Two main concerns of policymaking

1
Two main concerns of policy-making

• Power and policy-making which groups control
  public policy making and who benefits from a
  particular policy making structure
• Rationality and policy-making to what extent
  public policy making is, and more importantly
  should be, a rational process

2
Power, Analysis, and Policy Making

• policy making as politics (the play of power) and
  analysis
• limits on analysis in policy making
• roles for analysis in different regime types
• public policy by politics and analysis, and the
  debate between the rational model and various
  notions of incrementalism
• organization and public policy making

3
Rational Model

• Rational decision-making involves the selection
  of the alternative which will maximize the values
  of decision-makers, the selection being made
  following a comprehensive analysis of
  alternatives and their consequences
• extremely influential in explaining foreign
  policy making
• e.g. why China crossed the Yalu river why Soviet
  Union decided to deploy missiles in Cuba and why
  the U.S. decided to resort to sea blockade to
  demand the dismantling of the missiles

4
Rational Model

• Organizational and government action as choice
• Key concepts
• goals
• options
• consequences
• choice made on the basis of analyzing and
  comparing all alternatives

5
Dominant inference pattern of rational model

• If an organization perform a particular action,
  that organization must have had ends toward which
  the action constituted a maximizing means
• the explanatory power of the model stems from
  this inference pattern

6
Rational Model

• The main thrust of the rational model lies not in
  the fact that it is a correct description of the
  policy making process. In reality, the policy
  making process is markedly different from what is
  presented in the rational model
• the rational model is basically an ideal toward
  which organizational decision-making should
  approximate
• Hence, the real issue is whether the rational
  model should be taken as a good prescriptive
  model for policy making

7
Alternatives to the rational model

• As description of, and prescription for, policy
  making
• Herbert Simon bounded rationality
• Graham Allison organizational process model
• Charles Lindblom incrementalism

8
Bounded rationality

• Rationality is bounded at the individual as well
  as the organizational levels
• Bounded rationality at individual level
  satisficing rather than maximizing
• organizational processes give rise to even more
  constraints on rationality

9
Organizational constraints on rationality

• Routinization of activity through establishing
  programs and standard operating procedures
• specialization of activities and roles so that
  attention of attention is directed to a
  particular restricted set of values
• simultaneous and sequential pursuit of
  conflicting goals

10
Organizational constraints on rationality

• Factoring of goals and tasks into programs and
  departments that are semi-independent of one
  another to reduce interdependencies restrict
  range of stimuli and situations that narrow
  perception and foster concerns with narrow
  interests
• training and indoctrination lead individuals to
  make decisions as the organization would like
  them to make

11
Organizational Process Model

• Mainly as a descriptive model
• Action as organizational output
• Key concepts
• factored problems and fractionated power
• parochial priorities and perceptions
• sequential attentions to conflicting goals
• standard operating procedures
• programs and repertoires

12
Dominant Inference Pattern of the Organizational
Process Model

• If an organization performs an action of a
  certain type today, its organizational components
  must yesterday have been performing (or have had
  established routines for performing) an action
  only marginally different from todays action.

13
Incrementalism

• Both as a descriptive and a prescriptive model
• criticism of the rational model
• not adapted to limited problem-solving capacities
  of human being
• not adapted to adequacy of information
• not adapted to the costliness of analysis
• insistence on comprehensive analysis results in
  either inaction or neglect of important
  information. Hence, a strategy is required.

14
How does this model differ the analysis of Simon?

• Both descriptive and prescriptive
• Lindblom does not focus adequately on the
  organizational structures and processes that work
  to limit full rationality
• organizational structures and processes also make
  policy making incremental

15
Root and Branch Methods

• Root (rational) starting from basic issues o n
  each occasion and building from the ground up
• Branch (successive limited comparison) starting
  from the existing situation and changing
  incrementally. Hence incrementalism

16
Incrementalism is preferable because

• It rests on a more realistic assumption of human
  intellectual capacities and possession of
  information
• corresponds more closely to the reality of
  democratic politics relevance and realism
• a degree of comprehensiveness is achieved by the
  system of having each interest group to guard its
  interests
• avoids big mistake

17
Incrementalism and Strategic Analysis

• Rational model leads to unconscious neglect and
  inaction
• need for simplification and choice incremental
  analysis is only a form of strategic analysis
  other forms of strategic analysis are also in
  line with the spirit behind incrementalism.