefore is an attempt to explore the current state of relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia in the light of the above‐mentioned conceptual framework by showing how their mutual policies were not compatible enough to solidify their initial cordiality and friendliness. In order to do this a brief sketch of historical background is provided to help understand and analyze the impact it had on contemporary policies between them. The internal political dynamics and ideological doctrines of Eritrea are the focus of next discussion. The period of cordiality and later the period of hostility are discussed next. Finally, recent trends and future prospects are put forward.     

Legitimation as justification: Foregrounding public philosophies in explanations of gradual ideational change

In accounts of institutional change, discursive institutionalists point to the role of economic and political ideas in upending institutional stability and providing the raw material for the establishment of a new institutional setup. This approach has typically entailed a conceptualisation of ideas as coherent and monolithic and actors as almost automatically following the precepts of the ideas they hold and support. Recent theorising stresses how ideas are in fact composite and heterogeneous, and actors pragmatic and strategic in how they employ ideas in political struggles. However, this change of focus has, until recently, not included how foundational ideas of a polity, often referred to as ‘public philosophies’, are theorised to impact on institution-building. Drawing on French Pragmatic Sociology, and taking as a starting point recent efforts within discursive institutionalism to conceptualise the dynamic nature of public philosophies, this article seeks to foreground moral justification in accounts of ideational and institutional change. It suggests that public philosophies are reflexively used by actors in continual processes of normative justification that may produce significant policy shifts over time. The empirical relevance of the argument is demonstrated through an analysis of gradual ideational and institutional change in French labour market policy, specifically the development from the state-guaranteed minimum income scheme of 1988 to the neoliberal make-work-pay logic of the 2009 scheme, Revenu de solidarité active. The analysis shows that public and moral justifications have underpinned and gradually shaped these radical changes.     

Protecting the living: Managerialism and professional turf wars in risk regulatory death investigations

This paper demonstrates how general trends in the management of public institutions, and a specific turf war between the doctors and lawyers in Ontario, Canada, have combined to shape an important risk regulatory decisionmaking process: the coroner's inquest. Drawing on ethnographic evidence, I show how the priorities of managerialism, and the collateral effects of physician coroners battling with lawyers, have reduced the number of public inquests convened in Ontario by 80 per cent over a 20‐year period. Where many public safety decisions affecting the province's legal, policy, and physical environments were once made at public inquests, they appear now more likely to be made in private. The paper examines the implications of reduced public participation in the analysis of, and response to, death.     

NORMATIVE POLITICAL SCIENCE

The bad news is that critics of the quantitative movement in policy and political science are right (so far). Widely accepted quantitative models of politics promote cynicism and counter-productive uses of government power. Mainstream social science provides a perverse basis for policy analysis. The good news is that there is no sound scientific reason for the schism between so called "empirical" and "normative" theories of politics. Traditional theories of politics, which show how government power can be used to serve the public interest, can be quantified and tested as empirical theory. The resulting scientific normative theory provides a constructive foundation for policy analysis.     

Exploring How Institutional Arrangements Shape Stakeholder Influence on Policy Decisions: A Comparative Analysis in the Energy Sector

In recent years, there has been an expansion of efforts to include stakeholders in administrative policy making. Despite significant potential to improve policy decisions, empirical evidence suggests that not all participatory processes provide meaningful opportunities for stakeholders to shape policy and may even give the most powerful stakeholder groups disproportionate influence over policy decisions. This article argues that the institutional arrangements for stakeholder engagement—the rules and norms that determine which stakeholders can participate and how—affect stakeholders’ influence on policy decisions. This article uses state energy efficiency policy making as a context in which to compare how different institutional arrangements shape the ways in which stakeholders engage in and influence the policy process across two states, Connecticut and Maryland. Findings highlight that institutional arrangements can be used to increase participation, mitigate undue influence of industrial stakeholders, and increase the influence of public interest stakeholder organizations.     

POLITICAL CONDITIONS MOTIVATING LEGISLATORS' USE OF POLICY INFORMATION

While "research utilization" literature has focused on the limited use of policy research by policymakers, there has been l i t t l e attention directed at legislators1 use of policy research o r the importance of the decisionmaking context in explaining policy research use.
Relying on the research utilization literature and the legislative behavior literature, this paper examines the legislative setting as it relates to policy information use, and it outlines the conditions under which policy information might be used by legislators. Specifically, two types of legislator information searches are discussed–the constituent service search and policy formulating search. While there are many obstacles to policy information use–including cognitive and organizational ones–this paper focuses only on political conditions and political obstacles relating to legis- lators' use of policy information.     

Decision process models and the needs of policy-makers: Thoughts on the foreign policy interface

Many political scientists are not at all convinced that empirically verifiable generalizations about political behavior can ever be produced. There are thus many who believe that political scientists can never exert a significant impact upon the public policy-making process. Perhaps one way of narrowing the gap between the researcher and the policy-maker is to examine the public (foreign) policy decision-making process, pinpoint the leverage points within the process where social and political scientists (who engage in foreign policy analysis) might help, and then list the kinds and methods of analysis that would contribute the most to the process. The work of Harold D. Lasswell, James E. Anderson, E. S. Quade, William D. Coplin, and Charles F. Hermann can help us define the (foreign) policy-making process and locate the points at which scientific analysis can help the (foreign) policy-maker. The matching of these leverage points with types and instances of relevant analyses, as well as the methodologies necessary to carry out the analyses results in a matrix of decision tasks and research tasks which may be viewed as an agenda for the conduct of policy relevant research.The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or any other agency of the U.S. Government.     

Maximizing social equity as a pillar of public administration: An examination of cannabis dispensary licensing in Pennsylvania

Public administration upholds four pillars of an administrative practice: economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and social equity. The question arises, however, how do administrators balance effectiveness and social equity when implementing policy? Can the values contributing to administrative decisions be measured? This study leverages the expansion of medical cannabis programs in the states to interrogate these questions. The awarding of dispensary licenses in Pennsylvania affords the ability to determine the effect of social equity scoring on license award decisions, relative to criteria that represent the other pillars. The results show that safety and business acumen were the most important determining factors in the awarding of licenses, both effectiveness concerns. Social equity does not emerge as a significant determinant until the second round of licensing. This study then discusses the future of social equity provisions for cannabis policy, as well as what the findings mean for social equity in public administration.