session 2

1. Presentation Plan
Chapter 3. Approaches to Policy Analysis
• Overall View
• An excellent chapter detailing the various approaches to Policy Analysis,
presented a very balanced perspective discussing both strong points and weak
points of each approaches, and providing guidelines to becoming better policy
students/analysts
• The Chapter consists of 4 Parts:
• 1. Cook and Vaupel’s Model of 3 Basic Research Styles
• (a)policy analysis,(B)Policy research, and (C)applied social science research
• 2. Highlights of 9 Specific Approaches => the strengths & weaknesses of each
approaches are addressed
• 1.process, (2)substantive,(3)positivist,(4)economic,(5)post-
positivist,(6)participatory,(7)Normative,(8) Ideological, and (9) Historical.
• 3. Dubnick and Bardes’ Model of 5 Types of Analysts
• (1)scientist,(2)professional,(3)political,(4) administrative, and (5)personal
• 4. On Becoming Better Analysts
• 5. Personal Reflections/Lessons Learned

2. Cook and Vaupel’s Model of 3 Research Styles
(2)Policy Research (3)Applied Social-S Res.
(1)Policy Analysis • Focus on a broad problem Scholarly assessment of
• Focus on narrowly • Monograph effects of policy intervention
defined problem • Duration can take one year or on some narrowly defined
longer
• Staff Memorandum • Methods: system analysis
set of outcomes
• Basic data collection • Cost-benefits analysis University Researchers on
• Compilation of readings, • Conducted by several behalf of a state agency =>
synthesis of Many ideas • Analysts at an agency or at interested to adopting a
into a coherent whole research institutes particular policy
• Duration can be days Quantitative=> multiple
regression or case studies
• or weeks

3. 1.Process Approach(PA)
• Primarily Objective: examine a part of the P-Process
• Societal Problems => an Issue for Action
• Polices are adopted
• Implemented by agency official
• Evaluated
• Terminated or Changed  Success or  Lack of it
• Note: Policy Cycle (Political Process) => Public Policy
Pass

4. Advancements of Knowledge on Policy Cycles (30 Years Period)
• Some Aspects have been more heavily studied
• Example: Policy Formulation Issues have been heavily
studied
• Aspects less studied:
• Example: Policy Change Issues have been just
beginning to be further developed by researchers:
• Aims to advance the concepts involved
• Aims to test series of Hypothesis that focus on and
explain a particular aspect of Policy Change

5. 2.Substantive Approach
• Primarily Objective: examine s substantive area
• Policy Specialist in a particular area:
• Examples: Environmental policy, social welfare policy,
national security policy, economic policy (industry,
trade, investments), science and technology etc)
• Two perspectives on :
• Substantive Specialist Vs. Generic Policy analyst

6. Substantive Specialist Vs. Generic Policy Analyst
• Substantive Specialists • Generic Analysts
• Highly desirable • Substantive knowledge is not
• More Creditability necessary to be a good policy
• Requires knowledge in both analyst
technical and political • Substance is relatively
aspects of a policy area unimportant
• Combined policy analysis • Only requirement: skilled in
skills with substantive the process and methods of
expertise public policy

7. Authors’ Position
• Substance is important
• Give insight in to what questions to ask in
conducting policy analysis
• To better understand and interpret empirical
findings
• Unending debate: a matter of individual
choice

8. 3.The Logical Positivist Approach(LPA)
• LPA  Behavioral Approach  Scientific Approach
• Primarily objective: examine causes & Consequences using
Scientific methods
• Advocates: the use of deductively derived theories, models,
hypothesis testing, hard data, the comparative method, and
rigorous statistical analysis
• Scientific Context means:
• (a)Clarifying key concepts used in the analysis of policy
• Example: policy implementation => Different aspects or stages
• Previously “Policy Implementation” Yes or no Dichotomy
• Under LPA  Policy Implementation => stages=> drifting
guidelines, appropriating funds, monitoring performance
• Revising Statues

9. Logical Positivist Approach
• (2) Working from an explicit policy behavior, and testing
hypothesis from the theory
• (3)Using hard data (numbers), developing good measures of
various phenomena, and ideally examining various behaviors
across time
• Began right after 2nd world war (nearly over 50 years ago)
• LP Has become the dominant epistemological approach in
political science

10. Critics of LP/Scientific Approach
• Argument:
• LP/Scientific misunderstands the policy process by treating
it as a rational project.
• Policy Process is much more complex than this conveyor-like
perspective (far more than simple inputs produce simple
outputs)
• LP/S, consequently, does not lend itself to highly
sophisticated techniques of analysis or participatory
approaches to public policy analysis
• Next section presents “Post-positivitist
(Phenomenological)Approach

11. 4. Post-Positivist(Phenomenological) Approach
• Primarily Objective: analyze events by an intuitive process
• Due to the Growing Disenchantment with the utility of
scientific methods(Logical Positivism and econometrics) in the
study of public policy
• PP-Proponents => argued => intuition is more important than
positivist/scientific approaches
• Proposed=> Phenomenological, naturalistic, or non-positivist
approaches.
• Some key emphases of PP:

12. Analysts need to adopt :
• “ A disciplined employment of sound intuition, itself
born of experience not reducible to models,
hypotheses, quantifications, hard data, and the like.”
• Methodologically, analysts :
• Treat each piece of social “Phenomenon as a unique
event, with ethnographic and other qualitative
indices becoming paramount.

13. Post-Positivist Vs. Positivist
• Post-Positivists concern: • Positivists concern:
• Understanding • Prediction
• Working Hypotheses • Rigorous Hypotheses testing
• Mutual interaction between • Require Analyst’s Detached
inquirer and the object of observation
study • Sophisticated techniques of
• Observing evidence=> analysis (hard data,
continued use of case studies quantification, statistical
• Intuition & Total immersion in techniques etc.)
relevant information • Value free, reality  single,
• Multiple realities, cause and tangible, knower & known are
effects cannot be dependent, real causes= clear
distinguished as entities  cause and effect
mutual simultaneous shaping

14. Principal Critics of PP argue:
• PPs lack of Vigor
• Away from Scientific Approach advocated by”
Behavioralists and economists.
• Reversion (going backward) to 1940-50 = in
which descriptive, non-scientific and intuitive
studies characterized much of what passed for
policy analysis.

15. 5. The Economic Approach(EC)
• Economic Approach  Public Choice Approach  Political
Economic Approach
• Primarily based on economic theories of politics => Primarily
objective = Test Economic Theories
• “Human Nature is ‘rational’ or motivated by purely personal gain”
• EC assumes “people pursue their fixed, weighted preferences
regardless of collective outcomes.”
• Example : Principle Agent Theory (Terry et) => accounts for a range
of policy behavior = stresses political control of bureaucrats,
relationship between voters and elected officials, as agents have
more ready access to information, thus principles must closely
monitor and control the actions of the agent

16. The Economic Approach
• Earned wide currency & respect in the Policy
sciences
• Some critics indicated that EC has a somewhat
narrow approach to policy analysis
• Not completely wrong, but, incomplete in its
assumption of human behavior
• Humans can be altruistic (not just rational &
self-fish), can occasionally motivated to serve
the public or collective interests.

17. 6.Participatory Approach(PA)
• Closely related to PP-Challenge
• Primarily Objective: examine the role of multiple actors in the
policymaking
• Principal proponents include: Peter Delong & others
• Involving a greater inclusion of the interests and values of
various stakeholders in the policy Decision Making Process
• Closer to Harold Laswell called “Policy Science or Democracy”
in which an extended population of affected citizens be
involved in the formulation and implementation of PP through
a series of discursive dialogues.”

18. Operations of Participatory Approach
• Objectives: Gather information so that policymakers
can make better decision and recommendations
• Extensive open hearings
• Involves abroad range of concerned citizens
• Prompt individuals, interests groups, agency to
contribute to policy design or redesign
• Encourage analysts to consider greater number of
players and values  provides a more complete
catalog of perspectives that can affect the policy
under consideratiom

19. Critics argue:
• Operationally • Negative Impacts
• Increased citizen involvement • Increased chances of group
• PP => maybe more useful for disagreement
• agenda setting, policy formulation • Harder to reach consensus over
• Policy Implementation than in other program goals & procedures
stages of the process • Lead to needless delays in policy
• PP is more of a prescription of policy formulation(PF) & Implementation
design or redesign than empirical (PI),too time consuming
approach to understanding PF & PI • Increased costs in PF & PI
• Disaffected citizens will seek to
obstruct program litigation or
recourse to congress
• Where tried => increased confusions
and conflicts

20. 7. The Normative or Prescriptive Approach
• Primarily Objective: prescribe policy to decision makers
or others
• Proponents suggest that:
• The Policy analysts’ task is one of defining a “desirable
end state”  Desirable+ Attainable
• Advocate:
• “Use rhetoric in a skillful way to convince others the
merits of their position.” (Examples of this type of policy
analysts include: Henry Kissinger, J.Kirkpatrick, Daniel
Moynihan or Paul Morfowitz)
• Critics : These analysts often Disguise their ideology as
science

21. 8.The Ideological Approach
• Primarily Objective: analyze from either Liberal or conservative
point of view
• Not explicitly, but analysts often embedded either a liberal or
conservative perspective in their policy analysis
• Thomas Sowell calls this “visions” and identifies two competing
perspectives:
• (1)Constrained Vision=> a picture of egocentric human beings with
moral limitations:
• Fundamental social & moral challenge, make the best of
possibilities existing within that constraint, rather than dissipate
energy in a vain attempt to change human behavour
• Logic  tend to rely more on incentive, rather than disposition to
obtain the desired behavior

22. Ideological Approach
• Conservative views will lead to more conservative
policy
• Reasons:
• Because the primarily constraints come from within
the individual rather externally imposed by the
outside environment

23. Type(2)Unconstrained Vision
• Provides a liberal view of human nature, no constraint on it
• Suggesting that  understanding & human dispositions are
capable of intentionally creating social benefits
• Under this perspective:
• “Humans are capable to directly understanding other people’s
need as more important than own and therefore are capable
of consistently acting impartially, even when their interests or
those of their family are involved.
• Only constraints are imposed externally (from the outside
environment)

24. 9.Historical Approach
• Primarily Objective: examine policy over time
• Focus on the Evolution of Public Policy(PP) across time
• Longer time perspectives enable analysts to see certain patterns in the contours of
PP that were previously unrecognized due to short time frame (cross-section or a
decade or less).
• From Historical Approach <=>Two features can be identified:
• (1)US-Policy tend to follow a “Cyclical or ZigZag” pattern in which more
conservative tend to follow more liberal tendencies < this pattern is repeated
over time
• Revealed a “Reactive Pattern”= Repetitive= non-rational
• (2)Evolutionary Explanation
• US Policy reflects policy learning as American evolves toward more thoughtful
(more rational) policymaking.

25. 9.Dubick & Bardes’ Approaches to Policy Analysis
Type of Analysts P-Problem Motivation Approach Training
Scientist Search for Truth S-Method, Objectivity Basic R-Method
Theoretic
Canons of S-Science
Regularities,
Professional Design Improve- Policy Utilization of Strategic, Cost-Benefits
Knowledge, strategic Analysis, stimulation,
& Policymaking
decision Analysis
Political Value Max Advocacy of
P-Position Rhetoric Gathering useful
evidence, effective
analysis
Administrative Application Effective & Strategic Same as Professional
With stress on talents
Efficient Managerial
Useful for
Implementation Mixed implementation
Personal Contention Concern for P-
Impacts on Life Less sophisticated
Use of many models &
Techniques

26. On Becoming Better Policy Scientist
( Some Guidelines )
• Gain Historical & Comparative Perspectives
• Know Policy Making Realities
• Study his/her society in depth
• Take up grand policy issues & work on diverse issues
• Move into Metapolicymaking (Macro Perspective)
• Build an appropriate philosophy of Knowledge & Action
• Broaden methodology and experience
• Multiply one’s disciplinary base
• Be careful about Professional Ethics

27. Lessons Learned/ Reflections
• Totally agreed with the Authors:
• 1. No one best approach, analysts often combine a few Approaches
• 2.Knowledge of the various approaches, enable us to recognize
different type of policy analysis for what it is when we see it
• 3.Nevertheless, select one that is best appropriate for the nature of
the analysis
• 4.Each of the approaches highlighted is appropriate in certain
contexts
• 5. Trends < increasingly more scientific (positivist), remains a
minority approach compared to more descriptive & Rhetorical
• 6. PP=> more multidisciplinary, example: state and local issues in
area concerning natural resources, and taxing/budgetary issues

28. On Reflections
• Policy Analysis is highly Complex =>> involves the
examination of multiple issues
• One of the most difficult aspects is “Know our own
style or approaches of analysis, as this undoubtedly
has significant bearing on not only our approaches,
but, the outcome of our analysis”.
• To becoming a good student/analyst, it’s important
that we aware of our styles/approaches and make
them explicit at the outset of any analysis