A complete general theory of planning is impossible

The essay defines the domain of planning theory and proposes two criteria—brevity and neutrality — for a prime table displaying the basic propositions of a complete general theory. I argue—on sociological rather than on formal epistemological grounds—that these two criteria cannot be met simultaneously. Even the most aggressive development of the policy sciences is not likely, therefore, to culminate in a complete general theory of planning.     

Values, Diversity and the Justification of EU Institutions

Liberal theories of justice typically claim that political institutions should be justifiable to those who live under them – whatever their values. The more such values diverge, the greater the challenge of justifiability. Diversity of this kind becomes especially pronounced when the institutions in question are supranational. Focusing on the case of the European Union, this article aims to address a basic question: what kinds of values should inform the justification of political institutions facing a plurality of value systems? One route to an answer is provided by John Rawls, who famously distinguishes between comprehensive and political values, and defends the exclusion of the former from the foundations of a political theory of justice. This article questions the tenability of the Rawlsian solution, and draws attention to an alternative twofold conceptual distinction: that between minimal and non-minimal and between substantive and procedural values. Minimal values are meant to be as independent as possible of controversial conceptions of the good and views of the world, regardless of whether these are comprehensive or purely political. It will be argued that their endorsement may thus further specify the nature of what should be shared in order to justify political institutions in conditions of pluralism. In order to refine further the account of such a basis of justification, two variants of minimalism will be presented according to whether they invest substantive or procedural values. Substantive values qualify the property of an outcome; procedural values qualify the property of a procedure. The latter part of the article consists of a 'face-off' between minimal proceduralism and minimal substantivism, considering reasons in favour of the adoption of each. The result, we suggest, is a helpful reorientation of the political dimension of the value debates to which the multiplicity of values amid contemporary European horizons give rise.     

Accountability in the EU's para-regulatory state: The case of the Economic and Monetary Union

This article revisits Majone's famous argument about accountability in the regulatory state in reference to the European Union's (EU) Economic and Monetary Union. We show that the EU has entered the stage of a “para-regulatory state” marked by increasing EU regulation in areas linked to core state powers. Despite the redistributive and politicized nature of these policy areas, the EU's “para-regulatory state” has continued to rely on its regulatory model of accountability, focused on decisionmaking processes, and interest mediation. In line with Majone, we describe the model as procedural and contrast it to substantive accountability – which is necessary when regulation has clear redistributive implications. Using two case studies from fiscal policy and monetary affairs, we illustrate the predominance of procedural accountability as exercised by the European Parliament and EU Courts. We complement the empirical analysis with a normative discussion of how substantive accountability could potentially be rendered in both fields.     

Coercive versus cooperative policies: Comparing intergovernmental mandate performance

Cooperative policies hold out promise of an improvement over coercive mandates as ways to enhance implementation of intergovernmental programs. By treating subordinate governments as regulatory trustees and emphasizing substantive compliance, the cooperative mandates avoid the onerous aspects of heavy-handed regulatory federalism. Our comparison of state hazard-mitigation policy in Florida and in New South Wales, Australia addresses procedural and substantive compliance under the two forms of intergovernmental policies. When local governments are not committed to state policy objectives, the coercive policy produces better results as evidenced by higher rates of procedural compliance and greater effort by local governments to achieve policy objectives. When local government commitment exists, the cooperative policy produces substantive results that are at least the equivalent to the coercive policy. Moreover, over the long run cooperative policies may have greater promise in sustaining local government commitment. The dilemma is to figure out how to motivate lagging jurisdictions that seem to require a coercive policy, while not straightjacketing leading jurisdictions that are capable of thriving under a cooperative regime.     

Institutional features of congressional decisions: The fight to prohibit smoking on airlines

A pervasive theme of the congressional politics literature is that the committee system is fundamental in determining the policy status quo. Such an assertion hinges crucially upon committees controlling their jurisdictions; congressional delegation is undermined if a committee can assert authority over any issue domain at any time. Yet, representatives may possess an incentive to support a policy proposal that would change the status quo, even if it entails disregarding procedures. Indeed, standard conceptualizations of how members of Congress make their voting choices assume that only the benefits and costs associated with a policy matter, and they do not consider institutional factors such as whether a bill emerged from the correct committee.This analysis examines whether representatives will sacrifice policy interests to preserve institutional features of the legislature. The effort in 1987 to curb smoking on airplanes — which became embroiled in a difficult-to-resolve jurisdictional dispute — serves as a vehicle to analyze how sensitive members are to such features. The results demonstrate that a sizable number put aside their [generally moderate] policy preferences and voted against limits on smoking for institutional reasons. These findings have important implications both for specifying the determinants of policy change and for understanding institutional stability.     

Analytical debates and policy learning: analysis and change in the federal bureaucracy

One of the primary agents of change within federal organizations is the policy analyst. This is so because analysts are formally charged with critiquing existing policies and the organizations that implement them, and with proposing new policies and implementation procedures. But it is often forgotten by both proponents and critics of policy analysis that analysts themselves work within — are are responsive to — an organizational context. This paper provides an attempt to view analysis as a process that initiates and responds to policy change, and that is constrained by the organizational context within which analysis takes place. A set of cases, drawn from energy policy at the federal level, are used to illustrate that process.     

Public transportation policy making in France as an implementation problem

Public transportation policy is analyzed as the output of a complex social system of interdependencies and power relationships linking the central state bodies to various economic and political organizations. The interest groups structure the system by controlling the implementation process. The system works because of cheating—violating the public regulations, but the interest groups need state regulation to protect their privileges.The study of governmental projects is a particularly stimulating form of political analysis. Because it emphasizes both the process and the contents of the activities of public authorities, which is to say the goods and services produced by the State, such a study deals with problems having specific impact on and distinct meaning for individuals. It also allows one to avoid overly abstract speculation on the nature of the State by placing the discussion on a more scientifically fruitful level, that of the effective interactions and exchanges among institutions and groups.Our objective will be to demonstrate the importance of the implementation sequence of public policy, particularly in terms of its effects on the understanding of the definition of alternative solutions. We will concentrate on the way in which an ensemble of systems effects, induced by governmental action conditions both the perception of the problem to which this action is supposedly responding, and the elaboration of decisions to solve the problem. The method employed will be that of suggesting a form of analysis which will discern those fields of force and interaction processes with which decision makers, in this case public authorities, are confronted. The method employed should thus be useful in understanding the process of decision making.     

Owning the issue agenda: Party strategies and vote choices in British elections

Explanations of party competition and vote choice are commonly based on the Downsian view of politics: parties maximise votes by adopting positions on policy dimensions. However, recent research suggests that British voters choose parties based on evaluations of competence rather than on ideological position. This paper proposes a theoretical account which combines elements of the spatial model with the ‘issue ownership’ approach. Whereas the issue ownership theory has focused mainly on party competition, this paper examines the validity of the model from the perspective of both parties and voters, by testing its application to recent British general elections. Our findings suggest that as parties have converged ideologically, competence considerations have become more important than ideological position in British elections.     

Technology assessment and technology policy in Europe: New concepts,new goals,new infrastructures

Starting from the observation that the technological potentials are underutilized in economic and in social tems, this article raises the question of what role technology assessment (TA) can play in technology policy to address this problem. The causes of the problem of underutilization are analyzed and discussed in relation to developments in technology policy and TA. Against this background, the actual state of TA in Europe at national and supranational levels is described, gaps and flaws in the European TA Infrastructure (ETAI) are identified, and suggestions for improvement are made. It is concluded that TA can play an important role in increasing the social and economic returns on investments in the development of new technology. Growing interest in, and budgets for, TA at European level — together with the shift from a supply side toward a more demand oriented technology policy — create a favorable environment for this. However, attempts to strengthen TA will only be successful if the TA community recognizes this role and is not satisfied with the marginal position it still has.     

Inter- and Transdisciplinary University: A systems approach to education and innovation

In response to various pressures for change arising from the present situation, the university will have to adopt a new purpose which may be recognized as a means of increasing the capability of society for continuous self-renewal. With this new purpose in mind, the structure of the university will be determined by the concept of an integral education/innovation system for which four principal levels are considered: empirical, pragmatic, normative and purposive levels. From multi-, pluri-, and crossdisciplinary approaches, all pertaining to one systems level only, the university is expected to develop increasingly interdisciplinary approaches, linking two systems levels and coordinating the activities at the lower level from the higher level through common axiomatics. Ultimately, the entire education/innovation system may become coordinated as a multilevel multigoal hierarchical system through a transdisciplinary approach, implying generalized axiomatics and mutual enhancement of disciplinary epistemology. Current university approaches to develop interdisciplinary links between the pragmatic and normative systems levels are discussed. Finally, a transdisciplinary structure for the university is briefly outlined; its main elements are three types of organizational units—systems design laboratories, function-oriented departments, and discipline-oriented departments—which focus on the interdisciplinary coordination between the three pairs of levels in the education/innovation system, i.e., on method and organization rather than on accumulated knowledge. An important role for policy sciences is seen in the linkage between the top pair of systems levels.Dr. Erich Jantsch is currently Richard Merton Professor at the Technical University, Hanover, Germany. While developing some of the concepts reported in this paper, he held a visiting appointment as Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.     

Capital mobility and the possibilities for international policy coordination

When capital is internationally mobile, small differences in macroeconomic policies generate massive payments imbalances that cannot be managed successfully with the policy tools used during the Bretton Woods era. Monetary and fiscal policy coordination is needed to stabilize the international economy, but is difficult to achieve. This article uses insights from the theoretical literature on international cooperation to account for characteristics of policy coordination in recent years. Examination of the strategic situation helps to explain why governments have rejected proposals for a rules-based regime (e.g., strict multilateral surveillance using quantitative indicators) yet have coordinated policy adjustments on an ad hoc basis in response to crises. A solution to the strategic problem — in which there is one mutually adverse outcome (no adjustment by any government) and a number of Pareto-optimal outcomes preferred by different governments — depends on the exercise of power. Consideration of theories about hegemony and cooperation suggests that the U.S. continues to act as a hegemon in this area, albeit of the coercive rather than benevolent sort. International theories of cooperation, however, neglect the domestic policy making practices and institutions that pose the central problems for international policy coordination.     

Organizing consent: The role of procedural fairness in political trust and compliance

Abstract.  Political theory often attributes democratic legitimacy to the fairness of the processes by which collective decisions are taken; empirical research by contrast has primarily investigated whether citizens' approval of democratic institutions derives from satisfaction with the substantive output of those institutions. This article examines whether assessments of decision-making processes shape public willingness to consent to authority. The role of procedural fairness in institutional legitimacy has previously only been investigated in the context of the United States, and has fallen short of demonstrating that procedural assessments actually have a causal effect on institutional legitimacy. Panel survey data of attitudes in a large-scale land use issue provide the empirical base of the analysis. The results indicate that assessments of procedural fairness have a bearing on two conceptualizations of subjective legitimacy: respondents' trust for the authority and their willingness to accept a decision outcome.     

Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and "marxism", the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural "democracy" is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of the "market" but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of "freedom". The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals.     

Big data for policymaking: fad or fasttrack?

The buzz surrounding big data has taken shape in various theoretical and practical forms when it comes to policymaking. The paper combines current research streams with long-standing discussions on government and technology in public policy and public administration, such as e-government and evidence-based policymaking. The goal is to answer the question whether big data is a fleeting trend or has long-lasting effects on policymaking. Three larger themes in the literature are identified: First, the role that institutional capacity has within government to utilize big data analytics; second, government use of big data analytics in the context of digital public services; and finally, the way that big data information enters the policy cycle, focusing on substantive and procedural policy instruments. Examples from the education, crisis management, environmental and healthcare domain highlight the opportunities and challenges for each of these themes. Exploring the various aspects of big data and policymaking shows that big data is here to stay, but that its utilization by government will take time due to institutional barriers and capacity bottlenecks.     

Policy sciences and the market

The most recent response of our universities to the challenge presented by the urban crisis—the domestic problems that show their dramatic symptoms in our cities—has taken the form of new graduate programs in the policy sciences. They are widely diverse in course content, teaching methods, measures to assure experiential inputs and devices for survival in the standard discipline-oriented university climate, but all have the common purpose of improving the quality and enlarging the quantity of both public policy practitioners and analysts.These pioneering activities are growing in an atmosphere of intense intellectual debate and self-examination. How best to design and conduct them with respect to these input parameters, appropriate overall roles for universities in policy science training, the nature of more rational decisionmaking as a process, and the roles of policy science-trained analysts and practitioners in it and in promoting it, are all under lively examination and discussion.What has thus far received relatively little attention is the nature of the decision universe in which the products of these programs, the graduates, will need to perform if they are to have impact. In this paper that universe and the relationship of the university to it are characterized in simple market terms. Doing so suggests that the most pressing problems for policy science lie on the demand, not the supply, side of the market. It will take the best efforts of policy scientists to address them successfully.     

Pluralism,corporatism and perception of corruption

When people know who is influencing the elected politicians and they may ‘put the rascals out’ in case they feel that the incumbents are corrupt, ceteris paribus, their perception of the level of corruption should not be affected by lobbying. If on the other hand people are not sure which or how many actors are influencing public policy and they are not able to hold the government truly accountable as interest group influence is constant with different governments, people will be more likely to perceive the government as corrupted. The former system is a characteristic of corporatism and the latter of pluralism. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that interest groups with resources such as business groups or firms in pluralist systems are more influential than groups with few resources. Thus, people may perceive pluralist policy‐making system as more corrupt than corporatist policy‐making system where fewer visible actors have more or less equal weight in the policy‐making process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Rational choice theory,public policy and the liberal state

Liberalism requires a high order of responsible behaviour from its citizens in order to be sustainable. Yet when the modern liberal state makes policy, it is the stereotyped economic man, driven by self-interest and influenced only by carrots and sticks, who occupies center stage. This regulatory approach to public policy can be shown theoretically to give rise to a paradox — the greater the need for regulation, the less likely, because of compliance problems, it is to succeed. It is contended that an alternative approach which explicitly focuses on a broader behavioral understanding of citizens' attitudes and motivations provides a rationale for the use of a much wider range of policy instruments than does the regulatory framework, and is also more in keeping with those values necessary to the sustainability of the liberal state.