David Whorley Beyond Beyond Policy Analysis:

Emergent policy and the

complexity of government

“[/Inpractice rationalism and its offspring, policy

analysis, may be closed to more complex social
realities grounded in local practice and informal
and complex social and economic patterns of
behaviour”

Beyond Policy Analysis: Public Issue Management in Turbulent Times. By

LESLIE A. PAL. 2nd edition. Toronto: Nelson Thompson Learning. 2001.

Leslie Pal’s new edition of Beyond Policy Analysis updates the 1997 original
(International Thompson Publishing) and should similarly - and deservedly
- find its way onto the syllabi of introductory public policy courses every-
where. While of some interest to practitioners, the book is principally
directed towards the classroom; each chapter ends with a review of key
terms, a number of related web sites, and a good set of references, features
that students will find helpful for study and research. Pal covers core public
policy elements with helpful chapters on problem definition, instruments
and design, implementation, and evaluation. While effectively making use
of international literature, Beyond Policy Analysis is primarily located in Can-
ada, though governments in this country are presented as participants in a
broader international public policy movement.
Methodologically, Pal has departed somewhat from his approach in the
first edition by deciding to do away with excerpts from interviews with gov-
ernment officials, something that the preface to the first edition noted was
intended to provide a ”reality check‘‘ on the book’s arguments. In their place
the new edition provides “a greater number of concrete policy illustrations
and cases” (p. ix). While the new material is certainly welcome, it is unclear
that the sort of evidentiary trade-off hinted at is necessary. The excision of
practitioner reflections is a feature to be missed in the second edition not

The author teaches politics and public administrationat Bmck University.

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA

VOLUME 45, NO. 3 (FALL/AUTOMNE), PP.434-440
EMERGENT POLICY AND THE COMPLEXITY OF GOVERNMENT 435

only because checking with reality remains a good idea but because of the
opportunities afforded to “hear” public administrators grapple with some of
the considerable changes that have occurred in the public sector. Indeed,
returning to the important theme of change as discussed in the earlier ver-
sion, Pal points out that ”[tlhe forces that I identified in the first edition
have, if anything, intensified.” His claim that “[ilt is virtually impossible
today to engage in any serious discussion of public policy challenges with-
out addressing globalization, information technology, changing public val-
ues and cultural assumptions, citizen distrust, new public management
techniques, policy networks, consultation, or decentralization and subsid-
iarity” (p. viii), is undoubtedly true. Yet, notwithstanding the heightened
intensity of the assorted factors set out by Pal, readers of the second edition
are denied the useful experience of listening to public servants describe their
efforts at understanding the way in which these matters have come to influ-
ence what they do. For example, one public servant attempting to explain
cultural change associated with new public management pointed out in the
first edition that “lslo it’s not the performance the government wants to give, it‘s
the performance the client wants to get. How you give it to them becomes a technical
question” (p. 180, italics in original). This view might have provoked a num-
ber of interesting queries. For example, is this entirely a technical question?
Might it not be a political question if we entertain Harold Lasswell’s sense
that politics is about who gets what, when and how? How widespread is
this view within government, and what are the implications? There is much
to be said in praise of qualitative research that, among other things, leads us
to ask better and more challenging questions and draws attention to the
manner in which public administrators - the people who do the work -
struggle with an increasingly complex environment. Interviews with offi-
cials that are able to catch on the wing the lived reality of government have
characterized some of the stronger offerings in Canadian public administra-
tion scholarship in recent years. Here studies such as Donald Savoie’s Gov-
emingfrorn the Centre (University of Toronto Press, 1999) and Barbara Wake
Carroll and David Siegel’s Service in the Field (McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1999) come to mind, efforts from which the public administration
community has benefited. For the second edition of Beyond Policy Analysis,
one wishes that Pal had revisited some of the public servants he originally
interviewed and allowed readers to learn if or how their reflections on gov-
ernment had changed over the intervening years.
While acknowledging its limitations, Beyond Policy Analysis is largely
rooted in the rational planning tradition.’ In addition to outlining incremen-
talist and post-positivist perspectives, Pal’s .brief excursion into emergent
strategy as discussed by Henry Mintzberg and Jan Jerrgensen also helps
moderate the strong rational approach.* Yet Mintzberg and Jargensen’s
important perspective is not analytically engaged here to the extent it merits.
436 REVIEW ESSAYS / SY N T H~ SE SDE LECTURES

The implications of emergent strategy are profound when considered in the

light of governance that embraces the new public management ethos. Here,
one wishes that emergent strategy had received a more thorough treatment,
given that it presents a challenge to some of the book‘s main lines. Space
permitting, it is considered here.
Mintzberg and Jsrgensen observe how policy is regularly driven from
points deep within organizations. In sharp contrast to rational planning
accounts whereby ”policy or strategy is formulated consciously, preferably
analytically, made explicit, and then implemented formally,” they describe
the common organizational experiences of

policies that appear unannounced, ones that just seem to happen even though they
were never formally intended. Sometimes policy-makers themselves are inadvert-
ently responsible for these as they try to cope with situations that they know are too
complex to handle through conventional forms of rationality. Other such policies
seem to come from the bowels of the system, developed sometimes by intransigent
bureaucrats, at other times by conscientious ones trying to cope with policy direc-
tives from above that they know to be unworkable. And then there are policies that
just seem to grow by themsel~es.~

Here, policy is defined in terms of what actually happens - the pattern in

action demonstrating some consistency over time - regardless of intention.
This perspective is not one of Lindblomian incrementalism - an approach
that Pal criticizes - “because individual actions are not disjointed; rather
they converge into pattern^."^
To the extent that intended and eventually realized strategies are in align-
ment, Mintzberg and Jrargensen term this outcome a deliberate strategy.
Such circumstances represent a manifestation of the traditional rational
planning approach, something that the authors believe to be relatively
exceptional. Emergent strategies, those circumstances wherein intended and
realized strategies diverge to some degree, are more ~ o m r n o nPolicies
.~ are
not typically said to be either wholly emergent or deliberate in this analysis;
outcomes are the result of the interplay of intentions and eventual actions.
Accordingly, outcomes are more or less deliberate, more or less emergent.
However, Pal’s reading of Mintzberg and Jsrgensen suggests that emer-
gent strategies constitute “at most a corrective, since no organization could
survive through the ‘hothouse’ generation of uncoordinated strategies” (p.
5), a reading that is open to some challenge. Terminologically, Mintzberg
and Jsrgensen reserve “hothouse” for traditional rational views of policy-
making (deliberate strategies in their analysis, not uncoordinated ones) and
“grass roots” for emergent strategies.6 More importantly, as noted, Mintz-
berg and Jerrgensen suggest that organizations tend not to act in either
purely emergent or purely deliberate ways. In this respect they observe that
“[tlhe world must work somewhere between these two models, combining
EMERGENT POLICY A N D THE COMPLEXITY OF GOVERNMENT 437

deliberate and emergent elements in the formation of ~trategies.”~ Rather

than seeing emergent strategy as a limited exception to the traditional ratio-
nal planning approach, as Pal asserts, the authors see its influence as the
norm. This perspective must necessarily temper enthusiasm for the rational
model, since it reveals policy-making to be a much more ambiguous, analyt-
ically messy, organizationally complex, and - potentially - creative affair
than rational planning might allow.
The sense that, in reality, a considerable amount of policy finds its origins
at more operational levels - that is, a significant amount of policy-making is
rooted in administrative discretion -has been a long-running theme in pub-
lic administration and deserves more attention.’ Writing in 1933, for exam-
ple, Luther Gulick claimed that “discretion, the use of judgement, is the
essential element in the determination of policy. If any government
employee ... has discretion he [sic] not only has the power, but is by circum-
stances compelled to determine policy.’’ Given that the actions of various
officials constituted “a seamless web of discretion and action,” Gulick was
doubtful that a clear-cut division of policy from administration was at all
possible or even desirable.’ Similarly, Dwight Waldo declared in The Admin-
istrative State that “either as a description of the facts or a scheme of reform,
any simple division of government into politics-and-administration is inad-
equate.’”O
In 1949, Paul Appleby suggested that policy-making is pervasive, taking
place at all organizational levels: “the functions of policy-making cannot
actually be vested exclusively at any one point or level .in the government.
Wherever there is action affecting the public, there is policy-making. Policy
is made b means of all the political processes by which government is car-
ried on.”“Appleby believed that efforts at separating policy from adminis-
tration failed to capture “the reality of policy stimulation moving upward in
the hierarchy whereby much policy apparently made at high levels actually
develops out of lower a position that seems very much like that of
Mintzberg and Jsrgensen’s.
The implications of these serious and long-standing concerns for a vision
of governance embracing assorted alternative service delivery (ASD)
schemes are apparent. If to some extent policy routinely emerges from oper-
ational levels, then redefining government’s main role as policy formulation
- while operations/administration is put on the block for various ASD
arrangements - is problematic, given that this view neglects the operational
sources of policy. The “seamless web of discretion and action” that allows
for the transmission of emergent strategies is weakened and perhaps rent.
Moreover, it is likely that de facto policy choices will be made beyond the
scope of democratic control once they are contractually separated from gov-
ernment and administrative discretion is exercised by private actors.
Finally, the emergent nature of public policy raises problems for some of
438 REVIEW ESSAYS / SYNTHBSES DE LECTURES

Pal’s views concerning implementation (Chapter 5). Pal dichotomizes policy

and implementation in describing the conditions for policy success; design
and implementation can be roughly good or bad, with success achieved only
when both are done well, a view that accords with Mintzberg and J0r-
gensen’s view of deliberate strategy. A good policy design that is poorly
implemented is said to result only in “policy hope,” while bad designs well
implemented and bad designs poorly implemented lead to failure and mis-
ery, respectively. Nevertheless, a good design poorly implemented might
only indicate the presence of an emergent policy, the outcome of which orga-
nizations could choose to accept and something for which Pal’s framework
does not provide. According to Mintzberg and Jergensen, management
might “pretend that it did not notice a deviant action, and so give itself time
to assess the consequences of the unfolding pattern” and perhaps eventually
adopt it f~rmally.’~ This approach supports the view that formal organiza-
tional goals and strategies can serve to justify retrospectively actions already
taken, something that again challenges the traditional rational planning per-
~pective.’~ The admittedly rough two-by-two framework set out by Pal can
lead analysts to miss systematically some of the more complex and interest-
ing organizational dynamics shaping policy,
Perhaps the book’s greatest strength is the way in which it captures the
changed context of policy-making - something adverted to earlier - and the
current ambivalence surrounding the role of the state. Regarding the former,
Pal provides a good discussion of the challenges of economic globalization
and the associated set of powerful constraints placed on governments by the
current embrace of neo-liberal politics. For example, earlier decisions to cur-
tail their powers by pursuing liberalized trade policies have, among other
things, reduced governments’ abilities to support domestic industries. Simi-
larly, value change - in particular a shift towards post-materialism, increas-
ing diversity and “rights talk” - presents an additional set of demands and
constraints for governments.
Regarding the current ambivalence around the role of government,
Beyond Policy Analysis makes the case that policy-makers and the public
have diminished confidence in governments’ abilities to address public
issues and that our prolonged emphasis on deficit reduction implies that
government itself is a central problem. As Pal notes in this regard, “[tlhe
ferocity with which government itself is attacked as a source of problems
varies from conservatives to liberals, but the general view is that at a mini-
mum, government should ‘get itself right,’ and in so doing will provide the
best ‘solution’ to its negative impact on the economy and society” (pp. 122-
23). Here, however, things may well be changing. We might be witnessing a
new appreciation of the importance of government after the 11 September
2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington. In addition, the
recent string of scandals in the North American corporate sector - including
EMERGENT POLICY A N D THE COMPLEXITY OF GOVERNMENT 439

Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Qwest Communications, Adelphia

Communications, Xerox, Duke Energy, 1M Clone Systems, Halliburton, and,
closer to home, YBM Magnex, Philip Services Corporation, Livent, Nortel
Networks, Char and Bre-X - imply a private-sector ethical deficit that seems
to require the type of concerted effort that went into addressing government
budget deficits. Indeed, recent polls showing declining levels of trust in the
management of public companies and the information provided in their
audited financial statements and annual reports,15 might provoke govem-
ments and citizens to take a second look at embracing business closely in the
delivery of public services. Whether a “new publicity” is, in fact, taking hold
is perhaps something for Professor Pal to address in the third edition of his
thoughtful and provocative book.

Notes
1 While pointing out that this long-running approach has been much criticized, Pal asks “So
what is wrong with being rational? It may Seem a bit mechanical and plodding but is hardly
sinful or dangerous” (p. 21).Nevertheless, for a view of some dangers associated with tech-
nical rationality, readers might wish to consult Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour,
Unmasking Administrative Evil (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998).
2 Henry Mintzberg and Jan Jsrgensen, “Emergent strategy for public policy,” CANADIAN PUB-
LIC ADMINISTRATION 30, no. 2 (Summer 1987), pp. 214-29.
3 bid., p. 216 and p. 217,respectively.
4 bid., p. 220. See also p. 218.
5 Ibid., p. 219.The authors note for example that ”there is no such thing as a purely deliberate
strategy, anymore than a purely emergent strategy. In other words all policy-making
involves conscious thought as well as evolved actions (p. 220, emphasis in the original).
6 Ibid., p. 223.The authors are clear on this point: “at the limit, we can contrast the traditional,
rational model of the formulation of deliberate strategy (which, for reasons that will become
obvious, we shall call the ‘hothouse’ model) with an emergent, or ’grass roots’ one, in which
strategies grow deep inside the system” (Ibid.).
7 Ibid., p. 224.
8 It may well be that everything old is new again. Andrew Gray and Bill Jenkins point out that
“the reform agenda is often predicated on the basis of a distinction between politics and
administration that resuscitates in a novel way what some earlier reformers thought to be
misplaced and outdated dichotomy.” See Andrew Gray and Bill Jenkins, “From public
administration to public management: Reassessing a revolution,“ Public Administration 73,
no. 1 (Spring 1995), p. 10.Along with resuscitating the dichotomy as the basis for restructur-
ing public organizations, its return also gives the work of its earlier critics renewed rele-
vance.
9 Luther Gulick, “Politics, administration, and the ’new deal,”’ The Annals of the American
Academy ofPolitical and Social Science 169 (September 1933),pp. 60-1 and 60,respectively.
10 Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State: A Study of the Polifical Theory of American Public
Administration (New York The Ronald Press Company, 1948),p. 128. It is interesting to note
that in reviewing this work some thirty-five years later, Waldo remained convinced of both
the essential ambiguity and centrality of the politics-administration dichotomy. He observed
that “[clentrally, what is problematic here is the nature and moles of politics and administra-
tion. In essence, we can neither live with or without the distinction, realistically separate the two nor
j n d an agreed, proper joining.“ It was, he suggested, a problem unlikely ever to be solved
finally, “[blut the problem must, nevertheless be dealt with it is there” (p. iv, emphasis in the
440 REVIEW ESSAYS / SYNTHBSES DE LECTURES

original). The issue remained for Waldo “one of theoretical complexity and disorder; of vary-
ing diagnoses and conflicting prescriptions” (p. xxxiv). While the hope of a new synthesis
seemed remote to the older Waldo, he concluded, with some faint optimism, that it was at
least ”not unrealistic to hope for better answers than my own generation has provided”
(p. iv). See preface to Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State: A Study ofthe Political Theory of
American Public Administration, 2nd edition (New York Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1984).
11 Paul H. Appleby, Policy and Administration (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press,
1949), p. 20.
12 bid., p. 18.
13 Mintzberg and Jergensen, “Emergent strategy for public policy,” CANADIAN PUBLIC A D M I N -
ISTRATION, p. 221.
14 Richard W. Scott, Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, 2nd edition (Englewood
Cliffs Prentice Hall, 1992), pp. 285-87.
15 Paul Waldie, “Slender majority of Canadians shows faith in financial system,” The Globe and
Mail (Toronto),13 July 2002, p. 81.