Processes: origins, rationality, incrementalism and garbage cans (reading 11)
First, we consider three commons approaches:
1. tracing the origins of initiates
2. rational decision making
3. incrementalism
Origins
Public policy is not one single actor’s brainchild. Across case studies, the proximate origin of the policy
change varies from one case to the next. Even within a case study, it is difficult to point who was
responsible.
Ideas comes from everywhere, and the critical factor that explains the prominence of an item on the agenda
is not its source, but instead the climate in government or the receptivity to idea of a given type, regardless
of source. Nobody has monopoly on idea, they come from different resources. Thus the key to
understanding policy change is not where the idea come from but what made it take hold and grow.
An idea starts somewhere, and it becomes diffused in the community of people who deal with a given
policy domain.
Infinite regress
As we move from one case to another it is difficult to discern a pattern to the origins. When we track down
the origins of an idea, we become involved in an invite regression.
An idea doesn’t start with the proximate source. It has a history. When one starts to trace the history of a
proposal or concern back through time, there is no logical place to stop the process.
Because of the problem of infinite regress, the ultimate origin of an idea, concern, or proposal cannot be
specified. So tracing origins turns out to be futile.
Nobody leads anybody else
There are no leaders, at least not consistently across many possible subjects. If one examines the
percentages of respondents in each category who treat subject as very or somewhat important at the low
points (where it was considered not important) in the curve, before the subjects caught on with respondent
as a whole, the figures are quite uniform across categories.
Attention to a problems is fairly even across categories of participants at the point of most attention to a
subject, as it was at the points of least attention.
No category of participant consistently discuss a subject ahead of others, and no category participates
disproportionately when the subject is hot.
Combinations and the fertile soil
For a number of reason, a combination of sources is virtually always responsible. One reason is the general
fragmentation of the system. The founders deliberately designed a constitutional system to be fragmented,
incapable of being dominated by any one actor. They succeeded.
Thus a combination of people is required to bring an idea to policy fruition.
Nobody really controls the information system. Ideas, rumours, bits of information, studies - all of these
float around the system without any hard-and-fast communication channels.
It’s much less interesting where an idea got started than that it did. “There are a lot of ideas. The real
questions is, which of these ideas will catch hold?
Comprehensive, rational decision making
If policy makers were operating according to a rational, comprehensive model, they would first define their
goals rather than clearly and set the levels of achievement of these goals that will satisfy them. They would
compare benefits and costs, and they would chose the best alternative.
For a number of reason, such model does not accurately describe reality.
,The ability of human beings to process information is more limited than such a comprehensive approach
prescribe. We are unable to canvass many alternatives and simultaneously compare them, and we also fail
to clarify the goals.
It may be that some parts of the process approximate a rational decision making model more closely than
others. Still rational comprehensive model does not describe very well the processes under investigation in
this book, taken as a whole.
Incrementalism
Instead of beginning consideration of each program or issue afresh, decision makers take what they are
currently doing as given, and make small, incremental, marginal adjustments is that current behaviour. The
result is that policy changes very gradually in small steps.
Such a model deserve many political and governmental processes. For instance, if a program has basically
settled down into a stabile pattern, few questions are raised about it, there is little controversy around it.
There are changes, but these proceed gradually, piece by piece.
Incrementalism is also treated in the interviews, not as a description of the way the world is but as a
strategy that one might use to manipulate outcomes. People are sometimes reluctant to big steps.
Apprehensive about being unable to calculate the potential fallout, politicians shy away from grand
departures.
However is was found that changes in agendas don’t actually follow incrementalism. A particular subject,
after being stable for some time, suddenly takes off.
So an incremental model is useful to describe a certain part of processes, but we also have to face many
non incremental changes.
Thus incrementalism is important, particularly in understanding the development of alternatives and
proposals.
The federal government and garbage cans
To this point we have come across many important, but partial, answers: how the agent is set, how the
alternatives for choice are specified, and why these processes work as they do.
The garbage can model (Micheal Cohen)
Organised anarchies have three general properties:
1. Problematic preferences (people fail to specify their preferences accurately)
2. Unclear technology (an organised anarchy’s member do not understand the processes very well)
3. Fluid participation (participants drift in and out of decision making)
Despite these characteristics, such organisations do function: they make decision, adapt and survive. This
looks a lot like a federal government.
People do not disagree about what they need to accomplish, and are often obliged to act before they define
their preferences. They often do not know how to accomplish what they need to accomplish, even if they
can define the goal. People also don’t necessarily understand the organisation of which they are part.
Participation is definitely fluid.
Running such organisations or decision structures are four separate streams: problems, solutions,
participants and choice opportunities. Each of the streams has a life of its own, largely unrelated to the
others.
As Cohen says this kind of organisation “is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues looking for
decisions, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer and decision makers looking for
work”.
A choice opportunity thus is “ a garbage can into which various king of problems and solutions are dumped
by participants as they are generated. The mix of garbage in a single can depends on the mix of cans
available, on the tables attached to the alternative cans, on what garbage is currently being produced, and
on the speed with which garbage is collected and removed from the scene.”
The outcomes then are a function of the mix of garbage (problems, solutions, participants, resources) in the
can and how it is processed.
Note that this picture is quite unlike various models we discussed earlier. It certainly does not look like
comprehensive, rational decision making. People do not set to solve problems here. More often, solutions
search for problems. People work on problems only when a particular combination of problem, solution,
and participants in a choice situation makes it possible.
, A revised model
We now adapt this general lone of thought to understand agenda sitting in the federal government.
The federal government is seen as an organised anarchy. We will find our emphasis being placed more on
the “organised” the on the “anarchy”, as we discover structure and patterns in the processes. But the
properties of problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation are in evidence.
There are three families of processes in federal government agenda setting: problems, policies and politics.
People recognise problems, they generate proposals for public policy changes, and they engage in such
political activities as election campaigns and pressure group lobbying.
The three major process streams in the federal government are:
1. Problem recognition
2. The formation and refining of policy proposal
3. Politics
First, various problems come to capture the attention of people in and around government.
Second, there is a policy community of specialist (bureaucrats, planning division ecc), which have their own
ideas. In a selection process, some ideas or proposal are taken seriously and others are discarded.
Third, the political stream is composed of things like swings of national mood, election results, changes of
administration ecc. Events in this stream occur independently of the streams of problems and proposal.
These three streams develop and operate largely independently of one another.
Once we understand these streams taken separately, the key to understand agenda and policy change is
their coupling. The separate streams come together at critical times. A problem is recognised, a solution is
available, the political climate makes the time right for change, and the constraints do not prohibit action.
From government to governance: political steering in modern societies (reading 12)
Governance refers to a basically non-hierarchical mode of governing, where non-state, private corporate
actors participate in the formulation and implementation of public policy.
In the 1970s a shift from hierarchical to a more cooperative form of government happened in west European
countries which used to have a more interventionist state.
Non-hierarchical political control is also found in the European Union: it is a system of multilevel
governance, where networks are the dominant structural feature.
What triggered this shift was the failure of reform policies after the second World War; the isolated national
states alone was not able to assure constantly growing wealth.
One of the alternatives was deregulation and privatization; however a series of political crisis and economic
set-back has discredited the promises of the market as driving force of progress.
Another alternative is the move from government to governance, meaning state authorities cooperate with
private corporate actors: this allows higher flexibility and adaptability.
This cooperation has different forms:
1) Direct collaboration of public authorities and private corporate actors in policy development:
- Neo-corporatist arrangements: institutionalised negotiation between the state, organised business and
organised labour about macroeconomic policy (Sweden, Austria and Germany, the latter failed)
- Mixed ( Telecomunication, public health or scientific research) policy networks: negotiated consensus
which facilitates the formation of a policy meeting compliance rather than resistance. It is adapted to a
complex and dynamic social environment, where central coordination is difficult. Ex. German
science policy network includes large research organizations, federal and Lander authorities and the
association of institutions of higher learning.
Ex. USA: iron triangle: federal authority, powerful organisation, respective Parliamentary appropriations
committee.
2) Self regulation:private organisation fulfil regulatory function that are ultimately in the public
interest:
- Systems of negotiation between representatives of different interests.
Ex. German system of wage bargaining btw capital and labour.
- Private governments: organisations imposing norms and standards on their members not only
serving their own, but also certain public interests.
Ex. German DIN.
Delegated self regulation is an indirect form of cooperation between state and civil society : self regulation
in the context of modern governance is always regulated self-regulation.
First, we consider three commons approaches:
1. tracing the origins of initiates
2. rational decision making
3. incrementalism
Origins
Public policy is not one single actor’s brainchild. Across case studies, the proximate origin of the policy
change varies from one case to the next. Even within a case study, it is difficult to point who was
responsible.
Ideas comes from everywhere, and the critical factor that explains the prominence of an item on the agenda
is not its source, but instead the climate in government or the receptivity to idea of a given type, regardless
of source. Nobody has monopoly on idea, they come from different resources. Thus the key to
understanding policy change is not where the idea come from but what made it take hold and grow.
An idea starts somewhere, and it becomes diffused in the community of people who deal with a given
policy domain.
Infinite regress
As we move from one case to another it is difficult to discern a pattern to the origins. When we track down
the origins of an idea, we become involved in an invite regression.
An idea doesn’t start with the proximate source. It has a history. When one starts to trace the history of a
proposal or concern back through time, there is no logical place to stop the process.
Because of the problem of infinite regress, the ultimate origin of an idea, concern, or proposal cannot be
specified. So tracing origins turns out to be futile.
Nobody leads anybody else
There are no leaders, at least not consistently across many possible subjects. If one examines the
percentages of respondents in each category who treat subject as very or somewhat important at the low
points (where it was considered not important) in the curve, before the subjects caught on with respondent
as a whole, the figures are quite uniform across categories.
Attention to a problems is fairly even across categories of participants at the point of most attention to a
subject, as it was at the points of least attention.
No category of participant consistently discuss a subject ahead of others, and no category participates
disproportionately when the subject is hot.
Combinations and the fertile soil
For a number of reason, a combination of sources is virtually always responsible. One reason is the general
fragmentation of the system. The founders deliberately designed a constitutional system to be fragmented,
incapable of being dominated by any one actor. They succeeded.
Thus a combination of people is required to bring an idea to policy fruition.
Nobody really controls the information system. Ideas, rumours, bits of information, studies - all of these
float around the system without any hard-and-fast communication channels.
It’s much less interesting where an idea got started than that it did. “There are a lot of ideas. The real
questions is, which of these ideas will catch hold?
Comprehensive, rational decision making
If policy makers were operating according to a rational, comprehensive model, they would first define their
goals rather than clearly and set the levels of achievement of these goals that will satisfy them. They would
compare benefits and costs, and they would chose the best alternative.
For a number of reason, such model does not accurately describe reality.
,The ability of human beings to process information is more limited than such a comprehensive approach
prescribe. We are unable to canvass many alternatives and simultaneously compare them, and we also fail
to clarify the goals.
It may be that some parts of the process approximate a rational decision making model more closely than
others. Still rational comprehensive model does not describe very well the processes under investigation in
this book, taken as a whole.
Incrementalism
Instead of beginning consideration of each program or issue afresh, decision makers take what they are
currently doing as given, and make small, incremental, marginal adjustments is that current behaviour. The
result is that policy changes very gradually in small steps.
Such a model deserve many political and governmental processes. For instance, if a program has basically
settled down into a stabile pattern, few questions are raised about it, there is little controversy around it.
There are changes, but these proceed gradually, piece by piece.
Incrementalism is also treated in the interviews, not as a description of the way the world is but as a
strategy that one might use to manipulate outcomes. People are sometimes reluctant to big steps.
Apprehensive about being unable to calculate the potential fallout, politicians shy away from grand
departures.
However is was found that changes in agendas don’t actually follow incrementalism. A particular subject,
after being stable for some time, suddenly takes off.
So an incremental model is useful to describe a certain part of processes, but we also have to face many
non incremental changes.
Thus incrementalism is important, particularly in understanding the development of alternatives and
proposals.
The federal government and garbage cans
To this point we have come across many important, but partial, answers: how the agent is set, how the
alternatives for choice are specified, and why these processes work as they do.
The garbage can model (Micheal Cohen)
Organised anarchies have three general properties:
1. Problematic preferences (people fail to specify their preferences accurately)
2. Unclear technology (an organised anarchy’s member do not understand the processes very well)
3. Fluid participation (participants drift in and out of decision making)
Despite these characteristics, such organisations do function: they make decision, adapt and survive. This
looks a lot like a federal government.
People do not disagree about what they need to accomplish, and are often obliged to act before they define
their preferences. They often do not know how to accomplish what they need to accomplish, even if they
can define the goal. People also don’t necessarily understand the organisation of which they are part.
Participation is definitely fluid.
Running such organisations or decision structures are four separate streams: problems, solutions,
participants and choice opportunities. Each of the streams has a life of its own, largely unrelated to the
others.
As Cohen says this kind of organisation “is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues looking for
decisions, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer and decision makers looking for
work”.
A choice opportunity thus is “ a garbage can into which various king of problems and solutions are dumped
by participants as they are generated. The mix of garbage in a single can depends on the mix of cans
available, on the tables attached to the alternative cans, on what garbage is currently being produced, and
on the speed with which garbage is collected and removed from the scene.”
The outcomes then are a function of the mix of garbage (problems, solutions, participants, resources) in the
can and how it is processed.
Note that this picture is quite unlike various models we discussed earlier. It certainly does not look like
comprehensive, rational decision making. People do not set to solve problems here. More often, solutions
search for problems. People work on problems only when a particular combination of problem, solution,
and participants in a choice situation makes it possible.
, A revised model
We now adapt this general lone of thought to understand agenda sitting in the federal government.
The federal government is seen as an organised anarchy. We will find our emphasis being placed more on
the “organised” the on the “anarchy”, as we discover structure and patterns in the processes. But the
properties of problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation are in evidence.
There are three families of processes in federal government agenda setting: problems, policies and politics.
People recognise problems, they generate proposals for public policy changes, and they engage in such
political activities as election campaigns and pressure group lobbying.
The three major process streams in the federal government are:
1. Problem recognition
2. The formation and refining of policy proposal
3. Politics
First, various problems come to capture the attention of people in and around government.
Second, there is a policy community of specialist (bureaucrats, planning division ecc), which have their own
ideas. In a selection process, some ideas or proposal are taken seriously and others are discarded.
Third, the political stream is composed of things like swings of national mood, election results, changes of
administration ecc. Events in this stream occur independently of the streams of problems and proposal.
These three streams develop and operate largely independently of one another.
Once we understand these streams taken separately, the key to understand agenda and policy change is
their coupling. The separate streams come together at critical times. A problem is recognised, a solution is
available, the political climate makes the time right for change, and the constraints do not prohibit action.
From government to governance: political steering in modern societies (reading 12)
Governance refers to a basically non-hierarchical mode of governing, where non-state, private corporate
actors participate in the formulation and implementation of public policy.
In the 1970s a shift from hierarchical to a more cooperative form of government happened in west European
countries which used to have a more interventionist state.
Non-hierarchical political control is also found in the European Union: it is a system of multilevel
governance, where networks are the dominant structural feature.
What triggered this shift was the failure of reform policies after the second World War; the isolated national
states alone was not able to assure constantly growing wealth.
One of the alternatives was deregulation and privatization; however a series of political crisis and economic
set-back has discredited the promises of the market as driving force of progress.
Another alternative is the move from government to governance, meaning state authorities cooperate with
private corporate actors: this allows higher flexibility and adaptability.
This cooperation has different forms:
1) Direct collaboration of public authorities and private corporate actors in policy development:
- Neo-corporatist arrangements: institutionalised negotiation between the state, organised business and
organised labour about macroeconomic policy (Sweden, Austria and Germany, the latter failed)
- Mixed ( Telecomunication, public health or scientific research) policy networks: negotiated consensus
which facilitates the formation of a policy meeting compliance rather than resistance. It is adapted to a
complex and dynamic social environment, where central coordination is difficult. Ex. German
science policy network includes large research organizations, federal and Lander authorities and the
association of institutions of higher learning.
Ex. USA: iron triangle: federal authority, powerful organisation, respective Parliamentary appropriations
committee.
2) Self regulation:private organisation fulfil regulatory function that are ultimately in the public
interest:
- Systems of negotiation between representatives of different interests.
Ex. German system of wage bargaining btw capital and labour.
- Private governments: organisations imposing norms and standards on their members not only
serving their own, but also certain public interests.
Ex. German DIN.
Delegated self regulation is an indirect form of cooperation between state and civil society : self regulation
in the context of modern governance is always regulated self-regulation.
