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.
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
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:
Excessive debt is dangerous.
Britain is broke.
Austerity is a necessary evil.
Big government is bad government.
Welfare is like a drug, and government action should not encourage dependence.
Reform government to reward strivers and punish skivers.
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
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.
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:
‘Time is running out.’ The problem becomes more acute when solutions are not found.
‘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.
‘No central authority.’ There are global policy agreements to tackle climate change, but each government is responsible for its own implementation.
‘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:
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).
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.
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).
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
Long periods of policymaking stability followed by a burst of instability (or vice versa).
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:
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.
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.
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 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:
5-Step guides break the policy analysis task into key requirements:
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.
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.
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.
There are many ways to conceptualise these aspects of real world policymaking, in which policymakers are dealing with bounded rationality and complexity:
Incrementalism as a pragmatic response: (a) only analyse a few feasible solutions, (b) only depart incrementally from the status quo.
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.
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:
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.
The overall value of 3 perspectives on the study of UK politics and policymaking
5 step guides encourage the analytical and technical skills to interrogate policy problems systematically.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 peoplerequireofpolicymaking, 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.
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.
This post first appeared on LSE British Politics and Policy (27.11.20) and is based on this article in British Politics.
Paul Cairneyassesses government policy in the first half of 2020. He identifies the intense criticism of its response so far, encouraging more systematic assessments grounded in policy research.
In March 2020, COVID-19 prompted policy change in the UK at a speed and scale only seen during wartime. According to the UK government, policy was informed heavily by science advice. Prime Minister Boris Johnson argued that, ‘At all stages, we have been guided by the science, and we will do the right thing at the right time’. Further, key scientific advisers such as Sir Patrick Vallance emphasised the need to gather evidence continuously to model the epidemic and identify key points at which to intervene, to reduce the size of the peak of population illness initially, then manage the spread of the virus over the longer term.
Both ministers and advisors emphasised the need for individual behavioural change, supplemented by government action, in a liberal democracy in which direct imposition is unusual and unsustainable. However, for its critics, the government experience has quickly become an exemplar of policy failure.
Initial criticisms include that ministers did not take COVID-19 seriously enough in relation to existing evidence, when its devastating effect was apparent in China in January and Italy from February; act as quickly as other countries to test for infection to limit its spread; or introduce swift-enough measures to close schools, businesses, and major social events. Subsequent criticisms highlight problems in securing personal protective equipment (PPE), testing capacity, and an effective test-trace-and-isolate system. Some suggest that the UK government was responding to the ‘wrong pandemic’, assuming that COVID-19 could be treated like influenza. Others blame ministers for not pursuing an elimination strategy to minimise its spread until a vaccine could be developed. Some criticise their over-reliance on models which underestimated the R (rate of transmission) and ‘doubling time’ of cases and contributed to a 2-week delay of lockdown. Many describe these problems and delays as the contributors to the UK’s internationally high number of excess deaths.
How can we hold ministers to account in a meaningful way?
I argue that these debates are often fruitless and too narrow because they do not involve systematic policy analysis, take into account what policymakers can actually do, or widen debate to consider whose lives matter to policymakers. Drawing on three policy analysis perspectives, I explore the questions that we should ask to hold ministers to account in a way that encourages meaningful learning from early experience.
These questions include:
Was the government’s definition of the problem appropriate? Much analysis of UK government competence relates to specific deficiencies in preparation (such as shortages in PPE), immediate action (such as to discharge people from hospitals to care homes without testing them for COVID-19), and implementation (such as an imperfect test-trace-and-isolate system). The broader issue relates to its focus on intervening in late March to protect healthcare capacity during a peak of infection, rather than taking a quicker and more precautionary approach. This judgment relates largely to its definition of the policy problem which underpins every subsequent policy intervention.
Did the government select the right policy mix at the right time? Who benefits most from its choices?
Most debates focus on the ‘lock down or not?’ question without exploring fully the unequal impact of any action. The government initially relied on exhortation, based on voluntarism and an appeal to social responsibility. Initial policy inaction had unequal consequences on social groups, including people with underlying health conditions, black and ethnic minority populations more susceptible to mortality at work or discrimination by public services, care home residents, disabled people unable to receive services, non-UK citizens obliged to pay more to live and work while less able to access public funds, and populations (such as prisoners and drug users) that receive minimal public sympathy. Then, in March, its ‘stay at home’ requirement initiated a major new policy and different unequal impacts in relation to the income, employment, and wellbeing of different groups. These inequalities are list in more general discussions of impacts on the whole population.
Did the UK government make the right choices on the trade-offs between values, and what impacts could the government have reasonably predicted?
Initially, the most high-profile value judgment related to freedom from state coercion to reduce infection versus freedom from the harm of infection caused by others. Then, values underpinned choices on the equitable distribution of measures to mitigate the economic and wellbeing consequences of lockdown. A tendency for the UK government to project centralised and ‘guided by the science’ policymaking has undermined public deliberation on these trade-offs between policies. The latter will be crucial to ongoing debates on the trade-offs associated with national and regional lockdowns.
Did the UK government combine good policy with good policymaking?
A problem like COVID-19 requires trial-and-error policymaking on a scale that seems incomparable to previous experiences. It requires further reflection on how to foster transparent and adaptive policymaking and widespread public ownership for unprecedented policy measures, in a political system characterised by (a) accountability focused incorrectly on strong central government control and (b) adversarial politics that is not conducive to consensus seeking and cooperation.
These additional perspectives and questions show that too-narrow questions – such as was the UK government ‘following the science’ – do not help us understand the longer term development and wider consequences of UK COVID-19 policy. Indeed, such a narrow focus on science marginalises wider discussions of values and the populations that are most disadvantaged by government policy.
This post first appeared as Who controls public policy? on the UK in a Changing Europe website. There is also a 1-minute video, but you would need to be a completist to want to watch it.
Our #AcademicintheSpotlight series highlights social scientists doing innovative & dynamic research that you really ought to be aware of.
This week, it’s the turn of @CairneyPaul. Paul works on understanding the mechanics of public policy and policymaking. Interested? Read on… pic.twitter.com/bMs8RoQi2a
Most coverage of British politics focuses on the powers of a small group of people at the heart of government. In contrast, my research on public policy highlights two major limits to those powers, related to the enormous number of problems that policymakers face, and to the sheer size of the government machine.
First, elected policymakers simply do not have the ability to properly understand, let alone solve, the many complex policy problems they face. They deal with this limitation by paying unusually high attention to a small number of problems and effectively ignoring the rest.
Second, policymakers rely on a huge government machine and network of organisations (containing over 5 million public employees) essential to policy delivery, and oversee a statute book which they could not possibly understand.
In other words, they have limited knowledge and even less control of the state, and have to make choices without knowing how they relate to existing policies (or even what happens next).
These limits to ministerial powers should prompt us to think differently about how to hold them to account. If they only have the ability to influence a small proportion of government business, should we blame them for everything that happens in their name?
My approach is to apply these general insights to specific problems in British politics. Three examples help to illustrate their ability to inform British politics in new ways.
First, policymaking can never be ‘evidence based’. Some scientists cling to the idea that the ‘best’ evidence should always catch the attention of policymakers, and assume that ‘speaking truth to power’ helps evidence win the day.
As such, researchers in fields like public health and climate change wonder why policymakers seem to ignore their evidence.
The truth is that policymakers only have the capacity to consider a tiny proportion of all available information. Therefore, they must find efficient ways to ignore almost all evidence to make timely choices.
They do so by setting goals and identifying trusted sources of evidence, but also using their gut instinct and beliefs to rule out most evidence as irrelevant to their aims.
Second, the UK government cannot ‘take back control’ of policy following Brexit simply because it was not in control of policy before the UK joined. The idea of control is built on the false image of a powerful centre of government led by a small number of elected policymakers.
This way of thinking assumes that sharing power is simply a choice. However, sharing power and responsibility is borne of necessity because the British state is too large to be manageable.
Governments manage this complexity by breaking down their responsibilities into many government departments. Still, ministers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of issues managed by each department. They delegate most of their responsibilities to civil servants, agencies, and other parts of the public sector.
In turn, those organisations rely on interest groups and experts to provide information and advice.
As a result, most public policy is conducted through small and specialist ‘policy communities’ that operate out of the public spotlight and with minimal elected policymaker involvement.
The logical conclusion is that senior elected politicians are less important than people think. While we like to think of ministers sitting in Whitehall and taking crucial decisions, most of these decisions are taken in their name but without their intervention.
Third, the current pandemic underlines all too clearly the limits of government power. Of course people are pondering the degree to which we can blame UK government ministers for poor choices in relation to Covid-19, or learn from their mistakes to inform better policy.
Many focus on the extent to which ministers were ‘guided by the science’. However, at the onset of a new crisis, government scientists face the same uncertainty about the nature of the policy problem, and ministers are not really able to tell if a Covid-19 policy would work as intended or receive enough public support.
Some examples from the UK experience expose the limited extent to which policymakers can understand, far less control, an emerging crisis.
Prior to the lockdown, neither scientists nor ministers knew how many people were infected, nor when levels of infection would peak.
They had limited capacity to test. They did not know how often (and how well) people wash their hands. They did not expect people to accept and follow strict lockdown rules so readily, and did not know which combination of measures would have the biggest impact.
When supporting businesses and workers during ‘furlough’, they did not know who would be affected and therefore how much the scheme would cost.
In short, while Covid-19 has prompted policy change and state intervention on a scale not witnessed outside of wartime, the government has never really known what impact its measures would have.
Overall, the take-home message is that the UK narrative of strong central government control is damaging to political debate and undermines policy learning. It suggests that every poor outcome is simply the consequence of bad choices by powerful leaders. If so, we are unable to distinguish between the limited competence of some leaders and the limited powers of them all.
Paul Cairney (2020) ‘The UK Government’s COVID-19 policy: assessing evidence-informed policy analysis in real time’, British Politicshttps://rdcu.be/b9zAk (PDF)
The coronavirus feels like a new policy problem that requires new policy analysis. The analysis should be informed by (a) good evidence, translated into (b) good policy. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that either of those things are straightforward. There are simple-looking steps to go from defining a problem to making a recommendation, but this simplicity masks the profoundly political process that must take place. Each step in analysis involves political choices to prioritise some problems and solutions over others, and therefore prioritise some people’s lives at the expense of others.
My article in British Politics takes us through those steps in the UK, and situates them in a wider political and policymaking context. This post is shorter, and only scratches the surface of analysis.
5 steps to policy analysis
Define the problem.
Perhaps we can sum up the initial UK government approach as: (a) the impact of this virus and illness will be a level of death and illness that could overwhelm the population and exceed the capacity of public services, so (b) we need to contain the virus enough to make sure it spreads in the right way at the right time, so (c) we need to encourage and make people change their behaviour (primarily via hygiene and social distancing). However, there are many ways to frame this problem to emphasise the importance of some populations over others, and some impacts over others.
Identify technically and politically feasible solutions.
Solutions are not really solutions: they are policy instruments that address one aspect of the problem, including taxation and spending, delivering public services, funding research, giving advice to the population, and regulating or encouraging changes to social behaviour. Each new instrument contributes an existing mix, with unpredictable and unintended consequences. Some instruments seem technically feasible (they will work as intended if implemented), but will not be adopted unless politically feasible (enough people support their introduction). Or vice versa. From the UK government’s perspective, this dual requirement rules out a lot of responses.
Use values and goals to compare solutions.
Typical judgements combine: (a) broad descriptions of values such as efficiency, fairness, freedom, security, and human dignity, (b) instrumental goals, such as sustainable policymaking (can we do it, and for how long?), and political feasibility (will people agree to it, and will it make me more or less popular or trusted?), and (c) the process to make choices, such as the extent to which a policy process involves citizens or stakeholders (alongside experts) in deliberation. They combine to help policymakers come to high profile choices (such as the balance between individual freedom and state coercion), and low profile but profound choices (to influence the level of public service capacity, and level of state intervention, and therefore who and how many people will die).
Predict the outcome of each feasible solution.
It is difficult to envisage a way for the UK Government to publicise all of the thinking behind its choices (Step 3) and predictions (Step 4) in a way that would encourage effective public deliberation. People often call for the UK Government to publicise its expert advice and operational logic, but I am not sure how they would separate it from their normative logic about who should live or die, or provide a frank account without unintended consequences for public trust or anxiety. If so, one aspect of government policy is to keep some choices implicit and avoid a lot of debate on trade-offs. Another is to make choices continuously without knowing what their impact will be (the most likely scenario right now).
Make a choice, or recommendation to your client.
Your recommendation or choice would build on these four steps. Define the problem with one framing at the expense of the others. Romanticise some people and not others. Decide how to support some people, and coerce or punish others. Prioritise the lives of some people in the knowledge that others will suffer or die. Do it despite your lack of expertise and profoundly limited knowledge and information. Learn from experts, but don’t assume that only scientific experts have relevant knowledge (decolonise; coproduce). Recommend choices that, if damaging, could take decades to fix after you’ve gone. Consider if a policymaker is willing and able to act on your advice, and if your proposed action will work as intended. Consider if a government is willing and able to bear the economic and political costs. Protect your client’s popularity, and trust in your client, at the same time as protecting lives. Consider if your advice would change if the problem seemed to change. If you are writing your analysis, maybe keep it down to one sheet of paper (in other words, fewer words than in this post up to this point).
Policy analysis is not as simple as these steps suggest, and further analysis of the wider policymaking environment helps describe two profound limitations to simple analytical thought and action.
Policymakers must ignore almost all evidence
The amount of policy relevant information is infinite, and capacity is finite. So, individuals and governments need ways to filter out almost all of it. Individuals combine cognition and emotion to help them make choices efficiently, and governments have equivalent rules to prioritise only some information. They include: define a problem and a feasible response, seek information that is available, understandable, and actionable, and identify credible sources of information and advice. In that context, the vague idea of trusting or not trusting experts is nonsense, and the larger post highlights the many flawed ways in which all people decide whose expertise counts.
They do not control the policy process.
Policymakers engage in a messy and unpredictable world in which no single ‘centre’ has the power to turn a policy recommendation into an outcome.
There are many policymakers and influencers spread across a political system. For example, consider the extent to which each government department, devolved governments, and public and private organisations are making their own choices that help or hinder the UK government approach.
Most choices in government are made in ‘subsystems’, with their own rules and networks, over which ministers have limited knowledge and influence.
The social and economic context, and events, are largely out of their control.
The take home messages (if you accept this line of thinking)
The coronavirus is an extreme example of a general situation: policymakers will always have very limited knowledge of policy problems and control over their policymaking environment. They make choices to frame problems narrowly enough to seem solvable, rule out most solutions as not feasible, make value judgements to try help some more than others, try to predict the results, and respond when the results do not match their hopes or expectations.
This is not a message of doom and despair. Rather, it encourages us to think about how to influence government, and hold policymakers to account, in a thoughtful and systematic way that does not mislead the public or exacerbate the problem we are seeing. No one is helping their government solve the problem by saying stupid shit on the internet (OK, that last bit was a message of despair).
Further reading:
The article (PDF) sets out these arguments in much more detail, with some links to further thoughts and developments.
This series of ‘750 words’ posts summarises key texts in policy analysis and tries to situate policy analysis in a wider political and policymaking context. Note the focus on whose knowledge counts, which is not yet a big feature of this crisis.
These series of 500 words and 1000 words posts (with podcasts) summarise concepts and theories in policy studies.
This is the long version. It is long. Too long to call a blog post. Let’s call it a ‘living document’ that I update and amend as new developments arise (then start turning into a more organised paper). In most cases, I am adding tweets, so the date of the update is embedded. If I add a new section, I will add a date. If you seek specific topics (like ‘herd immunity’), it might be worth doing a search. The short version is shorter.
The coronavirus feels like a new policy problem. Governments already have policies for public health crises, but the level of uncertainty about the spread and impact of this virus seems to be taking it to a new level of policy, media, and public attention. The UK Government’s Prime Minister calls it ‘the worst public health crisis for a generation’.
As such, there is no shortage of opinions on what to do, but there is a shortage of well-considered opinions, producing little consensus. Many people are rushing to judgement and expressing remarkably firm opinions about the best solutions, but their contributions add up to contradictory evaluations, in which:
the government is doing precisely the right thing or the completely wrong thing,
we should listen to this expert saying one thing or another expert saying the opposite.
Lots of otherwise-sensible people are doing what they bemoan in politicians: rushing to judgement, largely accepting or sharing evidence only if it reinforces that judgement, and/or using their interpretation of any new development to settle scores with their opponents.
Yet, anyone who feels, without uncertainty, that they have the best definition of, and solution to, this problem is a fool. If people are also sharing bad information and advice, they are dangerous fools. Further, as Professor Madley puts it (in the video below), ‘anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen over the next six months is lying’.
In that context, how can we make sense of public policy to address the coronavirus in a more systematic way?
Studies of policy analysis and policymaking do not solve a policy problem, but they at least give us a language to think it through.
In each step, note how quickly it is possible to be overwhelmed by uncertainty and ambiguity, even when the issue seems so simple at first.
Note how difficult it is to move from Step 1, and to separate Step 1 from the others. It is difficult to define the problem without relating it to the solution (or to the ways in which we will evaluate each solution).
Let’s relate that analysis to research on policymaking, to understand the wider context in which people pay attention to, and try to address, important problems that are largely out of their control.
Throughout, note that I am describing a thought process as simply as I can, not a full examination of relevant evidence. I am highlighting the problems that people face when ‘diagnosing’ policy problems, not trying to diagnose it myself. To do so, I draw initially on common advice from the key policy analysis texts (summaries of the texts that policy analysis students are most likely to read) that simplify the process a little too much. Still, the thought process that it encourages took me hours alone (spread over three days) to produce no real conclusion. Policymakers and advisers, in the thick of this problem, do not have that luxury of time or uncertainty.
In our latest guest blog, Jonny Pearson-Stuttard, RSPH Trustee and Public Health Doctor @imperialcollege sets out what we know about the spread of coronavirus to date, and why the Government has taken the measures it hashttps://t.co/XM7zKKjwtE
— Royal Society for Public Health (@R_S_P_H) March 25, 2020
Provide a diagnosis of a policy problem, using rhetoric and eye-catching data to generate attention.
Identify its severity, urgency, cause, and our ability to solve it. Don’t define the wrong problem, such as by oversimplifying.
Problem definition is a political act of framing, as part of a narrative to evaluate the nature, cause, size, and urgency of an issue.
Define the nature of a policy problem, and the role of government in solving it, while engaging with many stakeholders.
‘Diagnose the undesirable condition’ and frame it as ‘a market or government failure (or maybe both)’.
Coronavirus as a physical problem is not the same as a coronavirus policy problem. To define the physical problem is to identify the nature, spread, and impact of a virus and illness on individuals and populations. To define a policy problem, we identify the physical problem and relate it (implicitly or explicitly) to what we think a government can, and should, do about it. Put more provocatively, it is only a policy problem if policymakers are willing and able to offer some kind of solution.
This point may seem semantic, but it raises a profound question about the capacity of any government to solve a problem like an epidemic, or for governments to cooperate to solve a pandemic. It is easy for an outsider to exhort a government to ‘do something!’ (or ‘ACT NOW!’) and express certainty about what would happen. However, policymakers inside government:
Do not enjoy the same confidence that they know what is happening, or that their actions will have their intended consequences, and
Will think twice about trying to regulate social behaviour under those circumstances, especially when they
Know that any action or inaction will benefit some and punish others.
For example, can a government make people wash their hands? Or, if it restricts gatherings at large events, can it stop people gathering somewhere else, with worse impact? If it closes a school, can it stop children from going to their grandparents to be looked after until it reopens? There are 101 similar questions and, in each case, I reckon the answer is no. Maybe government action has some of the desired impact; maybe not. If you agree, then the question might be: what would it really take to force people to change their behaviour?
The answer is: often too much for a government to consider (in a liberal democracy), particularly if policymakers are informed that it will not have the desired impact.
A couple of key takeaways from our analysis of early COVID-19 dynamics in Wuhan:
1. We estimated that the control measures introduced – unprecedented interventions that will have had a huge social and psychological toll – reduced transmission by around 55% in space of 2 weeks 1/
If so, the UK government’s definition of the policy problem will incorporate this implicit question: what can we do if we can influence, but not determine (or even predict well) how people behave?
Uncertainty about the coronavirus plus uncertainty about policy impact
Now, add that general uncertainty about the impact of government to this specific uncertainty about the likely nature and spread of the coronavirus:
The ideal spread involves all well people sharing the virus first, while all vulnerable people (e.g. older, and/or with existing health problems that affect their immune systems) protected in one isolated space, but it won’t happen like that; so, we are trying to minimise damage in the real world.
We mainly track the spread via deaths, with data showing a major spike appearing one month later, so the problem may only seem real to most people when it is too late to change behaviour
A lot of the spread will happen inside homes, where the role of government is minimal (compared to public places). So, for example, the impact of school closures could be good (isolation) or make things worse (children spreading the virus to vulnerable relatives) (see also ‘we don’t know [if the UKG decision not to close schools] was brilliant or catastrophic’). [Update 18.3.20: as it turned out, the First Minister’s argument for closing Scottish schools was that there were too few teachers available).
The choice in theory is between a rapid epidemic with a high peak, or a slowed-down epidemic over a longer period, but ‘anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen over the next six months is lying’.
Maybe this epidemic will be so memorable as to shift social behaviour, but so much depends on trying to predict (badly) if individuals will actually change (see also Spiegelhalter on communicating risk).
None of this account tells policymakers what to do, but at least it helps them clarify three key aspects of their policy problem:
The impact of this virus and illness could overwhelm the population, to the extent that it causes mass deaths, causes a level of illness that exceeds the capacity of health services to treat, and contributes to an unpredictable amount of social and economic damage.
We need to contain the virus enough to make sure it (a) spreads at the right speed and/or (b) peaks at the right time. The right speed seems to be: a level that allows most people to recover alone, while the most vulnerable are treated well in healthcare settings that have enough capacity. The right time seems to be the part of the year with the lowest demand on health services (e.g. summer is better than winter). In other words, (a) reduce the size of the peak by ‘flattening the curve’, and/or (b) find the right time of year to address the peak, while (c) anticipating more than one peak.
My impression is that the most frequently-expressed aim is (a) …
Delaying the spread of coronavirus could potentially prevent the health service from being stretched to breaking point, as national clinical director @jasonleitch explains to @LouiseScottSTV here. https://t.co/atrEOVgihfpic.twitter.com/AhaCHFKjCj
Yesterday we entered the Delay phase of our #COVID_19uk Action Plan. @UKScienceChief explained why this is important.
It allows us to #FlattenTheCurve, which means reducing the impact in the short-term to ensure our health & care system can effectively protect vulnerable people pic.twitter.com/1I45C3v38V
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) March 13, 2020
… while the UK Government’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer also seems to be describing (b):
Dr Jenny Harries, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, came into Downing Street to answer some of the most commonly asked questions on coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/KCdeHsaz6a
We need to encourage or coerce people to change their behaviour, to look after themselves (e.g. by handwashing) and forsake their individual preferences for the sake of public health (e.g. by self-isolating or avoiding vulnerable people). Perhaps we can foster social trust and empathy to encourage responsible individual action. Perhaps people will only protect others if obliged to do so (compare Stone; Ostrom; game theory).
See also: From across the Ditch: How Australia has to decide on the least worst option for COVID-19 (Prof Tony Blakely on three bad options: (1) the likelihood of ‘elimination’ of the virus before vaccination is low; (2) an 18-month lock-down will help ‘flatten the curve’; (3) ‘to prepare meticulously for allowing the pandemic to wash through society over a period of six or so months. To tool up the production of masks and medical supplies. To learn as quickly as possible which treatments of people sick with COVID-19 saves lives. To work out our strategies for protection of the elderly and those with a chronic condition (for whom the mortality from COVID-19 is much higher’).
— Lucia D'Ambruoso 💚 (@luciadambruoso) April 4, 2020
Why politicians fear being accused of over reaction. Which in turn might prevent them from reacting appropriately when a real crisis hits 👇🏽👇🏽 https://t.co/UrxHTAs2z5
If you are still with me, I reckon you would have worded those aims slightly differently, right? There is some ambiguity about these broad intentions, partly because there is some uncertainty, and partly because policymakers need to set rather vague intentions to generate the highest possible support for them. However, vagueness is not our friend during a crisis involving such high anxiety. Further, they are only delaying the inevitable choices that people need to make to turn a complex multi-faceted problem into something simple enough to describe and manage. The problem may be complex, but our attention focuses only on a small number of aspects, at the expense of the rest. Examples that have arisen, so far, include to accentuate:
The health of the whole population or people who would be affected disproportionately by the illness.
For example, the difference in emphasis affects the health advice for the relatively vulnerable (and the balance between exhortation and reassurance)
Inequalities in relation to health, socio-economic status (e.g. income, gender, race, ethnicity), or the wider economy.
For example, restrictive measures may reduce the risk of harm to some, but increase the burden on people with no savings or reliable sources of income.
For example, some people are hoarding large quantities of home and medical supplies that (a) other people cannot afford, and (b) some people cannot access, despite having higher need.
For example, social distancing will limit the spread of the virus (see the nascent evidence), but also produce highly unequal forms of social isolation that increase the risk of domestic abuse (possibly exacerbated by school closures) and undermine wellbeing. Or, there will be major policy changes, such as to the rules to detain people under mental health legislation, regarding abortion, or in relation to asylum (note: some of these tweets are from the US, partly because I’m seeing more attention to race – and the consequence of systematic racism on the socioeconomic inequalities so important to COVID-19 mortality – than in the UK).
COVID-19 has brought new focus to women’s continued inequality. Without a gendered response to both the health and economic crises, gender inequality will be further cemented. Read more on the blog: https://t.co/zYxSFpUTNE
“The epidemic has had a huge impact on domestic violence,” said Wan. “According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence are related to the COVID-19 epidemic.” https://t.co/xswemtf548
While black people make up about 12% of Michigan’s population, they make up about 40% of all COVID-19 deaths reported.
A social epidemiologist says the numbers don’t say everything, but there's something that can’t be ignored: inequality. @MichiganRadiohttps://t.co/bWsqFaCrUJ
#Coronavirus is not the 'great equalizer'—race matters:
“I believe that the actions and omissions of world leaders in charge of fighting the #COVID19 pandemic will reveal historical and current impacts of colonial violence and continued health inequities” https://t.co/nUuBIKfrVL
— Dr. Malinda S. Smith (@MalindaSmith) April 6, 2020
BAME lives matter, so far they account for:
– 100% of Dr deaths – 50% nurse deaths – 35% of Patients in ICU
Yet account for only 14% of population and account for 44% of NHS staff. Who is asking the questions, why the disparity?https://t.co/VOL8FAmy45
What the coronavirus bill will do: https://t.co/qoBdKKr64H Mental Health Act – detention implemented using just one doctor’s opinion (not 2) & AMHP, & temporarily allow extension or removal of time limits to allow for greater flexibility where services are less able to respond
English obviously, but fascinating that have issued an explicitly ethical framework for COVID decisions re mental health and incapacity. Can Scotland do same? https://t.co/WccPntZOwf
Abortion services for women from Northern Ireland remain available free of charge in England. This provision will continue until services are available to meet these needs in Northern Ireland. For more information, visit: https://t.co/YYjop5lSgUpic.twitter.com/M8k95aIisM
BREAKING NEWS!!!! The Home Office have confirmed that ALL evictions and terminations of asylum support have been paused for 3 months. Find out more and read the letter from Home Office Minister Chris Philp confirming this on our website at: https://t.co/KDlVr4PHyP
NEW Editorial: While responding to #COVID19, policy makers should consider the risk of deepening health inequalities. If vulnerable groups are not properly identified, the consequences of this pandemic will be even more devastating https://t.co/BrypuXH6vSpic.twitter.com/hka3nLzxdv
In relation to Prison Rule Changes – these would only ever be used as an absolute last resort, in order to protect staff & those in our care. I can confirm that emergency changes to showering have not been implemented in any establishment.
For example, governments cannot ignore the impact of their actions on the economy, however much they emphasise mortality, health, and wellbeing. Most high-profile emphasis was initially on the fate of large and small businesses, and people with mortgages, but a long period of crisis will a tip the balance from low income to unsustainable poverty (even prompting Iain Duncan Smith to propose policy change), and why favour people who can afford a mortgage over people scraping the money together for rent?
So…. Govt income protection package includes….. 1. 80% of wage costs up to £2500 2. Deferred VAT. 3. £7 billion uplift to Universal Credit and Woring Tax crdit. 4. £1 billion to cover 30% of house rental costs. 5. Self employed to get same as sickness benefit payments.
A need for more communication and exhortation, or for direct action to change behaviour.
The short term (do everything possible now) or long term (manage behaviour over many months).
The Imperial College COVID report is being discussed. But a major takeaway from it will likely survive discussion: the human cost of a pure mitigation strategy is inacceptable, whilst a pure suppression strategy is unsustainable over time (thread)
How to maintain trust in the UK government when (a) people are more or less inclined to trust a the current part of government and general trust may be quite low, and (b) so many other governments are acting differently from the UK.
For example, note the visible presence of the Prime Minister, but also his unusually high deference to unelected experts such as (a) UK Government senior scientists providing direct advice to ministers and the public, and (b) scientists drawing on limited information to model behaviour and produce realistic scenarios (we can return to the idea of ‘evidence-based policymaking’ later). This approach is not uncommon with epidemics/ pandemics (LD was then the UK Government’s Chief Medical Officer):
For example, note how often people are second guessing and criticising the UK Government position (and questioning the motives of Conservative ministers).
For example, people often try to lay blame for viruses on certain populations, based on their nationality, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or behaviour (e.g. with HIV).
For example, the (a) association between the coronavirus and China and Chinese people (e.g. restrict travel to/ from China; e.g. exacerbate racism), initially overshadowed (b) the general role of international travellers (e.g. place more general restrictions on behaviour), and (c) other ways to describe who might be responsible for exacerbating a crisis.
For social scientists wondering “what can I do now?” here’s a challenge:
@cp_roth @LukasHenselEcon & others ran a survey with 2500 Italians yday & found that:
Under ‘normal’ policymaking circumstances, we would expect policymakers to resolve this ambiguity by exercising power to set the agenda and make choices that close off debate. Attention rises at first, a choice is made, and attention tends to move on to something else. With the coronavirus, attention to many different aspects of the problem has been lurching remarkably quickly. The definition of the policy problem often seems to be changing daily or hourly, and more quickly than the physical problem. It will also change many more times, particularly when attention to each personal story of illness or death prompts people to question government policy every hour. If the policy problem keeps changing in these ways, how could a government solve it?
@alexwickham doing fine work as a journalist again. Gets right into Government somehow and tells people what is going on.
10 Days That Changed Britain: "Heated" Debate Between Scientists Forced Boris Johnson To Act On Coronavirus https://t.co/hDLEAPT3Z0
Public expenditure (e.g. to boost spending for emergency care, crisis services, medical equipment)
Economic incentives and disincentives (e.g. to reduce the cost of business or borrowing, or tax unhealthy products)
Linking spending to entitlement or behaviour (e.g. social security benefits conditional on working or seeking work, perhaps with the rules modified during crises)
Formal regulations versus voluntary agreements (e.g. making organisations close, or encouraging them to close)
Public services: universal or targeted, free or with charges, delivered directly or via non-governmental organisations
As a result, what we call ‘policy’ is really a complex mix of instruments adopted by one or more governments. A truism in policy studies is that it is difficult to define or identify exactly what policy is because (a) each new instrument adds to a pile of existing measures (with often-unpredictable consequences), and (b) many instruments designed for individual sectors tend, in practice, to intersect in ways that we cannot always anticipate. When you think through any government response to the coronavirus, note how every measure is connected to many others.
Further, it is a truism in public policy that there is a gap between technical and political feasibility: the things that we think will be most likely to work as intended if implemented are often the things that would receive the least support or most opposition. For example:
Redistributing income and wealth to reduce socio-economic inequalities (e.g. to allay fears about the impact of current events on low-income and poverty) seems to be less politically feasible than distributing public services to deal with the consequences of health inequalities.
Providing information and exhortation seems more politically feasible than the direct regulation of behaviour. Indeed, compared to many other countries, the UK Government seems reluctant to introduce ‘quarantine’ style measures to restrict behaviour.
Under ‘normal’ circumstances, governments may be using these distinctions as simple heuristics to help them make modest policy changes while remaining sufficiently popular (or at least looking competent). If so, they are adding or modifying policy instruments during individual ‘windows of opportunity’ for specific action, or perhaps contributing to the sense of incremental change towards an ambitious goal.
Right now, we may be pushing the boundaries of what seems possible, since crises – and the need to address public anxiety – tend to change what seems politically feasible. However, many options that seem politically feasible may not be possible (e.g. to buy a lot of extra medical/ technology capacity quickly), or may not work as intended (e.g. to restrict the movement of people). Think of technical and political feasibility as necessary but insufficient on their own, which is a requirement that rules out a lot of responses.
Add in the UK legislation and we see that it is a major feat simply to account for all of the major moving parts (while noting that much policy change is not legislative)https://t.co/gKsIx7aHr2pic.twitter.com/Ms6fjaDbhF
A few 'somewhat overwritten' newspaper stories today using some of our quotes on PPE. Here is exactly what we are saying, in the tone in which we are saying it: https://t.co/j6PO420WSF
Typical value judgements relate to efficiency, equity and fairness, the trade-off between individual freedom and collective action, and the extent to which a policy process involves citizens in deliberation.
Normative assessments are based on values such as ‘equality, efficiency, security, democracy, enlightenment’ and beliefs about the preferable balance between state, communal, and market/ individual solutions
‘Specify the objectives to be attained in addressing the problem and the criteria to evaluate the attainment of these objectives as well as the satisfaction of other key considerations (e.g., equity, cost, equity, feasibility)’.
‘Effectiveness, efficiency, fairness, and administrative efficiency’ are common.
Identify (a) the values to prioritise, such as ‘efficiency’, ‘equity’, and ‘human dignity’, and (b) ‘instrumental goals’, such as ‘sustainable public finance or political feasibility’, to generate support for solutions.
Instrumental questions may include: Will this intervention produce the intended outcomes? Is it easy to get agreement and maintain support? Will it make me popular, or diminish trust in me even further?
How to weigh the many future health problems and deaths caused by the lockdown against those saved? How to account for the worse effects of the lockdown on the young and the poor? Near impossible ethical choices that government will have to make. https://t.co/DJgwE4b3rd
Step 3 is the most simple-looking but difficult task. Remember that it is a political, not technical, process. It is also a political process that most people would like to avoid doing (at least publicly) because it involves making explicit the ways in which we prioritise some people over others. Public policy is the choice to help some people and punish or refuse to help others (and includes the choice to do nothing).
Policy analysis texts describe a relatively simple procedure of identifying criteria and producing a table (with a solution in each row, and criteria in each column) to compare the trade-offs between each solution. However, these criteria are notoriously difficult to define, and people resolve that problem by exercising power to decide what each term means, and whose interests should be served when they resolve trade-offs. For example, see Stone on whose needs come first, who benefits from each definition of fairness, and how technical-looking processes such as ‘cost benefit analysis’ mask political choices.
Right now, the most obvious and visible trade-off, accentuated in the UK, is between individual freedom and collective action, or the balance between state, communal, and market/ individual solutions. In comparison with many countries (and China and Italy in particular), the UK Government seems to be favouring individual action over state quarantine measures. However, most trade-offs are difficult to categorise
What should be the balance between efforts to minimise the deaths of some (generally in older populations) and maximise the wellbeing of others? This is partly about human dignity during crisis, how we treat different people fairly, and the balance of freedom and coercion.
How much should a government spend to keep people alive using intensive case or expensive medicines, when the money could be spent improving the lives of far more people? This is partly about human dignity, the relative efficiency of policy measures, and fairness.
If you are like me, you don’t really want to answer such questions (indeed, even writing them looks callous). If so, one way to resolve them is to elect policymakers to make such choices on our behalf (perhaps aided by experts in moral philosophy, or with access to deliberative forums). To endure, this unusually high level of deference to elected ministers requires some kind of reciprocal act:
"I hope the UK government will be transparent about its decision-making; willing to listen to NHS staff concerns; humble in learning from other countries’ experiences; and pro-active in building relationships with them."https://t.co/CYUyvij2bK
The Guardian calls this document a “secret” briefing from Public Health England. At a time of national crisis there is no place for secrecy from health experts. If you want public support, share your data, scenarios, and forecasts. Now. https://t.co/O8BpDlCJ7H
I am glad Johnson has listened, but we shouldn't have to drag him kicking and screaming to these decisions. A daily update is a basic step. Transparency, honesty, compassion are vital in this time of a global crisis! no more secret briefings PM.https://t.co/eMxZnMehUp
The CSA and CMO say they will publish the models underlying their strategy on Covid-19. Sharing the data and models is important for accountability, testing and learning. https://t.co/rOuJWwy93i
Dear Boris – Number 10 needs a professional communications operation, immediately. (Open letter to the Prime Minister. Britain has some great comms specialists. He needs to hire one of them urgently) https://t.co/8w6MBYHHbm
Still, I doubt that governments are making reportable daily choices with reference to a clear and explicit view of what the trade-offs and priorities should be, because their choices are about who will die, and their ability to predict outcomes is limited.
Focus on the outcomes that key actors care about (such as value for money), and quantify and visualise your predictions if possible. Compare the pros and cons of each solution, such as how much of a bad service policymakers will accept to cut costs.
‘Assess the outcomes of the policy options in light of the criteria and weigh trade-offs between the advantages and disadvantages of the options’.
Estimate the cost of a new policy, in comparison with current policy, and in relation to factors such as savings to society or benefits to certain populations. Use your criteria and projections to compare each alternative in relation to their likely costs and benefits.
Explain potential solutions in sufficient detail to predict the costs and benefits of each ‘alternative’ (including current policy).
Short deadlines dictate that you use ‘logic and theory, rather than systematic empirical evidence’ to make predictions efficiently.
Monitoring is crucial because it is difficult to predict policy success, and unintended consequences are inevitable. Try to measure the outcomes of your solution, while noting that evaluations are contested.
It is difficult to envisage a way for the UK Government to publicise the thinking behind its choices (Step 3) and predictions (Step 4) in a way that would encourage effective public deliberation, rather than a highly technical debate between a small number of academics:
Ferguson et al (link) simulate outbreak response. Positive: They show suppression (lockdown R0<1) is essential as mitigation (R0>1, “flattening the curve”) results in massive hospital overload and many dead. BUT 1/3 (review attached)https://t.co/srbBS7F1s5pic.twitter.com/qbEymBdOqm
I’m conscious that lots of people would like to see and run the pandemic simulation code we are using to model control measures against COVID-19. To explain the background – I wrote the code (thousands of lines of undocumented C) 13+ years ago to model flu pandemics…
Further, people often call for the UK Government to publicise its expert advice and operational logic, but I am not sure how they would separate it from their normative logic, or provide a frank account without unintended consequences for public trust or anxiety. If so, government policy involves (a) to keep some choices implicit to avoid a lot of debate on trade-offs, and (b) to make general statements about choices when they do not know what their impact will be.
Examine your case through the eyes of a policymaker. Keep it simple and concise.
Make a preliminary recommendation to inform an iterative process, drawing feedback from clients and stakeholder groups
Client-oriented advisors identify the beliefs of policymakers and tailor accordingly.
‘Unless your client asks you not to do so, you should explicitly recommend one policy’
I now invite you to make a recommendation (step 5) based on our discussion so far (steps 1-4). Define the problem with one framing at the expense of the others. Romanticise some people and not others. Decide how to support some people, and coerce or punish others. Prioritise the lives of some people in the knowledge that others will suffer or die. Do it despite your lack of expertise and profoundly limited knowledge and information. Learn from experts, but don’t assume that only scientific experts have relevant knowledge (decolonise; coproduce). Recommend choices that, if damaging, could take decades to fix after you’ve gone. Consider if a policymaker is willing and able to act on your advice, and if your proposed action will work as intended. Consider if a government is willing and able to bear the economic and political costs. Protect your client’s popularity, and trust in your client, at the same time as protecting lives. Consider if your advice would change if the problem would seem to change. If you are writing your analysis, maybe keep it down to one sheet of paper (and certainly far fewer words than in this post). Better you than me.
Please now watch this video before I suggest that things are not so simple.
Would that policy analysis were so simple
Imagine writing policy analysis in an imaginary world, in which there is a single powerful ‘rational’ policymaker at the heart of government, making policy via an orderly series of stages.
Your audience would be easy to identify at each stage, your analysis would be relatively simple, and you would not need to worry about what happens after you make a recommendation for policy change (since the selection of a solution would lead to implementation). You could adopt a simple 5 step policy analysis method, use widely-used tools such as cost-benefit analysis to compare solutions, and know where the results would feed into the policy process.
Studies of policy analysts describe how unrealistic this expectation tends to be (Radin, Brans, Thissen).
For example, there are many policymakers, analysts, influencers, and experts spread across political systems, and engaging with 101 policy problems simultaneously, which suggests that it is not even clear how everyone fits together and interacts in what we call (for the sake of simplicity) ‘the policy process’.
Instead, we can describe real world policymaking with reference to two factors.
The wider policymaking environment: 1. Limiting the use of evidence
First, policymakers face ‘bounded rationality’, in which they only have the ability to pay attention to a tiny proportion of available facts, are unable to separate those facts from their values (since we use our beliefs to evaluate the meaning of facts), struggle to make clear and consistent choices, and do not know what impact they will have. The consequences can include:
Limited attention, and lurches of attention. Policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of their responsibilities, and policymaking organizations struggle to process all policy-relevant information. They prioritize some issues and information and ignore the rest.
Power and ideas. Some ways of understanding and describing the world dominate policy debate, helping some actors and marginalizing others.
Beliefs and coalitions. Policymakers see the world through the lens of their beliefs. They engage in politics to turn their beliefs into policy, form coalitions with people who share them, and compete with coalitions who don’t.
Dealing with complexity. They engage in ‘trial-and-error strategies’ to deal with uncertain and dynamic environments (see the new section on trial-and-error- at the end).
Framing and narratives. Policy audiences are vulnerable to manipulation when they rely on other actors to help them understand the world. People tell simple stories to persuade their audience to see a policy problem and its solution in a particular way.
The social construction of populations. Policymakers draw on quick emotional judgements, and social stereotypes, to propose benefits to some target populations and punishments for others.
Rules and norms. Institutions are the formal rules and informal understandings that represent a way to narrow information searches efficiently to make choices quickly.
Learning. Policy learning is a political process in which actors engage selectively with information, not a rational search for truth.
Evidence-based or expert-informed policymaking
Don’t think science can or should make decisions Donna. In conditions of uncertainty, it must inform decision makers who must be transparent about the choices they make and be held to account for them https://t.co/Wj4s9IS6fO
Put simply, policymakers cannot oversee a simple process of ‘evidence-based policymaking’. Rather, to all intents and purposes:
They need to find ways to ignore most evidence so that they can focus disproportionately on some. Otherwise, they will be unable to focus well enough to make choices. The cognitive and organisational shortcuts, described above, help them do it almost instantly.
They also use their experience to help them decide – often very quickly – what evidence is policy-relevant under the circumstances. Relevance can include:
How it relates to the policy problem as they define it (Step 1).
If it relates to a feasible solution (Step 2).
If it is timely, available, understandable, and actionable.
If it seems credible, such as from groups representing wider populations, or from people they trust.
They use a specific shortcut: relying on expertise.
However, the vague idea of trusting or not trusting experts is a nonsense, largely because it is virtually impossible to set a clear boundary between relevant/irrelevant experts and find a huge consensus on (exactly) what is happening and what to do. Instead, in political systems, we define the policy problem or find other ways to identify the most relevant expertise and exclude other sources of knowledge.
In the UK Government’s case, it appears to be relying primarily on expertise from its own general scientific advisers, medical and public health advisers, and – perhaps more controversially – advisers on behavioural public policy.
Not a thread but an interesting exchange on #coronavirus & Behavioural Sciences including readings from @LiamDelaneyEcon https://t.co/7Yn89XwOk6
Here’s my article on why I wish my fellow psychologists and “behavioural scientists” would just stop talking about the coronavirus: https://t.co/ofjJWdIY9v
Right now, it is difficult to tell exactly how and why it relies on each expert (at least when the expert is not in a clearly defined role, in which case it would be irresponsible not to consider their advice). Further, there are regular calls on Twitter for ministers to be more open about their decisions.
Key point from @jameswilsdon 'It is problematic if political choices are being made and then the science advice system has to front them up. There needs to be a clearer sense of where science advice ends and political judgement begins.'https://t.co/TjLCJDZijO via @timeshighered
However, don’t underestimate the problems of identifying why we make choices, then justifying one expert or another (while avoiding pointless arguments), or prioritising one form of advice over another. Look, for example, at the kind of short-cuts that intelligent people use, which seem sensible enough, but would receive much more intense scrutiny if presented in this way by governments:
Sophisticated speculation by experts in a particular field, shared widely (look at the RTs), but questioned by other experts in another field:
2. This all assumes I'm correct in what I think the govt are doing and why. I could be wrong – and wouldn't be surprised. But it looks to me like. . .
— Professor Ian Donald (@iandonald_psych) March 13, 2020
As many have said, it would be good to get an official version of this, with acknowledged uncertainties and sources of evidence https://t.co/jxgoysYb3L
But what happened is that they have as a group fallen into a logical error in their attempts to model what will bring this epidemic under control. They have not appreciated that the answer to this question is adaptive behavior change. 3/17
Experts in one field trusting certain experts in another field based on personal or professional interaction:
Lots of concern about UK's approach to #COVID19. I'm not an epidemiologist or a virologist (=> can't judge the detail) but I knew Patrick Vallance before he was famous and I believe he is a man of integrity. Same for Chris Whitty. Science, not politics, is driving their thinking.
Experts in one field not trusting a government’s approach based on its use of one (of many) sources of advice:
Why is UK government listening to the ‘nudge unit’ on the pandemic, and not expert epidemiologists and the WHO? You would think the ‘anti-experts’ approach would have at least on this occasion, with so many lives at risk, given way to a scientific approach https://t.co/QZIicXYpsj
Experts representing a community of experts, criticising another expert (Prof John Ashton), for misrepresenting the amount of expert scepticism of government experts (yes, I am trying to confuse you):
The Chief Medical Officer @CMO_England and his team have the 100% support and backing of the Public Health community. Every DPH I know thinks he is doing an amazing job in difficult circumstances Sorry but JRA is just demonstrating he is out of touch on this https://t.co/ExmOjEgum0
Expert debate on how well policymakers are making policy based on expert advice
Disagree.
Not much audible consensus amongst scientists anywhere for UK approach. Science can only illuminate value judgements yet now used a shield for determining them. UK science advice has always been characterised by old boys, political operators. Blurring is concerning. https://t.co/iBt07QfvqH
— Michael Veale @mikarv@someone.elses.computer (@mikarv) March 16, 2020
Finding quite-sensible ways to trust certain experts over others, such as because they can be held to account in some way (and may be relatively worried about saying any old shit on the internet):
My current approach to making sense of conflicting expert opinion on #coronavirus: no expert is infallible, but some are accountable and others are not, and I will value the opinions of those who are accountable above the opinions of those who are not.
There are many more examples in which the shortcut to expertise is fine, but not particularly better than another shortcut (and likely to include a disproportionately high number of white men with STEM backgrounds).
Update: of course, they are better than the volume trumps expertise approach:
This meme is spreading (you could say, in a not very funny joke, that it has gone viral). The WHO Director-General did not say this (brief thread). https://t.co/3eMfy70tKZ
For what it’s worth, I tend to favour experts who:
(a) establish the boundaries of their knowledge, (b) admit to high uncertainty about the overall problem:
After having spent considerable time thinking how to mitigate and manage this pandemic, and analysing the available data. I failed to identify the best course of action. Even worse, I'm not sure there is such a thing as an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing. (2/12)
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 14, 2020
I would challenge anyone to provide an accurate estimate of prevalence. The difference between models & real life is that with models we can set the parameters as if they are known. In real life these parameters are as clear as mud. Extract 04/13/2020 https://t.co/Qg2OrCo8tR
— Silvio Funtowicz (sfuntowicz.bsky.social) (@SFuntowicz) April 12, 2020
(c) (in this case) make it clear that they are working on scenarios, not simple prediction
I am deeply uncomfortable with the message that UK is actively pursuing ‘herd immunity’ as the main COVID-19 strategy. Our group’s scenario modelling has focused on reducing two main things: peak healthcare demand and deaths… 1/
"Prediction models are just estimates of what might happen and a model is only as good as the data that goes into it." https://t.co/KXDILsbZgr via @ConversationUK
(d) examine critically the too-simple ideas that float around, such as the idea that the UK Government should emulate ‘what works’ somewhere else
It's easy to say 'let's just do what Wuhan did', but the measures there have involved a change to daily life that really has been unimaginable in scale and impact. And as we've seen, China cannot sustain them indefinitely. 3/
A lot of my colleagues in the @LSHTM modelling centre (@cmmid_lshtm) have been working extremely hard to help expand the COVID-19 evidence base over the past two months. I'd like to take a moment to highlight some of their work… 1/
I do not agree with this interpretation. Multiple papers that tested people at high risk found that asymptomatic infection is relatively uncommon, in the range of 6-32%. https://t.co/gv5e2upEwz
(e) situate their own position (in Prof Sridhar’s case, for mass testing) within a broader debate
Scientific community is well-intentioned but split in two camps: one argues why sacrifice short-term social/economic well-being if everyone will get virus regardless, & other which says we have to buy time in short-term & save lives now while figuring out exit plan.
How much effort does your govt want to put into suppressing this outbreak? There is no quick fix or easy solution. S.Korea & Germany show what huge govt effort, planning, strong leadership, & doing utmost to protect population look like. Do everything v. do minimum.
Been saying 3 objectives for weeks. Not to attack anyone, but to highlight what we have learned so far: 1. Testing, tracing, isolating 2. Protect health workers with PPE & testing 3. Buy time for NHS
Two weeks ago Boris Johnson said Britain was aiming to eventually test 250,000 people a day. The reality is still far off the aspiration https://t.co/2SHX40B9Ul
My new blog on whether Covid raises everyone’s relative risk of dying by a similar amount. https://t.co/76NSNuDJ3i Latest ONS data shows that, of recent death registrations, the proportion linked to Covid does not depend on age.
However, note that most of these experts are from a very narrow social background, and from very narrow scientific fields (first in modelling, then likely in testing), despite the policy problem being largely about (a) who, and how many people, a government should try to save, and (b) how far a government should go to change behaviour to do it (Update 2.4.20: I wrote that paragraph before adding so many people to the list). It is understandable to defer in this way during a crisis, but it also contributes to a form of ‘depoliticisation’ that masks profound choices that benefit some people and leave others vulnerable to harm.
— Louis Coiffait-Gunn💙💛 (@LouisMMCoiffait) April 6, 2020
See also: ‘What’s important is social distancing’ coronavirus testing ‘is a side issue’, says Deputy Chief Medical Officer [Professor Jonathan Van-Tam talks about the important distinction between a currently available test to see if someone has contracted the virus (an antigen test) and a forthcoming test to see if someone has had and recovered from COVID-19 (an antibody test)]. The full interview is here (please feel free to ignore the editorialising of the uploader):
We might need to change our criteria to decide on capacity and resources. COVID-19 showed that the standard CEO approach of doing more with less is no good. German planners have apparently safely ignored this holy managerial mantra. @Breconomicshttps://t.co/MKi3f1Pueq
Cross country comparisons of the efficacy of anti covid19 policies are going to be hard. There are so many likely inputs; and data on them is scarce and noisy.
The UK Govts chief medical officer has conceded that Germany “got ahead” in testing people for Covid-19 and said the UK needed to learn from that. Ministers have been challenged repeatedly during the pandemic over their failure to increase testing. https://t.co/V0bgcMR7l0
He says there is not as much scrutiny as we might normally wish and says concerns raised about human rights, the length of powers and need for safeguards should be heeded in Westminster. He also commits to legislate for reporting requirements for use of powers by SG 4/5
Glad Scottish Government recognise need for ethical guidance on Covid 19, and hope they can say more on human rights in next version https://t.co/GiyTd2Xksu
This is an excellent initiative from @policescotland – commissioning @johndscott to provide independent scrutiny of new Coronavirus Emergency Powers. Policing is by consent of the people, this step hopefully gives further public reassurance on the application of powers https://t.co/6MtrqdTqIm
Unprecedented restrictions are in force in order to limit social contact and slow the spread of the coronavirus. But the govt and police must make clear what is enforceable and what is guidance if they are to retain the trust and confidence of the public https://t.co/ieLcg2qVE5pic.twitter.com/mBOK2fppH2
— Institute for Government (@instituteforgov) April 5, 2020
The wider policymaking environment: 2. Limited control
Second, policymakers engage in a messy and unpredictable world in which no single ‘centre’ has the power to turn a policy recommendation into an outcome. I normally use the following figure to think through the nature of a complex and unwieldy policymaking environment of which no ‘centre’ of government has full knowledge or control.
It helps us identify (further) the ways in which we can reject the idea that the UK Prime Minister and colleagues can fully understand and solve policy problems:
Actors. The environment contains many policymakers and influencers spread across many levels and types of government (‘venues’).
For example, consider how many key decisions that (a) have been made by organisations not in the UK central government, and (b) are more or less consistent with its advice, including:
Devolved governments announcing their own healthcare and public health responses (although the level of UK coordination seems more significant than the level of autonomy).
Public sector employers initiating or encouraging at-home working (and many Universities moving quickly from in-person to online teaching)
Private organisations cancelling cultural and sporting events.
There’s some coverage today suggesting Scotland proposing different policy to rest of UK on over 70s. This isn’t so. The policy of social distancing, not isolation, set out here by @jasonleitch is the policy all 4 nations have been discussing at COBR – and will do so again today. https://t.co/D89nwUDZTb
This is interesting, particularly the contrast with the approach to Brexit. The key difference is that Brexit blurred the boundaries between reserved and devolved competences in a way that health does not. https://t.co/4kSIcQFmJf
— Aileen McHarg @AileenMcHarg@mastodon.scot (@AileenMcHarg) April 8, 2020
Context and events. Policy solutions relate to socioeconomic context and events which can be impossible to ignore and out of the control of policymakers. The coronavirus, and its impact on so many aspects on population health and wellbeing, is an extreme example of this problem.
Networks, Institutions, and Ideas. Policymakers and influencers operate in subsystems (specialist parts of political systems). They form networks or coalitions built on the exchange of resources or facilitated by trust underpinned by shared beliefs or previous cooperation. Many different parts of government have practices driven by their own formal and informal rules. Formal rules are often written down or known widely. Informal rules are the unwritten rules, norms and practices that are difficult to understand, and may not even be understood in the same way by participants. Political actors relate their analysis to shared understandings of the world – how it is, and how it should be – which are often so established as to be taken for granted. These dominant frames of reference establish the boundaries of the political feasibility of policy solutions. These kinds of insights suggest that most policy decisions are considered, made, and delivered in the name of – but not in the full knowledge of – government ministers.
Trial and error policymaking in complex policymaking systems (17.3.20)
One way of viewing the UK's COVID-19 policy is that it changed to reflect changing evidence. That is fair; it's both how science-guided policy *should* work, and how I think the govt's advisors are seeing it, as per the Imperial paper. But… 1/
There are many ways to conceptualise this policymaking environment, but few theories provide specific advice on what to do, or how to engage effectively in it. One notable exception is the general advice that comes from complexity theory, including:
Law-like behaviour is difficult to identify – so a policy that was successful in one context may not have the same effect in another.
Policymaking systems are difficult to control; policy makers should not be surprised when their policy interventions do not have the desired effect.
Policy makers in the UK have been too driven by the idea of order, maintaining rigid hierarchies and producing top-down, centrally driven policy strategies. An attachment to performance indicators, to monitor and control local actors, may simply result in policy failure and demoralised policymakers.
Policymaking systems or their environments change quickly. Therefore, organisations must adapt quickly and not rely on a single policy strategy.
On this basis, there is a tendency in the literature to encourage the delegation of decision-making to local actors:
Rely less on central government driven targets, in favour of giving local organisations more freedom to learn from their experience and adapt to their rapidly-changing environment.
To deal with uncertainty and change, encourage trial-and-error projects, or pilots, that can provide lessons, or be adopted or rejected, relatively quickly.
Encourage better ways to deal with alleged failure by treating ‘errors’ as sources of learning (rather than a means to punish organisations) or setting more realistic parameters for success/ failure (although see this example and this comment).
Encourage a greater understanding, within the public sector, of the implications of complex systems and terms such as ‘emergence’ or ‘feedback loops’.
In other words, this literature, when applied to policymaking, tends to encourage a movement from centrally driven targets and performance indicators towards a more flexible understanding of rules and targets by local actors who are more able to understand and adapt to rapidly-changing local circumstances.
Now, just imagine the UK Government taking that advice right now. I think it is fair to say that it would be condemned continuously (even more so than right now). Maybe that is because it is the wrong way to make policy in times of crisis. Maybe it is because too few people are willing and able to accept that the role of a small group of people at the centre of government is necessarily limited, and that effective policymaking requires trial-and-error rather than a single, fixed, grand strategy to be communicated to the public. The former highlights policy that changes with new information and perspective. The latter highlights errors of judgement, incompetence, and U-turns. In either case, the advice is changing as estimates of the coronavirus’ impact change:
I think this tension, in the way that we understand UK government, helps explain some of the criticism that it faces when changing its advice to reflect changes in its data or advice. This criticism becomes intense when people also question the competence or motives of ministers (and even people reporting the news) more generally, leading to criticism that ranges from mild to outrageous:
Laura Kuenssberg says (BBC) that, “The science has changed.” This is not true. The science has been the same since January. What has changed is that govt advisors have at last understood what really took place in China and what is now taking place in Italy. It was there to see.
We can’t keep changing our #COVID19 control policies whenever the results of the “mathematical modelling” change. We need to implement standard WHO-approved epidemic control policies hard and fast, as well as providing more support to frontline NHS staff. https://t.co/HAM9OqbmqW
One wonders if Brit leaders have decided that the ultimate way to cut national budgets is to cull the herd of the weak, those who require costly NHS care, and pray for "herd immunity" among the rest. Cruel, cost effective #COVID19 strategy?@richardhorton1
For me, this casual reference to a government policy to ‘cull the heard of the weak’ is outrageous, but you can find much worse on Twitter. It reflects wider debate on whether ‘herd immunity’ is or is not government policy. Much of it relates to interpretation of government statements, based on levels of trust/distrust in the UK Government, its Prime Minister and Secretaries of State, and the Prime Minister’s special adviser
I have enormous respect for the SAGE team and scientific advisors trying to understand the situation & inform the UK's response. If this article is accurate & partisan hacks were deliberately sacrificing lives based on their information, its scandalous. A week ago I was saying… https://t.co/WYsHbj6o0a
If you read the whole article you will see that Dominic Cummings has been, for the last 10 days, the most zealous advocate of a tough lockdown. Which is what his critics seem to want. The world is not black and white
1. Wilful misinterpretation (particularly on Twitter). For example, in the early development and communication of policy, Boris Johnson was accused (in an irresponsibly misleading way) of advocating for herd immunity rather than restrictive measures.
Below is one of the most misleading videos of its type. Look at how it cuts each segment into a narrative not provided by ministers or their advisors (see also this stinker):
2. The accentuation of a message not being emphasised by government spokespeople.
See for example this interview, described by Sky News (13.3.20) as: The government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has told Sky News that about 60% of people will need to become infected with coronavirus in order for the UK to enjoy “herd immunity”. You might be forgiven for thinking that he was on Sky extolling the virtues of a strategy to that end (and expressing sincere concerns on that basis). This was certainly the write-up in respected papers like the FT (UK’s chief scientific adviser defends ‘herd immunity’ strategy for coronavirus). Yet, he was saying nothing of the sort. Rather, when prompted, he discussed herd immunity in relation to the belief that COVID-19 will endure long enough to become as common as seasonal flu.
The same goes for Vallance’s interview on the same day (13.3.20) during Radio 4’s Today programme (transcribed by the Spectator, which calls Vallance the author, and gives ittheheadline “How ‘herd immunity’ can help fight coronavirus” as if it is his main message). The Today Programme also tweeted only 30 seconds to single out that brief exchange:
Sir Patrick Vallance, the govt chief scientific adviser, says the thinking behind current approach to #coronavirus is to try and "reduce the peak" and to build up a "degree of herd immunity so that more people are immune to the disease". #R4Today
Yet, clearly his overall message – in this and other interviews – was that some interventions (e.g. staying at home; self-isolating with symptoms) would have bigger effects than others (e.g. school closures; prohibiting mass gatherings) during the ‘flattening of the peak’ strategy (‘What we don’t want is everybody to end up getting it in a short period of time so that we swamp and overwhelm NHS services’). Rather than describing ‘herd immunity’ as a strategy, he is really describing how to deal with its inevitability (‘Well, I think that we will end up with a number of people getting it’).
For anyone who thinks it was all obvious in January and February reading these minutes is a sobering experience. What comes over is the real uncertainty about what could be foretold from the Chinese experience and the ease with which the disease could be transmitted.4/n
Toby Young 'expert'. Nobody, including the Oxford team, believes this is true. Shame on The Sun for publishing this irresponsible rubbish. Shame on Toby Young for cynical misrepresentation of the science. pic.twitter.com/17hrOPW9b8
[OK, that proved to be a big departure from the trial-and-error discussion. Here we are, back again]
In some cases, maybe people are making the argument that trial-and-error is the best way to respond quickly, and adapt quickly, in a crisis but that the UK Government version is not what, say, the WHO thinks of as good kind of adaptive response. It is not possible to tell, at least from the general ways in which they justify acting quickly.
Dr Michael J Ryan, Executive Director at WHO. An off the cuff answer to a question at today's virtual press conference. Inspiring stuff! pic.twitter.com/Q4EUs8V1dG
The coronavirus is an extreme example of a general situation: policymakers will always have very limited knowledge of policy problems and control over their policymaking environment. They make choices to frame problems narrowly enough to seem solvable, rule out most solutions as not feasible, make value judgements to try help some more than others, try to predict the results, and respond when the results to not match their hopes or expectations.
This is not a message of doom and despair. Rather, it encourages us to think about how to influence government, and hold policymakers to account, in a thoughtful and systematic way that does not mislead the public or exacerbate the problem we are seeing.
Further reading, until I can think of a better conclusion:
This series of ‘750 words’ posts summarises key texts in policy analysis and tries to situate policy analysis in a wider political and policymaking context. Note the focus on whose knowledge counts, which is not yet a big feature of this crisis.
These series of 500 words and 1000 words posts (with podcasts) summarise concepts and theories in policy studies.
The scientific response to COVID-19 demands speed. But changing incentives and norms in academic science may be pushing the enterprise toward fast science at the expense of good science. Read Dan Sarewitz's editor's journal in the Spring 2020 ISSUES: https://t.co/JSSS45eTze
— Issues in Science and Technology (@ISSUESinST) April 7, 2020
#politvirus Public Health has always been #political because it’s actions impact on politics, economics, commercial interests, personal freedoms – this becomes most obvious in crisis – it will be key to analyse the political responses to #Covid_19 if we want to be better prepared https://t.co/JkUZrVeAxv
An assessment of the Government's response to date – written by Chair of Global Health at Edinburgh University..Prof Devi Sridhar https://t.co/N31QtFmQ2p
One reason Germany has so many ventilators (and intensive care beds) given in The Times: Not just more money in the system but design of hospital payment rates through the insurance system has driven up ICU investment be hospital managers pic.twitter.com/7R062IJI2k
This is worrying. Singapore was held up as one of the models for how to control #COVID19 through a sophisticated programme of testing and tracing without having to resort to the kinds of lockdowns many other countries are going through. https://t.co/6R0LY4IhuO
Today’s reflection- A number of Swedes are pretty shit at social distancing and probably need at least a modicum of discipline- the notion that we should be so very different here is ludicrous
WATCH: "Some countries initially talked about herd immunity as a strategy. In New Zealand we never, ever considered that. It would have meant tens of thousands of New Zealanders dying" — New Zealand Prime Minister @jacindaardernpic.twitter.com/W1ei6OUUyr
An online form to report lockdown breaches undermines the trust we have in each other – unhelpful in even the most benign of situations, and downright dangerous right now, writes Michael Macaulay. https://t.co/XCrnpfEVJt
Speechless every time someone says that this was totally unexpected & nobody saw this coming. See chapter 3: 'Preparing for the Worst: A Rapidly Spreading, Lethal Respiratory Pathogen' published by the @WHO Sept 2019. https://t.co/23qTrz7dN9
People are facing uncertainty for days, weeks & months. We need a manageable way forward to keep the health, social & economic costs at a minimum. My analysis on where COVID-19 response is heading & how it could end: https://t.co/qLDm8tv8a9
I wish the late great Mick Moran were still around – it feels like the next chapter of his analysis of the modern British state urgently needs to be written. https://t.co/ffxegGKVCu
I’m writing a book about @ExtinctionR. Here are some thoughts about today’s controversy. 1. This may or may not be a legit XR group. 2. That may matter because it may be done in order to smear XR & climate activism generally 1/n https://t.co/NyQhbv53a3
Cautionary words for anyone tempted to say "this must be good for the climate" or, worse, "this shows we can tackle climate change".
COVID19 is a re-framing of the climate issues – a dramatically changed context for the response – but those climate issues haven't gone away. https://t.co/gixVwnk6gq
We are concerned about regulation rollbacks which impact the food system slipping under the radar at the moment – we are going to be keeping an eye on things and use hashtag #Covid19Watchdoghttps://t.co/niinfSWv6f#TuesdayThoughts
A study in politics – when leadership fails. Would those that were ready to bash the @WHO take the time to read this? The critical issue for all countries is: what did they do after the PHEIC was declared? Why did USA and China not work together to fight #COVID19https://t.co/zK7hcEbU80
Not a single voice from the Global South – that’s not good enough if you are reporting on a global organisation – @who has 194 member states – it’s not the donors who should be running it #COVID19#geopoliticshttps://t.co/xqTaFEYLap
— Professor Paul Cairney (@CairneyPaul) April 9, 2020
The Australian #COVID19 modelling was published today. My thanks to James McCaw (@j_mccaw) for checking this thread. I’ll do two threads – one explaining the results and how we might interpret them; and another to try to explain how these models work. https://t.co/O6sGwggY9W
This was so predictable. Ireland was already closing pubs and restaurants. #COVIDー19 . Cheltenham Festival ‘spread coronavirus across country’ | News | The Times https://t.co/QVQnJblJiH
— Andrea Catherwood (@acatherwoodnews) April 3, 2020
expert comments about comparison between the COVID-19 situation in Ireland and the UKhttps://t.co/y4OBOhdbtT
Gender lens missing from the pandemic control measures in #India. This article by @AshwDeshpande makes reference to her work with #LSEGender's @N_Kabeer on women, domestic work and care in 🇮🇳: https://t.co/ViXu07MoLG
“The ‘Brexit’ referendum was dominated by a narrative of taking back control of policy and policy making. Control of policy would allow the UK government to make profound changes to immigration and spending. Control of policymaking would allow Parliament and the public to hold the UK government directly to account, in contrast to a more complex and distant EU policy process less subject to direct British scrutiny.
Such high level political debate is built on the false image of a small number of elected policymakers – and the Prime Minister in particular – responsible for the outcomes of the policy process.
There is a strange disconnect between the ways in which elected politicians and elected policymakers describe UK policymaking. Ministers have mostly given up the language of control; modern manifestos no longer make claims – such as to secure ‘full employment’ or eradicate health inequalities – that suggest they control the economy or can solve problems by providing public services. Yet, much Brexit rhetoric suggests that a vote to leave the EU will put control back in the hands of ministers to solve major problems.
The main problem with the latter way of thinking is that it is rejected continuously in the modern literature on policymaking. Policymaking is multi-centric: responsibility for outcomes is spread across many levels and types of government, to the extent that it is not possible to simply know who is in charge and to blame.
Somemulti-level governance (MLG) relates to the choice to share power with EU, devolved, and local policymaking organisations.
However, most MLG is necessary because ministers do not have the cognitive or coordinative capacity to control policy outcomes.
They can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of their responsibilities, and have to delegate the rest. Most decisions are taken in their name but without their intervention. They occur within a policymaking environment over which ministers have limited knowledge and control.
The problem with using Brexit as a lens through which to understand British politics is that it emphasises the choice to no longer spread power across a political system, without acknowledging the necessity of doing so.
Our understanding of the future of UK policy and policymaking is incomplete without a focus on the concepts and evidence that help us understand why UK ministers must accept their limitations and act accordingly.
Yet, clearly the Westminster model archetype remains important even if it does not exist (Duggett, 2009). Policy studies have challenged successfully its image of central control, but, the model’s importance resides in its rhetorical power in wider politics when people maintain a simple argument during general election and referendum debates: we know who is – or should be – in charge. This perspective has a profound effect on the ways in which policymakers defend their actions, and political actors compete for votes, even when it is ridiculously misleading (Rhodes, 2013; Bevir, 2013)”
In retrospect, I think the title was too subtle and clever-clever. I wanted to convey two meanings: imaginative as a euphemism for ridiculous/ often cynical and to argue that a government has to be imaginative with evidence. The latter has two meanings: imaginative (1) in the presentation and framing of evidence-informed agenda, and (2) when facing pressure to go beyond the evidence and envisage policy outcomes.
So I describe two cases in which its evidence-use seems cynical, when:
Declaring complete success in turning around the lives of ‘troubled families’
Exploiting vivid neuroscientific images to support ‘early intervention’
Then I describe more difficult cases in which supportive evidence is not clear:
Family intervention project evaluations are of limited value and only tentatively positive
Successful projects like FNP and Incredible Years have limited applicability or ‘scalability’
As scientists, we can shrug our shoulders about the uncertainty, but elected policymakers in government have to do something. So what do they do?
At this point of the article it will look like I have become an apologist for David Cameron’s government. Instead, I’m trying to demonstrate the value of comparing sympathetic/ unsympathetic interpretations and highlight the policy problem from a policymaker’s perspective:
I suggest that they use evidence in a mix of ways to: describe an urgent problem, present an image of success and governing competence, and provide cover for more evidence-informed long term action.
The result is the appearance of top-down ‘muscular’ government and ‘a tendency for policy to change as is implemented, such as when mediated by local authority choices and social workers maintaining a commitment to their professional values when delivering policy’
I conclude by arguing that ‘evidence-based policy’ and ‘policy-based evidence’ are political slogans with minimal academic value. The binary divide between EBP/ PBE distracts us from more useful categories which show us the trade-offs policymakers have to make when faced with the need to act despite uncertainty.
As such, it forms part of a far wider body of work …
In both cases, the common theme is that, although (1) the world of top-down central government gets most attention, (2) central governments don’t even know what problem they are trying to solve, far less (3) how to control policymaking and outcomes.
In that wider context, it is worth comparing this talk with the one I gave at the IDS (which, I reckon is a good primer for – or prequel to – the UK talk):
Let’s be optimistic for a few seconds, and focus on the idea that a vote for the UK to leave the European Union was a vote for UK sovereignty and ‘taking back control’ of policy and policymaking. The comparison is between an EU process that is distant and undemocratic and a UK process we can all understand and influence, following the simple phrase ‘if you know who is in charge, you know who to blame’.
The down side is that we don’t know who is in charge, and it’s often futile to try to find a named individual or role to blame. The EU certainly complicates the picture, but don’t be fooled into thinking that we will eventually produce a UK political system that anyone understands.
If giving a lecture, this is the point at which I’d pause for effect and restate the idea that no-one understands the UK policymaking system as a whole [insert meaningful looks here]. Many people know about many parts of the system, but it’s not like a jigsaw puzzle that we’ve completed by working together. At best, it’s like that Dalmatian jigsaw that we started at Christmas before getting drunk and falling out.
Instead, policymakers and commentators tell simple stories about British politics
The dominant story of British politics relates initially to the idea of parliamentary sovereignty: we vote in constituencies to elect MPs as our representatives, and MPs as a whole represent the final arbiters on policy in the UK. This idea connects strongly to elements of the ‘Westminster model’ (WM), a shorthand phrase to describe key ways in which the UK political system is perhaps designed to work. Perhaps policymaking should reflect strongly the wishes of the public. In representative democracies, political parties engage each other in a battle of ideas, to attract the attention and support of the voting public; the public votes every 4-5 years; the winner forms a government; the government turns its manifesto into policy; and, policy choices are carried out by civil servants and other bodies. In other words, there should be a clear link between public preferences, the strategies and ideas of parties and the final result.
The WM serves this purpose in a particular way: the UK has a plurality (‘first past the post’) voting system which tends to exaggerate support for, and give a majority in Parliament to, the winning party. It has an adversarial (and majoritarian?) style of politics and a ‘winner takes all’ mentality which tends to exclude opposition parties. The executive resides in the legislature and power tends to be concentrated within government – in ministers that head government departments and the Prime Minister who heads (and determines the members of) Cabinet. The government is responsible for the vast majority of public policy and it uses its governing majority, combined with a strong party ‘whip’, to make sure that its legislation is passed by Parliament.
In other words, the ‘take home message’ of this story is that the UK policy process is centralised and that the arrangement reflects a ‘British political tradition’: the government is accountable to public on the assumption that it is powerful and responsible. So, you know who is in charge and therefore who to praise or blame, and elections every 4-5 years are supplemented by parliamentary scrutiny built on holding ministers directly to account.
These stories are more useful for our entertainment than enlightenment
Consider these five factors which challenge the ability of elected policymakers to control the policy process.
Bounded rationality. Ministers only have the ability to pay attention to a tiny proportion of the issues over which have formal responsibility. So, how can they control issues if they have to ignore almost all of them?
Policy communities. Ministers delegate responsibility to civil servants at a quite-low level of government. Civil servants make policy in consultation with interest groups and other participants with the ability to trade resources (such as information) for access or influence. Such relationships can endure long after particular ministers or elected governments have come and gone.
Multi-level governance. The UK government shares policymaking ‘vertically’ (with international, EU, devolved, and local governments) and ‘horizontally’ (with non-governmental and quasi-non-governmental organisations).
Complex government. Policymaking ‘emerges’ from the interaction between many actors, institutions, and regulations. In complex policymaking systems, people act without full knowledge of how other people act elsewhere in the system.
Policy environments. Many policy conditions and events are out of policymakers’ control (including demographic, technological, and economic change)
So, for example, the UK government has to juggle two stories of British politics – on the need to be pragmatic in the face of these five challenges to their power and sense of control, versus the need to construct a strong image of governing competence with reference to control – in the knowledge that one of them is a tall tale.
Brexit will change only one part of that story
None of these factors should prompt us to minimise the influence of the EU on the UK. Rather, they should prompt us to think harder about the impact of Brexit on ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ and ministerial accountability via UK central government control. The phrase ‘you know who is in charge, and who to blame’ will become a more important rallying cry in British politics (when we can no longer blame the EU for British policy), but let’s focus on what actually happens in British politics and recognise how little of it we understand before we decide who to blame.
I tend to set this simple-looking question for coursework in policy modules: what is policy, how much has it changed, and why? Students get to choose the policy issue, timeframe (and sometimes the political system), and relevant explanatory concepts.
On the face of it, it looks super-simple: A+ for everyone!
Give it a few more seconds, and you can see the difficulties:
We spent a lot of time agreeing that it seems almost impossible to define policy (explained in 1000 Words and 500 Words)
There are a gazillion possible measures of policy change (1000 Words and 500 Words)
There is an almost unmanageable number of models, concepts, and theories to use to explain policy dynamics (I describe about 25 in 1000 Words each)
I try to encourage some creativity when solving this problem, but also advise students to keep their discussion as simple and jargon-free as possible (often by stretching an analogy with diving, in which a well-executed simple essay can score higher than a belly-flopped hard essay).
Choosing a format: the initial advice
Choose a policy area (such as health) or issue (such as alcohol policy).
Describe the nature of policy, and the extent of policy change, in a particular time period (such as in the post-war era, since UK devolution, or since a change in government).
Select one or more policy concept or theory to help structure your discussion and help explain how and why policy has changed.
For example, a question might be: What is tobacco policy in the UK, how much has it changed since the 1980s, and why? I use this example because I try to answer that – UK and global – question myself, even though my 2007 article on the UK is too theory-packed to be a good model for an undergraduate essay.
Choosing a format: the cautionary advice
You may be surprised about how difficult it is to answer a simple question like ‘what is policy?’ and I will give you considerable credit for considering how to define and measure it, by identifying, for example, the use of legislation/ regulation, funding, staff, and ‘nodality’ and/ or by considering the difference between, say, policy as a statement of intent or a long term outcome. In turn, a good description and explanation of policy change is difficult. If you are feeling ambitious, you can go further, to compare, say, two issues (such as tobacco and alcohol) or places (such UK Government policy and the policy of another country), but sometimes a simple and narrow discussion can be as, or more, effective. Similarly, you can use many theories or concepts to aid explanation, but often one theory will do. Note that (a) your description of your research question, and your essay structure, is more important than (b) your decision on what topic to focus or concepts to use.
Choosing a topic: the ‘joined up’ advice
The wider aim is to encourage students to think about the relationship between different perspectives on policy theory and analysis. For example, in a blog and policy analysis paper they try to generate attention to a policy problem and advocate a solution. Then, they draw on policy theories and concepts to reflect on their papers, highlighting (say): the need to identify the most important audience; the importance of framing issues with a mixture of evidence and emotional appeals; and, the need to present ‘feasible’ solutions.
The reflection can provide a useful segue to the essay, since we’re already identifying important policy problems, advocating change, reflecting on how best to encourage it – such as by presenting modest objectives – and then, in the essay, trying to explain (say) why governments have not taken that advice in the past. Their interest in the policy issue can prompt interest in researching the issue further; their knowledge of the issue and the policy process can help them develop politically-aware policy analysis. All going well, it produces a virtuous circle.
Some examples from my pet subject
Let me outline how I would begin to answer the three questions with reference to UK tobacco policy. I’m offering a brief summary of each section rather than presenting a full essay with more detail (partly to hold on to that idea of creativity – I don’t want students to use this description as a blueprint).
What is modern UK tobacco policy?
Tobacco policy in the UK is now one of the most restrictive in the world. The UK government has introduced a large number of policy instruments to encourage a major reduction of smoking in the population. They include: legislation to ban smoking in public places; legislation to limit tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship; high taxes on tobacco products; unequivocal health education; regulations on tobacco ingredients; significant spending on customs and enforcement measures; and, plain packaging measures.
[Note that I selected only a few key measures to define policy. A fuller analysis might expand on why I chose them and why they are so important].
How much has policy changed since the 1980s?
Policy has changed radically since the post-war period, and most policy change began from the 1980s, but it was not until the 2000s onwards that the UK cemented its place as one of the most restrictive countries. The shift from the 1980s relates strongly to the replacement of voluntary agreements and limited measures with limited enforcement with legislative measures and stronger enforcement. The legislation to ban tobacco advertising, passed in 2002, replaced limited bans combined with voluntary agreements to (for example) keep billboards a certain distance from schools. The legislation to ban smoking in public places, passed in 2006 (2005 in Scotland), replaced voluntary measures which allowed smoking in most pubs and restaurants. Plain packaging measures, combined with large and graphic health warnings, replace branded packets which once had no warnings. Health education warnings have gone from stating the facts and inviting smokers to decide, and the promotion of harm reduction (smoke ‘low tar’), to an unequivocal message on the harms of smoking and passive smoking.
[Note that I describe these changes in broad terms. Other articles might ‘zoom’ in on specific instruments to show how exactly they changed]
Why has it changed?
This is the section of the essay in which we have to make a judgement about the type of explanation: should you choose one or many concepts; if many, do you focus on their competing or complementary insights; should you provide an extensive discussion of your chosen theory?
I normally recommend a very small number of concepts or simple discussion, largely because there is only so much you can say in an essay of 2-3000 words.
For example, a simple ‘hook’ is to ask if the main driver was the scientific evidence: did policy change as the evidence on smoking (and then passive smoking) related harm became more apparent? Is it a good case of ‘evidence based policymaking’? The answer may then note that policy change seemed to be 20-30 years behind the evidence [although I’d have to explain that statement in more depth] and set out the conditions in which this driver would have an effect.
In short, one might identify the need for a ‘policy environment’, shaped by policymakers, and conducive to a strong policy response based on the evidence of harm and a political choice to restrict tobacco use. It would relate to decisions by policymakers to: frame tobacco as a public health epidemic requiring a major government response (rather than primarily as an economic good or issue of civil liberties); place health departments or organisations at the heart of policy development; form networks with medical and public health groups at the expense of tobacco companies; and respond to greater public support for control, reduced smoking prevalence, and the diminishing economic value of tobacco.
This discussion can proceed conceptually, in a relatively straightforward way, or with the further aid of policy theories which ask further questions and help structure the answers.
For example, one might draw on punctuated equilibrium theory to help describe and explain shifts of public/media/ policymaker attention to tobacco, from low and positive in the 1950s to high and negative from the 1980s.
Or, one might draw on the ACF to explain how pro-tobacco coalitions helped slow down policy change by interpreting new scientific evidence though the ‘lens’ of well-established beliefs or approaches (examples from the 1950s include filter tips, low tar brands, and ventilation as alternatives to greater restrictions on smoking).
Any of these approaches will do, as long as you describe and justify your choice well. One cannot explain everything, so it may be better to try to explain one thing well.
British politics looks weird because UK governments have contradictory incentives: to look like they are in control, but delegate most, of policymaking; to take but shuffle off responsibility for policy outcomes; to hold on and let go.
One stresses central control, the other stresses complexity and emergent outcomes despite central government intervention
One stresses the need for central control to ensure clear lines of accountability, the other stresses the need for pragmatism and how ridiculous it is to hold people to account for things over which they have minimal control.
One gets all the attention, despite being misleading, partly because it relates to a simple and comforting message on accountability and the exciting world of high politics. The other gets little attention, despite being more accurate, because its message is confusing and often boring.
So, when we discuss the big post-war developments in British politics, and their impact on policymaking and accountability, we should not expect to find a grand or consistent plan. Instead, post war government reforms reflect these contradictions, and prompt a tendency for elected policymakers to delegate or ‘shuffle off’ most responsibility but intervene in unpredictable and inconsistent ways.
What were these big changes? 1. A shift from state to market?
I say this not to diminish the argument that major changes from the 1970s, to alter the balance between the state and market in the UK, were often ideologically driven. Rather, don’t assume that the consistent/systematic application of that ideology is the main explanation. In some cases, governments:
diluted their reformist beliefs, preferring pragmatism and realistic aims
pursued reforms for simple aims such as to bolster their popularity
accepted or reinforced the actions of their predecessors (even if from another party)
pursued major reforms after key events and crises seemed to force their hand.
Overall, politics is often about telling a story about handling government or crises well, not actually controlling events and outcomes, and no single elected government can oversee a 10, 20, or 30-year plan to reform the state in the scale we witnessed.
Still, we can now see fundamental differences when we compare the UK state with that of the 1970s. Examples include:
A ‘paradigm’ shift in economic policy, from ‘Keynesian’ to ‘monetarist’ economics (see Hall), prompted by economic crisis in the 1970s under Labour and the election of a Conservative government in 1979. For example, governments no longer promise to achieve ‘full employment’ via measures such as capital investment (indeed, the Thatcher government appeared to accept high unemployment while favouring inflation controls).
Privatisation. The sale of public assets (including major nationalised utilities and local authority owned social housing), break up of state monopolies, injection of competition in the public sector, introduction of public–private partnerships for major capital projects, and charging for government services.
In both cases, you can see one form of this debate on central control playing out: for some advocates of economic reform and privatisation, this was about producing a ‘rejuvenated’ and ‘lean’ state, with ministers able to focus on core tasks – making strategic decisions and creating rules for others to follow – without having to pretend that they can control the economy or manage major industries. In this account, post-war developments were based on the idea of state planning and central control over the economy and most public services, while post-79 developments were driven by the belief that such planning had failed.
Although prompted by the Conservative government of 1979-97, the Labour government from 1997-2010 reinforced most measures (and privatised more services than Thatcher would have envisaged). It also extended the idea of limiting central government ministerial intervention in the economy by introducing Bank of England independence (making it primarily responsible for interest rates and strategies to manage inflation).
A shift from ‘rowing’ to ‘steering’?
This ‘lean’ theme is summed up in the metaphor (made famous by management consultants Osborne and Gaebler) of ‘steering, not rowing’, in which governments decide to provide direction to public services/ public servants rather than managing them directly. Also look out for the phrase ‘new public management’ (NPM) which mostly describes the application of private business methods to the public sector. Examples include:
Civil service reforms to separate strategic ministerial/ operational decisions and make public servants more directly accountable for the latter.
Quasi-markets. Public bodies like hospitals and schools are given greater operational independence. One part of the public sector competes with another for (say) the business of commissioning agencies and/ or to compete in league tables of performance.
Quangos. The increased use of quasi-non-governmental bodies, sponsored by government departments but operating at ‘arms-length’ from elected policymakers.
Public sector reforms in which non-governmental bodies play an increasing role in service delivery while subject to regulation, inspection, and performance management.
Constitutional
These reforms, often designed to give a sense of reinforced central control, are different from decisions by the UK government to shift power upwards, to the European Union, and downwards,(a) in 1999, to devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and (b) through various experiments in regional government (in the early 2000s) and ‘localism’ (from 2010).
What is the overall effect of these reforms?
These reforms prompted several debates about the modern nature of the UK state, based on questions such as, Is it ‘hollowing’ or rejuvenated?
Is UK central government now less able to influence policy outcomes, and more reliant on persuasion and cooperation from many actors in policy networks? Do we talk about multi-level governance, not government, because no single government can control policy? Is this the great irony of reform: they were designed to reinforce central control but they actually exacerbated the UK’s governance problem?
Or, has central government shuffled off direct responsibility for the previously unmanageable parts of the public sector that took up a disproportionate amount of ministerial energy (major industries, local government, Scotland), and become more powerful via regulatory mechanisms or more able to shift blame?
When considering these questions, note how this UK-specific discussion can be supplemented by the ‘universal’ factors we discuss in POLU9UK and covered in the 1000 Words series, including: ministers are boundedly rational, operating in a policy environment with a huge number of actors, and apparently unable to control outcomes that ‘emerge’ from complex systems. In other words, the answer to the ‘hollowing’ question will not come only from an analysis of UK government policies.
What is the effect on ministerial accountability?
As in Scotland, the UK Government has experimented with many forms of accountability based on one of these two stories of central government:
Westminster-style democratic accountability, through periodic elections and more regular reports by ministers to Westminster. This requires a strong sense of central government and ministerial control – if you know who is in charge, you know who to hold to account or reward or punish in the next election.
Institutional accountability, through performance management measures applied to the chief executives of public bodies, such as elected local authorities and unelected agencies and quangos.
Accountability via pluralist democracy, fostering the shared ‘ownership’ of policy with stakeholders to produce choices that both support.
Localist democracy, encouraging a sense of collective responsibility between local authorities and their stakeholders.
User based notions of accountability, when a public body considers its added value to (and responds to the wishes of) service users, or public bodies and users ‘co-produce’ and share responsibility for the outcomes.
Yet, 2-5 generally seem incompatible with, or overshadowed by, 1. Ministers think that the public expects Westminster-style accountability, so they try these other measures but also:
Try to show that they still control the direction of delegated services, often with reference to problematic proxies of their own success (see the example of Troubled Families)
Intervene in an ad hoc way in the decisions of public bodies that they’d otherwise like to run themselves (see Gains and Stoker)
Or, they seem to delegate power to public bodies but introduce so many regulations, budget limits, and performance measures that it is difficult for those bodies to exert their autonomy (see the example of ‘prevention policy’, in which central governments simultaneously support and scupper various forms of prevention and early intervention).
Group work
In groups we can discuss these major reforms and the extent to which they were driven by a grand plan or a series of unfortunate events.
We can discuss accountability and try to explain how and why ministers intervene in some areas but not others.
Since we focused on the two basic stories of (lack of) control in week 2, this week we can zoom in to discuss specific measures to demonstrate success in government or produce the appearance of control. What examples spring to mind?
You get the idea by now. We began the course with a stylised Westminster model of centralised control and each week we use something new to chip away at that image. This week we focus on the sense that the UK government is (a) constantly responding to events rather than setting the political agenda, and (b) dealing with policy conditions and outcomes that seem to be out of its control.
Big E and small e events
You might get two impressions from the word ‘events’:
The really big ones that seem to shock half of the population (more or less, or much more). Take your pick from recent Events including Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum, or from economic crises including the global financial crises and shocks to the British Pound. Generally speaking, it is difficult to get a sense from these Events that the UK Government is in control of the agenda or outcome.
The day-to-day ones. You now get this other sense of events most strongly from social media: people’s attention lurches from issue to issue very quickly, and governments (or individual policymakers) often seem to struggle to respond effectively or set the agenda.
So, as we discussed in week 2, policymakers will often settle for the chance to portray themselves as decisive in responding and adapting to such events rather than controlling them (perhaps particularly in an age in which they struggle more and more to control the flow of information within populations).
Policy conditions: from funnels of causality to globalisation
A reference to policy ‘conditions’ or ‘environments’ is broader. It refers to the context in which policymakers make choices, including:
Literally, the environment in which people live and the spread of populations in urban and rural areas.
The demographic profile and trends in birth and ageing.
Levels of economic activity.
Social behaviour and attitudes.
Technological changes which prompt social change, from mass road transit to information technology.
Governing institutions with rules that constrain and facilitate behaviour.
One main connection between conditions and events is that the former often shape the latter: environmental crises prompt new forms of behaviour, ageing populations prompt a sense of crisis in health and social care, economic downturns panic governments, and so on. You get the idea: this is a far cry from our initial starting point in which we focus on what governments do. If we focus on what surrounds governments we get more of a sense of the limits to what governments can do, and a limited sense of their control of policymaking processes and outcomes.
As the language of ‘structure and agency’ suggests, we need to find a convincing way to describe this sense of limited choice. We (or, at least, I) want to maintain the sense that policymakers are actors making choices but that some choices are far more attractive or possible than others.
So, we have a choice about how to portray these choices. On the one hand, we have accounts which focus on the limits to choice:
The classic (but now little-discussed) way of thinking about wider conditions is Hofferbert’s ‘funnel of causality’. Its usefulness is to expand our horizons to think about the wider (literal or metaphorical) environment of policymaking in which, for example, geographical conditions influence population concentrations and public behaviour and attitudes influence elite behaviour.
The concept of ‘globalisation’ prompts us to think about the pressures on domestic governments to respond to global factors often outside of their control. In such cases, their choices about how to respond to external factors are not particularly attractive, such as when they are deciding how to set interest rates to deal with external fluctuations in demand for their currency (who do I mean by ‘they’ these days?), or how willing they are to reduce taxes and offer subsidies to attract foreign direct investment.
On the other hand is the sense that actors mediate such conditions and events: to a large extent they decide how to interpret events, the importance to attach to policy conditions, and which conditions produce events that seem the most urgent or important. In other words, many governments have shown an impressive ability to completely ignore events that other governments would treat as urgent crises.
The latter point is a nice segue to one of the recommended articles for this week, by Hindmoor and McConnell, in which they discuss the UK Government’s response to financial crisis. They remind us that we should understand the processing of events as they occurred, rather than via hindsight. This approach allows us to see that governments have highly imperfect ways to gather information and detect ‘warning signals’ effectively: what seems obvious now would not be obvious then. What now seems like a crisis to which governments inevitably had to respond would then seem very different.
Group exercises
In our groups we can identify and discuss key examples: how have UK governments dealt with demographic change or economic crisis? What kinds of factors are most likely to get their attention (and why?) and how are they likely to deal with them? What are the big events or conditions in UK politics that seem impossible to ignore? And what does our discussion tell us about the idea of a UK political system characterised by central government control and a centralisation of power.
As we discussed in week 2, if you start your study of British politics by describing the Westminster model, you get something like this:
Key parts of the Westminster political system help concentrate power in the executive. Representative democracy is the basis for most participation and accountability. The UK is a unitary state built on parliamentary sovereignty and a fusion of executive and legislature, not a delegation or division of powers. The plurality electoral system exaggerates single party majorities, the whip helps maintain party control of Parliament, the government holds the whip, and the Prime Minister controls membership of the government. So, you get centralised government and you know who is in charge and therefore to blame.
Most contemporary analysts dwell on the shortcomings of the Westminster account and compare it with a more realistic framework based on modern discussions of governance … Britain has moved away from a distinctive Westminster model.
‘Policy networks’ or ‘policy communities’ represent the building blocks of policy studies. Most policy theories situate them at the heart of the policy process.
So, you may want to know: ‘How did we get from the one case of affairs to the other case of affairs?’ (source). Here are some possible explanations to discuss.
One account is wrong
In our grumpy account, we pretty much complain that the incorrect story still wins because it sounds so good. The uncool academics have all agreed that the ‘governance’ story best sums up British politics, but the media and public don’t pay attention to it, politicians act as if it doesn’t exist, and cool Lijphart gets all the attention with his ‘majoritarian’ model of the UK which accentuates the adversarial and top-down nature compared to the utopian consensus democracies in which all politicans hold hands and sing together before agreeing all their policies.
One account is wrong most of the time
When less grumpy, we suggest that our account is correct most of the time. People pay attention to the exciting world of elected politics and governing politicians, but it represents the tip of the iceberg. Most policy is processed below the surface, away from the public spotlight, and this process does not match the UK’s majoritarian image. Instead, policymakers tend to work routinely with other policy participants to share information and advice and come to collective understandings of problems and feasible solutions.
What explains the shift from one image to the other?
If we go for the latter explanation, we need to know how this process works: what prompts a tiny number of issues to receive the excitement and attention and a huge number to receive almost none? I’ll give you some ideas below, but note that you can find the same basic explanation of this agenda setting/ framing process in many theories of the policy process. You should read as many as possible and, in particular, those on framing, punctuated equilibrium, and power/ideas. Combined, you get the sense of two scenarios: one in which people simply can’t pay attention to many policy issues and have to ignore most; and, one in which people exploit this limitation to make sure that some issues are ignored (for example, by framing issues as ‘solved’ by policymakers, with only experts required to oversee the implementation of key choices).
The general explanation: powerful people have limited attention
You’ll find this general explanation squirrelled away somewhere in almost everything I’ve written. In this case, it’s in the networks 1000 words post:
The size and scope of the state is so large that it is in danger of becoming unmanageable. The same can be said of the crowded environment in which huge numbers of actors seek policy influence. Consequently, the state’s component parts are broken down into policy sectors and sub-sectors, with power spread across government.
Elected policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of issues for which they are responsible. So, they pay attention to a small number and ignore the rest. In effect, they delegate policymaking responsibility to other actors such as bureaucrats, often at low levels of government.
At this level of government and specialisation, bureaucrats rely on specialist organisations for information and advice.
Those organisations trade that information/advice and other resources for access to, and influence within, the government (other resources may relate to who groups represent – such as a large, paying membership, an important profession, or a high status donor or corporation).
Therefore, most public policy is conducted primarily through small and specialist policy communities that process issues at a level of government not particularly visible to the public, and with minimal senior policymaker involvement.
A specific explanation: even ‘majoriarian’ governments seek consensus even when issues become high profile
I like this story about Brent Spar as an example of ‘bureaucratic accommodation’. In a nutshell (from p577), they argue that we began with a high profile issue in which Greenpeace occupied a Shell oil rig that was due for disposal, got Shell to change its policy through high profile campaigning, but that they came to quieter agreement within government by agreeing on specific policies without shifting their basic principles. Many of us saw the conflict but few saw the consensus building that followed (and, in fact, preceded these events). There are many stories like this, in which relatively short periods of highly salient policymaking ‘punctuate’ much longer spells of humdrum activity.
Group activities
So, in our group work we can explore the key themes through examples. I’ll ask you to identify the conditions under which Westminster-model-style activity happens, and the conditions under which we’d expect policy communities to develop. I’ll ask you to compare issues in which there is high salience and conflict with issues that are low salience and/ or low conflict. I might even ask you to remember some high profile issues from the past then ask: where are they now?
It can be quite daunting to produce a policy analysis paper or blog post for the first time. You learn about the constraints of political communication by being obliged to explain your ideas in an unusually small number of words. The short word length seems good at first, but then you realise that it makes your life harder: how can you fit all your evidence and key points in? The answer is that you can’t. You have to choose what to say and what to leave out.
You also have to make this presentation ‘not about you’. In a long essay or research report you have time to show how great you are, to a captive audience. In a policy paper, imagine that you are trying to get the attention and support from someone that may not know or care about the issue you raise. In a blog post, your audience might stop reading at any point, so every sentence counts.
There are many guides out there to help you with the practical side, including the broad guidance I give you in the module guide, and Bardach’s 8-steps. In each case, the basic advice is to (a) identify a policy problem and at least one feasible solution, and (b) tailor the analysis to your audience.
Be concise, be smart
So, for example, I ask you to keep your analysis and presentations super-short on the assumption that you have to make your case quickly to people with 99 other things to do. What can you tell someone in a half-page (to get them to read all 2 pages)? Could you explain and solve a problem if you suddenly bumped into a government minister in a lift/ elevator?
It is tempting to try to tell someone everything you know, because everything is connected and to simplify is to describe a problem simplistically. Instead, be smart enough to know that such self-indulgence won’t impress your audience. They might smile politely, but their eyes are looking at the elevator lights.
Your aim is not to give a full account of a problem – it’s to get someone important to care about it.
Your aim is not to give a painstaking account of all possible solutions – it’s to give a sense that at least one solution is feasible and worth pursuing.
Your guiding statement should be: policymakers will only pay attention to your problem if they think they can solve it, and without that solution being too costly.
Be creative
I don’t like to give you too much advice because I want you to be creative about your presentation; to be confident enough to take chances and feel that I’ll reward you for making the leap. At the very least, you have three key choices to make about how far you’ll go to make a point:
Who is your audience? Our discussion of the limits to centralised policymaking suggest that your most influential audience will not necessarily be a UK government minister – but who else would it be?
How manipulative should you be? Our discussions of ‘bounded rationality’ and ‘evidence-based policymaking’ suggest that policymakers combine ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ shortcuts to gather information and make choices. So, do you appeal to their desire to set goals and gather a lot of scientific information and/or make an emotional and manipulative appeal?
Are you an advocate or an ‘honest broker’? Contemporary discussions of science advice to government highlight unresolved debates about the role of unelected advisors: should you simply lay out some possible solutions or advocate one solution strongly?
Be reflective
For our purposes, there are no wrong answers to these questions. Instead, I want you to make and defend your decisions. That is the aim of your policy paper ‘reflection’: to ‘show your work’.
You still have some room to be creative: tell me what you know about policy theory and British politics and how it informed your decisions. Here are some examples, but it is up to you to decide what to highlight:
Show how your understanding of policymaker psychology helped you decide how to present information on problems and solutions.
Extract insights from policy theories, such as from punctuated equilibrium theory on policymaker attention, multiple streams analysis on timing and feasibility, or the NPF on how to tell persuasive stories.
Explore the implications of the lack of ‘comprehensive rationality’ and absence of a ‘policy cycle’: feasibility is partly about identifying the extent to which a solution is ‘doable’ when central governments have limited powers. What ‘policy style’ or policy instruments would be appropriate for the solution you favour?
Be a blogger
With a blog post, your audience is wider. You are trying to make an argument that will capture the attention of a more general audience (interested in politics and policy, but not a specialist) that might access your post from Twitter/ Facebook or via a search engine. This produces a new requirement, to: present a ‘punchy’ title which sums up the whole argument in under 140 characters (a statement is often better than a vague question); to summarise the whole argument in (say) 100 words in the first paragraph (what is the problem and solution?); and, to provide more information up to a maximum of 500 words. The reader can then be invited to read the whole policy analysis.
The style of blog posts varies markedly, so you should consult many examples before attempting your own (compare the LSE with The Conversation and newspaper columns to get a sense of variations in style). When you read other posts, take note of their strengths and weaknesses. For example, many posts associated with newspapers introduce a personal or case study element to ground the discussion in an emotional appeal. Sometimes this works, but sometimes it causes the reader to scroll down quickly to find the main argument. Consider if it is as, or more, effective to make your argument more direct and easy to find as soon as someone clicks the link on their phone. Many academic posts are too long (well beyond your 500 limit), take too long to get to the point, and do not make explicit recommendations, so you should not merely emulate them. You should also not just chop down your policy paper – this is about a new kind of communication.
Be reflective once again
Hopefully, by the end, you will appreciate the transferable life skills. I have generated some uncertainty about your task to reflect the sense among many actors that they don’t really know how to make a persuasive case and who to make it to. We can follow some basic Bardach-style guidance, but a lot of this kind of work relies on trial-and-error. I maintain a short word count to encourage you to get to the point, and I bang on about ‘stories’ in our module to encourage you to make a short and persuasive story to policymakers.
This process seems weird at first, but isn’t it also intuitive? For example, next time you’re in my seminar, measure how long it takes you to get bored and look forward to the weekend. Then imagine that policymakers have the same attention span as you. That’s how long you have to make your case!
These posts introduce you to key concepts in the study of public policy. They are all designed to turn a complex policymaking world into something simple enough to understand. Some of them focus on small parts of the system. Others present ambitious ways to explain the system as a whole. The wide range of concepts should give you a sense of a variety of studies out there, but my aim is to show you that these studies have common themes.
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Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy 
