Chapter 2. Perspectives on Policy and Policymaking

This post introduces chapter 2 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

Chapter 2 outlines the structure for UK policy case study analysis, comparing three perspectives: policy analysis, policy studies, and critical policy analysis.

This post summarises Chapter 2 but also signposts a wide range of additional resources on Cairney’s website to aid the study of UK policymaking, including:

• The 750 page which includes a separate book, blog post, and podcast series on the 3 perspectives introduced here.
• The 1000 and 500 pages which include a separate book, blog post, and podcast series on concepts and theories in policy studies.

Key examples of useful preparatory reading include:

What is Policy? 

Policy in 500 Words: what is public policy and why does it matter?

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Policy change and measurement 

Policy in 500 Words: how much does policy change?

Using this framework to inform UK studies, connecting chapters 2 and 3

These three perspectives allow us to examine each case study as:

1. A policy problem to be addressed. Q: how could analysts and policymakers define and address this problem systematically?
2. A way to explore how governments actually work. Q: how did UK policymakers define and address this problem in the real world?
3. A way to examine the unequal process and results. Q: who made and influenced policy, and who won and lost as a result?

Perspective 1: Policy analysis (see 750 page)

5-Step guides break the policy analysis task into key requirements:

1. Define a policy problem identified by your client.

Problem definition requires analysts to gather sufficient data on its severity, urgency, cause, and our ability to solve it. Problem definition is a political process involving actors exercising power – such as through argumentation – to make sure that policymakers see a problem from a particular perspective.

2. Identify technically and politically feasible solutions.

Policy instruments have to work as intended if implemented (technical feasibility) and be acceptable to enough powerful people (political feasibility).

3. Use value-based criteria and political goals to compare solutions.

For example, values include efficiency (the maximum output for the same input) and equity (fairness of process and outcome). Political goals include the desire to make policy changes without facing too much opposition or unpopularity.

4. Predict the outcome of each feasible solution.

In other words, find reasonable ways to signal what would happen if you made this policy change.

5. Make a recommendation to your client.

Perspective 2: Policy studies

We then relate these simple guides to messier reality. Policy studies provide a contrast between ideal-types (artificial models) and real world policymaking.

1. This is not an evidence based process in which there are clear and obvious technical solutions to social and economic problems. It is a political process to get attention, define problems, and get the solutions you want. Policymakers need information to reduce uncertainty, but rely on their beliefs and exercise power to reduce ambiguity.

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Bounded Rationality and Incrementalism 

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: ‘Evidence Based Policymaking’ (EBPM also has its own book, page, and podcast series)

Policy in 500 words: uncertainty versus ambiguity

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Framing 

2. It is not a simple process with clear analytical stages mapping onto policymaking stages. Rather, think of these stages as essential functions or requirements, not what really happens. Or, the policy process contains a spirograph of cycles.

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Policy Cycle and its Stages (podcast download)

Policy in 500 Words: if the policy cycle does not exist, what do we do?

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Policy Process

Policy in 500 Words: The Policy Process

There are many ways to conceptualise these aspects of real world policymaking, in which policymakers are dealing with bounded rationality and complexity:

1. Incrementalism as a pragmatic response: (a) only analyse a few feasible solutions, (b) only depart incrementally from the status quo.
2. Punctuated equilibrium theory suggests that policy change is actually hyper-incremental and radical, not simply incremental. Why? Attention to one problem means ignoring 99 others. As chapter 3 suggests, ignoring the 99 other issues actually means delegating to policy communities.
3. Studies of power and ideas suggest that some ways of thinking about and addressing problems dominate for long periods.
4. Studies of new institutionalism highlight the standard operating procedures that endure for long periods, with unequal impacts.
5. Social Construction and Policy Design describes policymakers using their gut instinct and emotions to reinforce social stereotypes (see also Narrative Policy Framework).
6. The Advocacy Coalition Framework describes people entering politics to turn their beliefs into policy, forming coalitions with like-minded people and competing with other coalitions.

What is the common link?

• Policy analysis is not a rational or technical response to problems.
• It is a political act, taking place in a policy process over which no one has full understanding or control.
• This act produces one more instrument to add to the overall ‘policy mix’. What we call ‘policy’ is actually a collection of instruments that have accumulated over time, and it is difficult to know what an additional instrument will do.

We can represent these common concepts in an image that (1) is as simple looking as the policy cycle, but (2) hints at policymaking complexity across many different ‘centres’.

This image tells a story that contrasts with the ideal type of comprehensive rationality and the policy cycle.

Instead of one powerful centre, there are many.

Instead of producing rational, orderly and stable policy making, these centres combine to produce dynamics that can be stable or unstable, and outcomes that can lurch from continuity to change.

A political system’s ‘central government’ may be the most powerful centre, but it tends to be broken down into many smaller ‘policy communities’ (see Chapter 3).

Senior policy makers could intervene in any issue at any time, but the logical consequence is to ignore most other issues.

Perspective 3: Critical policy analysis

For our purposes, CPA performs three tasks:

1. It pushes back on the idea that policymaking is chaos with random outcomes. Maybe the policy process is complex, but it is still characterized by unequal access, power, and outcomes.

For example, see:

Carol Bacchi (2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? 

Deborah Stone (2012) Policy Paradox

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies

Robbie Shilliam (2021) Decolonizing Politics

Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge

The overall value of 3 perspectives on the study of UK politics and policymaking

1. 5 step guides encourage the analytical and technical skills to interrogate policy problems systematically.
2. Policy studies relate these analytical processes to real world policymaking. Put simply, analysis focuses on what we require from policy and policymaking to solve problems. Policy theories and concepts explain why these requirements are not met in reality.
3. Critical policy analysis reminds us that policy analysis is not a rational, technical, objective process. It is a political process with unequal recognition and contributions of policy relevant knowledge, unfair rules, and unequal outcomes.

We need all three perspectives to: (1) analyse the UK’s pressing problems, (2) identify barriers to action (in chapter 3, by contrasting Westminster and Complex government stories), and (3) identify and challenge the inequalities that endure in politics and policymaking.

See also:

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the Westminster Model and Multi-level Governance 

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems 

Policy analysis in 750 words (used to produce Table 2.1)

Chapter 1 Introducing UK Politics and Policymaking

This post introduces chapter 1 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

It might seem like there is never a good time to read a book on contemporary policymaking in the UK. Politics moves too fast, and politicians come and go. Policymakers lurch from crisis to crisis without giving the impression that they understand policy problems or control the outcomes of their responses.

We anticipated this problem by focusing on case studies that are important to readers, because they (a) are contemporary, and (b) highlight themes that endure for years. For example, the cases include:

• Covid-19, which dominated life from 2020 while raising longer-term issues about state intervention to boost population health and reduce inequalities.
• Brexit, which dominated politics in the mid-2010s and raised longstanding issues about who should be responsible for UK policy.
• Climate change, which represents an existential crisis receiving sporadic policymaker attention.
• Austerity, the stated aim of the 2010 Coalition government and a reflection of long-term aims to reduce state intervention.
• Inequalities and protest, which are enduring features of UK politics which attract fleeting attention during major events such as the ‘London riots’.
• Foreign policy and war, including the Iraq War and its legacy on UK politics.

We identify three ever-present themes that help to understand these case studies.

Theme 1: Three complementary perspectives on the study of policymaking

Chapter 2 describes three ways to analyse the relationship between policy and policymaking in countries like the UK:

1. Policy analysis is a political act to identify important problems, generate feasible solutions, engage in trade-offs, estimate what will happen, and make recommendations or choices.
2. Policy studies describe and explain how policymaking actually works. If policy analysis is about what we require, policy theories identify the gap between requirement and reality. For example, we need policymakers to understand problems and be in control of delivering solutions. Yet, they must act despite uncertainty and contestation to define problems, and the link between their choices and outcomes is not clear.
3. Critical policy studies identify profound inequalities in social, economic, and political power and the outcomes that follow. Maybe policymaking systems defy control, but there are still patterns of inequalities that reflect the power of some and powerlessness of others.  

Theme 2: Two essential perspectives on UK politics and policymaking

Chapter 3 relates these general perspectives to the specific UK context, with reference to two essential stories:

1. The Westminster story of how policy should be made. Elect a powerful government to translate a manifesto into outcomes. Then, if you know who is in charge, you know who to re-elect or replace. This story is part of a fixation with political parties and UK general elections elections, as if that’s all there is to politics.
2. Complex Government stories of how things work. Elect governments with limited knowledge of problems, operating in a complex system containing many different influences on policy and outcomes. In other words, the stuff that happens in between elections.

The first story is simple for all and aspirational for some. The second story is complicated, with lots of variants and less clear aspirations. We separate them analytically but, in practice. they combine to produce a confusing story of ministers performing the idea of being in charge (to seek reelection) but adapting to their limits (to try to get things done).

Theme 3. Long-term changes inform current discussions (Chapters 4 and 5)

Chapter 4 explains that the UK state has transformed since the 1970s, from:

• Post-war consensus characterized by high state intervention, including Keynesian approaches to economic policy, an expansive welfare state, state ownership of public utilities, and government delivery of public services.
• Neoliberal reforms characterized by reduced state intervention, including non-Keynesian approaches to economic policy, reduced welfare state entitlement, the privatization of public utilities, and contracting out the delivery of public services. Broadly speaking, ‘neoliberal’ describes a preference to (1) encourage individual and market rather than state solutions, and (2) prioritise economic growth over other policy aims).

Chapter 5 asks how we can describe and explain the transformation:

• Was it secured via top-down imposition by a powerful central government?
• Did it happen in a series of incremental steps or bursts of radical change? Was it part of a clear long term plan, or a patchwork of reforms?
• Did it produce a leaner and more effective state, or exacerbate problems of low central government control?
• Was state transformation specific to the UK or part of a global neoliberal trend?

This focus on three enduring themes provides a structure for case study analysis (Chapters 6-11). In each chapter, we use (1) three perspectives on policymaking to describe what is going on, (2) UK stories (Westminster and complexity) to interpret these developments, and (3) a long-term perspective to relate current problems to longstanding approaches. This approach helps us to understand and interpret new developments with reference to well established ideas.

Preface: how to analyse UK policymaking

This post summarises the Preface of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

UK politics always seems to be changing, with UK government ministers lurching from crisis to crisis. Still, we have ways to make sense of chaos.

First, we place the actions of UK governments and ministers in a wider context. Ministers clearly matter, but they are part of a complex policymaking environment over which they have limited knowledge and even less control. They make then delegate choices, and what happens next is beyond their control.

Indeed, when you consider the case studies in this book, can you think of many policy outcomes that ministers wanted to happen? For example, is this what they meant by getting Brexit done? Did they really do all they could to minimise the fallout from COVID-19? Are they solving the climate crisis? Did they retreat victoriously from Afghanistan and Iraq? Is the economy working in the way they planned? 

Second, we place this study of UK policymaking in an even wider context, to harness insights from policy theories. They suggest that a focus on policy analysis at the ‘centre’ of policymaking is not entirely useful because this approach identifies what people require of policymaking, not what happens. We focus on how policymaking actually works. We do so through a critical lens: analysing who has the power to define and address policy problems, which social groups they favour and marginalise, and who wins and loses from policy outcomes. In that context, things are always changing but stay the same. New policymakers emerge, but face the same constraints. New issues emerge, but inequalities endure.

These insights help us to engage with the following phrase that often seems to sum up British politics.

No one is in control or knows what they are doing.

It is common to bemoan a lack of competence and trustworthiness of British policymakers. They don’t know what they are doing, and few trust them to get the results they promise. If so, would a change of government bring in better politicians? This idea forms part of the Westminster story in which a small number of senior ministers are in control. This story asserts how politics should work: if UK government ministers are in charge, we can hold them to account for policy. If they do badly, they can be replaced. It does not describe how British politics actually works.

Policy research provides a more useful story: the state is too large to be controlled by a small number of powerful individuals, and the complexity of policy problems and processes ensures that they are beyond anyone’s full understanding. These limits apply to policymakers regardless of their competence, sincerity, or trustworthiness, and we do a disservice to democracy if we ignore them in favour of simplistic stories of bad politicians.

That said, the Westminster story remains important. UK government ministers might not be in control, but they remain powerful and can still do damage. Further, the Westminster story still helps to structure government and fuel political debate. Think of British politics as a confusing conflation of two different stories: of the concentration and diffusion of policymaking power. UK government ministers have to juggle these images to project an image of governing competence based on the sense that they are in control and worthy of re-election. While no group can control policy outcomes, it would be wrong to ignore regular patterns of social, economic, and political life. Some people win, many people lose, and these patterns result from unequal access to resources. We therefore seek the right balance between accepting policymaking complexity and the limits to policymaker control and believing that well designed policies, taken forward by key people and organisations, can improve people’s lives. This approach requires us to reject superficial stories of UK politics and try to understand and engage with policymaking in the real world.