Policy analysis in 750 words: Three systems evaluation

There is much to be said for systems thinking or a systems-informed approach to key tasks such as evaluation. If the policy problem is complex, then we would not expect a single shot solution to work as intended in a linear or even straightforward way. If so, traditional ways to assess success or failure would be inappropriate. This broad argument has some traction, even in places associated with traditional evaluations in relation to policy cycles (such as the UK Treasury and its Magenta book supplement). However, just as systems thinking can mean 10 different things (and refer to two contradictory approaches), systems evaluation can involve very different tasks. Beware the possibility of contradictory ideas emerging from this process.

What exactly is a systems approach?

Systems thinking relates to the idea that key aspects of policy and policymaking resemble the complex systems that we find in nature, society, the brain, and information technology. Here, complex does not mean complicated. Rather, complex systems are greater than the sum of their parts, and exhibit non-linear dynamics, and prompt outcomes that emerge without central control.

Crucially, this argument can be related to many different types of policy relevant systems, including:

1. Complex policy problems. Policy problems are multi-faceted or inter-related, difficult to break down into specific parts, and not amenable to simple solutions.
2. Complex policy processes. Policymaking systems resemble complex systems
3. Complex policy mixes. ‘Policy’ is actually a policy mix, or large collection of policy instruments. The overall impact, of directing many policy instruments at one or more problems, is difficult to control or even predict. Overall policy incoherence may be a feature of such complexity.

In that context, I argue that people may be conflating three separate issues in the name of systems thinking evaluation, potentially with ironic unintended consequences. I make the distinction as follows:

1. Systems evaluations focusing on a complex policy problem, such as obesity. The aim is to identify the interconnectedness of the policy problem, such as to connect poverty, education, safe and healthy spaces, access to healthy food, commercial incentives, and so on. If so, we can adopt a ‘whole systems’ perspective to try to understand the problem, respond, and seek more meaningful ways to evaluate. This perspective may also be used to reject simplistic descriptions of problems (e.g. scroll down this page to see the ‘obesity system atlas’).
2. Systems evaluation focusing on a policymaking or governance problem, such as a lack of concerted attention or effective collaboration to solve a problem. The aim is to identify the interconnectedness of policy processes, such as: who is responsible for what, how does it all add up to systemic action, and what would a good policymaking system look like? Or, we may try to provide a map of policymaking responsibilities spread across levels of government (e.g. national/local) or sectors (e.g. health, education, transport, environment). If we intervene to change how we do things around here, we can assess the impact on things like levels of policy coherence or policymaking integration or cooperation. This perspective may also be used to counter the idea that one single centre of government can change things from the top-down.
3. Systems evaluation focusing on the overall impact of the policy mix. If many organisations use many instruments, is the policy mix coherent? Does each instrument reinforce or undermine the other? If we find limited success in relation to one instrument, is the problem really the other instruments? Or the delivery of the same instruments in different or unintended ways?

The potential irony arises if we recommend systems thinking in relation to one aspect but take a rather linear approach to others. Here, the classic mistake is to apply systems thinking to a problem but then act as if the solution can be produced by one central authority in a straightforward manner in a policymaking system. It is strange to see policy recommendations about problem complexity that do not recognise policymaking complexity. Why spend so much time identifying the interconnectedness of problems only to propose simple accounts of the responsibility for solutions?

One answer worth pursuing (because it represents a point of common ground) is that lots of people are inspired by Donella Meadows to find ‘leverage points’, ‘where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything’. Yet, Meadows notes there are ‘no cheap tickets’ to a full understanding of systems. In our case, there is no easy way to find leverage points in complex policymaking systems, even if you have a good sense of a complex problem.

See also:

Complex systems and systems thinking

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems 

An academic story of contemporary policy and policymaking problems

The draft of chapter 2 describes some of these concepts in more detail

Acknowledgement: I thank Dr Ravita Taheem for ongoing discussions to inform this post.

Positive Public Policy – A New Vision for UK Government

This post first appeared on the Academy of Social Sciences website.

In this piece, Professor Catherine Durose, Professor Sarah Ayres FAcSS, Professor John Boswell FAcSS, Professor Paul Cairney FAcSS, Dr Ian C Elliott, Professor Matthew Flinders, Professor Steve Martin and Professor Liz Richardson discuss how Positive Public Policy (PoPP) can drive performance improvements, save money, foster early interventions, align networks, and build capacity and momentum for more effective government.

Policy takeaways:

1. A different approach to policy-making is urgently required to address the chronic problems, complex crises and emerging challenges facing the UK.

2. Positive Public Policy (PoPP) encourages learning from success and failure to inform strategic, systemic and participatory approaches to government.

3. PoPP can drive performance improvements, save money, foster early interventions, align networks, and build capacity and momentum for more effective government. But to achieve it we need to find new ways to connect researchers with policymakers and practitioners across the UK.

Traditional approaches to policymaking struggle to deal with chronic problems such as health inequalities, growing crises such as the climate emergency, and emerging issues such as advances in artificial intelligence (AI). There is widespread acknowledgement of the need to transform the inner workings of government in order to rise to these challenges. The incoming UK government will be faced with an intimidating to-do list twinned with severe pressure on public spending. However, this presents an opportunity to create a more agile, coherent, responsive and effective approach to public policy. To assist in meeting this challenge, Positive Public Policy offers a coherent vision of how to achieve this and improve real-world outcomes.

The last two decades have witnessed a prolonged permacrisis during which the UK government has bounced reactively from financial crisis and austerity, through to Brexit, COVID-19, a cost-of-living crisis and increasing evidence of falling levels of public trust in politicians and in politics, matched by rising and increasingly concerning levels of anti-political sentiment. Our policymaking has been characterised by the dominance of a narrow range of perspectives, an emphasis on short-term outcomes and the backstory of the depletion of good governance. A limited form of Westminster-style democratic accountability continues to skew policy attention and resources to short-term and centralised approaches which have starkly revealed that what makes for ‘good’ politics, often fails to produce good policymaking.

Yet, there is shared recognition that business-as-usual in policy and policymaking is insufficient in a context of intense inequality, radical uncertainty, complexity and heightened polarisation. Further, there is a need to boost strategic policymaking capacity in order to live up to = the principles of effective government including the importance of being responsible and accountable, future-oriented, preventative, decentralised, co-productive, integrated, evidence-informed and equitable. The UK government recognised this in the Declaration on Government Reform published in July 2021. The General Election potentially offers a window of opportunity for meaningful change, but also a context of real challenge. So how can positive change be facilitated?

Effective government may be understood as a ‘magical’ concept: common sense enough to achieve political support, but evading a clear sense of how it can be achieved. It is rare to find a coherent account of how government can manage competing drivers. For example, governments centralise to avoid postcode lotteries, but decentralise to reflect local circumstances; they seek integration and coherence but create policy from within departmental ‘silos’. Reformers face significant obstacles. Policymakers frequently operate in complex systems, are constrained by a lack of resources and, are regularly blindsided by events, the electoral cycle, media stance or party politics. It is not possible to simply pull levers to make reforms happen. Add this to a sense that political capital is required across a range of priorities, and it is clear why simply muddling through becomes the default.

However, a different way of thinking about a ‘magical’ concept is that it provides an important port in a storm, an ideal to aspire to, and is useful in navigating challenging environments. In this sense, ‘effective government’ becomes a useful aspiration. But how can we achieve it? Aligning with the growing ‘Positive Public Policy’ (PoPP) movement, we challenge the assumption that public policy is doomed to fail and instead focus attention on learning from both failed and successful public policy. In doing so, we want to point to change and offer ways to learn from and share lessons of experiences from the past and other contexts.

PoPP embraces a range of approaches aiming to facilitate effective government and policymaking. Some are relatively new while others have been discussed and studied for decades without realising their full potential. These include the concept of the strategic state, systems-thinking, place-based approaches, evidence-informed government, public participation, and behavioural public policy.  What connects these approaches is (i) an appreciation of the complexity and inter-connected nature of policy contexts, (ii) a belief in the capacity of collective action to address shared challenges, and (iii) a commitment to the collection, synthesis and application of different forms of knowledge. Each has been tested and is underpinned by an accumulation of evidence – including, good practice, frameworks, case studies, and policy learning – and together they provide a coherent reform agenda and a fresh portfolio of ways of designing and delivering high-performing public policy.

Years of instability in UK government have eroded underlying capacity for reform. The General Election will be conducted against the backdrop of financial stress across government, and no reform is cost-free. Will an incoming government give priority to getting its own house in order? And taking the leap of faith reform requires? Positive Public Policy embodies the vision of real change to drive change to address the significant social, economic and environmental challenges we face. It provides a range of approaches, tools and methods for designing and delivering effective public policy, and the clear, coherent and sustainable story of reform required to lower barriers to change and to leveraging resources.

What we need is the political will and sustained capacity to trial and test the insights of Positive Public Policy in a UK context, and this in turn calls for investment in connective and catalysing engagement opportunities between researchers and policymakers. There’s an urgent need to connect the positive public policy academic community with practitioners at scale in order to help constitute the policymaking tools that governments can use as they grapple with the ‘art of the possible’ to translate lofty ideals into practices that might work in their own context. Now is the time to attract and devote resources towards trialling, tracking and evaluating experimentation in more future-oriented, holistic, and more participatory approaches to government.

About the authors

Catherine Durose is Professor of Public Policy, and Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool. She is recognised as a leading expert on urban governance and public policy, with a particular focus on how citizens and communities can engage in the policy and decision-making that affects their everyday lives.

Sarah Ayres is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Bristol. Sarah’s work has explored the complexities of devolution and city governance by exploring the inter-play between formal and informal structures, processes and outcomes. Her research has provided critical insights into how ‘informal’ decision making, i.e. what happens behind closed doors between political elites, has shaped devolution in the UK. This research has made a distinctive contribution by examining the impact of so-called ‘informal governance’ on different aspects of mainstream governance theory, including political innovation, democracy, policy effectiveness and the creation of public value.

John Boswell is Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton. His research and teaching are in democratic governance, public policy and public administration, and he is one of the co-directors of the Centre for the South, a regional policy think tank. His interests centre around contemporary issues and themes in democratic governance and public policy, with his research being generally qualitative and interpretive in nature.

Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling. He is a specialist in British politics and public policy, often focusing on the ways in which policy studies can explain the use of evidence in politics and policy, and how policymakers translate broad long term aims into evidence-informed objectives (for example, The Politics of Evidence-Based Policymaking, 2016).

Ian C Elliott is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Administration at the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Glasgow and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Public Administration and Development. His research includes work on strategy in government, public leadership and organisational change.

Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and the Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield. He is also Vice-President of the Political Studies Association and Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network. A former ESRC board member, he led the 2020 national review of research leadership – Fit for the Future – and is currently working with UKRI in relation to talent management and research culture investments. A former special advisor in both the House of Lords and House of Commons, he specialises in theoretically informed policy-relevant research and is a former ESRC National Impact Champion.

Steve Martin is Professor of Public Policy and Management at Cardiff University and Director of the Wales Centre for Public Policy. Prior to his current role he founded and directed the Centre for Local & Regional Government Research at Cardiff. Steve’s research focuses on evidence-informed policy, local government policy and public service improvement. He chaired the UK Government’s Expert Panel on Local Government and has acted as an adviser to the European Commission, UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments.

Liz Richardson is Professor of Public Administration at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include participatory urban governance; local politics and local government; public services; and public policy.  She has an interest in methodological innovation including participatory research approaches, and experimental methods.

See also

An academic story of contemporary policy and policymaking problems 

• Douglas, S., Schillemans, T., ‘t Hart, P., Ansell, C., Bøgh Andersen, L., Flinders, M., Head, B., Moynihan, D., Nabatchi, T., O’Flynn, J. and Peters, B.G. (2021) ‘Rising to Ostrom’s challenge: an invitation to walk on the bright side of public governance and public service’, Policy Design and Practice, 4:4, 441-451 https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2021.1972517
• Mallory Compton and Paul ‘t Hart Great Policy Successes: How Governments Get It Right in a Big Way at Least Some of the Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Preview PDF

Chapter 10. Social policy: Inequalities, Racism, and Protest

This post by Sean Kippin introduces chapter 10 of Politics and Policymaking in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

The term ‘social policy’ describes a wide range of concerns, including policy and processes regarding ageing, children, families, education, crime, health, housing, social security and welfare, and social care. A key theme is the study of inequality and inequalities, which is pertinent in the UK owing to the country’s highly unequal social and political system. Policy action could help to address inequalities, such as over class, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, religious, sexuality, disability, and age. Political protest may help to challenge or draw attention to inequalities and demand action to address them. We use our three lenses to these and related issues:

• Policy analysis: How should we analyse inequalities as interconnected policy problems?
• Policy studies: How do policymakers deal with inequalities, including their fleeting attention and the policy response to protests
• Critical policy analysis: Who wins and loses from these developments, and how should we (and policymakers) respond?

The UK has a long history of protest, including against the Poll Tax; Section 28, University tuition fees in England; and government inaction following the Grenfell Fire in 2017. There have also been protests against international phenomena, including led by women over Donald Trump’s election as US President; and a UK variant of the US-formed ‘Black Lives Matter’. These protests emphasise the importance of political activity outside of the UK’s ‘Westminster’ model. Their proponents describe them as essential, while their opponents often characterise them with reference to ‘riots’ or disruption to a ‘law abiding’ public.

Policy analysis: Defining, addressing, and solving inequalities

We explore how policymakers define, identify solutions to, and attempt to solve inequalities:

• Inequality may be identified as a ‘wicked’ problem, with intense contestation over issues such as the severity and urgency of inequalities; their cause, and; which inequalities can be tolerated, or might even be considered just. 
• Some solutions identify structural causes or ‘social determinants’, and propose redistribution, regulation, or a challenge to austerity. Some propose ‘joining up’ government or ‘mainstreaming’ policies to reflect the cross-cutting nature of problems and mitigate against incoherent responses.
• Inequalities are plagued by contestation and ambiguity, with anti-inequality strategies highlighting the potential for high state intervention but a tendency to favour modest intervention, or policies which create more inequalities in practice.

Overall, equity policies are difficult to sustain because

1. policymakers make broad claims for policy changes in the name of equity, but in practice undermine them (see the Conservative government’s “Levelling Up” agenda),
2. they quickly find out that these objectives clash with other, more established and higher priority policies (such as the need to maintain economic growth or maintain electoral support from key voter groups) and
3. most policymakers are unwilling or unable to engage in a direction or step-change in established patterns of policymaking.

The result is too often one of eye-catching promises, followed by modest or no policy change.

Policy studies: the London ‘riots’ in 2011

The events of August 2011 in London help to explore how each aspect of inequalities policy analysis are contested. All can agree that Mark Duggan, a 29 year old British man of mixed race, was killed in Tottenham North London by an on-duty Metropolitan Police officer. Beyond this, every other aspect of what occurred is contested, including:

• The cause of the killing. The Metropolitan Police claimed Duggan was shot because he was armed and dangerous. Their critics note that this fits a pattern of racist and discriminatory behaviour.
• What happened next. Some described a heavy-handed response to protests against police violence, others described ‘rebellions’ or ‘counter conduct’. Other voices, which predominated, characterised it as ‘rioting’, marked by ‘looting’, ‘violence’, and ‘disorder’, summed up by Prime Minister David Cameron’s comment that these were “riots, pure and simple”.
• Whether the riots resulted from structural causes such as inequality, police racism, and austerity on the one hand, or criminality, family breakdown, and moral shortcomings on the part of the rioters on the other.

Policymakers used the criminality narrative to pursue not only a punitive policing and legal response, but also to scale up the ‘Troubled Families’ programme. The latter sought to ‘turn around’ families with ‘entrenched issues’ (such as ‘worklessness’, ‘anti-social behaviour’, and ‘truancy’), in line with David Cameron’s diagnosis of a ‘Broken Society’ and his prescription of a ‘Big Society’.

Critical Policy Analysis

Critical policy analysis combines research to highlight inequalities with advocacy to defend or support marginalised groups. Critical race theory (CRT) emerged to challenge entrenched white supremacy in political, scholarly, academic, and other public institutions, and support intersectional approaches.

To its critics in the US and UK (including in government), CRT represents a threat to politics and society. The UK Government’s alternative focus on ‘race and ethnic disparities’ asked how to advance the ‘progress’ won by the struggles of the past 50 years. This approach sought to dismiss concerns about institutional and systemic racism in favour of a more benign framing, and seemed to justify existing approaches rather than to prefigure substantial policy change.

Inequalities and the Westminster and Complex Government stories

Critics of limited policy progress to reduce inequalities use the Westminster story to hold senior policymakers responsible for failing to act: if they could be bothered to learn about the social determinants of policy problems, and exhibited some political will, they could reduce inequalities in the UK. Instead, they favour platitudes and make problems worse by individualising complex social issues. The complex government story helps to explain the inevitable lack of progress to ‘join up’ policy and policymaking to reduce inequalities. Modern governments may put their faith in ‘holistic’ policymaking to take forward cross-cutting policy agendas to tackle spatial, educational, health or other forms of inequalities, but generally find that their reforms don’t live up to expectations.

‘How long must these sufferers wait for the compensation they deserve?’

That question was the title of an op-ed that I wrote for the Scotsman on 11 July 2000 about compensation for people with haemophilia infected by hepatitis-C through blood products in the NHS. The answer turned out to be decades, largely because the UK government has always resisted the idea of compensation for treatment by the NHS, but with exceptions in relation to HIV or with reference to wider financial support by the state.

Currently high attention in 2024 relates to the strong likelihood of a new UK government announcement on meaningful compensation, prompted largely by the work of the Infected Blood Inquiry . For a summary of key developments, see What is the infected blood scandal and will victims get compensation?

Below, I reproduce that Scotsman op-ed to provide background on UK government resistance to compensation, then link to some resources on how the issue played out in Scotland in the early years of devolution. In short, it became an intergovernmental relations issue when (1) there was pressure on the Scottish Government (then ‘Executive’) to respond, but (2) the UK government resisted successfully the idea that the Scottish Government could go its own way.

‘How long must these sufferers wait for the compensation they deserve?’

“SCOTTISH haemophiliacs are eagerly awaiting the results of a government investigation into the issue of hepatitis-C infection through blood products. However, this is an issue which should concern us all, not only because of the extent of suffering this type of infection causes, but also because it strikes at the heart of the whole question of compensation within the NHS.

It is also fitting that this issue should raise its head during the annual international AIDS conference, since – at least politically – the similarities between hep-C and HIV infection are uncanny. So how do we explain why HIV -infected haemophiliacs were compensated over ten years ago and yet haemophiliacs infected by hepatitis-C have had to wait until now even to hear if they have a case?

HIV and hepatitis-C are both particularly serious infections. The former – unless we believe Professor Duesberg – causes AIDS and diminishes the body’s ability to overcome subsequent infections, however slight. The latter, in the long term, causes chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. Either infection combined with haemophilia causes devastation among sufferers, their families and their friends. So why does one particular sufferer receive compensation and another doesn’t?

To put it bluntly, the main reason may well be that hepatitis-C is far less likely to capture the imagination of the public, Parliament or the government of the day. Hepatitis-C, unlike HIV, is only transmitted through blood and so its incidence within the general public is much less likely. Rather, on the whole it will only affect haemophiliacs and intravenous drug users. It is associated with minorities and/or deviance. It is unlikely to be able to maintain attention for any particular length of time. This is the key to the difference – HIV caught the public’s imagination because it was, and still is, presented as an infection which did or does not discriminate. It is transmitted sexually; it is transmitted through blood; it is transmitted from mother to baby; for a while it was thought that it might even be transmitted through saliva. It therefore affects us all and, albeit to a lesser and lesser extent, HIV continues to grab the headlines.

It is this crucial difference which informs much of the process of compensation. In both cases successive British (and now Scottish) governments attempted to deny responsibility for the compensation of those infected through blood products. However, this was largely unsuccessful with HIV because the issue just did not go away.

When, in the early Eighties, ministers denied the links between blood products and HIV, newspapers were filled with scientific reports which suggested otherwise. When ministers tried to delegate responsibility for HIV infections to haemophiliac specialists or health authorities, Parliament asserted its right to hold them to account. When the government accepted both the links and the responsibility, but not the need for compensation, the continuous public reaction forced a U-turn in government policy. And finally when the government accepted the need to compensate, but only those haemophiliacs who constituted a “special case”, it was again defeated by the threat of legal action supported by media, British Medical Association and MPs.

But is this likely to happen in the case of hepatitis-C? While those affected may take hope from the fact that the Scottish executive is finally taking their plight seriously, there is still one major obstacle to the granting of compensation – precedent. The most striking aspect of HIV in this regard was that the government could not afford to grant “no-fault” compensation to anyone suffering at the hands of the NHS for fear of opening the floodgates for a succession of similar claims. So, when granting a “trust fund” to HIV -infected haemophiliacs, it argued that these were “wholly exceptional circumstances”, with the implication that such compensation (although it was never termed as such) would never be repeated.

On the other hand, there is hope to be taken from this process, not least because since then the government has argued that those non-haemophiliacs infected with HIV through blood products were “also a very special case.” It seems, then, that to be successful a group just has to agree that what it is receiving is an exceptional compassionate payment rather than “compensation”.

More seriously, whether the government likes it or not, it has already set the precedent for haemophiliacs, when it recognised in 1990 that theirs were “wholly exceptional circumstances” and that haemophilia combined with another serious condition merited compensation, however this is phrased.

The government therefore has a responsibility to treat hepatitis-C sufferers in the same way as it treated those infected with HIV, irrespective of the findings of its investigation”

Attention in the Scottish Parliament (2001)

For example, the Scottish Parliament Health and Social Care Committee report in 2001 argued that sufferers should receive financial support, but largely rejected the idea of compensation:

‘100. Should this assistance that we advocate be described as compensation? “Compensation” implies negligence or fault, and on the (admittedly limited) basis of the evidence we considered, we do not think that this has been established. In the end, what matters most, in our view, is not what this assistance is called. What does matter is that it makes a clear, practical difference, and that it is delivered promptly. We would like to see a scheme established within twelve months’.

Compensation as an issue of intergovernmental relations (2003-)

By early 2003, the issue became an IGR issue. Barry Winetrobe’s report in February 2003 noted that:

“9.3 Hepatitis C referral to the JCPC

It has been reported in late January that differences in legal advice to the UK Government and the Scottish Executive over the latter’s proposal to make ex gratia payments to Hepatitis C sufferers, whose condition was caused by contaminated blood, may have to be resolved ultimately by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Two difficulties appear to be relevant, one of which (similar to earlier arguments over free personal care) involves possible clawback through the (reserved) social security system of some of the payments made by the Executive. The other relates to the more general question of whether the Executive actually has the power to make such payments. This appears to be a reference to Head F (social security) of the list of reserved matters in schedule 5 of the Scotland Act, which, in its interpretation provisions, may exclude such payments from the Executive’s devolved competence or the Parliament’s legislative competence”

Cairney (2006: 433) relates compensation to disputes between the UK and Scottish governments:

“This imbalance of power is apparent when disputes rise to the surface. The most high profile policy of the first Scottish Parliament session (1999–2003) was the decision in Scotland to depart from the UK line and implement the recommendations of the Sutherland Report on ‘free’ personal care for the elderly. … if the UK government had been sympathetic to the policy a solution would have been found, but general Whitehall indifference to Scotland had turned to specific hostility (particularly since UK ministers failed to persuade their Scottish counterparts to maintain a UK line). This approach was also taken with the issue of Hepatitis C compensation in Scotland, with the Department of Work and Pensions threatening to reduce benefit payments to those in receipt of Scottish Executive compensation (Lodge, 2003 reproduced below). This case was taken further, with Whitehall delaying Scottish payments on the basis of competence (health devolved, but compensation for injury and illness reserved) until it came up with a UK-wide scheme to be implemented in Scotland (Anon., 2004a)”

Cairney (2011: 98-9) notes:

“Hepatitis C became a cause of relative tension, with the UK Government apparently willing to challenge the Scottish Executive’s right to provide compensation (payments related to injury and illness are reserved), until it came up with a UK-wide compensation scheme (with which Scottish ministers were less happy) (Winetrobe, February 2003: 39–40; February 2004: 42; May 2004: Cairney, 2006: 433; January 2007: 83). The Scottish Executive and UK Government also faced calls for a public inquiry into Hep C in 2006 (Cairney, September 2006: 75). The Scottish Government oversaw its own inquiry on Hep C, partly to put pressure on the UK Government to follow suit (Cairney, May 2008: 87; May 2009: 58)”

The ‘view from the centre’

May 2003: Guy Lodge’s report states that:

“The dispute between the UK government and the Scottish Executive, over the decision by the Executive to provide compensation to anyone who contracted Hepatitis C on the NHS in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of contaminated blood, has continued this quarter. The Scottish Health Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, announced proposals for ex gratia payments in January 2003, but has had to concede that no payments will be made until the Scottish Executive resolves the issue with Westminster. The dispute centres on whether or not the Department for Work and Pensions will try and ‘clawback’ the money used by the Executive in compensation through the social security system. There is also a debate over whether the Executive actually has the power to make such payments. 

In what many in Scotland have interpreted as a snub to the Scottish Parliament, Andrew Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has refused to appear before the Health Committee, which had invited him to give evidence on the issue. 

The SNP have been keen to raise the issue at Westminster. On 21 May, Annabelle Ewing quizzed the Prime Minister on why no compensation had been made during questions to the Prime Minister. 

Annabelle Ewing (SNP – Perth): The Prime Minister will be aware that the Scottish Parliament agreed at the beginning of this year to pay compensation to hepatitis C sufferers in Scotland who contracted the disease through contaminated NHS blood products. However, not a penny piece has yet been paid, as a result of dithering by Westminster over jurisdiction. Can I inject a sense of urgency into the debate and ask the Prime Minister to confirm today that Westminster will not frustrate the will of the Scottish Parliament to pay compensation under exemption from the benefits clawback regulations? Surely the Prime Minister would agree that the people involved have already waited far too long for justice.

The Prime Minister: I am aware of the Scottish Executive’s decision to pay compensation to hepatitis C sufferers. I am not aware of the other particular problem to which the hon. Lady has just drawn attention. I shall look into it, and write to her about it.

Annabelle Ewing also raised the issue on 20 May at Scotland Office questions in which Liddell suggests that a decision will be made after the elections in Scotland. 

Annabelle Ewing : Surely the key issue is whether she will fight for the right of the Scottish Parliament to pay compensation and for a 100 per cent exemption from the benefit clawback rules. If she will not do that, will she explain to hepatitis C sufferers in Scotland why on earth Scottish taxpayers are paying £7 million for the running costs of her office?

Mrs. Liddell: There are serious legal and policy-based issues in relation to hepatitis C. There have been extensive discussions between the Scottish Executive and the Department for Work and Pensions, not least on whether payments should be taken into account as capital or income when someone claims income-related benefits. Those discussions could not continue because of the Scottish Parliament elections. As soon as the Minister for Health and Community Care is in place in the Scottish Parliament, those discussions will continue”

An academic story of contemporary policy and policymaking problems

Many policy concepts try to sum up the same story about modern governance: complex policy problems do not respect traditional government boundaries, and require collaborative responses across government and between governmental and non-governmental actors. We can break this narrative into four elements.

1. A common setting, involving inevitable policy complexity, the absence of a single centre of policymaking, and the absence of one-best-way to make policy: there is no simple way to come together to solve complex problems.
2. A range of relevant characters, including leaders of organisations or networks, entrepreneurs and brokers seeking ways to foster innovation and cooperation, and many others essential to routine policy delivery: while inspirational actors matter, policymaking is a chorus not a solo act.
3. The plot involves adversity and increased urgency, comparing the need for effective collaboration with the sense that practical and political reality does not match necessity: we are in a hole, need to act more effectively, and time is running out.
4. We require a realistic but positive moral, involvingthe pragmatic recognition of limited progress but hopeful vision of renewed models of collective action: things may seem tough now, but we have ways to make them better and can build on progress.

Such narratives combine a descriptive statement (here is the policy problem) with a prescriptive statement (we need collaborative and joined-up responses), a cautionary note (policy processes do not deliver what we require), and perhaps a rejection of despair in favour of learning lessons (forewarned is forearmed).

A simple narrative of complex problems

I base the following narrative on a synthesis of concepts and approaches to policy analysis and design, theories of policy processes, and approaches seeking pragmatic and feasible solutions to policy and policymaking problems.

There are no simple solutions to complex problems.

Policy analysis tools need to recognise the wickedness or complexity of policy problems. There is always contestation to define the size, urgency, and cause of policy problems and the role of the state in addressing them. Problems do not respect jurisdictional boundaries. Few problems are amenable to simple one-shot solutions. Terms such as systems thinking and new policy design focus on the interconnectedness of problems and multi-faceted policy mix.

Policymaking is a continuous process to manage problems.

Governments are rarely in the problem-solving business. They oversee continuous problem management by many actors across and beyond the public sector, including civil servants, public sector professions, and public, private, and third sector organisations delivering policy.

There is no single centre of policymaking.

Complex policy problems transcend traditional boundaries and responsibilities, such as across government departments, levels of government, or governmental and non-governmental action. Terms such as polycentric governance, multi-level governance, and multi-centric policymaking describe the responsibility for action held in many centres or venues for action. This distribution of responsibility results from a combination of choice, such as enshrined in a constitution, and necessity, when governments seek cooperation to deal with the practical limits to their power or resources (such as their bounded rationality).

There is a need for policy coherence, but no single model for collective action.

This spread of responsibilities to address problems leads to multiple responses that lack coherence or integration. There is a pressing need to coordinate responses, but no single model. The absence of one centre of authority – in one political system or many – rules out a simple top-down response. The presence of multiple more-or-less autonomous organisations requires more voluntary collective approaches. Concepts to describe aspects of such aims include collaborative governance, institutional collective action, mainstreaming, whole of government responses, joined-up government, and policy integration.

There is not one best way to lead or participate.

Policymaking at this scale involves many actors who contribute a range of skills, attributes, strategies, and mindsets to foster broad aims such as innovation, leadership, professionalism, and collective action. Terms such as systems leadership reflect the limited value of hierarchical leadership models. Terms such as entrepreneur highlight exceptional actors able to identify windows of opportunity for change or overcome common obstacles to progress, while terms such as professionalism and followership emphasis the value of different kinds of – often long-term – participation beyond the idea of instant heroic action.

There are many essential principles of effective government.

Many aims or principles could drive the search for more effective government, including:

• Accountable and responsible, to maintain a clear link between citizen wishes and government promises, such as via regular high stakes elections.
• Future oriented, to anticipate and address problems early rather than lurch from crisis to crisis.
• Preventive, to intervene early to ward of social or environmental problems rather than lurch between crises or respond to acute problems when it is too late.
• Decentralised, to avoid damaging attempts to hoard power rather than cooperate.
• Co-productive, to encourage high citizen and stakeholder participation and deliberation, to collaborate to inform or make policy.
• Integrated, to produce coherent policies that are mainstreamed across government departments, all levels of government, or across policymaking and delivery.
• Evidence-informed, to ensure that policymakers understand state-of-the-art knowledge when making choices.
• Equitable, just, fair, to ensure that all participants are included, policy processes or procedures are fair, and that the distribution of outcomes does not produce unfair inequalities (also known as recognitional, procedural, and distributional justice).

Each principle is essential but also vague and subject to contested interpretation (e.g. when defining fair procedures and outcomes). Further, it is not straightforward to design a policymaking approach that does justice to each principle. For example, a short-term electoral imperative in the name of accountability may fuel a level of political competition that undermines long-term and future-oriented collaboration or a meaningful focus on coherent and integrated approaches.

A government-led response is not always the government’s preference.

There is variation of state intervention by sector, political system, and over time. In some sectors a central government is at the heart of the action, such as when establishing the regulatory framework and funding for public service delivery or social security. In other sectors, the role of central government is essential but less clear, such as when supporting businesses and individuals to transition from high to low carbon energy systems. In some political systems, high state intervention is taken for granted, while in others it is contested or rejected. This contest may be won or lost over time, to produce periods of more or less state intervention.

What we require from policy and policymaking does not match practical or political reality.

Narratives of required action emphasise what we need to do to address problems, such as to foster policy coherence via collaboration and whole of government approaches. Theory informed narratives of policy processes emphasise the gap between this requirement and practical reality, and the inevitable role of politics in which contestation is often more likely than cooperation. Statements to sum up elements of this problem include:

• Policymaker attention lurches from issue to issue, often before addressing the problem in a meaningful way.
• Policymakers must act despite uncertainty about the problem and likely effect of action.
• Policy actors compete to define and address problems, and cooperation is never guaranteed.
• Policy actors pursue their beliefs and protect their positions, often at the expense of collaboration.
• The distribution of policymaking responsibilities in political systems often reflects demands for political or territorial autonomy rather than a technocratic search for optimal policymaking.
• The ‘usual ways of doing things’ undermines new approaches. Rules, norms, and practices in one venue may conflict with another.
• There are good reasons to specialise to deal with technical issues, or close off policy communities to foster small-scale cooperation. Such defendable actions produce silos that make sense in their own context but undermine cross-community action. What makes sense in relation to one problem or community makes no sense in another.
• Technically political solutions can be politically infeasible, and vice versa.

Overall, the message is that it would be a mistake to treat policy and policymaking requirements as technical problems amenable to technical solutions. There are technical issues to address, such as to define clearly what policy is and how it contributes to required outcomes, but they only make sense through the lens of cooperation and contestation since there is never one best way to define problems or collaborate to seek solutions.

See also:

There are loads of links to 500 or 1000 Words post in the text above, including Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Multi-centric Policymaking (which summarises Making Policy in a Complex World). See the link to polycentric governance for more on Ostrom and the Bloomington School.

My plan is to take this basic narrative of complexity and work with colleagues to think it through in different contexts, focusing on how to shift from restating this problem to thinking more positively about solutions. For more on this endeavour, see for example: Positive Public Policy – A New Vision for UK Government, the nascent LPIP network, and co-produced work with NHS Confederation.

For further reading on positive public policy, see for example

• Douglas, S., Schillemans, T., ‘t Hart, P., Ansell, C., Bøgh Andersen, L., Flinders, M., Head, B., Moynihan, D., Nabatchi, T., O’Flynn, J. and Peters, B.G. (2021) ‘Rising to Ostrom’s challenge: an invitation to walk on the bright side of public governance and public service’, Policy Design and Practice, 4:4, 441-451 https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2021.1972517
• Mallory Compton and Paul ‘t Hart Great Policy Successes: How Governments Get It Right in a Big Way at Least Some of the Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Preview PDF

How Can the Scottish Parliament Be Improved as a Legislature?

This post summarises my article (in 2013) that reflected on the Scottish Parliament’s role and influence as a legislature after its first decade. After 25 years of devolution, how many of these points still ring true? The aim is to work with the Centre for Scottish Public Policy to prompt debate among key people in Scottish politics.

Twenty-five years of devolution gives us plenty of evidence to assess the role and influence of the Scottish Parliament. In this blog, I summarise five previous concerns to prompt discussion about their contemporary relevance.

1. The Scottish Parliament did not live up to ‘new politics’ expectations.

It was once common to describe the gap between pre-1999 hopes for the Scottish Parliament and reality. Those hopes began with the Scottish Constitutional Convention’s description of a new political culture. They continued when the Consultative Steering Group (set up to design the Scottish Parliament’s standing orders) highlighted power sharing ‘between the people of Scotland, the legislators’ and the Scottish Government, and proposed strong powers for parliamentary committees, including to monitor government departments, assess the quality of government engagement with stakeholders, scrutinise legislation, and initiate its own legislation. Yet, the CSG also expected the government to govern, and envisaged improvements to a Westminster-style process in which the government would propose most legislation and parliament would legitimise policy via enhanced scrutiny.

2. The Scottish Parliament does not scrutinise government legislation sufficiently.

From 1999-2007, the problem was that a coalition government oversaw a punishing legislative schedule, giving insufficient time to scrutinise legislation. From 2007-11 a minority government passed less legislation, but the new threat of parliamentary opposition translated into the non-introduction of some bills rather than more time for scrutiny. From 2011 we saw majority government business-as-usual, then minority governments with less reliance on cross-party cooperation.

Committees could also engage in scrutiny via the inquiry process: to assess current policy and encourage new legislation to fill gaps, or to conduct post-legislative scrutiny to evaluate policy following implementation. However, the big splash reports tend to stand out as exceptions to the rule, and Scottish governments tend to reply with a polite ‘thank you’ rather than a substantive commitment to respond.

3. The Scottish Parliament does not have a sufficiently large professionally trained staff

These problems relate partly to capacity, in which dozens of committee staff try to keep track of an increasingly complex statute book delivered by a public sector with half a million employees. To be effective, committees need to prioritise a small number of issues. Even then, they often struggle to get enough information about legislation, and its impact on policy and public sector practices, to make an informed judgement. Still, few demand a boost to the capacity of the Scottish Parliament as an organisation (rather than a venue for party competition).

4. The party whip undermines independent scrutiny, or parties do not engage with the legislative process

These problems relate mostly to the party-political nature of parliamentary proceedings. The Scottish Parliament is a slightly more consensual mini-Westminster. From 1999-2007 a majority Labour-Liberal Democrat government had minimal interest in working with an opposition SNP. From 2007-11, and 2016 onwards, the SNP had to work with other parties to get things done, but minority government did not spark a new consensual culture of government-opposition relations.

5. The Scottish Parliament would benefit from an upper chamber

Of course, there is no prospect of a second chamber. The new Scottish political system was modelled as an alternative to ‘old Westminster’, containing an unelected second chamber in dire need of reform. Rather, the focus in Scotland regarded the extent to which a well-designed unicameral process could make up for the absence of the second chamber’s function, largely by front-loading scrutiny and investing high powers in committees. If so, it makes sense to reflect continuously on the gaps between hopes for design and actual execution.

In all five cases, a key difference is the passage of time, to move away from the highly optimistic language of reformers in the 1990s, and the initial honeymoon period of devolution, towards more pragmatic assessments in relation to real world politics. For example, the Commission on Scottish Parliament reform in 2017 focused largely on tweaks to current processes rather than radical redesign, and Steven MacGregor’s award-winning PhD research makes a convincing case for the non-trivial influence of the Scottish Parliament on government legislation. If so, in the absence of a big constitutional event, like devolution in 1999 or independence some other time, the Parliament will largely continue in its current form. The unexciting but satisfactory conclusion is that people may be vaguely satisfied with the Scottish Parliament because it performs its expected role competently.

Will the new Human Rights Bill for Scotland bring change to frontline social work practice?

Below is a guest post by Catherine Harris, written to accompany her Master of Public Policy dissertation at the end of 2023 …

It would be reasonable to assume that we can all see the value in human rights. We all want our human rights to be respected and benefit from just knowing they are there. Day to day, if we are fortunate, we probably don’t have to think about them at all. However, our concern for human rights might come to the fore when we, or someone we love, are in a more vulnerable circumstance. For example, if we need support from the social care system.

A human rights approach to social care, is the way in which people’s rights are upheld. This may be particularly important to someone who requires support to meet their everyday needs, if they live with a disability, or are older for example. While people don’t have a right to social care specifically, an effective social care system allows people to access the support they need to live as independently as possible. In other words, the social care system is a way people’s human rights can be met.

Human rights and a human rights approach seem to be important then, especially if we want to protect the most vulnerable. Yet, the Conservative led UK Government are making some radical moves that imply our human rights are becoming less of a priority. Although it was scrapped in the summer of 2023, the UK Bill of Rights promised nothing good for the security of the rights of people living in the UK.

Likewise, the ongoing Rwanda Deal, which has already been deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court, is a strong indication that the UK Government are moving against the promotion of human rights. As well as the UK Government’s questionable views on human rights, we are collectively facing the combined impact of Brexit, Covid-19 and longstanding austerity measures. It is reassuring then, that the Scottish Government are considering the future of human rights in Scotland through the new Human Rights Bill for Scotland.

Regrettably, the following paper suggests this new Human Rights Bill won’t bring much change in reality. This study finds that the language used in the human rights legislation is too vague, so vague in fact that it lacks any literal obligation for people to do the tasks expected. As well as this, there are many other factors that affect the ability and inclination of frontline workers to follow the rules of law. These include significant limitations on funding and resources, which leads to stress and burnout of workers, but also leads to people not getting the support they need.

The existing process of challenging decisions in social care is both complicated and unlikely to result in success. This means that if you’re unhappy with the support you’re offered, or if you feel like you need support but don’t meet the criteria, there isn’t much you can do about it. Clearly it is important to be able to hold social workers accountable for their decisions, but it is also important to be able to hold local authorities and our central governments accountable too. After all, they are in control of the finance and resource decisions which are having the negative impact. Until these underlying issues around accountability, funding and resources are addressed, rearranging human rights legislation is unlikely to transform the experience of social workers, or people who use social care services.

… The MPP dissertation uses the Institutional Grammar approach to code key aspects of government policy. We hope to work together to turn it into a publishable article soon.

Chapter 9 Economic Policy: Austerity

This post by Sean Kippin introduces chapter 9 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin. Key terms to remember include:

• Deficit: the amount to borrow when annual government spending is higher than income.
• Debt: the overall amount of government borrowing (from multiple deficits).
• Recession: a sustained drop in economic activity. Often defined as a reduction in gross domestic product (GDP) over two successive financial quarters.

From 1979 a ‘post-war consensus’ to pursue ‘Keynesian’ policies gave way to a ‘neoliberal’ approach which emphasised state withdrawal and market forces. This reduced the state’s control of its own economic policy, and left it subject to international forces. The response of successive UK governments to the financial crisis (which began in 2008) demonstrates how policymakers define and attempt to solve problems, the barriers they face when trying to enact their agendas, and the profound social consequences of their decisions.

Defining and solving the crisis

The global financial crisis of 2007-8 included the collapse of major banks in countries such as the US and UK. The UK was particularly vulnerable since its economy depends disproportionately on a large financial sector. The UK government sought to reinject financial sector ‘liquidity’ (access to cash or the means to convert assets to cash), since a failure to do so would risk economic collapse and terrifying social consequences. Its action took the form of enormous ‘bailouts’ to failing banks, including taking part-ownership of some. Such measures were controversial, as they seemed to let the banks off the hook for their risky lending practices and lack of prudence in managing their customers’ finances.

This immediate banking crisis created an economic crisis marked by recession and low growth. The response was to use mildly Keynesian economic policies to engage in counter-cyclical public spending to trigger economic growth, in the form of a ‘fiscal stimulus’. The combination of high spending and low growth generated attention to the issue of higher debts and deficits, with the Conservative Party benefiting from the issue politically and emerging as the largest party in the House of Commons following the 2010 General Election (then forming a Coalition government with the Liberal Democrats). Crucially, it gave them an opportunity to pursue longstanding neoliberal ideological goals.

The Coalition placed responsibility for crisis at the former Labour government’s door by claiming that they had ‘spent too much and ‘failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining’. This new problem definition was influential, reinforced by the unfolding Eurozone crisis, and triggered a shift to austerity whereby the Coalition pledged to eliminate the fiscal deficit within a single, five year parliamentary term. The Coalition related these issues to broader debates about the appropriate size and role of the state, the need for public sector reform, and the balance between tax rises and spending cuts which are socially just and economically viable.

Is UK economic policy within the Government’s control?

Economic policy has a strong international dimension, due to the centrality of international markets, the effects of currency fluctuations, and the interdependencies of globalised economic and financial systems. The UK government also handed power to an independent Bank of England from 1997 onwards, which sets interest rates and controls other elements of monetary policy (Chapter 4). The devolved executives also oversee important economic functions.

Conservative and Labour UK governments have supported neoliberal policies such as deregulation. Many have argued that such a hands-off approach helps to explain the severity of a global economic crisis as experienced in the UK.

While the outcomes of economic policy may be out of reach of UK governments, they have more influence over crisis narratives. For example, the Coalition government used a persuasive narrative to justify austerity, consisting of the following components:

1. Excessive debt is dangerous.
2. Britain is broke.
3. Austerity is a necessary evil.
4. Big government is bad government.
5. Welfare is like a drug, and government action should not encourage dependence.
6. Reform government to reward strivers and punish skivers.
7. We need to fix Labour’s mess quickly.

While the narrative was successful, UK policies were less so. Indeed, these policy choices were highly contested in relation to the following issues. First, UK debt levels were high, but affordable due to low interest rates. Second, the notion that the country had ‘run out of money’ was misleading and based on an inaccurate ‘domestic household‘ analogy. Third, despite the claims of the Coalition’s leading figures, there were alternatives to its approach. Fourth, a key element of austerity – that state intervention ‘crowded out’ the private sector and thus economic growth – is rather controversial. Fifth, it drew upon misleading claims about ‘welfare dependency‘ and a false distinction between in and out of work poverty.

Did the Government deliver austerity? And what were the consequences of its efforts?

The substance of the government’s austerity drive was spending cuts, tax changes, public sector reforms, and even a hike in English university fees (despite Liberal Democrat promises to the contrary).

The government cut spending heavily in some areas, such as local government and welfare, but not in others, such as money spent on old age pensioners and the NHS. It was more successful in projecting austerity than achieving its fundamental goals. Austerity harmed economic growth, and triggered a recession. Recession prompted a relaxation of spending cuts and even an intervention from the IMF. Public spending rose during this period, but fell as a proportion of GDP:

Other reforms, such as Big Society,  and gimmicks like the ‘one in, two out’ rule for regulation didn’t amount to much.

The social consequences of austerity were severe, and felt unequally

• Women received a ‘triple whammy‘ of cuts to benefits, and increase in employment, and the retrenchment of vital public services
• Austerity measures were ‘disproportionately detrimental to members of racial and ethnic minority communities‘ 
• Older people were (relatively) protected from austerity, such as in the form of the pension ‘triple lock’, while younger people were hit hard by changes to tuition fees, housing benefit, and the Educational Maintenance Allowance
• The Department for Communities and Local Government was the hardest hit by cuts, which translated into particularly severe local budget cuts to large urban centres in the North of England, while ‘middle England’ received less harsh cuts, exacerbating existing regional inequalities. 

In other words, the Coalition’s response to the economic crisis included policies which created social harms, backed by a top-down uncompromising language. If so, can we envisage more inclusive means of policymaking? Many ideas have been proposed:

–  Constitutional reform, such as through greater devolution or electoral reform might help to include a greater breadth of perspectives in policymaking.

–  ‘Co-production’ with service users and other citizens

–  Deliberative democracy, to assemble a representative body of people engaged in a finding common ground and reaching decisions, could foster participation in and legitimacy for policy decisions

–  Community wealth building to use ‘anchor institutions’ and member owned businesses to ensure wealth generated locally is kept there  

Many of these agendas have been proposed and rejected. Others show less potential for transformation than their advocates might suggest. Some may some appealing, but lose support should they propose too-radical change.

Conclusion

This story of post-crisis economic policy connects strongly to the Westminster story. Politicians responded to crises by projecting strong control of the situation and of acting decisively to make hard decisions on banking, then economic crisis, then debts and deficits. However, it also confirms elements of the complex government story: policies did not have their desired effects, often leading to a course change. Public sector reforms demonstrate the usual mixture of eye-catching presentation and low impact. Austerity was ultimately more useful as a dramatic government story than a way of controlling economic policy and achieving goals on debts and deficits. A government can appear to deliver on its promises, but not getting what it wants, while causing damage along the way.

Chapter 8 Environmental Policy: Climate Change and Sustainability

This post introduces chapter 8 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

This chapter describes climate change as the ultimate ‘wicked’ problem, so let’s make sure we know what that means.Think of references to ‘wicked’ as Rittel and Webber’s rejection of ‘rationalist’ understandings of policy problems. Rather, wicked problems:

• Defy simple definition and understanding. Indeed, the definition and alleged cause is contested.
• The cause of this problem may actually be a symptom of another problem, or too complex to be compared to problems addressed successfully in the past.
• It is impossible to know if all solutions have been identified, or if a problem is solved.
• Trial and error is difficult, since errors have major social consequences

You might think – reasonably – that all policy problems discussed in this book are ‘wicked’, but are they ‘super wicked’?! Levin et al identify 4 additional properties that sum up super wicked problems like climate change:

1. ‘Time is running out.’ The problem becomes more acute when solutions are not found.
2. ‘Those seeking to end the problem are also causing it.’ Countries like the UK help to lead the climate change agenda, but are major contributors of emissions.
3. ‘No central authority.’ There are global policy agreements to tackle climate change, but each government is responsible for its own implementation.
4. ‘Policies discount the future irrationally.’ Actors place too little value on policies with long-term benefits and too much on short- term costs.

Climate change also sums up complex government themes (Chapter 3), since it is an existential crisis that has not been addressed adequately by current policies, and it exemplifies the gap between what is required to address the problem and what actually happens.

The requirement is for continuously high policy-maker attention, and for governments to collaborate: with each other, to connect domestic and global policy agendas; within government, to join up policy across many sectors; and, with non-governmental actors, to harness stakeholder ideas and connect government policy to the behaviour of businesses.

Yet, governments are slow to pay (fleeting) attention. They make useful references to energy, transport, and food system transformation, and frequent references to collaborative or integrated policymaking inside and outside of government, but with limited effects.

How can we explore these issues with our 3 lenses?

Policy analysis: how to address the policy problem

We use 5-step policy analysis to understand the problem through the eyes of policymakers:

• Step 1. How could governments define climate change as a policy problem? We see contestation to give the problem a name and assign authority to organisations (like the IPCC) to describe its size, urgency, and cause.
• Step 2. Identifying feasible solutions. While the IPCC focuses mostly on technical feasibility, the UNFCCC focuses on limited political feasibility. For example, maybe the Paris Agreement represents a profoundly useful ‘Legally binding international treaty on climate change’, or maybe it allows countries to signal commitments without follow-through.
• Steps 3 and 4: Using values and goals to compare solutions, and predicting the outcomes of solutions. For example, the Stern Review produced a cost benefit case to demonstrate that, in the long run, it would be better for global GDP to address climate change effectively.
• Step 5: Making recommendations. Policy analysis texts advise that recommendations should be simple and punchy to make the problem seem solvable and the solution seem feasible.  Yet, environmental defies simple analysis, and a list of technically and politically feasible solutions is generally absent from international agreements.

Policy studies: What exactly is UK environmental policy?

Environmental policy can relate to (1) natural resources (water, air, forestry, land, coast), waste and pollution, climate change, and ecosystems, and (2) relate strongly to policies on energy, transport, food/ agriculture. This spread raises immediate issues:

1. It is difficult to map policymaking if everything is so connected and multi-level (EU, UK, devolved, local) and multi-sectoral (energy, transport, food, climate, environment).
2. It is difficult to coordinate policymaking, such as to establish a unit without enough power or ‘mainstream’ a climate policy aim across sectors with other bigger priorities.

How did the UK and devolved governments respond to climate change?

We describe limited then sporadic policymaker attention, followed by high EU activity from the 1980s, and some UK measures from the late 1990s to use taxes and regulations to address climate change. There was a brief but strong ‘competitive consensus’ from 2006, in which the governing party (led by Tony Blair) and opposition party (David Cameron) competed to establish their green credentials. This dynamic reinforced the motive and opportunity of Labour ministers to propose rapid and radical changes to policy

Policy changes included:

• The Climate Change Act 2008 to increase the government’s emissions reduction targets and give them statutory weight
• Policies to incentivise renewable energy and encourage more efficient homes and electric vehicles.

Policymaking changes included introducing the Office for Climate Change to coordinate responses (2006), independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to report on UK progress, and Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to lead policies to meet targets (2008).

Still, climate change was not a top priority for long, and the coalition government from 2010 was keener to support policies to reverse recession and prompt economic growth (e.g. supporting oil and gas).  

There was resurgent interest by 2019, to amend the Climate Change Act to set a ‘net zero’ target by 2050 (the amount of new GHGs entering the atmosphere is matched by the removal of GHGs) and establish UK and devolved government strategies to that end. Still, we are witnessing the gap between climate change aims versus outcomes, in which governments make big long term commitments, achieve the easy short term stuff, do things that undermine these long term commitments, and pass the rest to their successors.

Case studies: energy, transport, food

Chapter 8 examines this relationship between high ambition and limited progress:

• UK renewables policy is a partial success story, featuring a long term shift from coal to renewables (especially Scotland), often backed by government economic incentives to invest in renewables. At the same time, UK governments support fossil fuel extraction and use, especially when faced with periods of energy insecurity and high global energy costs.
• UK transport policy exhibits a post-war legacy of unsustainable policies (e.g. to support roads and car use). Reforms are difficult and thankless (e.g. to promote public transport), governments juggle multiple aims (transport, economy, climate), many remain unfulfilled, and integration and coherence are elusive.
• Postwar food systems are unsustainable. Brexit perhaps offered the opportunity to reform more quickly than in the EU, but we are yet to see the fruits of such initiatives.

Critical policy analysis: who matters to policy makers?

Chapter 8 describes the pursuit of a ‘just transition’ from high to low carbon energy systems. Here, climate justice can describe: being seen as a legitimate contributor of relevant knowledge (recognitional), fair rules and processes to make decisions (procedural), and the fair distribution of costs and benefits associated with climate change and policy (distributional).

At the international level, issues include: the UK causes a disproportionate share of the problem, but does not bear proportionate costs, so climate change is a foreign policy, trade, and international development as well as an environmental issue.  At the domestic level, problems such as fuel poverty endure despite the promotion of UK and devolved strategies, and there is contestation to determine who is in greatest need, who should bear the burden of costs (people, business, government), and if energy justice is a human rights issue.

Conclusion

Both of our policymaking stories signal bad news for the environment. The Westminster story could be harnessed to generate support for rapid and radical policy change, driven by a centralised focus on addressing an urgent problem. Rather, we see bursts of attention and limited follow-through. The complex government story describes the absence of single central government control over policy outcomes. Some is by choice, such as to privatise energy then minimise regulation. Some is by necessity, in which policymakers struggle to understand systems far less control them. Central governments often exacerbate this confusion by fudging their stories of policymaking – we are in control (the Westminster story) and we are not in control (the complex government story) – to project a sense of governing competence but avoid full responsibility for policy outcomes. The result is that UK (and devolved) governments have described maximally their ambitions to deal with climate change, but minimally how they will achieve them.

Chapter 5. What Does State Transformation Tell Us about the UK Policy Process?

This post introduces chapter 5 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

This chapter relates UK state transformation (Chapter 4) to the Westminster and complex government stories explained in Chapter 3.

We ask four key questions.

Q1. What was the style of policy making during transformation?

Did governments push new policies from the top-down, in line with the Westminster story? Thatcherism stories played up to this idea:

• Using the ‘there is no alternative’ language. Don’t waste time on consultation when you know you need to be radical
• Basing an image of governing competence on making strong decisions from the top-down
• Bashing unions, and brooking no opposition from vested interests.

The complex government story warns against the assumption that this style was ‘normal’ rather than based on high profile examples. In a wider policymaking environment, over which they have limited control, policymakers seek a range of styles. Chapters 2 and 3 use the concept of policy communities to make this point:

• Ministers have to ignore most issues, and delegate most policymaking to civil servants
• Civil servants form relationships with groups
• Civil servants see clear political benefits to consultation, to foster stakeholder ownership and policy legitimacy
• Groups recognize the benefit of insider strategies (following the ‘rules of the game’ to maintain good access).

See: Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Networks, sub-government and communities 

Still, long-term transformation had an impact on policymaking: the ‘normal’ policy style today is not the same as in the 1970s. Examples include:

• Many groups – such as trade unions – never returned to the status that they enjoyed in previous eras.
• Many policies – such as new public management (NPM) reforms (Chapter 4) – were opposed vociferously in the past, but now taken for granted.
• These reforms changed the role of the civil service, which became less central to policy making (Chapter 4).
• Both governing parties have exploited crises to make ‘tough choices’ backed by the ‘government knows best’ narrative.

Richardson describes a new normal style: making announcements then consulting on delivery. We describe a mix of co-existing styles: (1) high profile imposition, and (2) routine low attention issues and consultation.

We then describe the face value contrast between UK (majoritarian) and devolved (consensus) policy styles, but warn against the assumption of a contrast based on high-profile examples. Instead, ask yourself: what is the mix of styles across the political system (see Boxes 3.2 and 5.1)?

Q2. Did policy change incrementally or in radical bursts?

Chapter 4 describes long periods of policy continuity, but major shifts associated with some periods (the mid-1940s and late-1970s). In some cases, a new government signalled an era-defining shift in direction. In many others, policy slowed down or accelerated. The Westminster story has some value, to describe periods of radical change directed from the centre, but only when situated in a wider context to identify the rarity and effect of these changes.

These dynamics are not summed up well by ‘incrementalism’ (Chapter 2). If we treat incrementalism as a strategy, we exaggerate the coherence of steps towards an endgame. If we treat it as a description of policy change, we struggle to explain key periods that do not fit the pattern. Instead, we need to account for

1. Long periods of policymaking stability followed by a burst of instability (or vice versa).
2. Long periods of policy continuity followed by a shift in policy direction in relation to one problem. Or, the combination of many minor policy changes and a small number of major changes.

Punctuated equilibrium theory helps to explain these dynamics. See the separate blog posts for the general background:

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words:  Punctuated Equilibrium Theory 

Policy in 500 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

In Chapter 4, we focus on key measures of policy change – to budgets and agendas – that demonstrate many small changes and some huge ones.

Peter Hall also provides an influential account of paradigm change in economic policy. See the separate post on paradigm change Policy in 500 Words: Peter Hall’s policy paradigms 

Here, we focus on the contested idea that policy changed profoundly during Thatcher’s first term. Hall describes ‘third order’ change: rare, radical shifts in policy (1) prompted by failure to explain the problem or address it, (2) prompting the replacement of one paradigm (world view) and approach with another. Oliver and Pemberton argue that policy change was less of a clean break, and more about the accumulation of change.

There are many phrases that try to sum up this gradual but profound change to policy and institutions. In Chapter 5, we relate that idea to this wider discussion of paradigm coherence (State transformation: trial and error, not a grand plan). Examples include:

• There was no grand privatisation plan. It took off when it proved feasible and popular.
• There was initial reticence over challenging unions under Thatcher (similar moves had failed under Heath).
• Public sector reform was a mish-mash of changes, not a grand New Public Management plan.

In other words, we warn against assuming a grand coherent state transformation plan, and show that it is tricky to know if we witnessed a few radical steps or a collection of less radical measures adding up (eventually) to transformation. The difference might seem ‘academic’, but is actually more important to governments wondering if they can deliver on radical intentions.

Q3. What was the impact of state transformation on central government?

We describe ministers addressing the unmanageability of government, either to reassert central control or jettison the parts of government that defy it.  Have these reforms reduced or exacerbated the limits to central control?

There is a lot of academic uncertainty and contestation on this point.

• One interpretation is consistent with the Westminster story: reforms contributed to a ‘rejuvenated’ and ‘lean’ state, with ministers able to focus on core tasks without having to manage peripheral functions. They can make strategic decisions, create rules and regulations – backed by funding, inspection and performance management – to ensure that their aims are carried out by others, and minimise the powers of other public bodies.
• Another interpretation is that the UK government exacerbated its own ‘governance problem’ (the gap between a story of central control and what central governments can actually do). A collection of reforms fragmented the public landscape and exacerbated a sense that no one is in control. There is a never-ending and dispiriting cycle of such reforms, where a lack of central control prompts futile attempts at centralisation.

Similarly, there is a lot of government uncertainty. Conservative and Labour governments have: bemoaned some aspect of limited central control; reformed to solve the problem; found that many reforms just changed the problem; and had to project the sense of being in control regardless (Chapter 3).

Q4: How do these UK developments relate to the wider world?

‘Globalisation’ suggests that national governments do not simply manage their own affairs. Their high profile aims depend on choices made by other governments, international organisations and non-governmental actors such as multinational corporations.

For example, economic policies relate to:

• international financial markets that influence the value of a country’s currency
• the technology that allows a global trade in goods and services
• the power of multinational corporations, seeking the most favourable taxation, subsidy and regulatory systems from countries competing for their business
• the migration of people seeking work in a country
• the power of international organisations such as the IMF to set strict conditions on a government’s policies – to reduce state intervention and reform public services – in exchange for financial assistance (as with Labour in the late 1970s)

For example, ‘race to the bottom’ describes many countries pursuing ‘neoliberal reforms’ to please corporations by (1) minimising costly regulations, (2) reducing spending to reduce demand for taxation, (3) privatizing.

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Context, Events, Structural and Socioeconomic Factors 

Or, terms like policy learning/ transfer/convergence describe the international sharing of ideas and some pressure to keep up with others.

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Policy Transfer and Learning 

Conclusion

We describe a UK variant of neoliberal state transformation.

The Westminster story helps to interpret key Labour (1945) and Conservative (1979) governments setting a radical new policy direction. The Thatcher period drew on this story to narrate radical change, and promised a lean state less prone to ungovernability.

The Complex government story helps to narrate an uneven direction of policy, ad hoc reforms with limited impacts, path dependence and policy inheritance, and an incoherent state.

These long-term questions, of what happened and why, are crucial to the analysis of shorter term bursts of activity in chapters 6-11.

Chapter 4. The Transformation of the UK State

This post introduces chapter 4 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

What do we mean by state transformation?

State transformation describes a collection of major changes to policy and policymaking from the ‘post-war settlement’ towards ‘neoliberal reforms’ (towards a smaller state and less state intervention). There were many ‘neoliberal’ reforms to UK policy, policymaking, and delivery functions from the election of a Thatcher-led Conservative government from 1979.  However, we are not really describing a coherent and wholesale shift from one model of state intervention to another. Further, the election of a different party did not necessarily prompt a wholesale shift of approach.

What was the post-war consensus?

Consensus describes the maintenance of a similar approach to policy and policymaking throughout multiple changes of Labour and Conservative government (from 1945). This approach is characterised by higher state intervention to address policy problems. It includes:

• A Keynesian approach to economic policy (high state intervention via fiscal policies).
• An expanded welfare state, withnew entitlements to social security (including pension, unemployment and child benefits), access to free public services such as healthcare and education, and subsidized social housing.
• A large industrial state, with high state ownership of industry and public utilities.
• The funding and direct delivery of public services.

What were neoliberal reforms?

Neoliberal can mean the preference for: individual rather than state responsibility (e.g. for improving your health), market rather than state action (e.g. to promote economic growth), and economic growth as the primary aim. As such, reforms would include:

• The rejection of Keynesian intervention, based on belief that state intervention harms market forces, in favour of controlling inflation via monetary measures.
• Reduced policy commitments in relation to full employment and the welfare state, and being prepared to trade higher unemployment for low inflation. For example, the idea may be to seek a ‘natural rate of unemployment’, or the lowest level of unemployment that does not cause excessive inflation via inflationary wage demands, exacerbated by the negotiating power of trade unions, and too- high unemployment benefits.
• The privatisation of industry and reform of public services.

Economic Policy: From Keynesianism To Neoliberalism?

Chapter 4 describes a series of broad phases of activity, including:

1940s and 1950s: UK government policy changes consistent with Keynesian thought. For example, high taxation and spending to manage demand and seek full employment.

1960s: making state intervention work by modifying a Keynesian approach. For example, defending a Keynesian approach but modifying action to address unexpected problems (e.g. lower than expected growth, and a currency crisis)

1970s: a series of crises. They included the Conservative government (1970-74) seeking in vain to ‘roll back the state’, then a Labour government (1974–1979) facing rising inflation and unemployment, and a reduction in the value of sterling. The government’s need to borrow heavily, to finance major spending deficits, prompted initial attempts to reduce public expenditure.

1979–1997: a rejection of Keynesianism? Peter Hall describes a ‘paradigm change’ from Keynesianism to monetarism in the early 1980s, while Oliver and Pemberton describe longer term change towards neoliberal approaches.

1997 onwards: a mix of ‘neoliberal’ aims and new Keynesian’ policies. The New Labour government (1997-2010) sought to project an image of economic competence based on fiscal prudence (keeping government debt to 40% of GDP), granting independence to the Bank of England, and minimizing regulation of ‘the City’ (financial institutions).

Then came the global financial crisis, high state intervention, then ‘austerity’ (Chapter 9). Overall, we describe from 1979 an often-confusing mix of low-state intentions and unwanted high state action during crisis.

The story of employment policy is less confusing: from 1980 there has been a succession of Employment Acts to restrict the power of trades unions, based initially on Thatcher government antipathy to unions and consultation with interest groups (chapter 5), but maintained under Labour and accelerated by Conservative governments. The ability of trades unions to organize and call strike action has been reduced profoundly.

Privatisation and new public management

There has been a profound shift from a UK industrial state. For example, in 1950, the nationalized industries – water, coal, electricity, steel, gas, oil, rail, telecommunications and postal delivery – employed 2.3 million people. In 1980 they employed 1.8 million. By 1997: 0.24 million. UK governments sold £74 billion of state assets from 1979-1997 and £8 billion since then (2020 prices).

Thatcher governments also encouraged the mass sale of social housing. The 1980 Housing Act introduced a renter’s ‘right to buy’ their council house (and a discount based on years of renting).  From 1980-2003, 2.8 million homes were sold. To some extent, this obligation for councils was part of a wider challenge to local authorities, which included the ill-fated poll tax.

Privatisation also extended to:

• deregulating services (e.g. buses)
• obliging the private delivery of public services (e.g. making public bodies like councils ‘contract out’ some services)
• using private investment for capital projects (e.g. to fund investment in roads, bridges, hospitals, schools)
• reducing subsidies or increasing charges for services (e.g. for prescriptions, opticians, higher education tuition).

New public management reforms involve the application of private sector ideas or methods to the public sector. Examples include:

• NHS reforms to introduce an ‘internal market’
• Education (schools) reforms in England to foster ‘school choice’, shift from comprehensive schooling, and shift from local authority control.
• Civil service reforms, to reduce their number, recruit from outside, and separate policy and delivery (in Executive Agencies). Governments have also sought to establish new policy advisory systems (with more involvement from consultancy and think tanks)

Measures of state retrenchment or transformation

It is not always straightforward to demonstrate state transformation. For example, state spending as a proportion of GDP was 45% in 1988, which was lower than 1982 (54%) but higher than the mid-1950s (then it rose heavily under New Labour before ‘austerity’ from 2010 – Chapter 9). Still, the industrial state has vanished, and the role of the state in public service delivery has transformed (see Chapter 4 for examples). ‘Neoliberal’ also extends to a reluctance to foster ‘nanny state’ intervention.

The impact of devolution on state intervention

One the one hand, political devolution in 1999 represents the further transformation of the state towards multi-level policymaking. On the other hand, devolved governments are usually less keen on neoliberal reforms (although it is difficult to present a complete picture in Northern Ireland, since its Assembly was suspended in 2000, 2002–2007 and 2017–2020, and in flux from 2022-4). Examples include:

• Healthcare. The Scottish and Welsh governments sought to remove or slow UK reforms. All 3 governments phased out prescription charges.
• Schools. The Scottish and Welsh governments prefer comprehensive schooling. All 3 are less keen than the UK on ‘league tables’ of school performance.
• Local government. The Scottish and Welsh governments foster better central-local relations, and more trust in public bodies to deliver services.

Overall, there has been a transformation of the UK state

It moved from a ‘postwar consensus’, built on the belief that governments could and should intervene to benefit the UK population by delivering employment, education, healthcare, housing and social security. It moved towards ‘neoliberalism’, built on the belief that state intervention undermines the market and that individuals should take responsibility for their welfare. The size of the industrial state fell dramatically. The UK government is less committed to the ‘old’ Keynesian measures to tax and spend to manage demand in the economy. Tax- funded public services remain, but the state is much less likely to deliver them directly. Multiple reforms have changed how the civil service and policy advisory systems operate.

Parties made a difference to this transformation.  Labour introduced the policies associated with the post- war consensus, and the Conservatives pursued a commitment to neoliberalism. However, parties also inherited the commitments of their predecessors, accepting or accelerating policies of the past. Most elements of state transformation are here to stay, regardless of party.

See also Chapter 5 on how we can describe and explain the transformation.

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.

We are recruiting a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Stirling

‘The Division of History, Heritage and Politics wishes to appoint a suitably qualified and experienced Grade 7/8 Lecturer in International Politics. International Politics is a core element of our interdisciplinary research in relation to politics and policy, including human rights, justice, climate, energy, resource conflict, sustainable development, international security, and health. The appointee will pursue a programme of research, including research outputs and funding applications, in that context. In particular, we seek applicants who can contribute to research relating to theoretical approaches to International Politics. We are open to applicants with regional specialisms (such as Africa, Europe, Americas, or Asia). We also welcome a critical focus on gendered and racialised dimensions of international politics.

… We seek to appoint to an open-ended contract from 1 August 2024’.

https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/work-at-stirling/list/details/?jobId=3947&jobTitle=Lecturer%20in%20International%20Politics

I am one of the pre-interview contacts. To speak with someone with more expertise in International Politics, please email Professor Andrea Schapper andrea.schapper@stir.ac.uk  

These are my personal thoughts on that process, which blend background information and some helpful advice. These notes are also there to address a potentially major imbalance in the informal side to recruitment: if you do not have the contacts and networks that help give you the confidence to seek information (on the things not mentioned in the further particulars), here is the next best thing: the information I would otherwise give you on the phone.

Here are some general tips on the application and interview processes.

The application process:

• At this stage, the main documents are the CV and the cover letter.
• You should keep the cover letter short to show your skills at concise writing (I suggest 1-page, but others may seek something a little longer). Focus on what you can offer the Division specifically, given the nature of our call, the further particulars, and the detailed ‘Description of duties’ in the main advert.
• Lecturers will be competing with many people who have completed a PhD and have some publications – so what makes your CV stand out?
• We take teaching very seriously. Within our division, we plan an overall curriculum together, discuss regularly if it is working, and come to agreements about how to teach and assess work. We pride ourselves on being a small and friendly bunch of people, open to regular student contact and, for example, committed to meaningful and regular feedback.
• You might think generally about how you would contribute to teaching and learning in that context. In particular, you should think about how, for example, you would deliver large undergraduate modules (in which you may only be an expert on some of the material) as well as the smaller, more specialist and advanced, modules closer to your expertise. However, please also note that your main initial contribution is specific (as follows) and that you are expected to have some grasp of theories of international politics (or theories of IR):

‘The appointee will contribute to our successful Masters Programme — International Conflict and Cooperation (ICC) — and BA programmes in International Politics, as well as doctoral and dissertation supervision. An ability to contribute to introductory undergraduate modules, as well as design and deliver an advanced undergraduate and ICC module, is essential. The ability to teach qualitative or quantitative research methods is welcome. The appointee will also undertake administrative duties as prescribed by the Head of Division’.

The interview process

The deadline for applications is mid-February, and the interviews are scheduled for March 1^st (subject to change), so you should know by then if you will be invited for interview.

The interview stage

By the interview stage, here are the things that you should normally know:

• The teaching and research specialisms of the division and their links to cross-divisional research.
• The kinds of modules that the division would expect you to teach.

Perhaps most importantly, you need to be able to articulate why you want to come and work at Stirling. ‘Why Stirling?’ or ‘Why this division?’ is usually the first question in an interview, so you should think about it in advance. We recommend doing some research on Stirling and the division/ faculty, to show in some detail that you have a considered reply (beyond the usual ‘it is a beautiful campus’ and ‘I need a job’). Since it is the first question, your answer will set the tone for the rest of the interview. You might check, for example, who you might share interests with in the Division, and how you might develop links beyond the division or faculty, since this is likely to be a featured question too.

• Then you might think about what you would bring to the University in a wider sense, such as through well-established (domestic and international) links with other scholars in academic networks.
• Further, since ‘impact’ is of rising importance, you might discuss your links with people and organisations outside of the University, and how you have pursued meaningful engagement with the public or practitioners to maximise the wider contribution of your research.

The interview format

For open-ended contracts, we tend to combine (a) presentations to divisional staff in the morning, with (b) interviews in the afternoon. They will be in person if possible (but Teams if need be). The usual expectation is that if you can’t make the date, you can’t get the job. In addition:

• We recommend keeping the presentation compact, to show that you can present complex information in a concise and clear way. Presentations are usually a mix of what you do in research and what you will contribute in a wider sense to the University. Please note that most of your interview panel will not attend the presentation, so treat them as two different exercises/ audiences and don’t worry about repeating yourself (rather, you should repeat the points that you think are most important).
• The interview panel format at this level will have four members: one subject specialist – Professor Schapper – plus our Head of Division, Dean of Faculty , and a senior academic in another Faculty.
• Since only 1 members of your panel will be a specialist in International Politics, you need to describe your success in a way that a wider audience will appreciate. For example, you would have to explain the significance of a single-author article in the top-rated journal in your field.

It sounds daunting, but we are a friendly bunch and want you to do well. You might struggle to retain all of our names (nerves), so focus on the types of question we ask – for example, the general question to get you started will be from the senior manager, and the research question from the subject specialist. Our 4-person panels tend to be gender balanced (although this one will be 3 women, 1 man) but are often all-white panels. I hope that you can see other more useful signals about our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion in this and other materials relevant to the post.

We are happy to answer your questions, via email in the first instance: andrea.schapper@stir.ac.uk  and  p.a.cairney@stir.ac.uk . Perhaps you should ask Professor Schapper but copy me in.

Chapter 7: Constitutional Policy and Brexit

This post by Sean Kippin introduces chapter 7 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin. It examines Brexit, which is a portmanteau combining Britain and exit from membership of the European Union. The Brexit referendum ballot wording was ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ and people could vote to ‘Remain a member of the European Union’ or ‘Leave the European Union’.

Photo (9.12.20) of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) and President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen (right) (Source)

The UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) in January 2020 was a major constitutional change. A June 2016 referendum delivered a narrow but decisive victory for ‘Leave’ over ‘Remain’’ (52% to 48%).

The Leave slogan ‘take back control’ drew on the Westminster Story (Chapter 3) to present EU membership as incompatible with British democracy and sovereignty. However, turning Brexit into policy reality in the intervening years illustrated the lack of control that UK policymakers actually have over decisions, outcomes, and consequences.

In Chapter 7, we relate Brexit to three perspectives: as the symbol of a policy problem (policy analysis), policymaking problem (policy studies), and problem of social and economic inequalities (critical policy analysis).

Policy analysis: how did policymakers approach Brexit?

We describe the referendum as a poor solution to an ill-defined problem. For example, former Prime Minster David Cameron had treated the referendum as a means of placating his party and the Eurosceptic media following his failure to renegotiate the UK’s terms of membership (Cameron then resigned after the vote). For others, Brexit was the alleged solution to a poor economy or low control over immigration, or the campaign was part of  a ‘populist’ approach to relate EU membership to control by out of touch political elites.

5 step analysis helps to analyse Brexit as a policy problem and help to identify the problems faced by new Prime Minister Theresa May. First, actors defined Brexit as a problem in different ways: they debated over when to trigger Article 50, what powers the government had to enact Brexit, the UK Parliament’s role, and which issues to pursue in preliminary negotiations.

Second, policy actors identified very different feasible solutions, such as:

• ‘Soft Brexit’, leaving the EU but retaining economic union by remaining in either or both of the Single Market and Customs Union.
• ‘Hard Brexit’, leaving EU institutions, but coming to various bilateral agreements over areas of mutual interest.
• ‘No deal Brexit’, leaving without any formalised arrangements (often treated as the ultimate bad outcome).
• Some proposed different avenues to avoiding or ‘undoing’ Brexit, such as a confirmatory or second referendum (known by advocates as a ‘People’s Vote’).

Third and fourth, the main trade-offs between (and estimates of the effect of) the different solutions amounted to favouring sovereignty (i.e. control over trade and immigration policy), or maintaining economic union and a soft border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Theresa May announced ‘red lines’ which closed off many possibilities. The status of Northern Ireland involved particularly contested trade-offs. Ultimately, political dynamics and feasibility issues ruled out many options, including soft Brexit and No Deal Brexit.

Fifth, the House of Commons failed to find a mutually acceptable way forward (including ruling out the  ‘attractive fudge’ of the ‘Chequers Plan’). May resigned and was replaced by the Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson. Johnson called and won a General Election, then secured a similar deal to one considered by May (though Johnson’s government would keep Northern Ireland within the Single Market, to the consternation of Northern Ireland unionists). A ‘differentiated Brexit’ would ultimately take effect in 2020.

Policy studies: did Brexit change the UK’s ‘multi-level’ policymaking system?

Brexit exposed long-standing debates about the feasibility and fairness of different ways to govern. Debates on ‘multi-level governance’ explore whether there is an ‘optimal’ division of policymaking functions, such as in one authoritative centre or shared between different ‘territorial’ levels of government. Advocates of multi-level governance argue that the dispersion of power across different centres is more efficient and democratic than central state control, but these divisions relate more to the competing political demands to take or share power at the different levels, rather than a technocratic process of constitutional design.  

There is some evidence that the UK government has become more centralised and majoritarian in approach, although the impact is difficult to measure. The main sectoral changes (Table 7.1 below) are in salient areas, such as immigration, where the UK has ended the ‘free movement of people’ (a key European freedom) and now operates a reformed trade regime (but has not really solved the problem of immigration described by prominent Leave campaigners). There have also been constitutional knock on effects, such as the adverse impact of the new UK internal market policy on devolved government autonomy (accentuated by high profile disputes, such as regarding the UK government’s veto of the Scottish Parliament Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill).

Critical Policy Analysis: Who is winning and losing due to Brexit? 

The clear winners of the impacts of Brexit are hard to identify. So far, it is far easier to identify losses, and to note that those with more resources are far better placed to endure the hardship.  According to some Leave campaigners, but not reality, some of the biggest beneficiaries of Brexit were to be a ‘left behind’ working class, centred in the deindustrialised ‘emblematic sites of revolt’ such as Sunderland. Rather, there have mostly been visible losses, such as among the minority ethnic groups, women, and disabled people who lost EU funding and important legal protections.

How does Brexit inform our Westminster and Complex Government stories?

The ‘take back control’ message embodies the Westminster story of centralised top-down control, but the Brexit process exposed the limits to that control. The Government endured years of delay and political setbacks, provoking multiple leadership crises which threatened the viability of Brexit and ended successive premierships. The process also exposed the limitations of the UK Parliament, which couldn’t find a solution to an ostensibly straightforward problem (outlined in detail by UK in a Changing Europe).

Brexit challenges one aspect of the complex government story by simplifying the multi-level policymaking system. However, policymaking complexity remains a necessity, reflecting bounded rationality and the inevitable delegation of policymaking to a large number and wide range of actors across the UK political system.

Take home messages

• The Brexit referendum illustrated the strength of the ‘Westminster story’, when voters chose to ‘take back control’.
• Brexit entailed years of delay and setbacks, political crises, threatening its viability. It illustrates the complexity of the policymaking process.
• The post-Brexit system is relatively simplified, removing one ‘level’ of government, however complexity and delegation are a necessity rather than a choice.
• Brexit created many losers, and few winners. Those with greater resources are generally better able to withstand the negative consequences.

Chapter 3. Explaining UK Politics and Policy Making

This post introduces chapter 3 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

The UK political system often seems confusing because commentators are juggling two stories of policymaking.

The first is the official account of how policy is, and should be, made: the Westminster story. It emphasises strong, responsible, policymaking by very few powerful minsters at the heart of government.

The second comes from accumulated wisdom from policy studies about how policy is really made: the complex government story. It emphasises profound limits to central government control and the existence of many ‘centres’.

In that context, our question for reflection is: if the official story is so inaccurate, why does it matter and endure?

Story 1.The Westminster story (or model)

This story begins with how policy should be made: you only know who to praise or blame if you know who is in charge. Democratic accountability requires strong and decisive government. The ‘British political tradition’ is of responsible government: doing what is right for the public (even if it is unpopular).

To that end, the Westminster model is backed by measures to ensure strong central government:

• Representative democracy. Vote for people to act in your constituency’s interests.
• A sovereign Parliament delegating power to a strong executive. Maintain strong government legitimised by an elected (and unelected) legislature.
• Plurality elections and majority party control. Exaggerate support for the winning candidates, and biggest party, to concentrate power.
• Unitary state. Maintain central government control across the UK.
• Prime Minister and Cabinet Government. Vest overall decision-making in an executive committee filled with senior ministers and led by the most senior minister.
• Individual Ministerial Responsibility. A senior minister is in complete control of each government department, supported by civil servants loyal to the government.

This official story provides the language that most comentators use to describe who is in charge and should be held to account. It also underpins common criticisms about how the UK political system works in practice, inclduding:

• Politics is too distant from ‘the people’. Ministers make choices from the top-down, with too little regard for the wishes of the UK population.
• The ‘political class’ is an elite profession, largely of white, middle or upper class, private schooled and Oxbridge educated, men. It not represent the general public

• 

• 

• Politicians are too keen to play the ‘blame game’, hoarding power for their own benefit but blaming others when things go wrong.

Story 2. Complex government and multi-level policymaking

This story could focus on a democratic alternative. First, avoid power hoarding by sharing responsibilities with international organisations (like the European Union), devolved governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and English regions, and respect the electoral mandates of local governments. Indeed, perhaps this approach could aid a shift from ‘majoritarian’ towards ‘consensus’ democracy

Second, delegating policy delivery makes sense to most UK governments, seeking to set broad strategy rather than get involved in the details. Further, some organisations – such as ‘quangos’ – need some autonomy to give independent advice or proper audit of government functions.

However, policy studies tends to focus on empirical reality: how it really works, and the necessity of many policymaking centres. Here is a list of statements with links to separate posts on the underlying concepts:

• Policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of their responsibilities (bounded rationality, uncertainty/ ambiguity). They pay disproportionate attention to some and ignore the rest (PET).
• Policymakers delegate most issues to civil servants, who rely on specialists – including interest groups – for information and advice (policy communities).
• We say ‘governance’ (not government) to describe blurry boundaries between those who have formal responsibility and informal influence over policy (MLG).
• People or organisations make policy as they deliver (implementation in complex systems).
• Policy problems transcend traditional government departments – like finance, health, education, justice – but policymaking is ‘fragmented’ and difficult to join-up.
• Governments inherit the commitments of their predecessors, giving them limited room for manoeuvre.

If the official story is inaccurate, why does it matter and endure?

Democratic accountability via UK general elections still seems to be the ‘only game in town’, and the Westminster story seems to dominate most coverage of UK politics. Why? It provides a coherent and defendable story of who should be responsible. Even if minsters don’t live up to expectations, they still set the policy agenda and direct government resources, to benefit some groups and punish others (social construction and policy design).

It is also difficult to promote a ‘complex government’ alternative, even when decentralization seems to be inevitable and to make sense. Academics may want politicians to stop wasting their time on a misleading story, and to focus instead of managing policy pragmatically given their limitations (advice from complex systems). Yet, this story of complexity does not mix well with the Westminster story.

What happens when these stories collide?

Some ministers actually want to possess and use central powers to deliver their manifesto commitments. Some have tried to be pragmatic about their limits, but struggled to defend decentralisation. Some seem only interested in power-hoarding when they can, and blame games when they can’t. It is difficult to know what they want to do, if they can do it, and how they narrate their activities (longer discussion of King Canute).

The long-term result is a bit of a mess. There have been many public sector reforms in the name of centralising policy and decentralising delivery, including privatisation, ‘quasi-markets’, and public sector reforms (which we discuss in Chapters 4 and 5).

This mess and complexity makes the UK policy process very difficult to understand, prompting a lot of metaphors (e.g. policy communities and ‘patchwork quilts’ of delivery) or direct criticisms (e.g. the ‘incoherent state’)

Take home messages

The Westminster story remains inaccurate but important.

The complex government story is more accurate but less understandable.

It is difficult for ministers to juggle both stories (but they have to).

It has produced very different responses, and many have added to the mess.

This is a UK-centric story, but key elements have wider applicability (explored in the 500, 750, and 1000 words series).

New Oxford University Press book series: Lessons from Policy Processes on the World’s Grand Challenges

Commissioning editor for Oxford University Press: Dominic Byatt (see Proposal Form)

Series Editors: Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, Evangelia Petridou, and Christopher M. Weible

This Series seeks innovative scholarship, that offers novel theoretical and/or methodological insights, particularly to understand and inform policymaker responses to global challenges. We seek a groundbreaking series of books that use policy process theories to help understand and address the world’s grand challenges, such as global public health, climate change, social and economic inequities, struggling democracies, and food, water, and energy security. We welcome scholarship that:

• Produces theoretical excellence, by extending theoretical frontiers to new contexts, testing theory with new methods or empirical approaches, or consolidating existing insights to advance knowledge about the world’s grand challenges.
• Bridges research and practice, by focusing on how to understand real world problems or how to improve the capacity of policy processes to responsibly address them.
• Meets our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (see below).

We welcome standard authored or co-authored research monographs (up to 100,000 words) aimed at specialists or a wider audience, seeking books that balance an immediate impact – on research or practice – with intellectual longevity.

Editors and Advisory Board

Series Co-Editors

Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling, UK. He specializes in the study of comparative public policy, including comparisons of policy theories, processes in different political systems, and comparisons of policy sectors (including health and education). He has written 14 books (including two monographs for Oxford University Press), 95 articles in international peer reviewed journals, and 31 chapters in edited books. The full list is available at https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/cv/ and Google Scholar.

Tanya Heikkila is a Professor the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs, where she also co-directs the Center for Policy and Democracy. Heikkila’s research and teaching focuses on policy processes and environmental governance. She is particularly interested in how governance processes can be designed to facilitate collaboration, foster learning, and resolve conflicts. Some of Heikkila’s recent research has explored these issues in the context of interstate watersheds, large-scale ecosystem restoration, and unconventional oil and gas development. She has over 100 publications, including six books, which can be found on Google Scholar. Heikkila has also served in various advisory capacities on policy issues, including her current appointment to California’s Independent Science Board for the Delta Stewardship Council.

Evangelia Petridou is associate professor at Mid Sweden University, Sweden, and senior researcher at NTNU Social Research in Norway. She is co-editor of the International Review of Public Policy (IRPP). Her research interests center on policy process theories and specifically policy entrepreneurship, collaboration mechanisms in bureaucracies, and crisis management as a policy sector. She has a robust publication list in terms of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has co-edited two volumes and two journal special issues thus far. For a full publication list please see Mid Sweden University and Google Scholar. She is the lead, co-lead, and is involved in, research projects funded by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, the European Union, and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency.

Christopher M. Weible is a professor at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs. His research and teaching center on policy process theories and methods, democracy, and environmental policy. He serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director for the Center for Policy and Democracy and Co-Editor for Policy & Politics. His publications exceed over 100 journal articles and book chapters.  His volumes include “Theories of the Policy Process,” “Methods of the Policy Process,” and “Policy Debates in Hydraulic Fracturing.” The full list of publications is available on Google Scholar.

Advisory Board

A group of public policy experts at different career stages and with diverse theoretical and substantive policy sector expertise will comprise our advisory board. Scholars with extensive networks will be included, to ensure that we reach as many innovative scholars as possible. Below is a brief description of this group, in which we list their country of employment while noting that each author is also selected to reflect their wider networks (e.g. Osei-Kojo is central to a nascent network of scholars applying policy theories to African states): Claire Dunlop (UK), Johanna Hornung (Germany and Switzerland), Carolina Milhorance (France), Michael Mintrom (Australia), Annemieke Van der Dool (China), Alex Osei-Kojo (US), Raul Pacheco-Vega (Mexico), Sam Workman (US), Hongtao Yi (US/China). Our aim is to draw meaningfully on the board – which has a broad international range – to provide direction and support to individual authorship teams.

The Editorial team is gender balanced. The Series Team offers representation of the diversity of policy process scholarship worldwide, not only in relation to geography, but also early career and experienced scholars, and theoretical lenses. We also outline a ‘Commitment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ below.

Commitment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The Series Editors and Advisory Board acknowledge that under-represented and minority communities (women, ethnic or racial minorities, people who identify as LGBTQ+, Indigenous peoples, first-generation university students, early career scholars, persons with disabilities, international students, English-as-subsequent-language learners, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and scholars in the Global South) encounter harmful biases in academia. Accordingly, the Series Editors and Advisory Board aim to address these inequities through the following actions:

• Recruiting a diverse and inclusive team of Series Editors and Advisory Board
• Committing to representing diverse authors and voices in this Series
• Humbly listen to critiques of our practices from under-represented and minority communities to make the processes and outcomes as equitable as possible.
• Structuring the submission and evaluation process to support the voices and perspectives of under-represented and minority communities

The proposal process

A completed version of this form should be submitted to the series editors and OUP editor (details below). Please note that to send the proposal to review we may also need chapters – the exact requirements will be communicated by the editors – but as the proposal is the first thing reviewers will look at it is important that it is thorough, clear, and explicitly sets out your main contributions. The suggested section lengths provided are guides – it is fine to be over or slightly under.

Title of the book

Plus name of the author and affiliation

Publication details

Please state the length of the proposed volume in number of words (including notes and references), number of currently drafted chapters, and planned delivery date of the full manuscript.

Introduction (2-3 pages)

This section should explain the motivation of the project, the empirical data that it covers, the methods used, and the core argument that it makes.

Why is this book needed? (1-2 pages)

This section should set out the main contribution of the book, reflecting on why it is needed in three senses. First, what is the main contribution of the book to the current academic debate? How does it move that debate forwards? Second, how does the book help us to understand public policy more broadly? Third, how does it fit into this book series?

The competition (2-3 paragraphs)

This section should set out the most similar/relevant books published on this topic in recent years, and explain how the proposed book is different. Authors may wish to bullet point 5 or 6 publications and then write a couple of focussed paragraphs that discuss them.

The contents (typically 3-4 pages)

This section should provide an annotated contents page, with the full set of chapter headings and one or two paragraphs under each heading to explain its contents. The focus here should be less on listing the empirical material covered and more explaining the argument, how it is defended, and how this contributed to the central narrative of the book.

The author (1-2 pages)

This section should tell the editors who you are and why you are qualified to write the book – focusing on your skills and experience rather than your job title.

Please return this form and a full CV including your contact details, to the series editors:

Paul Cairney p.a.cairney at stir.ac.uk

Tanya Heikkila TANYA.HEIKKILA at UCDENVER.EDU

Evangelia Petridou evangelia.petridou at miun.se

Christopher Weible Chris.Weible at UCDENVER.edu

and

Dominic Byatt of OUP dominic.byatt at oup.com.

It can be also helpful for the editors if you include chapters from the manuscript, ideally a mixture of theoretical and empirical material. If the editors decide to proceed with the proposal, exactly which chapters should be sent for review will be decided in conversation with the author.

The politics of policy analysis: theoretical insights on real world problems

This post introduces a new Journal of European Public Policy Special Issue called ‘The politics of policy analysis: theoretical insights on real world problems’.

How can policy process research help to address policy and policymaking problems? This special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy seeks to address that question by examining the theory and practice of policy analysis. The call for papers sought state of the art articles that conceptualise the politics of policy analysis, and empirical studies that use theoretical insights to analyse and address real world problems. Contributions could draw on mainstream policy theories to explain how policymaking works, and/ or critical approaches that identify and challenge inequalities of power. Both approaches identify three general reference points or assumptions.

First, policy analysis is not a disinterested, objective search for truth and an optimal policy solution. It is not a technocratic process that can be separated from politics. Techniques such as cost-benefit analysis require technical skills, but are not a substitute for political debate. Therefore, phrases like ‘evidence based’ do not describe policymaking well.

Second, policy analysis is not part of a simple, orderly policy process. It does not contribute to a tightly managed policy cycle consisting of linear and clearly defined technical stages. Policymaking is a highly contested but unequal process. Many policymakers, analysts, and influencers cooperate or compete to use information selectively to define problems, and select policy solutions with inevitable winners and losers, in processes over which no actor has full understanding or control.

Third, optimal policy and linear policymaking are not good ideals anyway. The language of optimality depoliticises policy analysis and reduces attention to policy’s winners and losers. Simple images of policymaking suggest that policy problems are amenable to technical policy solutions. They downplay power and contestation. Ignoring or denying the politics of policy analysis is either naïve, based on insufficient knowledge of policymaking, or strategic, to exploit the benefits of portraying issues as technical and solutions as generally beneficial.

Further, governments are not in the problem solving business. Instead, they inherit policies that address some problems and create or exacerbate others, benefit some groups and marginalize others, or simply describe problems as too difficult to solve. The highest profile problems, such as global public health and climate change, require the kinds of (1) cooperation across many levels of government (and inside and outside of government), and (2) attention to issues of justice and equity, of which analysts could only dream.

This description of policymaking complexity presents a conundrum. On the one hand, there exist many five-step guides to analysis, accompanied by simple stage-based descriptions of policy processes, but they describe what policy actors would need or like to happen rather than policymaking reality. On the other, policy theory-informed studies are essential to explanation, but not yet essential reading for policy analysts. Policy theorists may be able to describe policy processes – and the role of policy analysts – more accurately than simple guides, but do not offer a clear way to guide action. Practitioner audiences are receptive to accurate descriptions of policymaking reality, but also want a take-home message that they can pick up and use in their work. Critical policy analysts may appreciate insights on the barriers to policy and policymaking change, but only if there is equal attention to how to overcome them.

We see this Special Issue as not only the source of five new articles but also the spark for a longer term discussion about how to engage head-on with this theory-practice conundrum. In this more general project, we seek new research that can perform a dual purpose, to:

1. improve policy theories and generate new empirical insights, and
2. provide practical lessons to non-specialist audiences, many of whom would otherwise use too-simple models of policymaking to guide their understanding.

The following articles engage with these issues in five different ways:

Occupy the semantic space! Opening up the language of better regulation

Evidence-Based Policy, Artificial Intelligence, and the Ethical Practice of Policy Analysis 

Social identities and deadlocked debates on nuclear energy policy 

Discourse analysis and strategic policy advice: manoeuvring, navigating, and transforming policy

Blood, Sweat, and Cannabis: Real-World Policy Evaluation of Controversial Issues  

You can also read the full introduction to the Special Issue: Cairney, P. (2023) ‘The politics of policy analysis: theoretical insights on real world problems’, Journal of European Public Policy, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2023.2221282

Applied Policy Analysis: A Taste of Reality

Dr Céline Mavrot, Dr Susanne Hadorn, and Professor Fritz Sager introduce the fifth article – ‘Blood, Sweat, and Cannabis: Real-World Policy Evaluation of Controversial Issues’ – published in the Journal of European Public Policy Special Issue ‘The Politics of Policy Analysis’. They reflect on the relationship between policy analysis and real-world politics, such as when salient issues divide actors and undermine the trust required to foster collaboration. An academic focus on the wider policymaking context can encourage policy actors to cooperate, while assigning some empirical authority to researchers can reduce the tendency for each actor to pursue their own interpretation of the current evidence.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has once again highlighted ambivalent feelings regarding the role of science. Governments worldwide have given an unprecedented platform to scientists, and many suddenly became the Prince’s closest advisors. However, the pandemic has also prompted a massive infodemic, some of which promotes skepticism regarding COVID-19 and scientific authority. Democracies and evidence-based policies have a love–hate history. Scientists tend to have an equivocal attitude towards their role in real-world matters, torn between the will to bring useful information to the debate, and the fear of being instrumentalized. This dynamic makes policy analysis all the more intriguing.

What is the role of political science in such activity? It is the discipline most directly concerned with real-world politics, but has also devoted much effort to distinguish itself from the applied matters of power and politics. Some streams of public policy – such as policy evaluation – have kept applied social science at the center of their activity, but are often received with polite indifference or marked skepticism among the scientific community. However, far from being subordinated to the constraints of political mandates and lacking independence, applied streams of policy analysis have – when performed properly – developed reflectivity and instruments to maintain an analytical distance from their object of study. Therefore, a stronger dialogue between applied and theoretical streams of policy analysis would benefit the discipline.

In this contribution, we address the question of hands-on policy analysis, and question what politics does to science and what science does to policies. The article is based on a case of applied policy evaluation. The research team has evaluated the highly controversial policy on medical cannabis in Switzerland. The team was asked to assess the legality and adequacy of its implementation against the backdrop of a parliamentary and administrative controversy. We hold that policy analysis has much to gain from undertaking applied studies around concrete policy problems, and vice versa. We discuss four specific challenges policy analysis faces in its applied endeavors:

• political pressure (how to resist external pressure toward the results)
• scientific integrity (how to balance scientific rigor and needs in the field)
• access to sensitive data (how to manage explosive situations and confidential information), and
• epistemic legitimacy (how to defend the distinctive added value of political science applied to sectoral and highly specialized issues).

Bringing transversal concepts and an external viewpoint, policy analysis can contribute to de-escalating controversies by providing a 360-degree perspective on the issue at hand, and by retracing the historical reasons that account for policy incoherencies of deadlocks. In return, applied mandates allow policy analysts to penetrate the realm of policies behind closed doors. Mavrot, C., Hadorn, S. and Sager, F. (2023) ‘Blood, Sweat, and Cannabis: Real-World Policy Evaluation of Controversial Issues’, Journal of European Public Policy, https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2222141