Frontiers of social policy in Europe and America

The cumulative growth of social programs and public income distribution is leading to a grave need for policy harmonization, i.e., efforts to take into account interdependencies across formerly distinct areas of public and private activity. This need is particularly severe with regard to income support programs, labor market relations and taxation systems. While any fundamental backlash against the welfare state is unlikely, so too is any comprehensive solution through negative income taxation or other abstract forms of economic planning. Prospects for coping with problems of policy harmonization differ among nations, but all countries face the challenge of building consensus around noneconomic values lying at the heart of social policy. Without this cushion of legitimacy, increased policy complexity and higher public expectations threaten to overwhelm democratic political systems.     

The policy implementation process

There is an implicit assumption in most policy studies that once a policy has been formulated the policy will be implemented. This assumption is invalid for policies formulated in many Third World nations and for types of policies in Western societies. Third World governments tend to formulate broad, sweeping policies, and governmental bureaucracies often lack the capacity for implementation. Interest groups, opposition parties, and affected individuals and groups often attempt to influence the implementation of policy rather than the formulation of policy.A model of the policy implementation process is presented. Policy implementation is seen as a tension generating force in society. Tensions are generated between and within four components of the implementing process: idealized policy, implementing organization, target group, and environmental factors. The tensions result in transaction patterns which may or may not match the expectations of outcome of the policy formulators. The transaction patterns may become crystallized into institutions. Both the transaction patterns and the institutions may generate tensions which, by feedback to the policymakers and implementors, may support or reject further implementation of the policy.By application of the model, policymakers can attempt to minimize disruptive tensions which can result in the failure of policy outcomes to match policy expectations.     

Valuation in the environmental policy process

Expert valuation, a process used to determine how much stakeholders value eco-system aspects, places experts as intermediaries for public-preference input into the environmental policy process. While the rise and refinement of expert valuation might capture ecosystem values more comprehensively, two dilemmas are also worth of consideration: (1) will expert valuation and benefit cost analysis supplant democratic expression; and (2) will refinement of expert valuation still leave the ecosystem under valued? This article reorients the current problem from focusing on the need to refine methods to capture more ecosystem benefits to consider how valuation can contribute to a set of more democratic processes that allow the public to contribute to and consider a broader range of policy options.     

Social identities in the policy process

Policy Sciences - This paper introduces social identity theory and self-categorization theory to policy process research. Drawing from the prominent and widely acknowledged psychological social...     

Neutrality and advocacy in policy research

The naive scientism which has dominated federal policy research and most policy research institutes has become a self-blinding dogma, an armchair philosophy which fabricates and distorts reality and has failed at its task of understanding our social and economic problems. Broader approaches are needed which do not artificially isolate and arbitrarily quantify selected factors but examine them in their social and historical context. The vain search for “objectivity” should be replaced by an honest avowal of the interests being served. The sanctimonious assertion of an undefinable “public interest” should be replaced by a definable fairness doctrine setting forth the status of the draft and final reports, project finances, and institute and sponsor controls. Such a doctrine could provide the basis for a new professional consensus and self-regulation in the policy research community, and for new IRS tax regulations governing nonprofit research institutions.     

The one-child policy in China

Although the government of the People's Republic of China manifested sporadic concern about the nation's rapid population growth beginning at the time of the 1953 national census, it was not until the 1970s that a small family with a maximum of 2 children began to be promoted through a national campaign of education and persuasion. With the subsequent advent of the 1-child policy in 1979, the family planning campaign became a campaign for population planning in which the government no longer limited itself to contraceptive education and distribution, but began to intervene in human reproduction to accomodate it to material production. China's population policy, despite setbacks and delays, has had notable results. No other predominantly peasant society has achieved such a significant fertility decline in such a short time, but the price has been high. The problems have included confrontation with ancient cultural traditions, interference of the government in the most intimate aspects of family life, the sacrifice of a natural desire for children, evasion of marriage and birth registration, and even female infanticide. The incentives and sanctions for the 1-child policy have been primarily economic in nature, but widespread coercion and abuse have been reported. Although China's fertility has declined steadily since 1971, the fall was considerably greater in the cities, where the expense of children and critical housing shortages have effectively discouraged childbearing. In the countryside the dismantling of the communes and substitution of a system of family responsibility for agricultural production have had a strong pronatalist effect, reinforcing the desire for children as a means of old age security. The costs of children in rural areas are insignificant compared to the cities, housing is less crowded, and fertility sanctions are harder to enforce. Rural discontent and resistence to government family planning policy nevertheless became so acute that it was probably a factor in the 1984 relaxation of the 1-child policy in certain rural areas. Despite considerable success, the Chinese government has not met its family planning goals. 32.3 million couples, or 18% of fertile-aged couples, have expressed willingness to have only 1 child. The 32.3 million include 36% of urban and 11% of rural couples. According to a July 1988 fertility survey, the crude birth rate dropped to 8.84/1000, but the rates of early marriage and adolescent pregnancy were increasing. A major problem in the next 5 years will be the arrival at marriageable age of the large cohorts born around the time of the Cultural Revolution.     

Understanding and influencing the policy process

This essay translates some of the underlying logic of existing research of policy processes into a set of strategies for shaping policy agendas and influencing policy development and change. The argument builds from a synthesized model of the individual and a simplified depiction of the political system. Three overarching strategies are introduced that operate at the policy subsystem level: developing deep knowledge; building networks; and participating for extended periods of time. The essay then considers how a democratic ethic can inform these strategies. Ultimately, the success or failure of influencing the policy process is a matter of odds, but these odds could be changed favorably if individuals employ the three strategies consistently over time. The conclusion contextualizes the arguments and interprets the strategies offered as a meta-theoretical argument of political influence.     

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.     

西方的政策研究机构:历史、现状及其对中国的启示

政策研究机构是政府决策体制的一个重要组成部分。西方国家的政策研究机构先后经过了萌芽阶段、初创阶段和发展阶段 ,如今已深入西方社会各个领域 ,成了政府决策不可或缺的有力助手。西方的政策研究机构有官方、半官方和民间三种。通过研究西方政策研究机构的历史与现状 ,我们可以从中得到许多有益的启示 ,如 :谋断分离应成为政府决策体制改革的一项重要内容 ,政策研究必须有一定的独立性 ,要大力发展非官方的政策研究机构 ,政策研究机构要充分借用外力 ,政策研究机构内部要有合理的智能结构     

Is there a third-world policy process?

The introduction to this special issue asks what is distinctive about public policy making in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In field after field, some political scientists have argued for distinguishing Western polities from developing polities, whereas other have argued for inclusive treatment. The essay assesses these divergent perspectives as they relate to public policy making. On the one hand, it is clear that the systemic frameworks of policy - the institutions, participants, resources, the weight of the state relative to the society, and the capacity of the state to work its will - all vary as between developing and Western countries. The same is true for the scope of policy activity, the configuration of issues, and the actual content of policy. On the other hand, the policy process - the constraints, the ripe moments that produce innovation, the tendency for policy to have unanticipated consequences, and so on - appears to display regularities that transcend the categories of Western or Third World state. The essay goes on to explain the divergences of policy in terms of disparate access to resources, levels of economic development, and social patterns. The convergence of process is explained in terms of the deeper exigencies of human problem solving in highly structured contexts.     

The power of policy networks in authoritarian regimes: Changing environmental policy in China

In this article, I examine how civil society organizations (CSOs) in China created policy networks among government officials to change environmental policies. I contend that these networks work in similar ways to those in democracies, despite the focus in the literature on how policymaking in authoritarian regimes lacks societal participation. China adopted strict regulations to control CSOs by requiring registration with a supervisory agency. However, CSOs exploit the regulations to use the supervisory agency as an access point to policymakers whom they otherwise could not reach. I use case studies to demonstrate how the strategies used to construct policy networks determined their success in changing policy. This finding represents an initial step in theorizing bottom‐up sources of policymaking in authoritarian regimes given that these regimes all create mechanisms for government control over CSOs, have difficulty accessing good information for policymaking from society, and a policy process formally closed to citizen participation.