Policy Theory Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Policy theory is the set of principles and rules regarding public policies. Such definition immediately highlights the product of political action. Indeed, according to Harold Lasswell and Daniel Lerner’s classical 1951 definition, policy represents “a systematic attempt to shape the future” (ix).

The Pragmatic Perspective Of Policy Analysis

Policy sciences have developed only recently, when the necessity of state intervention for correcting economic deficiencies—the presence of what Alfred Chandler termed in 1977 the visible hand in market activities—has led to the formation of a field of research aimed at locating data and providing interpretations relevant to the policy problems. In the United States, Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1932 was one of the first political programs to require allocative rationality, contributing to the affirmation of a scientist approach to problem solving.

Thus, as far as the ideological roots of policy theory are concerned, John Dewey’s pragmatism and Rudolf Carnap’s logical positivism constituted natural attitudes for a political scientist. Also, a normative and quasi-ethic dimension often combines with such a rationalist tendency, considering that policy analysis seems to represent a practical philosophy that guides public action to design better systems of government. Consequently, “changing the world with knowledge” represents an implicit objective of policy analysis.

Policy Science Imperatives

Describing policy science in a few statements includes three main imperatives: (1) a belief that the consequences of governmental action are important and predictable, (2) a holistic approach to political processes, and (3) the idea that knowledge may be useful for improving public decision making and for the quality of democracy.

Theodore Lowi’s contributions to policy science reflect such imperatives. He considers public policies as an instrument for political action, the first imperative, defining them in 1972 as “deliberate coercion-statements attempting to set forth the purpose, the means, the subjects, and the objects of coercion” (86). Some years later, in 1985, Lowi clarified that such statements are rules “formulated by some governmental authority, expressing an intention to influence the behavior of citizens, individually or collectively, by use of positive or negative sanctions” (70).

Lowi’s attempts to formulate a classificatory definition of public policy denote an encompassing approach to political process—reflecting the second public policy imperative of holism. This aspect is present in Lowi’s classical articles, which have provided the most relevant effort to analyze public policies, based on two variables: likelihood of coercion, which may be concrete or remote; and proximity of governmental coercion, which may be connected to individual or environmental application. In his view, different areas of policies—regulatory, constitutive, distributive, or redistributive—are capable of producing specific “arenas of power.”

In this way, Lowi’s categorization explains the rich and scarcely cumulative literature of case studies diffused in the American political science literature up until his work emerged. Instead of attempting to find relationships that hold across the entire range of public policies, he argues that one should focus investigation within one of the four policy classifications. This is because relationships among important concepts or variables that may be quite strong when policies of one kind are involved may be much weaker, or even totally absent, when other types of policies are concerned. For the first time, the hypothesis “policy determines politics” is introduced—an important and alternative way to look at the political life.

James Wilson presented a similar approach in 1980, although his public policies typology focuses mainly on cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, his classification represents the base for defining four types of politics: interest group politics, client politics, entrepreneurial politics, and majoritarian politics. Yet according to some critics, such taxonomy leads to underestimation of the classical themes of political research—power, conflict, consensus—for leaving the place to cost-benefit considerations.

The Prescriptive Dimension

Other theories seek to unpack public policy process in developmental stages. Interpreting policy as a problem-solving activity, most authors find a forerunner in John Dewey and his pragmatic philosophy when they break up decision making in several steps: problem identification, research of solutions, decision, implementation, and evaluation. A research strategy helps to analyze complex processes and cope with the multiplicity of involved actors. Although the stage model accompanies the institutionalization of political science as a discipline, descriptions of policy cycle are often criticized as depicting a sequential model process when, in fact, policy making is complex and interactive.

Although public policies are determined by the continuous interaction between various actors, public and private, in each phase of policy process, policy theory tends to reduce political complexity, concentrating on the solution for problems that is perceived as publicly relevant and thus requires a collective solution.

The third imperative of policy science is its constant reference to the improvement of democratic policy making. Indeed, another core element of policy studies is that they present a frequent tendency to translate what Hugh Heclo considers “theories into concrete policy guidance, or short of guidance, into ‘methodological’ advice about policy making.” Policy studies are about the production and application of multidisciplinary knowledge of and in policy: for this reason “speaking the truth to power” remains their main mission— and promise.

More generally, the development of policy theory strongly ties to a pragmatic conception of democracy, which emphasizes the dimension of responsiveness by giving centrality to outputs of a political system and to its capacity for problem solving. It pays attention to themes of political performance more than to competition, social conflict, and ideological contraposition. Rediscovering its functionalist basis (i.e., the sociological paradigm that considers all parts of society necessary for the survival of society as a whole), policy theory denotes a sort of satisfaction with political systems: the real question seems to be how to improve social life, ignoring the problem of how to change it.

Bibliography:

Chandler, Alfred. The Visible Hand:The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977.
Friedrich, Carl J. Man and His Government. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.
Goodin, Robert E. Political Theory and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Greenberg, George D., Jeffrey A. Miller, Lawrence B. Mohr, and Bruce C. Vladeck. “Developing Public Policy Theory: Perspectives from Empirical Research.” American Political Science Review 71, no. 4 (1977): 1532–1543.
Heclo, Hugh H. “Policy Analysis.” British Journal of Political Science 2, no. 1 (1972): 83–108.
Lasswell, Harold A., and Abraham Kaplan. Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
Lasswell, Harold A., and Daniel Lerner. The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951.
Lowi,Theodore. “Four Systems of Policy, Politics and Choice.” Public Administration Review 4 (1973): 298–310.
“The State in Politics: The Relation between Policy and Administration.” In Regulatory Policy and Social Sciences, edited by Roger N. Noll, 67–105. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Nolen, Barbara J. “Public Policy and Administration: An Overview.” In A New Handbook of Political Science, edited by Robert E. Goodin and HansDieter Klingemann, 551–592.
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Wildavsky, Aaron. Speaking Truth to Power:The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979.
Wilson, James Q. The Politics of Regulation. New York: Basic Books, 1980.
Wright, Quincy “Reviewed Work: The Policy Sciences; Recent Developments in Scope and Method, by Daniel Lerner; Harold D. Lasswell.” American Political Science Review 46, no. 1 (1952): 234–238.

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