What is Policy?


Introduction

Finding an authoritative definition of policy is no easy task. Ham and Hill note that the definition of policy has “attracted much attention but little agreement”[1]. Hogwood and Gun[2], discuss a number of the common uses of the word policy: policy as a label for a field of activity (for example, foreign policy); policy as an expression of general purpose or desired state of affairs; policy as a specific proposal; policy as a decision of government; policy as a formal authorisation (for example, legislation); policy as a program of activity; policy as outputs or what governments actually deliver as opposed to what it is promi policy as a theory or model (if we do X then Y will follow). Davis et. al., suggest that the debate about definitions is largely futile.

“In short, the debate about definitions has largely dissipated without result? Australian academics, pragmatic to the end, gave up the endless definitional jostling to get on with substantive policy work.”[3]

Authorised and rational choices?

In spite of these definitional difficulties, Colebatch[4], Considine[5] and Stone[6] all argue that there is classical view of policy, primarily as a product or object. Colebatch[7] describes this classical view as the authoritative rational choice model of policy.

Before considering example classical definitions of policy we need to take a moment to consider the term, “public policy”. Although contested by those outside of the classical view, within the classical view public policy is seen broadly as the decisions and actions of governments and the public sector as opposed to those of other organisations (for example, a corporation’s staff leave policy is not public policy). Hogwood and Gun[8] say for a policy to be considered a public policy, “it must to some degree have been generated or at least processed within the framework of governmental procedures, influences and organizations”. Bridgman and Davis[9] note that public policies can call on public resources and legal coercion in a way that other policies cannot.

Dye defined public policy as “Anything a government chooses to do or not do”[10]. Howlett and Ramesh took a similar approach. “Public policy is, at its most simple, a choice made by a government to undertake some course of action”[11]. Mascarenhas said, “Public policy is primarily an output of the political process, the responsibility for which rests with governments”[12]. Bridgman and Davis argue that public policy is “an authoritative statement by a government about its intentions”[13]. Fenna[14], also in the classical stream, argues that policy is the purposeful connecting of ends with means; it is a course of action calculated to achieve a desired objective. Considine summarised the classical view as, “A public policy is an action which employs governmental authority to commit resources in support of a preferred value”[15].

Stone labels the classical view as policy-making in the rationality project. For Stone, the rationality project is the mission of rescuing policy from irrationality of politics and restoring it its rational, analytical and scientific ideal. In this context, she depicts the classical view as follows:

“The model of policy making in the rationality project is a production model, where policy is created in a fairly ordered sequence of stages, almost as if on an assembly line. Many political scientists, in fact, speak of ‘assembling the elements’ of policy. An issue is ‘placed on the agenda,’ and gets defined; it moves through the legislative and executive branches of government where alternative solutions are proposed, analysed, legitimised, elected, and refined; a solution is implemented by the executive agencies and constantly challenged and revised by interested actors, perhaps using the judicial branch; and finally, if the policy-making process is managerially sophisticated, it provides a means of evaluating and revising implemented solutions.”[16]

This is not to suggest that those who advocate the classical view have a simple or unsophisticated model of policy. Advocates of the classical definition[17] readily acknowledge that: policies usually involve a series of interrelated decisions; rather than a single decision-maker, many different people at different levels and scattered throughout government organisations make public policy decisions; policies are shaped by earlier policy decisions and environmental factors; policies are mediated through their implementation[18]; policies involve both actions and inactions; policies cannot be analysed apart from the policy-making process; policies have outcomes that may or may not have been foreseen; policies are subjectively defined, and may be defined retrospectively; policies extend beyond the formal records of decisions; and policies need resources and action to be differentiated from political rhetoric.

A common theoretical device that appears in the literature on the classical model of policy is the notion of a policy cycle that has its foundation in systems theory and scientific method. According to Colebatch[19], the policy cycle imagines the policy process as an endless cycle of: policy decisions; implementation; and performance assessment. Howlett and Ramesh[20] conceive of a similar cycle but with more steps: agenda setting (problem recognition), policy formulation (proposal of a solution), decision-making (choice of a solution), policy implementation (putting the solution into effect), and policy evaluation (monitoring results). Bridgman and Davis[21] advocate an eight-step “Australian Policy Cycle”: identify issues; policy analysis; policy instruments; consultation; coordination; decision; implementation; and evaluation. Hogwood and Gun [22] also envisage a similar cycle: issue search or agenda setting, issue filtration, issue definition, forecasting, setting objectives and priorities, options analysis, policy implementation, evaluation and review, and policy maintenance, succession or termination.

Easton[23] was the first to use systems theory to explain political processes. Easton argued that, like biological systems, political systems could be understood as open, adaptive systems where inputs (essentially political demands and public support in Easton’s schema) are converted to outputs (decisions and actions) through a political process. Building on the (by 1970) common use of an inputs-processes-outputs schema to describe the policy process, Sharkansky[24] added the notion that policy impacts (or outcomes) are distinct from policy outputs.[25] A modern, sympathetic rendition of the systems theory conceptualisation of policy is one where governments direct inputs at specific process in order to produce outputs that will lead to desired outcomes in the client population or in the society as a whole [26]; where each of these terms - inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes - has a specific meaning within this model.

“Inputs - includes dollars, staffing, skills, experience, physical facilities;

“Processes - are the tasks, activities, strategies, etc. - what is done;

“Outputs - what programs actually produce (goods, products, services); and

“Outcomes - the differences in a consumer’s life or the changes to society as the result of outputs (there is a hierarchy of outcomes; some changes are more immediate, others are more significant and/or take longer to manifest).”[27]

Implicit in this systems approach is a causal model of the policy process, from inputs to outcomes. This causal model can be thought of as a hypothesis[28]. It is the belief that if the policy-maker does a particular thing it should achieve a desired change in the wider population. This hypothesis provides the link from systems theory to scientific method in the policy cycle, through the process of developing and testing hypotheses in order to find the best solution to a problem. Policy-makers develop a hypothesis about the best way to achieve an objective (the causal model from inputs to outcomes noted above). They then test their hypothesis (that is to say, they implement their policies and analyse the impacts of their policies). From their analysis, policy-makers can come to a conclusion about how well their policies work and whether they should be continued, improved, implemented in another way or terminated. Diagrammatically, the policy cycle is depicted in the following chart.

An example policy cycle

It should be noted that proponents of the policy cycle readily admit that this model is idealised and not isomorphic. Howlett and Ramesh[29], for example, argue that the model does not explain why decisions are made or what drives policy from one stage to the next. The model fails to embrace the complexity of the policy-making process and the reality that policy rarely, if ever, proceeds as a linear progression. Stages are often skipped or compressed and the idiosyncrasies, interests and preset ideological dispositions of the people involved often usurp the process.

It is, therefore, tempting to dismiss the policy cycle (and indeed the classical view of policy) simply because the model diverges so far from practice. However, such dismissal underestimates the influence of the model. Reforms since the mid 1980s, especially the Financial Management Improvement Program[30], have entrenched policy cycle thinking in the Australian public sector. In the guise of program logic[31], the policy cycle has become the main ideological framework for policy evaluation[32]. Furthermore, the Howard government in their accrual budgeting reforms has also explicitly adopted this model[33].

In the policy literature, the notion of a policy cycle often associated with two cognate discussions. The first is what Colebatch calls “the set-piece encounter in policy texts and courses between ‘rational’ and ‘incremental’ decision-making”[34]. The second is about the range of possible solutions (policy interventions or policy instruments) that can be applied to a problem.

The ideal of rational decision-making underpinning policy-making, according to Ham and Hill[35], goes back to Herbert Simon’s Administrative Behaviour, first published in 1945. In Simon’s ideal model, a policy-maker establishes clear goals, identifies a complete range of options and then selects the best one following a comprehensive analysis of the alternatives and their consequences. However, this ideal has difficulties in practice, which Simon recognised at the time, and some of which Simon addressed when he proposed his 1957 theory of “bounded rationality”, in which decision-makers use practical rules-of-thumb to choose satisfactory rather than optimum solutions (a process he described as ’satisficing’)[36]. In 1959, Charles Lindblom criticised the idea of decision-making as the search for the best solution to a problem. According to Colebatch, Lindblom argued that

“in practice means and ends are not separable, analysis is limited rather than comprehensive, policy emerges from a succession of small changed rather than a single clear decision, and the test of a good decision is not so much that it achieves known objectives, but rather that people agree with the process by which it was reached.”[37]

Subsequently a debate emerged between those who advocated the ideal of comprehensive or bounded rationality and Lindblom’s[38] less ambitious though no less rational form of analysis known as incrementalism or muddling through. This debate has also seen the development of a range of compromise theories, including: Dror’s optimum model, which supplements rational assessment with extra-rational elements including judgements, brainstorming and creative invention [39]; and Etzioni’s mixed scanning model, in which inconsequential decisions are usually handled incrementally while the more consequential decisions are handled through the structured mechanism of mixed scanning, where a range of options are scanned cursorily with only the more promising options receiving detailed consideration[40].

Along with the ideal of rational decision-making (whether a comprehensive or incremental rationality), the other element that often accompanies the classical view of policy is a discussion of the range of policy instruments that can be applied to a problem. Between the extremes of voluntarism and outright coercion, Fenna[41] and Bridgman and Davis[42] identify four broad types of policy instrument: exhortation (including education and advocacy), economic incentives and disincentives (spending and taxing), government provision and legislation/regulation. Considine[43] identified a slightly different four: rule making, direct provision, grants, and taxes and charges. Howlett and Ramesh[44] provide a larger taxonomy with instruments ranked according to their level of state involvement: family and community; voluntary organisations; private markets; information and exhortation; subsidies; auction of property rights; tax and user charges; regulation; public enterprises; and direct provision. However, selecting the optimum mix of policy instruments for implementation is as difficult as, if not more difficult than, the choice of policy objectives itself[45]. It is complicated in that while most instruments are technically substitutable, each has “varying degrees of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, legitimacy, and partisan support”[46].

An alternative view - process and interaction?

In addition to the classical view of policy, Colebatch[47] argues that there is fundamentally different conception that he labels as the structured interaction model:

“The structured interaction perspective does not assume a single decision-maker, addressing a clear policy problem: it focuses on the range of participants in the game, the diversity of their understandings of the situation and the problem, the ways in which they interact with one another, and the outcomes of this interaction. It does not assume that this pattern of activity is a collective effort to achieve known and shared goals.”[48]

The interactional view recognises that policy is an ongoing process with many participants, most of whom do not have a formal or recognised role in policy-making. They include ministers of state, their advisers, politicians, public servants, party members, street level delivery staff, peak bodies, interested members of the public, media and academics. According to this view, policy is not about the promulgation of formal statements but the processes of negotiation and influence; indeed, “much policy work is only distantly connected to authorized statements about goals: it is concerned with relating the activities of different bodies to one another, with stabilizing practice and expectations across organizations, and with responding to challenge, contest and uncertainty”.[49]

Rejecting the classical view of policy as insufficient, Considine argued, “policy is the continuing work done by groups of policy actors who use available public institutions to articulate and express the things they value”[50]. It is the interplay of deals, alliances and attempts at finding solutions involving individuals and groups including elected officials, bureaucrats, political parties, the media, interest groups and social movements; each with values, assumptions, categories, stories and languages[51].

“In a sense everything in the policy world is really just process, the movement of people and programs around common problems such as education, transport and employment. None of the initiatives in these fields stays fixed for very long because the problems themselves keep moving and changing. We cannot afford, therefore, to view policy as just a study of decisions or programs. The specific decisions which often interest us are merely important punctuation marks within this flow - not the thing itself.”[52]

Stone is another who advocated an interactional view. She said that policy-making “is a constant struggle over the criteria for classification, the boundaries of categories, and the definition of ideals that guide the way people behave”[53]. Behind every policy issue there is a contest over conflicting though equally plausible conceptions of the same abstract goal. In one amusing example about sharing a cake equitably, Stone identifies nine different definitions of equality - all of which are used in different policy domains. Similarly, behind every policy issue there is also conflict about how the problem should be defined. And completing the picture, policy solutions are little more than temporary resolutions of conflict.

“Policy is more like an endless game of Monopoly than sewing machine repair. Hence the common complaint that policies never seem to solve anything. The process of choosing and implementing the means of policy is political and contentious. The actions we commonly call ‘new policies’ are really somebody’s next move, and in politics, as in a good game, nobody’s move completely determines anybody else’s future move.”[54]

Stone contested the government-centric view of public policy, which is part of the classical view. She said, “public policy is about communities trying to achieve something as communities.”[55] The organs of government are just one of the sites (but not the only site) for the contest of competing ideas.

A synthesis of the two views

Colebatch, argues for a synthesis between the classical and interactional views of policy, seeing them as the vertical and horizontal dimensions of policy[56]. In the vertical dimension the focus is on authorities making decisions in the context of problem identification, identifying and comparing possible solutions, and checking that policies have been implemented correctly and that they are achieving the desired results. In the horizontal dimension the focus is on the range of participants, the diversity of their agendas, and the activities of negotiation, coalition building, and the ratification of agreed outcomes. The essence of Colebatch’s synthesis is that the rational model has considerable symbolic importance. Quoting March and Olsen, Colbatch says, “it is hard to imagine a society with modern Western ideology that would not require a well-elaborated and reinforced myth of intentional choice through politics, both to sustain a semblance of social orderliness and meaning and to facilitate change’[57]. The role of the rational myth is that it frames the appropriate behaviour of the actors - from ministers to bureaucrats, from academics to interest groups and from service providers to service users.

In this context, Colebatch explores what people are trying to achieve when they label something as policy. He says, “to describe something as ‘policy’ is to give it special significance”[58]. Use of the term, policy, implies organised activity that is coherent (all the bits of the action fit together), hierarchical (a course of action that is officially endorsed), and instrumental (a course of action that is deliberately in pursuit of particular purposes, rather than erratic or random)[59]. Policy statements imply authority (they have the endorsement of some authorised decision-maker, be it Cabinet, the Minister or senior public servants); expertise (they invariably draw on a body of experts - policy requires knowledge); and order (policy responses create order - they define how something should be done)[60].

Drawing on Foucault’s motifs of power/knowledge, bio-power and governmentality, Shore and Wright[61] make similar observations. Although a political phenomena, the classical view of policy disguises this political nature through the language of objectivity, rationality and neutrality. Once disguised, policy can serve other functions. The label of ‘official policy’ objectifies decision-making and conceals the decision-makers. It legitimises the arguable and irrational; and by aligning them with ‘experts’ and collective, universalised objectives (for example, family values, democracy, respect for tradition or individual free choice) it makes disagreement impotent. They conclude, “policies work as instruments of governance, as ideological vehicles, and as agents for constructing subjectivities and organising people within systems of power and authority”[62].

Conclusion

So what is policy? In many ways we are no further along our quest to define policy than we were at the beginning of this page, where we noted that an authoritative definition is difficult to find. Not surprisingly, Colebatch concludes his book with the words, “The term is not a scientific absolute, but a socially constructed variable. Policy is a concept which we use to make sense of the world - but we have to work with it.”[63] In the same paragraph, he implied that the real task of policy analysis is not to examine policy as products, but to find out “What determines how things are done?”[64].

Notes

[1] C Ham and M Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1984) 11.

[2] B W Hogwood and L A Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) 12-19.

[3] G Davis et al., Public Policy in Australia, 2nd. ed. (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993) 10.

[4] H K Colebatch, Policy (Buckingham UK: Open University Press, 1998).

[5] M Considine, Public Policy: A Critical Approach (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1994).

[6]

D A Stone, Policy Paradox and Political Reason

(Harper Collins, 1988).

[7] Colebatch, Policy 102, 108.

[8] Hogwood and Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World 24.

[9] P Bridgman and G Davis, Australian Policy Handbook (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998)

[10] T R Dye, Understanding Public Policy, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972) 1.

[11] M Howlett and M Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995) 5.

[12] R C Mascarenhas, Government and the Economy in Australia and New Zealand: The Politics of Economic Policy Making (Bethesda MD: Austin and Winfield, 1996) 1.

[13] Bridgman and Davis, Australian Policy Handbook, 3.

[14] A Fenna, Introduction to Australian Public Policy (Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998) 3.

[15] Considine, Public Policy: A Critical Approach, 3.

[16] Stone, Policy Paradox and Political Reason, 7.

[17] See for example: Howlett and Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems Hogwood and Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World 19-24. W I Jenkins, Policy Analysis: A Political and Organizational Perspective (New York: St. Martins Press, 1978) 16. Fenna, Introduction to Australian Public Policy, 5.

[18] For example, advocates of the classical view will acknowledge Lipsky’s observation that, “the decisions of street level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures effectively become the public policies they carry out”. M Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1980) xii.

[19] Colebatch, Policy,55.

[20] Howlett and Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems 10.

[21] Bridgman and Davis, Australian Policy Handbook.

[22] Hogwood and Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World, 24.

[23] D Easton, "An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems," World Politics, no. 9 (1957). D Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965). D Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life(New York: Wiley, 1965).

[24] I Sharkansky, "Environment, Policy, Output and Impact: Problems of Theory and Method in the Analysis of Public Policy," in Policy Analysis and Political Science, ed. I Sharkansky (Chicago: Markham, 1970).

[25] In today’s terminology, we might more accurately describe Sharkansky’s insight as saying that policy outcomes differ from policy statements. At the time, the “output” of the policy process was commonly understood as being policies or actions and decisions. Nevertheless the notion of impacts or outcomes apart from the activity of government, and the production of policies was an important insight.

[26] B Palmer, "Beyond Program Performance Indicators: Performance Information in a National System of Health and Family Services," in National Leadership through Performance Assessment, ed. Department of Health and Family Services (Canberra: Department of Health and Family Services, 1997), 23.

[27] Ibid. 23-24.

[28] Bridgman and Davis, Australian Policy Handbook, 5-6.

[29] Howlett and Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems 12.

[30] Mascarenhas, Government and the Economy in Australia and New Zealand: The Politics of Economic Policy Making, 221.

[31] S Funnell, "Program Logic: An Adaptable Tool for Designing and Evaluating Programs," Evaluation News and Comment 6, no. 1 (1997).

[32] Department of Finance, Doing Evaluations: A Practical Guide (Canberra: AGPS, 1994) 7-26. Australian National Audit Office, Performance Information Principles: Better Information Guide (Canberra: AGPS, 1996) 5.

[33] Department of Finance and Administration, Specifying Outcomes and Outputs: Implementing the Commonwealth’s Accrual-Based Outcomes and Outputs Framework (Canberra: AGPS, 1998).

[34] Colebatch, Policy 78.

[35] C Ham and M Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1984) 77.

[36] Ibid., 79.

[37] Colebatch, Policy 78.

[38] C E Lindblom and E J Woodhouse, The Policy-Making Process, 3rd. ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993) 27-30.

[39] Ham and Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State 85.

[40] Ibid., 85-87.

[41] Fenna, Introduction to Australian Public Policy, 7.

[42] Bridgman and Davis, Australian Policy Handbook, 58.

[43] Considine, Public Policy: A Critical Approach, 41-45.

[44] Howlett and Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems 82.

[45] Ibid. 80. Davis et al., Public Policy in Australia,182.

[46] Howlett and Ramesh, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems 83.

[47] Colebatch, Policy,102.

[48] Ibid. 102-130.

[49] Ibid. 100.

[50] Considine, Public Policy: A Critical Approach, 4.

[51] Ibid. 6-16.

[52] Ibid. 3-4.

[53] Stone, Policy Paradox and Political Reason, 7.

[54] Ibid. 208.

[55] Ibid. 14.

[56] Colebatch, Policy,88.

[57] J G March and J P Olsen, Rediscovering Instiutions (New York: Free Press, 1989) 52. Cited in Colebatch, Policy.

[58] Colebatch, Policy,2.

[59] Ibid. 3-4.

[60] Ibid. 90-91.

[61] C Shore and S Wright, "Policy: A New Field of Anthropology," in Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power, ed. C Shore and S Wright (London: Routledge, 1997), 3-35.

[62] Ibid. 35.

[63] Colebatch, Policy,113-114.

[64] Ibid.,113.