1) The document discusses whether academics can still "speak truth to power" by providing policy advice to governments. 2) It argues that while governments claim to want rational policy advice, they are often deaf to analysis that challenges their preferred justifications for decisions. 3) Additionally, policy analysis has become more complex as the policy process has become more fragmented and politicized. Tentative or nuanced policy recommendations may not be well received by those in power. 4) However, continuing to conduct policy analysis and teach students about the realities of the policy process is still important. If not to directly influence decisions, then to equip future "policy advocates" and civil servants with a realistic understanding of how

1. Should we still try to Speak Truth to
Power? Dilemmas for Contemporary
Policy Process Analysis.
Michael Hill

2. Speaking Truth to Power
• Title of Aaron Wildavsky’s book with subtitle ‘The
Art and Craft of Policy Analysis’, published 1979
the year Policy and Politics came to Bristol.
• Always liked the title, but expected I would find a
dated exposition of rational policy analysis.
• Not so, it is a wise book full of provocative wit
and wisdom: ‘rationality resides in connecting
what you want with what you can do’ (p. 18)

3. So – nothing new about a problem
about speaking truth to power
• Many have recognised that while
governments aspire to rationality, and
seemingly seek advice on how to do that,
reality is often a deafness to that advice.
• Questions for this lecture about how we view
that issue now and about what we can do
about it.

4. Should I therefore have a more
modest title?
• How about: ‘Speaking Truth to Power –
something with which we have not had much
success: why should we expect to do any
better now?’
• ‘We’ here of course means the body of
academic students of the policy process
• My own role modest – but the concern here is
with the activity. Even indeed with how the
subject is presented to students.

5. What are we talking about?
• Policy (policy advocacy)?
• The policy process?
• In this lecture: the latter –except that these
are often hard to separate. When we critique
the policy process we may well be motivated
by concerns about its outcomes (example:
privatisation).

6. Topic has three parts
• What knowledge do we draw on when we try
to speak truth?.
• Is anyone in power listening?
• Still. Is the situation different now?

7. Policy studies implicitly practice
oriented but also often ‘critical’
• Context: a policy studies discourse that
directly challenges the discourse with which
much policy making is justified.
• Often criticising the actual context of
decisions, and saying ‘there are better ways of
making decisions’.

8. Towards or away from practicality?
• Discussing the classic defence of the idea of a
university Collini reflects on how subjects initially
seen as ‘practical’ evolved as a wider academic
discourse developed.
• As we get better ‘intellectually’ does the practical
content of our ‘truth’ declines.
• A tension then here perhaps between ‘speaking
to power’ and ‘speaking to students’, with
problematical propositions about the meaning of
‘truth’.

9. Where then does policy analysis stand
as a ‘discipline’: ‘policy science’?
• ‘mountain islands of theoretical structure...
occasionally attached together by foothills of
shared methods and concepts, and empirical
work... surrounded by oceans of descriptive
work’ (Schlager, 1997).
• Quoted by Sabatier, who argues we could do
better.
• But the only systematic approach to doing
that is provided by public choice theory.

10. Alternatives to a simple positivist
grounding of our work
• ‘the importance of the empirical testing of theories
and hypotheses, although accepting that this is only
one kind of test, and that arguments concerning
whether the appropriate conditions for falsification will
be met will never cease’ (Pollitt and Bouckaert)
• ‘reality is socially constructed, but not all constructions
have equal claim to our credulity’ (ibid)
• ‘our most significant explanatory variables do not avail
themselves of quantification or simple measurement,
description is the basis from which interpretation and
explanation must build’ (Hay)

11. So what is most policy process analysis
actually doing?
• Describing systematically.
• Observing regularities and generalising (not
prescribing).
• Making critical and often negative judgements
(particularly of simplified prescriptions).

12. Losing sight of relevance?
• As we seek to give our work intellectual
coherence it is easy to forget why we are
doing it.
• An analytical and definitional ‘game’ or
something that helps us to address real world
issues?
• Example from recent workshop on ‘street level
bureaucracy’: research on roles of SLBs as
identifiers of children ‘at risk’.

13. Is power listening?
• Hence when we try to ‘speak’ to power, are
we caught between an expectation of a
systematic approach which falls short of
‘science’ as many see it, and the need to be
relevant.
• We are expected to be practical and not
tentative.

14. But much depends on what you are
trying to say
• Receptivity to hard evidence – feasible with
some issues at the evaluation end and some
aspects of implementation. Determinants of
outputs and outcomes.
• But: lack of policy stability makes for
difficulties where the whole process is
political.

15. What can we expect ‘power’ to make
of tentative propositions?
Compare: in respect of implementation:
• Solving the problem by strong top-down input
exemplified by Lewis Gunn’s lecture to civil servants :
Explicit propositions with recommendations, which can
be set out on a single sheet of paper.
• A view that controlling the implementation process is
complicated, that ‘politics’ makes it so, hence problem
is that top down recommendations say ‘simplify that
which is difficult to simplify’ and sometimes the
‘bottom’ knows best.

16. It may also depend on who you are
trying to talk to
• Seeing power as fragmented and contested –
talking to some people with some power.
• Recognising variations in extent to which
decision-making is politicised.
• Process issues may be less politicised that
policy issues, and maybe we should be
particularly critical of politicising of process
issues (joined-up government etc.).

17. Summing up so far
• Policy analysis as an activity weakened by our
(academic) doubts and their (policy makers)
lack of interest.
• Process analysis propositions often complex.
• Yet outcomes depend upon realism about
process.
• Route to frustration?

18. A changed policy making world?
Debates about:
• Democratic deficit
• Increased elite dominance
• Damage to intermediate institutions (must mention
local government at this event!)
• Reactive policies – instant reactions to issues
• Difficulties about governing the economy
• Complexity of governance
• Global influences on nation states
Are these developments making policy analysis more
difficult?

20. Speaking Truth to Power Now
• More difficult for policy advocacy- to whom, where,
how?
• Need therefore new understandings of the policy
process. In principle, makes the activity more relevant.
• Need to look again at policy process theories, models
and concepts.
• But, reinforces the futility of search for universal
propositions.
• Process analysis easier than policy analysis but even
here ‘Speaking truth to power’ easiest if we share
power’s frame of reference.

21. A changing policy process?
• A more complex process, with the relocation of
power.
• An increasing difficulty in identifying ‘stages’ and
‘roles’ in the policy process and the related
participation points.
• Even a neo-pluralist exploration of interests may
be difficult in the face of extreme – but often
covert – power differences. From ‘the private
management of public money’ to ‘the private
management of the economy’?

22. Discomforts?
• An analysis that is increasingly sceptical about
how the process works is placed in a difficult
position to recommend better ways of making
policy.
• Are we inevitably drawn into some more
fundamental questions about our society and its
institutions, and about challenges to the
dominant discourse that renders more detailed
analysis beside the point.
• Here then a clash between our roles as scholars/
teachers and the possibility of speaking to power.

23. Still speaking truth, but to whom?
• Justifications in terms of ‘the enlightenment
function’ (Carol Weiss) still appropriate, but
rather grandiose and optimistic.
• Instead how about: equipping people to deal
with power?
• Particular role here in respect of ‘policy
advocates’.
• But above all a teaching role.

24. And who are we teaching?
• Future small cogs in the policy system, broadly
future ‘street level bureaucrats’ (SLBs).
• Importance of taking a positive view of that
still often vilified role.
• Inevitability of SLB discretion, concerns need
to be with how they use it.
• And beyond that how they are managed
seeing that as ‘co-production’ with colleagues
and the public as well as with managers.

25. Conclusions
• Is speaking truth to ‘power’ with complex
recommendations a feasible activity?
• But do we want to yield the field to those who
speak with simple slogans?
• Or just speak truth to participants? Arming ‘policy
entrepreneurs’ and ‘street level bureaucrats’?
• Or maybe what is most important to defend is
speaking truth to students, future participants.