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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: PUBLIC POLICY

18.1. Policy as a bundle of decisions and as an intention to decide similarly in the future. Analytical (not chronological) stages of the policy process (p. 377).

 

18.2 Initiation: the systemic and institutional agendas. In the USA, the role of policy entrepreneurs in exploiting policy windows. More controlled agendas in other democracies. The impact of science, technology and the media (p. 378-9).

 

18.3 Formulation: rational vs. incremental approaches. Cost-benefit analysis and the discount rate. The garbage can model (pp. 379-381).

 

18.4 Implementation: top-down and bottom-up approaches. The knowledge uniquely available at street level (pp. 381-2).

 

18.5 Evaluation: the problems of mushy goals and of goal-shift during implementation. Policy outputs vs. outcomes. Naturalistic evaluation (pp. 383-4).

 

18.6 Review: continue, revise or terminate? Functions persist, even though many agencies don’t (p. 384).

 

18.7 Policy instruments: tools for translating policy into practice. Many available: law, regulation, permits, auctions, labelling, self-regulation, contracting out, tax expenditures, loans, grants, information and suasion. Can be classified as sticks, carrots or sermons. Criteria for policy selection: effectiveness (will it work?), efficiency (at what cost?), equity (is it fair?), appropriateness (does the instrument fit the problem?) and simplicity (is it manageable?) (pp. 384-6).

 

18.8 Public policy in liberal democracies: from the night-watchman state (pre-nineteenth century) to the welfare state (second half of the twentieth century) to the regulatory state (final decades of the twentieth century and later). Types of welfare state: liberal, conservative and social democratic. Financial problems of the welfare state, e.g. funding public pensions. Retrenchment but no collapse. The regulatory state: from government to governance (pp. 386-91).

 

18.9 Public policy in authoritarian regimes: policy takes second place to politics as the regime seeks to maintain its position through patronage, leading to policy inertia. The nature and limits of planning under communism. The blinkered nature of the big push. Contemporary China: an expansion of the non-state sector but even so wealth still flows from politics (pp. 391-2).

 

18.10 Public policy in illiberal democracies: strong political control of key economic resources, particularly commodities, with a freer market in less sensitive sectors of the economy. The populist leader both draws on, and claims he is the only means of overcoming, the glaring gap between the poverty of the many and the wealth of the few. Problems of capacity-building, both public and private, especially in the smaller illiberal democracies in Africa and Latin America (pp. 392-4).