the other children might have complained
that their children were getting sick as a consequence. There might have been
concerns from the public health authorities, and the centre staff might have
found out that the schools had a standard response to illness excluding
children with specified ailments for prescribed periods of time. The centre
might then have defined its own sickness policy, so that the staff and parents
did not have to decide and negotiate each case as it came up.
We can see here that 'policy' can
mean not a set of objectives for the
activity, or even the guiding principles, but simply the Standardization and
articulation of practice: 'This is the way we do ii here.' The adoption of such
policies by the centre is likely to relied a number of processes: the centre is
growing and the Director wants to be sure all the staff do the same thing;
increasingly, the staff have had training and want to supervise activities, not
care for sick children; centre staff will become aware of practice in other
centres, perhaps through an association of childcare centres; and regulatory
officials may be asking increasingly specific questions about practice, In
other words, articulating policy in organizations has to do with looking
sideways ('Who are the relevant others, and what are they doing?') as well as
with looking forwards ('Where do we want to go?').
In this example, we can see the
emergence of policy within organizations seen as 'non-government'; we can also
find non government organizations being drawn into governmental policy
activity. For example, the childcare centre's policy on children III nesses and
attendance would not have been developed solely within the centre. The
construction of policy involves more than just government: other participants
have a very significant roll' to play, particularly in the impact they have on
which things arc si i n as problems and worthy of policy attention. Even if we
stick In I he perception that it is governments which 'make policy', it is
clear that they do not make it in times and circumstances of their own
choosing, and non-government is also an important part of the policy process.
The attributes of policy
'Policy' is clearly a term that is
used in a variety of ways at different levels. Rather than trying to
superimpose on this usage an authoritative (to us) definition of policy, it
might be more fruitful to identify what it is that people are trying to label
when they term something 'policy'. We can see three central elements in the
ways that the term is used: authority, expertise and order.
First of all, policy rests on authority.
To speak of something as policy implies that it has the endorsement of some
authorized decision-maker. It is the authority which legitimates the policy,
and policy questions flow to and from authority figures: the Minister, the
General Manager, the Executive Committee. These figures may have little to do
with the framing of policy, but it draws on their authority, cascading down
through the organization via the principle of hierarchy.
Secondly, policy implies expertise.
Policy is seen as a process of bringing the power of the organization to
bear on some particular problem area. This implies that policy requires
knowledge, both of the problem area, and of the things that might be done about
it. Policy knowledge is subdivided into functional areas-education policy,
transport policy, etc. - the stress being on education or transport rather than
on policy. When new policy concerns appear, such as the environment or equality
of opportunity in employment, they are driven initially by widely shared
principles, but over time a body of specialized policy expertise is developed.
And since this perspective sees policy as an exercise in skilled
problem-solving, it invites the question 'Does the policy work?', which
generates a further specialized field of policy evaluation.
Finally, policy is concerned with order.
Policy implies system and consistency. The decision is not arbitrary or
capricious: it is governed by a known formula of universal application. In
this way, policy sets limits on the behavior of officials; at the same time, it
frees them from the need to make choices. And it draws a range of activities
into a common framework: we don't just teach a foreign language to a lot of
students, we have a foreign language education policy.
In this context, a major source of
difficulty is the problem of consistency between different policy fields. The
policy of the highways agency on building urban freeways may clash with the
policy of the wildlife agency on protecting the habitat of the native fauna.
The policy of the water authority to extend its supply network may be at
variance with the policy of the planning authority to contain the geographical
spread of the city. Such inconsistencies are seen as a major policy problem,
and much policy work is concerned will) I he way different agencies handle the
same policy issues.
To say that authority, expertise
and order are the attributes of policy is not to imply that they are all
equally present at all points in the process. In fact, they may operate against
one another: for instance:
·
The desire of the Minister for Education to exercise her right
to make a decision about the school leaving examination (authority) may
jeopardize the shared understandings so laboriously built up among schools, teachers,
parents, universities, etc. (order).
·
The criminologists know from careful research that taking a
tough line on crime is not very effective (expertise), but find that the
politicians think that the electorate favours this, and are more interested in
the votes than the evidence (authority).
·
Officials have negotiated a policy development which would
be supported by all the relevant players (order), but the experts are insisting
on a controlled trial before they give it their support (expertise).
So policy outcomes are likely to embody
a continuing tension between these attributes.
Choice and
structure
So far, we have spoken of policy in
terms of articulate, conscious choice: policies are the choices which
decision-makers have made, and they are clearly set out so that everyone knows
them. Certainly, this is the way in which these authority figures would
describe policy: it is their job to make policy decisions, and there are also
jobs for others, advising them about the decisions they ought to make, and
carrying out the policies once the decision has been made. But this may not
give us an adequate analysis of the policy process.
In the first place, it sometimes
seems difficult to divide the action into, on the one hand, clear policy
decisions and, on the other, action taken to carry them out. As Schaffer and
Corbett put it (1965: xiii), we do not find 'policy' as a thing apart,
'existing on a somewhat airless plateau' and quite distinct from 'a jumble of
activities among the lower foothills'. Rather, it is a point of relative firmness
built into a continuing flow: 'an obligation for some, a structural factor for
other participants'.
What is described as policy may be
clearly grounded in an authorized decision, but it may have its origin in
practice: what can be done conveniently and systematically, what works, what is
consistent with the expectations that others have of us. This pattern of behavior
may have the tacit approval of those in authority, but it is stretching the
term to describe it as their 'decision'.
In any case, some would argue that
having a formal policy decision is only the beginning of the policy process,
and the critical thing is what happens as a consequence. It is easy to say, it
is company policy to care for the environment', but does anything change as a
result? What resources are allocated to environmental care? Are any staff
allocated to the task? What happens when there is a clash between maintaining
production and caring for the environment? For this reason, some would argue that
policy has to be understood not in terms of intent, but of commitments.
I
shall use the term 'public policy' to refer to the substance of what government
does; to the pattern of resources which they actually commit as a response to
what they see as public problems or challenges warranting public action for
their solution or attainment ... I do not pretend that all students of public
policy would agree with the meaning which I attach to this term, but then I do
not consider that goals, intentions, principles, decisions, wishes, objectives
or anything else that has been seen as constituting a public policy represents
an appropriate usage of the term.
(Dearlove 1973:2)
In this perspective, policy must be
understood not simply in terms of officially proclaimed goals, but in terms of
the way activity is patterned among a wide range of participants, so that
people know what is going to happen. Goal statements may be significant, but
they are unlikely to tell the whole story, and their absence does not mean that
there is no policy. The players in the game learn how things are done, they
learn how the world is viewed, what is regarded as the problem, and what can be
done about it. In this respect, occupations are an important source of pattern,
and different occupations make sense of the action in different ways: a production
engineer and a wildlife biologist will know quite different things about a
proposal to extend a factory into a piece of adjoining bushland, and are likely
to reach quite different conclusions about whether it is consistent with the
statement, 'It is company policy to care for the environment'. In this
perspective, the essential thing about policy is not the aspirations, but the
effect they have on (he action: policy is, in Schaffer's words, 'a structured commitment
of important resources'.
Of
course, making statements about policy goals is one of the important ways of
committing resources, but it may not be sufficient, and it is certainly not
the only way. The most important form of commitment is inertia: what we did
last year is the best guide to what we will do this year. The budget tends to
express this commitment, and carry it forward from year to year. The
organization chart represents a particular commitment of resources: having a
Department of Agriculture or a Consumer Affairs Bureau or an Office of Small
Businesses reflects recognition of these interests, and offers a base for
further claims. All of these would have to be counted as part of the structured
commitment of important resources.
What
we can see here is an ambiguity in the concept of policy: a tension between
choice and structure, To describe policy as the choices of authorized
decision-makers implies that the action follows from the decision: they could
have chosen something else, and different action would have followed. But the
experience of the policy process is often that it is the flow of action which
throws up the opportunities for choice, and that the scope for choice is
limited by the action already in place and the commitments which it embodies.
To
take an example, in a country with an established system of technical schools,
there will be decisions to be made about budgets and staff levels and new
facilities, but it would be difficult to decide that vocational education
should be conducted in the workplace rather than in schools. So much has
already been committed to the system of technical schools-there are buildings
and specialized staff and graduates who do not want the worth of their
qualifications to be questioned-that it would be very difficult to close the
schools down completely. It would not be impossible, but it would require
enormous effort. Over time, policy innovations become institutionalized - in
the form of bricks and mortar, the names of organizations, and job titles - and
the commitment to maintaining them becomes very strong.
So
the demands for decision-making emerge from the existing system, and the scope
for choice is limited by the commitments that have been built upon previous
choices. And in this case, the initial choice might have been an agreement a
century ago to pay a small stipend to a couple of part-time instructors at one
school. And that decision may well have been generated by the flow of action:
for instance, the employers might have been doing the training themselves, but
decided that they would like to pass this responsibility to some public
authority, and the relevant decision-maker agreed to provide the relatively
small sum involved, on the basis that this was consistent with other forms of
public support for education. The large system of technical schools was built
on this very small foundation. A choice was made then, but it was not a choice
to have the outcome which we now see.
The
point here is not that structure gets in the way of choice: the two dimensions
of the policy process are inextricably linked to one another. Unless the policy
decision could shape the action, there would be no point in making it. Unless
the action could be linked to some policy statement, it would be difficult to
secure support for it. But the two dimensions operate against one another:
making choices challenges the existing structure, and having this structure
limits the opportunity for choice. So there is a structural tension between the
two in the policy process and, as a consequence, a lot of ambiguity.
Policy and
labelling
It might seem that the ambiguity begins
with the concept of policy itself: there has been much discussion in this
chapter about how the term is used, but not what it actually means. This is
because 'policy' is a term used by practitioners as well as academic observers.
Imposing a definition which satisfies the observers but which failed to take
account of the way practitioners use the term would be a self-defeating
exercise. We must make our own judgments about how to use the term, but we need
to take account of how it is used in practice.
We need to note first that 'policy'
is a term which frames the action rather than simply describing it: it labels
what we see so that we can make sense of it in a particular way. To say, 'Our
policy on the young unemployed is in total disarray' is to highlight some
things rather than others - e.g. young unemployed people as such, rather than
the supply of jobs or the state of the economy and to assume that the
activities of different agencies (e.g. those responsible for education, social
security, employment, policing, human rights, etc.) should be consistent with
one another, and directed towards the solution of the identified problem (in this
case, the position of young unemployed people).
At the lame time, it directs
attention away from other dimensions of the action. It directs attention to
young unemployed rather than older unemployed, or young apprentices. It focuses
attention on the implications for the young unemployed of the activities of
schools or the police. But these agencies might see their primary task, as
being to run a system of universal education, or to keep the peace and apprehend
lawbreakers, and view the situation of the young unemployed as a side issue. To
talk about 'policy on the young unemployed' is to frame the action in such a
way as to make it a central issue rather than a side issue.
To state that 'policy' is a particular
way of framing the action implies that there are alternatives, and there
certainly are. Perhaps the most obvious is 'polities', and 'management' or
'strategy' would be others. The distinction between these terms will be
discussed in more detail later (Chapter 6), but we can note here that in
ordinary usage, 'politics' seems to denote a continuing struggle for partisan
advantage, whereas 'policy' implies a settled, considered choice. 'Management'
(like 'strategy', 'corporate planning' and 'vision') is a term which originally
was mostly applied to commercial organizations, but in recent years has become
widely used in government and non-profit organizations. Many would claim that
it is not really an alternative to policy, but is simply concerned with the
ways in which policy objectives can be efficiently and effectively pursued.
Others would argue that in practice, the stress on 'letting the managers
manage' means an increase in the autonomy of managers, and a reduction in the
scope for authority figures to determine policy.
But perhaps the main alternative to
policy as a way of framing the world might not even be recognized as a label: we could call
it 'practice'. People do things in ways that make sense to them, and there is
no formal prescription about how they should act: I hey have operational
autonomy. The existence of this sort of autonomy is sometimes overlaid and
reinforced by claims about professional expertise: that it is inappropriate to
have policies which override professional judgement. For instance, if a student
threatens a teacher with a knife, should there be a
policy that this student be suspended, or should this be left to the
professional judgment of the school staff? Teachers may prefer to be able to
use their own judgment, but officials of the education department would feel
more secure if there was a standard practice which all teachers followed: a
policy. (In one education department, it was estimated that there were over 500
such policies.)
Policy as
a concept in use
This discussion has gone some way beyond
the common-sense understanding of policy as a thing: a clearly stated (or at
least generally understood) statement of intent on behalf of the organization:
e.g. 'our policy on the level of immigration'.
Certainly, policy in this sense is
(or can be) important, but we need to go beyond this. If statements like this
are significant, it is because of the extent to which they shape practice. We
need to ask what shapes practice, and how the idea of 'policy' plays a part in
this.
We have seen in this chapter that
the concept of policy mobilizes particular values. It expresses values of
instrumental rationality and of legitimate authority. It presents action in
terms of the collective pursuit of known goals, so that it becomes stable and
predictable. And it sees these goals as being determined by some legitimate
authority.
In doing this, the concept of
policy both explains and validates the action: it explains what people are
doing, and it makes it appropriate for them to do it. So it is not simply a
descriptive term: it is a concept in use, and understanding 'policy' means
understanding the way in which practitioners use it to shape the action.
But it is also a concept in use for
observers: we use it as a way of interrogating organized activity -
particularly, but not exclusively, in relation to public authority. It leads us
to ask who is involved, in what settings, how action is framed, and what the
significance is in this process of the idea of authorized purpose - that is, to
ask questions about policy as a process, and not simply an outcome.
Further
reading
There is an enormous amount written
about policy, and one of the best guides to it is Wayne Parsons' systematic and
encyclopedic text, Public Policy: an introduction to the theory and practice
of policy analysis (1995). This should be supplemented with a close reading
of the daily newspaper, for evidence of the way in which policy is established, sustained and contested.
