Showing papers in "Journal of Public Policy in 1982"

The Pressman-Wildavsky Paradox: Four Addenda or Why Models Based on Probability Theory Can Predict Implementation Success and Suggest Useful Tactical Advice for Implementers

Abstract: Pressman and Wildavsky's Implementation occupies center stage in the developing literature about policy implementation, in part because of the analogy they drew between implementation processes and the multiplicative model from probability theory. This paper takes the relevance of probability theory further and considers the additive model from probability theory and conditional probabilities as well as the multiplicative model. This expanded coverage of probability theorems (1) leads to markedly increased optimism about the likelihood of successful implementation, (2) encompasses empirically reasonable tactics such as persistence, packaging of clearances, engineering bandwagons and policy reduction, and (3) generates advice to hopeful implementers – some of it non-obvious.

Two Cheers for the Welfare State: Public Opinion and Private Welfare

Abstract: In a democratic society, public policy must claim to provide what people want. One clue to this is the evidence of opinion surveys. Yet, in the field of welfare, surveys set policy analysts a puzzle: evidence about attitudes to what government should be providing displays an ambiguity. Some surveys demonstrate popular preferences for market provision, suppressed to a considerable extent by the coercive system of tax-financed state welfare, and others reveal a high level of satisfaction with and support for existing public welfare services. Both sets of opinions are tinged with a moralistic concern about the regulation of state services for stereotyped undeserving scroungers. The paper suggests that this ambivalence in findings is not simply the result of methodological difficulties: it may reflect an ambiguity in many people's attitudes in this area that is founded on the contrast between the ideology of individual self-interest prevalent in a market society and awareness of common needs for collective provision. Both aspects contribute to people's framework of ideas about the proper role of the state. Evidence from a recent survey is analysed to highlight the contradiction, and support this interpretation.

The Policy Analysis-Critical Theory Affair: Wildavsky and Habermas as Bedfellows?

Abstract: Policy analysis may benefit from specific conceptual contributions derived from Jurgen Habermas's critical social theory. In particular, Aaron Wildavsky's emphasis on the policy analyst's fostering of social and political ‘interactions’ can be given concrete empirical content derived from the critical theorist's account of social and communicative action. In addition, the critical theorist's distinction between action and ‘learning’ extends and sharpens Wildavsky's and Lindblom's account of policy outcomes. Once obstacles to social and political learning are distinguished from ordinary constraints upon citizens' action, policy analysis research (as formulated by Wildavsky and Lindblom) can be more concretely specified and then understood also and essentially to involve fundamental normative judgments of the legitimacy of policy-fostered ‘interactions’.

Growth by Exception: or The Vain Attempt to Impose Resource Scarcity on the Danish Public Sector

Abstract: For more than a decade control of public sector growth has been one of the key issues in Danish politics. In an attempt to contain further uncontrolled growth, the whole budgetary system has been gradually reformed, and political cutting operations have been a recurrent event. Serious questions, however, remain. First, it is questionable whether procedural and institutional reforms of the budgetary system have made it any easier for political decision-makers to carry through their cutting plans. Second, it is doubtful whether the policy-makers are able to keep within the financial limits, set up by themselves, when confronted with demands for solution of unforeseen, but politically pressing, problems. In such situations there will always remain a strong political propensity to make an exception. As in all these 'battles of the cuts', the air is rent with the anguish of amputated billions; but yet again as the smoke clears, total government spending is found to be undiminished and even rising. The Economist, 23 May 198I.

The Home Office and Race Relations Policy: Coordinator and Initiator? *

Abstract: This article attempts to analyse why, to quote a recent report from the Home Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons, ‘in the vacuum caused by the Home Office's reluctance to be seen to be interfering, ethnic minority concerns go by default’. It first examines the reasons for placing responsibility for race relations policy with the Home Office and then goes on to detail events within the Home Office in the two years following the introduction of the 1976 Race Relations Act. The article concludes by suggesting that a lack of preparedness for the implementation stage of the policy, together with a diminution of political commitment and the limitations on special funding, discouraged the Home Office from playing a more active and more effective role in coordinating and initiating within central government policies for racial disadvantage.

Inequlity, the National Health Service and Health Policy*

Abstract: The National Health Service (NHS) was founded in 1948 to replace an inefficient, ill-coordinated and financially unstable health care system and to reduce the barriers to the consumption of health care. In this article, it is argued that the geographic and social class equity objectives of the NHS have been poorly specified and that attempts to achieve them through government policy have been inadequate. The renewed interest in inequalities in health and health care and the problems of formulating and implementing policies aimed at reducing inequalities are discussed in general terms in section 1. Section 2 examines the inequalities of health care provision that were inherited in 1948, the development of policies to mitigate the problem and the current situation. Alternative demand and supply side policies to reduce inequalities in health and health care are presented in section 3. A summary of the proceeding arguments is set out in section 4.

Black Minority Participation in the USA and Britain

Abstract: Little attention has been paid to the comparative study of the politics and administration of race in the USA and Britain. There exist certain important similarities between the two countries particularly with regard to the way in which even militant leaders are willing to co-operate with centrally funded community agencies and to moderate their demands to gain political and economic returns for their organisations from government. There are, however, structural differences between American and British community bodies which affect the success of those institutions in obtaining the allegiance of community militants and in more fully integrating moderate leaderships into local level participatory processes. In the USA the system encourages an apparently high degree of 'voluntarism' and 'independence' from direct central control through relative institutional autonomy. This is more conducive to group co-operation than Britain's more centralised community relations framework with its closer direct association with government and the so-called 'white power structure'. Because, therefore, of the American version of 'independence' groups there are actually more effectively integrated than the British into governmentally funded institutions.

Crowding Out in the UK within an Optimal Control Framework

Abstract: An important issue in the discussion of fiscal policy is the contention that the public sector could expand only at the expense of the private sector, which must contract to provide the necessary room. This paper is concerned with ‘financial’ crowding out, which relates to the financing of public expenditure, rather than resource crowding out, which relates to the size of public expenditure. The paper attempts to determine empirically, using the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) macroeconomic model of the UK economy, whether fiscal actions under different modes of finance affect some strategic economic variables. The paper utilises techniques of optimal control, which are considered superior to simulation. The main conclusion of the paper is that there is no significant crowding out in the NIESR model; it is, nevertheless, important to distinguish between money-financed and bond-financed increases in government expenditure.

Organising for Health: The National Health Service in the United Kingdom

Abstract: Although the NHS operates throughout the United Kingdom, it is organised, and services are planned, differently in each of the four countries: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Curiously, the differences are generally either overlooked or dismissed as irrelevant. Yet their persistence gives the lie to the view that the NHS is a highly centralised, monolithic entity. Moreover, they illustrate the paradox of considerable diversity within a unitary state. This paper examines some of the variations that exist, noting that recent changes in the organisation of health services have done little to modify these differences. Indeed, in regard to developments in the private health sector and to approaches to planning and priority-setting, the differences may, in future, become greater. For such a compact entity, UK policy analysts are surprisingly uninformed about practices occurring around them. The paper argues that there is a need for researchers and policymakers to pay more attention to intra-UK variations such as those evident in the NHS and to devise ways of ascertaining their impact on service delivery and, if possible, on performance.

Marketable Permits: What's all the Fuss About?

Abstract: The command and control approach to government regulation of pollution is clearly not working for many problems. While the theoretical case for applying market mechanisms to control pollution as an alternative is persuasive, there are several stumbling blocks which arise in their application. This paper examines some of the key implementation issues which must be addressed in designing a marketable permit scheme. The issues are brought into focus by considering a particular example – the control of sulfur oxides emissions in Los Angeles.

Strike costs and public policy

Abstract: Strike costs provide incentives for bargaining parties to seek agreement by effective negotiation. To perform this role efficiently both the magnitude and distribution of such costs are crucial. Despite the apparently low aggregate costs of strikes the extreme concentration of stoppages indicates that costs may be sufficient. The burden of such costs appears inefficient in certain situations. In such cases government intervention may be required. Impending legislative changes in Britain contribute little to strike containment and are likely to manifest their effect in bargaining outcomes as opposed to the bargaining process. Increases in the strike costs suffered by one side in wage negotiations serve only to increase the relative bargaining power of the other side. Reductions in state subsidies to the strike costs suffered by labour appear more effective as a device for controlling wage growth than strike activity. A poor level of understanding of the strike process makes this an area where public policy must incorporate gradualism and pragmatism.

Evaluation and Problem Redefinition

Abstract: Inadequate problem formulation leads to inadequate, alas persistent, solutions (programs). Program evaluation is commonly held as a means to put programs and policies to the test. The best of controlled experimentation, however, cannot serve as the ‘potential falsifier’ of problem formulation, only of the adequacy of means to solve a pre-conceptualized problem. An analysis of disadvantaged youth policy in Israel is provided to illustrate and support these contentions.

Towards a Craft of Energy Policy: Constraints upon and Opportunities for Strategic Planning in the US Department of Energy

Abstract: This discussion draws upon the author's experience with the US General Accounting Offices's Energy Planning Review Team, which analyzed the planning processes and procedures (as well as the products) used by the US Department of Energy. It suggests that the DOE's preoccupation with 'rational' planning techniques in the face of incremental political and organizational realities explains many of the recent energy policy failures. These failures, however, viewed through an 'adaptive-learning' perspective provide valuable clues to potentially more successful analytical activities, and eventually, perhaps, more rational and systematic energy policies.

Decision rules and regulatory reform

Abstract: The regulation of risks to health and the environment in the United States is currently undergoing serious criticism for its impact on the recession economy. Attempts to diminish health risks by placing stringent limitations on potentially harmful substances are thought to be excessively expensive and ineffective. To remedy this problem, basic reforms in the way these regulations are fashioned have been proposed. Perhaps the best known is cost-benefit analysis. Nevertheless, there are a number of areas where agencies purposely avoid making tradeoffs between costs and benefits and instead assign priorities among levels and types of benefits. However, despite a considerable literature examining the merits of making tradeoffs in regulatory decisions, little attention has been given to the disparate premises of the tradeoff and no-tradeoff rules and how the choice of decision rules determines the role of cost considerations in agency decision making. This paper not only examines these issues, but develops an analytical framework for restructuring the choice between rules. Instead of abolishing the no-tradeoff rules, the analytical framework proposed here can be used to generate a compromise rule which permits partial tradeoffs under certain well-defined circumstances.

Inflationary Momentum and Stabilization Policy: A US Perspective

Abstract: The inflationary experience of the industrial countries in recent years is explained in terms of institutional and structural changes promoting wage-price momentum. Developments such as the increasing extent of indexation of incomes and flexibility of exchange rates tend to result in downward rigidity of the rate of change of prices and wages. In the extreme, this is seen to lead to stagflation as the normal economic condition, and to the ineffectiveness of exchange rate changes for adjusting external imbalances. While output and employment continue to respond to the application of monetary and fiscal policies, the wage-price mechanism lies increasingly beyond the reach of these conventional tools. It is argued that the sufficiency of stabilization policy is restored, as a medium-term tendency, to the extent that the inflationsustaining links between wage and price changes can be systematically restrained, such as could follow from a permanent tax-based incomes policy.