The Political Process of Policymaking

A Pragmatic Approach to Public Policy

P. Zittoun

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137347664
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Public Finance
• Index: Economics

Philippe Zittoun analyses the public policymaking process focusing on how governments relentlessly develop proposals to change public policy to address insoluble problems. Rather than considering this surprising Sisyphean effort as a lack of rationality, the author examines it as a political activity that produces order and stability.

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Introduction: The Political Process of Policymaking

Machiavelli’s advice to Lorenzo de’ Medici goes beyond the most conservative and traditional issues in political philosophy (Machiavelli, 2005)*. He does not restrict his reflections, unlike many authors who preceded and succeeded him, to the nature of Power or the forms that government must take. Nor does he indulge in what State or society should ideally be.

On the contrary, he addresses the issue of Power by starting from a simple, original and specific question: what must a Prince do to remain in Power? Rather than focusing on how to access the ultimate status and making this the key of his legitimacy, Machiavelli suggests that this legitimacy stems essentially from the Prince’s actions.¹ According to him, the stability of a state is therefore linked, first and foremost, to the capacity of its governments to act, its virtù to handle fortuna, the multiple unpredictable events which disrupt society.

By pinning the legitimacy of the power on governmental action, Machiavelli points the way towards new reflections on public policy, no longer simply understood as simple governmental practices that must resolve problems but also, and perhaps essentially, as where the stability of a Power is determined and where a politician’s identity is forged. From this perspective, Machiavelli, who is among the first “advisers” to edit these recommendations (Radin, 2000), occupies what Hannah Arendt referred to as a “unique position” in the history of political thought (Arendt, 2006).

Machiavelli therefore highlights the complex and inextricable link that connects public policy to political action. It is not about generating a simple causal link which makes it possible to grasp public policy merely through the cynicism of political actors seeking to remain in power, neither is it a matter of assuming that political action is always linked to a public policy as there are other kinds of action such as votes, manifestations, or partisans’ actions which are also political (Walzer and Miller, 2007). First and foremost, it involves recognising public policy as a political action where for each decision taken, the Prince calls into question, or even endangers, his identity and legitimacy.

Machiavelli’s intuition which designates policymaking as a vital political activity is at the heart of the issues discussed in this book. In an entirely different context, his intuition is in line with issues raised by other authors such as Walter Lippmann (1922, 1925) and Harold Lasswell (1942a, 1942b) who, while also seeking to advise government on public policy, placed emphasis on the strong link that connects a government’s actions to its legitimacy. To combat the democratic disenchantment that he noted after the First World War, Walter Lippmann proposed specialised services to advise governments in order to improve their public policy and reinforce their legitimacy. In the midst of the Second World War, Harold Lasswell argued that ensuring the stability of a democratic system in Europe after the conflict required the implementation of a public policy institute able to produce expert advice.

Admittedly, Machiavelli’s advice is intended for a Prince forced to operate in a non-democratic context of violence, instability, war, overthrow risk, crime, and assassination where he risks not only his crown but his life as well. On the contrary, Lasswell’s advice is intended for an American government against the background of war and the overthrow of democratic European regimes. Nevertheless, by declining to narrow a government’s legitimacy to how it acquires its position, be it by divine right or by democratic election, these authors enable us to address wider issues concerning both these crisis situations, as well as the more peaceful contexts of our contemporary democracies.

Is public policymaking fundamentally political or not? Far from being a mere definitional issue, this question that has already been formulated by authors such as Machiavelli, Lasswell, and Lippmann is at the core of our work. Existing positivist literature on public policy has often limited its inquiry to defining new cognitive ways to solve problems, analysing public policy, or understanding policy change processes by identifying the numerous constraints that governments encounter. Although interesting, this inquiry generally considers public policy as a “neutral” object that researchers can define by themselves, thereby grasping its dynamic in the same way as physicists follow the movement of objects (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003). While some authors still consider values in public policy, this remains illusory. Indeed, they end up generally reducing these values to data that they can distinguish from “neutral” policy instruments. Thus, these researchers take an interest in these valueless objects, that is, tools, and analyse them as other authors have done.

Questioning the political character of public policy is an approach that differs from the one generally used by policy analysts. This innovative questioning makes it possible to place public policy studies back to the centre of political science issues with regard to the transformation of politics, Power and society. To question the political character of policymaking is therefore to consider that the activities carried out by the stakeholders to shape public policy are core processes not only in understanding the forms that public policy eventually takes but also in understanding the unfolding forms of politicisation and the modes of legitimacy used by those who govern.

Interrogating the political character of public policy therefore allows us to grasp its significance within the policy process and to better understand how contemporary government legitimises itself through this dimension. It allows us to contemplate policymaking not only as a process to solve social problems but also as a means through which to build legitimacy. By this, we do not imply that problem solving does not legitimise governments but rather, we wish to take into account the fact that even if governments try to solve problems, they are always confronted by the growing complexity of society, the desperately insoluble character of major social problems, the weight of stagnation, or the imbroglio of multiple actors eager to act. In other words, if policymaking contributes to legitimising governments, why does their incapacity to resolve major issues such as unemployment or inequality not endanger our democracies?

To respond to these questions, we posit that the political character of public policy lies less in the direct outcome of implementation (Merriam, 1925; Easton, 1965a) than in the outcome resulting from the policymaking activity itself, an activity which consists of defining, formulating, propagating, and imposing a policy proposal. In other words, it means observing a policy proposal as a succession of primarily political actions rather than as a desperate process marked by a few rare successes in the midst of numerous failures, both heroic and surprising, that are genuine markers of the persistence of politicians’ claims to govern our societies. These actions contribute to the legitimisation process that is both fragile and resistant.

Before we present our approach in greater detail and show that public policymaking can indeed be considered as a political activity, we need to return to what we refer to as “public policy” on the one hand, and “political activity” on the other.

1.1 Definitional activities in public policy

Despite the attempt by a large number of authors to define the concept of policy, no one has managed to impose one specific definition. In his preliminary studies on policy sciences, Lasswell uses the term “policy” to designate an “important” decision. This context enables the author to define a possible scope for researcher intervention that distances itself from both partisan issues and politics (Lerner and Lasswell, 1951).

Gradually, Lasswell both refines and renders his definition more complex by considering policy first as a programme composed of objectives, values, and practices (Lasswell and Kaplan, 1952). This complexity is confirmed a few years later in A preview of policy science. Here, the author does not hesitate to conceive policy as the grouping of values, stakes, “instruments”, and “outcome practices” (Lasswell, 1971, p. 57).

The tendency to complexify the concept and its definition is especially true among numerous authors specialised in the study of public policy. On one hand, the definitional processes carried out by the authors are primarily based on a series of reductions and deconstructions. Public policy is therefore considered as a group of elementary objects and concepts that are multiple and varied. Notably, there are objectives, instruments, alternatives (Simon, 1945), technical means (Dahl, 1949), decisions, outputs and outcomes (Easton, 1965a), policy actions and courses of action (Jones, 1970; Friedrich, 1963; Rose, 1969), policy demands, and policy statements (Anderson, 1975). On the other hand, this study consists in coupling these different elements together in order to show that public policy consists of more than just one element. It is therefore defined as a more or less complex association of problems, objectives, values, instruments, actions, consequences, etc.

Faced with the plethora of definitions, some authors have chosen to abandon this issue or to avoid it. Counting more than forty different definitions in 1972, Thomas Dye concluded that only a relatively non-discriminatory broad definition would be satisfactory, which he summarises as follows: “whatever governments choose to do or not to do” (Dye, 1972). Rather than attempt to characterise content, Dye avoids this definitional task by focusing on its producer.

Although interesting, this approach circumvents the definitional process and remains limited with regard to what these same authors practice when defining a problem. Indeed, when they study problem agenda setting, they are less interested in defining the problem than in understanding how the participants themselves carry out this definitional task. An author such as Kingdon, for instance, does not hesitate to reject all problem definitions and to highlight the importance of problematising situations carried out by the actors themselves (Kingdon, 1995). In this way, the author does not only acknowledge the cognitive skills of each of these actors but also the importance of a definitional framework in agenda setting. This differential treatment between “problem” and “public policy” probably results from the influence of pragmatic studies which have largely influenced the study of problems since the studies carried out by John Dewey (1927).

Rather than embarking on a never ending search for a definition, we have chosen to follow the path traced by pragmatic studies on problems by applying them to solutions as well. Consequently, we will focus on the numerous discursive practices which enable actors to transform a set of fragmented public policies into a coherent public policy, and to attach objectives, problems to be solved, values, consequences, and a public to this public policy.

Grasping the definitional framework that practitioners develop thus makes it possible to better understand its significance in policymaking. Far from being insignificant or purely semantic, this definitional framework restores participants’ skills by seriously taking into account their ability to define and analyse public policies. The issue is therefore not in knowing if their analyses are true or not, nor if the researcher can conduct significantly better analyses, but rather in questioning the conditions of emergence, diffusion, evaluation, and use of these analyses by practitioners.

1.2 Exploring the political question

The key assumption of this book is not only to consider that the definitional framework plays a major role in policymaking but also to show that this activity is first and foremost a political activity.

To achieve this, we must first define what we mean by “political activity” and understand what policymaking activities have to do with politics. This is far from evident. There exists what Pierre Favre refers to as “already given”² political activities (Favre, 2007). These are socially-constructed activities that often have visible materiality and a political character which is not an object of debate. Analysing voting or the activities of a political party does not necessarily evoke debate with regard to the political dimension. When dealing with an activity in which the political attribute seems evident, debate on the political nature of the activity diminishes. This is the case when analysing politicians, for instance.

This situation is more complex when it refers to objects such as public policies. Admittedly, we can assume that as the State, which is the principal policymaker, practices ontological politics, then policy is politics. The studies that rediscovered institutions, therefore, posit that to understand society, the State in its specificity must be taken into account. Is this not why Theda Skocpol developed the assumption that to understand the presence or absence of revolution within a country (Skocpol, 1979), emphasis must be placed on the role of State in society? Did Peter Hall and Paul Pierson not insist on the importance of institutional constraints progressively forged within the State and which subsequently reduce decision-making possibilities (Hall, 1986; Pierson, 2000)?

However, all these analyses shift political issues from participant intention and behaviour to institutions and the constraints that these impose. Consequently, actors have limited influence on public policy, and this also renders obsolete the issue of legitimacy. Consequently, what is political is no longer the policymaking or transformational act, but rather the governing public organisation.

The first casualty of this shift is the politician himself who researchers keep dispossessing of his ability to produce or to influence policies, and more generally, to do politics. Subsequently, his only solution is his capacity to produce discourse that has no effect on public policy itself. Numerous studies have highlighted the illusory nature of such discourse in order to lift the veil on appearances more effectively and show the “real” actor practices that make a difference. Faced with political discourse which highlights a proactive “decision-maker”, capable of resolving problems by reforming policies, researchers highlight the key role that stakeholders such as experts, bureaucrats, and social and professional partners play from “behind the scenes” (Gilbert and Henry, 2009). In this silent world that researchers disclose, the politician disappears often in favour of alternative and apolitical causalities such as knowledge, experts, networks, or even institutions.

However, if the administration and institutional routines play a significantly larger role than politicians with regard to public policy, how can we analyse the link between policy and politics other than through this ontological evidence which sees the State as politics? Do institutions alone raise political issues or do actors also generate politics? Put differently, how else can we analyse the political issues which make it possible to place the actor and his proactivity back to the centre of the political debate?

And here we enter into a study based primarily on the concepts and objects that “are not already given” (Favre, 2007). Politics therefore becomes an intangible concept that the researcher must define and then illustrate through empirical studies. To achieve this, he must equip himself, that is make and/or use observation tools comprising methods, concepts, or paradigms that enable him to glimpse beyond the empirical reality.

It is from this particular moment that analysing public policy becomes complex. After demonstrating that political discourse does not reflect reality, and that politicians have only a minor influence on policy, researchers find themselves relatively unprepared to identify the political issues in what they have observed.

To overcome this difficulty, we must reconsider the very definition of the concept of “politics” by examining it slightly differently. This is a particularly perilous exercise considering the polysemy of the term and how it is used. Rather than get into an endless debate on the exhaustive list of definitions of politics, we have selected two contradictory definitions in existing literature. These make it possible to characterise activities as “political” as they echo empirical activities that one comes across in policymaking.

The first definition defines “politics” as all activities that seek to order, govern, resolve social conflict, and re-establish order within society. According to Max Weber, for instance, politics is first, the leadership of a State: “We wish to understand by politics only the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership, of a political association, hence today, of a state” (Weber, 2000, p. 112). Here we find Plato’s idea that politics is, above all else, the “science of commanding”. Governing is therefore taking decisions to end conflicts, establishing common principles to punish the behaviour of those who endanger society (Favre, 2005, p. 266).

On the contrary, the second definition considers that “politics” are activities of contestation, opposition, conflict, partisan competition, and more broadly of social disorder. For instance, according to Leca and Grawitz, a political activity is primarily an activity of competition among groups – irrespective of how they are constituted – in order to support or contest policy decisions and their authors (Grawitz and Leca, 1985). Jacques Lagroye argues that political activities are based primarily on the infringement of rules and established orders as well as the ability to exceed limits (Lagroye, 2003). Political action therefore amounts to disputing the social orders that ensure a society’s stability.

While these two definitions appear to be opposed in every respect, we would like to consider them in their necessary complementarity or, to take up the hypothesis developed by Julien Freund, in their “antinomian dialectics” (Freund, 1986). This implies that a political ac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: The Political Process of Policymaking
• 2  Creating Social Disorder: Constructing, Propagating and Policitising Social Problems
• 3  Defining Solution: A Complex Bricolage to Solve Public Problems
• 4  Propagating Solution: Argumentative Strategies to Cement Coalitions
• 5  Policy Statements to Legitimise Decision Makers
• 6  Conclusion: How Public Policy Shapes Politics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index