The culture of risk regulation: Responses to environmental disasters

Disasters challenge the equilibrium of regulatory regimes and make policy shifts more likely. Using an institutional theory of cultural biases and the concept of cultural “surprise”, this article analyses the direction and intensity of media argumentation in respect of policy shifts. Instead of assuming a demand for greater State intervention after dramatic focusing events, as suggested by other theoretical frames, cultural theory opens a variety of options that range from embracing regulatory responses from different cultural biases to the radicalization of current, but failing, instruments. The analysis of media reaction to the environmental disasters caused by the oil spills of Exxon Valdez (United States), Erika (France) and Prestige (Spain) shows that the demand for more hierarchy does not monopolize the overall argumentation. The change demanded often implies a radicalization of a particular prevalent view where the associated institutional setting is failing its supporters.     

The interaction problem in policy analysis

A problem little noted in the literature on policy analysis is that analysis can interact with problems to make them different and more difficult to solve than they would be without analysis. Four varieties of interaction can be distinguished. All are rooted in the methods and assumptions of economics, the discipline that now dominates federal analysis, and particularly in its limited capacity to set policy goals. To prevent interaction, analysts would have to be able to set goals with greater independence so that aims were not swayed by the analytic process. They would need either their own theory of ends or closer political guidance.     

Does the policy cycle reflect the policymaking approach in Ghana?

Based on two cases involving 60 interviews and secondary evidence, this paper investigated whether Ghana's policymaking approach accorded with the policy cycle. The evidence showed that the Ghana industrial policy was largely compliant with the model. But the free senior high school policy bore little resemblance to it. Factors that determined whether or not policymaking followed the policy cycle included the salience of the issue, the sponsor of the issue, the political environment at the time, and the timing of the introduction of the issue. Four conclusions can be drawn from the Ghanaian evidence. First, the rough edges of the policy cycle can be trimmed and applied as a best fit model rather than a best practice model in any jurisdiction. Second, the policy cycle like other policy process theories should not be written off as inappropriate or inefficacious simply because practice failed to adhere to one or two out of the several elements of the theory. Third, an integrated policy process model is likely to be more efficacious than a single one, but there is inattention to such an idea. Finally, drawing lessons from policy process theories is a neglected area, which needs to be emphasized.     

Rational Choice and the Policy Sciences

This article discusses the possibility of applying deductively based rational choice theories as analytical tools for understanding complex policy problems. It surveys the basic assumptions, axioms and rules of interpretation on which the theory is constructed and some of its important findings. Two of its more interesting results, that of the "paradox of voting" and of the "prisoner's dilemma," are presented and applied herein.     

Kritik und Neubewertung politischer Repräsentation: vom Hindernis zur Möglichkeitsbedingung politischer Freiheit

In participatory democratic theory we see a positive reassessment of political representation these days. Whereas until recently representation has at best been accepted as an unavoidable substitute for direct democracy, newer theories regard representation as constitutive for democratic political action. Such a turn in the assessment of representation has become possible by dismissing an autonomy-oriented concept of democracy that goes back to Rousseau, and of which a modified version is represented by Jürgen Habermas today. The new interpretations understand representation not in the sense of an as perfect as possible transmission of the will of the represented to the representative, but as a relation of difference which allows for plural acting and political judgment in the first place. Although the discussion of these theories shows that they can offer an interesting theoretical reconstruction of representative democracy, they remain very vague in specifiying concrete possibilities of political action and democratic participation for the represented.     

Party Government and the "Cohesive Power of Public Plunder"

We argue that party government in the U.S. House of Representatives rests on two pillars: the pursuit of policy goals and the disbursement of particularistic benefits. Existing theories of party government argue that the majority party in the House is often successful in biasing policy outcomes in its favor. In the process, it creates "policy losers" among its own members who nevertheless support their party on procedural votes. We posit that the majority party creates an incentive for even the policy losers to support a procedural coalition through judicious distribution of particularistic benefits that compensates policy losers at a rate commensurate with the policy losses that they suffer. We evaluate our theory empirically using the concept of "roll rates" in conjunction with federal domestic outlays data for the period 1983–96. We find that, within the majority party, policy losers are favored in the distribution of "pork barrel" spending throughout this period.     

Politicized CSR: How corporate political activity (mis-)uses political CSR

In this article, we posit that corporate political activities (CPA) such as lobbying make use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to advance instrumental goals. We juxtapose the theoretical foundations of the normative concept of political CSR and the strategic notion of nonmarket strategy to show that they are in opposition conceptually regarding the role of corporations in public policy. Using a systematic theoretical comparison along seven dimensions, we discuss the juxtapositions and identify the common ground of the two theories. Building on examples from the alcohol industry, we describe how CPA uses instrumental CSR to advance goals in public policy—we call this politicized CSR. Hence, we illustrate the shift from political to politicized CSR, a misuse of CSR for purposes of CPA, and discuss consequences for the theory and practice of public affairs and CSR.     

No Solutions,Only Trade‐Offs? Evidence about Goal Conflict in Street‐Level Bureaucracies

Theories of goal conflict suggest that public organizations confront two possibilities when they face multiple policy goals: (1) organizations attain synergy among lower‐order, instrumental goals in order to achieve higher‐order objectives, or (2) organizations face a zero‐sum trade‐off among goals. Implicit in this debate is the proposition that trade‐off is more likely when performance toward the attainment of multiple goals is measured with substantively exclusive metrics and under varying environments of task difficulty. This research examines which of these theories appears to explain the implementation and interaction of multiple policy goals in the context of Georgia public high schools. The findings demonstrate the highly contingent nature of goal synergy and trade‐off. While goal synergy is possible in the interaction of multiple lower‐order goal attainment, more robust gains can be made toward a higher‐order objective by focusing on one particular lower‐order goal rather than an all‐inclusive approach to goal attainment.     

From “smart regulation” to “regulatory arrangements”

When regulators are faced with practical challenges, policy instrument choice theories can help them find the best solution. However, not all such theories are equally helpful. This paper aims to offer regulators a better alternative to the current policy instrument choice theories. We will specifically address the shortcomings of “smart regulation theory” and present an alternative that keeps the best of that theory while remediating its weak points. Some authors (Böcher and Töller 2003; Baldwin and Black 2008) say that smart regulation theory does not address institutional issues, compliance type-specific response, performance-sensitivity and adaptability of regulatory regime. We have resolved these problems by merging the smart regulation theory with the policy arrangement approach and the policy learning concept. We call the resulting approach “regulatory arrangement approach” (RAA). The central idea of the RAA is to constrain the almost infinite “smart” regulatory options by: the national policy style; adverse effects of policy arrangements of adjoining policies; the structure of the policy arrangement of the investigated policy and competence dependencies of other institutions. The reduction can be so drastic that the potential governance capacity falls below the smart regulation threshold. In other words, no smart regulatory arrangement can be developed in that institutional context unless policy learning occurs. In addition, a “smart” regulatory arrangement is no guarantee that the policy will succeed. For this reason, the performance of the regulatory arrangement is measured and evaluated. Performance below a certain threshold indicates that the regulatory arrangement needs to be adapted, which then results in policy learning. We illustrate the usefulness of this new approach with a secondary analysis of the Flemish sustainable forest management policy.     

Ethnography of a policy process: a case study of land redistribution in Bangladesh

Throughout the developing world, Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are involved in various aspects of an increasing number of policy interventions. The donor community has lent considerable support to this strategy. One of the key assumptions behind the strategy is that the greater involvement of NGOs in policy processes will result in more resources being distributed to the poor, and will also facilitate the establishment of a policy process which is more inclusive and egalitarian. Here the involvement of NGOs in an important land redistribution policy initiative is used to examine both these assumptions. While there is strong evidence that more land was redistributed to the poor as a result of NGO involvement, the actual mechanism or process for deciding the distribution of land was not found to be all inclusive or completely egalitarian. This ambivalence serves as a timely critique to the naive optimism and simplified assumptions underpinning development thinking and practice. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Governance for Sustainability

Environmental policies and responses are strongly influenced by a government's knowledge and understanding of environmental problems, its assessment of their severity, the expert opinions available to it on the size of the response needed, its understanding of the driving forces leading to environmental deterioration and the influence of prevailing theories and paradigms. Environmental policy cannot furthermore exist in a policy vacuum. Environmental goals may or may not be strongly weighted compared to other societal goals especially economic goals. All these influences have major bearing on the approach taken by governments to environmental policy.     

Do populist values or civic values drive support for referendums in Europe?

Representative democracy gives voters the right to influence who governs but its influence on policy making is only indirect. Free and fair referendums give voters the right to decide a policy directly. Elected representatives usually oppose referendums as redundant at best and as undermining their authority at worst. Democratic theorists tend to take electing representatives as normal and as normatively superior. The nominal association of popular decision making and populism has strengthened this negative view. Public opinion surveys show substantial support for holding referendums on important issues. Two major theories offer contrasting explanations for popular support for referendums; they reflect populist values or a commitment to the civic value of participation. This innovative paper tests an integrated model of both theories by the empirical analysis of a 17-country European survey. There is substantial support for all three civic hypotheses: referendum endorsement is positively influenced by attitudes towards participation, democratic ideals and whether elected representatives are perceived as responsive. By contrast, there is no support for populist hypotheses that the socioeconomically weak and excluded favour referendums and minimal support for the effect of extreme ideologies. The conclusion shows that most criticisms of referendums also apply to policy making by elected representatives. While referendums have limits on their use, there is a democratic argument for holding such ballots on major issues to see whether or not a majority of voters endorse the choice of their nominal representatives.     

Public Managers in Integrated Services Collaboratives: What Works Is Workarounds

Public managers in local integrated services collaboratives find that commitment to local partnership goals sometimes requires evading policy directives that are imposed by legislation or bureaucratic superiors. Using data that reveal what is often concealed, the author finds that these workarounds can be defined and identified and that they often revolve around central features of policy rather than marginal details. Workarounds emerge in the space created by certain managerial strategies and dispositions: treating directives as starting points for negotiation, using performance to justify discretion and manage risk, establishing local collaborative goals as an alternative locus of accountability, and distinguishing front‐door services from back‐door accounting. By aggregating data from clusters of workaround stories, researchers and practitioners can (1) identify policy flaws in need of repair, (2) illuminate tensions in the integrated service ideal, and (3) inform the enduring normative debate over administrative discretion and public accountability.     

The Logic of Violence

To date, there is no synthetic, general theory of violence able to integrate the less complete theories of violent behaviour. There is little agreement among researchers about the causes of violence (not to mention what to do about it) and the field has become vast in terms of literature. This paper reviews theories of violence, mostly from sociology, political science and psychology both at the level of the individual and the collective. The paper is divided in two parts: the first deals with theories that see violence as a reaction, the second deals with those theories that see violence as a mean to attain goals.     

The transition from traditional to postpositivist policy analysis: A role for Q‐methodology

This paper suggests that a gap exists between policy theorists who are formulating postpositivist models of analysis and the beliefs of practitioners whose labor is guided by the traditional hand of positivism. The tension between postpositivist theory and traditional practice has created a dialectic that contributes to both, but the postpositivist theory is not likely, for reasons discussed in the paper, to spark a revolution in practice. The paper maintains that members of the discipline's intellectual infrastructure can assist the evolution to a policy analysis paradigm that includes elements of postpositivism by introducing incremental changes in practice that reinforce it. For this purpose, one important incremental change is the introduction of Q‐methodology as a common tool for policy analysis. The use of Q‐methodology—a method for the study of subjectivity—would help subvert the assumptions of dominant objectivism that underlie the R‐methods typically learned and used by traditional analysts and could influence analysts to adopt a postpositivist perspective of their work. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Role of Political Ideology in the Structural Design of New Governance Agencies

This paper employs theories of structural politics and delegation to develop a set of propositions about the legislative delegation of authority to quasi-governmental entities, known as "quangos." Legislators have incentives to condition their choice of structure for an organization charged with implementing policy on their own political attitudes toward "good government." The quasi-independence of quangos provides credibility for legislators to commit to a process that takes policy making out of their hands while creating a structure that increases the likelihood of achieving their policy goals. Theoretical implications are empirically examined using data on the financial autonomy of Dutch public bodies. The results support the argument that it is important to consider politicians' ideologies directly in governance studies because they form the key component of structural politics.     

Political science,political ideas and rhetoric

The article reviews ‘ideational’ analysis and theory in political science. It argues that this is an important area of research limited by lack of a clear sense of what ideas in politics are and of how to analyse them as directly as possible. It is argued that political science should learn from the ‘rhetorical turn’ in various areas of the social sciences, developing ways, appropriate to political science, of analysing the language, rhetoric and argumentation of political and policy discourse in its governmental contexts. Such an approach rests on a strong sense of the dynamic, contested and creative nature of political activity.     

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.     

The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization,Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion, intervention and statebuilding have once again been explicit features of American foreign policy. Current assessments of this return, however, overlook both their longer term history and their roots in liberal (and not just American) ideology. The contradictions and dynamics entailed in the liberal philosophy of history have already played themselves out once before, in the modernization theories and policies of the early Cold War period. Despite their academic and political failures at the time, the same assumptions now underpin democracy promotion in the post-Cold War period and show signs of the same dynamics of failure. In this two part essay, I argue that the repetition of such counterproductive policies constitutes a recurring ‘tragedy of liberal diplomacy’ in which the shaping of US foreign policy by assumptions deeply rooted in the liberal philosophy of history plays a central part in producing the very enemies that policy is designed to confront and transform.     

How to argue about the new public management

Hood and Jackson's (1991) distinction between administrative argument and administrative philosophy has been largely overlooked in writings on NPM. This seemingly subtle distinction flows from the more obvious one between “practical argument” and “social scientific explanation.” These terms refer to different scholarly practices. Practical reasoning is a highly-developed form of scholarship in law, public policy, and political theory. Explanation is a highly-developed scholarly activity in political science and related disciplines. The fact that practical argument and explanation are, in principle, complementary scholarly activities in practically-oriented fields such as public management is not a reason to overlook the distinction between them. If scholars writing on NPM made more of this distinction, it might prove easier for their readers to see precisely how social science explanations and practical arguments are interrelated. Discussion of how well claims have been supported would then be facilitated. Also, it would be easier for writers to decide how to engage the NPM literature. Not only would the issues be clearer, but it would also be easier to discuss the merits of alternative approaches to tackling them. If more weight is given to the distinction between practical argumentation and social scientific research by scholars of NPM, an urgent question is: how should the scholarly practice of practical argumentation be characterized?