Spink, Peter - Beyond Public Policy

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Beyond Public Policy
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NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY

Series Editor: Wayne Parsons, Professor of Public Policy, Wales Governance
Centre, Cardiff University, UK
This series aims to explore the major issues facing academics and practitioners
working in the field of public policy at the dawn of a new millennium. It seeks to
reflect on where public policy has been, in both theoretical and practical terms, and
to prompt debate on where it is going. The series emphasizes the need to understand
public policy in the context of international developments and global change. New
Horizons in Public Policy publishes the latest research on the study of the
policymaking process and public management, and presents original and critical
thinking on the policy issues and problems facing modern and post-modern
societies.
Titles in the series include:
Analysis and Public Policy
Successes, Failures and Directions for Reform
Stuart Shapiro
Public Policy Transfer
Micro-Dynamics and Macro-Effects
Edited by Magdaléna Hadjiisky, Leslie A. Pal and Christopher Walker
Policy Experiments, Failures and Innovations
Beyond Accession in Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by Agnes Batory, Andrew Cartwright and Diane Stone
How Far to Nudge?
Assessing Behavioural Public Policy
Peter John
Policy Problems and Policy Design
B. Guy Peters
Interrogating Public Policy Theory
A Political Values Perspective
Linda Courtenay Botterill and Alan Fenna
Public Policy Circulation
Arenas, Agents and Actions
Tom Baker and Christopher Walker
A Public Action Languages Approach
Peter Kevin Spink

A Public Action Languages Approach
Peter Kevin Spink

Centre for Public Administration and Government Studies,
Getulio Vargas Foundation, São Paulo, Brazil
NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY
Cheltenham, UK + Northampton, MA, USA
© Peter Kevin Spink 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission
of the publisher.
Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 2JA
UK
Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

William Pratt House
9 Dewey Court
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA
A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930814
This book is available electronically in the

Social and Political Science subject collection
DOI 10.4337/9781788118750
ISBN 978 1 78811 874 3 (cased)

ISBN 978 1 78811 875 0 (eBook)
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02
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Collective concerns: from policy studies to public action 1

2 From publics, parishes and philanthropy to resistance and
self-help: the civic side of public action 31
3 Social languages and the performative turn 58
4 Some active governments and their action languages 84
5 Public action languages seen from elsewhere: from the Treaty
of Rome and public administration reform to the arrival of
public policies in Brazil 115
6 From noisy rights to hybrid forums: languages of mobilization 143
7 Beyond public policy: public action languages and the
negotiation of possibilities 171
References 202
Index 227
Acknowledgements
For many years now, one of Latin America’s leading social psychologists
Mary Jane Paris Spink and I have shared the same office as we moved
from house to house in the UK and Brazil. Along the way our
bookshelves have merged into each other, we have debated how and
where to put which different academic subjects on what shelves and have
discussed each other’s ideas and research. There is no way that I can
adequately say thank you to her for all her many contributions.
Some years ago, we visited Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian archi-
pelago in the South Atlantic. At that time, it was a very simple place and
the main activity at night was to attend the lectures given by the members
of the Brazilian Government’s Marine Biology Station. In one lecture a
chance question led to an explanation of why dolphins ‘play’ in the bow
waves of ships. The answer was: they are not playing. Ships are a threat
to dolphins and it is the role of the younger, more agile male dolphins to
attract their attention in order to protect the school. The suggestion then
followed that the next time members of the audience got excited about
the dolphins ‘playing’ around the bows of the small fishing boats that
took tourists around the archipelago, we should look left or right and we
would probably see the whole school passing by. The following day,
when we went out by boat to explore the island, that was exactly what
happened. Two or three dolphins attracted our attention while many more
passed by about 50 yards away. There are lots of other ways of
introducing the discussion of public action languages, but the dolphins
and the biologist who answered the question deserve pride of place in the
acknowledgements. As the following pages will point out, we are at times
so fascinated by the words under the bow of the ship, especially public
policy, that we don’t see all the other terms, expressions and social
languages passing by.
I have always worked on the assumption that there is no such thing as
a personal idea in the social and applied social sciences. If some
everyday happening kick-starts a different line of thought, it is most
probable that other people are also moving along similar lines. Know-
ledge, or preferably knowledges, are a collective concern. If there is any
reason for our individual work it is to keep arguments moving on. Within
vi
Acknowledgements vii
the limits of my bibliographical ability, I have tried to be as fair as

possible to the many scholars that I would have preferred to talk to but
had to judge their views from their texts. Some of these were translations,
which are always complicated; others were written at different points in
time, which is also complicated. In the hope of avoiding misinterpreta-
tions, I have tried always to relate key arguments not as short citations
but as part of the text in which they appeared. Isolated phrases, as will be
seen, can be part of the problem. I apologize in advance for any errors or
misinterpretations.
The ideas that guide the book were put together in many discussions in
São Paulo and Barcelona in which Mario de Aquino Alves, Lupicínio
Iñiguez-Rueda, Gabriela Toledo Silva and Mary Jane Paris Spink were
leading figures. There were echoes in earlier discussions at the Tavistock
Institute in the 1970s, when the policy question was coming over the
horizon, especially with John Friend, Michael Norris and John Stringer.
But the book itself wouldn’t have happened without the support of Hal
Colebatch and Robert Hoppe who chaired the 2014 International Political
Science Association panel on Making Sense in Policy Practice at which
Gabriela Toledo Silva and I tried out this argument in an international
setting. Their comments and encouragement were more important than
perhaps they realized.
Key also in the production of the book was long-time research
colleague Robert H. Wilson of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public
Affairs, University of Texas–Austin, who co-organized a recent book on
the LBJ period (2015) and shared his impressions about the way public
affairs was ‘done’ at that time. I was fortunate to spend time researching
in the archives at the LBJ Library in Austin, and here very special thanks
are due to archivists Brian C. McNerney and Allen Fisher who taught me
about the day to day of the Johnson period and with whom I tested a
number of the ideas of a public action languages approach. These are not
just institutional acknowledgements, but the thanks of one researcher to
another. I would never have got on to the importance of speechwriting as
a collective production without them and they taught me more about the
backstage of the White House than they can possibly imagine.
I am grateful to the Editor of Cadernos de Gestão Pública e Cidadania
for permission to draw on a previous article outlining the public action
languages approach. Thanks also are due to the Brazilian National
Council for Scientific Research (CNPq grants 308318/2008-0 and
306927/2011-0); the São Paulo State Research Foundation (FAPESP); the
Ford Foundation for the support of the Public Management and Citizen-
ship Program and for the constant and stimulating presence of its Senior
viii Beyond public policy
Program Officer, Michael Lipsky; the Swedish International Develop-

ment Cooperation Agency and Ingemar Gustafsson; the Fundação
Getulio Vargas (FGV) and my colleagues in the Centre for Public
Administration and Government Studies at the São Paulo School of
Business Administration of the Fundação Getulio Vargas, including
Mario Aquino Alves, Eliane Barbosa da Conceição and Maria do Carmo
Meirelles Cruz for help with cases in Chapter 5. Finally, but certainly not
least, special thanks are due to the Editorial team of Edward Elgar for
their help with the manuscript, and Harry Fabian who was key in turning
an idea into a possibility and finding six anonymous reviewers of the
original proposal whose comments and critiques were of great help in
shaping the final version.
1. Collective concerns: from policy

studies to public action
Edward by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke
of Guyan, to all to whom these presents shall come, sends greeting: we have
seen the charter of the Lord Henry our father, sometime King of England,
concerning the Forest in these words.
(…)
Know ye, that we, unto the honour of Almighty God, and for the salvation
of our soul and the souls of our ancestors and successors, to the
advancement of Holy Church, and amendment of our realm, of our mere and
free will have given and granted, to all archbishops, bishops, earls, barons
and to all of this our realm, these liberties, following, to be kept in our
kingdom of England forever.
(…)
Every freeman may agest his own wood within our forest at his pleasure,
and shall take his pawnage. Also we do grant, that every freeman may drive
his swine freely without impediment through our demesne woods, for to
agest them in their own woods, or else where they will. And if the swine of
any freeman lie one night within our forest, there shall be no occasion taken
thereof, whereby he may lose anything of his own.
(…)
(The Charter of the Forest contains part of the 1215 Magna Carta and with
minor revision was re-issued in 1225. Transcript from The National
Archives, UK)
INTRODUCTION
Why would somebody start a book entitled Beyond Public Policy with a
quotation from an early Norman English statute? Could it be because the
Charter of the Forest is often referred to, along with the Magna Carta, as
one of the moments in institutional history when it is possible to get a
sense of some kind of discussion about liberties? There are references to
the free movement of pigs and, in other parts, to other activities that
together suggest that forests, especially the royal forests covering large
parts of England, were far more complex in their physical make-up and
in their political, economic and social importance than the scaled-down
versions of woods that are current today.1 However, even though it may
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2 Beyond public policy
be comforting to trace the discussion of rights or budgeting (in the case

of the Magna Carta) to these earlier events and social processes, they are
beyond current comprehension for most scholars, apart from those highly
skilled medievalists for whom this is a lifetime’s work. Nonetheless, and
despite this somewhat impenetrable distance, there clearly was some kind
of issue, concern or dilemma to be resolved. How those who took part in
the discussions talked about this and what terms they used is unavailable;
because there are no meeting notes, recordings or scraps of private
memoirs. But they certainly got on with it somehow.
Most current societies are what they are because, over the years, people
as families, tribes, villages, nations and other forms of collective life, have
found it useful to regard certain happenings as mutually important and
have sought ways of talking about and doing something about them.
Which people were considered as legitimate to engage in the definition of
questions, actions and the form of their presentation never was, and
continues never to be, synonymous with the totality of those present.
Over the years the social ideas about how these different bits and pieces
should be linked together changed, sometimes dramatically, and will
continue to do so.2 As the years passed, these different ways of thinking
and talking about who, what, when and how began to be brought together
under what is today called the discussion of government and governing.
The Charter of the Forest was just one of many moments in which,
because it was registered, it is possible to get a small glimpse of these
social processes in action. There were many other moments before this
that have left their traces in buildings, seals, drawings and other icons.
There are glimpses in traditional verse, religious and early philosophical
texts and, along with the introduction of printing, important analyses of
the broader flow of intellectual ideas.3 But, until recently, it has been
very difficult to get much sense of the more practical side and especially
the discussions of the actions themselves. That is, to ask how people
talked to one another, framed their concerns, decided who to listen to,
where to seek guidance and what to do.
Beyond Public Policy is concerned with part of this ongoing flux of
ideas. Starting from the empirical recognition that public policy is
currently ‘the’ articulating concept for talking about government in
action, it wonders what happened to the many other forms of discussing
and doing public affairs that were present before policy began to move to
the centre of the stage, in the 1970s and 1980s. How did actions in the
public arena happen in other moments, what did governments do when
they didn’t have policy and what happened to the terms, expressions and
meanings that they used? Did these different action languages bow down
and rearrange themselves within the organizing characteristics of this
Collective concerns 3
new and clearly important concept? Did they become obsolete, or are
they still around and what does this say about the dynamics of public
affairs? How central in fact is public policy; is it ‘the’ synonym for the
work of government? To answer these and other questions it is necessary
to get beyond public policy and, as it were, look at it from the outside. To
ask what was around before, what is still around today and what may be
currently emerging.
For the social scientist faced with the challenge of learning from
history, even from recent history, it is easy to fall into the trap of reading
history from the present to the past, or, as historians say, ‘reading history
backwards’ and to assume that all earlier peoples had governments, forms
of representation, public agendas, budgets, policies and such like.4 It may
be helpful to organize material in certain of today’s categories as a way
of indicating the type of question under study, but the danger comes
when this is taken as a description of what was actually happening.
Indeed, in many cases and until recently, nobody would have a clue about
what is meant by most of the current terms in use for discussing
governing or, if they were used, it would be in a very different manner. In
addition, as Thompson pointed out in contrasting the complexity of the
actions of the English crowd in the eighteenth century with the modern
view of uncontrollable riots: ‘It is difficult to re-imagine the moral
assumptions of another social configuration. It is not easy for us to
conceive that there may have been a time, within a smaller and more
integrated community, when it appeared “unnatural” that any man should
profit from the necessity of others’ (1971, p. 131).
Why, it may well be asked, such concern with public policy? After all,
isn’t it obvious that there are policies? Today, if there was a panel to
select the one contemporary expression most present when politicians,
journalists, academics and international advisors talk about responsible
public affairs and government in action, it is likely that this will be some
variant of public policy. It seems so natural to talk about policy
documents or policy advisors and there are many thousands of scholars,
students, courses, conferences, books, politicians and public sector work-
ers for whom the world of public policies is as real as night and day. Yet,
as the different chapters will show, it is only one amongst many ways of
talking and doing public affairs and, in its current form, dates from the
end of the 1960s in the USA, the 1970s in the UK, the 1980s in France
and Spain and the 1990s in Brazil, amongst others.
Humankind is where it is because it never stopped tinkering with its
basic rules, concerns and their resulting procedures and collective forms.
In order for that to happen, people had to meet in talk and there is no
reason to assume that such talk was consensual. Equally, the notion of
government and the practice of governing brings certain assumptions

about who does what for whom, which leads to other assumptions about
how this takes place and the different social action languages in which
this takes place. Government and public policy are only two of these,
budgeting and planning are others, public administration is another, and
while government has had a relatively long life as an expression, with
public administration somewhat shorter, policy is a relative newcomer.
Yet, in this short time, it has come to dominate the way people talk about
doing public administration and government as a central component of
the democratic order. Policy, then, seems a good idea; good ideas are
almost by definition useful and the public sector has long been a source
of, and a market for, good ideas. Indeed, as Beyond Public Policy will
argue, there is no problem in public policy being just one more
contribution to an expanding universe of social ideas that different parts
of humanity create for themselves in order to do and describe certain
relations and actions. Nor is it a question of being right or wrong. Lots of
people use the notion. It seems to create bridges between different parts
of society, connecting citizens to politicians, giving meaning to the
activities of administrators, enabling political parties to vie for public
attention, and it allows academics to comment on what to do about a
wide range of issues.
As long as there are themes, topics, issues and questions of public
concern, there will also be ideas, arguments, concepts and techniques for
actions in relation to these concerns. Public policy is a language for
action that is shared by many people. It is a social language: part
professional, part political and part everyday. As a concept, it may seem
at times abstract, as also are themes like justice, but doing justice is as
performative as making public policy. Social languages are comfortable
for those who use them and policy, in this sense, is no different; it makes
sense of a part of the world. However, there are problems.
First, although it may be seen as central it is only one of a number of
similar social languages, equally part professional, part political and part
everyday, that can be found in and around government action. Take, for
example, budgeting, finance, planning, diplomacy, rights, systems, direc-
tives, decisions and laws, as well as the many different versions of public
administration or management, amongst others. They are rarely hierarchi-
cally or logically related, frequently have their own professional roots
and can be found in different departments, ministries and branches of
government. Some of them have been in place for a long time before
policy, others are more recent or emerging. Some were seen as equally
central in their times and others may be vying for centrality. They are
also languages which are comfortable to be positioned within, from
which to make sense of the world. Within each there will be different
approaches and even different theories – just as in public policy.
Second, there is the problem with centrality itself. Ideas will arise
which help solve certain questions and offer frames for organizing
affairs. In doing so they will create their own social languages but, in
time, others will appear to offer better possibilities. Currently, in a
number of areas it is governance that seems to be moving ahead, even
though the rhetorical structure for this proposition has curious similarities
to what has been said before. Here for example are the editors of a recent
handbook on Governance:
Concepts and approaches come and go in the social sciences. Some of them
are more than passing moments and become steadily growing research areas
that attract increasing scholarly attention. Some of the new research areas are
stabilized and consolidated and gradually take the form of new paradigms that
signal a scientific turn and give rise to a significant reorientation of the
scholarly activities of researchers and the ideas and actions of practitioners.
The research on governance has recently evolved into such a paradigm.
Although the notion of governance can be traced far back into history, the
interest in governance surged in the 1990s and has grown ever since. Today,
governance is one of the most frequently used social science concepts in the
world, as any internet search will readily confirm. A vast array of researchers,
research centers, journals and conferences are devoted to the study of
governance, and many new theories of governance have been promulgated
over the last two decades. (Ansell and Torfing, 2016, p. 1)
Centrality might make normative sense as a device for organizing books

and courses, but if government action, governing in the broader sense, is
performed by a heterogeneity of different social languages, is there any
practical sense in centrality; that is, of a specific social language that
somehow holds everything together? Some of the languages may interact
with each other on similar terms, but others may have their distinctive
hierarchical views on which is more dominant. Others, again, may
inhabit very different parts of the public landscape and go their own way.
For example, the UK Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing,
Communities and Local Government, by Command of Her Majesty,
presented the National Planning Policy Framework to Parliament in July
2018 (Cm 9680). The document uses planning, policies, framework, law,
development plan, decision, planning policies, international obligations,
statutory requirements, ministerial statements, planning system, sustain-
able development, overarching objectives, presumptions, plan-making
and decision-taking – all in the space of the opening three pages. All
those who are active in the field of housing, communities and local
government presumably understand what is being said and know how to
position themselves within the text. But does it make sense to talk about
an overriding and central ‘something’ that holds all this together?
If these first two problems raise serious doubts about the idea of public
policy, or anything, as the main articulator, or even synonym, of
government in action, a third is far more crucial. Is collective life merely
a question of government and the governed – even if both are ‘the
people’? How do the parishes, the friends of the library, the local
historical society, the neighbourhood babysitting circles and community
associations fit in? What about the many charities, philanthropic bodies
and micro-collective soup kitchens, street parties and animal rescue
centres? What about the pressure groups and social movements, interfaith
networks, community activists and street protests which also have their
action languages, and which are just as social in their own ways? They
are also heterogeneous, also comfortable to be within, and also are ways
of making sense of parts of the world. Is governing just about represen-
tation or is it also about those who independently voice the concerns that
they feel are present: the different publics and their problems (Dewey,
1927) or, in today’s terms, their issues and rights?
The result, as the book will seek to show, is that it is necessary to go
beyond public policy and recognize the many other social languages for
public action present, not as auxiliaries but as equally active players in
and around public affairs. Present in the not necessarily harmonious
relationships between governments, representatives and the people they
serve; and present in those areas of action where, for varying reasons, the
public or public(s) prefer to get on and do it themselves. Understanding
these differences and learning how to create and negotiate possibilities,
rather than seeking to impose new centralities, is the challenge to be faced.
As a final point, going beyond public policy means looking outside
public policy at what is also happening in other social languages. Public
policy as currently understood appeared gradually in different western
democracies in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It follows therefore –
rather than is a precursor of – many of the key developments of the
modern welfare states. If it is not key in their formation, what then is its
role and relationship? Why did it become so popular? The answer to this
is beyond the scope of the book and would require a different form of
study – but there are at least suggestions that can be made.
SOCIAL LANGUAGES AND PUBLIC ACTION

Paying attention to the performative aspect of language has been a fairly
constant theme in the social sciences since the late 1950s, stimulated to a
large extent by the debate in philosophy on language and action. In

different ways, some more radical than others, the result was a swing
from the idea of an independently existing out-there reality to one that
was performed through language. This swing, often described as the
linguistic turn because of the 1967 volume edited by Rorty, also resulted
in a number of different proposals and ideas, such as social construction,
post-empiricism and postmodernism, as well as expressions such as
enactment and structuration, that were concerned with the more specific
performative aspects. Overall, it is much less a paradigm, school of
thought or a specific theory; rather the move is to multiple ways of
looking at the way words produce what takes place rather than just
describe it. Furthermore, it assumes, in different ways, that people are
conscious performers. They are very aware that the answer ‘I do’ to a
question about who wants chocolate sauce on their ice cream is very
different to the same ‘I do’ in a marriage ceremony.
Austin introduced the idea of performatives in his 1962 text on how to
do things with words and later Butler was to use the term in an important
text on gender and feminist theory (1988). Amongst the different
consequences of these ideas was a growing attention to discourse analysis
and discursive practices and, more specifically for Beyond Public Policy,
to the way that social meanings circulate in the day to day within
scientific and professional communities – what have been called interpre-
tive repertoires.5 In a similar vein, Bakhtin saw social language as
‘a discourse peculiar to a specific stratum of society (professional, age
group, etc.) within a given social system at a given time’ (Bakhtin, 1981,
p. 430). In his later essay on speech genres, Bakhtin provides a further
definition when discussing the inseparable link between style and genre:
‘A particular function (scientific, technical, commentarial, business, every
day) and the particular conditions of speech communication specific for
each sphere give rise to particular genres, that is certain relatively stable
thematic, compositional and stylistic types of utterances.’ (Bakhtin, 1986,
p. 64). Hence, when people are described as public policy advisors, or
there is talk about policy making, policy processes, policy documents or
policy presentations, these terms will be found as part of repertoires that
both make sense of policy and, in doing so, are policy themselves.
Similarly, planning, budgeting and the many other public action practices
are also performative social languages, or, to use an earlier expression of
Fleck, thought collectives (1935). They are ways of enacting public
affairs.
To argue that there was a very effective public life before policy, that
these different social languages are still very present and that they will
continue, along with policy, to play their part if or when the next centre
stage social language comes along, is not a straightforward task. To begin

with, handbook after handbook seems to be able to extend the field of
policy studies into new epistemological and critical dimensions.6 The
impression is given that there is nothing that policy cannot do and no end
to its elasticity. Also, the frequent mention of new paradigms coupled
with the characteristics of many disciplinary social epistemologies,7
suggests that there is little need to look at what went before; knowledge
is driven by the assumption that what is recent is what is important.
However, the action languages of the English crowd of the eighteenth
century didn’t disappear with the arrival of different forms of economic
relationship, labour unions and new patterns of representation and
pressure. Observers and chroniclers may have switched their attentions,
but social languages remain social. A few may disappear without trace,
others blend into new circumstances, new ones will appear, but some will
keep on making sense of the world. They can be found in the corridors of
public sector agencies, in the tumult of protest and campaigns, in
speeches and documents or in the solidarity of community-based service
provision. Being performative, they may cooperate or compete with one
another for place and space, or at times just go their own way, living
parallel lives. It is not a question of preferring one over the other, but of
paying more attention to these different attempts to order collective life,
including, most importantly, the assumption that collective lives can be
reduced to what governments do. What is under discussion in Beyond
Public Policy is not a change from one central articulating concept to
another, but the very idea of the central concept itself.
Paying more attention to the performative aspects of social languages
means recognizing that they are socio-technical. They introduce ways of
doing things, give new meanings to old objects, create new objects which
in turn create new meanings and institutionalities, as well as suggesting
different ways of seeing things; they can be soft technologies8 but
produce a lot of hard bits and pieces. Discussion on traffic control may
acquire the notion of calming or taming; from somewhere will come the
idea of putting raised bumps on the roads in key areas; speed bumps
become known as sleeping policemen in certain parts of the world, giving
a different social twist on a very solid object. But these new micro-
institutions are by no means inevitable and are also open to challenge.
Ahmed Kathadra devoted his life from an early age to the South African
freedom struggle and was sentenced to life imprisonment along with
Nelson Mandela at the 1963 Rivonia Trial. In his memoirs, he reflected
on getting used to life after being released in 1989:
As for language use, efficiency aids and jargon, I recall how activists in the
1940s and 1950s managed to organize the Passive Resistance Campaign and
the Defiance Campaign, the boycotts of potatoes, tobacco and buses, and the
Congress of the People without the benefit of consultants, events organisers,
brainstorming sessions, strategic workshops, think tanks, key note addresses,
organograms and so on. I still have not fully adjusted to these, and I suspect
my comrades are exasperated whenever I question the necessity for these
so-called aids. (Kathadra, 2004, p. 348)
Passive resistance campaigns, boycotts and congresses are just as much a

part of public affairs and collective life as are votes, plans, budgets and
policies; and they too have their social languages and repertoires, key
meanings that circulate and make sense of activities. It is difficult, when
thinking about collective life, in the west not to be influenced by a
common theme in Judaism, Islam and Christianity: concern with the
unknown other. There are similar elements in the east, the north and the
south; indeed, if there weren’t it would probably have been impossible to
arrive at the idea of universal human rights and its underpinning notions
of dignity and humanity in the 1940s. Faith-based organizations, at least
in western public sector literature, are rarely talked about when the
subject of social policy and non-governmental organizations comes up.
Yet, as service providers and first responders in times of crisis they are a
ubiquitous presence in thousands of communities. Parish halls, syna-
gogues and mosques are the meeting places of associations, playgroups,
debating societies all throughout the west, and their members and leaders
are often at the forefront of a number of key public issues, especially
those linked to inequality.
Indeed, the many different ways of ordering collective life go on even
further, beyond the spheres of government and religion to include other
notions of community such as neighbourhood associations, assembly
halls, meeting rooms, clubs and societies which, with the technologies of
printing and writing, enabled people to produce minutes, pass out pam-
phlets and register events. Civil society, as it is called today and somewhat
different to Ferguson’s earlier conception of the dedication to civil concerns
(1767), should never be taken as a synonym of collective cooperation with
government. Long before the current arrangements of relatively stable
political parties, general franchise, transparency and accountability, the
different social languages of protest played and continue to play their
part. All of this, and more, is collective life. Here, Rosanvallon’s approach
to the political and its history provides another important starting point:
As I understand it, ‘the political’ is at once a field and a project. As a field it
designates the site where the multiple threads of the lives of men and women
come together, what allows all of their activities and discourses to be

understood in an overall framework. It exists in virtue of the fact that there
exists a ‘society’ acknowledged by its members as a whole that affords
meaningfulness to its constituent parts. As a project, the political means the
process whereby a human collectivity, which is never to be understood as a
simple ‘population’, progressively takes on the face of an actual community.
It is, rather, constituted by an always contentious process whereby the explicit
or implicit rules of what they can share and accomplish in common – rules
which give a form to the life of the polity – are elaborated. (Rosanvallon,
2006, p. 34)
This is where the second part of the book’s title requires an introduction.
The notion of public action has been around in a civic vein for a number
of years as, for example in Hirschman’s (1982) discussion of public and
private interests: ‘Public action, action in the public interest, striving for
the public happiness – these all refer to action in the political realm, to
involvement of the citizen in civic or community affairs’ (p.6). At around
the same time, it began to assume a more precise definition that has
carried it through much of the last 30 years, especially in French
pragmatic sociology. Sometimes, in translation, there is a tendency to
switch action publique into policy, but there is a subtle and at the same
time quite radical distinction between the two that is followed by a
majority of authors.9 In an earlier key text on the discussion of develop-
ment and hunger, Dreze and Sen (1989) used public action to mean: ‘not
merely the activities of the state, but also social actions taken by
members of the public – both “collaborative” (through civic cooperation)
and “adversarial” (through social criticism and political opposition)’ (p.
vii). Thoenig (1997) will make the same distinction in pointing out that
the state does not have the monopoly over the public nor have the public
given up their control over what they see as public or of their own
autonomy for action. The same line can be found in the introduction to
Laborier and Trom’s (2003) collection of readings on historical and
sociological aspects of public action:
Public action is understood, in the broad sense, to cover the activities of the
public powers and more widely all activity articulated in a public space and in
reference to a common good. This extensive definition brings together in the
same area of activity, those actions directly as a result of public authority and
those that come from the ordinary activities of citizens as they show their
concerns about collective life (p. 11).10
It is not uncommon to find reference to ‘action by the public’ in

discussions of public affairs. However, often this is reduced to either
pressuring for change, for example through civil society organizations, or
as a reference to the fact that most public services depend on public

collaboration to be effective. Beyond Public Policy goes beyond this
‘add-on’ approach to public affairs and takes the ordinary actions of
citizens, for and from themselves, as equally important as those of
government and as creating distinctive arenas of public action. As will be
seen as the book progresses, at many times in the past and the present,
actions take place not because ‘government isn’t doing something,
therefore …’ but because of a collective and independent sense that ‘we
must do something about …’.
Putting the two parts of the title together, the field of public action
suggests an ever-changing and complex arena which is formed by these
very different social or action languages. There is no presumption that
there is a logical relationship and, despite professional or disciplinary
pressures, much less a hierarchical ordering. Policy is in there some-
where, but that is all. For all practical purposes, it is only one in a line of
new kids on the block when seen from some parts of the governing side
of affairs and totally ignored in many other areas of public action.11
GETTING THINGS DONE WITH OTHER WORDS – THE

EXAMPLE OF DIRECTIVES
At this point it is useful to bring in an example of just one of these many
other terms. Article 288 of the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) on the func-
tioning of the European Union (EU) establishes five ways in which the
EU can exercise its competence. These are: regulations, directives,
decisions, recommendations and opinions. Directives are ‘binding, as to
the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is
addressed, but shall leave to the national authorities the choice of form
and methods’.
In the aftermath of the Second World War the same term, directives,
with the same operational meaning, was to play a key role in the
recuperation of daily life in Germany. There, the Allied military leaders
faced not only the questions of demobilization and security, but the
problems and traumas of different peoples in shock, without food, work
and often without shelter. Germany had been divided into four occupied
zones (one for each of the Allies) and, while there was also an overall
Allied Control Council, each zone was more or less independent in the
early stage. A recent study by Knowles (2014) has traced part of the story
of reconstruction in the British zone. The situation being faced was
catastrophic:
In May 1945 Germany was in chaos. Observers reported that the destruction
in some of the larger cities had to be seen to be believed with, for example,
66% of the houses in Cologne destroyed, and in Düsseldorf 93% un-
inhabitable. The economy was at a standstill and no central government
remained to implement instructions issued by the Allies. Millions of people
were homeless, or attempting to return to homes that no longer existed (…)
Field-Marshall Montgomery, appointed Commander-in-Chief and Military
Governor of the British zone of occupation on 22 May 1945, later recalled the
immediate problems they faced: what to do with 1.5 million German POWs, a
further million wounded German soldiers, similar numbers of civilian German
refugees and Displaced Persons of many different nationalities, no working
transport or communication services, industry and agriculture at a standstill, a
scarcity of food and the risk of starvation and epidemics of disease. He added
that: ‘I was a soldier and had not been trained to handle anything of this
nature …’. (Knowles, 2014, p. 2)
The language they used to talk about what was necessary was the same
language of directives that can be found in the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007.
Directives say what is to be achieved but leave open the choice of how.
Directives were, and continue to be, a long-standing part of military
language, something which all military leaders at that time had been
actively using for the previous seven years. In the words of Montgom-
ery’s Deputy, General Brian Robertson, written in January 1946:
The directives were not many and much was left to the initiative of
individuals … the (military) detachments entered into a land of desolation and
bewilderment. Government above the level of the parish council had ceased.
Everything was in disorder; people were stunned and helpless … ‘First things
first’ was the motto when the Military Government first raised its sign in
Germany. (Cited in Knowles, 2014, p. 3)
The directives focused on rebuilding economic and political life. In

Knowles’ description:
As early as July 1945, less than three months after the end of the war, he
(Montgomery) issued a new draft directive to British army commanders and
Control Commission heads of division, finalised on 10 September 1945.
Unlike earlier wartime directives, the new directive identified steps to be
taken to reconstruct German economic and political life, address shortages of
food, fuel and housing, improve transport facilities, re-open schools, permit
freedom of assembly, licence political parties and prepare for future elections.
Con O’Neill a senior Foreign Office official and leading authority on
Germany, minuted that the directive ‘gives me, in general, the impression that
British Military Govt. has now embarked on a policy of Full Speed Ahead for
German rehabilitation’. (Knowles, 2014, p. 3)
The results were by and large successful in many areas, much more so
than the desperate consequences of the First World War (one of which
will play a part in the next chapter), and, despite problems with housing
and food supply, they were able to provide an important period of
stability.
Directives are a social action language like many others. They identify
goals and responsibilities, but like in the Treaty of Lisbon, do not go into
the methods. They were also part of an action language that was familiar
to those involved, even though the themes and issues were totally new.
Different to current notions of policy, there is no mention of implemen-
tation; it is assumed that the directives are viable and that those involved
are able to find a way through. As Knowles reports, the results were
considerably more effective than could have been imagined. Policy was
‘full speed ahead’ an expression of a stance, posture or position, as will
be discussed in the following section and whose variants, such as ‘let’s
get on with it’, will also be found in Chapter 4.
While article 288 of the EU does not use policy, the word can certainly
be found when the concern is with different issue areas, such as the
common agricultural policy (CAP):
The common agricultural policy (CAP) is aimed at helping European farmers
meet the need to feed more than 500 million Europeans. Its main objectives
are to provide a stable, sustainably produced supply of safe food at affordable
prices for consumers, while also ensuring a decent standard of living for 22
million farmers and agricultural workers. (EU Common Agricultural Policy,
Agriculture and Rural Development, overview, June 2016)
The CAP has hundreds of different actions in different areas, and half an
hour wandering around the CAP section of the EU website will be
enough to identify all sorts of different ways of talking about the
different ongoing actions. As the example suggests and the book pro-
poses, no one expression is correct nor is there a specific definition for
each term that enables them to be placed in order on a conceptual
bookshelf. Rather, it is to take all of them seriously and look at the
realities they enact and perform.
POLICY BEFORE THE POLICY SCIENCES

If public policy and public policies are newcomers to talking about action
in public affairs – less so in some countries and action arenas, more so in
others – the same is not the case with the word policy itself. Some of its
different threads of meaning are continuous and others discontinuous,
and as with the emergence of ideas and notions in other areas and fields,
it is certainly not a question of asking where, when and much less why. It
appears, as police, in relation to order or local government in various
versions in different languages, and some kind of generic notion of
policy – as a course of action or position in relation to action that is
adopted as advantageous or expedient – can already be found in the
English language when the new technology for printing books helped
stimulate the standardization of the language in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.12 Here are two much-used examples: honestie the
best policie (1599) or thys was the crafty polycye of the clergye (1544).13
Another thread of meaning can be found in the materialism that arrives
along with notions of risk, insurance and, later, Lloyd’s of London:
policy as a written promise. Who does not have an insurance policy kept
safely somewhere from the days before digital transactions. Adding in
other bits and pieces related to the polis, police, polity, even government
itself, it is not too difficult to imagine the gradual social, organizational
and inter-organizational sensemaking (Weick, 1995) that will lead to a
‘posture towards action’, or of the importance of some kind of declar-
ation about how a person, community or society can be expected to act in
certain circumstances, including in the public arena. Without falling into
the trap of suggesting a magical starting point, certainly one of the early
areas of government in which this seems to happen is that of foreign
affairs – see, for example, the foreign affairs speeches collected by Jones
(1914), a member of the UK parliament, in his book on British oratory.
Here is the Earl of Chatham, otherwise William Pitt the Elder,
addressing the House of Lords in London on 22 January 1770 on the
topic of the defence of weaker states:
My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble duke, that nothing less than an
immediate attack upon the honour or interest of this nation can authorize us to
interpose in defence of weaker states, and in stopping the enterprises of an
ambitious neighbour. Whenever that narrow, selfish policy has prevailed in
our councils, we have constantly experienced the fatal effects of it. By
suffering our natural enemies to oppress the Powers less able than we are to
make a resistance, we have permitted them to increase their strength; we have
lost the more favourable opportunities of opposing them with success; and
found ourselves at last obliged to run every hazard, in making that cause our
own, in which we were not wise enough to take part while the expense and
danger might have been supported by others. (Jones, 1914/2004, p. 7)
Pitt used the term policy very much as posture or position, but with a
focus: the action of governments to other governments. As there is no
information on how Jones made the selection, it can only be assumed that
they were at least a partial cross-section of parliamentary themes and

addresses. In his collection, policy appears in the text of many speeches
on foreign affairs (for example George Canning, Foreign Secretary,
addressing the House of Commons on negotiations relative to Spain, 30
April 1823), but it would only be much later that it appears in the titles of
speeches themselves. (For example, the speech of John Bright on
‘Principles of Foreign Policy’ delivered in Birmingham, 1858, or of
Gladstone on the ‘Right Principles of Foreign Policy’ in West Calder,
Midlothian in 1879).
This idea of policy as posture or position, with its fairly long history of
usage, can be considered almost as vernacular, part of the everyday
horizon of rhetorical possibilities of at least that part of the population
that shared a more general dialect or were able to read similar texts. It
can be found in other fields than that of foreign affairs but it is certainly
in the sphere of relations between countries that it was most present in
public life. Indeed, it could be argued that, as the western world very
slowly settled down to the idea of nations, the idea of knowing how
countries stood on certain issues became an important tool for govern-
ments and leaders. To take a stance on issues or problems requires
recognizing some set of affairs or questions as problematic. It also
implies that there will be topics on which, for a variety of reasons, there
might be no positions to be held; a theme that will appear in later
chapters.
In 1867, journalist Walter Bagehot published a collection of essays
with the title The English Constitution. The following citation is from the
introduction:
No one can approach to an understanding of the English Institutions, or of
others which being the growth of many centuries exercise a wide sway over
mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In such constitu-
tions there are two parts (not indeed separable with microscopic accuracy, for
the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of division): first, those which excite
and preserve the reverence of the population, – the dignified parts, if I may so
call them; and next, the efficient parts, – those by which, it in fact, works and
rules. There are two great objects which every constitution must attain to be
successful, which every old and celebrated one must have wonderfully
achieved: – every constitution must first gain authority, and then use
authority; it must first win the loyalty and confidence of mankind, and then
employ that homage in the work of government. (Bagehot, 1867, p. 4–5)
In describing a host of different traditional customs and practices and

publishing them together under a single title, Bagehot, as Burke and
Pallares-Burke comment (2016), could be said to have invented the
British constitution. It was certainly something that he and his fellow

Victorians were fond of discussing. The mix of acts of parliament, court
judgements, conventions and charters was never coded and keeps getting
added to, but this does not stop the British from feeling a sense of
constitutionality nor of his book being studied, even today, by ministers
and monarchs.
Bagehot’s text is an early account of how the different institutions of
politics happen in the day to day. His delicate demolition of the belief in
the legal separation of institutions, through his analysis of monarchical
powers and the executive power of Cabinet, is an early warning not to
assume normative definitions as actual descriptions and has much to
contribute to the current discussion on ‘policy work’. Perhaps the best
indication of his influence is that, even today, the journal which he
helped transform into the world’s leading economic weekly (The Econo-
mist) continues to publish a regular commentary on British life and
politics under his name. The few times that Bagehot used the word policy
were, as could have been expected given previous comments, as: foreign,
international or national policy, or as the policy of parliament, govern-
ment, department (the English word for ministry), monarch or presidents
and assemblies in the case of comparisons with other countries; in all
cases, policy as posture, position, or as an approach to be taken.
In the USA, influential texts were beginning to be produced on a related
question, that of the separation of politics from administration. Woodrow
Wilson will talk about the legislative and policy making functions of
government but, as he puts it, this does not mean that the administrator is
a passive instrument: ‘the distinction is between general plans and special
means’ (1887, p. 212). Shortly after in Politics and Administration, Good-
now (1900/2012) will talk about the two functions of government: politics
and administration. He makes this distinction through the idea of oper-
ations necessary to the expression of the will of the state or in operations
necessary to the execution of that will. ‘Politics has to do with policies or
expressions of the state will. Administration has to do with the execution
of these policies’ (p.18). Here, even though the language appears familiar,
general plans, special means and expressions of state will are still much
more linked to the notion of major areas of posture or approach than to our
present-day expressions.
Moving from individual examples to a more archival approach, an
important source for reference is the network of official deposit libraries
where publishers are required to deposit copies of their publications
(a practice that began in France in 1537). In the case of the UK deposit
libraries, concern is specifically with British publications, but there
are also other English language exchanges. Despite restrictions, and
assuming that giving titles to books is a social process that happens in

conversations, the results can be taken as at least indicative.
The Cambridge University library archives provide support for the
view that this early usage of policy as ‘position or stance on some
important concern’ was the lead contender for meaning up until the
period shortly before the Second World War. In 1826 Joseph Priestley
published his Lectures on History and General Policy: To Which is
Prefixed an Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active
Life and a year later William Phelan published in Dublin a History of
the Policy of the Church of Rome in Ireland. Later, in 1905, J.L. Le
Breton Hammond wrote Towards a Social Policy: Or Suggestions for
Constructive Reform about the early reform movements, and there were
histories of British Colonial Policy in 1905 (H.E. Egerton), the Cam-
bridge History of British Foreign Policy in 1922 (A.W. Ward and G.P.
Gooch) and of French Colonial Policy (S.H. Roberts) in 1929. Eco-
nomic policy makes an appearance in 1923 with J.S. Reyes’ text on the
Legislative History of America’s Economic Policy towards the Philip-
pines in 1923 and education in 1931 with Nicholas Hans’ History of
Russian Educational Policy.
A very similar pattern emerges from the British Library catalogue
where there are 4,110 different printed items with policy in or near the
title from 1600–1950. Of these, most of the earlier uses are religious and
it is only in the nineteenth century that foreign affairs (diplomacy, war
and the colonies) start to take over. There are as many items in the 35
years from 1901 as there were in the whole century before (approxi-
mately 1,200) and a similar number in the 15 years from 1936. This
increase in usage has to be offset in part by the growth of the book and
printing industry as a whole, but the range of titles points to the changes
taking place. In the first part of the twentieth century, foreign policy has
been joined by commercial policy, later economic policy and the policy
of specific political parties (for example, liberal policy). Between 1936–
1950 this has been added to again with transportation policy, workers’
nutrition and social policy, educational policy in India, but still variants
of foreign affairs are very much around. As to public policy, there are
only 67 items in the period 1936–1950, mostly from the USA. These are
mainly items on economics, a few on secondary education and a
collection of classroom materials for discussing current issues of public
policy in schools and colleges by the American Political Science Associ-
ation (Beard and Smith, 1936).
Elsewhere, as with Roosevelt’s Social Security Bill of 1935 and even
the wartime meetings chaired by Beveridge in 1942 mentioned in
Chapter 4, there is very little if any mention of policy in the way that it
is understood today – especially when it acquired the extension ‘public

policy’. Even in the few places that policy appears in Lasswell’s classical
text Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936), it remains in the
vernacular. It is not in the index nor in the contents and, when it appears,
it is either as national policy or public relations policy and certainly has
no similarity to his later arguments. Those who seek to place the
definition and paternity of public policy in this book are mistaken.
To finish, here is policy very much as it has appeared in these different
texts and citations, reflected in Webster’s second edition of the New
International Dictionary of the English Language, published in Spring-
field, MA, in 1934:
1. Civil or ecclesiastical polity; government; the science of government; also
a government or state. Now Rare.
2. Prudence or wisdom in the management of public and private affairs;
wisdom; sagacity; shrewdness; wit; as, the policy of such a course is
doubtful.
3. A wise scheme or device; a contrivance, esp. a cunning contrivance; a
stratagem; trick. Now Rare.
4. Management, administration, or procedure based primarily on temporal or
material interest, rather than on higher principles; hence more or less
disparagingly, worldly wisdom; as, he allowed policy to outweigh honor.
5. A settled or definite course or method adopted and followed by a
government, institution, body or individual. Honesty is the best policy. Old
Saying.
WHY ARE POLICY SCIENCES DIFFERENT?

If there is to be one key distinction introduced in The Policy Sciences
(Lerner and Lasswell, 1951) it is not in the application of sciences to aid
government action; although concern with the contributions of social
research, its methods and the role of social scientists in relation to
research policy was part of the book. Nor is it in Charles Easton
Rothwell’s preface to the book on behalf of the Hoover Institute, which
provides a very workable and matter-of-fact definition of policy as it was
at the time; no longer the policy of foreign affairs but not yet the
fully-fledged policy of the 1970s. Rather, it lies in the first of Lasswell’s
two-part policy orientation: ‘A policy orientation has been developed that
cuts across the existing specializations. The orientation is twofold. In
part, it is directed to the policy process, and in part toward the intelligent
needs of policy’ (1951, p. 3). He went on to describe: ‘In the realm of
policy, more attention has been given to planning, and to improving the
information on which staff and operational decisions are based. We have
become more aware of the policy process as a suitable study in its own
right …’ (p.3).
Technical and scientific knowledge, albeit in a less organized way, had
already been at the service of governments in the previous century (as,
for example, in the case of Pasteur) and academic counsel even longer
(deLeon, 1989); Policy Sciences would certainly make this relationship
clearer. However, the big change lay in the proposal to study the policy
process itself, for in doing so it helped to turn policy from a vernacular
expression, freely used and readily understood, into a self-conscious
discipline. The proposal to study a process presumes, within the broad
neo-empiricist framework of the time, that this process exists, independ-
ently of the observer. Lasswell was very clear about the novelty of the
proposal: ‘The expression “policy sciences” is not in general use in the
United States, although it is occurring more frequently now than before.
Perhaps it should be pointed out that the term is not to be taken as a
synonym for any expression now in current use among scholars’ (Lass-
well, 1951, p. 4). Given that the 1951 book and Lasswell’s chapter is the
most commonly cited starting point of policy studies, it is worth
repeating some key parts to be clear about where Lasswell was both
going to and coming from.
The word ‘policy’ is commonly used to designate the most important choices
made in organized or in private life. We speak of ‘government policy’,
‘business policy’ or ‘my own policy’ regarding investments and other matters.
Hence policy ‘is free of many of the undesirable connotations clustered about
the word political, which is often believed to imply ‘partisanship’ or ‘corrup-
tion’ (…) The movement is not only towards a policy orientation, with a
resulting growth in the policy sciences, but more specifically toward the
policy sciences of democracy. (p.5)
The policy-science approach not only puts the emphasis upon basic problems
and complex models, but also calls forth a very considerable clarification of
the value goals involved in policy. After all, in what sense is a problem
‘basic’? (p.9)
We can think of the policy sciences as the disciplines concerned with
explaining the policy-making and policy-executing process, and with locating
data and providing interpretations which are relevant to the policy problems
of a given period. The policy approach does not imply that energy is to be
dissipated on a miscellany of merely topical issues, but rather that funda-
mental and often neglected problems which arise in the adjustment of man in
society are to be dealt with. (p.14)
Easton Rothwell’s description in the preface follows similar lines. He had

had significant administrative experience during the war and after, where
he had been the Executive Secretary to the preliminary United Nations

Conference on International Organization in San Francisco and then
Secretary General of the USA delegation to the United Nations itself.
Planning suggests a systematic attempt to shape the future. When such
planning becomes a prelude to action, it is policy-making. For policy, broadly
speaking, is a body of principle to guide action. The application of policy is a
calculated choice – a decision to pursue specific goals by doing specified
things. The formulation and execution of policy usually consists of four steps:
1) a clarification of goals, 2) an exhaustive evaluation of the situation to be
met, 3) the selection of a course of action by weighing the probable
consequences of various alternatives, and 4) the determination of optimum
means for carrying out the action decided upon. Since the situation to be met
is normally not static but involves a complex of moving forces, policy and
action are, in effect, a design to shape the future by exerting influence upon
trends that flow from the past into the present. (Rothwell, 1951, p.xi)
Lasswell’s later 1971 text has many of the themes of the earlier text and,
while it is usual to find citations of the phrase ‘knowledge of and in’,
there is less attention paid to the wider text within which this is a part
and, for that reason, is reproduced below.
As a working definition, we say that the policy sciences are concerned with
knowledge of and in the decision process of the public and civic order (…) The
emphasis on decision process underlines the difference between policy sci-
ences and other forms of intellectual activity. By focusing on the making and
execution of policy, one identifies a relatively unique frame of reference, and
utilizes many traditional contributions to political science, jurisprudence
and related disciplines. However, these public order decisions do not exhaust
the field of policy. In complex societies, the agencies of official decision do not
account for many of the most important choices that affect men’s lives. In the
interest of realism, therefore, it is essential to give full deference to the study of
semiofficial and nonofficial processes. The dividing line between public and
civic is more a zone than a line, and in totalitarian states the civic order is
almost entirely swallowed up by the public order. The separation is most
visible in bodies politic where the activities assigned to the formal agencies of
government are relatively few and where the collective activities of businesses,
churches and other active participants in society are independent of detailed
direction from government. (1971, p. 1)
Both Lasswell and Rothwell were concerned with major questions of

shaping the future and about the most important choices; what today
might be called the big issues to be faced. Whether Lasswell (1902–
1978), who finished his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1926, would
have been happy about the way that future generations would fill in the
dots that these comments laid out is beyond conjecture; he had many
themes to work on and made so many contributions in so many areas,

including being considered the founding father of political psychology.
Important here is to show that, at least at this time, in the 1950s and
1960s, there is a transition in progress. The older notion of policy as
posture or stance on major issues, still remained, but is now acquiring the
idea that knowledge has much to contribute to solving these greater
concerns: both in the processes that help decisions along the way and in
the understanding of the issues themselves.
Over the next 40 years, policy and public policy would continue to
grow and spread from place to place, country to country and from theory
to theory. It would acquire both a centrality and a certain mystical air of
importance, as this citation from the introduction to a widely used book
of readings published in 1995 shows.
In recent years there has been a substantial transformation in the way public
policy is studied. The student of policy is faced not only with a diversity of
theoretical approaches but also, at times, with rival vocabularies and specialist
terminologies. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the definitions of
public policy. Such discussions frequently use a specialized language, indeed
often jargon, which often confuses and muddles an understanding of public
policy. The one thing, however, that all authors on public policy do agree on
is that public policy deeply affects the daily lives of every individual in
society. (Theodoulou, 1995, p. 1)
IS THERE REALLY A NEED FOR A CHANGE?

The June 2018 issue of the member’s journal of the British Psychological
Society carried on its cover a drawing of a very large seated elephant
with a circus type of mantle on its back inscribed with the word ‘policy’.
In a Lilliputian reference, it was being held up by a host of tiny figures
and the cover bore the words ‘Can psychologists shift public policy?’.
The article to which the cover referred was a critique of the way
psychologists produce an imaginary rational version of policy, policy
makers and the policy process, along with an equally rational view of
their (the psychologists’) capacity to influence affairs; instead of recog-
nizing that what exists ‘is a dauntingly complex and ideologically riven
mess of relations, where the evidence of psychologists exists as one, not
especially compelling, presence in a range of actors, agents, networks
and pressure groups’ (Walker et al., 2018, p. 40). What perhaps is more
important for Beyond Public Policy is the size of the elephant in
relationship to the psychologists; the fact that it was an elephant that was
chosen to represent policy; and the one little figure who stands in front of
the elephant, raising her arms as if to say, ‘Listen to me’. Has policy
outgrown its conceptual space and contribution? Has it stopped being
useful and become something very different? Does it need to shrink back
to normal size? Similar arguments have been made by Orren and
Skowronek (2017) about the way in which policy has taken over the
public sphere in the USA, creating what they have called ‘The Policy
State’:
… policy has expanded its role in American government and society by
eroding the boundaries and dissolving the distinctions that once constrained
policy’s reach. As we show, greater reliance on policy has the consequence of
rendering all aspects of state authority more homogeneous and making each
more difficult to pin down. A protracted history of collective problem solving
has in this way created a set of problems for American government that more
policy is unlikely to remedy.
Our proposition is that policy has not filled a void in governance; rather, it
has dislodged governance previously in place. Examining the matter that way
points to the impact of policy’s expansion on the fundament of rights and on
formal structures of decision making. Rights and structure, we contend, grow
more attenuated and uncertain as policy proliferates and assumes dominance.
When we call this troubled accretion a “policy state”, we are referring to the
effects on elements and modes of government that in earlier times bore little
resemblance to policy, indeed represented an opposite set of governing
principles. (Orren and Skowronek, 2017, p. 6)
Over the last 60 years, edging its way to the centre of a stage already
fairly full of different ways of talking about and doing public affairs,
policy gradually came to assume the role of the official articulator of
public life in western democracies and to represent the broad idea of
government in action. Evidence that ‘policy’ is serious and important
comes from the many courses, journals, conferences, policy professionals
and advisors, as well as different theories about policy processes and
about how policy happens. Very present in these different arenas is the
view of policy as the result of authoritative figures, in the institutional
and hierarchical sense, making technically informed choices from which
practices are introduced, implemented and evaluated. Colebatch and
colleagues critically refer to this as the narrative of authoritative instru-
mentalism and in a number of texts have shown that this official account
bears very little resemblance to policy work itself, when seen in the day
to day of those who are practically involved (Colebatch, 2006, 2010;
Colebatch et al., 2010). There are conflicting views and versions around
and, as they argue, somehow it is necessary to work with them. This is a
position also shared in part by those involved in various approaches to
critical, deliberative or interpretative policy analysis (Fischer, 2003; Hajer
and Wagenaar, 2003) and also in earlier texts on argumentation and

policy (Majone, 1989). However, even here and despite the broadening
out of analysis and the questions posed, the language of policy remains
active, suggesting that it serves some purpose or purposes.
The variety of definitions and approaches that Theodoulou mentions
was, it appears, an early feature of the policy arena. In 1978, Edwards
and Sharkansky were to say:
There is no single definition of public policy. It is what governments say and
do, or do not do. It is the goals or purposes of government programs, for
example the elimination of ignorance and poverty. Policy is also the important
ingredient of programs, like the requirement that all elementary school
teachers be college graduates, or the compulsory division of funds earmarked
for education between vocational and liberal arts programs. Policy further
includes the implementation of intentions and rules.
Policy may either be stated explicitly – in laws or in the speeches of
leading officials, or implied in programs and actions. Implicit policy may be
apparent only to those who are intimately familiar with the details of
programs and able to discern patterns in the sum total of what is being done.
Indeed, some policies consist in a lack of action and may be especially hard
to discern if officials wish to conceal their real purpose; the decision by local
authorities to evade a high court mandating racial integration constitutes such
a policy-through-inaction. A change in policy may be proposed or debated in
public with the full participation of interest groups and the mass media, or
policy may change covertly, as when a chief executive decides to embark on
a new venture under a cloak of secrecy or with a contrived explanation
designed to mislead the public. (p. 2)
A critic might ask, what is the public policy they are talking about? And
an answer might be that very similar difficulties to define what ‘it’ is, are
common in all social ideas. The joint production of meaning both as
description and action can make the answer ‘you know it when you see
it’ not as illogical as it may seem. Others might suggest that public policy
is no longer able to give an adequate account of public affairs and that
there are other contenders for the centre stage, newer kids on the block,
edging their way forward. Governance is already being pushed forward
as a better replacement for the articulating role, with very much the same
type of argument as has been used from time to time with public policy.
The discussion of self-organizing, inter-organizational networks within a
governance framework,14 for example, may leave little space for authori-
tative instrumentalism of the orthodox kind but also raises many ques-
tions around modes of rationality15 and governmentality,16 which
suggests that much more is involved than a simple broadening out of
perspectives and actors.
While talk and exchange of arguments are a key part of it, the whirl of
organisational routines, practical judgements, subjective voices, personal
histories and improvisational practices are equally important. For the count-
less administrators, elected officials, street-level bureaucrats, professionals,
activists and ordinary citizens who are involved in struggling with collective
problems, governance is above all about ‘intervening’ in practice. We have
barely begun to fathom what an interventionist approach to politics, govern-
ance and public policy might look like. (Griggs et al., 2014, location 365,
Kindle edition)
The Public Policy and Administration Research Committee of the Inter-

national Political Science Association (IPSA) in its session information
for the 2018 IPSA Conference, seems to be recognizing that agendas are
moving, by commenting that while the early focus of the committee was
on ‘policy analysis, over time this has broadened to take in the full range
of practices aimed at “steering” public activity’ (RC 32, 2018). Steering
and governance, it should be noted, share the same roots, and the image
of ‘steering’ and ‘rowing’ has been much evoked in the discussion of
public management – both positively and negatively.
Beyond Public Policy shares these doubts but moves the focus away
from the discussion about new paradigms and successors. There is no
doubt that policy has made an important contribution, but what about all
the other social languages for enacting governing and collective life,
some of which as mentioned were involved in talking into place the
different versions of the western welfare state17 well before what has
been called public policy’s high modern period.18 What happened to those
other performative languages, those ways of doing things with words?
Here it is important to acknowledge an earlier analysis of some of
these issues by Hale (1988), who pointed out how textbooks in public
administration in the early 1980s moved effortlessly towards policy. As
he put it: ‘The old paradigm is dead; the new paradigm is the “adminis-
trative policy making paradigm” in which administrators are not simply
“enmeshed” or “involved” in politics – but have become full-fledged
policymakers’ (p. 428). In a similar manner to public administration,
political science texts on American politics and government became texts
on policy making in America and, in doing so, focused on the short-term
process of the policy itself rather than the institutional, social and
organizational history of the issues and actors involved. As Hale remarks:
‘politics has been replaced by process: nobody ever does anything; things
just happen.’ (p.442). Closing the circle, he argued, administration moves
away from the execution of laws and bills to a new sphere of action
‘implementation’, that is activities directed to putting a programme into
effect.
Which way forward? The answer, as the evidence suggests and the
book proposes, lies in adopting a broader and somewhat chaotic approach
to public affairs, based on a diversity of social languages that may
cooperate, enter into conflict or act independently of one another,
taking seriously Rosanvallon’s proposal of a contentious process. Young
(2000) introduced the idea of a decentred and ‘agonistic’ approach to
deliberative democracy, in which: ‘Disorderly, disruptive, annoying or
distracting means of communication are often necessary or effective
elements in such efforts to engage others in debate over issues and
outcomes’ (p. 50). This suggests the importance of considering, with
equal intensity, not only the different ways of performing those actions
that are normally associated with government but also those that come
from the public(s) themselves. This orientation provides the structure for
the book.
STRUCTURE
Beyond Public Policy is not about a simple addendum to government in
action which might be referred to in some contextual way as civil society,
the civic arena or just society. On the contrary, it argues that there are at
least as many different social action languages present when people(s) act
to pressure government or when they get on with solving problems
themselves, as there are to be found in the offices of ministries,
departments and public service agencies. That is, that there is no single
social language for government in action nor for society in action; there
are just lots of heterogeneous social languages, lots of bits and pieces of
soft and hard technologies. Some of these are newer versions of previous
notions of practice, others may be hybrid mixtures and others still will be
edging their way forward. Some see themselves as central to public
affairs, others are just about getting on with making things happen. They
move in and out of each other, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in
cooperation, or, often, just going their own way. The structure of the
book reflects this position.
There are two chapters that look at public action languages from
within the arena of governing and two chapters that look from within
various forms of social and community-based action. None is completely
separate and they draw on different historical moments, including the
present, to provide examples of emerging social languages and the way
that certain themes were discussed. These four more empirical chapters
are complemented by a chapter on the idea of social languages from a
theoretical standpoint and a final chapter that draws some of the threads
together and takes a somewhat critical look at the limits of the negoti-
ation of possibilities. Chapter 1 has introduced the general argument and
provided some glimpses of themes that will be returned to in subsequent
chapters. The choice of a structure which moves backwards and forwards
between different themes and examples reflects a conscious attempt to
show a little of the amazingly curious way in which ideas move around
and to make more visible the density of the public action scene.
Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of public(s) and the way that public
issues and problems are formed. The focus, however, is not on how
governments deal with these, but how people themselves got on with and
continue to get on with solving what they saw as problematic. Resistance
is one of these, shown in examples of reaction to slavery in Brazil and
the USA; alternatives are others, as in the Jesuit missions in Latin
America. Resistance and alternatives come together in the Paris Com-
mune and in the early days of the Rochdale cooperative store. A second
line of analysis looks at civil society, philanthropy and parishes, focusing
on some of the different social languages that emerge when people take
care of each other in the everyday. This will lead, in turn, to another
broad area of public action: the creation of new kinds of institutions such
as orphanages and international associations which in different ways laid
the basis for current discussions of public concerns.
Chapter 3 starts with some examples of words in action and social
organization during the late medieval and Renaissance periods: the
Crusades, the Hanseatic League and the Treaty of Westphalia. The three
set the tone for the theoretical part of the chapter for they show the
intersection of expressions and actions, point to social and administrative
skills and illustrate the role that language(s) played in forming and
shaping one of the early ‘professions’ on the public affairs scene, that of
diplomacy. The chapter goes on through a brief mention of the history of
ideas and language to focus on the main theoretical theme that is present
in the book, that of the performative approach to language as social
action and social languages themselves as forming a very heterogeneous
landscape of ways of doing things with words. It finishes with another,
this time recent, public sector profession that, like diplomacy, has words
at the centre of its attention in a very particular way: the speechwriter.
Chapter 4 concentrates on three periods of intense governmental
activity which, in their different ways, were crucial in crafting some of
the bits and pieces of democratic welfare states and influencing others.
Milestone changes were introduced and urgent social and development
issues were tackled, without much of a policy in sight. In the first two,
where there is much material already published, the focus will be on
specific themes: the Roosevelt period and specifically the Tennessee
Valley Authority and public planning; the 1945 Labour Government led
by Attlee in the UK with a comment on the Beveridge Report, seen as
key for social policy, and the introduction of the National Health
Service. On the third, the domestic part of the Johnson Administration
in the USA, the interest is broader, for it is often cited as the period
when public policy came of age but where a closer look at internal
documents suggests a different conclusion. The chapter finishes with the
UK’s Fulton Report which marked the ‘formal’ introduction of a new
version of policy within the civil service and the arrival of the policy
advisor.
Chapter 5 starts with an overview of the way that policy would
continue to spread out both in terms of use by governments and scholars
in discussing public affairs and in its application to new themes, such as
implementation. It then goes on to look at a number of different places
and areas in which policy might be found along with other action
languages, such as the EU and the Treaty of Rome, the United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) work on
cultural policy in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the government reform
movements in the following periods, especially in the countries of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It
then traces through the various reform movements in Latin America
which demonstrate the dedication to public management and adminis-
trative improvement but also raise questions about the relative delay in
adopting public policy as a way of looking at public affairs. Here the case
chosen is that of Brazil where studies of bibliographies, newspapers and
academic publications are complemented by a case study in the area of
HIV/AIDS.
Rights as an action language have been very present in the developing
world as a mobilizing agenda and, as elsewhere, were present well before
policy reached the centre stage. Now, in both the developed world and
developing worlds, they are serving to challenge policy and suggest other
forms of taking the democratic experience forward. Chapter 6 takes this
as a starting point to return to some of the events and debates around
the introduction of rights within the United Nations, especially around
the very idea of rights itself. From this it picks up the theme of the
intersection of social languages with a reworking of the idea of civic
engagement in different ways, including the languages of civil disobedi-
ence. It goes on to look at the languages of mobilization and community
organization as well as those of social movements, crowds and protests.
It closes by looking at ways in which some of these social languages are
also joining with public sector social languages in creating new mech-
anisms of decision – for example in the area of participative budgeting
and what have been called hybrid arenas, as well as civic-based co-
operation in service provision.
In Chapter 7, these different themes and examples from different sides
of the public affairs arena are brought together in response to the three
points raised in the introduction: the heterogeneity of social languages in
the public affairs arena; the problems with centrality; and the fact that
there are just as many social languages for being and doing ‘public’
outside the generally assumed circles of governing as there are inside. It
begins with an example of a setting in which there is very little contact
between these different social languages and shows how this can have a
major impact on a recurrent theme in the public affairs arena in both the
developed and developing world – social, material and institutional
vulnerability. It then goes on to look at whether public policy will survive
and in what form, and what the promises are for governance, in part
through the way the expressions are being incorporated in different
national and international arenas. It concludes by arguing that the public
action languages approach – as an approach and not a theory – offers a
stimulus to look for and recognize the multiplicity of the many different
social languages present and a more promising basis on which to take on
the challenge of building links between repertories and of negotiating
possibilities.
A BRIEF NOTE ON METHODS

The author is a social and organizational psychologist who has had the
opportunity of working in interdisciplinary settings for most of his
research life, during which time he has been involved in applied social
research in various areas of public administration and government in the
developed and developing world. Like most applied researchers, he has
learned to have a high respect for the work of others in their specialist
disciplinary fields, while also recognizing that despite epistemological
differences, methods have more to do with ‘how it’s done’ than ‘how it
should be done’.
To begin with it is necessary to emphasize that this is not a history of
ideas but, as can be seen from this introduction, going beyond policy
requires moving outside policy and this implies looking before, during
and, even, after. Inevitably, there are many ideas in circulation and while
there is no intention of redoing the work of historians, their contributions
have been important, as have many of those in the different applied social
sciences who have described the emergence of their own professions or
questioned the centrality of certain approaches from different disciplinary
standpoints. From discourse analysis – as well as learning how to seek

out the nuances in texts and the importance of public domain documents
as themselves products of talk in action – has come the practice of
avoiding short citations. Single words are never uttered as single words;
as talk flows it forms chunks of meanings in the same way that written
texts form sentences and paragraphs. Archival material, public domain
documents, case studies and many conversations are also part of the
book. The choices made about which events to make more visible are
both academic and also literary, for this is also a collection of stories
about some of the ideas and the languages that perform public affairs,
and curiosity always has a part to play. Without doubt, readers will be
able to point to other examples and key moments when other ideas for
public action emerged and, if this happens, the purpose of the book has
been fulfilled.
In many cases, it has been possible to go back to original texts in
administration and policy, official documents, or cross-check with differ-
ent accounts of what was discussed. Biographies of some key figures
have also proved very helpful as well as a number of historical analyses
of earlier and relatively current events. The main empirical focus has
been towards the USA, the UK and Latin America. In the case of the first
two, this is because there seems to be agreement in the field that they
played a key role in the emergence of the public policy narrative. Latin
America has been a very interesting site from which to follow the gradual
spread of administrative terms and practices, including the arrival of
policy; helped also by some familiarity with language. Theoretically the
reach has been wider within the European democracies and especially, in
relation to the public action languages approach, France. However, this is
simply a reference to the physical and linguistic location of scholars and
not a suggestion of a school of thought. There is no more a French
approach to public action as there is a USA approach to public policy.
Many other versions of each of the chapters could be written and there
are many more stories to be told; especially by scholars coming from
other linguistic backgrounds who can follow the way in which terms are
taken from one language to another in other linguistic spaces and places.
Indeed, there is much work to be done.
NOTES
1. Young (1979), also Cox (1905).
2. Finer (1997).
3. For example, Skinner’s Liberty Before Liberalism (1998).
4. Burke (1992) and Ashford (1991).
5. Gilbert and Mulkay (1984), see also M.J.P. Spink (1999) for a discussion in the area of
health.
6. Fischer et al. (2015).
7. Fuller (1988).
8. Friedmann (2011).
9. See the academic dictionary article by Commaille (2014).
10. Translations from the French, Portuguese and Spanish citations have been made by the
author and colleagues.
11. Alexander (1981) suggested that the lack of impact of Wildavsky’s (1973) ‘If Planning is
Everything, Maybe it’s Nothing’ amongst planners may have been due to its being
published in a journal (Policy Sciences) that planners didn’t read.
12. Blake (1996).
13. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Vols I and II (1973).
14. Rhodes (1996).
15. Hoppe (2002).
16. Burchell et al. (1991) and Enroth (2013).
17. Garland (2016).
18. Goodin et al. (2006).
2. From publics, parishes and

philanthropy to resistance and
self-help: the civic side of public
action
In 1968 New Society, a British weekly that was an important focus for
applied social science debate especially in areas linked to the welfare
state, published a number of linked articles on the origins of the social
services. The following quotation is the beginning of two articles on
slums and public intervention into housing in the UK and is introduced
for two reasons. First, the nineteenth century was a period in which many
different social and societal themes, that are today taken for granted as
obvious and concrete empirical objects for government concern, were
gradually put together, piece by piece and, with them, various notions of
what to do, who should do it and what this ‘doing’ should be called. The
reasons for getting involved were varied, some were results of early
analyses of labour relations and the industrial economy,1 some were
linked to early formulations of urban poverty, but others were far from
philanthropic. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, concern with
housing was also a consequence of early discussions on public health and
that had, at times, much more to do with the fear of diseases being spread
into other areas of society than to the specific conditions of poverty itself.
Second, the area of housing is one which later, in Chapter 6, will serve
as one of a number of examples of what can be called rights approaches
to public affairs. Discussion on the right to the city and to adequate
housing is a very present theme in international conferences and conven-
tions, but is also an arena in which the conflicts, competition and
sometimes cooperation of and between different action languages is
visible and explicit – especially in the developing countries.
Government nowadays is directly concerned with housing in ways that
involve millions of pounds and millions of people. That was not so for most
of the 19th century, when the housing of the working classes was regarded
almost entirely as a private matter and not as a subject for national, political
concern. It was not indeed until 1915 that the government accepted a
31
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responsibility for the control of rents and not till the heroes came home that it
saw any need to subsidise the building of working class houses on any scale.
By 1919 it had become politically acceptable to tax one section of the
community in order to provide cheap house-room for another. This was a
crucial and lasting change. (Dyos, 1968, p. 192)
As concerns become social and different fragments get put together into
problems which acquire names and identities so, as Dewey (1927)
pointed out, are publics formed. In other words, problems do not come
magically out of the air nor grow from the ground as empirical and
self-named facts. They are talked into existence, as will be discussed in
Chapter 3, through a mix of empirical happenings, moral concerns, fears,
attempts at understanding and views on how to act. Nor do they stay still,
as Hacking (2007) has pointed out. In his (1999) analysis of women
refugees, Hacking argues that:
Ideas do not exist in a vacuum. They inhabit a social setting. Let us call that
the matrix within which an idea, a concept of kind is formed (…) The matrix
in which the idea of the woman refugee is formed is a complex of institutions,
advocates, newspaper articles, lawyers, court decisions, immigration pro-
ceedings. Not to mention the material infrastructure, barriers, passports,
uniforms, counters at airports, detention centers, courthouses, holiday camps
for refugee children. You may want to call them social because their meanings
are what matter to us, but they are material and, in their sheer materiality
make substantial differences to people. Conversely, ideas about women
refugees make a difference to the material environment (women refugees are
not violent, so there is no need for guns, but there is a great need for paper,
paper, paper (…) And ideas, thus understood do matter. It can really matter to
someone to be classified as a woman refugee; if she is not thus classified, she
may be deported, or go into hiding, or marry to gain citizenship. The matrix
can affect an individual woman. She needs to become a woman refugee in
order to stay in Canada; she learns what characteristics to establish, knows
how to live her life. By living that life she evolves, becomes a certain kind of
person (a woman refugee). (Hacking, 1999, pp. 10–11)
The many different bits, pieces, things and peoples, humans and non-
humans actively present in the continual formatting and reformatting of
the ‘woman refugee’ call attention to the very active part that materiality
plays in the formation of ideas. Latour described the various bits of
materiality and sociality as actantes,2 drawing from semiotic theory.3 In
this case they are gathered around notions of government action in the
most basic version of modernity’s territorially defined nation state: who
gets to stay in and who doesn’t. Pressure groups, human rights advocates,
churches and humanitarian organizations are present, as are many
different social organizations that intermediate issues and, of course,
From publics, parishes and philanthropy to resistance and self-help 33
governments, both locally, nationally and internationally. Some may see

themselves, in their own words, as part of civil society, others as having
a civic duty. Present, in general, although not a defining principle, is
some kind of disposition to cooperate and discuss. Since about the
middle of the twentieth century we have got used to describing them as
organizations, but they will often use other terms and expressions.
Chapter 6 on noisy rights, crowds, protests and the languages of
mobilization, will pick up some of these themes in a different way, but
even in the most conflicting of circumstances there is some, even faint,
hope of a connection. However, the alternative can and does happen. The
United Nations High Commission for Refugees currently estimates,
worldwide, over 23 million refugees – of which 50 per cent are under 18
years of age – and, in addition, some 10 million or more stateless people
who are denied a nationality.4 There is no dividing line between
cooperation, discussion and confrontation, and as will be seen from
chapter to chapter there are overlaps, discontinuities, connections made
and lost. But there is no comfortable whole; no easy multiple entry table
into which the different social action languages can be separated and
organized. This is one of the book’s proposals, and as commented in the
introduction it is reflected in the structure. In a similar manner, there is
no attempt to move along a time line; some earlier events are dealt with
earlier but others will come in later in the book.
WHAT MAKES A PUBLIC?

In The Public and its Problems, Dewey’s main concern was to position
the state as a consequence of the public and its officials as part of this
consequence. There may be points of disagreement with this overall
position, but his localism and community-based approach to social life
still finds an echo over a century later. Here is the starting point in his
argument.
We must in any case start from acts which are performed, not from
hypothetical causes for those acts, and consider their consequences. We must
also introduce intelligence, or the observation of consequences as conse-
quences, that is in connection with the acts from which they proceed. Since
we must introduce it, it is better to do so knowingly than it is to smuggle it in
in a way which deceives not only the customs officer – the reader – but
ourselves as well. We take then our point of departure from the objective fact
that human acts have consequences upon others, that some of these conse-
quences are perceived, and that their perception leads to subsequent effort to
control action so as to secure some consequences and avoid others. Following
this clew, we are led to remark that the consequences are of two kinds, those
which affect the persons directly engaged in a transaction, and those which
affect others beyond those immediately concerned. In this distinction we find
the germ of the distinction between the private and the public. (Dewey, 1927,
location 889, Kindle edition)
From this, Dewey will go on to distinguish those consequences of

consequences which affect others beyond those immediately concerned
and which, in doing so and being recognized as consequences, will in
turn produce publics and problems. ‘The public consists of all those who
are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an
extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematic-
ally cared for’ (1927, location 919) or, later, ‘… the perception of
consequences which are projected in important ways beyond the persons
and associations directly concerned in them is the source of a public; and
that its organization into a state is effected by establishing special
agencies to care for and regulate these consequences’ (1927, location
1163). Important is the first part of the argument that links the awareness
of consequences of consequences to the production of publics. The
plural, however, is never mentioned as such by Dewey, but if the many
different consequences of different consequences are considered there
seems no doubt that many a different ‘public’(s) are produced along with
their problems.5
Today, Dewey’s work is not only relevant to the growing debate on
different publics and issues,6 but also to the general focus of the current
chapter. Dewey was looking at the relation between a public and the state
at the beginning of the twentieth century when some concerns were
already on the table for governmental action but were only a part of those
that would appear in the later welfare state(s). At the same time, he
provides a window on another transition that is taking place:
As we saw in our earlier consideration of the theme of the public, the question
of what transactions should be left as far as possible to voluntary initiative
and agreement and what should come under the regulations of the public is a
question of time, place and concrete conditions that can be known only by
careful observation and reflective investigation. (1927, location 2773)
Taking Dewey’s argumentative lead, in the discursive sense, brings up the

question of voluntary action. Is voluntary action action in the private
sphere or is it action in the public sphere?7 Is it public because in some
way it is sanctioned as such or is it public because those involved
consider it so?
As this is a book which has as its focus contemporary public action

languages, the parts of the past that are of more direct relevance are those
in which elements of an agenda for public affairs are emerging, prior to
the configuration of the current and different welfare states. As these
have to be talked into existence, they become reminders of the many
social languages that were around before policy and, in some cases,
before public administration as it is currently conceived. It is easier to
pick these themes up in the nineteenth century where a number of publics
and problems are more visible and, possibly, comprehensible. But, to
avoid any interpretation that such happenings or the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries were special, it is useful to remember other moments
in which new forms of social action were developed – even though their
results may have been in some cases less continuous. Some have left
buildings, others have left shadows and others are very much around.
Bonded slavery into the New World dates from around 1510 and while
the Portuguese were very involved in the commercial aspects of buying
and selling from the beginning, the first slaves only arrived in Brazil in
the 1530s. It would not be long before, as in other countries, there would
be reports of slaves escaping to set up small communities in out of the
way places, in some cases helped by original peoples. Some of these
grew in size, some created patterns of relationships with neighbours,
others, especially in Brazil because of its size, took a long time to be
discovered, and there were also many conflicts. One of the results is that
20 November is remembered nationally in Brazil as Black Awareness
Day and is a formal holiday in many municipalities. It was chosen,
symbolically, to mark the death of Zumbi, the leader of one of the larger
quilombos, as they were called, which was destroyed in 1694 after some
150 years of existence. Palmares – hence the name Zumbi dos Palmares
– was formed in a mountainous area of a coastal forest region with many
palm trees, spanning the current border between the states of Alagoas and
Pernambuco. At its peak, it consisted of a number of different settle-
ments, of which the largest had some 1,500 houses (Anderson, 1996).
There were many attempts to take it over and there were also periods of
peace during which trade relations took place. ‘In the internecine peace,
Palmarinos traded with their Portuguese neighbours, exchanging food-
stuffs and crafts for arms, munitions and salt’ (1996, p. 552). Some
colonials favoured establishing peace with the quilombo and others,
perhaps wishing to remove an attraction for other slaves, did not.
Palmares was only one of a number of events in Brazilian history in
which large communities were set up outside the reach of the state only
to be defeated in battle.8 Unfortunately, as also is the case of Palmares,
there are more descriptions of the battles than there are about the
organization of everyday life. However, and important for this chapter,

the echoes of the event and of the figure of Zumbi have served as a
focal point for discussion about the continued presence of these,
certainly much smaller, communities. The Brazilian Ministry of Culture’s
Palmares Foundation reported some 3,524 remaining quilombos in a
2008 study and estimated that the final figure could be around 5,000.
Here the concern is not just to register traditions; much more is at stake.
The transitional arrangements of the 1988 Constitution determined that:
‘Final ownership shall be recognized for the remaining members of the
ancient runaway slave communities who are occupying their lands and
the State shall grant them the respective title deeds’ (Article 68 of the
Temporary Constitutional Provisions Act, 1988).
During the 1970s and 1980s, Bolivia had a very centralized govern-
ment with a top-down regional administration and almost no responsibil-
ity for the towns. In 1994, the government introduced legislation on
decentralization, municipalization and popular participation, creating 311
municipalities with contiguous territorial limits covering the whole
country. Of its then population of seven and a half million, over 60 per
cent were Aymara, Quechua or Guarani and another 30 per cent were of
mixed descent. There are some 36 different ethnic language groups. In an
innovative approach to representation, council oversight committees
(vigilance committees) were created to complement the more traditional
role of elected councillors and oversee the use of government transfer
funds. The oversight committees were to be formed from representatives
of what were termed Territorial Base Organizations. These were
organizations that had a specific relationship to a zone, community or
neighbourhood. In order to prevent a whole new crop of artificial
organizations being created, proposing and voting on committee mem-
bers was restricted to those that could show they had been in existence
for some years before the legislation was published. The last time in
Bolivian history that community and neighbourhood organizations had
been allowed to formally and officially exist was during the few years of
democracy brought in by the 1952 Bolivian Revolution. By the time the
elections took place in 1995, some 13,000 informally existing com-
munity, indigenous and neighbourhood groupings had come forward to
be registered.9
The persistence of social organization despite adverse conditions in
countries where there is some semblance of a state and government is
also the persistence of ways of talking about social identity and being
that identity in action. There are also many examples of moments when,
without the presence of an effective state, people have been able to get
themselves together to organize public affairs or, under adversity, main-

tain the public hope.
This can lead to attempts at creating alternatives; proposals about other
ways of being together, as in the Jesuit missions in Brazil, Paraguay and
Argentina from 1606 until 1767, when the Jesuits were exiled back to
Rome by the command of King Carlos III of Spain. By this time there
were 30 different missions in which, for protection, the largely Guarani
population had been persuaded to come closer together and invest in
agriculture and cattle. At the centre of the missions were the many
arguments and debates that had taken place in the sixteenth century about
whether the ‘Indians’ were rational beings with souls and therefore could
not be placed in slavery.10 An idea of the size and importance of the
missions is given by the report made by the administrator appointed by
the Spanish authorities to take over the mission at San Ignacio Mini in
Paraguay (16 August 1768). It included: 33,400 cows; 1,409 horses;
3,571 mules; 7,356 sheep etc. (Armani, 1982). As an observation, the
expression mission comes from the Latin/French missio/mission which
refers to the act of being sent to do something. Possibly because in the
seventeenth century most of those people being sent were being sent
for religious reasons, it quickly acquired a religious tonality. There would
be missionaries, mission bells and mission schools. But soon there
would also be diplomatic missions and now there are missions to space
and mission control centres and lots of bits and pieces, people and
technologies.
EARLY LANGUAGES OF RESISTANCE

In a different time and place, many unknown women and men across the
USA connected in different ways to one another against slavery, without
ever knowing much beyond one or two connections, and never knowing
the extent of what became known in the 1840s as the ‘underground
railroad’.
For the ‘Underground Railroad’ was no actual railroad of steel and steam. It
was a network of paths through the woods and fields, river crossings, boats
and ships, trains and wagons, all haunted by the specter of recapture. Its
stations were the houses and the churches of men and women – agents of the
railroad – who refused to believe that human slavery and human decency
could exist together in the same land. The scholar Edwin Wolf II captured the
essence of my ancestors’ experience when he wrote that the Underground
Railroad is filled ‘with tales of crated escapees, murdered agents, soft knocks
on side doors, and a network as clandestine and complicated as anything
dreamed up by James Bond’. As a historian attempting to research the

Underground Railroad, I have found, with a mixture of admiration and
chagrin, that this atmosphere of secrecy endures. So much is uncertain. Even
the origin of the term ‘Underground Railroad’ is obscure. Nobody knows how
many fled from bondage along its invisible tracks. (Blockson, 1984, pp. 3, 9)
Amongst these, as Blockson (whose own great-grandfather had fled

along the railroad) comments, was Harriet Tubman who went north to
freedom in 1849 and returned south at least 15 times to conduct some
300 fugitives along its tracks. (The price on her head by the time she
stopped had reached USD 40,000.) There are estimates of over 100,000
slaves escaping north between 1810 and 1860. All sorts of people were
involved, both freethinkers and members of every religious faith of
the time, many of whom, to return to Dewey, would be ‘the public’ of the
end of slavery. This was a time when the railroads were making their
impact on society and those involved used a ‘railway code’ of stations,
depots, forwarding and other terms as a way of talking to one another.11
While most of these experiences point to publics that form within
some kind of bounded notion of state or relations to government, there
are also those for which a state is seen as an ‘unnecessary’ evil – or, at
least, as something in relation to which it is better not to expect very
much. The focus of the book is on the different ways of talking about
public action in what are currently known as countries with governments
and which together are understood as states. It is important to register
that there is also an important literature – both empirical and political –
about societies without states which amplifies even more the arguments
made about the variety of ways of talking public action. While there are
arguments for or against that can be made on political grounds, the events
of the Paris Commune and of the urban and rural collectivizations in
Catalonia and Valencia during the early days of the Spanish Civil War12
provide enough evidence that the organization of public affairs is
something that publics can, if they need to or want to, sort things out for
themselves, by themselves.
The Paris Commune (18 March–28 May 1871) will appear again in a
later chapter, not for what it was but for what it wasn’t. That is, to the
impact that the creation of an image of ‘wild mobs’ and ‘crazed women
with petrol bombs’ was to have on the discussion of the psychology of a
crowd. On the contrary, the vast majority of women who were engaged
in L’Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soin aux blessés
were certainly working class and largely socialist but had other issues
that they wished to discuss about the general condition of women and
the equality of the sexes. Most of them were not even arrested nor killed
in the bloody days following the end of the Commune, because they
didn’t correspond to the stereotypes of the communards held by the
Versailles soldiers and police. As Schulkind (1985) comments after a
very detailed archival study: ‘It is as if the courts and arresting agents
were victims of their own prejudices in so far as they were unable to
conceive of any Communard women as serious, intelligent and organiza-
tionally sophisticated’ (p.130). Discussing the founding meeting of the
Union:
Unlike the tendency among popular groupings at the time, this founding
meeting of the Union was more than a talking session: it set up committees in
most of the arrondisements to serve as recruiting centres for volunteers for
nursing and canteen work as well as for the construction and defence of
barricades should the need arise. It established procedural statutes and
membership rules, and elected a provisional central committee to be replaced
eventually by one composed of the delegates from committees created in each
arrondisement. It also sent a proposal to the Executive Commission of the
Commune soliciting material aid in setting up facilities in each arrondisement
town hall. (Schulkind, 1985, p. 139)
As well as providing welfare support for orphanages and hostels,

amongst other welfare institutions, recruiting nursing and cooking auxil-
iaries, organizing meetings, staffing aid and information centres, the
Union also got on with discussing how to bring about changes in the
organization of production. Meetings were called to form cooperatives
and group them in associations. To cite a wall poster: ‘It is hoped that the
various women’s occupations, such as needle trades, feather processing,
artificial flowers, laundry, etc., will form unions and send delegates to the
committee meeting.’13
There is a tendency to typify the present as a global informational
environment but, as Burke (2000) has commented, by the seventeenth
century knowledge flowed all around Europe, from ports to capitals, with
returning missionaries, news of people arriving from far-off lands and
just plain meeting places in the print shops that were being set up.
Discussion of cooperatives had been around in some form since the
beginning of the nineteenth century and there had been previous experi-
ences in France in 1848. It would be largely the French and British
workers’ movements which would be behind the first meeting of the
International Working Men’s Association in 1864, at which many differ-
ent left-wing movements were present, from moderate trade unionist,
utopian socialists, through to anarchists and revolutionaries of different
tendencies. (In 1865 women were allowed to be members, but it
remained a mainly male affair.)
In 1844, in a different and not so dramatic setting, a small group of out

of work weavers in Rochdale, Lancashire, found themselves facing a
number of unpleasant survival choices, including emigration or appealing
to the Poor Law. The result was the Rochdale ‘store’, which would go on
to make a major contribution to the cooperative movement around the
world. It started with 12 people and an individual subscription of two
pence a week. By 1857, just over 12 years later, the over the counter
sales had reached some 76,000 pounds a year14 and the cooperative
movement was on the way to being a way of life for many people. It also
became a public that had brought a new notion of public to public affairs
– that of self-help – and an action language that was to challenge the
economic organization of society through the idea of associations that
were not for profit. The organizational language itself drew heavily on
the earlier Friendly Societies which had been around in different forms
for many years. Ross (1976), for example, mentions Defoe talking about
them in an essay in 1697. In the English part of his historical review, he
found the use of ‘voluntary association’ already beginning to be estab-
lished by the end of the eighteenth century and also found suggestions of
some 32,000 Friendly Societies in England in 1874 which, as he
comments, ‘would make it a major social institution then’ (p. 246).
The idea of the structure of work itself, and not just the economic
relation of work in society, would live on in the cooperative movements,
resulting in various forms of broader social partnerships. It would still be
going strong when Joyce Rothschild-Witt (1979) described what she
referred to as collectivist organizations, both theoretically and empiri-
cally, in her study of a free medical clinic, a legal collective, a food
cooperative, a free school and an alternative newspaper in California.
While very different between themselves in a number of ways, they had
a number of similarities. Amongst these were: a more consensual and
horizontal approach to decisions and authority, minimal rules, social
controls of a more moral kind, the absence of hierarchy and career,
generalization of jobs and minimal division of labour, with normative and
solidarity-based incentives. Work is clearly action and activity and the
ways of talking about it and doing it go together, and create and give
continuity to social and material forms and values. The range of values
could be quite wide, some more political than others and some more
directly community based but, in the middle, was clearly a notion of
working in the public good. Not because those involved in the different
organizations had been asked to do so by some official body, but because
in some alternative way, and with all the trouble that meant both socially
and materially, it mattered.
CIVIL SOCIETY, PHILANTHROPY AND PARISHES:

TAKING CARE OF EACH OTHER
Since whenever – a popular expression that is useful to refer to the many
different ways in which the past branches forward – people have been
taking care of each other because it mattered. Not all people for all
people, but at least some people for some people, known and unknown
and in ways that change. Amongst the many ways in which ‘each other’
has changed can be found questions such as: who then is a person; what
is dignity; who has the right to respect or dignity; what is help; and what
are the limits of the moral community (of those to whom we are
concerned to be fair, Crosby and Lubin, 1990)? The results are the many
different languages of solidarity found not only in alternative types of
organization as studied by Rothschild-Witt, but in other forms of
collective action, voluntary action, charity and philanthropy, as well as,
more recently, the complex heterogeneity of the broad and constantly
expanding non-profit sector. The meaning of all this, including the idea
of a non-profit sector, varies depending on the identity and intentions of
the user (Hall, 2006).15 As he pointed out in his historical review of
philanthropy, volunteering and non-profit activities in the USA, the terms
non-profit sector and non-profit organization are talked into use between
1960–1970s, largely for tax and regulatory purposes, with some initia-
tives from Congress and major initiatives from the philanthropic foun-
dations themselves.
Most broadly construed, the terms refer to the larger universe of formal and
informal voluntary organizations, non-stock corporations, mutual benefit
organizations, religious bodies, charitable trusts and other nonpropriety enti-
ties (…) None of the contemporary definitions does justice to the complex
historical development of these entities and activities. Every aspect of
nonprofits that we consider distinctive – the existence of a domain of private
organizational activity, the capacity to donate or bequeath property for
charitable purposes, the distinction between joint stock and non-stock corpor-
ations, tax exemption – was the outcome of unrelated historical processes that
converged and assumed significance to one another only at later points in time.
Processes of development and change are continuous and ongoing. The
institutional and organizational realities we attempt to capture in creating such
synoptic terms as nonprofit sector are, at best, of only temporary usefulness.
(Hall, 2006, p. 32)
Legislative concern about the new wider-focused philanthropic insti-

tutions had started much earlier with the arrival of the Carnegie Corpor-
ation of New York (1911) and later the Ford Foundation (1936). One
thing was to have charities focused in specific ways for specific purposes,
another was to have foundations with a broad brief for human and social
development. This was seen by Congress as getting involved in politics.
After all who talks for the well-being – another term in ascension – of
society?16 Sometimes this early advocacy work, as it would be called
today, did very clearly step across the invisible line that divides issues
from parties and their candidates. Many of the early generations of
philanthropists, including the Fords, had been brought up in the very
non-contested ‘do what I say’ world of industrial expansion and were
used to having strong opinions. But Congress itself was facing challenges
from other sectors of society, as well as the philanthropic arena; social
dreaming was becoming open territory and no longer the private property
of government.
On 28 August 1963 Martin Luther King Jr spoke to over 250,000 civil
rights workers and activists on the March for Jobs and Freedom in
Washington DC, in support of President John F. Kennedy’s proposal of
civil rights legislation. He was speaking on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial when, prompted by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, he put
aside his written text and a somewhat staid lecturer style of address and
started talking, using the rhetorical preaching style of repeated phrases,
about his dream. One of the people who had worked on the text with
King, and had commented later that the ‘dream’ wasn’t in it, although it
had been used elsewhere, turned to the person at his side and said of the
250,000 people present, ‘those people don’t know it, but they’re about to
go to church’. Nobody remembers the formal speech, but everybody
remembers the dream.17
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go
back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of
our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be
changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my
friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still
have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a
dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at
the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of
Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the
heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I
have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character. I have a dream today.
Martin Luther King Jr was a Baptist pastor and President of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, an umbrella organization for civil
rights. Citing from his Nobel Prize biography: ‘The ideals for this
organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from
Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and April 4th 1968,
when he was assassinated, King travelled over six million miles and
spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was
injustice, protest, and action … .’18 He wrote a lot of speeches along with
his colleagues but was also able to combine his talks with the capacity to
develop new threads of argument and influence. Speechwriting can be the
art of the speaker her- or himself, but by the middle of the twentieth
century it was increasingly the art of an invisible member of a public
figure’s staff and, still today, being a speechwriter is a rarely talked about
profession in the academic study of government in action (as will be seen
in later chapters).
The previous reference to missions, the reference in the next chapter to
crusades, and in this section to parishes, serves as a reminder that much
of the local structure of civic life, and indeed local government, in many
parts of the world has been built up on top of forms of religious
organization; in the case of the west, until recently, largely Christian. But
the same will apply to other religions in the Middle East and in the east,
to original peoples all over the world and probably to wherever humanity
finds itself. They provide not only values but forms of organization and
action, all of which happen in speech and conversations.
Today these different forms of being together can be found sharing
their community-based resources in new forms of ecumenical and
interfaith organization that may act collectively on public issues. London
Citizens, described in Chapter 6, is an alliance of over 230 civil society
organizations, including schools, synagogues, churches, mosques, chari-
ties, youth clubs and other groups that work for the common good and
whose efforts have included campaigning for ‘living wages’, creating
safe havens for young people in danger and ending the detention of
children for immigration purposes.19 In a much more mundane manner,
there are probably at this moment hundreds of thousands of micro-events,
including playgroups, yoga sessions, book readings, alternative therapy
sessions, debates on human rights, discussions of local government
proposals amongst many others, that are taking place in the meeting
rooms of parishes, congregations, mosques and synagogues as well as the
YMCA, Rotary and the local community library (often built by popular
subscription). Community is not an abstract expression, to be in common
requires being in common. In certain parts of the world a big broad tree
can create the shade for being in common, in others more robust forms of
shelter are required. In Hall’s (2006) account of non-profits, he mentions

the important contribution by one of Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies (The
Public Works Administration (PWA)) in constructing many buildings that
provided venues for the activities and meetings of all types of non-profit
groups, from the boy and girl scouts, through drama clubs to local sports
teams, in places such as civic centres, municipal auditoriums, museums
and libraries, amongst others.
In pre-revolutionary France, the lowest level of administration was that
of the parish (paroisse) of which there were some 60,000 and in which
the village priest would keep the records of births, marriages and deaths.
Some had responsibilities for poverty, but mainly it was the local feudal
lords or other landed, powerful figures who ruled over what issues were
public. Following the Revolution, already in 1789, the National Assembly
created the Commune as the lowest level of administration and incorpor-
ated the village parishes as communes. There was some adjustment, but
from 60,000 parishes the result, following fusions in larger towns, was
still some 41,000, of which many are exactly the same in territorial terms
today. In 1792 the mayors took over the civil role of the priests in terms
of births, deaths and a new secular marriage ceremony, but the local
identity remained. Today nearly 37,000 communes still form the basis of
French political life. While not administrative and not political, parishes
remain the basis of territorial organization in the Catholic Church even
today. In many developing countries, especially in Latin America, they
became crucial in supporting a number of different social movements and
community-based organizations during the period of liberation theology
from the late 1960s to the 1980s.20
In the UK, the switch from papal to royal control of the Christian
churches had many consequences but had little effect on the parishes,
which continued to be the way of organizing and identifying souls.
Mosques and synagogues are just as important as meeting places, as later
would be the different forms of congregational Christian worship,
however they respond more strongly to specific internal religious orien-
tations and have more flexible relationships to physical territory.21 Even
though people may not choose to worship in their parish, or even go to
church, for a long time it was the Anglican parish, as an ecclesiastical
district with a priest and a church, that provided territorial details and a
source for earlier statistics. Towards the end of the nineteenth century in
the UK, the religious parishes began to lose their civil responsibilities
(for example with the changes in the Poor Laws), and from 1895 civil
parishes took over with a council elected by public vote, serving as the
first level of local government beneath the district councils. Currently
more than a third of the population of England has a town or parish
council and there are currently moves to stimulate local communities to

create more.22
In the case of the USA,23 the strength of the congregations as
individual church organizations and community-based meeting points
was certainly a strong point in New England and continues to be so
today. However, as this citation from Hall’s history of the reforming
people suggests, this served more as an important source of training
and practice in performing public affairs – rather than as a basis for
institutional design.
The governance of towns, and, to an even greater extent, the governance of
local congregations, was deeply participatory. So was civil society as a whole,
for the colonists brought with them a cluster of assumptions and practices that
abetted popular involvement in everyday politics: an appetite for news, a
confidence in sharing their opinions with local leaders, a facility for writing
and reading, the custom of distributing handwritten texts to influence political
decision-making, the experience of resisting (usually by ignoring) the rules
of the Church of England, and the habit of using petitions to complain of
grievances. (Hall, 2012, p. 53, Kindle edition)
Institutional design, in all but two of the states, followed the idea of
counties and townships. Louisiana, with its French and Spanish legacy,
still has parishes today and Alaska has boroughs. Perhaps more distinc-
tive for the theme of this chapter were the multiple experiences of
independent school districts.
In 1932 the local government structure of the USA had 3,062 counties,
16,442 municipalities, 19,978 towns and townships, 128,548 school
districts and 14,572 special districts – in total, some 182,602 instances of
local government. In 2007, the number of counties was very similar
(3,033), municipalities had risen to 19,492, town and townships had
dropped to 16,519 (almost the same as the rise of municipalities), school
districts had fallen to 13,051 (only 10 per cent of the earlier amount) and
the overall total had declined to 89,476.24 School districts, often known
as independent school districts, are something very different in demo-
cratic theory and practice. They are single-theme jurisdictions which
collect taxes from everybody in the district, independent of whether or
not they are users of school services. In addition (no taxation without
representation) they are run by councils or boards that are democratically
elected. All residents of the district are responsible for the decisions
and investment loans and all can run in the school district elections. Over
time, many of the school districts became absorbed into town and
county structures, while retaining the practice of being close to their
communities. The origins were very pragmatic; settlers were families,
families had children, and as education began to be seen as increasingly

important children needed to be in school. In the same way that churches
were built, schools were also built, and a teacher was hired by collective
effort and local subscription. A number of these early one-room schools
can still be found in historical sites. Here is one, in Stonewall, Texas, that
will play its part in Chapter 4.
The first one-room schoolhouse on the Pedernales River was actually a tent in
the Christadelphian campgrounds one mile east of the present day Junction
School. In 1882, the tent was replaced by the community with a small frame
building that served both as a school and church. On September 27, 1910
John Pehl sold to the school district 2 3/4 acres of land on the north side of
the Pedernales River to build a new school (…) The Junction School was a
typical one-room school. A wood stove sat in a sand box in the center of the
school and was the only source of heat. Two kerosene lamps suspended from
the ceiling at opposite ends of the room provided light. The teacher’s desk
and a chair were in front of the classroom. A small brass bell on the teacher’s
desk summoned the students. Students sat at double desks which had wooden
tops with holes for the glass inkwells. The desks were arranged in rows facing
the teacher’s desk; the boys in one row and the girls in another.
One of the students at the Junction School was a 4-year old boy by the
name of Lyndon Baines Johnson (…) Since Lyndon could hear the children
outside before school and at recess, he would run down to the school house to
play with them. His mother – constantly worried he would get lost – talked to
the teacher, Miss Katie Deadrich, about enrolling him early into school (…)
In 1924, he graduated from high school in Johnson City and later attended
Southwest Texas Teachers’ College in San Marcos where he received his
teaching degree. Johnson taught school for a while in Houston, Cotulla, and
Pearsall, Texas. (The Junction School House is now part of the Lyndon B.
Johnson National Historical Park in Stonewall, Texas.)25
As Cnaan (2002) pointed out in the introduction to his study of

present-day congregations in the USA, ‘… most social scientists shy
away from faith-based organizations in general and congregations in
particular’. Yet there are, he estimated, probably some 350,000 in
existence today in that country, which represent a constant flow of what
can be considered micro- and community-level social actions. Congrega-
tions and parishes are indeed largely invisible when most discussion of
public policy takes place, for their actions are voluntary and collective. In
today’s largely secular institutional environment, governments can’t
require them to help those in need. Equally, they themselves do not have
the extension and capacity to hold social service provision together. They
did so partially in the nineteenth century, but not in the way that the
twentieth-century welfare state would require. Indeed, as will be seen in
the case of the UK in Chapter 4, the welfare state saw itself as a much
better and far more skilled replacement and initially dispensed the need
for such actions (Prochaska, 2006).26 However, they are still around, not
only as the more visible faith-based charities and development organ-
izations that they stimulated and encouraged, but as themselves, with
their own action languages.
In 2001, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development
produced a major report on ‘Faith Based Organizations in Community
Development’.27 Its executive summary began: ‘In recent years, policy-
makers have begun looking to churches, synagogues, mosques, and other
faith-based organizations to play a greater role in strengthening com-
munities. Yet little research exists on the role of faith-based organizations
in community development.’ The report found that, while faith-based
organizations were less active in community development, more than half
of all congregations and many other faith-based organizations provided
some form of human services. This was more so amongst larger
communities located in low-income areas, especially those that were
theologically liberal and African American. As Cnaan also found: ‘Con-
gregations cannot assume the role that government plays in social
services provision and in caring for needy people. They can, however, be
the quiet partner that constitutes part of the first line of help’ (2002, p. 9).
Congregations and parishes, then, provide yet another reason for the
broad public action languages approach that the book is proposing. They
are not part of government, they do not follow government requirements,
but that does not stop them being a public for the public. Equally there is
no simple dividing line between congregations and parishes carrying out
activities that they themselves see as important, and the more hybrid type
of service-providing faith-based organizations that may well be working
in some kind of direct relationship with local authorities.28
ORPHANAGES, CHARITIES AND THE RIGHTS OF THE

CHILD
No unaccompanied adults, no dogs, no glass bottles
(Plaque on the gateway to Coram’s Fields in London, UK, once the site of
the Foundling Hospital)
There is no path from Adam Ferguson’s 1767 An Essay on the History of

Civil Society, written in Enlightenment Scotland, that will lead to Alexis
de Tocqueville’s reflections on his trip to early nineteenth-century New
England, but placed side by side with Dahrendorf’s contemporary
definition they make it clear that at least a good part of middle and late
modernity shares the view that government does not have the monopoly
on public affairs.
If the public good be the principal object with individuals, it is likewise true,
that the happiness of individuals is the great end of civil society: for in what
sense can a public enjoy any good, if its members, considered apart, be
unhappy? (Ferguson, 1767/1995, p. 59)
Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form
associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies,
in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious,
moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The
Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to
build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the
antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons and schools. If it is
proposed to inculcate some truth or foster some feeling by the encouragement
of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new
undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England,
in the United States you will be sure to find an association. (de Tocqueville,
1840/1990, Book 2, p. 106)
Civil society describes the associations in which we conduct our lives and
which owe their existence to our needs and initiative rather than to the state.
Some of these associations are highly deliberative and sometimes short lived,
like sports clubs or political parties. Others are founded in history and have
very long life, like churches or universities. Still others are the place in which
we work and live – enterprises, local communities. The family is an element
of civil society. The criss-crossing network of such associations – their
creative chaos as one might be tempted to say – make up the reality of civil
society. It is a precious reality, far from universal, itself the result of a long
civilizing process; yet it is often threatened by authoritarian rulers or by the
forces of globalization. (Dahrendorf, 1996, p. 237)
In 1774, two years before Ferguson’s book, Johann Basedow founded a

school in Dessau, now Germany, for the education of children on topics
such as philanthropy and natural religion. His students were called
philantropines and already at this time the expression was used to refer to
people who loved humanity and practised benevolence to their brothers
on earth. Orphanages and hostels for babies and children who could not
be maintained by their mothers had been around even longer. The famous
Ospedale dela Pietâ, the orphanage in Venice where Vivaldi would later
teach and conduct, was founded between 1336–1346.29
Thomas Coram, a successful shipwright and sailor retired home to
England from the New World at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Impacted by the sights of children discarded and dying on the streets of
London, he campaigned for 17 years to establish a Foundling Hospital
which was granted by Royal decree in 1739. Amongst its supporters was
the painter William Hogarth, who donated works to be put on show and
persuaded fellow artists to do the same, thus unknowingly creating the
UK’s first public art gallery. The result was to become, for the London
elite, a very fashionable charity and place in which to be seen. George
Friedrich Handel also joined in and gave a highly successful benefit
concert in 1749, returning the following year to conduct the recently
written Messiah in a second over-subscribed benefit concert. The concert
was repeated, Handel was made a governor and he continued to perform
the Messiah in the annual benefit concert until his death, having donated
the complete score to the hospital.
The hospital moved out of London in 1926 and stopped only in 1954,
when the institutional model of child care ended, partly as a result of the
disruptions of wartime, but also because of the growing understanding of
the consequences of family break-ups and the 1946 Curtis Report on
children deprived of a normal life. In 1948 the Children’s Act transferred
the responsibility of caring for homeless children and those in need to the
local authorities, who had to set up a children’s committee and appoint a
Children’s Officer. Charities had to take their place within this new
structure and report to the Home Office. Little by little the orphanages
changed their roles as fostering, family support and smaller care units
began to take over. The Foundling became the Thomas Coram Foun-
dation for Children (The Coram), a leading research and advocacy centre
for research on child and family vulnerability and best practice in care.
Part of the old grounds became, with charitable support and public
subscription, a much-needed space for inner London children to play –
Coram’s Fields (1936).
Children were also the focus of other early social activists, this time in
the area of education. The Ragged School movement (named after the
quality of the clothes that children wore) had started almost spon-
taneously in different parts of the UK in the 1820s to offer education to
those who could not pay. One of these local movements was led by John
Pounds, a Portsmouth shoemaker, who in 1818 taught up to 40 children
at a time to read and write in his workshop. It became a union in 1844
and, importantly, many of its teachers were women. There are estimates
of more than 1,600 voluntary teachers in 1851 and by 1867 the Union
reported 226 Sunday schools, 204 day schools and 207 night schools,
with a total of 26,000 children. In 1866, the Irish doctor T.J. Barnardo
arrived in London for training as a missionary. He ended up joining the
movement, and on finding that many of the children in his school lived
on the streets he opened a shelter in 1870. One evening he had to turn
11-year-old John Somers away because the shelter was full. ‘Carrots’ as
he was known was later found dead from malnutrition and exposure.
From that day on a sign was put on the shelter door: ‘No destitute child
ever refused permission.’ By the end of his life, in 1905, Barnardo had
opened a further 95 shelters and homes. The organization he founded
went on to run many more homes all over the UK until gradually running
down its residential care work in the 1950s and early 1960s. Under the
name of Barnardo’s it continues as one of the UK’s leading charities for
children, with an activist and advocacy agenda in children’s rights.
It was not only in the ragged schools that women like Mary Carpenter
(educated in a school run by her father, a Unitarian minister), who
opened a school for girls with her mother and sisters in 1829 and was
another founder of the movement, were taking an active part. Increas-
ingly present in other areas of the growing charitable arena of social
action, but denied access to higher education until the latter part of the
century and then only in some universities, they were to appear not just
as volunteers but as employees and leaders of a number of initiatives. It
is estimated that by the 1890s some 20,000 women were actively
employed in a wide variety of charity organizations and more than
500,000 in some kind of voluntary or semi-professional role (somewhat
contrary to Queen Victoria’s views about the role of women).
Prochaska (2006) grouped his study of church-based activities and the
early social services into four broad themes: schooling, visiting, mother-
ing and nursing. Of these perhaps the one least mentioned today is
visiting.
Of all forms of charitable activity established in Britain, none was more
important than district, or household, visiting. It is little remembered today,
except as the forerunner of social casework. But from the late eighteenth
century until well into the twentieth it represented the most significant
contribution made by organized religion to relieving the ills of society.
(location 751, Kindle edition)
Often organized by parish, visitors would be assigned to specific streets

and households which they would visit weekly or more often with the
‘tools of their trade – Bibles, tracts, clothes, blankets, food and coal
tickets, domestic advice, medical assistance, friendship and love’
(location 751, Kindle edition). Some visiting societies were set up by
the poor themselves, some were pioneers on special issues such as those
who worked with the blind and visitors came from the Church of
England, the Catholic Church as well as the many different chapels and
meeting halls. Prochaska provides data for the Church of England, which
in its first census counted 47,112 district visitors, mostly female in
12,000 of the 15,000 parishes in England and Wales. The figure was
74,009 by 1910, 85,000 a few years later – of which 75,000 were

women. Estimates from across the religious spectrum suggest that overall
the tally was 200,000.
Another of these early activists was Eglantyne Jebb, born in 1876 into
an upper-middle-class family with social concerns. In the turmoil of the
aftermath of the First World War, she was imprisoned for handing out
leaflets in Trafalgar Square London with photos of starving Austrian
children, in protest against the effects of the post-war economic blockade.
She was fined £5 (£500 at today’s value) and, as a sign of the times, the
public prosecutor stepped forward and asked permission to pay the fine
on her behalf. A few days later, along with her sister and friends,
including Margaret, the sister of the economist John Maynard Keynes,
she raised £10,000 (close to £1 million today), which was delivered as
aid within ten days in Vienna (Mulley, 2009). One amongst many women
who were assuming new roles in society, Jebb, as an Anglican, sought
support from the Archbishop of Canterbury who backed away because of
the political implications. As a travelled member of intellectual society,
she had no difficulty in finding her way to Rome where, after a long
conversation, Pope Benedict XV not only made a substantial contribution
from his own funds but promised the support of all the catholic parishes
on a ‘save the children day’. On Holy Innocents’ Day, Christian churches
all around the world joined together in an ecumenical act of support and
the Save the Children Fund was created.
The organizational format of Save the Children, a network of national
associations, was similar to that developed some 50 years before by a
businessman, Jean Henri Dunant, who had by chance witnessed the
terrible aftermaths of the Battle of Solferino in 1859. He wrote a book
about the sufferings of wounded soldiers and, together with others,
organized a meeting to discuss his concerns in 1863 in Calvin’s city,
Geneva. The result of the meeting was the International Committee of the
Red Cross, followed by the first Geneva Convention of August 1864. It
was in the same mountains above Calvin’s city that Jebb would sit down
in 1922 to pen one of the first proposals of a declaration of children’s
rights. Clearly, she had been talking about this for some time and her
love of Geneva was in part a result of a daughter’s obligation to
accompany her invalid mother on the different cures for water and air.
Like most people who today grab a moment in an airport lounge or
coffee shop to format an argument, the place becomes symbolic in a post
facto manner; that is sensemaking. But it’s still a nice story. The result
was the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the
League of Nations on 26 September 1924.
By the present Declaration of the Rights of the Child, commonly known as

‘Declaration of Geneva’, men and women of all nations, recognizing that
mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give, declare and accept it as
their duty that beyond and above all consideration of race, nationality or
creed:
(1) The child must be given the means requisite for its normal develop-
ment, both materially and spiritually;
(2) The child that is hungry must be fed; the child that is sick must be
nursed; the child that is backward must be helped; the delinquent child
must be reclaimed; and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and
succored;
(3) The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress;
(4) The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be
protected against every form of exploitation;
(5) The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must
be devoted to the service of fellow men.
Declarations and Bills of Rights were already appearing in the wider

social and institutional imaginary30 but here was a moment in which they
were being used as a precise and definable tool, a language for social
action. Written almost 100 years ago it would put to shame many current
programmatic and policy documents on child welfare. Its language is
emphatic and certainly not related to budget approval. It is written, just
like the writer when she penned the first version, on the high ground –
only in this case a very clear and non-political moral high ground. It is
very difficult to ‘if’ and ‘but’. It is said that the Pope was running behind
schedule when he fitted her in for a quick talk, but that he stayed
listening for two hours.
Going forward in time, it is unlikely without the Dunants and Jebbs of
this world and other similar cross-national arrangements that the United
Nations Organization would have included in its article 71 of its 1945
Charter that: ‘The Economic and Social Council may make suitable
arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations
which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrange-
ments may be made with international organizations and, where appro-
priate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of
the United Nations concerned.’
Without them, and many others, it is possible that what today we call
NGOs (non-governmental organizations) may not have been called
NGOs and may be still wrapped up as philanthropic or non-profit or
some other different descriptor. Save the Children continues, as does the
Red Cross, to work in conflict zones but can also be found around the
corner. For example, in Spain in 2012 the Red Cross was supporting
more than a million-and-a-half people in different parts of the country

with food parcels because they did not have enough to eat. Many others,
including the author, stopped by a Red Cross/Red Crescent booth on 8
May to donate funds to support them. Those who stepped into these
issues, or talked them into being, were probably not interested in creating
non-governmental organizations, rather they were very much concerned
with problems that in some way they felt responsible for doing some-
thing about.
RECUPERATING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

In an earlier publication of his Italian study, Putnam (1988) set his
discussion in the arena of civic culture (rather than social capital), using
both de Tocqueville on ‘mores’, an earlier kind of civic disposition, and
Almond and Verba’s (1963) classic comparative study of civic culture in
five countries. Almond and Verba’s starting concern was with the
development of political cultures consistent with the democratic form of
participatory political systems in the new generation of post-Second
World War nations:
If the democratic model of the participatory state is to develop in these new
nations, it will require more than the formal institutions of democracy –
universal suffrage, the political party, the elective legislature. These in fact are
also part of the totalitarian participation pattern, in a formal if not functional
sense. (Almond and Verba, 1963, p. 5)
Key to their arguments was the importance of what they termed ‘civic
culture’ as a mixed modernizing-traditional culture that was a product of
tense encounters over time between modernizing forces and traditional-
ism ‘sharp enough to effect significant change but not so sharp or so
concentrated in time as to create disintegration or polarization’ (p.7).
Their focus was on Britain, where they saw the story of the civic culture
writ large, but they would also recognize that America, the Scandinavian
countries, Holland and Switzerland appeared to have worked out their
own version ‘of a political culture and a practice of accommodation and
compromise’. Of Britain they would say:
What emerged was a third culture, neither traditional nor modern but
partaking of both; a pluralistic culture based on communication and persua-
sion, a culture of consensus and diversity, a culture that permitted change but
moderated it. This was the civic culture. With this civic culture already
consolidated, the working classes could enter into politics and, in the process
of trial and error, find the language in which to couch their demands and the
means to make them effective. (Almond and Verba, 1963, p. 8)
Looked at in hindsight, as Ehrenberg (1999) has commented, Almond

and Verba’s arguments show considerable aversion to conflict and their
view of British history was considerably pastoral. There is no place for
the Chartists, the Levellers, Cromwell, strikes and massacres amongst
their observations on consensus and compromise. ‘Like many social
scientists of the period, Almond and Verba shared Truman’s worries that
high levels of political activity might be politically destabilizing. This
is why their composite “civic culture” combined participation with
enough parochial and subject orientations to keep it within safe bound-
aries’ (Ehrenberg, 1999, p. 205). Indeed, as Almond and Verba were to
conclude:
The civic culture is a mixed political culture. In it many individuals are active
in politics, but there are many who take the more passive role of subject.
More important, even among those performing the active political role of the
citizen, the roles of the subject and the parochial have not been displaced. The
participant role has been added to the subject and parochial roles. This means
that the active citizen maintains his traditional nonpolitical ties, as well as his
more passive role as a subject. (1963, p. 474)
There is no doubt that seen from this perspective the adoption of ‘civic
culture’ by Almond and Verba is both liberal and orthodox, if not to say
conservative, suggesting that politics needs to be kept in its place and that
somehow the norms and values of the interpersonal and the social
environments provide a background of general trust and confidence.
Their implicit civil society is much more like that of Ferguson than it is
of Gramsci (1971), yet at the same time they came close to an important
observation, albeit in a very different direction than their understandable,
for the time period, pro-westernized intentions. That is, the importance in
everyday life of a minimum acceptance of and responsibility to the other,
a point much better dealt with in the discussion surrounding the moral
commonwealth (Selznick, 1992) and the collectivist critique of Rawls
(Sandel, 1998).
However, possibly it was their understanding of European history that
let them down. The guilds, communes and early city movements of the
middle and late medieval periods had already established a variety of
practical versions of the principle of mutual responsibility, argued in
different ways but present in such terms as comunitas, universitas,
civilitas and recognized as an acceptance of the bonum comune or
common good (Black, 1984). The suggestion by Almond and Verba that
civic culture, as symbolized by the UK and northern continental coun-

tries, was something that should be spread to help democracy was wide
of the mark and probably helped the expression to quietly fall into disuse.
The Latin corona civica was a garland of oak leaves bestowed on
somebody who saved the life of a fellow citizen in war. In the medieval
period it had become firmly attached to the associative responsibilities of
city membership, and by the time of the French Revolution it had
become, as the serment civique, the oath of allegiance to the new order of
things. The teaching of civics was the early teaching of the science of
civil government, and Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary described it
thus: ‘Civick – relating to civil honors or practices; not military’. There is
a lot of evidence that there are basic requirements for civility once people
have found themselves occupying the same space, or in order to do things
together. It may not be called civic responsibility but something like it
does seem to play a key role in building societies. Perhaps the mistake
that Almond and Verba made was to assume that it came in a particular
size and shape and from a particular part of the world – a mistake that
early anthropologists also made in associating culture with the more
visible institutional structure rather than with the subtle assumptions of
lived-in social processes (Bloch, 1977).
Today, civic engagement may seem somewhat old-fashioned as a term
and can bring the dangers of localism,31 but it has not gone out of use as,
for example, in serving as a rallying point for the discussion of the role
of the university in relation to the community or communities of which it
is a part.32 Civil society, as Friedmann (2011) points out, is neither good
nor bad: ‘civil society must under no circumstances be read as a
homogeneous sphere. Deep divisions run through it, creating an internal
dynamic that is based on social class, gender, religion, ethnicity, so-called
race, access to household resources and other social markers’ (p.116).
Seen from the perspective of planning, itself a field with many action
languages, the importance of the revival of civil society in the 1980s was:
‘less the term itself, but the varied forms of discourse linked to it, such as
discursive democracy, citizenship (especially citizen rights and obliga-
tions), civic spaces, social justice, voluntary organizations, and social
movements’ (pp.109–110).
Government officials and agencies may look from their offices and
imagine a spreading network of policy, inter-agency coordination,
implementation and action moving outwards towards their fellow citizens
and service users. But at the same time, their fellow citizens – wondering
how they will get through to the end of the day, week or month – are
more likely to see a world of questions, organizations and actions, some
of which are private affairs, some of which are handled by different
government agencies such as the state or region, the city, the county, the
municipal government, the water board, the police and the fire depart-
ment, and some of which are somehow resolved by all sorts of mixtures
of church, friends and relations, neighbours, clubs, associations and
philanthropic bodies.
In a number of cases the question of ‘who does what?’ will be in
dispute; either because this or that level, branch or agency of government
doesn’t do ‘its bit’ or because ‘it is getting in the way’. Information will
be more or less easy to find, including the very question of where to find
it. The result can be a generally deepening democracy (Habermas, 1998),
but it can also get blocked in the uneasy co-existence of assorted
agencies, citizens, households and community-based groups who find
themselves pushing and shoving in the same arena. Increasingly, these
tensions are marked by the complexity of dealing with broader issues of
living in moral communities. It is towards this multiplicity of action
languages that the book now turns, first in theoretical terms and then
through a series of examples of governments and of publics in action.
NOTES
1. See the classical texts by Engels ‘On the Housing Question’, first published in 1872 and
1873.
2. ‘… both people able to talk and things unable to talk have spokesmen. I propose to call
whoever and whatever is represented actant’ (Latour, 1987, pp. 83–84).
3. Actantes in narrative theory refer to the key roles in the story, without which the story
wouldn’t happen. ‘The term actante (literally “that which accomplishes or undergoes the
action”) refers, in semiotics, to the great functions or roles occupied by the various
characters of a narrative, be they humans, animals or simple objects’ (Vandendorpe, 1993,
p. 505).
4. Accessed 15 March 2018 at UNHCR (2018).
5. This is confirmed in the introduction by Melvin Rogers to the 2012 edition: ‘Revisiting
The Public and its Problems’.
6. Marres (2007), Cefaï (2016).
7. Habermas (1962/1999), Cohen and Arato (1994).
8. For example, the well-documented war against Canudos in the interior of the State of
Bahia, Brazil, between October 1896 and October 1897 in which a semi-religious
community of some 30,000 people from different parts of the north east of the country
held out against an army of over 9,000.
9. Spink (1997).
10. In part through the constant effort of the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas in describing
the conditions on the Spanish plantations in the New World which largely contributed to
Pope Paul III issuing his Sublimus Dei in 1537, discussed later in the chapter. For a review
of the impact of the missions see Adelha (1999).
11. Tubman (undated).
12. See Balcells’ recent review (2017) of collectivization in Catalonia and Valencia; also Alba
(2001) for an insider’s view and Thomas (1961/1977).
13. Cited in Schulkind (1985, p. 150).
14. Cited in Holyoake (1857/1907).

15. See also Billis (2010) on heterogeneity and hybrid forms, Smith and Lipsky (1993) on
issues of policy making and independence, Salamon and Anheier (1998) for a cross-
national perspective, and also Zunz (2012) on philanthropy.
16. Bache and Reardon (2016).
17. King Jr (1963).
18. King Jr (undated).
19. See www.citizensuk.org.uk
20. Mackin (2013).
21. Daniel Elazar has suggested that this may in part have to do with questions of physical
geography and the difference between lands with rivers and streams that suggest clearer
physical boundaries and lands with wells and deserts. http:/www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/
jewreorg.htm (accessed in March 2018 but no longer available).
22. This is a bottom-up process, see UK Parish Councils (undated).
23. The history of local arrangements for public life can vary considerably from one
democratic country to another and each would require its own chapter to do it justice. The
focus on the USA and the UK has to do with the wider focus of the book, for it is largely
in these countries that the idea of ‘public policy’ was put together from 1950–1975. They
are therefore key places to look for other social action languages that were in use and to
ask what happened to them. Was public policy, as the textbooks seem to say, so powerful
as an articulating concept that it swept away the other ways of being and talking public
affairs?
24. Wilson (2012, p. 78).
25. Johnson (undated).
26. This may explain part of the reason why social scientists tend to leave them on one side.
Rochester and Torry (2010), in their own contribution (‘Faith-Based Organizations and
Hybridity’) to Billis’ edited volume on Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector,
comment that there is no equivalent in the UK literature to Cnaan’s detailed study of 251
US congregations and also report that even a study carried out for the Church of England
itself admitted a very fragile base of information (p.121).
27. HUD (2001).
28. See Rochester and Torry (2010), Smith and Lipsky (1993).
29. The expression ‘Ospidale’, in English ‘hospital’, dates from the very early practice of
providing protection and shelter (hospitality) to pilgrims and grew in use following the
crusades, changing meaning as shelter was provided for the sick as well.
30. ‘The imaginary of which I am speaking is not an image of. It is the unceasing and
essentially undetermined (social historical and psychical) creation of figures/forms/images,
on the basis of which alone there can ever be a question of “something”. What we call
“reality” and “rationality” are its works’ (Castoriadis, 2006, p. 5).
31. Mohan and Stokke (2000).
32. Goddard et al. (2016).
3. Social languages and the

performative turn
Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the
laws for educating the common people.
(Thomas Jefferson writing from Paris to George Wythe, one of the seven
Virginian signatories to the Declaration of Independence, 1786)1
In the eleventh century, Pope Urban II received a request from the then
Byzantine Emperor to help with the fight against westward moving Sejuk
Turks who had taken most of Asia minor including Jerusalem. He went
on to make a speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095 where he called
for those present and others to recover and guarantee access to the Holy
Land. In part of the speech, registered by members of his audience, he
gave the following instruction:
Whoever, therefore, shall determine upon this holy pilgrimage and shall make
his vow to God to that effect and shall offer himself to Him as a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, shall wear the sign of the cross of the
Lord on his forehead or on his breast. When ‘truly’, having fulfilled his vow
he wishes to return, let him place the cross on his back between his shoulders.
Such, indeed, by the twofold action will fulfill the precept of the Lord, as He
commands in the Gospel, ‘He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me,
is not worthy of me.’ (Munro, 1895)2
WORDS AND EVENTS: SOCIAL ACTION AS

CIRCULATING MEANINGS
There is probably nobody who has grown up or gone to school in Europe
or the Americas who has not come across images of tall and noble
knights in armour with long white over-cloths marked by the sign of the
cross in red, or vice versa, who are taking part in the crusades. The
crusaders, unfortunately, would never know that they were crusaders, or
that they were on crusades. The word that Urban II used was the word
that was available – pilgrimage (perigrinato) – and many of those
involved may have just called it an iter or journey. The idea that
58
Social languages and the performative turn 59
Jerusalem had been recently seized is also strange as the city had been in
Muslim hands for many centuries, but the following two centuries of
struggles after the Council of Clermont would leave a legacy of expres-
sions and practical forms of organization.3 The term itself would require
gradual tweaking and turning by the time of the third ‘crusade’ with the
latin crucesignatus (signed by the cross) and the later French term
croisade (approximately ‘the way of the cross’) before early historians
began to write about the crusades. This earlier vision of the crusades as
morally justifiable ventures can be found in the Oxford English Diction-
ary on Historical Principles (OED) documentation of its use in 1786 as
‘an aggressive movement of enterprise against some public evil’. Jeffer-
son, it can be assumed, was using a softer notion of the word, as would
the US pastor and evangelist Billy Graham who carried out over 400
crusades, later changed to missions, in 185 countries from 1947 to 2005.
A common thread, however, is the implicit moral high ground which can
also be found in the use of ‘wars’ on poverty and on want.4
The different chapters of Beyond Public Policy deal with many ideas
that seem natural and obvious in describing different aspects of the broad
arena of public affairs. This is in part because of the tendency to see
academic ideas as somehow detached and independent of the everyday
and certainly not as social products. If they are widely used, then there
must be good academic reasons for using them, and if they are used by
many, they must be accurate descriptions of what is taking place. But, if,
on the other hand, ideas are social products, then the form and substance
of what is said and the social situation in which it is said are linked.
Thus, looking at other periods and times – when time indeed was
different and ideas changed more slowly – helps to be a bit more
suspicious of the ‘naturalness’ with which current concepts and ideas are
treated.
The example of the crusades shows how actions and terms intercon-
nect, are altered, used, reinvented and borrowed for a variety of reasons
in a variety of ways. Those external armed pilgrimages to the eastern
Mediterranean lands would not only help to produce the ‘Holy’ Land, but
also contribute to serve as a way of dealing with movements in Europe
itself that could also be positioned as heretics or challengers to the
dominant religious order. Such was the case of what is referred to today
as the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century, led by armed
soldiers (knights) from north and central France against the Cathars in
the south west near Albi in the Pyrenees. The Cathars5 were a non-
materialist Christian movement that directly challenged papal authority
and whose members were slaughtered in their thousands. It is said that
when one of the crusaders said, ‘We don’t know which are Cathars and
which are Christians’, the papal legate Abbot Arnaud Amalric replied
‘Kill them all. The Lord knows those who are his.’ While there is no
certainty that this was actually said – it was attributed to the Abbot some
ten years later – it no less served as a reflection on a growing position.
This internal campaign within Christian territory sparked off other
actions against dissident movements and in turn would lead to the
Inquisition with, it might be said, a similar approach to possible mistakes
of judgement. It would take a very long time for the current belief in the
presumption of innocence to become established as a core value for
justice.
Part of this core value is often associated with the role ascribed to the
modern sovereign state in guaranteeing citizenship and rights which, like
the Policy Sciences in 1951 (Lerner and Lasswell, 1951), is often given a
symbolic starting time and location. In this case it was to be the Treaty of
Westphalia made up of two treaties signed on the same day in Münster in
1648. It has been described as the portal that leads from the Old World
into the New World, from the middle ages to modernity. Croxton, whose
historical analysis points in a very different direction, characterizes this
current ‘version’ as suggesting that ‘On one side, diplomacy is hemmed
in by religion and confused by overlapping jurisdictions that make it
difficult even to identify the main actors; on the other side, it is
conducted by sovereign states in pursuit of security through balance of
power’ (Croxton, 2013, p. 3).
It was certainly an event that had many consequences, although some
of the parties continued fighting each other afterwards, but as Croxton
argues it had much more to do with the different Catholic and Protestant
powers (these included Lutherans and Calvinists) agreeing to accept each
other. It was, in other words, a peace that tried to deal with the conflicts
that were present, rather than a treaty that was turned towards a new
institutional design. Münster and Osnabrück were small provincial towns,
picked not because of their centrality but because they served as a
compromise between the distances that delegations were travelling from
Madrid, Stockholm, Rome, Paris and Vienna. There had to be two towns
because the French and Swedes would not accept either one having
precedence over the other. There were Protestants who disagreed with
Catholics, the Holy Roman Empire that didn’t see eye to eye with
France, princes against emperors, France also against Spain, Swedes,
Danes, Poles, Russians, the Dutch and the Swiss – plus all sorts of
commercial interests. But it was agreed that there would be communi-
cation and that eventually the two signings would take place on the same
day. Putting all this together was an immense jungle of different tasks
with huge contingents of princes, ambassadors, servants and cooks on all
sides. Estimates put this as representatives of some 194 states, large and
small, 179 plenipotentiaries and ambassadors (who were already in
action in early Europe) with moderators from the Pope and from Venice.
Croxton’s descriptions of the day to day of the four years in which the
Congress was in action illustrate the skills that must have been involved,
including dealing with the languages in which demands were presented
(Latin, French, Spanish, Italian and German). ‘The inability of the
participants to settle on a single language at the Congress of Westphalia
was symbolic of the transition through which diplomacy was passing; on
the one side the medieval period with its universal use of Latin; on the
other side, the modern period in which national languages are preferred’
(2013, p. 164). In the informal negotiations with most delegates under-
standing some of the other languages (for example, those who had gone
to university had Latin as a working language), most delegates preferred
to talk in their own tongues. One would talk in French and the other in
Italian. Dutch and Swedish were known to few outside their delegations
and Spanish was also limited. Documents were going backwards and
forwards all over Europe and lawyers were involved with many of the
specific settlements.
This was Europe of the seventeenth century and, as Spruyt (1994) has
pointed out, over the previous centuries there were many alternatives
around for territorial political organization. Something of this can be
found in the lines of the treaty itself. There are references (in the English
translation) to ‘Vassals, Subjects, Citizens and Inhabitants who will be
restored to the possession of their Goods’ and the very ‘Places, Citys,
Towns, Boroughs, Villages, Castles, Fortresses and Forts that have been
possessed’.6
The variety of expressions and forms of relation between economic
activity and early urban institutions – such as guilds, universitas and
Gemeinde or communities especially in smaller towns – has been
frequently described, and by 1300 central and northern Italy was dotted
with guild republics (Black, 1984). Italy would also provide city leagues
and city states, and in the north the Hanseatic League would gradually
emerge as a confederation of towns which as its peak covered an area
from parts of present-day France, Brussels, Holland up through Sweden
to the Baltic. Beginning with relationships between merchants it moved
on gradually to be a set of relationships between the towns themselves
(more than 200), capable not only of trading but fielding armies and even
deposing kings and participating in international treaties. It was a very
viable way of organizing political and economic activity without a central
authority. The towns would be called to meet or send delegates to the
Hansetag which met every few years on the principle of one town one
vote. It lasted from the thirteenth through to the sixteenth centuries and
slowly stopped during the seventeenth century, with the last assembly
being held in 1669 at which only Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg were
present.7 The Hanseatic League was more than just an arrangement; these
were commercial and political activities, and for commerce there is a
need for warehouses and storage as well as skills and knowledge about
the great trade routes. Today it is possible to walk through many a town
in northern Europe, including the English town of King’s Lynn, and still
see the physical presence of the league. There are now tourist routes
through Hanseatic territory and, not surprisingly, there are new
cooperation agreements between the Hanse towns8: socialities and mate-
rialities have a curious way of conversing over time.
Many of these earlier expressions for human settlements, in Latin or
vernacular French, German and Italian, still appear on today’s descriptive
territorial landscape. Others were adapted, translated or put aside, in the
same way that the territorial landscape of human settlements has also
changed. Most European towns will have an ‘old quarter’, and it is a
useful exercise to stand at some narrow crossing and remember that this
was the town and it probably stayed like that for a long time. In contrast,
that which is surrounding it has another time frame, one that changes
constantly. In order to deal with this contrast and potential conflict, many
local governments will have departments dedicated to preservation and,
along the corridor, departments dedicated to planning. It is difficult to be
in two ‘times’ at the same place.
CONCEPTS, SOCIAL LANGUAGES AND SPEECH

GENRES
The notion of the simultaneous presence of different concepts, terms and,
often conflicting, forms of reason and ideas, as well as the discussion of
their implications and consequences, can be found throughout the
humanities and the social sciences.9 Different times are not only present,
as it were, in the past but are also in the present; and the future also
makes its presence felt through expectations that exist because they too
have effects.10 Concepts, ideas, terms, theories and practices which form
social languages are the main focus of the book, and one in particular –
policy – provides its initial attraction. But these do not happen in the air.
The work of Koselleck (1979/2004) on the history of concepts
(Begriffsgeschichte) and of historians of ideas in general help to under-
stand both the connections and disconnections, the breaks and continui-
ties, the gradual changes and the reinventions that can take place around
social and political theses, ideas and concepts. One of Koselleck’s

leading themes is the intersection of experience and expectation:
The highly developed forms of association among the Stände in the Late
Middle Ages led, but only after some delay, to the easily remembered
expression Bund. This expression was first formed (outside of Latin termin-
ology) only when the shifting forms of association had found temporally
limited but repeatable success. What was at first only sworn verbally, that is,
the individual agreements which for a specific period mutually bound,
obliged, or associated the parties, was, as the outcome of its successful
institutionalization, brought under the one concept, Bund. An individual
Bündnis still had the sense of an active concept operating in the present,
Bund, on the other hand, referred to an institutionalized condition. This is
apparent, for example, in the displacement of the parties, when the ‘Bund of
cities’ became the ‘cities of the Bund.’ The real agent is hidden in the genitive.
While a ‘Bund of cities’ still placed emphasis on the individual partners, the
‘cities of the Bund’ were ordered to an overall agency, the Bund. In this way,
the various activities of Bündnisse became retrospectively consolidated in a
collective singular. Der Bund incorporated experience that had already been
made and brought them under one concept. This is, therefore, what might be
called a concept for the registration of experience. It is full of past reality
which can, in the course of political action, be transferred into the future and
projected onward. (2004, p. 271)
But there are also concepts that had basically been forgotten until they
were found in some musty attic of the collective mind or social
imaginary, dusted down and given a totally different usage. As for
example with ‘civil society’ after the events in Poland and then Hungary
in the 1980s that redefined the political map of Europe and the
experiences in different parts of the developing world of new forms of
social movement. Within this wider text, civil society became a key
articulating term for thinking about democracy and development, added
a new concept ‘solidarity’ (the abbreviated name of the Polish trade
union movement founded in 1980) and recovered a forgotten author
(Gramsci).11 In both cases, whether slow adaptation or recovery for other
uses, it is possible to say that it happened, but the rest is a question of
interpretation. But, as Richter (1996) remarked in the introduction to a
seminar held to discuss the twenty-five-year study led by Koselleck to
document past uses of some 120 German political and social concepts:
‘By understanding the history of the concepts available to us, we may
better perceive how they push us to think along certain lines, thus
enabling us to conceive of how to act on alternative and less constraining
definitions of our situation’ (p.10).
In a similar way, the social histories of the languages themselves

provide insights into the many different ways that people found them-
selves together in talk and, within them, the many different varieties of
dialects that defied attempts to teach people the proper way. In the town
of Rochdale, site of the cooperative shop of Chapter 2, people were seen
as being blunt and abrupt, surnames were replaced by other forms of
identification and it was reported that strangers would find it impossible
to understand the broad, unadulterated provincialisms of the natives
(Joyce, 1991). Languages are indeed very social affairs.12 Latin, for
example, held on in diplomacy for a long time before being replaced by
the vernacular French. After all it was a language which had no ‘owner’,
so no one person was subservient to the other. Treaties continued to be
written in Latin in the eighteenth century, and in those countries where it
was not expected that visitors would have any vernacular skills Latin
came in handy and there are reports of its use by travellers well into the
mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, it was probably those who were most
dedicated to the preservation of its classical standards, not those for
whom it was a practical way of getting around (what Burke (1991) called
pragmatic Latin), who most contributed to it being seen eventually as a
‘dead language’.
Bakhtin’s view of language may start from somebody talking to
somebody else (including themselves) in a particular dialogue at a
particular time and in a particular place but this does not mean that the
two are separate and that talk passes from one to the other through an
uncluttered space. On the contrary and similar in part to Mead,13 it is the
conversation that produces the people and in carrying it out the complex-
ity of language is continued, for any conversation is the continuation of
many other conversations and will in turn take part in many others.
Humankind lives in words and languages like fish live in water, they are
inseparable and part of each other. Holquist, who has been largely
responsible along with Emerson for making Bakhtin’s texts available in
English, continues this line in his introduction to the 1981 volume:
The two will like everyone else, have been born into an environment in which
the air is already aswarm with names. Their development as individuals – and
in this Bakhtin’s thought parallels in suggestive ways that of Vygotsky in
Russia (…) and Lacan in France (…) – will have been prosecuted as a
gradual appropriation of a specific mix of discourses that are capable of best
mediating their own intentions, rather than those which sleep in the words
they use before they use them. Thus each will seek, by means of intonation,
pronunciation, lexical choice, gesture, and so on, to send out a message to
the other with a minimum of interference from the otherness constituted
by pre-existing meanings (inhering in dictionaries or ideologies) and the
otherness of the intention present in the other person in the dialogue. Implicit
in all this is the notion that all transcription systems – including the speaking
voice in a living utterance – are inadequate to the multiplicity of the meanings
they seek to convey. My voice gives the illusion of unity to what I say; I am,
in fact, constantly expressing a plenitude of meanings, some intended, others
of which I am unaware. (Holquist, 1981, p.xx)
Bakhtin brought in the distinction between national language and social

language in his study on speech genres. The former are the traditional
linguistic unities such as English, Russian and French. The second, as
mentioned in the introduction are those discourses, or discursive prac-
tices, that are peculiar to a specific part of a society within a given social
system at a given time (Bakhtin, 1981). These, social, languages can be
seen as genres, with relatively stable forms of thematic, compositional
and stylistic types of utterance (Bakhtin, 1986).
Bakhtin placed a special emphasis on the extreme heterogeneity of
both oral and written speech genres which, as he repeatedly wrote,
should never be minimized:
In fact, the category of speech genres should include short rejoinders of daily
dialogue (and these are extremely varied depending on the subject matter,
situation and participants), everyday narration, writing (in all its various
forms), the brief standard military command, the elaborate and detailed order,
the fairly variegated repertoire of business documents (for the most part
standard) and the diverse world of commentary (in the broad sense of the
word: social, political). And we must include here the diverse forms of
scientific statements and all literary genres (from the proverb to the multivol-
ume novel). (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 61)
The heterogeneity to which Bakhtin refers also includes the manner in

which different genres can merge with one another, as for example the
different literary traditions that criss-cross with many equally different
traditions in the social sciences, or the different ways in which profes-
sional languages develop.14 They are ideas in social and material con-
texts, but that does not mean that the context is homogeneous text.
Discussing current approaches to the historical analysis of languages of
political theory, Pagden will say:
The discursive practices discussed here were, certainly, the product of long
processes of linguistic change. But we believe that those changes were
brought about by agents who clearly intended to say some things and not
others, and who employed the discourses which they had, in part at least,
inherited. This is not, of course, to deny that the ‘prison house of language’ is
a real one. For there clearly is a part of every author’s text which can be
shown to be derived, in some sense of which the author may seem aware,
from an assembly of past utterances. But any analysis which concentrates on

that alone must ultimately be only circuitous. (1987, p. 2)
Amongst these different genres is one that is a constant presence directly

or indirectly in much of public administration – in plans, decisions,
programmes, policies, budgets, discussions on governance, amongst
others – yet is hardly ever discussed in general textbooks on public
administration and government: law.15 As most academic production
takes place within and in relation to one specific country, usually that of
the author(s), the legal system tends to be taken as a given, as part of the
background nation state, also taken for granted instead of being recog-
nized as only one mode of social institution.16 As a result, it is often
assumed that all sorts of other concepts, such as public–private partner-
ships, new public management, transparency and accountability, can be
discussed in international meetings often only with reference to very
broad aspects of institutional design (parliamentary, unitary, federalist etc.).
Yet in day-to-day practice, there is very little that takes place without the
usually indirect, but sometimes direct, involvement of different kinds of
legal professionals in some part or other of the chain of action. The form
this involvement takes can vary considerably, in part depending on the
legal traditions and institutional practices of different countries.
Scholars who work with comparative law will constantly debate the
number and basis of legal families in the world, but they will agree on
one aspect: that there are different families and the distinctions are
complex.
For example, it is quite possible that a system is to be put in one family for
private law purposes, and in another for purposes of constitutional law. Thus
German private law unquestionably belongs in the German legal family, but
one might well put German constitutional law in a group which included the
United States and Italy and excluded England and France, depending on the
weight one attributes to the presence or absence of judicial review of
constitutionality as being the hallmark of a constitutional system. But even if
one concentrates on private law, a similar difficulty may arise. Thus the
Arabian countries unquestionably belong to Islamic law as far as family and
inheritance law is concerned, just as India belongs to Hindu law, but the
economic law of these countries (including commercial law and the law of
contract and tort) is heavily impressed by legal thinking of the colonial and
mandatary powers – the Common Law in the case of India, French law in the
case of most Arab states. So in the theory of legal families much depends on
the area of law one has in mind. (Zweigert and Kötz, 1987, p. 66)
Zweigert and Kötz (1987) propose using the idea of style rather than
family and, as they point out in a comment that has much to do with the
identification of differences between public action languages, ‘it is easier

to discover the stylistically distinctive elements in a foreign system than
in one’s own’ (p.69). For style they understand the historical background
and development, the predominant and characteristic mode of thought in
legal matters, especially distinctive institutions, the legal sources acknow-
ledged, how they are handled and its ideology. The French Civil Code,
brought in by Napoleon through a process in which a variety of different
legal practices and laws were combined together, had a great impact on
Spain, Portugal and, through them, Latin America. The Anglophone
countries were much influenced by the Common Law tradition but, even
then, there are differences. All of these have consequences for adminis-
trative practice, the organization of institutions, control procedures and
personnel practice. But they also have more subtle implications for the
way in which action takes place:
The tradition of the English Common Law has been one of gradual develop-
ment from decision to decision; historically speaking it is case-law, not
enacted law. On the Continent, the development since the reception of Roman
law has been quite different, from the interpretation of JUSTINIAN’s Corpus
Iuris to the codification, nation by nation of abstract rules. So Common Law
comes from the Court, Continental law from the study; the great jurists of
England were judges, on the Continent professors. (Zweigert and Kötz, 1987,
p. 70)
While the two styles are acquiring something of each other and remem-
bering that the authors were writing in the 1980s, they do suggest that in
the Common Law tradition there is more emphasis on moving empiri-
cally through decisions while, in the Continental tradition, making plans,
advanced regulation, drawing up and systematizing rules play a much
stronger role.17 In both cases the examples are from countries which are
well up the rankings for human development and which are established
democracies with a fairly solid base of rights, so it is not a question of
which way is better. But it is interesting to reflect on what many
apparently similar ‘international’ terms actually mean in the day to day of
government and social practice within the environments of distinctive
legal styles.
THE MOVE TO PERFORMATIVES

Social languages are present in processes of socialization and define
in different ways the possibilities for communication and the production
of meaning. They are, like language itself, performative, and have
implications for identity and for positioning the self and others. John L.
Austin introduced the expression ‘performative’ in a series of lectures at
Harvard in 1955, which were later written up from his notes under the
apt title of How to Do Things with Words, as introduced in Chapter 1. His
concern was with those utterances which are not statements that describe
or report, nor are true or false (which he referred to as constative) but
which can’t be left aside as just saying something. These are utterances
in which the sentence is, or is part of, the doing of an action. Amongst
the examples he gave were the marriage ceremony (‘Do you take … I
do’) and the naming of a ship (uttered as the bottle of champagne is
smashed open on the stem – ‘I name this ship …’). Associated with the
‘happy functioning’ of the performative were a set of conditions.
– There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain
conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words
by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further
– The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be
appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.
– The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and
completely.
– Whereas often the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain
thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential
conduct on the part of any participant, then a person participating in and so
invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts or feelings, and
the participants must intend so to conduct themselves, and further
– Must actually so conduct themselves subsequently. (Austin, 1975, pp.
14–15)
By the time he reached the end of the lectures (published posthumously),

Austin had delicately dismounted the constative/performative distinction
and was focusing a general theory of speech acts in which attention had
switched to the illocutionary force of the utterance. These ranged on the
one side from ‘veredictives’ that deliver a finding and have ‘obvious
connections with truth and falsity, soundness and unsoundness and
fairness and unfairness’ (p.153), through to ‘expositives’, ‘used in acts of
exposition involving the expounding of views, the conducting of argu-
ments, and the clarifying of usages and of references’ (p.161). In between
were speech acts which assert influence or the exercise of power, assume
obligations or declare intentions and adopt attitudes; all again done
though words including policy, plans, decisions, directives, contracts and
many others.
Austin, as Patterson (2009) comments in a later set of lectures, was

concerned with verbs and not with abstract nouns. As she points out, one
marriage is very different from another marriage; an abstract noun that
refers to many centuries of being married, including state regulations and
what happens after the ‘I do’. The abstract noun, she argues, is the form
of speech that does the most work in the English language.
Abstract nouns I shall try to show, are the power words in our society today,
the key words, the megawords. How this happened – that is to say, by doing
historical semantics – will be part of my story. Why we should care – a
question that involves both moral philosophy and politics – will emerge
primarily in the second lecture, when I will deal with abstract nouns that have
emerged as megawords in American culture, among them marriage, success
and democracy. (Patterson, 2009, p. 160)18
In the English language, the scholar often referred to when discussing

those terms most present in collective vocabularies is Williams and his
text Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976). In describing
the origins of what later became a book, Williams takes the very common
expression ‘we just don’t speak the same language’ to point out to the
way in which, despite using the same native language, different interme-
diate values linked to strong feelings or important ideas can produce
significantly different uses. Nobody is right or wrong, although dominant
groups might try to suggest so.
What is really happening through these critical encounters, which may be
very conscious or may be felt only as a certain strangeness and unease, is a
process quite central in the development of a language when, in certain words,
tones and rhythms, meanings are offered, felt for, tested, confirmed, asserted,
qualified, changed. In some situations this is a very slow process indeed; it
needs the passage of centuries to show itself actively, by results, at anything
like its full weight. In other situations the process can be rapid, especially in
certain key areas. (Williams, 1976, p.xxiv)
Habermas’ theory of communicative action, which will play an important

role in the discussion of deliberative democracy, also assumes the
performativity of speech acts. He brings together three types of action:
teleological (oriented to means and ends), normatively regulated (ori-
ented to common values), and dramaturgical (that of the participants as a
public for each other). Communicative action – which draws on both
Mead (Strauss, 1956) and on Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology (1967) –
refers to the three together: awareness of what it is possible to talk about
as true, what is considered valid or appropriate to talk about and how,
and the truthfulness of the exchange.
MEANINGS AND CLASSIFICATIONS

What the ‘performative turn’ helps to draw attention to are the different
ways that key words, nouns, verbs and adjectives combine to form the
different social languages that can be found in and around public affairs
and are actively part of the affairs themselves. Take, for example, a
public meeting to discuss a new road, or a zoning law, or whether to have
a library or a health centre. The event may be described as democratic
governance, or public consultation, or participatory budgeting but it will
also be like the naming of a ship or a marriage ceremony. There will be
procedures and words, lots of words, but they won’t be random. Those
present are very aware of what constitutes the ‘happy functioning’ of the
event. Equally, they are very aware of what is inadequate functioning.
Active membership was an important part of Giddens’ structuration
theory (1979). Structure, simplifying, is not a barrier to action but is
essentially involved in its production which, when performed, may be
seen as solid. But there is always the option of not proceeding.
It is an essential emphasis of the ideas developed here that institutions do not
just work ‘behind the backs’ of the social actors who produce and reproduce
them. Every competent member of every society knows a great deal about the
institutions of that society: such knowledge is not incidental to the operation
of society, but is necessarily involved in it. (1979, p. 71)
Institutions are not solid and permanent affairs but are dynamic and
discursive processes by which certain sets of practices and bits and pieces
of organization become infused with value beyond the technical require-
ments of the task at hand, to use the organizational definition of Selznick
(1992).19 For example, in the way that people and communities invest in
their churches, their schools, little league baseball, voluntary associations
and other enterprises. However, as he went on:
‘Infusion with value’ can be misleading, however, if it is thought of in
psychological terms alone. It takes place in other ways as well: for example
by selective recruiting of members or personnel; by establishing strong ties or
alliances; by creating a special language; and by the many commitments to
persons and groups made in the course of implementing a policy or protecting
a going concern. From a moral point of view, institutionalization may be
positive or negative. Much depends on what is institutionalized. (Selznick,
1992, p. 234)
In technical fields, social languages can also carry disciplinary impli-

cations and, despite attempts to claim the interdisciplinary character of
public life, many of the different professional languages present are
distinctively disciplinary. In Fuller’s (1988) discussion of social episte-

mology, he argued that any knowledge-based discipline is bounded by its
procedure for adjudicating knowledge claims. Under what conditions is
something seen as a contribution to knowledge. Amongst these are the
argumentative format; word usage; borrowings that are permitted from
other disciplines; the appropriate contexts of justification or discovery
(for example reason alone, ordinary perception, technically aided percep-
tion) and their ceteris paribus clauses (that is their base lines for other
things being equal or held constant). This is not merely a question of
paradigms, although these are also present, but about ways of thinking –
what Fleck discussed in 1935 as a thought collective. In the organ-
izational field, very specific social languages can give quite different
social meanings and make different forms of ‘sense’. Weick (1995)
referred to this as sensemaking: the ongoing retrospective development of
plausible images that rationalize what people are doing.
Ways of performing are ways of producing and reproducing. In their
classic text, Berger and Luckmann (1961) would point to the way that the
way we are doing something can become the way we are doing
something again, and eventually the way we do things around here. As
Searle later remarked (1995), in making a more specific distinction of
social reality, ‘there are portions of the real world, objective facts in the
world, that are only facts by human agreement. I am thinking of things
like money, property, governments and marriages’ (p.1). There was a
difference between these ‘institutional facts’ and what he called ‘brute’
facts which need to be described but are, like Mount Everest, independ-
ent of us.20 Here is his opening example:
I go into a café in Paris and sit in a chair at a table. The waiter comes and I
utter a fragment of a French sentence. I say, ‘un demi, Munich, à pression s’il
vous plait ’. The waiter brings the beer and I drink it. I leave some money on
the table and leave. An innocent scene, but its metaphysical complexity is
truly staggering, and its complexity would have taken Kant’s breath away if
he had ever bothered to think about such things. Notice that we cannot
capture the features of the description I have just given in the language of
physics and chemistry. There is no physical-chemical description adequate to
define ‘restaurant’, ‘waiter’, ‘sentence of French’, ‘money’ or even ‘chair’ and
‘table’, even though all restaurants, waiters, sentences of French, money, and
chairs and tables are physical phenomena. Notice, furthermore, that the scene
as described has a huge, invisible ontology: the waiter did not actually own
the beer he gave me, but he is employed by the restaurant, which owned it.
The restaurant is required to post a list of the price of all the boissons, and
even if I never see such a list, I am required to pay only the listed price. The
owner of the restaurant is licensed by the French government to operate it. As
such he is subject to a thousand rules and regulations I know nothing about. I
am entitled to be there in the first place only because I am a citizen of the

United States, the bearer of a valid passport, and I have entered France
legally. (Searle, 1995, p. 3)
While few would probably disagree about the benefits of having a beer in
Paris, or of the usefulness of money – which is increasingly virtual –
there are many other social facts which are equally performed and about
which there is much to discuss. Judith Butler evoked Simone de
Beauvoir’s expression ‘one is not born, but rather, becomes a woman’ in
her 1988 text on ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’.
In this sense, gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from
which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in
time – an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Further,
gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be
understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and
enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered
self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a
substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of a constituted
social temporality. Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are
internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a
constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane
social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to
perform in the mode of belief. (Butler, 1988, pp. 519–520)
If people can become women, or men, or other notions of gender, so can

they also become other parts of the social world. This is the focus of
Hacking’s work on the classification of people (2007) and on the way
that new scientific classifications, for example in health, bring into being
new kinds of person, that is of ways of experiencing being a person, and
the way that classifications interact with those classified. Classifications
also require specialists who can legitimate knowledge, they require
institutions, they require professionals who can help those classified, and
then there are the classified themselves who tend not to stay still but also
interact and position themselves (including creating their own associa-
tions). All of these connect to each other in various ways providing
apparent stability to issues and fields. They are also part of the social
action languages, for if there aren’t any issues there can’t be plans,
decisions, programmes, and if there are no different peoples it becomes
difficult to have participation, or focus groups, or service users.
Here it is worth mentioning studies in the anthropology of public
policy about the way policies can be part of the process of creating new
categories (as can plans and budgets) and the various discussions on the
implications of the terms that describe those seen as clients, consumers,
customers, patients, users and citizens as well as mega-terms and

expressions such as ‘the people’.21
SOCIAL LANGUAGES AND INTERPRETIVE

REPERTOIRES
A key point for the analyses in the following chapters is the way in
which these different social languages and their notions and terms – of all
types – move around, or, rather, are moved around in everyday talk and
discourse (Iñiguez-Rueda, 1997). As M.J.P. Spink (1999) points out in
her study on making sense of illness experiences, all utterances are
dialogical, they are links in chains of communication that may take place
in local and situated contexts, even the scientific, but also as social
languages and speech genres they are shaped by the cultural historical
context. Originating in studies of scientific discourse and the way in
which scientists draw on very different vocabularies at different points of
time,22 the notion of interpretive repertoires as ‘systematically related sets
of terms, often used with stylistic and grammatical coherence and often
organized around one or more central metaphors’ has wider applicability
(Potter, 1996, p. 116). These clusters of terms, descriptions and figures of
language both mark the possibilities of discursive constructions23 and
may indeed be at the basis of Williams’ impression of ‘another language’
as almost hermetic and closed worlds. They can also be very powerful, as
the empiricist repertoire of Gilbert and Mulkay’s scientists showed
(1984). However, because there is a common background language and
there will be questions and requirements to ‘say things in simple words
for the viewers’, bits and pieces of different interpretive repertoires tend
to move around.
Cross-nationally, similar processes apply. Expressions are squeezed
into other formats through translation, sometimes just used in the
original, or even localized by being pronounced and written as if the
expression was vernacular. Diplomats usually get around the potential
traps that this creates for meaning by being skilled linguists. Even so, in
the toing and froing of terms, concepts and professions in public affairs
there is a tendency to assume that meaning somehow is a magically held
constant and, rather like an implanted electronic chip, an integral part of
the word, expression, phrase or concept – even to professions themselves.
This is especially the case with what have been called magic concepts
(Pollitt and Hupe, 2011): those notions that are broad, have normative
appeal, are not binary, have implications of consensus and are globally
fashionable and, if there is no easy translation, they are adopted as they are.
For example, after many attempts at finding alternative ways of

expressing the term ‘accountability’ in Portuguese, at a time when it was
very important to talk about certain issues, most Brazilian scholars in the
field of public affairs ended up either by adopting the English term
directly, without any attempts at turning it local, or switched to talking
about transparency and social control (in the sense of social accountabil-
ity). But, given the different legal families involved and the history of the
different terms, it is doubtful whether the meanings were ever completely
in agreement.
Nash (1993) makes the movements of terms and expressions the focus
of his study of jargon on the move, or ‘jargoning’. As an academic study:
‘jargon is for lexicographers, whereas jargoning, being jargon on the
move or jargon in action, is for students of style – or rather, styles:
literary styles, journalistic styles, official styles, commercial styles, social
styles, professional styles – varieties of language, written or spoken, in
diverse functions, with diverse pretensions’ (p.ix). He begins with the
jargons of profession, how those in the same field describe what they do
to one another and perform their profession; what he calls ‘shop talk’.
Shop talk is often necessary for technical reasons as people go about
discussing their work and it often forms a communicative shorthand for
talking and working at the same time, guaranteeing the cohesion of social
groups and networks. It can be baffling to outsiders when they find
themselves in the middle of a mono-professional conversation; but it is
very similar to highly dedicated sports fans talking about baseball or
football. To someone for whom baseball appears to be one person
throwing a ball as fast as they can at another person waving a stick, a
discussion about the World Series is as unfathomable as, in the reverse
case, the UEFA Champions League to someone for whom football is a
lot of people running backwards and forwards, also as fast as they can,
with a ball arbitrarily moving itself around somewhere in the middle.
Jargoning is what happens when these different expressions move
around:
Some word or phrase in regular occupational service is used by the prac-
titioner with reference to objects or activities outside the sphere of working
life. In this way it becomes a form of slang, or even a sub-species of
metaphor. By and by it is taken up, often for the sake of show-talking by
members of the general public, who conspire to neglect the specific source of
the term, using it ever more loosely, until at length it becomes so well
established as standard idiom that its original sense is lost. (Nash, 1993, p. 7)
Show talk refers to jargons of pretension, which over the centuries have
played a major role in enlarging the English language and similarly –
because similar processes will have been in place in other languages –

the world at large. By the time an expression has rooted itself down in
general conversation it requires quite a lot of skill to find out where it
came from, and Nash’s text is full of fascinating examples, at least for the
Anglophone circle. But somewhere between shop talk and show talk,
there is, as he puts it, an awkward and treacherous country where words
keep their original meanings but are already acquiring analogous use: for
example, in the way that the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis-
tration (NASA) shop talk can be found in ‘windows’, ‘countdowns’,
‘launch pads’, ‘all systems go’ and ‘lift offs’.
Britain was a maritime nation by necessity, and today it is difficult to
realize that the great tea clippers were still racing back under sail from
India to London in the 1860s and 1870s, and that the London Docks, like
their counterparts in other maritime nations, would be full of masts for
many years afterwards. Their bars and coffee houses would be likewise
full of sea folk and many families would have somebody at sea. Not
surprising therefore to discover how much ‘sail talk’ is also part of
ordinary daily conversational English, Dutch, Italian and Portuguese,
amongst others, as for example in the English taken aback, under way,
making headway or changing tack. In Portuguese, the equivalent to
budget is ‘orçamento’, which found its way via the Italian and Portu-
guese ‘orçar’ which is what sailing boats do when they ‘tack’ forwards
against the wind.
Show talk also has its own sources, which are brought in through the
ancient art of mixing metaphors and letting them settle down to a quiet
life in everyday speech. They are usually elegant and provide a feeling of
performative justification; Nash calls them ‘package phrases’. Here are
some: at the end of the day; light at the end of the tunnel; giving value
for money; in real terms; in place (‘the appropriate instruments are in
place to …’). Others have drifted from literature into public action in
ways that would require much foraging around the different vehicles that
contribute to the public sphere to understand. Here is another example
from Nash.
It would be interesting to know exactly when the phrase ‘sea change’ was first
taken up into British journalese as a kind of emphatic, with the meaning of
extensive change, or even complete reversal. ‘Sea change’ it appears, is
related to simple ‘change’ as ‘proactive’ is related to ‘active’. Political
policies, for example undergo a sea change, or there is a sea change in public
attitudes. (1993, p. 25)
Whether it moved from the journalists to the social and political science
communities or whether the route was the reverse, it did not drift there;
rather it was, to use a metaphor, fished. As Nash continues: ‘That

Shakespeare is poetically describing a process of transmutation is obvi-
ous; but it is a gradual, all-consuming process, the work of the sea which
turns mortal remains into “something rich and strange’” – something of
another kind and category altogether. “Sea-change” in the Shakespearean
text is a hauntingly mysterious world …’ (p.25). The source is from The
Tempest, when the invisible Ariel tells Prince Ferdinand:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! Now I hear them – ding-dong, bell.
Nash was concerned about the way these meanings in circulation could
also be harnessed in what he called ‘sales talk’. That is, used to gain
acceptance for goods, ideas, political parties and such through the control
of the potential consumer’s responses to the product. Naturalizing, as it
were, the acceptance.
Dwight Waldo was an early observer of social languages in the public
arena (1948, 1952). His arguments for a theory of democratic adminis-
tration were founded on his analysis of the non-voiced principles that
were to be found hiding within the apparent technical neutrality of public
administration. His critical observations on the fusion of efficiency,
science, democracy and medieval law into ‘cosmic constitutionalism’
were written around the time of the Policy Sciences (Lerner and
Lasswell, 1951) and, like any critique, are clearly directed at discussions
in course. In this context can be placed discussions about the social
construction of the discipline of public administration itself and its
versions (Farmer, 1995; Jun, 2006) and Fischer and Forester’s (1993)
collection of papers on the argumentative turn in policy analysis and
planning which also open other lines of enquiry and reflection.
SOCIAL LANGUAGES AND FIELDS

Mosher (1968) was another writer on the professional state, and the
definition he used for profession (social mechanisms whereby know-
ledge, including particularly new knowledge, is translated into action) is
not just a way of thinking about public administration, where it remains

important (Plant, 2008), but also about the social processes involved in
professions in general and the fields that they help form. Professions, he
found, were necessary for public service but brought new dilemmas in
relation to the contents of their work, which was no longer determined
internally but now also linked to their own professional associations and
the institutions in which they were trained.
Social languages, as has been the theme of this chapter, are highly
practical and performative, but they are also adapted and incorporated by
a variety of different groupings including professionals. Indeed, later
work in policy analysis on advocacy coalitions, policy communities or
networks and the like24 applies not only to the themes in focus but to the
social languages themselves and, also, could equally apply to all the
other social professional languages with their different views on action.
These multiple places, their links and the various bits and pieces
involved, easily evoke the image of fields and here two lines of work are
important. They are not mutually exclusive, even though they have
different standpoints on the social character of science, on epistemology
and truth.25 One is Bourdieu’s field theory and the other is the actor-
network theory associated with Latour; and both cases have many
collaborators. The one, Bourdieu, discusses limits and the way in which
science and other areas articulate their internal spaces; and the other,
Latour, discusses the ramifications of material and social connections. In
the following chapters, both will help to understand something of the
complexity of public action.
Bourdieu’s concern initially was with the scientific field, but he was
clear that this also applied to other fields of activity. He argued that to
understand any cultural production (literature, science, art and so on) it
was not enough to look at the textual content nor refer to the wider social
context as something in direct relation with the text. Instead, he proposed
that between these two poles:
… there is an intermediary universe which I call the literary, artistic, juridical
or scientific field, that is the universe in which the agents and the institutions
that produce, reproduce or spread art, literature or science can be found. This
universe is a social world like any others, but obeys more or less specific
social laws. The notion of field seeks to designate this relatively autonomous
space, this microcosm with its own laws. If, like the macrocosm, it is
submitted to social laws, these are not the same. It can never escape the
impositions of the macrocosm, but has, in relation to this, a more or less
accentuated partial autonomy. One of the major questions that emerges from
the proposal of scientific fields (or subfields) is precisely in terms of the
degree of autonomy that they have. (Bourdieu, 1997/2004, pp. 20–21)
The identification of the field is also the recognition that this is a force
field of objective relationships between agents who determine what can
and cannot be done; a field in which symbolic – as distinct from
economic – capital is very present. That is, the recognition and the credit
attributed by fellow agents, which may include the ability to gather
research grants, tend to play a greater role. Here it might be asked how
many of the different public action languages are, in practice, relatively
autonomous fields that have their own internal social and political, if not
actual, economies. Indeed, a number of the public action languages, as
will be seen in the following chapters are, to all intents and purposes,
quite happy to go on by themselves.26
Latour and colleagues’ actor-network theory is relational in a different
way. Law (1999) described it as a semiotics of materiality:
It takes the semiotic insight, that of the relationality of entities, the notion that
they are produced in relations, and applies this ruthlessly to all materials –
and not simply to those that are linguistic (…) the semiotic approach tells us
that entities achieve their form as a consequence of the relations in which they
are located. But this means that it also tells us that they are performed in, by
and through those relations. (p.4)
Here it is interesting to go back to the earlier discussion by Hacking on

the various bits and pieces that are swept together to form the refugee
woman, or to think what a planner would be without a plan. Law and
Mol would emphasize this in their discussion of how materiality and
sociality produce themselves: ‘Perhaps association is not just a matter for
social beings, but also one to do with materials. Perhaps then when we
look at the social, we are also looking at the production of materiality.
And when we look at materials, we are witnessing the production of the
social’ (1995, p. 274).
Relational materiality is also a moving patchwork of possible connec-
tions, something which has been a feature of Latour’s work since the
early studies on research laboratories and his study of the bits and pieces
that are Pasteur in action. Latour (1999) would emphasize this in his
critique of the way actor-network theory was beginning to be interpreted,
very differently from the original intentions as a critical tool for
rethinking the apparent solidarity of institutions.27
What is the difference between the older and the new usage? At the time, the
word network, like Deleuze’s and Guattari’s term rhizome clearly meant a
series of transformations – translations, transductions – which could not be
captured by any of the traditional terms of social theory. With the new
popularization of the word network, it now means transportation without
deformation, an instantaneous, unmediated access to every piece of infor-

mation. That is exactly the opposite of what we meant. What I would like to
call ‘double click information’ has killed the last bit of the cutting edge of the
notion of network. I don’t think we should use it any more at least not to
mean the type of transformations and translations that we want now to
explore. (pp.15–16)
The rhizome, the image of creeping rootstocks that constantly put out
new roots which themselves root – ginger for example – leads to a very
different approach to text and context, a major difference between Latour
and Bourdieu. Latour will emphasize this in his notion of the flat social,
and his critique of the mystification of a place called context where
problems come from to be solved. ‘To be sure, the structure of language
is spoken by nobody in particular and yet it is out of this that all speech
acts are generated, although the ways in which la parole meets la langue
have remained totally mysterious ever since the time of Saussure’ (2005,
p. 167). Given that action is always dislocated, translated and shifted
around in a variety of ways, any given interaction will have elements
coming from other times, places and agencies. However, as will be
returned to in later chapters, this does not mean that these other times,
places and agencies are some overriding context which can and should
take over and force the abandonment of the local scene.28
Here Rorty’s (2000) draft essay on the Decline of Redemptive Truth
and the Rise of a Literary Culture is more than apt:
I shall use the term ‘redemptive truth’ for a set of beliefs which would end,
once and for all, the process of reflection on what to do with ourselves.
Redemptive truth would not consist in theories about how things interact
causally, but instead would fulfill the need that religion and philosophy have
attempted to satisfy. This is the need to fit everything – every thing, person,
event, idea and poem – into a single context, a context which will somehow
reveal itself as natural, destined, and unique. It would be the only context that
would matter for purposes of shaping our lives, because it would be the only
one in which those lives appear as they truly are. To believe in redemptive
truth is to believe that there is something that stands to human life as
elementary physical particles stand to the four elements – something that is
the reality behind the appearance, the one true description of what is going
on, the final secret. (p.2)
The problem about the attempt by philosophers to treat the empirical scientist
as a paradigm of intellectual virtue is that the astrophysicists’ love of truth
seems no different from that of the classical philologist or the archive-oriented
historian. All these people are trying hard to get something right. So, when it
comes to that, are the master carpenter, the skilled accountant, and the careful
surgeon. The need to get it right is central to all these people’s sense of who
they are, of what makes their lives worthwhile. (p.8)29
THE INVISIBLE ART OF SPEECHWRITING

Speechwriters are also dedicated to trying to get it right, and perhaps
there is nothing more performative than speechwriting and no better way
to sum up this chapter than by introducing this often unrecognized and
very important action language – the speech. Most people involved in
some way in the academic world will, as part of their work, need to
prepare a presentation, a paper, a talk or a contribution. It takes time; a
half-hour presentation needs at least another half a day, if not longer, to
prepare. If it is a keynote, then even more time is needed. Imagine, then,
a political figure who has to deliver at least one such talk, keynote,
presentation or, as it is called in the performatics of public affairs, a
speech, nearly every day of the week – if not more. Clearly there can be
times when this is, to use the expression, off the cuff; a few notes at the
most in a less formal setting. But even when it is a major speech those
who are listening are hoping to listen to someone who is talking to them,
or with them as if they were together, and not at them. The resulting
balancing act between formality and informality is very hard to prescribe
or describe. Enter stage left, to use the expression of one of the founders
of the art of speech-making in the theatrical sense,30 the mystical and
invisible speechwriter.
If diplomats tend to keep in the background, they can usually be found
somewhere in the photo shoots and are present at major events. There are
also other moments of diplomatic visibility and performatics, the presen-
tation of credentials and many other events. Nowadays, nobody kills the
messenger who brings bad news, although they may be expelled, and a
diplomatic career is indeed a career, probably the first of the public sector
careers and highly praised. There are also non-career and at times other
highly visible diplomats called to fill strategic posts or assume specific
missions, but they are also a recognized feature of the work of govern-
ment. Speechwriters on the contrary are totally invisible, because their
work is to ensure that the person on the platform (or on the radio or on
the television) who speaks so beautifully is ‘our’ President/Prime
Minister/Secretary/Minister/Secretary General. In doing so, they have the
duty and responsibility indeed to be that person, and their sometimes
mundane, often important and at times crucial contributions to statehood
and ‘statespersonship’31 must always go without recognition. To use an
early and epoch-marking example. In 1932, the UK’s King George V
gave the first of what was to become a traditional Christmas radio speech
to the British Empire and later the Commonwealth. He began: ‘Through
one of the marvels of modern Science, I am enabled, this Christmas Day,
to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire.’ In doing so, through

his voice and words he became the embodiment of Empire and Kingship.
Nobody amongst the few who knew would have even dared to add
‘written by Rudyard Kipling’.32 It is still said that the one overriding
requirement for any speechwriter is a passion for anonymity, an expres-
sion used to describe the proposal for a small group of direct US
presidential aids by the 1937 Brownlow Committee.
If the performatics of the speech are taken apart, the different bits and
pieces are amazingly complex. Democracy requires key figures to have
replies, positions and answers to difficult questions. The speechwriter
knows it’s a speech and is writing it for someone specific. There is no
point in Queen Elizabeth sounding like Shakespeare, or Obama sounding
like Johnson. The press knows it’s a speech and has a pretty good idea of
how it got put together and who was involved, single or plural (but that is
backstage knowledge that is rarely shared). The public may see the key
figure bring out a piece of paper from her or his pocket, or a series of
cards, but they ‘hear it’ as from her or him to them. At that moment, the
speaker is a persona (a person in a social role). Obama has to sound like
Obama, not dad or uncle Barack or the neighbour from down the street
mowing his lawn, and the Queen has to sound like the Queen, not
grandma nor the princess driving an ambulance. Other far less welcome
figures have also to sound like ‘themselves’ and some, like Hitler and his
staff, were able to turn this into a very frightening tool.
Given that speechwriting is hidden behind speech-making, it is difficult
to talk about where and when it began to become part of the daily life of
doing government. In parliamentary democracies, there is more demand
placed on the capacity to stand up and speak, and debating societies can
still be found amongst school and university activities. Churchill for
example was not seen as a good speaker in his earlier years, he was
judged by his peers as exaggerating on the rhetoric. Later, however, he
was to prove to be the right speech-maker for the period. He also wrote
what he said. Alistair Cooke, who for 58 years read his weekly Letter
from America on the BBC, recalled this in the letter of 23 February 1990
on presidential speechwriters.33
There was a time, less than a month after the United States came into the
Second World War, when, at Christmas time, Prime Minister Churchill arrived
suddenly (…) in Washington to stay with President Roosevelt (…) Towards
the end of this now-famous visit, the two leaders agreed that within a few
days of Mr. Churchill’s safe return to London, each of them would go on the
air and broadcast to the peoples of the new transatlantic alliance his own
inspiring version of their discussions. There was a firm, but unwritten
agreement that the two broadcasts – radio, of course – would fall on the same
evening. The American radio networks were made privy to the arrangement
and, while Churchill was flying home, Roosevelt wasted no time and
summoned three of his most dependable and gifted ghosts, Judge Sam
Rosenman, the poet Archibald MacLeish and the playwright Robert Sherwood
to compose as soon as possible and, in view of the formidable competition, a
piece of memorable prose. They were, next morning, not much further along
than a first draft when they had a telephone call from London to the effect
that Churchill was safe at home and was going on the BBC that very evening
(…) ‘How’, moaned President Roosevelt to his slaving ghosts, ‘how can he do
it? How did he do it’. It was the playwright Sherwood who gave the
melancholy answer. ‘I’m afraid Mr. President’, he said, ‘he rolls his own.’
In the introduction to a collection of radio and sound recordings of key

historical moments, released as an LP record with Fred Friendly in 1949
under the title ‘I Can Hear it Now: 1933–1945’, newsman Edward R.
Murrow was to say of Churchill: ‘Now the hour had come for him to
mobilize the English language, and send it into battle.’ The phrase reveals
the intuitive sense of language in action by someone who himself was a
legendary writer and broadcaster. It would later be borrowed by President
Kennedy (or one of his staff) in presenting Churchill with honorary
American citizenship.
NOTES
1. Jefferson (1786). The Columbia University Teachers College Classics in Education No. 6
which focuses Jefferson’s essays on education is entitled: ‘Crusade against Ignorance’.
2. Munro (1895).
3. Ashbridge (2010).
4. War on Want is a London-based charity founded in 1951 to fight poverty and injustice.
5. Brenon (1998).
6. Westphalia (1648), accessed 23 August 2018 at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/
westphal.asp (articles XC and CXII – the numbering of the text is Roman).
7. Nash (1929), Dollinger (1970), Lloyd (1991).
8. Created in 1980, see www.hanse.org
9. For example in Habermas’ discussion of system and lifeworld (1984); Karl Polanyi’s
(1944) analysis of the repositioning of economic and social life; Bendix’s analysis of
ideologies of management during industrialization (1956); Skinner’s work on the liberty
dilemmas of sixteenth-century England (1998), and Boltanski and Thévenot’s economies
of worth (1991).
10. See Lewin (1936, p. 19): ‘what is real is what has effects’.
11. In her text on this period, Frentzel-Zagorska will say ‘I use civil society here in its modern
meaning’ (1990, p. 759).
12. See for example, Burke and Porter (1991).
13. Collected papers of Mead edited by Strauss (1956).
14. See for example the volume edited by Bazerman and Paradis on the Textual Dynamics of
the Professions (1991).
15. A rare exception is the chapter by Bertelli in the Oxford Handbook of Public Management
(2005) but even there it is only one of 30 chapters.
16. ‘Thus the articulation of society into technique, economy, law, politics, religion, art, etc.
which seems self-evident to us, is only one mode of social institution, particular to a series
of societies to which our own belongs’ (Castoriadis, 2006, p. 112).
17. Brazil, through Portugal, follows the Code tradition and in a classroom discussion with
postgraduates, all of whom had had experience in the public sector, they confirmed the
important role that officially documented instructions played. ‘Show me where it’s written’
was a very common response to a new activity of strategy for action.
18. Patterson (2009).
19. See also Schmidt (2010) on discursive institutionalism.
20. In a similar way, the idea of climbing Mount Everest and all the bits and pieces involved
is very much a social production; but what would happen if a climber is caught at the top
in a five-day blizzard is far from imaginary.
21. Frederickson (1991), Wedel et al. (2005), Catlaw (2007), McLaughlin (2009).
22. Gilbert and Mulkay (1984).
23. M.J.P. Spink and de Pinheiro (2004).
24. Colebatch (1998), Sabatier (2007).
25. Kale-Lostuvali (2016).
26. A leading US political scientist who followed the growth of policy and the introduction of
the policy schools during the 1970s suggested to the author that the idea of interdiscipli-
nary work was never really on from the beginning: ‘the schools were interdisciplinary and
people had their offices on the same corridor, but everybody did their own work’.
27. This would be something that Foucault had worked on with the notion of dispositive
(dispositif): ‘An absolutely heterogeneous set which implies speeches and talks, insti-
tutions, architectural structures, regulated decisions and laws, administrative measures,
scientific proposals, philosophical, moral and philanthropic positions … the dispositive is
the network that is established between these elements’ (from an interview cited by
Giorgio Agamben (2009), also Bussolini (2010)).
28. Here it is worth remembering Gilbert Ryle’s use of the term category-mistake in his
critique of body–mind dualism (1949). The mind does not exist, it is not a place, person or
location, it is only a reference to the manner in which somebody behaves or refers to their
thoughts.
29. Rorty (2000), accessed 26 August 2018 at http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf
30. Shakespeare continues to be considered one of the founders of modern theatre and his
scripts included not only the speeches but also the movements, the entries and the exits of
his characters. The expression migrated into everyday talk – as a way of introducing an
important character.
31. In 2017 there are often more stateswomen than there are statesmen.
32. Probably the most Empire sensitive of British writers.
33. Cooke (1990). The last US president to write his own speeches was said to be Woodrow
Wilson, on a typewriter that he kept over from his academic days.
4. Some active governments and their

action languages
The 1937 report of President Roosevelt’s Committee on Administrative
Management (known as the Brownlow Report after its chairman) is a
well-known feature of US public administration. In a recent retrospective
issue on the report, Newbold and Rosenbloom (2007) comment ‘At no
other time in our nation’s history has a report by public administrative
scholars and practitioners so fundamentally transformed the federal govern-
ment’s working’ (p.1006). Here is the opening part of the summary:1
Modern management equipment for the Federal Government so that it may do

promptly and efficiently what is expected of it by the American people is the
keynote of the report made today to the President by his Committee on
Administrative Management. The purpose of making Federal administrative
management modern and businesslike is to make American democracy
efficient. It is the view of the Committee that self-government cannot long
survive even in this country unless it can do its work efficiently. ‘The forward
march of American democracy at this point of our history,’ says the Commit-
tee, ‘depends more upon effective management than upon any other single
factor.’ To this end a five-point program of reorganization of the Executive
Branch of the Government is presented to the Committee including these
major recommendations.
Modernize the White House business and management organization by giving
the President six high-grade executive assistants to aid him in dealing with the
regular departments and agencies.
Strengthen the budget and efficiency research, the planning and the personnel
service of the Government, so that these may be effective managerial arms for
the President, with which he may better coordinate, direct and manage all of
the work of the Executive Branch for which he is responsible under the
Constitution.
Place the whole government administrative service on a career basis and
under the merit system by extending the civil service upward, outward and
downward to include all non-policy-determining positions and jobs.
Overhaul the more than 100 separate departments, boards, commissions,
administrations, authorities, corporations, committees, agencies and activities
which are now parts of the Executive Branch, and theoretically under the
84
Some active governments and their action languages 85
President, and consolidate them within twelve regular departments, which

would include the existing 10 departments and two new departments, a
Department of Social Welfare, and a Department of Public Works. Change the
name of the Department of Interior to Department of Conservation.
Make the Executive Branch accountable to the Congress by creating a true
postaudit of financial transactions by an independent Auditor General who
would report illegal and wasteful expenditures to Congress without himself
becoming involved in the management of department policy, and transfer the
duties of the present Comptroller in part to the Auditor, to the Treasury, and to
the Attorney General.
These five points are woven together in a single comprehensive program.
(Brownlow, 1937)
President Roosevelt’s Committee was made up of Louis Brownlow, Director

of the Public Administration Clearing House, Luther Gulick, Director of
the Institute of Public Administration, Charles E. Merriam, Chairman of
the Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, with Joseph P.
Harris of the staff of the Committee on Public Administration of the Social
Science Research Council as Director of Research. Committee reports,
findings and recommendation are usually the products of wide processes
of consultation, in which many conversations, ideas and proposals move
around. Independently of their later effectiveness, in this case consider-
able, they offer an important window on at least part of the ideas and
assumptions that were around. The experience of the Great Depression, or
the later Second World War, the idea of proposing a career civil service, a
miniscule White House with borrowed staff, the trauma of the Vietnam
War, the UK without the National Health Service are not feelings that
many can draw upon today, but it is possible to relate in part to some of
the broader questions being approached.
The distinction in the title of ‘active’ governments is qualitative and
perhaps even literary, for all governments are active in their ways. The
use of the qualifier in this chapter is a reference to one of the questions
raised in the introduction: what can be learned from the way that
governments went about doing public affairs before policy became a
synonym for government in action? At times in today’s current texts,
policy and government appear to be so closely linked that it seems almost
impossible to imagine governments making things happen without the
expression. The three cases that will be looked at, all from the twentieth
century and each in their own way contributing to the construction of the
democratic welfare state, did just that. They are not the only cases which
could be taken, but they can certainly be seen as periods in which there
was a lot of action for the public good. The three are the Roosevelt
Administration, the New Deal and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA);
the Attlee post-war government, the National Health Service and the
Beveridge Report; and the Johnson Administrations in relation to domes-
tic affairs. The first is from a period when policy was still very much a
posture; the second is from a time when very initial changes are taking
place; and the third from a time when there are clear indications of
ascendance. The choice of governments from the USA and the UK
reflects what appears to be the common understanding of the early
importance of these countries in the policy field. How then did they go
about public affairs, what were some of the other social languages
available and what happened to them?
The second and third points of the Brownlow Committee’s proposed
programme are good examples from which to start. First, in terms of
managerial efforts, the emphasis is on budget and efficiency research,
planning and personnel services. Second, linked to personnel, is the
proposal for a career-based administrative service for all ‘non-policy-
determining positions and jobs’. The first points to the principal articu-
lating notions of government action at that time, including the word
efficiency, and the second provides an idea of the way that policy was in
use as something that is ‘determined’. It is also worth noting that it was
in a memorandum prepared for the Committee that Gulick spelt out his
view on organization using the acronym POSDCORB (Planning, Organ-
izing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting). Like
Woodrow Wilson before and for a good many years after, there were
those who determined policy, which was government policy, and there
were those who got on with administrating with dedication in the public
good. ‘Steady, hearty allegiance to the policy of the government they
serve will constitute good behaviour. That policy will have no taint of
officialism about it. It will not be the creation of permanent officials, but
of statesmen whose responsibility to public opinion will be direct and
inevitable’ (Wilson, 1887, pp. 216–217).
PERSONNEL, BUDGETING, EFFICIENCY AND

PLANNING: THE PERFORMATIVE BASIS OF
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS
The discussion of a career-based public administration had been around
for a long time, going back, in the US, to Woodrow Wilson’s own
proposals, written while still an academic, and before that to the
Northcote–Trevelyan Report to the British Parliament published in 18542
which recommended a totally open and regular competitive entrance

examination of a carefully selected body of young men3 as a means of
overcoming the ‘evils of patronage’. The examination was to serve as the
entrance point to a merit-based career in which promotion depended on
the ‘industry and ability’ of those selected, who: ‘with average abilities
and reasonable application may look forward confidently to a certain
provision for their lives, that with superior powers they may rationally
hope to attain to the highest prizes in the Service, while if they prove
decidedly incompetent, or incurably indolent, they must expect to be
removed from it’ (Northcote and Trevelyan, 1854, p. 9). Their view was
that if somebody could do better than a well-trained university student,
then ‘there can be no reason why the public should not have the benefit
of such mens’ services, in preference to those of inferior merit’ (North-
cote and Trevelyan, 1854, p. 12). It would take until 1870 for the report
to be put into practice and then even gradually, but it would provide an
important future stepping stone for merit, even though it was a merit, at
the time the report was published, restricted to an upper-middle-class and
aristocratic elite.4 The original proposal was to have a broad-based exam,
of which:
… we need hardly allude to the important effect which would be produced
upon the general education of the country, if proficiency in history, jurispru-
dence, political economy, modern languages, political and physical geography
and other matters, besides the staple of classics and mathematics, were made
directly conducive to the success of young men desirous of entering into the
public service. (Northcote and Trevelyan, 1854, p. 14)
Of the three other terms in the opening part of the Brownlow Report, one
(budgeting) was much older than the discussion on careers and merit, and
the other two (planning and efficiency) were, at that time, very recent.
It is said that from the Latin bulga (to bulge) came the French bouge
and then the bougette or little bag. Making its way to England as a term
for a leather satchel, it carried the statements of accounts to parliament.
In 1733 the then prime minister (Robert Walpole) described the begin-
ning of the discussion of the accounts as the opening of the budget and,
over time, the bag was replaced by other containers and the contents of
the bag became the budget. Budgeting is probably one of the oldest
public action languages on the government side, along with diplomacy.
Whether from the side of kings and emperors seeking to finance armies
or the different sectors of society that slowly – through negotiation,
revolution or execution – contributed to current procedures and controls
on public spending, it has become a highly independent space of talk and
performance. The British may have tweaked the term budget, but it was
in France that the Inspection Générale de Finances was created in 1797,

followed by the ‘Cours de Comptes’ of Napoleon in 1807. Napoleon had
also been instrumental in bringing in the idea of Administrative Law
which, when combined with public accounts in the countries influenced
by the Civil Code, was to become a very special dialect of the budgeting
language. It would take time for other countries to follow the French
move towards centralized financial management, but by the second half
of the nineteenth century there were already a number of cases (such as
Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden). The UK itself would take until
1866 to have full control, and in the USA the Bureau of the Budget was
only created in 1921.5 Important for the general line of analysis here, is
Webber and Wildavsky’s recognition of the implicit social and performa-
tive characteristic of budgets.
Ask how budgets should be made and you will be asking how social life
ought to be lived. Cultural organization requires social support. People must
be able to do things for others. They must be able to act together to support
their way of life, to oppose other ways, and to hold one another accountable
for things that go wrong. Getting and spending by governments is an
important mode of collective action and accountability. (1986, p. 22)
How the west arrived at modern-day financial languages and how

structures of accounting were built up over time has already merited
many books. One story is worth retelling, because it serves as a reminder
of how social languages weave around each other. Venice had much to do
with the early developments, as it seems to have with other terms and
practices from the crusades onwards, no doubt in part due to its location
as the gateway to routes towards the east, from where news of very
different views of the world were likely to arrive.
Leonardo da Pisa, known as Fibonacci (c.1170–1240), grew up in what
is today Algeria where his father worked at the Pisan custom house:
The young Fibonacci spent his days in the local bazaars, where he was
captivated by the extraordinary system of writing numbers the Arab merchants
used to conduct their business. He later wrote ‘There following my intro-
duction, as a consequence of marvelous instruction in the art, to the nine
digits of the Hindus, the knowledge of the art very much appealed to me
before all others’. The numerals used by the Arabs in bazaars across the
Mediterranean – in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Provence – could be applied to
computations Fibonacci had never seen before, such as addition, subtraction
and multiplication (…) The Arab merchants had learned their number system
in India by the ninth century and had been using it for centuries to calculate
interest, convert currencies and solve other problems of trade. (Gleeson-
White, 2013, p. 18)
Fibonacci’s book, written in Latin and published in 1202, became the

most important book on the Hindu-Arabic numerals, yet the Venetian
adoption of double entry bookkeeping, which Gleeson-White suggests
may have also come from the Arab traders or more likely from Indian
merchants, remained faithful to Roman numerals, which don’t have a ‘0’.
The two sets of knowledge, Hindu-Arabic numerals and double entry
bookkeeping, would remain separate for some 300 years. The use of the
new numerals was outlawed by the Venetian Guilds and the Church and
they were seen as too easy to alter and falsify. The last Italian arithmetic
book with Roman numbers was published in 1514. In other parts of
Europe: ‘… the adoption of Hindu-Arabic numerals was even slower: in
1520, the German Municipality of Freiburg refused to accept accounts as
legal proof of debt unless they were made in Roman numerals or written
out in words; and Roman numerals were still used in Scotland in the
seventeenth century’ (Gleeson-White, 2013, p. 26).
Italian merchants, on the other hand, seemed to have seen the practical,
as opposed to legal, benefits and local schools were set up in which the
slow fusion of double entry bookkeeping and Hindu-Arabic numerals
began to take place in the vernacular language. It would be in 1494, in a
Venice now filled with printing shops and moveable type, that Luca
Pacioli who had started as a teacher of Hindu-Arabic numerals, published
his Particulars of Reckonings and Writings as part of his mathematical
encyclopedia.6 Both the book and a separate publication of the chapter
became the most widely read mathematical works in Italy for the
following century and Luca Pacioli would later be regarded as the father
of modern accounting.
Accounting is a somewhat independent social language with its own
terms and its own courses and departments, with many of the early
schools of business administration growing out of the even earlier schools
of finance. Budgeting, too, has its schools of thought, as can be seen in
practices that might make sense in one part of a government structure,
while being delicately rejected in another (Planning, Programming and
Budgeting System – PPBS, for example). Zero-based budgeting may be
taught in business schools, but, as Webber and Wildavsky comment:
Major spending programs – pensions, education, health, the armed forces and
the like – are the cumulative results of decades of incremental change.
Agreements entered into in an earlier age still affect the amount and
feasibility of change. In other respects, however, the ideas that animated past
taxing, spending and borrowing, like that of the balanced budget, appear out
of synch with contemporary conditions. (1986, p. 608)
Brazil’s participative budgeting is another way of approaching financial

decisions that has received a lot of attention for the way it engages
citizens in direct decision making on budget distributions and actions
(Wampler, 2007). Its language is immediate and highly focused. It is not
about policy priorities, but about what is more important: a school over in
that neighbourhood or a health centre in another one. It is disjointed and
incremental but seems to work in redistributing local government funds.
What is more, people – often those with very little familiarity with
budgets, plans and other public administration action languages – feel
very comfortable in arguing and voting for streets to be paved, or squares
to be tidied up. It has become a social language that draws in other bits
and pieces, but it is very much a field in itself – very direct and to the
point.
The Brownlow Report put budget and efficiency research together, for
reasons that can only be guessed. However, it is worth the conjecture
that, at that time, those technically concerned with finance and budgeting
were also familiar with the language of efficiency. Efficiency is said to do
many things, but it normally comes with a promise of saving money or
using it better. Budget offices and financial departments were by then an
established part of the public administration scene and an important
source of professional staff, both technical and university trained. Even
though efficiency was a much broader theme than the earlier scientific
management, it is not difficult to imagine that the implicit appeal to
doing more with less – a line that much later on would be picked up in
the economics of cost-effectiveness – would be favourably received by
those who also had the technical and mathematical skills to put it to
work.7 As both Bendix (1956) and Waldo (1952) from different disciplin-
ary positions have pointed out, this may have seemed the natural route to
‘neutral’ administration, but seeming and being are very different.
Planning, the other term in the second recommendation of the Brown-
low Report, was very much the ‘new kid on the block’ at the time and,
like budgeting and finance, is still as strong today. National planning had
been introduced in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s and aroused much
suspicion because of its relationship to a centralized state, more so when
Italy and Germany also moved in similar directions during the early
1930s; planning of a different kind, for cities and towns had emerged a
bit earlier, around the turn of the century. The British Housing and Town
Planning Act, for example, dates from 1909. Peterson in his study on
the birth of city planning in the USA cites the introduction to one of
the early texts on City Planning in 1916, as noting that while most of the
individual topics that formed the field had long histories, bringing them
together as city or town planning was recent.
Olmsted voiced what he and others in the movement called ‘the new social
ideal of unified and comprehensive city planning’. By this he meant that the
overall development of the modern city as a physical entity should be
controlled in a coherent, all-encompassing way by public authority. Without
question, this was a new idea, warranting fresh nomenclature. (Peterson,
2003, p. 2)
Planning is a social language for public affairs with many tentacles in

different places, not just to budgeting, but also to participation and
governance where it can be found in approaches to citizen planning. But
it is also very independent and in the day to day; planners plan, and
though urban planners may talk of urban policy, when it comes to action
they are looking for instruments. Planning as a term comes from the
French plan, which was a graphical (flat, two-dimensional) reproduction
of an object or even a city. The Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias in
Spain would send out flat drawings of how the cities in the New World
were to be built. A main square with the church, the house of the colonial
representative, the cabildo or meeting place for local affairs, amongst
others. The Marquis of Pombal probably drew up a plan when he set
about rebuilding Lisbon after the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed
one of the most beautiful cities in Europe on All Saints Day, 1775.
Pombal’s Lisbon is the Lisbon of the squares and blocks downtown by
the river. Pombal did not have much time for Lisbon’s religious leaders,
who saw the events as an act of God.8 As Ambassador to England from
1738–1745 he had become a member of London’s Royal Society and he
tested his proposals by building models of the downtown area and having
heavily armed soldiers march around them. He certainly wouldn’t
understand the suggestion that he was one of the founding fathers of
planning, along with Baron Haussmann a century later in Paris, or that he
introduced risk management into public affairs by requiring each parish
priest in Portugal to report on local events at the time the earthquake
happened. Equally, none of those involved in setting up the villages and
sites of the colonial settlements in the Americas saw what they were
doing as planning. ‘Commonly, a landowner or public official simply
hired a surveyor to devise a plan showing the streets and lots. No special
terminology had drawn attention to this service’ (Peterson, 2003, p. 6).
From town and later city planning at the beginning of the century to
national planning in the 1930s, the term became applied to development
planning in the post-war period, with social planning to follow. India’s
first five-year plan following Independence, for example, covered the
1951–1956 period. Along the way, different professionals were arriving
on the scene, the architects and urbanists, the economists, social
scientists, business consultants along with associations, courses and

professional diplomas. Many of the earlier proposals about policy were to
be made in the intersecting space of planning and decision and it is
important to note that the two could be found together at various
moments – especially in the earlier years.9 But there were also attempts
to make distinctions, as for example Wildavsky’s (1973) ‘If Planning is
Everything, Maybe it’s Nothing’.
There is no doubt that both policy and planning along with budgeting
are currently much-used languages in the field of public affairs. But it is
also the case that they seem most of the time to get on individually by
themselves, or to see one or the other as part of themselves or, even, to
see themselves as each other. They also share common texts, as for
example Lindblom’s Science of Muddling Through (Good, 2011). Most
budget specialists will say that budgeting is planning (meaning, planning
is part of budgeting) and Friedmann, in his text on planning theories, will
say ‘State planning, of course, also includes policies and programs …’
(1987, p. 28).
In concluding the chapter on ‘Planning as Policy Analysis’ – key for
anyone wishing to follow the early 1970s and the relation of policy
analysis to government – he will comment:
And although modern policy analysis, with its array of sophisticated models
and computers, is of very recent origin, there is no question that, in one form
or another, it will survive indefinitely into the future (…) Still the recent shift
in emphasis from on-line analysis to “enlightenment” and from decision
theory to implementation and interaction is a significant one. Once decision
theory has been displaced as the principal focus of policy analysis, the way is
open for many different approaches, some of which may well depart from the
hallowed traditions of the field. A major alternative to decision is “action”,
and actions imply the existence of actors who act (…) In the public domain,
there are always multiple actors, such as political parties, social movements,
trades unions, and farmers’ granges, whose roots are deep in civil society (…)
This new focus on action leads us to different models of planning and, indeed,
to two new traditions. These models have two things in common: 1) they are
not specifically addressed to the ruling elites, and 2) they focus on actions
rather than on decisions. (Friedmann, 1987, p. 179)
Policy analysis may remain as a provider of knowledge for authority, but

public planning moves on, as would be clear in Friedmann’s (2011)
selection of key essays where policy is hardly found. In his introduction,
he recalls his earlier years in Brazil when he asked himself a question
that could well apply to many of the public action languages present in
governmental circles: ‘what is this new-fangled soft technology called
planning?’ (p. 1).
ROOSEVELT, THE NEW DEAL AND THE TENNESSEE

VALLEY AUTHORITY
In 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, Roosevelt won a
landslide victory and, supported by a very able group of academics,
lawmakers and social liberals, men and women, produced a flood of bills
in his first 100 days that changed the social landscape of the country (see
for example the work of his Secretary of Labour, Frances Perkins10). His
inaugural address is an interesting insight into policy at that time:
Through this program of action, we address ourselves to putting our own
national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international
trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity
secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a
practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore
world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at
home cannot wait on that accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is
not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon
the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United
States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of
the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the
immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of
the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and,
because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects
his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world
of neighbors.11
He would also mention national planning, which, as planning, had

already taken shape in urban affairs and had jumped into a different
shape in the economic arena with the work of Keynes. Roosevelt and
Keynes had met and had different ideas about deficits, but the desirability
of governments getting involved in the economy was increasingly
accepted. Bit by bit this would be called economic policy, and planning
would become a broader instrument than that for urban affairs. In the
address, he would also mention: ‘… national planning for the supervision
of all forms of transportation and communications and other utilities
which have a definitely public character’. However, there was no specific
plan for the New Deal, rather many different programmes, agencies, acts
and regulations across and in a wide variety of areas. Webber and
Wildavsky (1986) comment that it was never a coherent set of measures,
‘Rather it comprised ad-hoc answers to immediate crisis’ (p.453).12
Amongst these was a totally new concept of public sector organization

that set out to show that regional planning could be democratic. The
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reorganized floodwaters, built hydro-
electric schemes and locks, and led programmes and projects in regional
development over an area that included major parts of a number of states
and, in doing so, consolidated regional planning as part of democratic
society. Yet there was no department of planning in the TVA, certainly no
‘plan’ and, also, no policy. In its practice, TVA was much less a planning
agency and more an action theory about planning the interests of
government, the private sector and the community in a collective and
cooperative way.13 It ran into a lot of difficulties, for the original
presidential message charged it not only with the ‘broadest duty of
planning for the proper use, conservation and development of the natural
resources of the Tennessee River drainage basin (…) For the general
social and economic welfare of the Nation’, but also gave it the
‘necessary power to carry these plans into effect’. There was to be much
discussion in both public and academic14 spheres as a result, but it
happened and in the long run was more effective than perhaps was
expected (Couto, 1988).
David Lilienthal, the TVA’s second chairman, summed up this experi-
ence in a much-reprinted paperback entitled Democracy on the March
(1944), which he saw as the TVA’s report to its stockholders, that is, the
American public. For current students of planning theory, some of the
discussion on planning will seem very much up to date, as the following
extracts show:
The reason that the TVA Plan is not available is that there is no such
document. Nor is there one separate department set off by itself, where
planners exercise their brains (…) The TVA is a planning agency, the first of
its kind in the United States. The great change going on in this valley is an
authentic example of modern democratic planning; this was the expressed
intent of Congress, by whose authority we act. But through the years we have
deliberately been sparing in the use of the terminology of ‘plans’ and
‘planning’ within the TVA and outside, and those terms have hardly appeared
thus far in the book. For the term ‘planning’ has come to be used in so many
different senses that the nomenclature has almost lost usefulness, has even
come to be a source of some confusion … (p.207)
The TVA idea of planning sees action and planning not as things separate
and apart, but as one single and continuous process (…) The idea that
planning and responsibility for action may and should be divorced – the
maker of plans having little or nothing to do with their execution – follows
the analogy of the planning of a house, an office, any fixed structure. But the
analogy is a mistaken one. For the development of a region is a course of
action; it has no arbitrary point of beginning and goes on and on with no point
of completion. The individual acts that make up regional development are the
day-to-day activities of plowing a particular field, harvesting timber from a
particular tract, the building of a factory, a church, a house, a highway (…)
Plans had to be made, of course, many of them. But plan and action are
part of one responsibility. TVA is responsible not alone for plans but for
results. These results depend chiefly upon the people’s participation. Getting
that participation was to be almost wholly on a voluntary basis. To get a job
done in this way was a unique assignment, one that required the invention of
new devices and new methods. If TVA had been a ‘planning agency’ in the
sense that its responsibility had been limited to the making of plans – the
usual meaning of the term – those plans would probably have met the fate of
so many other plans: brochures decorating bookshelves … (pp. 214–215)
As these excerpts show, Lilienthal was not wandering around the

Tennessee Valley in an absent-minded manner without a social action
language in which to find himself, his colleagues, technical advisors,
local farmers, business people and politicians. His text is a social
product, a way of talking, making sense and enacting, that linked many
different social actors but also generated questions for others. (Indeed, in
the early years the dispute about the government’s role as an active
supplier of energy was to produce a major crisis leading to the resigna-
tion of the first chairman). Much of what today is taken as obvious in
relation to rural development, water drainage, test farming and agricul-
tural extension was heavily influenced by the TVA and, materially, the
Tennessee River is no longer the ferocious monster of floods and
landslides of the early 1930s.
The Roosevelt generation used policy very much in the way that it had
been used previously in the nineteenth century; as a position or a stance
on certain issues or even in general – first things first. There was foreign
policy and national policy, later to be called domestic policy. There
would be economic policy – especially once the economy was considered
as part of government – and there would be policy-determining positions
and non-policy-determining positions.
ATTLEE, THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE AND THE

BEVERIDGE REPORT
The result of the 1945 elections in the UK had a number of similarities to
the Roosevelt period. The elections resulted in a landslide of votes for the
Labour Party and in the following five years no less than 347 acts of
parliament were introduced, radically changing the organizational and
institutional landscape of the British public sphere. These included:
implementing the 1942 Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied

Services; creating the National Health Service (NHS); raising the school
leaving age to 15; nationalizing key critical areas for industrial infrastruc-
ture; and the building of over a million homes amongst many other more
local actions. More important still, even with a reduced majority in 1950
and an election loss in 1951, the resulting bi-partisan post-war consensus
was to remain firm until 1970. The National Health Service Act of 1946
is a masterpiece of institutional and administrative rearrangement with
advisory bodies, councils, committees, authorities, boards, duties, gov-
erning bodies, authorizations, requirements, regulations and duties, but
not a policy in sight. This is its introductory paragraph:
(1) It shall be the duty of the Minister of Health (hereafter in this Act referred
to as ‘the Minister’) to promote the establishment in England and Wales of a
comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical
and mental health of the people of England and Wales and the prevention,
diagnosis and treatment of illness, and for that purpose to secure the effective
provision of services in according with the following provisions of this act.
(2) The services so provided shall be free of charge, except where the
provision of this Act expressly provides for the making and recovery of
charges.15
Aneurin Bevan, the Minister for Health, had been a notable orator from
an early age and he could speak at length without notes. Like Thomas
Jefferson with his pen, they were both good with words. Indeed, it is
worth remembering that rhetoric is, in itself, a very early public action
language. However, his skills also lay in other directions, as Kynaston
(2008) notes in his history of the austerity period of 1945–1951:
But if no one denied that Bevan was a fine, inspiring orator, capable also of
considerable personal charm, what surprised many – friends as well as
enemies – was the remarkably effective way in which he pushed through the
creation of the National Health Service. Inevitably the scheme had many
complexities, but at root there were seven key elements. Access to health care
was to be free and universal; costs would be met from central taxation, not
insurance; all hospitals – whether local authority or voluntary, cottage or
teaching – were to be nationalized; the great majority of these hospitals would
be run by regional hospital boards; the other two legs of a tripartite overall
structure would be executive councils (overseeing GPs, dentists and opticians)
and local authorities (still responsible for such miscellaneous activities as
vaccinations, ambulances, community nursing, home help and immunization
programmes); NHS ‘pay beds’ would enable consultants to combine private
practice with working for the NHS; and GPs would no longer be allowed to
buy and sell practices but would not be put on a full-time salary basis, with
the capitation (i.e. per patient head) element in their income making it easier
for patients to move between doctors. There were plenty of dramas to come,
but the NHS Bill that Bevan put forward in March 1946 more or less became
actuality just over two years later. (Kynaston, 2008, pp. 145–146)
Bevan fought both within his party and with the other parties; there were
disputes about the role of local government, on the wish for health
centres – left till much later, and very hard negotiations with the various
associations of doctors and specialists. Glennerster (2007), in his history
of British social policy, comments: ‘Whatever words may be used to
describe this train of events, “consensus” is not one of them’. He
mentions Churchill describing the period as one of ‘Party antagonism as
bitter as anything I have seen in my long life of political conflict’ (p.53).
Many of the elements and parts of the ideas for the NHS were already
around. Health had appeared as an aspect of a ‘wider social policy’ in the
Beveridge Report and there had been proposals from the coalition
wartime government. Bevan, however, had spotted that the key to change
was a comprehensive hospital service. His Deputy Secretary is reported
as saying: ‘Of course he was right. They [the Coalition White Paper
proposals] would never have worked. I came away that night with
instructions to work out a new plan on the new basis he proposed’
(Glennerster, 2007, p. 50). Through the hospitals he was able to persuade
key sectors of the medical profession that their incomes and freedoms
would be more secure than before. The new plan and the details that went
into getting everything ready on time would have been mainly the work
of the permanent civil service in the Ministry of Health, led by Bevan’s
Deputy Secretary, also a civil servant. Plans were probably seen at this
time as things that were carried out, or some similar expression; times
were set, schedules drawn up, studies made and meetings arranged.
It is very unlikely that anybody talked about implementation, at least in
the UK, where it is not mentioned even in the 1973 edition of the Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary on historical principles (the same year as the
Pressman and Wildavsky book was published). Implements had been
around since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and were used in
executing work, as was the verb (to complete, perform; to fulfil; often in
an official manner implement the findings of the committee). Merriam and
Webster report implementation in the nineteenth-century USA; a helpful
reminder not to assume that single languages are homogeneous in their
patterns of usage nor in the way they produce new terms as well as new
versions of older terms and meanings.
On 5 July 1948, doctors, nurses, opticians, dentists and hospitals came
together as a single country-wide National Health Service.16 By this time,
94 per cent of the population was already enrolled and 92 per cent of the
3,000 or more local authority and charity hospitals were effectively
nationalized and the newly created health boards took over their adminis-
tration. The NHS was and continues to be the National Health Service;
service, not system as it is sometimes mistakenly referred to in various
parts of the world. But there are now health policies and policy documents.
The Beveridge Report is often hallmarked as the key to social policy,
and Beveridge does use the term in the title of part 6 of the Report,
Social Security and Social Policy, but there is only one use of the term in
the text of the chapter itself. Policy is used sparingly and either as a
general pointer to a broad arena (as in domestic policy, financial policy,
or foreign policy) or to higher matters of government. Here are examples
from the introduction and summary as well as the introduction to part six:
6. In proceeding from this first comprehensive survey of social insurance to
the next task – of making recommendations – three guiding principles may be
laid down at the outset.
7. The first principle is that any proposals for the future, while they should
use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by
consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that
experience (…)
8. The second principle is that organization of social insurance should be
treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social
insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack on
Want. But Want is only one of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in
some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor
and Idleness.
9. The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operation
between the State and the individual (…)
10. The Plan for Social Security set out in this Report is built upon these
principles. It uses experience but is not tied by experience. It is put forward as
a limited contribution to a wider social policy, though as something that could
be achieved now without waiting for the whole of that policy. It is, first and
foremost, a plan of insurance – of giving in return for contributions benefits
up to subsistence level, as of right and without means test, so that individuals
may build freely upon it. (pp. 6–7)
… The State with its power of compelling successive generations of citizens
to become insured and its power of taxation is not under the necessity of
accumulating reserves for actuarial risks and has not, in fact, adopted this
method in the past. The second of these two distinctions is one of financial
practice only; the first raises important questions of policy and equity. Though
the State, in conducting compulsory insurance, is not under the necessity of
varying the premium according to the risk, it may decide as a matter of policy
to do so. (Paragraph 24, p. 13)
Freedom from want is only one of the essential freedoms of mankind. Any
Plan for Social Security in the narrow sense assumes a concerted social policy
in many fields, most of which it would be inappropriate to discuss in this
Report. (Part VI, paragraph 409, p. 154)17
Beveridge, a lawyer and economist, was a leading specialist in

unemployment insurance and had been director of the London School of
Economics (1919–1937), so he was familiar with and very much part of
the discussion around welfare and poverty. His working terms were plans
and budgets; policies, as seen above, are broad positions and intentions.
These were key to a number of different actions, agencies and forms of
contributory and non-contributory methods of finance which would start
to stitch together what would indeed be called social policy.
While these results, as also Roosevelt’s before, were impressive by any
standards, they were done with some very straightforward administrative
tools, such as budgeting and planning, regulations and directives, acts and
bills and many speeches. But they also, especially in the case of the UK,
led to a strong government-centred approach to the welfare state and the
new universe of civil, political and social rights. Vast areas of civic life
didn’t go away but, metaphorically, were moved into the background. As
Prochaska (2006) commented in the conclusions of his study on Christi-
anity and Social Service in Modern Britain:
Victorians held government in esteem but expected little from it on social
issues. In a national culture dominated by Christianity, they commonly
believed that poverty was ineradicable, yet they sought its amelioration
through voluntary service. A century later most Britons believed poverty
could be abolished, but that the responsibility for welfare provision resided in
the political process. An opinion poll in 1948 found that over 90 per cent of
people no longer thought there was a role for charity in Britain. With
collectivism in the ascendant, the payment of taxes had become the primary
civic duty. (Location 1799, Kindle edition)
The NHS language of health boards, advisory councils and committees

with representatives of different sectors continues to make a lot of sense
in the twenty-first century of participation and governance. But how
many creative ways of running charity and local government hospitals
were lost in the process?
POLICY IN THE 1940s

By 1951, Lerner and Lasswell’s text was arriving in the bookshops but
the policy that was around in administrative and government practice at
least in the UK and the USA was the older policy of position and
orientation. There is little if no talk about implementation. Bevan and his
senior civil servants didn’t implement the NHS, they just set a date at
which it would happen and worked backwards to ensure that would be
the case. Equally, Roosevelt didn’t implement the TVA, he just – as some
observers of the time would say – pushed the bill through Congress, set
up the Board and expected them to get on with their work.
What then was ‘policy talk’ in the academic circles of this time? Here,
books – especially collected works – are interesting places or sites to
look for clues and there are two that appear in references to this period.
The first text was edited by Friedrich and Mason under the title Public
Policy in 1940. It was a yearbook of the Graduate School of Public
Administration at Harvard which included chapters on price policies,
industrial markets and public policy, policy of industrial control and
monetary policy. Friedrich opened the volume with an article on public
policy and the nature of administrative responsibility. He begins with the
view that any usefulness – as a matter of emphasis – in distinguishing
between politics and administration had been lost by the transformation
of the distinction into a fetish or a stereotype in the minds of academics
and practitioners.
In other words, a problem which is already complicated enough by itself –
that is, how a policy is adopted and carried out – is bogged down by a vast
ideological superstructure which contributes little or nothing to its solution.
Take a case like the AAA.18 In simple terms, AAA was a policy adopted with
a view to helping the farmer to weather the storm of the depression. This
admittedly was AAA’s broad purpose. To accomplish this purpose, crop
reduction, price-fixing, and a number of lesser devices were adopted. Crop
reduction in turn led to processing taxes. Processing taxes required reports by
the processors, inspection of their plants. Crop reduction itself necessitated
reports by the farmers, so called work sheets, and agreements between them
and the government as to what was to be done, and so forth and so on. What
here is politics and what administration? Will anyone understand better the
complex processes involved in the articulation of this important public policy
if we talk about the expression and execution of the state will? The concrete
patterns of public policy formation and execution reveal that politics and
administration are not two mutually exclusive boxes, or absolute distinctions,
but that they are two closely linked aspects of the same process. Public policy,
to put it flatly, is a continuous process, the formation of which is inseparable
from its execution. Public policy is being formed as it is being executed, and
it is likewise being executed as it is being formed. Politics and administration
play a continuous role in both formation and execution, though there is
probably more politics in the formation of policy, more administration in the
execution of it. In so far as particular individuals or groups are gaining or
losing power or control in a given area, there is politics; in so far as official
act or propose action in the name of public interest, there is administration.

The same problem may be considered from another angle. Policies in the
common meaning of the term are decisions about what to do or not to do in a
given situation. (Friedrich, 1940, p. 6)
The second is a collection of papers organized by Appleby, in 1949, the

then Dean of the Maxwell Graduate School at Syracuse. Starting life as a
newspaper publisher, he served in the US Department of Agriculture with
Roosevelt and then in the Bureau of the Budget before becoming Dean.
In the collection, entitled Policy and Administration, Appleby contrasts
the then still current tendency to separate policy from administration (like
politics before), with the description of what is actually taking place in an
aptly named first chapter on ‘Fallacies and Definitions’:
If one wishes then, to define policy as that which Congress decides, and
administration as that which the executive branch does, policy and adminis-
tration may be regarded as separated, and the definitions, like so many others
having to do with social processes, become rather meaningless. Similarly,
within the executive branch, if policy is defined as decision-making at top
levels and administration is decision-making and decision-application at
lower level, a kind of separation is achieved, but the definitions are not
useful.
The position taken in this discussion is that description is more appropriate
than definition; that many types of decision involving policy-making are and
must be delegated as a usual thing; that, on the other hand, almost any type of
decision may become on occasion a matter for top-level consideration and
determination, even for popular determination; that the movement of work
materials and decisions perpendicularly and laterally in the levels and
divisions of government is of the essence of both policy-making and
administration; and that the whole government context is important to
legislation, to administration, to policy-making, and to court decisions. (p.10)
An intricate process is subject to definition, but the definition must be made
in such general terms as to reveal very little. Here administration is viewed as
the government in direct action on behalf of and in restraint of citizens;
policy-making in administration is the exercise of discretion with respect to
such action. There are different orders of action, and different orders of
policy, but these orders together are a continuum, with the fundamental
common character which use of the term requires. Confusion enters when the
continuum is denied. Wisdom comes when the process of decision making is
considered as a whole. (p.15)
Placing these two examples together suggests the gradual coming

together of notions of policy with decision and discretion, and the
recognition that in practice the fusion of politics and administration with
decision and discretion is how things get done. Policies are adopted and
carried out, formed and executed in a continuous manner. As the 1940s
merged into the 1950s and then into the 1960s, so do the number of areas
and questions on which governments, officials and, later, technical staff
need to have positions or statements of posture, of the relative importance
of certain lines of action or priorities. In the same way that foreign policy
will become policy on different issues for different places, so the
domestic front finds itself with more are more themes. The idea of
domestic policy will slowly fade away and will be replaced by specific
terms – agriculture, housing, employment, amongst many others – and
eventually social policy will become social policies and then different
policies on a whole host of more specific themes.
POLICY, DOMESTIC POLICY AND PUBLIC POLICY:

THE JOHNSON ADMINISTRATIONS FROM 1963–1969
For most people outside of the USA, and also for many inside it, mention
of Lyndon B. Johnson will provoke – if anything – traumatic images,
often visual, of Vietnam. Dallek, who has made an extensive study of
Johnson, suggests (2015) that it is the strength of this same image, of a
war seen over time as a big mistake by a majority of the American
people, that served to push Johnson’s work in the domestic arena into the
background. In this area, what he qualifies as an extraordinary body of
achievements included:
civil rights, voter rights, Medicare, federal aid to elementary/secondary and
higher education, environmental protection, clean air, clean rivers, clean
harbors, consumer protection, truth in lending, safe tyres, safe roads, the
National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, national public
television (and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), the Freedom of
Information Act, and the extraordinary immigration reform statute of 1965.
(2015, p. 22)
After six terms in the House of Representatives, Johnson entered the

Senate in 1948, becoming the Democrat minority leader in 1953 and,
with the Democratic victory, majority leader. He is credited with rare
legislative skills learned over those years, and as Glickman et al. (2015)
describe him in the introduction to their recent volume on his neglected
legacy in the domestic affairs arena:
Although he had been a public servant early in his career, Johnson
approached governing not as a chief executive officer or an experienced
administrator might but, rather, as a master legislator would. His political
strategy was to get “laws on the books” that he hoped would ultimately, not
immediately, achieve his goals. As legislator in chief he instinctively left it to
future Congresses to resolve any controversies arising from the initial

authorizing legislation. Dallek (1996, 80) has written that Johnson ‘under-
stood from past experience that once a major government program had been
put in place, it would be easier for supporters to modify its workings than for
opponents to dismantle it’. (p. 8)
In the 1960 electoral campaign Johnson was elected vice president to

John F. Kennedy, becoming president on 22 November 1963 when
Kennedy was assassinated. He immediately assumed Kennedy’s congres-
sional agenda with a tax bill and also what was to become the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. By 1964 work was already ongoing to prepare the
platform for the elections and a host of other measures were being
introduced, including Acts on Economic Opportunity, Housing and Urban
Mass Transport, as well as the creation of various historical and scenic
sites and parks, the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), Nurse
Training and the War on Poverty. On 22 May 1964, six months after
Kennedy’s death, Johnson made a major keystone address to graduating
students at the University of Michigan, which is remembered as the Great
Society address. Many of his staff worked on the address, as did some
highly skilled speechwriters, and commentators see it as the moment
when Johnson set the base for his coming electoral platform. Speechwrit-
ing, which was discussed in Chapter 3, had already been part of the
White House in the 1930s and its ubiquitous and continuous presence is
well described in Robert Schlesinger’s White House Ghosts (2008). As
commented earlier, speeches are fascinating social products, often
collective, and Johnson had many good writers19 as well as his own
direct staff. What is interesting about the address is not so much the final
text, which doesn’t mention the word policy at all, but the various
suggestions along the way, made by aids and staff in internal memoran-
dum and handwritten notes on different versions. Here again it is clear
that policy, if anything, was something very broad and background.
Here are two suggestions, one in the early days of the speech and the
second in relation to the third draft, neither of them making the final
version.20
We do not serve ourselves or our society by speaking or heeding past answers
– simple solutions – or petty platitudes. For this complex age, there are no
uncomplicated answers – in politics, in foreign policy, in business decisions,
in labor negotiations, and least of all in raising our children.
From the earliest days of the Republic we have struggled to protect the life
of our nation and preserve the liberty of our citizens that we may pursue the
happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success
as a nation. It underlies all our policies, our programs and our prospects for
the future.
Here are some of the central parts of the address as it was given, showing
very clearly that there is a coherent action language present, that things
will take place, as indeed they did, but that the language of action is not
that of public policy:
[The Great Society] demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which
we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great
Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind
and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to
build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place
where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands
of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a
place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors
creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race.
It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals
than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the Great Society is not a
safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge
constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our
lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. So I want to talk to you
today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society: in our
cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.
(…)
These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our
Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that
we have the full answer to those problems. But I do promise this: we are
going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over
the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working
groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings on the
cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging
challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these
studies, we will begin to set our course towards the Great Society. The
solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington,
nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require
us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the
national capital and the leaders of local communities.
The Johnson period in the domestic arena is very like the UK post-war
period, but with a much stronger drive of equity and equal opportunity
both for the poor and for the black population. There are many bills
(an average of around 40 per full year), and programmes bringing new
ideas to the fore and creating new agencies, such as the Office of
Economic Opportunity (OEO) and the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), but even though people may talk today about
Johnson’s social policies, that will be in hindsight; Johnson himself and
his team didn’t. Kennedy had initiated the outside task force as a source
of ideas and Johnson made it a central feature from the ‘Great Society’
onwards.
The task force approach was one that the president was familiar with and that
was compatible with his management style. Johnson recalled that his first task
force experience was with a group established by Roosevelt during the 1930s
to study economic conditions in the south. Throughout his senate career and
as vice president Johnson relied ‘extensively on advice gathered by independ-
ent groups of experts.’ The task force process reflected central elements of
Johnson management: reliance on ad-hoc, informal bodies, maintenance of
personal control of process, and retention of flexibility through confiden-
tiality. (Redford and McCulley, 1986, p. 78)
There were many conferences with debates on what needed to be done,

and some signs of the shifting times, such as an early scheme for White
House interns, and there may be talk about domestic policy in contrast to
foreign policy. But the driving languages were those of bills, rulings,
programmes and budgets. Evaluation was beginning to be important and
the OEO had an Office of Research, Plans, Programs and Evaluation. The
language of PPBS was brought into the mainstream of public adminis-
tration in 1965, following McNamara’s earlier work in the Department of
Defense. Johnson himself was very concerned about the effectiveness of
government, sending a special message to Congress in 1967 on the
quality of American Government (17 March 1967), and he was highly
critical of excessively bureaucratic communication, the use of which he
had referred to in a 1964 cabinet meeting as ‘gobbledygook’ and
appointed the then Chairman of the Civil Service Commission John
Macy to lead the war against it.21 Evaluation was also present, as this
citation from W. Gorham, the then Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation at the Department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW),
demonstrates: ‘The very process of analysis is valuable in itself, for it
forces people to think about the objectives of Government programs and
how they can be measured. It forces people to think about choices in an
explicit way’ (cited in Lynn, 2015, p. 382).
There are major actions on civil service training and recruiting
professionals to ‘top policy positions’ and there is no doubt about the
concern with getting things done; it was just that those concerns and an
amazing array of actions did not need policy to serve as a hierarchical
and authoritative focus. Policy had been around in Washington, just like
it had been around in the UK. But it was very much the policy of
orientation and position, a guide for decisions, not unlike its earlier uses.
Roosevelt in his 1941 Message to Congress had talked about national
policy in internal affairs and national policy in foreign affairs. Internal

affairs had become domestic affairs and domestic policy, but the general
approach was similar. Policy, as could be expected, was very much part
of the State Department (the US equivalent of the Foreign Office) where,
from 1947, as the Policy Planning Staff, it served as a source of
independent analysis and advice for the Secretary of State. Johnson too
would have no problem using the expression within the arena of foreign
affairs, as in an internal memorandum requesting a concise summary of
‘all favourable developments in policy towards and relations with Latin
America’,22 or in the introduction to an important address on Vietnam
in April 1965 at Johns Hopkins University entitled ‘Peace without
Conquest’:
My Fellow Americans
Last week seventeen nations sent their views to some dozen countries having
an interest in South East Asia. We are joining these seventeen countries and
stating our American Policy which we believe will contribute towards peace
in this area of the world.23
Policy can also be found, very occasionally, being used by members of

Johnson’s own White House staff in a similar way to refer to the
domestic arena (domestic policy), to matters of personnel administration,
to access to documents (the administration’s policy on executive privil-
ege), but never more than that. The Director of the Bureau of the Budget
would discuss the location of the OEO in terms, amongst others, of
strengthening ‘the authority of the director to make his policy decisions
binding on the various delegate agencies’;24 similar to the notion of top
policy positions. Likewise, when seen from inside the daily working of
the White House and through working memos from staff, or within those
key agencies that spearheaded the Great Society push, there is no doubt
that a lot of action is going on. But it is referred to through the social
languages of programmes, proposals and projects, as in R. Sargent
Shriver’s testimony on the OEO before the USA Senate on 19 August
1966, or when leading academic deans write in in support of the OEO in
response to suggestions that it should be dismantled.25 The OEO was key
to Johnson’s war on poverty and this is from the earlier letter he wrote to
Shriver on his appointment:
You will also undertake the coordination and integration of the federal
program with the activities of state and local governments and of private
persons, including the Foundations, private business and industry, labor
unions, and civic groups and organizations. I ask that you invite their close
cooperation; that to the extent that they desire, you integrate their efforts with
our work at the federal level; and that you encourage joint planning, joint
programs and joint administration wherever feasible. (White House, 11
February 1964)26
Public policy as a field of study and a language with which to organize

public affairs was certainly strengthened by the fact that many of the
actions initiated in the Johnson period went on to be later discussed in
policy terms, or that the concern with evaluation would lead to later
discussions on implementation, but to suggest that one caused the other
would be incorrect. Policy as an action language did not orchestrate what
was a tremendous and often undervalued push over a wide social arena.
In major events such as the White House Conferences it is possible to see
that the idea of policy is beginning to pop up in comments by university-
based academics, for example in the Conference on Education (20–21
July 1965) ‘critical problems in urban education may more often be at a
policy rather than a program level’, or in comments about the importance
of policy planning in federal–state partnerships. But when the US
Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on 9 April
1965 it used the language not of government policy, nor of public policy,
but of a policy of the USA, an expression already present in Foreign
Affairs:
In recognition of the special educational needs of low-income families and the
impact that concentrations of low-income families have on the ability of local
educational agencies to support adequate educational programs, the Congress
hereby declares it to be the policy of the United States to provide financial
assistance (…) to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations
of children from low-income families to expand and improve their educational
programs by various means (including preschool programs) which contribute
to meeting the special educational needs of educationally deprived children.
(Section 201, Elementary and Secondary School Act, 1965)
The Act itself was signed by the president on 11 April in the same
one-room school where Johnson had begun his studies as a four-year-old
and in the company of his then school teacher. It was seen as one of the
cornerstones of the ‘war on poverty’.
By the end of the Johnson period, when some of the major achieve-
ments are being written up, those directly responsible will continue to
talk about programmes and projects, but already external commentators
will be introducing the language of policy as very much a foreground
device. In one of the various books discussing social affairs that were in
circulation at that time in the USA, with little mention of policy in the
chapters, a preface by the Swedish development economist, Gunnar
Myrdal,27 makes use of policy in the way it would be recognized today:
A dramatic change in American attitudes towards the social problem is under

way. The nation is finally – and rather suddenly – becoming prepared to
accept the welfare state (…) Broad policy measures which a few years ago
would have seemed to be radical and unacceptable are now becoming part of
practical policy. The swelling flood of statistical investigations devoted to the
poverty problem, conferences and seminars, books and articles, speeches and
policy declarations, give expression to this catharsis at the same time as they
spur it on. (p. i)
We are increasingly coming to recognize as part of this great catharsis that
not only social security policies but almost all other policies – agricultural
policies, taxation policies, housing policies, minimum wage legislation, and
so forth – have followed the perverse tendency to aid the not-so-poor, while
leaving a bottom layer of very poor unaided. The War on Poverty will
therefore have to be fought on many fronts and will in the end have to imply
not only an enlargement but a redirection of all economic and social policies.
(p. vii)
If policy was not a driving force, the action languages of planning,

projects, bills and budgets were hard at work – as would be another new
kid on the block: evaluation. There has been much discussion on the
introduction of PPBS in the US Federal Government as a whole in 1965,
following its very effective development in the Department of Defense
under McNamara, where it still remains in use (Lynn, 2015). Five years
later, under Nixon, the now Office of Management and Budget quietly
put it aside. PPBS overlaid budget practices with concerns for the outputs
(planning and programming) but did not replace the traditional areas of
expenditure (such as salaries, operating expenses etc.).
Specialized staffs analysed proposed expenditures for what they were
expected to accomplish in maintaining or increasing military capabilities and
what they would cost, that is their cost effectiveness in performing military
missions, such as strategic nuclear deterrence, close tactical air support of
troops in combat, and airlift and sea lift of military forces to theatres of
conflict. (Lynn, 2015, p. 375)28
Charles Schultze, Head of the Bureau of the Budget from 1965–1968,

had suggested to Johnson that this could be an important way of avoiding
costly mistakes by establishing goals for the direction of ‘domestic
policy’.29 Heads of Department were to have analytic staffs that would be
both recruited and also selected from existing staff who would be trained
‘in the modern techniques of program analysis and management’. If
output-related budgeting was to have a chequered life – even though it
remained in the background in many forms – the same period was to see
the rapid growth of evaluation research (Frumkin and Francis, 2015). The
original Economic Opportunity Act, 1964, did not require evaluation but
allowed 1 per cent of programme funds to be used in this way, and its
Office of Research Plans, Programs and Evaluation (ORPPE) carried out
studies in the late 1960s and early 1970s: ‘the ORPPE engaged in
ambitious evaluations of Head Start, Follow Through, Upward Bound,
VISTA, the Job Corps and Neighborhood Health Centers, as well as the
first large-scale social experiment of the era, the negative income tax
experiments’ (Frumkin and Francis, 2015, p. 400).
The result was to be a demand that couldn’t be attended to by staff
within the different departments. Frumkin and Francis cite a 500 per cent
rise in federal expenditures on evaluation between 1969 and 1974, with
about 60 per cent of 1974 expenditure going towards contract research.
By 1970 there were some 300 firms, both for-profit and non-profit,
qualified to receive proposals from the OEO – some that were already in
existence before programme evaluation began, such as the RAND
Corporation, and others that were created afterwards. It would be into
this mix that the language of the policy sciences (including the first
number of Policy Sciences journal in 1970) would slowly shape itself out
of a shared common ground with planning, budgeting, programmes,
projects, decisions, evaluation and, then, implementation. Its consolida-
tion would also get a big push from another part of the block: the
differently named graduate professional schools that became known as
the Policy Schools (including the John F. Kennedy School of Govern-
ment at Harvard and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at
the University of Texas Austin); many of which were set up with
significant support from the Ford Foundation. Soon meetings were being
held to discuss these early experiences and various existing academic
associations began to adjust their conference structures around this new
agenda item of public policy. A good example is the 1975 meeting
organized by the Ford Foundation to discuss the ‘Mission of Public
Policy Programs’ at which 12 leading US schools were represented by
deans or senior faculty.30
POLICY BECOMES INTERNATIONALLY

ESTABLISHED
The same concerns about the growing demand for a more technically
qualified administration, able to deal with a growing area of public
affairs, issues, programmes and activities, was taking place in the UK.
Many of the texts being circulated, especially around public planning
and decision, were moving backwards and forwards across the Atlantic
and the number of journals was infinitely less than today. Operations
research, a wartime product, was still an open field and far less
mathematical than it is today; problem analysis was another theme
making its way, as were open systems and a growing questioning of
planning itself – at least in its orthodox form. Much of this was leading
to suggestions that while it was important to have good generalists in
the public service, other talents were also necessary. On 8 February 1966,
Prime Minister Harold Wilson (Labour) announced the appointment of
a committee to examine the structure of recruitment and management,
including training, of the Home Civil Service and to make recom-
mendations. The committee was chaired by Lord Fulton, the first Vice
Chancellor of the University of Sussex and a key architect of that
university’s rapid growth both in student numbers and importance
(1959–1967).
The Fulton Report,31 as it was referred to, was seen at the time as
being as significant as the 1853 Northcote–Trevelyan Report. Amongst
its many important dimensions was its very clear position on the changes
faced by the British Civil Service and the role for ‘policy support’ that
this involved. Here are some excerpts from chapter 2 of the Report on the
tasks of the modern civil service and the men and women it needs:
Civil servants work in support of Ministers in their public and parliamentary
duties. Some of them prepare plans and advise on policy, assembling and
interpreting all the data required, e.g. for a decision on a new social security
policy, a change in defence policy, a new national transport policy or a new
international joint project in the technical field (…) They prepare legislation
and assist Ministers with its passage through Parliament. They draft regu-
lations and answers to Parliamentary Questions. They produce briefs for
debates and the mass of information which the constitutional principle of
parliamentary and public accountability requires (…) Some of this varied
work has no counterpart in business or, indeed, anywhere outside the
government service. Operating policies embodied in existing legislation and
implementing policy decisions take up most of the time of most civil servants.
There are taxes to be collected, employment and social security offices to be
run. There is a mass of individual case-work both in local offices and in the
central departments of state. New policy may require the creation of a new
administrative framework. There are major programmes to be managed and
controlled, such as the planning and engineering of motorways (…)
Some of the work involves the Civil Service in complex relationships with
other bodies which are partners in the execution of government policy or are
directly affected by it. They include local authorities and nationalised indus-
tries in the first category and a multitude of organised interests in the second.
This work calls for practical judgement and negotiating skill. It also calls for
a thorough knowledge of the subject under negotiation and of the problems
and interests of the bodies concerned (…)
Even this brief and impressionistic description is perhaps enough to make it

clear that, as a body, civil servants today have to be equipped to tackle the
political, scientific, social, economic and technical problems of our time. They
have to be aware of interests and opinions throughout the country and of
many developments abroad. They have to keep up with the rapid growth of
new knowledge and acquire new techniques to apply it. In short, the Civil
Service is no place for the amateur. It must be staffed by men and women
who are truly professional. (Report of the Committee on the Civil Service,
1968, chapter 1, pp. 15–16)
The Report would, amongst other recommendations, lead to the setting

up of a special department to look after civil service recruitment and
training with a new top to bottom career grade in the civil service that
placed professional, scientific and technical staff as equals alongside the
traditional administrative generalists. More important for the current
discussion was the proposal for long-term policy ‘thinking and planning’
at the ministerial (i.e. department) level:
We emphasised in Chapter I the growing need for long-term planning if the
problems of modern government are to be foreseen, and the groundwork for
decisions prepared in good time. We believe that this responsibility, like the
complementary responsibility for the execution of policy, needs to be more
clearly defined and allocated. At present, policy making, especially long-term
policy thinking and planning, is the responsibility of officers over burdened
with more immediate demands arising from the parliamentary and public
responsibilities of Ministers (…)
We propose that a department’s responsibility for major long-term policy-
planning should be clearly allocated to a planning and research unit. In the
rest of this chapter, we call these ‘Planning Units’. Research is, however, the
indispensable basis of proper planning, and the phrase should be understood
as referring to a unit equipped to assemble and analyse the information
required for its planning work. The unit should be relatively small. Its main
task should be to identify and study the problems and needs of the future and
the possible means to meet them; it should also be its function to see that
day-to-day policy decisions are taken with as full a recognition as possible of
their likely implications for the future (…) (p.57)
We think that Planning Units should be staffed by comparatively young
men and women. Thus, some of the most able, vigorous and suitably qualified
young civil servants will be able to have an early and direct impact on top
policy-making, as they do so impressively in France and Sweden. Planning
Units also offer scope for the employment of men and women on short-term
contracts or temporary secondment to the government service (…) We think
that people should not normally remain in these units beyond their mid-forties
(except for the head of the Planning Unit) (…) they should then expect to
move – some returning to work outside government, others into the operating
sections of their departments. (p.58)
The Fulton Committee’s Report was widely supported, careers were

reorganized and regrouped, the Civil Service Department (CSD) created
and staff training taken much more seriously. Even before the Civil
Service College started in 1970, central management training had
increased by nearly 80 per cent with a 100 per cent increase for
managerial grades.32 Wilson lost the 1970 election to the Conservatives
under Edward Heath, but the incoming prime minister was equally
committed to the recommendations of the Report. The result was the
Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) – nicknamed the ‘think tank’ –
physically located within the Cabinet Office under Lord Rothschild,
former head of research with the Shell oil company. Half of the staff,
never more than about 20 in all, came from the civil service and the
others came from universities, the business sector and consultancies. The
work continued under Wilson after the 1974 elections and was an
important stimulus for the gradual spread of specially appointed policy
advisors to senior ministers and the setting up of departmental policy
units (James, 1986). PPBS was also to influence the development of
what was termed Programme Analysis Review, introduced by Heath to
look at the priorities, objectives, costs and effectiveness of government
actions.
Making allowance for the institutional, cultural and political differ-
ences between the UK and the USA, the similarities between events,
arguments and analyses are interesting. Policy is clearly entering into
government in a much wider manner than before, but is the policy now
being talked about the policy of position or stance, or is it something
different? Did Laswell’s earlier proposal about the policy sciences prove
prophetic or was the 1951 text something that, in arguing for the
importance of a ‘new’ approach to policy, became a convenient reference
on which to lean? There are also differences in the two cases. In the UK
the linking of policy and planning would also bring in management
services and operations research in its softer form, especially in the
context of decision processes. In the USA, meanwhile, there would be a
sharper reference to policy analysis, for example in Wildavsky’s defence
of policy analysis in relation to PPBS (1969). But in both countries there
was already a growing academic community talking itself into – and, in
doing so, creating – this new field of work, still potentially interdiscipli-
nary. Lindblom – whose pioneering work on decision processes had led
him to be placed as a key figure in the areas of budget and planning, as
well as policy – would describe both the moment and its performative
characteristics in his 1968 text on policy analysis:
The idea of making the ‘policy-making process’ itself a major focus for
specialized enquiry is still so new that no one seems to want to answer the
question of what is supposed to be included in the process and what excluded
from it (…) But one characteristic of policy making important for our
method is worth noting here: its complexity and apparent disorder (…) We are
going to look at policy making as an extremely complex analytical and
political process to which there is no beginning or end, and the boundaries of
which are most uncertain. Sometimes a complex set of forces that we call
‘policy making’ all taken together produce effects called ‘policies’. (1968,
pp. 3–4)
NOTES
1. Brownlow (1937).
2. Northcote and Trevelyan (1854).
3. The report is not gender neutral. This was 1854, and as was seen in Chapter 2 most of the
meritorious women were elsewhere.
4. This was still the time when the Ragged School Union was struggling to provide some
basic education and it would be only in 1880 that the law required basic education for all
children from five to ten years of age.
5. Webber and Wildavsky (1986).
6. The Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni e proportionalita is the equivalent of a
1,500-page modern textbook. It was expensive but a commercial success. Ten years later
the part on bookkeeping was published separately with the title of La scuola perfetta dei
Mercanti (The Perfect School of Merchants).
7. This was also the case throughout Latin America at this time. Organization and Methods
would be commonly located in the finance ministries.
8. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marquis of Pombal, was a somewhat mercurial figure
in Portuguese political history and was also responsible for the general purge against the
Jesuits which led to them being exiled back to Rome and in doing so ended their missions
in Latin America.
9. See Rittel and Webber’s (1973) ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’ with their
discussion on problems of social policy as ‘wicked problems’. See also Healey (2012) on
the three planning traditions: economic planning, physical development, and public
administration and policy.
10. Downey (2009).
11. Roosevelt (1933).
12. Interesting here is to point to (a) the possibility that the lack of coherence may have been
one of the contributors to Roosevelt’s success, and (b) that coherence is not an abstract
notion, it depends on the point of view of the observer.
13. Lilienthal (1944).
14. Amongst these was one major study that would be foundational for the later organizational
studies on co-optation and institutions: Selznick’s 1949 TVA and the Grass Roots.
15. National Health Service Act (1946).
16. It is easy to forget that the 1939–1945 wartime effort was an invisible college of intensive
administrative training not just in military but also in non-military affairs, in which
learning was very much done by doing.
17. The Beveridge Report Social Insurance and Allied Services, accessed on 15 August 2018
at https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.275849/2015.275849.The-Beveridge_djvu.txt
18. (Agricultural Adjustment Act, 1933: note by author.)
19. Including the novelist John Steinbeck.
20. Statements of Lyndon Baines Johnson 20th May–23rd May 1964 Box 106, File University
of Michigan Address, suggested remarks Busby, Comment on Draft between Goodwin and
Valenti. LBJ Presidential Library, University of Texas – Austin.
21. Personal Papers of John Macy, Box 12, Reading File, January to March, 1965.
22. LBJ Presidential Library, University of Texas – Austin. Office Files of Horace Busby Box
19 (1301), memorandum from Busby to Assistant Secretary Mann, 16 August, 1964.
23. Johnson (1965).
24. LBJ Presidential Library, University of Texas – Austin. Memorandum for the President,
March 7, 1964 from the Director, bureau of the Budget. File FG 999-2, FG 11-1.
25. LBJ Presidential Library, University of Texas – Austin. File FG 11–15, 6/11/66–9/13/66 in
Box 125.
26. LBJ Presidential Library, University of Texas – Austin. Office of the White House Press
Secretary. Text of President’s letter addressed to the Honorable Sargent Shriver, Director of
the Peace Corps, February 11, 1964. File: FG 11-15 Office of Economic Opportunity,
11/22/63–11/24/64.
27. Myrdal (1965).
28. Could it be that part of the reason for the effectiveness of PPBS in the Defense Department
as opposed to elsewhere is the very clear distinction made about who sets policy on
foreign and military issues and who carries them out?
29. From a text cited by Lynn (2015, p. 376).
30. Yates (1977).
31. The Civil Service: Report of the Committee 1966–68 (1968) Cmnd 3638, London: Her
Majesty’s Stationary Office.
32. Fulton Report (undated).
5. Public action languages seen from

elsewhere: from the Treaty of Rome
and public administration reform to
the arrival of public policies in
Brazil
PUBLIC POLICY ON THE MOVE: CONCEPTUALLY
Advancing through each chapter it has been possible to see various
threads that woven in different ways would lead to and support different
public action languages. Some of these are technical and some more
governmental, others very much belong to publics themselves in action.
At times they interweave, at times they go their own way and at times
they enter into conflict. This interweaving will continue in the next two
chapters with, first, more attention to government in action and then in
the next chapter to the people(s) in action. From the side of governing, it
has been possible to see times when administrative positions were
described as non-policy-determining, which implies that there would also
be others that were policy-determining; policy therefore was something
that was determined and different to administration. Policy makers, a
later arrival, were involved in policy making and, later, policy formation.
Policies were also sometimes adopted and sometimes carried out or
executed, they also could be formed and executed in a continuous
manner. Policy, as an ‘in general’ approach to international or foreign,
internal, domestic or social affairs, became policy for specific areas and
themes, and policy became policies, and policies became public policies.
Policy advisors also started to appear, but to advise on policy it is
necessary to say more than just ‘that’s a good idea’; advice requires
substance. Analysis is a more academic word and the policy analysts
were seen as somewhat independent, more scientific and able to
provide substantive advice.1 Later, this was expanded to critical analysis
as part of a branch of ‘critical policy studies’, but already in the 1940s
there were doubts about the various attempts to separate stages, or
responsibilities.
115
Evaluation was a new presence, playing a big part in terms of practical

influence, and financial incentives and planning were always around
somewhere. But planners planned and the basic vocabulary stopped there.
Implementation is usually treated in the literature as a ‘natural progres-
sion’ and much is made of landmark studies such as that of Pressman and
Wildavsky (1973). But, considering the different policy narratives that
have appeared so far, what would implementation have meant to each of
them? How are principles, positions and determinations implemented?
Part of the answer is in the preface of the first edition of Pressman and
Wildavsky and to the discussion of the different versions of policy that
were around at that time. Here are the key paragraphs:
In everyday discourse, we use policy (when referring to decisions) in several
strikingly different ways. Sometimes policy means a statement of intention:
Our policy is to increase employment among minorities. Policy here is treated
as a broad statement of goals and objectives. Nothing is said about what
might be done or whether anything has been or will be done to accomplish
that purpose. Other times we speak of policy as if it were equivalent to actual
behaviour: Our policy is to hire minorities, meaning that we actually do hire
them. Policy in this sense signifies the goal and its achievement. Both these
meanings of policy rule out the possibility of studying implementation. When
policy remains a disembodied objective, without specifying actors or the
actions in which they must engage to achieve the desired result, there is no
implementation to study. When the statement of the objective includes its
attainment, implementation is unnecessary.
We can work neither with a definition of policy that excludes any
implementation nor one that includes all implementation. There must be a
starting point. If no action is begun, implementation cannot take place. There
must also be an end point. Implementation cannot succeed or fail without a
goal against which to judge it. (1973, p.xxi)
Pressman and Wildavsky also commented that, at that time, implemen-

tation was much discussed but rarely studied; but this could have been for
a different reason. ‘Honesty is the best policy’ is something that can be
followed or not followed, and certainly ‘We are long term allies of
Portugal’2 is designed to avoid the need to take action. Principles aren’t
implemented but they influence action when they are followed as
normative injunctions (moral or value positions rather than laws). To
take, for example, the already mentioned Common Agricultural Policy of
the European Union: a sustainable food supply at affordable prices with a
fair standard of living for farmers. The result will be regulations,
directives, decisions and a host of other forms of action trying to balance
the implicit equations involved. Here policy is not implemented, it is
followed.
Public action languages seen from elsewhere 117
That such a variety of ways of using policy can be found is not in itself
a problem; nor is it a signal to search for a new theory. On the contrary,
it is to recognize that there are many different discussions happening,
different versions of ideas, terms and concepts in circulation and lots of
action taking place. The Pressman and Wildavsky text could lead the
reader in the direction of thinking that there are different versions of
policy in circulation, all of which are valid, because they are circulating
and being used and understood, and all have implications for action,
which may not imply implementation. But it could also lead the reader in
the direction of thinking that policy is only that which can be imple-
mented and, therefore, the practical definition of policy goes backwards
from the definition of implementation.
In a later edition of the book (1979), Majone and Wildavsky will
rework these ideas and recognize the dangers of creating a what-comes-
first type of argument. They propose that ‘implementation begins neither
with words nor deeds, but with multiple dispositions to act or treat
certain situations in certain ways’ (p.169). Evaluation studies, also around
at the time, were moving on from results to look both forwards at the
impacts of the results and backwards to the processes that produced the
results and were also on their way to becoming an applied scientific
profession. By the preface to the third edition of the book, implemen-
tation and evaluation will be seen as the ‘opposite sides of the same
coin’.
While implementation seems to have caught on fairly quickly in the
USA this was not the case in the UK. Barrett and Fudge in their 1981
collection of essays on the implementation of public policy, also seen as
a key reference, would note that ‘much of the existing published material
on implementation is North American. Given the growing interest in
Britain from academics, practitioners and students, we have aimed to
contribute a body of British material to the debate’ (p.ix). They would
take a different line from Pressman and Wildavsky by suggesting from
the beginning that implementation was translation – a very different
social process and one that does not require a specific version of policy.
Indeed, it works with all of them.
This book is about the relationship between public policy and action, the
processes at work within and between agencies involved in making and
implementing public policy and the factors affecting those processes. As a
working approximation we suggest that the term ‘public policy’ may be
defined as the implicit or explicit intentions of government and the expression
of those intentions entailing specific patterns of activity or inaction by
government agencies. Public policy provides the framework within which
agencies of government operate to control, regulate or promote certain facets
of society in the interests of national defence, law and order, economic and
financial management, social welfare and the like.
In recent years, professional and academic concern with problems of public
policy implementation – translation of policy into practice – has increased,
and this concern relates to wider anxieties about the effectiveness of public
policy and government in general. At one level, concern with effectiveness
forms part of wider ideological debates about the role of the state in society
and about the ‘governability’ of an increasingly complex industrial society, in
which, it is argued, interventions are likely to have unforeseen or counter-
intentional results. (p.v)
For Barrett and Fudge, policy itself can be expressed in a party

manifesto, a formal decision or legal resolution, government circulars,
administrative procedures and rules, amongst others, and, as they say, for
executive officers involved in local service delivery ‘administrative
procedures may well appear to be policy in so far as they comprise the
framework governing the scope for action. On this basis, implementation
is the process of successive refinement and translation of policy into
specific procedures and tasks directed at putting policy intentions into
effect’ (Barrett and Fudge, 1981, p. 11). In this sense, they argue, it
becomes important to:
… investigate what is happening to policy as it is successively refined and
translated. How far do detailed frameworks for action – legislative, adminis-
trative, procedural – reflect or relate to original intentions; that is, what
exactly is being implemented? If what is being implemented is different from
the original policy intention, is this ‘good’, for example, demonstrating that
policy was flexible enough to be tailored to local circumstances, or ‘bad’ in
that the original policy goals have been distorted in the process? (pp.11–12)
As policy began to spread in the UK and other parts of Europe, there was
a tendency towards the more easygoing definition of policy as seen in the
Barrett and Fudge citations3 and which recalls the 1940s’ discussion of
rights: it works and is useful provided that nobody asks what it is (see
Chapter 6). Titmuss, who founded the discipline of Social Administration
at the London School of Economics, would say:
For our purposes the word ‘policy’ can be taken to refer to the principles that
govern actions directed towards given ends. The concept denotes action about
means as well as ends and it, therefore, implies change: changing situations,
systems, practices, behaviour. And here we should note that the concept of
policy is only meaningful if we (society, a group or an organization) believe
we can affect change in some form or other. We do not have policies about
the weather because, as yet we are powerless to do anything about the
weather. But we do have policies (or we can have policies) about illegitimate
children because we think we have some power to affect their lives – for
better or worse depending on whether you are the policy-maker or the
illegitimate child.
The word ‘policy’ is used here in an action-oriented and problem-oriented
sense. The collective ‘we’ is used to refer to the actions of government in
expressing the ‘general will’ of the people – whether of Britain, Nigeria or
China. The meaning and validity of a concept of the ‘general will’ is, of
course hotly debated. (Titmuss, 1974, pp. 23–24)
At a similar period in time, also in the UK, Friend would note that
despite the tacit assumption that somehow public policy making is broad,
it is possible to make a distinction:
I would like to suggest that a decision is essentially an act which passes into
history once carried out, while a policy is essentially a stance which, once
articulated, contributes to the context within which a succession of future
decisions will be made. The act of declaring such a stance through some
formal channel can then be properly described as the taking of a ‘policy
decision’ – though this is not to imply that the ‘making of policy’ can be
considered purely and simply as the accretion of a series of policy decisions
of this kind. (1977b, p. 40)
Policy is clearly polysemic and as Wilson (2006), a former senior

member of the UK civil service and an academic, would say: ‘The word
“policy” is imprecise and is usually used loosely by those who make it.’
In his chapter on policy analysis and policy advice in the Oxford
Handbook of Public Policy he proposes that: ‘policy means the actions,
objectives, and pronouncements of governments on particular matters, the
steps they take (or fail to take) to implement them, and the explanations
they give for what happens (or does not happen)’ (p.154). Bovens et al. in
the same volume, will say:
When public policies are adopted and programs implemented, the politics of
policy making do not come to an end (…) they merely move from the main
stage, where political choices about policies are made, to the less visible
arenas of policy implementation, populated by (networks of) bureaucratic and
non-governmental actors who are involved in transforming the words of
policy documents into purposeful action. (2006, p. 320)
Here it is worth remembering the dictum that rules are made to be

broken, laws to be disobeyed; perhaps a continuation might read ‘and
policies to be ignored’. However, even with these different views, some
forcing a harder and precise definition, others a softer approach, some
implementing and others translating and transforming, plus the various
texts in public administration that were already embracing public policy
(for example, Frederickson and Wise, 1977), it seems fair to say that by
the late 1970s and early 1980s, public policy and public policy analysis
were making their presence felt in the USA and also in the UK. In 1978,
a Sloan Foundation-sponsored conference in the USA to discuss public
policy and management curriculums at universities would lead 15 policy
schools and research institutes in May 1979 to create the Association for
Public Policy Analysis and Management. Remembering the earlier dis-
cussion of Lasswell’s text, once something has become the focus of
analysis and management it starts to become very real and material. After
all nobody analyses, and much less manages, things that don’t exist. But,
it might be asked: what is it that exists? Something very different or
something that is still very much linked to the older expression of
principles and positions; or both and many others? Important here is not
the theoretical question of what is more correct or adequate or logically
valid, but the acceptance that these are versions that are circulating and
are very much in use in a mix and match way, as this example from the
discussion of legal deposit legislation4 makes clear.
Legal deposit legislation serves a clear national policy interest by ensuring the
acquisition; the recording, the preservation and the availability of a nation’s
published heritage. Such a national collection is undoubtedly one of the major
components of a country’s cultural policy and should also be considered as
the foundation of a national policy of expression and access to information.
(Lariviere, 2000, pp. 4–5)
THE WIDER DRIFT TO POLICY

If there were clear signs that a policy field, later referred to as policy
studies or policy analysis with or without the addition of public, was
becoming consolidated at a similar period of time in the UK and the
USA – with all the differences and nuances of specific political,
governmental and academic contexts – that was not necessarily the case
elsewhere. Comments were made in the initial chapter about the arrival
of policy – not the consolidation – in France and Spain in the 1980s, and
in the Netherlands a bit earlier, and it would take until the end of the
1990s to start to appear in places like Brazil. In the case of France,
Halpern et al. (2018) suggest that the earlier translation of Laswell’s
policy as ‘la politique’ possibly didn’t help as the term can be used to
mean policy, politics and polity. It was only when policy studies as a
discipline emerged during the 1980s that the term was translated as
‘politiques publiques’. The same would happen in Latin America more
than ten years later. Curiosity grows when this is compared with other
aspects of public administration theory and its associated technologies,

which seem to have moved around much more quickly. Many of the
same European countries which would take their time over public
policies were actively working together in the European Economic Union
of the mid-1980s,5 with a founding treaty that made very good use of the
earlier notion of policy as a position.
At the beginning of the Treaty of Rome (1957), the ‘King of the
Belgians, the Queen of the Netherlands, the Grand Duchess of Luxem-
bourg and the Presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the
French and Italian Republics, state their desire to contribute, by means of
a common commercial policy, to the progressive abolitions of restrictions
on international trade’. They also state that they have decided to create a
European Economic Community and ‘to this end have designated as their
Plenipotentiaries …’.6
The Treaty, which also establishes the European Economic Community
(EEC) lists amongst its principal concerns (article 3), the adoption of a
common policy in the sphere of agriculture, a common policy in the
sphere of transport and the application of procedures by which the
economic policies of member states can be coordinated and the dis-
equilibria in their balance of payments remedied. Within a few years the
common policy in the sphere of agriculture had become one of the most
important areas of action in a Europe of many family farmers and
smallholdings: the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Here is the CAP
today, a set of principles to guide action:
Farmers provide a stable food supply, produced in a sustainable way at
affordable prices for more than 500 million Europeans. The European Union’s
farm policy ensures a decent standard of living for farmers, at the same time
as setting requirements for animal health and welfare, environmental protec-
tion and food safety. Sustainable rural development completes the picture of
the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP).7
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO)8 offers another site from which to follow some aspects of
what is probably better called a drift to policy; certainly not a sea change,
paradigm shift or even a transition to use more academic expressions.
However, the metaphor of drifting helps as it allows the recognition of all
the other bits and pieces of hard and soft technologies around, as well as
the different variants on policy that have already appeared.
In 1967, UNESCO held a round-table meeting in Monaco to discuss
the idea of cultural policy, given that an increasing number of govern-
ments had set up departments of cultural affairs, but in very different
ways, and that there were many different ideas from one country to the
other of what actions public authorities should take. This is policy in use
in the same way as the earlier social policy, economic policy or the CAP,
as this extract from the final report shows:
This publication is the first in the Studies and Documents on Cultural
Policies series, published as part of the programme adopted by the Unesco
General Conference at its fifteenth session for the study of cultural policies.
In this context, ‘cultural policy’ is taken to mean a body of operational
principles, administrative and budgetary practices and procedures which
provide a basis for cultural action by the State. Obviously, there cannot be
one cultural policy suited to all countries; each Member State determines its
own cultural policy according to the cultural values, aims and choices it sets
itself. (UNESCO, 1969, p.iii)
It would take some 20 years to complete the set of individual reports by

member countries about their cultural policies and, indeed, there was
much questioning by leading cultural activists as to whether governments
should get involved in culture, other than in a generally supportive
manner. Was government’s heavy hand of regulation the most appropriate
way to deal with cultural expressions? Government regulation has come
up several times in the preceding chapters and the UNESCO example is
doubly helpful. It points to a sense of policy being used at this time
(policy as principle) but also adds an addendum to the question posed by
Dewey: what about those problems that are public, but that the public
doesn’t want governments to get involved in solving?
The apparent drift towards the idea that policy is serious, central to
government and needs to be studied (despite the various versions of what
this is) seems very natural until a few questions are raised. When policy
was a stance or principle, the answer to ‘what is your policy on X’ can be
answered either as ‘ABC’ or ‘there isn’t one’. In the latter case, there is
no need to feel guilty for the answer can be that it is not a public
concern, or not one that it is necessary to have a position on, nor one
where the public wants the government to get involved. It is very
doubtful that there was much of a position on the Antarctic, apart from
the fact that it was very cold, until expeditions started to feel their way
around the area at the turn of the early twentieth century.
But when foreign policy moves to domestic and then social policy,
from social policy to different areas like educational policy and then
policies and, later, environmental policies, it becomes difficult to disagree
when it is said that policy is what governments do or don’t do. If any of
the Southern Hemisphere countries don’t have a formal policy on the
Antarctic then the lack of a policy will become a policy. For now, who is
discussing policy is the observer and not the observed; policy becomes an
analytical fact and is what policy analysts do. Titmuss’ 1974 position on
the weather, for example, would now be disputed by those who talk about
climate change. Dryzek (2006) in his discussion of critical policy
analysis will point to the different traditions of critique and their
implications for analysis, yet he too will also assume that it can all be
called policy. Ryle (1949), when introducing the idea of a category-
mistake in his critique of the existence of mind, uses the example of a
visitor to Oxford who when shown around the different buildings (colleges,
libraries, playing fields and such) asks: but where is the ‘university’?
Where, then, is the ‘policy’ and how did it become so polysemic?
Perhaps one of the answers, amongst many others, is that it was an elastic
and easygoing expression that made a great deal of sense to many people
in different conversations in which they all assumed they understood each
other – with enough connection to keep it going until, like ‘university’, it
became a social and very powerful institution. There is no need to define
it, because those who use it know what it is. But, as with the examples of
‘university’ or ‘mind’, this is a social dynamic that is not unique to policy
itself. For this reason and also to explore other possible lines of
discussion about these curious social processes through which meanings
circulate, it is helpful to move sideways to another field that has captured
the attention of public affairs scholars of various disciplines in recent
years as well as many generations of practitioners.
IMPROVING GOVERNMENTS THROUGH REFORM

In their ten-nation study of public management reform, Pollitt and
Bouckaert (2000) commented that in the period after 1980 a ‘pandemic
of public management reforms’ moved through the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Some of
these became associated with the more hardline expression of New
Public Management and others were moving in other directions, but
together they would help consolidate the idea of public management as
somehow distinct from public administration and requiring significant
changes in organizational patterns and behaviours.
These include making savings (economies), in public expenditure, improving
the quality of public services, making the operation of government more
efficient and increasing the chances that the policies which are chosen and
implemented will be effective. (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000, p. 6)
As a first approximation we could say that public management reform
consists of deliberate changes to the structures and processes of public sector
organizations with the objective of getting them (in some sense) to run better.
(Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000, p. 8)
Reform, however, is not something that just happens at one moment.

Here they distinguish between trends (drifts with vague patterns that can
be interpreted) and trajectories: intentional patterns, routes that people
are trying to take. These, they grouped under finance (budgets, accounts
and audits), personnel (recruitment, posting, remuneration, security of
employment etc.), organization (specialization, coordination, scale),
(de)centralization and performance measurement systems. In each of
these there are many different schools of thought which may share a
broader field, such as financial management reform, or even just budgets,
but do so in a variety of ways. They found that, more often than not,
reform in practice was far more incremental or ‘muddling through’ to use
the Lindblom (1959) expression. In these spaces of adjustment, they
would find that many other more local changes would take place, led by
public servants themselves rather than by specialists.
Such ‘improvements’ may occasionally be self-serving but often they are
substantially other-directed, and result in gains in productivity, service quality,
transparency, fairness, or some other important value. If close-up scrutiny of
many ‘great operations’ tends to reveal incremental rather than strategic
decision-processes, it also reveals endless examples of beneficial opportunism
and pragmatic reform by public servants at all levels. (Pollitt and Bouckaert,
2000, p. 191)
In contrast to these local value agendas for trying to get things better,
they pointed to the well-articulated and apparently coherent versions of
reform circulating in an increasingly internationalized setting. These
‘communities of discourse’, as they described them, can very easily
disconnect from the practicalities of the everyday and create an almost
independent vocabulary, heavily based on values of progress. ‘Within this
managerialist thought-world there is only limited consciousness of the
flimsiness of many of the current principles of good public management.
A more historically-informed awareness would show how such “prin-
ciples” or “proverbs” come and go over time’(p.190).
The wave of public management reforms was an incentive for many
comparative studies. The various experiences offered a middle ground for
looking more closely at what came to be called the machinery of
government, as well as the various functional areas that were key to the
continuity of public affairs. As the analyses moved from one country to
another it would not be uncommon to find that there were many similar
bits and pieces, ideas, soft and hard technologies and ways of organizing,
but that in each country these followed specific paths. In their prelimin-
ary analysis of the characteristics of the different governments studied,
Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000) refer amongst other characteristics to the
diversity of forms of what they term policy advice; that is, where advice
comes from. In their ten countries, there are five (Canada, Finland,
France, Germany, New Zealand) where this is predominately from inside
the civil service itself, two (Australia and the UK) where this was also
the case up until the 1980s after which others began to be involved. The
remaining three have a broader mix: civil servants, academics and other
experts in the Netherlands; academic experts and trade unions in more
corporatist roles in Sweden; and in the USA, the policy advice arena is
described as very diverse with political appointees, corporations, think
tanks and consultants.
A further part of the mix refers to the backgrounds of the civil servants
and public administrators themselves. Germany, France, Finland in part,
and Sweden until recently, tend to draw heavily on people with a
background in public law, others prefer non-specialist generalists. Halp-
ern et al. (2018), in their text on France, point to the difference in the
ways in which studies for policy (including analyses and recommenda-
tions) and studies of policy processes have usually taken place. The first
is largely seen as a responsibility of an elite corps of highly trained civil
servants taught in schools such as the National School of Administration
(ENA) by largely former students and few independent academics; the
second – research centred and seen as independent of government – are
the policy studies of the academic community. Only rarely are research-
ers involved in commissioned studies or consulted on specific policy
issues – very different to the flourishing practices of policy analysis that
link governments and bureaus to think tanks and academics in the USA
(Lynn, 1999). Given such a variety of relationships and orientations, it is
perhaps indeed not surprising that pinning down policy, as opposed to
discussing approaches to budgets, has become an increasingly difficult
task, nor that different countries have their own versions.
A further distinction that is often commented on, and which is in part
influenced by different legal frameworks, is between those countries for
which the concept of ‘state’ is a central integrating concept and force
within society, and those for which the state is rarely used as an
expression and, instead, the central concept is that of government. Laws
are present in both, but in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and
the UK, legal training will not be part of public service training and civil
servants tend to see themselves as working for public sector organ-
izations rather than having a mission in relation to the state (Pollitt and
Bouckaert, 2000). The case of the USA is different again. Stillman
(1997), who studied the relationship between public administration and

the state, argues that whereas in different ways and with different histories,
continental Europeans deduce public administration out of a sense of state,
in the USA the reverse is the case and state is induced from public
administration. Here, could the continued discussion of the relationship
between public administration and government – in which the state is a
result of practices (as Waldo had pointed out (1948)) – also have
something to do with the importance of policy as a mediating concept?
FROM CENTRAL BANKS TO ADMINISTRATIVE

REFORM IN LATIN AMERICA
Different from its very influential neighbour to the north in which, for
most residents, state refers to a middle tier of government such as the
State of Texas, the national state in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking
Latin America is very central, even in the federalist countries (Argentina,
Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela). Political regimes tend, almost without
exception, to be executive led with a strong presidential role. In the very
early nineteenth century, when most of the countries gained some form of
independence, there were two influential and innovative approaches to
organizing affairs on the known international scene: the US Constitution
and the French Civil Code. Both would play a major role in shaping
affairs and in approaching later reforms.
In Spanish Latin America, universities were already present in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (initially as theological colleges),
Brazil had law and medical schools and there were many ties with France
and later the USA. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the
discussion of public administration and how to go about being more
efficient and, later, effective, has a long history. As Caiden, a constant
observer of public administration in the region, commented in 1991:
The most important fact about Latin America over the past four decades has
been the stubbornness with which it has pursued administrative reform,
despite so many failures and disappointments. Possibly nowhere else in the
world have so many governments announced bold, imaginative reform plans
to achieve so little in practice. (p.262)
In the 1920s, well before Bretton Woods and the multinational financial
community, financial loans to countries were a very individual affair and
guarantees were important, not just of repayment but of financial
competence. In this setting, Edwin Walter Kemmerer, a US economist,
university professor and specialist in international finance, made several
trips to Latin American countries, as well as within Europe and to the

Philippines, to argue in favour of independent central banks, currency
reform and balanced budgets (Drake, 1989). Using the US General
Accounting Office as a model, the missions of the ‘money doctor’, as he
was called, left results that can still be seen in a number of countries
(solid-looking buildings with the copper-plated names of the original
central banks). With the central banks and the knowledge and skills of
financial administration and budget control would also arrive a new
cohort of professionals, far more used to quantitative methods and
practices than their legal colleagues, who had a different administrative
tradition.
Documental studies suggest that there was a fairly constant flow of
discussion amongst administrative elites of different countries about the
new ideas in administration, even though these would be interpreted in
Latin America within a legal framework influenced by French and
German law and containing a theme that was not present in common law:
administrative law (Spink, 1999, 2001). When Gullick’s POSDCORB
(planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordination, reporting and
budget) along with efficiency and organization and methods arrived on
the scene of public administration in the Northern Hemisphere, they were
quickly picked up also in Latin America. By the 1940s there were many
Organization and Methods Offices located either within the judiciary
(seen as subordinate to administrative law) or within the budget and
finance offices (where they were more successful). The problem, as
Wahrlich later commented (1979), was that POSDCORB was taken up as
a creed for administrative organization, and even today many formal legal
instruments specifying the functions of senior role holders in public
organizations use these or very similar terms.
In the same way that training and, later, staff development became a
growing theme in the north so, along with actions initiated by President
Truman in 1949 that continued up to Kennedy, came support for the
development of public administration schools. In a similar way, staff
colleges on the UK model were being set up in Africa, and the new
United Nations was discussing the importance of training for the, equally
newly termed, developing world. National planning was also very much
on the table, especially so in Latin America whose diplomats had
managed, despite US counter-pressure, to reach agreement on a United
Nations planning agency for the region. The Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), or ‘CEPAL’ as it is widely
known, soon became a reference for its progressive approach to national
development planning and for a more independent Latin America
(Iglesias, 1992). Planning for development required an effective civil
service and programme budgeting was also adopted in the 1960s,

following suggestions from the USA in the 1961 Alliance for Progress.
While there was progress in many areas, personnel administration was
often the Achilles heel. Many international advisors and specialists, as
also the newer generations of Latin American specialists who were
moving around the development community, were influenced by the UK
model of a permanent career civil service and the clear separation of
politics from administration. (Curiously, despite the legal links to France
and Germany, the idea of a guiding elite trained within highly specialized
schools was not to prove popular until much later on and still remains
only partial today.) Neither approach was succesful. Much of Latin
American experience went in a different direction and still does, with
many hundreds of managerial posts being changed with each change in
government.
More important than the differences is to note that each new approach
to efficient or effective government and administration did not replace the
previous approaches. They were added on: budgeting led to organization
and methods, which led to staff training, planning and new schools and
institutions for technical advice. Eventually, around the 1960s, these
threads began to get pulled together, internationally, under a new term:
administrative reform (echoing discussions elsewhere about efficient
government). This is part of the summary report from a UN seminar on
major administrative reforms in developing countries held in the UK in
1971:
Programs of major administrative reform are frequently essential to set up the
necessary administrative capabilities for economic and social development
and for carrying out government functions in general (…) major adminis-
trative reforms are defined as specially designed efforts to induce fundamental
changes in public administration systems through system-wide reforms or at
least through measures for improvement of one or more of its key elements,
such as administrative structures, personnel and processes. (UN, 1971/1973)
When the post-1950s developmental period, often with populist govern-

ments, started to break down, the consequences for many Latin American
countries was what O’Donnell (1978) termed bureaucratic authoritarian-
ism and Calvert and Calvert (1992) as military developmentalism.
Reform discussion would continue, the Latin American Centre for
Development Administration (CLAD) was set up in 1972 and held its
first major open meeting at which experiences were presented in 1979 in
Mexico. In a previous study (Spink, 1999, 2001), the author was able to
follow many of these events through reports and documents. To repeat a
theme already mentioned in relation to public management reforms in
OECD countries, in practice – and despite attempts to pull the different

topics together as major articulated trajectories – the results, even in
times of hardline rule, were are at best incremental.
At the United Nations 1981 Bangkok Conference on Enhancing
Capabilities for Administrative Reform in Developing Countries, the final
report would talk about a considerable variation in what is meant by
administrative reform and would note that there is: ‘a marked absence of
any clear-cut criteria to distinguish administrative reform from other
activities such as administrative improvement, administrative change and
administrative modernization’ (UN, 1983, p. 4).
In his 1991 review of administrative reform in various parts of the
world, Caiden listed 16 major areas that could be found associated with
this title. These were: scope and activities of the administrative state;
national planning, agenda setting, performance indicators; organization
and structure of the machinery of government; rule of law – con-
stitutions, accountability, right to inform; public policy making; pro-
gramme execution – professional delivery; public budgeting and financial
administration; public employment, practices and conditions; public regu-
lation, safeguards and practices; preservation and maintenance of public
capital; general services – consistency, performance, standardization;
public enterprises – impact on economy and return on investment; public
management practices – organization and methods, de-bureaucratization,
efficiency, quality; public ethics – honesty, professionalism, anti-
corruption; public participation – voluntary actions, complaint handling;
institutionalization of reform – research and development, training,
agencies and schools. The list is extensive and covers most themes and
activities that can be thought of when discussing administrative actions in
the broader sense. The question then follows that if they can be identified
in fairly practical ways – and if action seems to be again incremental or
at the most in relatively clear focused programs – why insist on putting
them together as a major articulated strategy? Could this be overloading
the limits of Pressman and Wildavsky’s criteria for implementation, or
the possibilities of approaches to evaluation?
A first observation about the list of topics is the presence of public
policy making as part of a community of ideas on improvement. A
second is that to those involved in each of the other 15 areas, their
specific set of sub-topics, techniques and theories is as central to them as
public policy making may be to those for which it is a key concern.
A third point that emerges when examining the breadth of these
technical and administrative areas is how some go on to produce
further areas of performative discussion when types of activity cross over
with different areas of public concern. Planning may be one line of
professional activity and health will certainly be an area where planners

can be found; but what happens when planners who work in health
become ‘health planners’? Are the ideas and approaches of those who
work with efficiency and quality independent of the field in which they
work, or will this vary from field to field? Are public administrators and
managers ‘social service’ managers before they are managers, or vice
versa? Are environmental services staff regulators or environmentalists?
What happens when these cross over with the different versions of the
public that can be found in different approaches to public administration,
such as Frederickson’s (1991) interest groups, consumers, voters, clients,
citizens, or McLaughlin’s (2009) analysis of the subtle and not so subtle
changes in the labels that perform social work relationships: patients,
clients, customers, consumers, service users, experts by experience or
whatever will be next to emerge. How do Lipsky’s (1980) under-pressure
street-level workers make performative sense of trying to get things done
with so many suggestions for improvement around them?
Evidence that certain themes, topics and terms are hard to pin down is
not in itself problematic. It becomes more difficult when the number of
different ways of looking at and performing the activities that try to pin
down possibilities of action increase, and it is even more problematic
when these are not taken into consideration. Bakhtin’s alert to ‘never
minimise the extreme heterogeneity of discursive genres and the con-
sequent difficulty to define the general nature of statements’ (1979/2016,
p. 15) applies not only to the difference between the socio-political, the
scientific and the literary but also within each. Between the national
languages and the intensity of everyday talk lies an intermediary territory
where it is possible to find civil servants, technical professionals,
politicians, advisors, analysts and, as will be discussed in the next chapter,
lots of different social and thematic movements and forms of citizen
action. All recognize each other in talk, whether they get on or not.
THE CONSENSUS OF WASHINGTON AND THE RISE

OF STATE REFORM
In the early 1980s, large parts of Latin America had been going through
considerable financial crisis and needed support with debt payments.
Others required support to break inflation cycles and the sources of all
these funds were in international organizations located in Washington DC
(especially the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank)
as well as the US Government itself. The various conversations, reports,
documents and debates about what to do, and the way support was
provided, resulted in a set of programmatic orientations that Williamson

in 1989 described as the Washington Consensus (Williamson, 1990).
Later, in the 1990s, with many of the same Latin American countries
either consolidating or moving towards democratic regimes, a different
type of consensus would emerge (although it was not referred to as such)
around a successor concept to administrative reform: state reform. State
reform would draw on many of the ideas that were being tried out in the
countries that Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000) had studied, but it would seek
to articulate this within a general approach of rethinking the state; how
government could or should be. This is how Williamson introduced the
first consensus:
No statement about how to deal with debt crisis in Latin America would be
complete without a call for the debtors to fulfil their part of the proposed
bargain by “setting their houses in order”, “undertaking policy reforms”, or
“submitting to strong conditionality”. The question posed in this paper is what
such phrases mean, and especially what they are generally interpreted as
meaning in Washington. Thus the paper aims to set out what would be
regarded in Washington as constituting a desirable set of economic policy
reforms. An important purpose in doing this is to establish a baseline against
which to measure the extent to which various countries have implemented the
reforms being urged on them. (…)
The Washington of this paper is both the political Washington of Congress
and senior members of the administration and the technocratic Washington of
the international financial institutions, the economic agencies of the US govern-
ment, the Federal reserve board and think tanks. (Williamson, 1990/2002)
The rigour of the consensus on economic policies, plus the emergence of

conditionalities, had a marked impact on the social arenas of many Latin
American countries, for spending cuts nearly always aggravate socio-
economic differences and have a negative impact on poverty reduction.
Hardline regimes were also ending with democratic transitions which
would bring new discussions on rights and eventually lead to a broaden-
ing of the use of policy beyond the diplomatic and economic arenas. It
would not, therefore, be long before the rigour of the Washington
Consensus began to lose force, especially because of the growing
backlash against what became termed neo-liberal economic policies. In
its place came another set of terms that, while not ignoring fiscal
responsibility and the market, were to return the developmental agenda to
a more comfortable middle ground between neo-liberalism on the one
hand and state socialism on the other.
Amongst the many words in use, three became increasingly present in
the annual reports and publications of the international agencies in the
1990s: institutions, civil society and social capital. Supported by the new
institutional economics of North (1990), they in turn acquired a degree of
rhetorical certainty; yet another consensus. This suggested that insti-
tutions matter; that a strong civil society is the key to strengthening the
institutions of democracy, that civil society, in partnership with the state,
has a key role in guaranteeing effective public service delivery; and that
increasing social capital is the way to strengthen civil society. The value
orientation is clear in reports from the United Nations agencies, from the
World Bank and from a host of International NGOs. When used at the
broader societal level at which many programme officers of aid agencies
operate, or in the language of evaluation reports that sweep up entire
populations in broad descriptors of social capital, such terms have a
shadowy certainty; they are neither as precise as class nor are they as
vague as society. The overall line of argumentation may be appealing to
some, but what are social capital and civil society in daily life in many
places in Latin America, especially in the conflict-ridden, local and
mid-range horizons in which most local governments, community group-
ings and social movements work?
At this point it could be asked – why worry? If the successive
production of new ideas about ‘good for government’ is a fairly perennial
process, whose waves have washed over Latin America at least since the
Kemmerer missions, why be concerned about yet another. One response
would certainly be: only because it is necessary to recognize that this
happens and to be prepared to discuss the effective contribution of each
proposal. Another line of argument would move to the critical debate on
development itself, highly important but outside the scope of this book. A
third, more relevant and within the scope of the book, is to note the
subtle changes in the ways in which different ideas, technical proposals
and articulating concepts are put together. Whereas in the 1920s and
1930s some governments would be concerned with central banks and
later organization and methods specialists, others would not. Equally, the
early institution-building approaches of the post-war period, especially in
the staff training field, would show many local variants. Administrative
reform had some adepts in the 1960s, but certainly not all of the
countries that were to get together under the CLAD banner in the 1970s
were to go down that line.
By the 1990s the pattern was changing. Administrative reform had
become state reform and all Latin American countries reported important
activities under this label on the 1997/1998 CLAD database of reform
activities. The move from public administration to state is a significant
one, for it is a movement from organizational effectiveness and the
improvement of service provision in different ways and for different
reasons and arguments, to the questioning of the institutional architecture

of the state and the introduction into the 1990s development agenda of
yet another articulating proposal: governance (Sundaram and Chowdhury,
2012). Here is an example from the OECD:
The challenge for governance at the end of the 20th century is one of
institutional renewal. Setting appropriate frameworks for both public and
private sector activity under conditions of increasing global interdependence,
uncertainty and accelerating change is a major challenge. It requires a
reappraisal of the rationale for government intervention and a re-examination
of the cost-effectiveness of public sector institutions, their programs and
regulatory activities. Governments must strive to do things better, with
fewer resources, and above all differently. Outdated institutions and practices
need to be redesigned or replaced with ones that better match the realities
and demands of dynamic market economies with the objectives and respons-
ibilities of democratic systems. If the public sector is to remain responsive to
the needs of those it serves, governments must foster the development of
organizations that perpetually adapt and reshape themselves to meet changing
client needs, and that develop new ways to cope with the changing world.
Government must be willing and able to learn. (OECD, 1995, p. 7)
CLAD itself was to argue in its own conclusive document, A New Public
Management for Latin America (1998), that there was now a clear trend
to public sector reforms. The many reforms reported at that time on the
CLAD database match those also noted by Caiden (1991) and Pollitt and
Bouckaert (2000).
Of 23 areas of reform mentioned by 17 countries, no country reported
less than five and the great majority reported 11 or more areas of reform
(Spink et al., 2001). Of these the most frequent were: institutional
restructuration and development; political and administrative decentral-
ization; restructuring of public sector enterprises and public services;
financial reform; social security reforms; constitutional reforms; electoral
reforms; judicial reforms; commercial reforms; social programme
reforms; social sector reforms; reform and simplification of adminis-
trative procedures, amongst others. Interesting also is that only one
country reported on an integrated programme of public sector reform
and modernization. The importance of the social sector reforms was, in
many cases, a consequence of the earlier budget crises and structural
adjustment economic policies, but it was also a sign of the recognition by
newly elected social democratic governments of new social responsibil-
ities. Amongst the more active countries reporting was Brazil in tenth
place with some 11 categories of activities. It is to Brazil that the analysis
now turns to look at the arrival, within these many different themes, of
the notion of policy.
POLICY COMES TO BRAZIL

Brazil is neither a special case, nor is it an example of many. Following
the various partial conclusions of the chapter it is, as in other countries,
a bit of both. Many of the same bits and pieces of terms, ideas, actions,
soft and hard technologies can be found, but they appear within specific
stories. Using Brazil serves also to call attention to the need for other
accounts from other countries, which may show similar or dissimilar
results. In Brazil, policy was on its way up the chain of visibility for
a variety of reasons, but again lots of very important developments
and actions were done without policy; yet policy suddenly became
important.
There are various places from which to start the hunt for the use of
public policy in practice and, as in all forms of documental research, a lot
depends on availability and a dose of serendipity. To begin with, a
number of the principal Brazilian newspapers have recently digitalized
their archives in open access form. The Brazilian press has played a very
important independent role in societal affairs, as elsewhere in Latin
America; journalists talk to academics, specialists in research centres,
political activists, politicians and to each other. The press is sensitive to
the fluctuations in the spoken word and provides a very good source in
which to look for an overview. The second place, also a part of these
conversations, is the databanks of dissertations and theses held by the
Ministry of Education’s postgraduate agency (CAPES)9 in which there is
a consistent register of all masters and doctoral dissertations along with
their titles and keywords. The third place is the digital archives of the
principal – and for much of the time, only – academic journal in the field
of public administration and government, produced by the widely recog-
nized and again highly independent Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV).
FGV is itself a product of the 1940s and 1950s institutional building
initiatives in the region in the areas of teaching, training and research,
with its headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, the former capital, and under-
graduate and graduate schools in Rio and São Paulo. Some more specific
examples and cases will be used to complement this broader sweep,
ending with the internationally important initiatives in the area of
HIV/AIDS.
The search for the use of public policy or policies (politica(s)
publica(s)) in the electronic archives of the Folha de S.Paulo, the O
Estado de S. Paulo and the Rio de Janeiro-based O Globo, together
representing the solider part of the press spectrum, showed 13 entries for
all daily editions of the three newspapers from 1960–1969 followed by
79 for the following decade. In 1980–1989 this rose to 392, followed by

2,068 between 1990 and 1999. For the 2000–2009 decade, the number of
mentions was already at 11,086. Thus, over 90 per cent of all mentions
were to be found in the two decades from 1990 to 2009, with between
75–85 per cent in the second of these (cross-checks were made for nearly
all the mentions so as to avoid false positives).
Looking at the same period through the archives of masters and
doctoral reports maintained by CAPES provides evidence from a wide
range of disciplines as the database refers to all postgraduate programmes
in all fields. Using as a search item the expression public policy (politica
publica) in the title, summary or as key words, and without any
restriction of academic discipline, it was possible to identify 611 masters
dissertations and 126 doctoral theses approved between 1990 and 1999.
In the following decade (2000–2009) the numbers had increased nearly
tenfold to 5,298 masters dissertations and 1,266 doctoral theses. Masters
and doctoral dissertations and theses are an interesting indicator of shifts
in ideas, for they are a highly interactional product. They need a subject
matter, theory, cases and data, but also a supervisor. They have to be
written in and accepted in disciplinary languages and, further, are
examined by a panel in a process that is open to the public. During this
period there was some growth in postgraduate programmes, not enough
to explain the growth in output, but here again the growth of programmes
was part of the same story, a gradual acceptance of public policy as a
valid course title. Confirming policy’s arrival, a 2011 bibliographic
review showed that 65 per cent of all Brazilian journal articles with
public policy in the key words were published between 2006–2010
(Marques and de Faria, 2013).
The Brazilian public administration journal Revista de Administração
Pública was founded in 1967 and was one of the few academic journals
that was able to maintain some regularity during the military period
(1964–1985), with between four to six numbers a year plus special
issues, and some eight to ten articles in each number. Until the mid-
1980s it basically stood alone as a journal in the field of government and
public administration. By the mid-1980s, other centres were beginning to
appear, including the important Nucleus for Public Policy (NEPP) at the
University of Campinas, and the number of journals and possibilities for
publication expanded, but up to that point it can be considered a fairly
good observatory of the academic scene.
From 1967 through to 1979, and with the exception of a special
seminar which will be discussed later, there were only 12 articles
published in which policy was featured, and always as policy. Nearly all
were references to policy in major areas: development policy; scientific
and technical policy; transport policy; financial and economic policy;

urban development policy; industrial policy; government policies and
controls. In the following ten years the number grew to 20, and then to
33 in the 1990s.
Policy starts to take a more solid presence qualitatively in the 1980s
with major discussions of social policy, both in relation to the effects of
structural adjustment agreements but also in relation to the new consti-
tution. Environmental policy would also make its presence felt, possibly
also stimulated by the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development in Rio de Janeiro (1992). Another theme that would
appear quite often, also in the broader social area but not in relation to
policy, was that of health. Here the discussions were very much couched
in the language of the Unified Health System itself, its systems and its
related themes of health planning, decentralization, coordination and
programmes.
The result of this review of the journal’s contents over the years
confirms the idea of the gradual drift from policy to public policy, and
then to public policies, that has been commented on before. Different for
example to the areas of reform or administrative improvement which
were nearly step by step with discussions elsewhere, these were ideas
that took time to arrive. The one event that was outside the drift was an
International Seminar on Public Policy Analysis, held at FGVs Brazilian
School of Public Administration (EBAP) in Rio de Janeiro, 1976. The
seminar’s papers were published in a special issue of the journal with the
following introduction:
The analysis of public policies, although recent, is an area of research in full
development and constitutes today the most advanced frontier of the study of
public administration and government. Its objective is the analysis of govern-
mental decisions in its most diverse areas of action, from the point of view of
the factors which influence them, the alternatives considered and selected, the
process of decision making, as well as the social and economic impact of
the policies adopted. (RAP, 1976, p. 3)
The ten articles covered many of the topics that would be found at the
same time in the discussion of policy analysis in the USA, for example:
politics and policies; economic models in public policy analysis; non-
incrementalism in public policy; general frameworks for the analysis of
public policy; PPBS (Planning, Programming and Budgeting System)
and incremental budgets and the history of social welfare policy in
Brazil. Despite being up to date and contrary to other areas of adminis-
tration and government, the impact of the seminar was very slight and,
basically, negligible. It stands as an isolated event without consequences;
it would be nearly 20 more years before the public policy arena of

investigation would be seen, locally, as a legitimate arena for discussion
and debate. This was also confirmed in a later article in the journal by
Medeiros and Brandião (1990), under the title of ‘On New Paradigms for
the Analysis of Public Policies’, which mentioned the earlier seminar but
noted that it, indeed, came to very little and pointed to the later 1980s as
the time when the field began to get itself together.
What then could have been some of the reasons behind what appears to
have been a false start. All the other terms from the reform and
modernization agendas were very much present and PPBS was also in
vogue as well as systems and many other expressions – so why not
policy? Could it be that policy in its newer versions, especially as public
policies, no longer as a position or stance but as a more explicit
discussion about government action, is a performative that brings with it
the idea of inspection, options, problems and critique within a minimally
constructive although not necessarily collaborative relationship between
the worlds of scholarship and government? At the time of the seminar in
1976 and despite signs of easing the very strict controls that had been
imposed during periods of armed resistance, it would still be some eight
years before the military finally handed over power to a civilian
government. Following this line, the boom in the late 1990s and the
beginning of the new millennium would be a period of, first, social
democratic government (1995–2002) and, second, from 2003 to 2010 the
two terms of the progressive Workers’ Party. However, whether these
governments stimulated discussion in terms of policy, or merely provided
a space in which the terms could be legitimately used, is an open
question and one that would require a very different study.
Brazil’s 1988 Constitution is frequently referred to as the starting point
for effective social policy, but the expression ‘public policy’ is nowhere
to be found and the expression ‘policy’ only appears as a general
reference to one or other chapter (Urban Policy or Agricultural and Land
Policy) or to orthodox areas such as monetary policy or personnel policy
(for public sector workers). However as a sign of what was to follow, the
section on health includes ‘Health is the right of all and a duty of the
State, guaranteed through social and economic policies’ (article 196) and,
in relation to the Unified Health System and social services, reference is
made to participation in policy formulation (articles 200 and 204).
A preliminary discussion of these observations led a colleague10 to the
records of one of São Paulo’s small progressive municipalities (Penápo-
lis) during the 1983–1992 period. Her search included various laws, a
discussion of local planning, a master’s dissertation and the first munici-
pal health conference in 1991. She found, as in the Constitution,
references to policy in a background and non-specific sense, but in each

case the more direct language within which action would take place was
that of programmes, projects, actions and systems, fed by principles that
were the guarantee of rights and the democratization of municipal
government. Public policy as an articulating theme was absent from the
texts. Similarly, the Public Management and Citizenship Awards Program
on innovation in subnational government, which was supported by the
Ford Foundation and run by the Centre for Public Administration and
Government Studies at the Getulio Vargas Foundation between 1996–
2005, was to point to many very important innovations that could have
been classed by observers as policy experiments (to use Rondinelli’s
1993 term) but were basically described by those involved as projects and
programmes that were seeking to guarantee basic services and rights
(Farah and Spink, 2008). It was only in the later years of the innovation
programme that the expression public policy began to appear.
BEING INNOVATIVE WITHOUT POLICY: THE

BRAZILIAN HIV/AIDS PROGRAMME
This final case serves as a summary of much of what has been discussed
in this chapter and also in Chapter 4. It looks at the way in which Brazil
responded to the AIDS epidemic and to actions that were to place its
National Program as an internationally highly praised source of good
practices and strategies for action (Nunn, 2009).
By 1982, the first cases of AIDS in Brazil had been officially reported,
as well as the first identified deaths in the main urban centres of the
south-eastern region. Even though the country was still under the control
of its last military president, transition was already under way with direct
elections for state governors in 1982. Social movements were finding
more space for action and there were already a significant number of
activist NGOs in various areas, all of whom would be very present in
the constitutional assembly of 1987. Second, and more specifically, the
health reform movement was already raising its voice against the
excessive privatization of health services and was gathering wider
support for extensive public health services for all – as a right. Very
present in the pressures for health as a right were the Catholic Church’s
ecclesiastical base communities, influenced by liberation theology, which
will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
Early moves on AIDS started in the state of São Paulo in 1983, where
the recently elected democratic movement governor was a social
reformer and Christian Democrat. The first diagnoses were reported by
public health physicians at the Emilio Ribas Hospital, a specialist referral

centre for skin diseases including leprosy (Hansen’s disease). Representa-
tives of the gay rights movement and other human rights militants in the
state of São Paulo were able to gain access to the State Health Secretariat
to demand an official position. The State Health Secretariat responded by
establishing a task group, which included many of the same public health
professionals who had been dealing with the early cases (Teixeira, 1997).
They drew on previous experience in public hospitals and health centres
with Hansen’s disease, where they had learned to deal with discrimin-
ation and prejudice through engaging directly with the population
involved. This gave them the technical competence and social legitimacy
to argue the case for specific AIDS measures. As public health profes-
sionals, many were also active in the health reform movement, which
again had the active support of the Governor and his staff. In 1983 the
São Paulo State AIDS Program was created and the programme roll-out
included regular open meetings with many of those who had raised
earlier concerns. These community meetings gave rise to GAPA-São
Paulo (Support Group for AIDS Prevention), the first and one of the most
influential AIDS NGOs in Brazil. At the beginning, the gay rights
community activists were the most predominant, but they were later
joined by other organizations representing haemophiliacs, women, sex
professionals and healthcare professionals, as well as social workers
working with drug users.
In the state of Rio de Janeiro, mobilization was also taking place, but
in a different way. The former federal capital until 1960, Rio was the site
of key national health research institutes such as the Oswaldo Cruz
Foundation (Fiocruz) and the National Public Health School. As a result,
and along with the progressive Social Medicine Department of the Rio de
Janeiro State University (UERJ), it was home to a group of professionals
with a broad view of health and a focus on nationwide issues. Social
mobilization here was different, drawing on well-known public personal-
ities who had taken part in the national democratization movement. Early
organizations were the Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association for AIDS
(ABIA, 1987), and Pela Vidda (1989), the first organization specifically
for people living with AIDS, their families and friends. Other influential
AIDS NGOs were also established in Rio de Janeiro and many of them,
as also those in São Paulo and elsewhere, were to receive early support
from international cooperation organizations.
Although state governments, social organizations, associations and
NGOs worked hand in hand to prepare and implement programmes, this
relationship would assume different forms. In Rio de Janeiro, the
founders of ABIA ‘consciously rejected any direct role in the protection
and treatment of people with HIV/AIDS’ because they felt this was a
government obligation, and focused their efforts in advocacy, ‘criticizing
government policy – or the lack of one – particularly at the federal level’
(Parker, 2003, p. 24). On the other hand, GAPA-São Paulo, while
maintaining its advocacy role, moved to provide services not offered by
the government. (In this earlier period before the Unified Health System,
there was little space and funds available for municipal governments.)
Those different positions reflected debates that were taking place in the
wider health arena. Reformist ideas for public health were gaining
strength and would eventually gain the high ground with the 1988
Constitution and the Unified Health System (SUS) and its platform of
free healthcare for all. As many health reform activists were also involved
in the AIDS mobilization, the two agendas provided important stimuli for
each other. Amongst the themes in circulation were: decentralization;
regionalization; community involvement; health as a right and a duty of
the state; and integral and universal care with equity.
By then, the AIDS mobilization was beginning to acquire more federal
visibility with the creation of a national advisory commission in the
Ministry of Health. However, a major political crisis in the early 1990s
led to the impeachment of the president in 1992, during which federal–
subnational government relations in many areas deteriorated consider-
ably. In 1992, a new National Program Coordinator was able to attract
different sectors of society by reformulating the National Commission
and beginning negotiations with the World Bank. The subsequent agree-
ments with the World Bank were to reshape the field and the inter-
organizational relationships between many, if not all, of the actors.
The World Bank was already playing an active role in promoting
investments in the social and health areas and in fighting poverty.
Without giving up its market-driven economic policies, the Bank’s AIDS
approach was based on two premises: the importance of expenditure on
prevention rather than care and treatment; and the importance of the
involvement of civil society organizations which were considered better
placed to reach the poorer and marginalized populations than the
government agencies. In the case of the Brazilian agreements there were
a number of conflicting issues that continued despite the signing of the
first loan agreement. Important for the case is to note that despite these
often-considerable differences, the loans would go ahead while discus-
sions continued. This was a very open debate indeed and was marked by
considerable respect all around.
It was with the World Bank loans11 that the AIDS NGOs were to grow
considerably and become more visible as a result of their various forums
and other inter-organizational associations. One such was the National
Meeting of AIDS NGOs (ENONGs). From the first meeting in 1989

supported by the Ford Foundation with 14 organizations, the number of
participant organizations quickly rose to 87 in 1992 and to 212 in 1997.
After the loans were introduced, with funds available for NGO activity,
the AIDS NGOs began to work less and less with the national pro-
gramme and more and more with state and local programmes which were
closer to their on-the-ground activities. Agendas were also changing, and
the AIDS NGOs were now increasingly assuming the dual role of
advocacy and service provision. The national programme also began to
move back from direct operations. Campos et al. (2012) were to refer to
this aptly in the opening part of the title of their article on these changes
and their implications for the AIDS NGOs: from ‘dot.org’ to ‘dot.gov’.
Thus, from a fairly tight, clear and initially local set of arenas,
HIV/AIDS had become integrated and national, centralized and now was
to be decentralized again. In the period, key actors had changed roles –
moving from the local to the national and to the international arena,
governments had changed – giving greater or lesser importance to
HIV/AIDS, and the arena had both grown and become far more complex,
as had HIV/AIDS itself. Amongst all these changes a very new category
of social organizations had created itself – the AIDS NGOs – and all of
this took place in the languages of the time, as shown by the documents
and reports of meetings. An important study here was that sponsored by
the National AIDS Commission to register its work up to 2002 and which
had full access both to formal documents and minutes of meetings
(M.J.P. Spink, 2002). The opening part of the official remit given to the
National Commission (then called the Advisory Commission on AIDS)
was stated in 1986 as: ‘To advise the Ministry of Health in all aspects
related to the control of the syndrome’. In 1987, the Commission became
the National Commission for the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome,
with the remit of ‘advising the Ministry of Health on the definition of
technical-operational mechanisms for the control of AIDS’. This remit
was to remain the same for the 1988 Commission, now termed the
National Commission for the Control of the Acquired Immunodeficiency
Syndrome – CNAIDS’, and for the more openly engaging 1992 version.
It was only in 1994 that the now National AIDS Commission (CNAIDS)
would have as its remit: ‘to participate in the formulation and give its
views on the policy of prevention and control of sexually transmitted
diseases and aids DST/aids’ (M.J.P. Spink, 2002, p. 12).
Thus, during the whole of the period in which the HIV/AIDS
programme was being talked into practice and gaining international
recognition from many areas, the languages in use were those of projects,
actions, budgets, loans, plans, a new kind of organization (AIDS NGOs),
and only later on – within the first social democratic government and
following the trends that have already been noted – that of policy.
Weaving around these earlier action languages were certain equally
important notions – one of which was that of equality. Equality as a
political position was central in the collective health movement, and that
there should be no social discrimination in terms of health was an
explicit statement in many of the SUS documents. Health was about
rights for all and not about promises; rights, as mentioned before, are a
more immediate relational language – people have them or they don’t.
NOTES
1. See also deLeon (1989) on the development of the policy sciences.
2. The Alliance between England and Portugal was ratified in a Treaty at Windsor on 9 May
1386 and still stands today. It is the longest continuously standing treaty in global history.
3. See also Barrett (2004).
4. It is difficult to think of one area that is more crucial to knowledge, as it is known amongst
us, than legal deposit legislation, which since the sixteenth century has guaranteed that
what is being written down is preserved in some way.
5. Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany (1957), followed
by the UK, Denmark and Ireland (1973), Greece (1981) and Portugal and Spain (1986).
The European Union (EU) was formed in 1993.
6. Here it is not very difficult to recognize the echoes of that earlier diplomatic action
language that was seen at an equally important European moment some 400 years before.
7. EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (undated).
8. See Toledo Silva (2015) for a fuller discussion.
9. Coordenadoria de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) – Foundation
for the Coordination and Improvement of Higher Level Education Personnel.
10. Maria do Carmo Meirelles Toledo Cruz.
11. The first loan (AIDS I) was granted in 1994 with US$160 million; the second loan (AIDS
II) was granted in 1999 with US$165 million; and the third loan (AIDS III) was granted in
2003 with US$100 million (World Bank, 2003).
6. From noisy rights to hybrid forums:

languages of mobilization
The notion of rights has a special relevance to the discussion of public
policy both academically, technically and also empirically. For, as was
seen in the last chapter, at the same time that more advanced democracies
were moving firmly into the field of public policy (especially in the late
1970s and early 1980s), some of the emerging democracies were
struggling under military or authoritarian regimes in which the tense and
conflictive relation between citizens and the state was often expressed
through the conflict over basic civil rights and liberties. The names of the
countries may have changed but, unfortunately, the themes continue to
the present. Even in the USA where the theme of civil rights and voting
rights was very strong, it would be policy that would, as it were, take
over the stage of government action. It wasn’t that rights weren’t around,
after all the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been proclaimed
in Paris on 10 December 1948. But – and despite Marshall’s (1950)
formulation of civil, political and social rights – they remained in the
background as the developed world set about social reconstruction.
Indeed, there was for some time much tension about the use of rights in
international affairs, especially during the Cold War. The result was that
instead of moving forwards to its next phase within the United Nations as
one document, the Universal Declaration became two covenants: the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (19 December 1966)
and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights
(16 December 1966). Both were to come into force in 1976 but
ratification would go on for many years after and is still incomplete. It
may be convenient to think of the Universal Declaration as being
resolved in 1948, but the idea of rights has still got a long way to go. As
Nelson and Dorsey comment:
The curious separation of human rights and development began immediately
after the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when cold
war politics thwarted efforts to forge one treaty legally binding upon
government signatories. Civil and political rights and economic, social and
cultural rights were bifurcated along the political fault lines of the period (…).
(2008, p. 13)
143
THE AGE OF RIGHTS AND DIGNITY

We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek
with all our might to bring those sheep of his flock who are outside, into the
fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly
men and that they are not only capable of understanding the catholic faith but,
according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it (…) The
said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians
are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their
property (…) Nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary
happen, it shall be null and have no effect. (Pope Paul III, ‘Sublimus Dei’, 29
May 1537)1
Pope Paul III did not use the term rights, nor did he talk about humanity.
His definition of ‘truly men’ was expressed in religious terms and the
‘Sublimus Dei’ had also a lot to do with the economics of slavery.
Today’s human rights workers would certainly argue in a very different
way and use other expressions, but they might well draw Paul III into
their bibliography in the same way as the English discussing liberty and
freedom in the seventeenth century would do the same with Roman
texts.2
Social concepts and ideas are social, and being social they are also
historical. Bobbio restated his position on human rights in a collection of
his texts on the theme, aptly named The Age of Rights.
My theoretical approach has always been and continues to be, in the light of
new arguments, that human rights however fundamental are historical rights
and therefore arise from specific conditions characterized by the embattled
defence of new freedoms against old powers. They are established gradually,
not all at the same time, and not for ever. It would appear that philosophers
are asked to pass sentence on the fundamental nature of human rights, and
even to demonstrate that they are absolute, inevitable and incontrovertible, but
the question should not be posed in these terms. Religious freedom resulted
from the religious wars, civil liberties from the parliamentarian struggles
against absolutism, and political and social freedoms from the birth, growth
and experience of movements representing workers, landless peasants and
smallholders. The poor demand from authorities not only recognition of
personal freedom and negative freedoms, but also protection against
unemployment, basic education to overcome illiteracy, and gradually further
forms of welfare for sickness and old age – all needs which the wealthy can
provide for themselves. Next to this so-called second generation of rights
which concern social questions, there is now emerging a third generation of
rights which is still too vague and heterogeneous for an exact definition.
(Bobbio, 1996, pp.x–xi)
From noisy rights to hybrid forums 145
Some of these different threads came together in the Universal Declar-

ation, where they provide a well-documented example of an action
language in formation. The Human Rights Commission was led by
Eleanor Roosevelt and the other 17 members came from a wide variety
of backgrounds, countries and regions, both religious and philosophical,
from eastern to western, from the left through to the liberal centre. The
many discussions and debates, sometimes very heated, are evidence of
their determination to make the post-war world a better and safer place
(Glendon, 2001).
In order to contribute to the work of the Commission, UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) car-
ried out an enquiry into ‘the theoretical problems raised by such a
Universal Declaration’ and circulated a questionnaire to thinkers and
writers, most of whom were philosophers, asking for their views. The
replies were discussed and proposals were made. Fortunately, the results
were kept and many of the replies were published in 1949 along with an
introduction by Jacques Maritain, philosophy professor and former
French Ambassador to the Holy See. In the introduction, he comments on
all the different schools of thought present from all different religious,
philosophical and non-faith positions. In doing so he mentions the
surprise generated in a UNESCO committee meeting at the news that
champions of violently opposed ideologies had agreed on a list of rights.
The reply was ‘Yes, we agree about the rights but on condition that no
one asks us why.’ Here is part of his own contribution in which he
discusses a certain number of practical truths about life together on
which agreement could be reached from widely different and even
absolutely opposed theoretical positions.
Though it would probably not be easy, it would be possible to arrive at a joint
statement of these practical conclusions, or in other words, of the various
rights recognized as pertaining to the human being as an individual and a
social animal. But it would be quite useless to seek for a common rational
justification of those practical conclusions and rights. That way lies the
danger either of seeking to impose an arbitrary dogmatism, or of finding the
way barred by irreconcilable divisions. While it seems eminently desirable to
formulate a Universal Declaration of Human Rights which might be, as it
were, the preface to a moral Charter of the civilised world, it appears obvious
that, for the purposes of that declaration, practical agreement is possible, but
theoretical agreement impossible, between mind and mind. (UNESCO, 1949,
p. 72)
McKeon, from the University of Chicago, was on the drafting committee

and in his own contribution (1990) he stresses the practical importance of
rights, as Bobbio also would confirm. The conception of rights, McKeon

argued, was written into constitutions not because those involved had
agreed on a philosophy, ‘but, because they agreed, despite philosophical
differences, on the formulation of a solution to a series of moral and
political problems’ (McKeon, 1990, p. 37).3
One of the consequences of this position is that of the capacity to
enforce rights, to guarantee them and to actively produce the performa-
tive sense of ‘having rights’. As most people working with human rights
would argue, this depends in the international arena on the tools of
‘naming’ and ‘shaming’ as well as agencies capable of balancing the
equally delicate tools of observations, missions, judges and arguments.
Nationally it can imply constitutions and judges as well as specialist
agencies.4 Nationally there may be laws that are more easily enforced,
but if institutions fail these can quickly be undermined. Given that rights
are not implemented but enforced – that they are not something that
budget cuts can suspend or redirect, something that planners can place at
some future point – it follows that the more there are, the more difficult
it is to guarantee them. As Gutmann will say, ‘Proliferation of human
rights to include rights that are not clearly necessary to protect the basic
agency or needs or dignity of persons cheapens the purpose of human
rights and correspondingly weaken the resolve of potential enforcers’
(Gutmann, 2001, p.x). This is very clear in the international arena,
especially with human rights, but it also applies to national arenas and to
what have been called positive rights (the rights to have) or collective
rights. ‘I share the concern of those for whom applying the word “rights”
to demands for what are at best future rights, means creating expectations
which can never be satisfied among people who use the word “right”
according to its current meaning of an expectation which can be satisfied
because it is protected’ (Bobbio, 1996, p. 57).
The problem comes in deciding where to draw the line: should basic
human rights be restricted to freedom from abuse, oppression and
cruelty; should this be understood in relation to dignity and if so what is
dignity and should freedom from poverty also be seen as part of the basic
basket of human rights?5 Dignity is present in the second line of the
preamble to the UN Charter ‘to reaffirm faith in fundamental human
rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights
of men and women and of nations large and small’ and takes pride of
place in the first line of the preamble of the Universal Declaration:
‘Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation
of freedom, justice and peace in the world.’
These are far from abstract questions, and despite long periods when
rights were seen as something for the legal profession or for specialized
activists who dealt with events somewhere over the horizon of western
democracies, they are increasingly present. In the developing world, as
Nelson and Dorsey (2008) comment, the themes of development and of
rights are coming closer and closer together as rights-based organizations
and development organizations connect their agendas.6 Nationally and
locally as new questions arise so do communities and movements reach
out to the language of rights as a new public action language for change
both in terms of pressure for priorities and also for individual action
itself; as for example in the extensive and very current discussion of
judicialization.7 The implications of rights for public administration as a
field of action is not a new question; Frederickson, for example had
pointed to the citizen-based approach to thinking about the public as one
of the ways of talking of public administration (1991), and concern with
rights can be found in the foreground of a number of democratic
countries, especially in their more progressive moments. The difference,
perhaps, is when rights become the principal shaper of action. Decisions
are made, budget priorities are changed, and activities are re-routed
because somebody (individual or collectively) has a right to whatever is
involved. As with comments about other public action languages through-
out this book, the question is not as to whether or not this is an inherently
good thing. All public action languages make sense to those who use
them, otherwise they would quickly disappear. Rights can be important
pressure points for policy, or plans, but they can also be pressure points
for mass action and, rather than moving into the background as democ-
racy progresses, they are increasingly present; as are many other social
languages that have made their presence felt over the last century.
Take, for example, the earlier mention in Chapter 2 of the gradual
emergence of housing onto the scene of public concern. Engels, who had
already published his The Condition of the Working Class in England in
1845, was – in a later series of essays On the Housing Question
published in 1872–1873 – strongly against attempts to provide housing
for workers. He saw this as a ‘philanthropic plot’ to tie workers to
capitalists in a semi-feudal manner. Here he also included the actions of
the middle-class ‘bourgeois philanthropists’ who sought to do good in
relation to housing and health, largely to protect themselves. Neither, he
argued, recognized that the social order that they were part of produced
the conditions that their actions were aimed at improving. What, it can be
wondered, would Engels have made of the Fifth Session of the World
Urban Forum under the auspices of UN HABITAT that took place in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil (22–26 March 2010)? The title of the report was The
Right to the City: Bridging the Urban Divide. The first of its five key
messages was:
The time has come to move beyond mere advocacy and commitment to the
legal notion of the ‘right to the city’. Greater effort needs to be directed
towards putting in place appropriate legal and institutional frameworks as well
as the necessary investments to make the right to the city a reality. Practical
efforts to give effect to this right must take due account of the social and
cultural diversity that prevails in each context and must use that diversity to
build the strength and vitality of urban communities. (p.5)8
The ‘right to the city’ is not just an academic concept found in urban
studies9 but a growing gathering point for social action. Adequate
housing is part of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights and here is part of the address of the special
rapporteur10 on adequate housing to the Third Committee of the General
Assembly of the United Nations (25 October 2016):
The right to life has been described as ‘the supreme’ human right. It embodies
the commitment to the dignity, security and inherent worth of every human
being that is the cornerstone of the entire human rights system and at the
foundation of every human right (…) The link between inadequate housing
and the right to life is obvious and deeply disturbing. An estimated one third
of deaths worldwide are linked to poverty and inadequate housing (…) On
official missions and working visits, I have met people of all ages who are
homeless or living in container settlements, institutions, relocation sites or
informal settlements, forced to live without safe drinking water, or electricity,
amidst excrement and garbage, without adequate protection from inclement
weather, with no bed to lie on, no place to wash or defecate; threatened by
violence, insecurity, discrimination and stigmatization and, worst of all,
forced to watch children suffer and frequently die from prolonged diarrhoea.
All are hanging by the thinnest thread, clinging to life, dignity and humanity.
I have been astonished at the resilience and inherent dignity of those who
live in these circumstances and their ability to affirm their human rights. I
have learned that they articulate their human rights claims not simply as a
demand for housing with basic services and secure tenure, but more funda-
mentally as a claim to equal recognition of their right to live in dignity and
security.
The notion of dignity was and remains the cornerstone of the United
Nations Declaration and many of its documents. It is another expression
that has seen much change over the years. From the times that it referred
to only a few, the dignitaries who were worthy of being dignified,
through its presence in theological and philosophical debates, to the
time when various delegates brought the idea to the founding Conference
of the UN in 1945 (including the USA and New Zealand)11 where, in

the tweaking and polishing of the preamble, the part that is always
remembered, it would later become an expression for mankind. As
remarked, the Declaration was by no means an immediate success and
the field of rights and human rights is by no means stable, but, somehow,
dignity has come to stand, as Schachter well remarked, as an expression
of a basic value accepted in a broad sense by all peoples.
Political leaders, jurists and philosophers have increasingly alluded to the
dignity of the human person as a basic idea so generally recognized as to
require no independent support. It has acquired a resonance that leads it to be
invoked widely as a legal and moral ground for protest against degrading and
abusive treatment. No other ideal seems so clearly accepted as a universal
social good. (1983, p. 848)
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, CONTROVERSIES, ISSUES

AND STRUGGLES
There are a number of people who, in some way or through an image,
personify dignity. One of them was consulted by UNESCO for the study
on human rights. His reply is given pride of place in the edited volume of
replies and in the attached list of biographies, it is the shortest: Mahatma
Gandhi – the Father of Modern India. Here is part of his reply:
I learnt from my illiterate but wise mother that all rights to be deserved and
preserved came from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us
only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world. From this one
fundamental statement, perhaps it is easy enough to define the duties of Man
and Woman and correlate every right to some corresponding duty to be
performed. Every other right can be shown to be a usurpation hardly worth
fighting for. (UNESCO, 1949, p. 18)
Most people when they think of Gandhi will refer to his very special type
of non-violent, mobilizing and civil disobedience. A significant part of
this came from his religious upbringing and his wise mother, but another
part can be traced to a little book that he read while in prison in South
Africa in the early part of the twentieth century. In 1846, Henry David
Thoreau refused to pay the state poll tax in protest against both the
USA–Mexican War and slavery. He spent a night in prison and was
released the next day when somebody paid the taxes for him. The result,
after a number of lectures and talks, was an essay published in 1849
under the original title of ‘Resistance to Civil Government’ and now
known as ‘Civil Disobedience’. Gandhi would use the Sanskrit word
satyagraha, which means devotion to truth. Here is a similar argument in

Thoreau’s text:
But to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves
no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better
government. Let every man make known what kind of government would
command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the
people, a majority are permitted and for a long period continue, to rule, is not
because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the
strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be
based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a
government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but
conscience? – in which majorities decide only those questions to which the
rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the
least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a
conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is
not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The
only obligation which I have the right to assume, is to do at anytime what I
think right. (1849/1995, pp. 3–4)
Civil disobedience is part of a complex moral universe which includes

non-violent rule-breaking in order to pressure governments for change.
Those involved know that they are disobeying and that there are
consequences for breaking rules and laws. Students sitting in their
universities, black women sitting in the wrong part of buses, people
sitting down in traffic lanes are just some of thousands of examples. But
the same moral universe of pressuring for change can also imply direct
action such as breaking windows, pulling statues down or, in a milder
form, taking on governments through their own rules which, while it is
not really disobedience, creates a nuisance and a lot of extra work for
those on the receiving end. There seems to be no simple definition for
pressuring for action and change, nor is there a catalogue of its many
different versions which are constantly changing and being added to.
People just seem to get on with it; what matters is a sense of civic
collective, the will of people to organize themselves and values of
dignity, solidarity and justice.12
Sometimes those engaged in action will use the term collective to
describe their way of organizing, but they may also refer to themselves
as social movements, associations, neighbourhoods, alliances, amongst
others, and can position themselves or not as being part of ‘civil society’.
Many of these, such as social movements, are major fields of study in
themselves with extensive literatures which cross over with a number of
the themes in this book. Here, concern is less with how they are formally
described in order to be debated and explained, an important discussion
in its own right, but about how they describe themselves, or are
described, and the performative implications. For example, when differ-
ent groupings of urban youths in the poorer outskirts of major cities in
Brazil refer to each other as collectives and discuss their alliances within
The Peripheral Cultural Movement, they are producing a performative
identity that will push and shove its way into both local and broader
horizons of public action.
As a wider collective term, ‘civil society’ is a strong image that has
travelled a lot in recent years.13 Amongst these different meanings, the
notion of struggle was very present in Gramsci’s discussion of cultural
hegemony developed in the 1930s (1971; and Bobbio, 1988) which later
became very important for social movements involved in processes of
democratization in different parts of the world. Early Enlightenment
thinkers saw civil society as a society capable of self-regulation as, for
example, in Thomas Paine’s defence of the rights of man (1791/1984).
For others, civil society is a necessary counterbalance of the state and
versions of all these and others can be found within the different action
languages of pressure and protest themselves; especially so, but not only,
in settings where relations between governments and different sectors of
their societies are far from settled. In these different uses, the expression
usually comes linked to the broader moral arena of the civic collective, of
civic agency and its associated values about which there are also different
meanings in circulation.
Dagnino (2008) alerts us to the danger, first, of these broader collective
expressions leading to fields being taken as homogeneous rather than
heterogeneous and diverse, and, second, as having some kind of natural-
ized virtuous quality. As she comments:
Recognizing the diversity of meanings coexisting in the real world acknow-
ledges the conflicts and disputes between different and often divergent and
antagonistic conceptions. To the extent in which different conceptions are
related to different political projects of ‘what society should be’, this
recognition should also cast light on ‘what kind of change’ is at stake in
different types and understanding of civic agency. (2008, p. 28)
As she points out, neo-liberals, radical democrats and conservatives can

find themselves using a vocabulary (as may also – it can be added –
many different types of social association) in which apparently similar or
linked concepts such as civil society, citizenship and participation are
associated with civic life, but are doing so from very different positions.
For example, in the case of ‘civic’ this can happen when it is used as a
reference to a location (civil society, lifeworld) pertaining to citizens and

when its virtue (civic action) is naturalized as a quality that is inherently
part of that location and to the organizations that so define it.
An alternative way to look at the civic as a virtuous attribute is to recognize
that it may or may not result from a historical/empirical creation, which
implies that it is not necessarily or intrinsically there. In this case as in much
of the real world, and depending on how we understand it, the ‘civic’ may be
absent and its construction would be precisely the kind of change required.
(Dagnino, 2008, p. 29)
The discussion of civic has received an important renewed impulse from

the area of development studies in a series of initiatives led by the
Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands.14 Under the heading of
civic-driven change, concern is with the primacy of people’s own actions
in shaping society, challenging institutional prescriptiveness, and with
opening up to multiple types of knowledge and sites of knowledge
making (Biekart and Fowler, 2009). Rethinking civic also implies
rethinking citizenship from outside the straightforward model of nation
state, government, civil society and citizenship which, as many scholars
from Third World and developing countries have commented, is not what
is found in practice and which may not be what is found in practice
elsewhere. As Clarke et al. (2014) argue from a recent, cross-national
study, to recentre citizenship requires first its decentring: that is, unpack-
ing these assumed relationships which are often put forward as naturally
fitting elements in which formations of state, nation and law provide the
status of citizenship.
Somehow, in the midst of this collective confusion, various fragments
of ‘us’, different parts of some of the people, do continue to argue,
discuss and put questions forward. They may or may not use the
language of plans, projects, policies, budgets or other professionally
driven social languages, but if they do it will be on their terms as part of
a language of concerns, of things that happen in the day to day and that
are very real, because they hurt. They are important not because they
affect a certain percentage of the population and therefore have gained
the seal of visibility; but they are important because they are somebody’s
problem and there are enough somebodies directly or indirectly impli-
cated to make this one of Dewey’s problems. As Marres (2007) argued,
the issue deserves more credit and the issue is in itself a language.
Issue is another of these amazing elastic terms that have many different
and distinctive uses, as a look at any major dictionary will reveal. In the
case of public affairs, it probably came into the field fairly recently from
the legal arena (otherwise Dewey might have used it) where it has been
in use in Anglo-Saxon legal practice as the ‘point in question’ since the

sixteenth century. That is, the key to the legal argument, that which is in
contention (popularly adopted as the bone of contention) and remains to
be decided. Marres (2007) placed issues at the centre of discussion of
public involvement in politics through research on controversies in the
area of science and technological studies and in doing so took Dewey’s
public problems into new directions.
Dewey defined a public affair as a problem that jointly affects an association
of actors who were not directly involved in its production, but it seems more
appropriate to say that actors are jointly and antagonistically implicated in
issues. Partly exclusive associations are entangled in an issue. Such an
understanding of controversy brings into relief a distinctive merit of public
articulations of issues: a publicizing issues articulation highlights the partial
irreconcilability of the associations that coalesce with that issue. (2007,
p. 773)
Controversy, issue, civic concerns are not an a priori given, but are the
result of many interlinked socialities and materialities within many
different conversations. Take for example the question of climate change
and who speaks for the climate. What is the climate for the public works
department of a large city seeking to get ready for the rainy season,
paying attention to specific roads, low-lying areas and drainage clear-
ance? What is climate for a soon to be approaching weather system that
will slam a cold front into a highly charged and overheated conurbation?
What is the climate for the hills, hillsides, rivers and very often hidden
streams behind the dense urban and con-urban landscape, or for the
different members of local communities who may be living with risk
in its most immediate forms? Anyone who has followed even a small part
of the climate debate(s) will be very much aware that this is not a
traditional example of cohesion around problems and solutions. Here
the earlier observation of Heclo about issue networks (1978) is worth
noting.
Iron triangles and subgovernments suggest a stable set of participants coa-
lesced to control fairly narrow public programs which are in the direct
economic interest of each party to the alliance. Issue networks are almost the
reverse image in each respect. Participants move in and out of the networks
constantly. Rather than groups united in dominance over a program, no one,
as far as one can tell, is in control of the policies and issues. Any direct
material interest is often secondary to intellectual and emotional commitment.
Network members reinforce each other’s sense of issues as their interests
rather than (as standard political or economic models would have it) interests
defining positions on issues. (p.102)
In everyday practice, all these different languages get shuffled together.

After all, they are social. Separating them is helpful in that it shows that
there is no a priori reason for assuming that one has superiority over the
others, or that the art of crafting social languages for doing public work
has finished, but in practice they all crowd together to position people
and create moral traps and dilemmas, and they can be used to include and
exclude, create markets for professional services and careers, and support
zones of intolerance and hegemonic spaces. They can also be used to
strengthen democracy. This move from an individual-centred rationality
to a communicative rationality, as proposed by Jürgen Habermas (1987),
has had an important effect on current discussions of democracy,
especially in terms of participation and deliberation. However, as Iris
Marion Young’s (2000) ‘decentered’ and ‘agonistic’ (contested) approach
to deliberative democracy mentioned in Chapter 1 shows, this does not
mean that people should be nice to each other.
Struggle is a process of communicative engagement of citizens with one
another. People of differing social positions or interests must struggle to raise
issues because others may be threatened by those issues or they may simply
think that different issues are more important. Once the issues that concern
them are on the agenda, citizens must struggle with others over the terms in
which they will engage the issue, they must struggle to get their views heard,
and must struggle to persuade others. The field of struggle is not level; some
groups and sectors are often at a disadvantage (…) Because disadvantaged
and excluded sectors cannot wait for the process to become fair (…)
oppressed and disadvantaged groups have no alternative but to struggle for
greater justice under conditions of inequality (…) Disorderly, disruptive,
annoying or distracting means of communication are often necessary or
effective elements in such efforts to engage others in debate over issues and
outcomes. (Young, 2000, p. 50)
NEVER DO FOR OTHERS WHAT THEY CAN DO FOR

THEMSELVES
The title of this part of the chapter is an expression that has served as an
‘iron rule’ for community organizing and mobilizing by the many
different alliances, interfaith associations and organizations that in some
way share the views of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). The IAF
has some 65 affiliates in the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany and
Australia. It is only one of many different experiences in community
strengthening that can be found, of which there must be hundreds of
thousands around the world and all of which will certainly have tales to
tell; this, then, is one of many.
The IAF was set up by a Roman Catholic bishop (Bernard J. Shell), a

businessman and founder of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper (Marshall
Field III), and a community organizer (Saul Alinsky) who was rethinking
the traditional outreach programmes of the University Inner City Mis-
sions in the meatpacking zone of Chicago (the area known as Back of the
Yards). In doing so he put the bits and pieces together of a very different
approach which focused on linking the many different ways of being
together that exist in most places: people’s organizations in their different
shapes and sizes. The result, in 1946, was another ground-breaking book,
Reveille for Radicals, with a second volume Rules for Radicals following
later (Alinsky, 1946, 1971; see also Horwitt (1989) for a biography).
Alinsky’s views and the work of the IAF continue to trouble many long
after his untimely death in 1972, in part because of the implications of a
much-cited phrase in the second volume: ‘The Prince was written by
Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is
written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.’
There are many different social dialects and even quite different social
languages to be found around community mobilizing, organization and
development; to use some of the words that can be found. As mentioned
previously, important for the ongoing theme is that they keep on
appearing: out of the woodwork of schools, associations and religious
assembly halls, the bricks and mortar of self-help construction and the
rural grass roots. There are thousands of articles being produced yearly as
scholars chase after these experiences, many of which have very little
interest in being the focus of academic studies. Not, that is, because they
are anti-academic, but that their concerns and priorities are elsewhere
and, it needs to be said, the academic community is in general not much
good at being around when things get complicated and push turns to
shove.
Alinsky’s approach to organizing is one of many and other choices
could be made, for example of educators active in social change such as
Paulo Freire in Brazil or Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School in
the USA (Horton and Freire, 1990). It is one that has attracted much
attention and controversy, yet at the same time has proved highly
effective in various parts of the world. Different from some other
community development approaches which focus on building participa-
tory relations with local governments and joining committees, Alinsky
focused in a very explicit way on power and on learning how to use it
from the bottom up, step by step. Most important, however, is the thesis
that a solid democracy depends on independent and active people’s
organizations and that these are the organizations that are present in
the everyday: schools, congregations of different faiths, sports clubs,
shopkeepers’ associations and so on. IAF organizers work to identify

leaders in these different organizations and help them to build broad,
independent and increasingly stronger collective organizations. A list of
even a few of the names that these horizontal forms take on gives a very
good picture of the approach and parts of its mobilizing language: Pima
County Interfaith Council; BAY Area IAF organizations; Communities
Organized for Relational Power in Action; Sacramento Valley Organizing
Committee; Inland Communities Organizing Network; One L.A. – IAF;
Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut; Lake County United;
Together Baton Rouge; Greater Boston Interfaith Organization; Action in
Montgomery; New Jersey Together; Nevadans for the Common Good;
Long Island Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods; Com-
munities Organized for Public Service/The Metro Alliance.15
Their concerns are the issues that people in communities have, whether
or not these are part of the agenda of the government of the day. Here is
Alinsky in 1965 discussing Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, which
used a committee representation approach with quotas for different sectors
of business, public service and communities, and of which Alinsky was
highly critical; for him the poor should be making the decisions:
Poverty means not only lacking money but also lacking power. An economic-
ally stable negro in Mississippi is poor. When one lives in a society where
poverty and power bars you from equal protection, equal equity in the courts
and equal participation in the economic and social life of your society, then
you are poor. The meaning of money is in what it can purchase and how it
can be used. Therefore an antipoverty program must recognize that its
program has to do something about not only economic poverty but also
political poverty. (p.47)
His answer was the active engagement of alliances of people’s organ-

izations in defining agendas on their own terms; not in taking part in the
discussion of agendas produced by others on the other’s terms. Accepting
a minor role in a meeting called by another was not part of the approach,
nor was accepting predefined quotas for participation; both were con-
tributors to political poverty. This constant tension and pressure on power
created a backlash towards Alinsky but, as his comment on Machiavelli
shows, he had an acid sense of humour and remained a radical democrat
to the end. One of his favourite phrases was to discuss power in terms not
only of what a community has but of what the other party thinks it has,
and here everything was valid, including humour and innuendo. Cortes
(1997), part of the second generation of IAF leaders, described their
approach as a major effort to recuperate the importance of social
institutions and democracy:
The community organizations affiliated with the IAF work to strengthen and
in some cases recreate the mediating institutions of communities. These
institutions must be broad-based and designed to cultivate and develop the
capacity of people to engage in a deliberative process. These institutions must
enable people to cross racial lines and class distinctions through their common
interests in family and community while connecting the results of deliberation
to power. We have a record of success in creating those institutions in
communities across the United States and now in the United Kingdom.
IAF organizers work to train community leaders in the skills associated with
public life, the ‘civic virtues’ that are required for the effective functioning of
self-governing democratic institutions (…)
Action is critical. Deliberation and discussion are important, particularly as
they lead to judgement and wisdom, but unfortunately, in organizations where
deliberation is cultivated (such as universities) it is rarely tied to action. That
is why IAF organizers create direct learning opportunities and agitate leaders
to think in new ways about themselves and their ability to influence their
world. All of our organizing is centered around the Iron Rule: Never do for
others what they can do for themselves. Victories are won not by speaking for
ordinary people, but by teaching them how to collectively speak, act, and
engage in politics for themselves. This kind of agitation and organizing
enables the leaders of a community to make a collaborative and sustained
commitment to change. And as deliberation must be tied to action, so must
action be tied to strategy – and to an understanding of power. (Cortes, 1997,
pp. 20–21)
Wilson (1997a) and colleagues followed up a number of different

experiences of community engagement in state and local government
concerns in which the presence of the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation
was very significant. One of these became known as COPS (Com-
munities Organized for Public Service and Neighborhood Revitalization
in San Antonio). COPS took on the challenge of making the community
participation provisions of the 1974 Federal Housing and Community
Development Act for block grants for urban renewal and revitalization
not only effective but also focused on the direct concerns of the
neighbourhoods themselves – instead of being used to strengthen voting
patterns in different areas to attend political interests (‘the Mayor’s
walking around money’ as it was described). Over more than 20 years
COPS has been able to force the concentration of federal funds to areas
and issues that its member communities, congregations and associations
debated and identified as key (Sanders, 1997). Wilson cites data from the
early 1980s concluding that COPS projects were already some 56 per
cent of the San Antonio Community Development Block Grant spending,
with some 91 per cent of the projects they requested being approved by
the city planners and managers.
The organization initially employed a protest strategy, confronting public

officials with unmet promises, packing city council meetings, and mobilizing
community residents. It also made unusually effective use of the vote,
boosting electoral participation in Mexican American neighborhoods on issues
of particular relevance to the city’s economic and political leadership. Finally,
COPS tactics have been supported by the evolving structure of local politics
and Institutions. (Wilson, 1997b, p. 4)
Other areas of work reported in the studies include work with inner-city
congregations and schools to involve parents directly in the debate on
school renewal. The work started with COPS and went on to involve
many other areas in the state of Texas (Shirley, 1997). Key to the
interreligious or interfaith approach is the recognition that people in
congregations are also people who live in neighbourhoods and have many
other concerns that are common, independently of any specific religious
position. Here the approach was made to people as parents and relatives
of parents and the challenge was to overturn a feeling of pessimism about
academic achievement. This was also the approach within the Catholic
Church’s liberation theology movement which played an important
role in Latin America in the 1970s and early 1980s. Small grass-roots
congregations or base ecclesial communities (comunidades eclesiales de
base) would gather together to discuss social conditions and poverty in
the light of the gospel, and in many places this would lead to other
approaches to mobilizing for change and to learning from doing (Levine,
1988). Many of the different social movements in health, housing,
agricultural reform, and other areas in the region, have at least some roots
in the experience of community meetings and forums and the skills
learned in being able to discuss current affairs, talk about solutions and
organize meetings.
The same learning about the important aggregating role of religious
organizations is very present in what began in the UK in 1996 at a
gathering of more than 1,000 people from some 30 organizations:
TELCO (The East London Communities Organisation; later Telco Citi-
zens). Other similar gatherings followed and grew into London Citizens
and also the Citizen Organising Foundation. Member organizations
which help to support the training activities and also to support the small
staffs of professional organizers include faith-based congregations of all
sorts and sizes, schools, tenants’ associations, community associations
and centres, neighbourhood associations, trade union branches, and
university and college students unions. Early organizers spent lots of time
listening rather than proposing action, and then all of these different
concerns became the basis for finding some common ground between
issues. There were many concerns about poverty, difficult living con-
ditions, and lack of urban regeneration and opportunities. After much
debate, the open meetings started to focus on the importance of finding
ways of protecting low-paid wage earners in largely low-skilled jobs;
many of whom lived in the communities of East London and attended its
churches and mosques. Given that the national minimum wage in the UK
bore no relationship to living conditions in the capital, the idea of a
‘living wage’ set at an hourly value sufficient for somebody to live with
dignity in London became a key item in discussing living conditions. The
result was an agreement of a London Living Wage, supported by local
government authorities and many others and calculated by agreed
research methods. This then served as a target that firms, building
contractors, hotels, shops, restaurants, supermarkets and others, including
football clubs, could agree to assume as a civic responsibility in a process
of pressure and individual declaration that continues today.16 As Alinsky
had said in Rules for Radicals:
To organize a community you must understand that in a highly mobile,
urbanized society the word “community” means community of interests, not
physical community. The exceptions are ethnic ghettos where segregation has
resulted in physical communities that coincide with their community of
interests, or, during political campaigns, political districts that are based on
geographical demarcations. (1971, p. 120)
REBELLIOUS BY TRADITION
As Chapter 2 already hinted, and this chapter has opened further, once
the focus moves beyond policy and into the broader set of possible
relationships or non-relationships between different parts of what is
customarily called society, a vast and continuously opening horizon of
ways of performing public affairs begins to appear. To classify this as
‘civil society’ or ‘social infrastructure’, ‘social capital’ or ‘third sector’
forces a degree of compliance to certain principles that even this brief
look at some of these forms of collective association would suggest is
unreal. This is not only because the variety of ways of doing public
issues shows much more dissimilarity than similarity, but also because
the very social action languages themselves are equally as different.
In Customs in Common, Thompson (1993) revisited some of his earlier
texts and especially that which was mentioned in Chapter 1 (‘The Moral
Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’ (1971)). As he
pointed out, the arrival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the
study of folklore, and the positioning of customs as oddities that are
reproduced yearly in the form of cultural calendars, turned almost

invisible another notion of custom ‘not as post-anything but as sui
generis – as ambience, mentalité, and as a whole vocabulary of legitima-
tion and of expectation’ (1993, p. 2). This other, earlier notion of custom
was something very different.
If many of the ‘poor’ were denied education, what else did they have to fall
back on but oral transmission with its heavy freight of ‘custom’. If nineteenth-
century folklore, by separating survivals from their context, lost awareness of
custom as ambience and mentalité, so it lost sight of the rational functions of
many customs within the routines of daily and weekly labour. Many customs
were endorsed and sometimes enforced by popular pressure and protest. (p.3)
In the eighteenth century custom was the rhetoric of legitimation for almost
any usage, practice or demanded right. Hence uncodified custom – and even
codified – was in continual flux. So far from having the steady permanence
suggested by the word ‘tradition’, custom was a field of change and of
contest, an arena in which opposing interests made conflicting claims. This is
why one must be cautious as to generalisations about popular culture. (p.6)
Part of the result was the paradox: rebellious by tradition. Customs are
conserved and rebelliously defended, including the actions of crowds, of
protests and the impositions of sanctions of ridicule, shame and also
intimidation. These are, as the study of the ‘Moral Economy’ showed,
intensely social languages, as are some of the current versions that can be
found when people take to the streets. They can do this spontaneously
because streets are public places but, paradoxically, this can also happen
in a negotiated way, with consultations, police agreement, accepted
restrictions to guarantee traffic flow and booking requirements to avoid
conflicts with other events.
Unfortunately, apart from major social expressions of celebration and
solidarity – such as France winning the FIFA World Cup in 2018 when
most of Paris could be found in its traditional public meeting place of the
Champs-Élysées – the idea of spontaneous crowds in major protest,
especially when this becomes confrontational, often invokes a very
different and negative social imaginary. That which can also be found in
the tensions between ‘the people’ as a force for change on the one hand
and the ‘mob’ or ‘rabble’ on the other.17 The image is that of the enraged
mob, the headless crowd or, as it would later become, rioting as
pathological social behaviour. This very convenient image would find
further support when interpreting the events of the Paris Commune, as
discussed in Chapter 2, which also served to censor its various achieve-
ments. The result would be the classical crowd psychology set out by
Taine (1876), one of the founders of French psychology and popularized
by Le Bon (1895). His book The Crowd, a simplified and plagiarized

version of Taine’s ideas, became a best-seller in its time and also served
to influence Freud. As van Ginneken’s (1992) careful analysis showed,
neither of the two authors worked from descriptions of the events. Taine,
who was born in 1828, was horrified at the reports of events following
the Storming of the Bastille in the French Revolution, which he described
as spontaneous anarchy and the result of a band of people:
… whose aim is violence, composed of those who are most destitute, most
wildly enthusiastic and most inclined to destructiveness and to license, but
also, as this band tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual
the most brutal, the most irrational, the most corrupt, descends lower than
himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the dregs of
society. (Taine, cited by Ginneken, 1992, p. 20)
During the Commune, Taine was in England at the University of Oxford

and his view was also influenced by letters from elite friends and
comments in the English Press. Le Bon was what in today’s terms would
be called a scientific journalist, but with a difference – he was quite
happy to rewrite other people’s texts without acknowledging the original
authors. The impact of the two texts, especially that of Le Bon, was to
help crystallize many of the negative notions of crowds that still continue
today.
Rather than being recognized as a perfectly normal way of gathering
on issues and making a presence felt, of being together with others in a
special type of horizontal and open relationship,18 as a fairly spontaneous
form of voice,19 crowds were increasingly seen as potentially explosive
and somewhat dangerous. From an acceptable, and even approved, form
of everyday action and reaction, protesting crowds became a sign of
chaos that required order, lots of law and, by the end of the twentieth
century, new types of anti-riot police. Some may not like the more
confrontational approach and may not feel happy about broken windows
and shop goods being taken without payment, but these are social action
languages that are just as performative as others. Angry crowds of
protesters create horizontal identities and choices, and as current observ-
ers such as Dikeç on urban rage (2017) and the analyses of riots in the
UK by Reicher and Stott (2011) and Stott and Drury (2017) have shown,
there are decisions being taken and moral choices being made. They are
far from mindless or pathological, and it may be difficult many times for
those who tend to see from the point of view of the state, or seek the
more reasonable ground of conversation and committees, to come to
terms with the very different types of social action languages on which
this section has only lightly touched. Indeed, to return to the discussion
of public action in the opening chapter, they are just some of the
languages that become more visible once the horizon of government and
public is allowed to find its own balance, unrestricted by classical
institutional rules around governments and public decisions.
Demystifying prevailing notions about rioting mobs or understanding
the confrontational pressure tactics of multi-organizational and interfaith
alliances are important in themselves. But they also point to the need to
look more seriously at the complex dynamics that are present in
governmental and state actions that subtly, or not so subtly, determine
social languages for raising and responding to issues and controversies
that are seen as acceptable or reasonable. But here the corresponding
tensions and confrontations may need to be seen from a different
perspective. As Dryzek commented:
If the impetus for democratization begins in oppositional civil society rather
than in the state – and I would suggest that this has almost always been true
historically – then, counterintuitively, a degree of exclusion in the pattern of
state interest representation is desirable if civil society and so democracy
itself are to flourish. (1996, p. 482)
NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US

the reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
(George Bernard Shaw (1903), Man and Superman)
George Bernard Shaw’s often used quotation is as timely today as it was

when it was written in the turbulence of the events of the beginning of
the last century. It points to the dilemma that is both a product and a
producer of public action. There are times when governments, people(s),
representatives, service providers and public servants can and do work
together quite comfortably; but there are times when working together
can take any one of or all these different groupings well outside their
comfort zones. As was seen through the different chapters, the ‘art of
being unreasonable’ is by no means a privilege of one sector of society
and the fairly equal division of the chapters and their different emphases
between governments and peoples is a reflection of this observation. In
the previous section the focus was on the breaking point between
collaboration and confrontation, and there are plenty of burnt cars,
broken windows and road blocks, including thousands of smashed ATMs,
to suggest that testing the breaking point is a very real part of the clashes
between public action languages. In this section, the focus and concern
are with those social arrangements that are able to support the
co-existence of very different social languages in ways that provide a
different anchorage for change that can be just as unreasonable and even
at times confrontational; albeit in non-physical ways.
The title of this section is from the book of the same name by Charlton
(1998) on the disability rights movement, based on interviews with
disability rights activists from countries in the Americas, South Africa,
Asia and Europe. The expression itself became visible initially in
sixteenth-century Poland where, translated into Latin (nihil de nobis, sine
nobis), it became a reference for legislation that transferred authority
from the monarch to the government and later was a key part of
Hungarian law. As Charlton relates, he heard the expression from South
African disability activists who themselves had heard it from an East
European disability rights activist at an international conference. The fact
that the phrase emerged in the arena of disability rights and then spread
elsewhere has its own significance in relation to identity, as this part of
one of Charlton’s interviews shows:
I went to Winnipeg to attend the Rehabilitation International (RI) Conference
(…) As you know, 1981 was the International Year of Disabled Persons, a
year dedicated to full participation of disabled persons. But RI didn’t really
practice this. At the conference, there were 5,000 delegates but only 200
disabled persons. So the disabled delegates got together and demanded that
the executive committee be 50% people with disabilities. This was over-
whelmingly rejected, so there was a split and the 200 disabled persons and
some others formed Disabled Peoples’ International of which I have held
various posts. I am the current chairperson until 1994. When I returned I
was a changed person. When I left I was very passive, but when I returned
I was very radical. Immediately when I returned from Winnipeg in 1981 we
changed our name from National Council for the Welfare of the Disabled to
the National Council of Disabled Persons Zimbabwe. At that time, we began
to recognise that disability was about human rights, about social change,
about organizing. We did not want to emphasize welfare but organization.
(Interview with Joshua Malinga, in Charlton, 1998, pp. 12–13)
The significance of the phrase increased for Charlton, as he tells it, upon
seeing a photograph on the front page of the Mexico City daily La
Jornada of thousands of landless peasants marching under a banner with
the words Nunca Mas Sin Nosotros (Never again without us).20 Com-
menting on the wide variety of different organizations that have been
created in response to different personal and political needs in the area of
disability rights, along with the significant changes that they have
brought about, he sees the phrase as summing up not just a change in
posture but also in redefining disability from a medical to a political and

social condition. Today, the expression ‘people with disabilities’ – with
all the implications that this has in terms of personhood – has replaced
the older expressions, largely as the result of this pressure.
People(s) can get themselves into the discussion about themselves by
breaking down doors, by finding the appropriate moral or legal keys, or
because the doors are opened, either permanently or for particular periods
and reasons. There is no value scale implication in these or other
metaphors for gaining place and space in a thematic meeting room; rather
it is a recognition of possibilities. The theme of active presence, of
participation or deliberation, is a constant in the social science, political
science and development studies literature and has appeared directly or
indirectly at many places in this and preceding chapters. Taking part,
discussing, forming and taking decisions all happen in talk and happen in
places. Recently there has been a growing interest in the variety of ways
that these actions can take place, especially outside the formal patterns of
representation with forms of gathering that have received the description
of ‘minipublics’ (Fung, 2003) or ‘mini-publics’ (Goodin and Dryzek,
2006).21
These are designed to be groups small enough to be genuinely deliberative,
and representative enough to be genuinely democratic (though rarely will they
meet standards of statistical representativeness, and they are never representa-
tive in the electoral sense). Such mini-publics include Deliberative Polls,
Consensus Conferences, Citizens’ Juries, planning cells and many others (…)
Importantly different though all these designs are from one another, their
reliance on small-group deliberations in mini-publics composed of ordinary
citizens is what distinguishes them from a raft of other recent democratic
innovations. (Goodin and Dryzek, 2006, p. 220)
Fung is more inclusive in his approach to mini publics than Goodin and
Dryzin, for he sees this characteristic of small-group deliberation present
in or as part of a variety of settings – from educative forums, participa-
tory advisory panels, participatory problem-solving collaboration through
to participatory democratic governance. One of the key examples he uses
for this last type of setting, also mentioned in a 2005 UK survey of
democratic innovations,22 is the participatory budget, introduced in
Chapter 4. While all examples of mini publics create or adapt social
languages as they create forms (deliberative, consensus, juries amongst
others), the experiences of participatory budgeting are perhaps more
instigating in that they sit on the intersection of two very different public
action languages: participation, with its dynamic sense of involvement,
novelty and engagement; and budgeting, in many senses the opposite.
There have been many descriptions of participatory budgeting especially

since it has broadened out from Brazil to elsewhere.23 Whether it is an
alternative to orthodox budgeting, an important add-on, an exercise in
education or, as Fung describes it, a significant move to democratic
governance is a question in debate but the concern in this chapter is with
the way that this intersection creates yet another language.
There have been many variations in the Brazilian experiences, but they
all tend to use a mix of different tiered discussion, beginning at the
neighbourhood level, moving up to city districts and regions, and then to
a city-wide forum of elected delegates from regions and neighbourhoods.
This is complemented by city-wide thematic forums on more general
themes such as environment, culture, economic development, transport as
well as key social issues dealing, for example, with race, gender and
discrimination. The number of delegates from neighbourhoods to regions
and regions to a general forum depends on the number of residents who
turn up to meetings, usually in a sliding scale: for example, up to 100,
one for every ten; from 101 to 250, one for every 20, and so on.
Attendance is usually significant, and Smith (2005) cites a figure of 8.5
per cent of the population of Porto Alegre, one of the first cities to adopt
the practice, having taken part over a five-year period. In the Brazil case,
the opening for participatory budgeting comes from the budget laws that
require the executive to prepare the budget for the following year and
send this to the legislative by a specified date, usually at the end of
September. How the mayor goes about building the budget and who she
or he involves is totally open providing that certain general restrictions or
requirements are followed. The legislative will have final responsibility
for the budget, and despite initial concerns that the different contributions
from the participatory budget (usually around specific local investments)
and the more city-wide issues may collide with the interests of elected
representatives, the result has been a lot of learning on all sides.
While the debates in the thematic forums will discuss general plans,
major projects, policies and priorities the debates in the neighbourhoods,
communities or ‘micro-regions’, as they are sometimes called, are quite
different. They do not go from the general to the specific, rather they are
and stay at the specific: improving lighting in a small commercial area
that is key for people coming home from work after dark; a reform of a
school playground that can be opened at weekends for community use;
an extension to a health centre; paving an earth road; or building steps up
a hillside. These are straightforward actions, there is no discussion of
policy or planning, programmes or even projects. These are actions, and
in some of the participatory budgets the residents themselves will have
the formal authority to oversee the work being done when the particular
action is approved. ‘Things to be done’ is a reminder of a very simple

piece of organizing technology that also goes by the name of a ‘to-do
list’. It is about action, very specific and apparently piecemeal, hardly
even incremental, a bit here and a bit there, what was done last year and
what can be done this year. But the results over some ten years have been
major transformations in local neighbourhoods, in the way that budgeting
is seen and in the characteristics of community leadership.
Tarso Genro, who was mayor of Porto Alegre for two terms of office
and followed the participatory budget from the beginning, had this to say
in 1997:
As a personal observer of this process over eight years, I can point to three
different things that happened to community leaders in the participatory
budget regions. A first group of leaders who were accustomed to working in a
clientelist manner couldn’t overcome the limitations of this mode of working
and began to be rejected by their communities. A second group effectively
transformed themselves during the process. They acquired a new language
and became true intermediaries between their base and the state (…) disputing
the improvements that the community needed with the demands from other
regions. A third group of leaders could be called as an emergent leadership,
those that were formed in the participatory budget itself. (Genro and Souza,
1997, p. 33)
As can be seen, language is not an additional component or a separate

part of a process, but is one and the same along with action and identity
– in this case, the identity of community leadership within a budget
process that is concerned with improvements and possibilities to be
negotiated.
COOPERATION, ALLIANCES AND HYBRID FORUMS

For ten years (1996–2005) the Public Management and Citizenship
Program of the Getulio Vargas Foundation worked with the support of the
Ford Foundation to identify, analyse and disseminate innovative practices
amongst subnational Brazilian governments (states, municipalities and
original people’s tribal governments) that had a positive impact on
strengthening citizenship and on the quality of life. During this period, it
was able to follow a wide variety of different experiences, including a
number from the arena of participatory budgeting. This was also the
period in Brazil when, as discussed in Chapter 5, public policy was
becoming more visible in public life.
The principal method used for identifying innovations was an annual
open access award cycle, the starting point for which was an invitation
sent to all municipalities and states, plus their different agencies, NGOs
and Original People’s organizations to send information of what they
were doing to improve public services in ways that had a positive impact
on citizenship. In its ten years, the programme received information
about some 8,000 innovative experiences, localized in 890 municipalities
of different population sizes and various socio-economic levels as well as
in all the Brazilian states, and also in a number of the Indigenous peoples
and amongst the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of govern-
ment (Farah and Spink, 2008).
Experiences were sent in from a wide variety of areas and from many
different types of jurisdiction. While it would be expected that the larger
municipalities would be active – given that they are usually places with
universities and NGOs – there were a significant number of entries from
smaller municipalities, including those with fewer than 20,000 inhabit-
ants. Entries came from all over the country, again an indication of the
breadth of the experiences that have been received.
One of the striking features that ran through the various experiences
submitted was the constant presence of other organizations of different
kinds, from both public sector and non-public sectors. Overall, some 66
per cent of all the programmes, projects and activities submitted reported
working links with other governmental agencies either within the same
jurisdiction, across jurisdictions or with another level of government or
both. Further, approximately 60 per cent reported links with what can be
broadly termed local community-based organizations, business and other
associations. In some 46 per cent of the cases links were reported with
both other governmental agencies and community and local organizations
and associations. In contrast, in only 20 per cent of all the experiences
submitted the agency or service was working alone without any external
operational linkages. Placed in terms of public administration theory this
suggests that in only 20 per cent of the cases were actions being
undertaken using the presumed and normally taught managerial model of
the hierarchical public sector agency working alone in its own patch,
developing and implementing new practices in accordance with its own
perspective. In the remaining 80 per cent of cases – hardly a minority –
other organizations were present along with their different languages.
The public sector organizations present covered the whole range that
could be expected within a federal system: municipal, state, regional and
federal agencies and secretariats; inter-municipal agencies and national
regional bodies (such as development agencies), public system schools
and public universities, public foundations and institutes, public banks
and state-owned businesses.
In the case of the non-public sector organizations the first point that
stood out was their variety. In terms of presence, most mentions were
made of neighbourhood associations and local private business enter-
prises (11 per cent each), followed by commissions councils or forums (9
per cent); Catholic Church organizations (6 per cent); professional
associations (5 per cent); statutory councils (5 per cent); service or
activist NGOs (4 per cent); producers’ associations (farming, fishing,
etc.) (4 per cent) and trade unions (3 per cent). The remainder were
spread around 1 or 2 per cent.
Most of the categories used are self-explanatory but a few do require
some discussion. First, the category of neighbourhood associations was
used to cover all forms of organizations that had a specific territorial root
and focus, including residents’ associations and community associations
(sometimes called territorial base organizations). In different parts of the
country these names will change as also they may change in terms of
class. Middle-class neighbourhoods tend to use the term residents, others
may use neighbourhood, or dwellers; what are favelas in Rio de Janeiro
are comunidades in Recife. Statutory councils are those that are required
by the 1988 Constitution to be present at each level of the federation and
are gradually being put into place: for example, councils for the rights of
children and adolescents and health councils. Many other councils have
been created locally and others adopted in an advisory manner. A
national study carried out in 1999, in the middle of the period under
analysis, placed the number of municipal councils in different areas at
23,987 for the approximately 5,500 municipalities.
The presence of business enterprises points to one of the key points
from the study. The presence of major business enterprises is in fact very
small, they appear at the 2 per cent level as business foundations,
whereas the 11 per cent of private enterprises is basically made up of
what are usually called local business concerns. That is, shops, small
firms, local factories, car dealerships, local franchisees of fast food
chains, soft drink distributors and the variety of other commercial
activities that form part of everyday life. When added to the other
principal categories it can be seen that the great majority of those active
in working together with local governments are those who are territori-
ally rooted and are part of the same place. Well over 95 per cent of the
first ten types of organizations present are what might be expected to be
around in a small and even medium-sized municipality. In a similar way,
rather than representing any explicit theory about local governance and
networks, the various alliances are taking place for very down-to-earth
reasons – bringing resources and technical skills and helping to get things
done.
Interestingly, the principal reasons given for collaborating with other

organizations from the public sector were almost the reverse of the
reasons given for the non-public sector. For the former, the reasons given
in order of magnitude were: first, financial; then, technical and logistical,
co-implementation and operational; and, finally, co-management. For the
latter, the reasons were: first, operational; second; co-implementation,
then co-management, followed by technical and logistical; and, finally,
financial. In both cases, public and non-public organizations are contrib-
uting with actions that take place in talk, with many different languages
present. They are alliances rather than partnerships because they are more
simple and straightforward, and they work because those involved think
it makes sense, perhaps within some everyday notion of civic action, to
be part of a heterogeneous community.
In the case of these different experiences the starting point is in the
possibility of collaboration. There is, however, another area of joint
working wherein the origin is contentious and linked to controversies.
The result is far from being a collaborative alliance but, nevertheless,
there is a sense of trying to work it through. Here an important
breakthrough has been the work of Callon et al. (2011) in the area of
social, scientific, technical and technological controversies, where they
introduced the expression ‘hybrid forums’ in a discussion of two different
controversies.
There are striking similarities between the two cases just set out. In the
example of radioactive waste as in that of high-voltage lines, the uncertainties
concerning the dangers incurred (whether long-term or short-term) are patent.
In both cases, despite these uncertainties, indeed because of them, decisions
nevertheless have to be made, or, as we say, “something must be done” (…)
In both cases the controversies take place in public spaces that we propose to
call hybrid forums – forums because they are open spaces where groups can
come together to discuss technical options involving the collective, hybrid
because the groups involved and the spokespersons claiming to represent
them are heterogeneous, including experts, politicians, technicians, and lay-
persons who consider themselves involved. They are also hybrid because the
questions and problems taken up are addressed at different levels in a variety
of domains, from ethics to economic and including physiology, nuclear
physics, and electromagnetism. (Callon et al., 2011, p. 18)
Hybrid forums emerge in conflict, at times violent, at times as a result of

civil disobedience and other forms of resistance. But they can also
become offers of collaboration which may open or close doors, give or
deny voice – especially as they comment after an analysis of a variety of
cases – to those who struggle to make their case but have been unable to
gain access. Any organizational form will, simultaneously, support and
constrain, any social language will include and exclude, and there is no
simple answer to the resulting dilemmas. The hybrid forum (and the
expression hybrid) refers to the possibility of putting together very
different positions in a way that is hardly imaginable. It is not a synonym
for difference, rather for radical difference. Sometimes these different
forms of connection can begin to move together, but sometimes they fall
apart or never connect.
NOTES
1. Paul III (1537), accessed 20 June at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/paul03/p3subli.htm
2. Skinner (1998).
3. See the longer discussion in McKeon (1990).
4. Gearty (2006).
5. Ignatieff (2001).
6. Spink (2000).
7. See, for example, Forejohn (2003).
8. UN HABITAT (2010).
9. Originally introduced by Henri Lefebvre in 1968 (see Lefebvre (1996)) it became a central
part of the urban debate in the later writings of Harvey (for example, 2003).
10. Canada (Farha, 2016).
11. See notes by Moyn (2014, 10 June). Roosevelt had used dignity in his 1941 Message to
Congress, both as the ‘rights and dignity of all our fellow-men within our gates’ and also
in terms of a ‘decent respect for the rights and dignitiy of all nations, large and small’.
12. See for example the discussion by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) of the civic world in
their On Justification: Economies of Worth and Honneth (1995) on collective struggles for
recognition, amongst many others.
13. Which has been well treated by scholars such as Keane (1988), Cohen and Arato (1994),
Chambers and Kymlicka (2002), Edwards (2004).
14. Fowler and Biekart (2008).
15. Industrial Areas Foundation (undated).
16. Living Wage Organization (undated).
17. Rudé (1964/1981).
18. Canetti (1962).
19. See Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970).
20. Charlton (1998, p. 16).
21. In both cases the authors report back to Dahl’s ‘minipopulous’ (Dahl, 1989) although they
differ in the way of writing the term. The author has adopted mini public as an
intermediate position.
22. See Smith (2005).
23. Smith (2005), Wampler (2007, 2015), Costa (2010), Bertelsmann Stiftung (2011).
7. Beyond public policy: public action

languages and the negotiation of
possibilities
The argument set out in the introductory chapter consisted of three
points. First, that although it may seem central and obvious, policy is
only one of a number of social languages that can be found in and around
government action. Some have been in place for a long time before
policy, others are more recent or, even, emerging. Some were seen as
equally central in their time and others, such as governance, may be
vying for centrality. Some can be found linked together, but rarely in a
hierarchical manner. Others just seem to go their own way.
The second point was a question about centrality. If the first point turns
out to be acceptable and valid, as the previous chapters that looked at
some of the social languages that can be found around government seem
to indicate, then apart from a normative desire to somehow place
governing into a logical hierarchical framework, as for example in the
persistent narrative of authoritative instrumentalism, centrality is more of
a hindrance than a help. To remember Colebatch et al.’s critique:
In the narrative of authoritative instrumentalism, governing happens when ‘the

government’ recognizes problems and decides to do something about them;
what it decides to do is called ‘policy’. The narrative constitutes an actor
called ‘the government’ and attributes to it instrumental rationality; it acts as it
does in order to achieve preferred outcomes. (2010, p. 15)
How then to deal with the heterogeneity of these different social

languages that are part professional, part political and part everyday; that
can be found in different departments and agencies of public sector
affairs?
The third point was to take this evolving argument further, to the other
side of the street or out into the fields, the rivers or along the coasts, and
ask if collective life is merely a question of the government or the
governed, with some generic addendum to bring in society as context.
What happens when the same questions are applied to the way in which
people(s) go about creating and raising issues and, also, solving problems
171
for themselves? Does this happen in a single social language called civil
society or are there, equally, a heterogeneity of social languages which
may connect or disconnect with one another and, equally, connect or
disconnect with those to be found when talking from the government side
of public affairs?
After six chapters which have looked at these points from a number of
different angles and in various moments and periods in time, it would
seem that the argument continues to stand. It may not be a popular
argument and there may be disciplinary difficulties, but at least for the
moment it offers a way of understanding part of the complexity of public
affairs. How then to deal with the challenge of creating and negotiating
possibilities? This is the focus of this last chapter.
It begins with an example of a setting in which there is little or no
connection between these different languages and where ‘service’, in
anything other than a minimal sense, breaks down. It uses a middle-
income country, Brazil, but similar situations have also appeared in
recent research from the USA (for example Desmond’s 2016 study of
evictions) and, in a literary format, in Ken Loach’s award-winning film I,
Daniel Blake about social services in the UK (2016). Together they
suggest that this type of setting is more common than is thought. In
discussing the example, the chapter will bring in some of the ideas that
have been developed in the preceding chapters as well as introducing
others that may help to understand the challenges of heterogeneity. It will
go on to look at the possible futures for policy and touch on an issue that
a number of colleagues have raised when debating the idea of public
action languages but which, as mentioned in the introduction, would
require a different kind of study to address in any depth: why did public
policy become so popular? To finish, the chapter will reinforce what has
been said at different points: the proposal of public action languages is an
approach, which, if followed, implies the negotiation of possibilities. By
implication, it is also about the presence of impossibilities.
WORKING WITH URBAN VULNERABILITY

The example comes from an ongoing cluster of applied research projects
on the micro-level impacts of social, material and institutional vulner-
abilities present in big cities and multi-city conurbations; especially those
which are aggravated by precarious processes of high-density land
occupation, habitation deficit and changes in patterns of sustaining
livelihoods. It involves colleagues from various universities in São Paulo
who share the idea of carrying out different studies in the same territorial
Public action languages and the negotiation of possibilities 173
area and, in doing so, look for ways in which resources could be
combined and results made more useful to those directly involved in
local affairs. This simple starting point of linking research, public service
and a more equitable use of university resources is one that colleagues in
urban affairs are assuming in various parts of the world. It has echoes of
urban outreach, of field stations1 and of community-based action
research, to name but a few traditions, but is perhaps better located
within the current discussion of the civic university (see Goddard, 2009).
The work has been going on since 2013 in the peripheral south zone of
the municipality of São Paulo. São Paulo with 11 million inhabitants and
the greater São Paulo metropolitan area with 21 million inhabitants are
situated only 35 miles from the port of Santos on the coast but at an
elevation of some 750 metres above sea level within the coastal mountain
range. Unlike most of the big cities of the world which can be found near
the outlets of rivers or at least considerably downstream (Cairo, Rome,
Paris, London, New York, to cite but a few), São Paulo is not just
upstream but sits on top of its catchment area in a broad water basin
whose many streams and artificial lakes push water inland to form the
Paraná River, which passes Paraguay and Uruguay before reaching the
sea at Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hence, despite the photographs which
suggest that São Paulo is a flat maze of high-rise buildings, it is in fact a
city full of hills and valleys, from which and through which emerge and
flow numerous small streams and rivers – under roads, in back gardens
and even under houses.
The south zone of São Paulo can be divided into three successive
areas. The first is what those in the wealthier regions call the south zone
(zona sul) which starts at the Paulista Avenue and goes out past the
Ibirapueira Park and the well-urbanized houses and flats towards the
national airport at Congonhas. The second is more mixed and starts more
or less at the airport and moves on to cover what used to be part of the
municipality of Santo Amaro, founded some 400 years ago and annexed
to São Paulo in 1935. The rest of the old municipality moves on south
and crosses the Pinheiros River where it splits into two parts, one on
either side of the Guarapiranga water reservoir. As it crosses the river
(over three different bridges) it materializes expressions that are often
heard when discussing the differences in distribution and quality of
public services and the way in which the police act: this side of the
bridge; the other side of the bridge.
For the planners in the city hall, some 25 kilometres away and in the
centre of town, this is part of the periphery (periferia) of São Paulo; an
expression that is used to talk about the outer zone of the city, towards its
limits with adjoining municipalities. But it is also an expression that
positions people as being working class, which in Brazil is often

synonymous with having low incomes, with substandard housing, with a
poor education, with a higher percentage of Afro-descendants, and often
being seen as problematic.
On the western side of the Guarapiranga reservoir are two districts –
Jardim Ângela and Jardim São Luís – that make up the regional
sub-prefecture of M’Boi Mirim with a population of over 600,000. If
they were in fact a municipality they would be the ninth largest
municipality in the state of São Paulo. Even though the sub-prefectures
are meant to assume a role in local-level coordination, they are basically
involved in local-level street and drainage maintenance, with a very low
budget and little authority. The two districts together are like an invisible
city, similar to a number of others in the municipality. São Paulo has a
single municipal chamber for its 11 million population, with 55 members
voted on at large lists.
The two districts went through a housing explosion from the 1960s
onwards, fuelled by the industrial boom in São Paulo which brought
many thousands in search of work to a city without any plans for the
necessary housing. The introduction of restrictive legislation on agricul-
ture, including a ban on pesticides in water catchment areas, led to small
farmers selling out and moving away. The new arrivals, as well as those
pushed out of downtown squatter areas by a housing boom, bought
formal or semi-formal small plots of land carved out of the former
agricultural properties or, in the impossibility of payment, occupied the
leftover public land alongside rivers or on hillsides. When people tell
their histories, they describe very similar processes: ‘We first dug a well
to get down to the water, then we built a room and then bit by bit we
carried on, when we had the money, the time and as the family
expanded.’2
The landscape of Jardim Ângela and its co-district Jardim Luís is
highly undulated and today it is marked by high-density housing that
seems to occupy all available possibilities – and impossibilities – of
location. Despite the heavy subtropical rainfall in summer months, there
are no sloped roofs. The tops are flat and unfinished and are very key
parts of the property: either for holding social gatherings or for, when
necessary, building more rooms: (social) space is indeed a (social)
product. Self-building did not apply only to housing3 but also to most
everything else. These were areas of the outskirts of São Paulo that were
largely ignored by the municipal government in the 1970s, part of the
period of military rule, and those present had to fend for themselves.
Many of them were religious people – Brazil has a large Catholic
population – and were used to the Church playing an important role as a
community institution. They built their own chapels for worship that in
turn served as meeting points which in its turn strengthened the com-
munities and became key elements in the São Paulo Catholic Church’s
1970s’ option for liberation theology. With municipal government absent,
social mobilization, through the ecclesiastical base communities and
trade unions, was the route to providing basic services and pressuring for
place-based public investment. Water, electricity, sewage, schools, health
and transport amongst others were many of the themes that people recall
fighting for and which were put in not before, as planners would prefer,
but after the houses had been built.
Little by little the state and its organizations began arriving, but the
communities in their different ways had already been active and as well
as mobilizing had also been creating various social services which in turn
were supported by the municipality. A document published by the
Municipal Secretary for Social Assistance and Development (SMADS,
2013), which analysed the different regions of the municipality of São
Paulo stated that in the region of M’Boi Mirim, some 36 per cent of the
population can be classified as being in high and very high vulnerability,
which rises to 50 per cent in Jardim Ângela. The description continues
with an appraisal of social services:
In relation to the network of social services, the area of the sub prefecture has
79 different service units capable of attending together 16,610 clients and is
the most well equipped of the southern zone 1. Of these units, the Municipal-
ity directly runs three (2 CRAS and 1 CREAS). Amongst the services that are
contracted, the major part is focused on children and adolescents (…).
(p.105)4
The three service units that are run directly by the municipality are the
coordinating units for social welfare (known as reference centres in the
terminology of the Unified Social Service System). A simple calculation
shows that the remainder – 76 – are run by other organizations in the
region; many of them faith based and many of which were there long
before the effective arrival of the local state and the new social welfare
system as a result of the 1988 Constitution.
Despite the many positive aspects of community mobilization, this
remains an area that is faced with very complicated social, material and
institutional issues. The two districts and their near neighbour (Capão
Redondo) were classified during the 1990s as being the most dangerous
places on the planet. Even today police violence and the violent death of
young, mainly black, males are still at a frightening level. There are over
50 areas that have been identified as being in serious risk of land slippage
and flooding and probably many others still to be identified. Most of the
formal and semi-formal plots that were sold back in the 1960s and 1970s
do not have officially registered land title deeds and while there are a
number of public services there is very little inter-agency coordination
and the different scales of internal agency coordination can be very
different.
THE MYSTERY OF THE ABSENT STATE

When the research began and those involved in the research projects
started to move around the area and take part in forums and meetings,
they were frequently told that the big problem that communities faced
was that ‘the state was absent’. This seemed a bit strange given that
although the region was big, there were services around. Indeed, one of
the reasons for seeking to work in the area were contacts made
previously with some of the originally community-based social service
organizations.
In order to discuss this better with residents in different settings,
simple 60 cm × 90 cm maps were made out from street guides which
were then photocopied and along with coloured markers served as a
simple and mobile instrument to locate and discuss services. The maps
showed that there were services spread around the region and, yes, they
could be better distributed. The tendency was to find more services in the
top northern half closer to the river, the first area to be settled, and some
territorial distribution problems in parts of the more southern part,
moving towards the outer limits of the municipality. In taking the maps to
meetings and forums to discuss the findings, the reason for the apparent
contradiction began to become clearer – more so when different studies
began to get closer to the day to day of street-level service workers, and
clearer still in the different thematic forums where local community
leaders and activists would talk about specific issues.
Coordination in the different service areas was upwards and down-
wards, not sideways, and the languages in use were also different. While
most services used the districts as a basis for initial organization, the way
these were combined into regions varied. In some critical areas, for
example policing, an entirely different approach was adopted. In terms of
social languages, education follows a federal law that sets directives,
norms, requirements and a National Education Plan that determines
directives, guidelines, goals and strategies for ‘educational policy’ for a
rolling ten years. Within this, individual states and municipalities will
also develop policies and plans that are consonant with the National Plan.
Health, which constitutionally is a right of all and a duty of the state to
provide, is seen as a universal health system which is very much

influenced by its principles (universal care, equity in care, integrity in
care) and its organizational principles: regionalization and hierarchy of
complexity; decentralization and a single command; participation of
society through councils and conferences. Within this, systems, rights and
plans are a common theme. Social assistance uses a more normative
framework of types of service and types of problem, with social policy
and public policy very present. Interesting here is to note that education
has a longer public history with previous federal laws of directives and
foundations (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases) in 1961 and 1971. Health was
very active in the constitutional congress in the 1980s which was marked
by the theme of rights. Social assistance, present in the constitution, was
only finally implemented as a unified social assistance system in 2005
when public policy as an expression was much more visible. Housing
and urbanism tend to talk about plans and instruments, culture about
incentives and programmes, and there will also be talk about public
policies. Many of the social organizations which are contracted to work
in different areas of welfare provision, and also in child care day centres,
were originally faith-based organizations and, while no longer religious
in practice, tend to share key values of solidarity and care.
It was then that the term connectivity began to emerge, along with the
idea that simply doing the basic job in settings of vulnerability was not
enough, for the issues are not single issues but complicated issues
involving different services. If health services don’t connect to education,
or education to social services, or any other of a myriad of connections
that are necessary to deal with everyday issues, this can seriously limit
what people can do on their own, especially when they are trying to hold
together very fragile livelihoods. Transport is very complicated in areas
with a highly undulating terrain, where side roads have to go back and
forth up the hillsides and bus access is very scarce. The huge concrete
stairways that can cut corners are not safe at certain times of day and
some are never safe. Connection however was not just a question of
walking a few blocks to a neighbourhood health centre or a quick drive
to a school, for the different services were not that far away from each
other. It was about services turned in on themselves. As a community
leader commented, ‘we can do a lot, but if the state doesn’t do its part
there is a tendency to give up’. The state, in other words, is not the
services but the connective presence of being together in a supportive
manner; connection is not just about organizational decisions or add-
itional elements on a job description, but very much about the many
different social languages in use.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET AND A FLAT

SOCIAL
There are various ways of thinking about what is emerging from these
different projects, but certainly one of them has to do with the way in
which social and material vulnerabilities are considerably affected by
institutional vulnerabilities. Merkel (2004) in his discussion of embedded
and defective democracies is concerned with the comparative studies of
countries. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Loach and Desmond, amongst
others, those involved in the vulnerability studies might well have put
their initial conclusions into his ‘defective’ country democracy category.
But given that neither the USA nor the UK are ‘defective democracies’
and similar events are taking place, perhaps it is worth thinking about
how, not as a whole, but in parts and fragments, even the most
democratic of countries can also be highly defective. Here is his
definition:
In intact democracies, legitimate representatives are bound to constitutional

principles. In an illiberal democracy, with its incomplete and damaged
constitutional state, the executive and legislative control of the state are only
weakly limited by the judiciary. Additionally, constitutional norms have little
binding impact on government actions and individual civil rights are either
partially suspended or not yet established. In illiberal democracies, the
principle of the rule of law is damaged, affecting the actual core of liberal
self-understanding, namely the equal freedom of all individuals. This is the
most common type of ‘defective democracy’, and it can be found all over the
world. (Merkel, 2004, p. 49)
It took a long time to get to the other side of the street, for it wasn’t a
question of crossing the road. It required moving away from some very
ubiquitous state-centred and implicitly hierarchical presumptions, of
which perhaps the most difficult was that of a world of action organized
from the general to the specific. Also present is a strong normative belief
that public issue resolution in democracies is guided by some form of
participation, if not also deliberation. There will be controversies, but
these should lead to consensus or at least acceptance and where, for
example, policy or planning or budget fields are not level, attempts
should be made to make up the differences. Translated into public sector
service provision and governmental action, this leads to the further
assumption of overall service provision as seeking to build a good fit
between the many different ways of providing and or regulating services
and the different demands present in society.
Seeking to build a good fit does not mean the search for a perfect
match for, as Beer pointed out in his cybernetic approach to service
provision,5 demands change as societies and services themselves change.
Nor does it imply that there will be widespread agreement about what is
being offered and what is being required. Indeed elections, polls,
newspapers, processes of open and continuing consultation and protest
marches are all examples of disagreements in terms of issue, scale and
focus. However, when talking about consolidated democracies, the refer-
ence is usually to polities in which some kind of middle ground has been
established and through which a minimum balance is possible. This is
also the case when the discussion turns to implementation; adjustment
may be necessary, it may be an incremental learning process, but it will
work out in the end.
Overall, the many social languages discussed in previous chapters
which are found around governments in action and which play a major
role in performing public affairs tend to follow the view that there should
be a ‘general’ or ‘overall’ plan (policy, budget, programme, decision,
directive, etc.) that will later be adapted to ‘specific’ circumstances; that
is, the route is from the former to the latter. At the same time, those
involved will recognize that governments may develop programmes that
affect a wide range of issues and territories, but their results do not
happen in a place called ‘everywhere’; they will always be applied by
‘someone somewhere’. While planners, programme managers and policy
analysts may be concerned about the implications, the sheer weight of
expressions that flow through the different ways of doing government,
the organization of data in tables and diagrams, the reports and diagnosis
will all favour the normal procedure of assuming that the variety of
somewhere can be accommodated by the flexibility of a well-designed
everywhere. Is this a logical conclusion, or a proposition that has limits?
What about the implications of the reverse relationship, from the
specific to the general? After all, everything happens in places. Here,
there is important work in human geography and social theory about
place (Hubbard and Kitchin, 2011), and in economics about development
as locally situated (Boisier, 2005); or arguments by Latour about the flat
social (1996) and by Marston et al. (2005) about non-scalar geography
and a flat ontology. Whether it is intentional or not, the general to the
specific – present in policy, plans and many other bits of soft and hard
technology – leads to the notions of different levels of structure as being
higher up, in the centre, instead of recognizing that they are: ‘not at some
level once removed, “up there” in a vertical imagery, but on the ground,
in practice, the result of marking territories horizontally through bound-
aries and enclosures, documents and rules, enforcing agents and their
authoritative resources’ (Marston et al., 2005, p. 420). Take, as a further

example, expressions such as ‘frontline worker’, ‘first time responder’ or
‘direct service provider’. If these are read within a hierarchical organ-
izational format of decisions and implementation, the result is one kind
of impression. If these are read as from the specifics of each one, what it
means to be first, the impression changes.6
If you set yourself the task of following practices, objects and instruments,
you never again cross that abrupt threshold that should appear, according to
earlier theory, between the level of ‘face-to-face’ interaction and that of social
structure; between the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’ (…) Social worlds remain flat
at all points, without there being any folding that might permit a passage from
the ‘micro’ to the ‘macro’. For example the traffic control room for Paris
buses does indeed dominate the multiplicity of buses, but it would not know
how to constitute a structure ‘above’ the interactions of the bus drivers. It is
added on to those interactions. The old difference of levels comes merely
from overlooking the material connections that permit one place to be linked
to others and from belief in purely face-to-face interactions. (Latour, 1996,
p. 240)
To Latour’s practices, objects and instruments could be added the

different social languages that connect and disconnect the bus drivers and
the traffic control room; equally so, the social languages of passengers
for whom a bus is not an end in and of itself but part of a daily, weekly
or eventual pattern of movement necessary to help things happen. Indeed,
very little attention is paid to the fact that patterns of mobility of women
can often be radically different from those of men.7
The tension between the everywhere and the somewhere, between the
general and the specific, was well described by Friend (1977a) in studies
on regional and local government coordination in the UK. He pointed to
the differences between the government-centred view of community
service provisions (the ‘government policy space’) and the citizen-
centred view of people in their ‘life spaces’. In the former, where concern
is with the implementation of programmes and policies, the different
services are like the different parts of a fan; each of which spreads out
towards different groups or populations, often with different levels of
intersection within national, regional or local authorities and agencies.
When ministers, secretaries and programme managers gather together,
concern is with the coherence of these different activities as part of a
government platform or action agenda; which will also require negotiat-
ing possibilities between the different social action languages present.
For the citizen in the day to day, the situation is the reverse. Her, his
and, more often, their social reality is made up of very concrete questions
and issues linked to different demands and rights: a single mother with a
young baby who needs to work; an elderly person who needs to move
around; a youngster looking for books that aren’t in the school library.
Think also of a community association fighting to stop commercial
property development on land that is urgently needed for community-
based resources, such as a park and a community centre. For them, the
day to day in relation to state action is made up of bits of different
questions and social and material solutions, which are treated and
delivered by different bits of the various organizations whose actions fan
outwards towards everyday life. The executive or cabinet or policy
committee is concerned with implementation; the citizen, family, friends
and neighbours are concerned with where things are, how to get to them
and how to put the bits together to solve very specific issues. If the image
of the fan is translated into the image of a left hand and a right hand, then
the key point becomes how can the hands get together. Can the fingers of
the left hand ‘policy space’ connect with the fingers of the right hand
‘life space’?
Friend was concerned with the implications for coordination and in
doing so provided an important and earlier questioning of the tendency to
fall back to the ‘general’ rather than the ‘specific’.
Whenever the provision of services to the public seems to be becoming
fragmented among too many specialized departments or agencies, people tend
to seek better co-ordination by moving to another level where things can be
seen in a more rounded, less blinkered way. But should this [level] mean
moving closer to the level of the individual citizen for whom the service is
intended or towards the heart of the government system through which control
is exercised, or are there ways of making progress in both directions at once?
(1977a, p. 4)
Friedmann (1992) used a similar approach in referring to those aspects of

the day to day that are key to social power in overcoming poverty and the
important role played by state agencies in helping or hindering their
acquisition. These he identified as financial resources; social networks;
appropriate information; surplus time over subsistence requirements;
instruments of work or livelihood; social organization; knowledge and
skills; and a defensible life space. As he argued, all of these are areas in
which governments and public services can make significant impacts,
both positively and negatively, not just to individuals but to the various
connections present in a household economy. Here again the theme of
institutional vulnerability is present; the impacts can be positive or
negative. As was pointed out in one of the discussions in Jardim Ângela,
‘if you are not helping than you are hindering – there is no neutral zone’.
Taking this a step further, it seems reasonable to argue that when the
variety of somewhere(s) is limited and the mismatch between the general
and the specific can be adjusted in one way or another through resources,
opportunities or social and organizational innovations (such as participa-
tory planning or budgeting or community debates and implementation
monitoring), the principle of adaptation in implementation may hold
good for all practical purposes – even though it might be questionable on
logical or theoretical grounds, as discussed in Chapter 5. But what
happens when the mismatch becomes too much for the fragile settings in
which households may be seeking to sustain some kind of livelihood, to
make it through, get by, hold the bits together? When social vulnerability
is not only aggravated by material vulnerability but also by the insti-
tutional vulnerability produced by the holes in the safety nets, the lack of
connection between territorially-based services, or between national and
regional plans and directives; all performed in the many social languages
that don’t necessarily ‘make sense’ to each other.
In the different conversations and studies, sometimes the two ‘hands’
would connect and sometimes they would end up being so limited in
their interconnections that it is as if they were worlds apart, talking a
different language. Sometimes it can work – and citizens and public
officials can put the different bits of solutions together and find a way
through as, for example, in the discussion by Wagenaar (2007) of citizen
initiatives in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the Netherlands – but
sometimes not. Here is one of Desmond’s graphic descriptions:
If Arleen and Vanetta didn’t have to dedicate 70 or 80 percent of their income
to rent, they could keep their kids fed and clothed and off the streets. They
could settle down in one neighborhood and enrol their children in one school,
providing them the opportunity to form long-lasting relationships with
friends, role models and teachers. They could start a savings account or buy
their children toys and books, even a home computer. The time and energy
they spent making rent, delaying eviction, or finding another place to live
when homeless could instead be spent on things that enriched their lives:
community colleges, classes, exercise, finding a good job, maybe a good man
too. (2016, p. 295)
While these examples come from settings where there are obvious
disadvantages present, the very same issues can be around in many other
places. Factories can close down, putting whole neighbourhoods out of
work, including the local commerce. As Desmond also comments, for a
long time in the USA a rental payment of no more than 30 per cent of
household income was a consensus goal that most people could meet.
Almost overnight, this became more impossible for more people and
evictions began to rise. Complexities are not easy to understand and even
more difficult to do something about, especially many of those in the
broader social field, as Rittel and Webber pointed out in their discussion
of wicked problems as essentially unique: ‘There are no classes of
wicked problems in the sense that principles of solution can be developed
to fit all members of a class (…) In the more complex world of social
policy planning, every situation is likely to be one-of-a-kind’ (1973,
pp. 164–165).
Here is one of many tales that tend to confirm the dilemma of the
specifics. It is from a meeting of local residents in the very southern part
of the district of Jardim Ângela, at one of the few multipurpose schools
in the region, to discuss the tensions between housing and water
management. The title was: The waters and the community: what should
we be doing? (The waters, plural, referred to the Guarapiranga reservoir,
the streams and the natural springs that are still very visible in some
areas.) In the morning there were presentations of some final-year studies
by students of architecture who had been working in the area, and in the
afternoon there were other experiences by local groups and a debate on
possible actions.
The final year architecture students and their tutors started off their different
presentations by first discussing the southern region of the city as a whole.
This included the broad south zone on both sides of the reservoir and the rural
area of its southern catchment zones. They emphasized the importance of the
water catchment issues versus housing, as had the professor from the other
university’s water resources program who had talked before. They then, as
they put it, scaled down to the M’Boi region running beside the reservoir on
the west bank. It was a very good analysis with data and maps, but the maps
looked like those of the municipal planners with linear parks running along
the reservoir, when everybody there knew that those areas are currently being
invaded and the parks don’t exist. They had picked up the issues of mobility
but tended to see this as a question of getting people out of the region to work
in the morning and back at the end of the day. It included using cable cars –
echoes of Rio de Janeiro and Medellin – but they hadn’t picked up everyday
mobility in and around services, shops and schools. If you see something as a
dormitory region you will treat it as a dormitory region, an empty territory
that is only filled at night. Then they moved again to little pieces of
neighbourhoods with a few streets, different houses mapped out, with streams
and what few green mini-areas existed, or at least mini-squares. Then they
moved to their individual projects of specific individual installations and it
seemed like the rest suddenly all faded away into a background blur. I turned
to a colleague who said, why didn’t they start with the little pieces of
neighbourhoods and remembered the architects from the “cities in movement”
group who worked on the importance of the walkways and stairways that go
up and down the hills and which people use as a way of cutting kilometres off
their routes to the buses along the roads that zigzag up the hillside like a mini
version of the roads up to an alpine pass. (Diary notes from an open forum
meeting on housing and the waters held in the southern part of Jardim Ângela
PKS, May 2017)
WILL PUBLIC POLICY SURVIVE OR HAS IT

OUTGROWN ITS USEFULNESS?
Looking back over the preceding chapters, the immediate answer to the
question about the survival of policy would seem to be yes; but not in its
currently imagined form and certainly not in the precise view of all the
different attempts at definitions. Here are some examples from docu-
ments in active circulation that are designed to help people get on with
actions in key areas and with discussing expectations about what
governments can do. They are written to be practically useful and result
from social processes of debate and discussion. The first example comes
from the current worldwide United Nations initiative around the Sustain-
able Development Goals.
The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries –
poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the
planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with
strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs
including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while
tackling climate change and environmental protection.8
Goal 1 No poverty: While global poverty rates have been cut by more than
half since 2000, one in ten people in developing regions are still living with
their families on less than the international poverty line of US$1.90 a day, and
there are millions more who make little more than this daily amount.
Significant progress has been made in many countries within Eastern and
Southeastern Asia, but up to 42% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa
continues to live below the poverty line. Poverty is more than the lack of
income and resources to ensure a sustainable livelihood. Its manifestations
include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic
services, social discrimination and exclusion as well as the lack of partici-
pation in decision-making. Economic growth must be inclusive to provide
sustainable jobs and promote equality. Social protection systems need to be
implemented to help alleviate the suffering of disaster-prone countries and
provide support in the face of great economic risks. These systems will help
strengthen responses by afflicted populations to unexpected economic losses
during disasters and will eventually help to end extreme poverty in the most
impoverished areas.9
The Sustainable Development Goals are targets to be reached by the year

2030; they are not policies to be implemented. They may seem similar,
but they are very different. How countries and peoples reach these targets
and the social languages they use for this will vary considerably, similar
to the very early discussion about directives. The description of the
poverty goal includes a comment on ‘social protection systems’ which
links to another area of United Nations activity that has grown a lot in
recent years: disaster relief. Here, other social languages play an import-
ant role including the term vulnerability which has a history of meanings
not unlike policy, with the major difference being that despite being used
in a wide variety of areas and themes, it has remained fairly close to the
latin vulnerare (to wound).
In March 2016, the British Library registered some 38,096 items in its
catalogue under vulnerability. Of these, less than 0.1 per cent were from
before 1980 and are concerned with, amongst other things, fortifications,
atomic bomb explosions, civil defence from attacks, economics, genetic
vulnerability of crops, early childhood. In 1980, the report of the Office
of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO) on natural
disasters and vulnerability analysis from the 1979 Expert Group Meeting
was published; itself a result of previous studies. From this period, the
different fields that adopt the expression grow significantly and the
number of publications form a steeply rising curve. To what extent this is
a direct influence of the UNDRO report would require a separate study
but, to recall Weick’s sensemaking (1995), it is more likely that such
events are used as justifiers. It is always convenient to have an imaginary
starting point but, in practice, terms tend to drift in and out of popularity
in a variety of ways.
Today, one of the leading references for disaster-based work on
vulnerability is the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies, especially through its vulnerability and capacity
assessment approach. Yet when the Red Cross produced its commentaries
on the Geneva Conventions of August 1949 there was only one use of the
term in some 466 pages, and that referred to the concern that with a
broader use of the red cross symbol beyond strict military control to
include civilian hospitals, staff and certain means of transport, the
‘emblem is thus rendered more vulnerable than before and there is a vital
need for its protection to be reinforced and the vigilance against misuse
increased’ (ICRC, 1952, pp. 393–394). Barnardo’s, discussed in Chapter
2, is one of the UK’s leading NGOs in the field of children and
adolescents and it will proudly, with all reason, state that ‘for 150 years
we’ve been supporting the UK’s most vulnerable children’, but that was
not a term that its founder would have used, when he wrote out the sign
‘no destitute child ever refused permission’. In 1924, the League of

Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child,
which had been drafted by Eglantyne Jebb, one of the founders of Save
the Children also mentioned in Chapter 2. When reading the Declaration
today the implicit reference to what is currently understood as vulnerabil-
ity is very clear, but it is difficult to understand that this ‘clarity’ is a
recent phenomenon.
There is no answer to the question of why vulnerability, despite its
constant presence over the centuries, should take such a long time to
move into public affairs; but when it does, it rapidly becomes a key word.
Systems are described as vulnerable; populations become vulnerable to
climate change. Vulnerability is not synonymous with poverty, for the
rich too are vulnerable in many areas, but being poor especially within
current multi-dimensional approaches to poverty can increase vulnerabil-
ity. People well integrated in their communities can rapidly become
vulnerable in the face of unstable labour markets and precarious work
contracts. Women and girls are more vulnerable than men and boys in
certain areas of violence and sexual discrimination, while black male
youths can be, as in Brazil, more vulnerable than their white colleagues
in relation to death from violent causes.
While it is certainly not unusual for a word to find itself in a variety of
settings, as various examples throughout the book have shown, what is
interesting about vulnerability is that the basic relational idea has
remained constant. It has gained new dimensions such as risk and
resilience, but the central idea remains that people are potentially
vulnerable as a result of (a) what can happen externally and (b) how they
protect themselves. They can protect themselves as much as they like, but
that won’t stop them being vulnerable; however, if they don’t protect
themselves or are not protected by others, they will be highly vulnerable
in situations where those – better protected – won’t be. As a result, in
both cases, there is much that can be done by a number of different
agencies and actors that can tilt the scales one way or another. The 2014
UN Human Development Report provides a similar example:
Much of the early work on vulnerability focused on natural disasters in the
1970s. A landmark study showed that the incidence of natural disasters and
fatalities was increasing and the burden of death fell disproportionately on
developing countries. One of the authors developed the concept of vulnerabil-
ity as both external (exposure to risks) and internal (people’s capacity to
cope). More recent frameworks, such as the World Risk Report, have added a
third component, adaptation (capacities for long-term societal changes).
(UNDP, 2014, p. 28)
The Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (2015)

created a series of global targets and priorities of action known as the
Sendai Framework,10 from the Japanese city where the meeting was held.
Policy and policies play a role but not as the guiding hand of the
framework. When they appear, it is usually in relation to some other
activity, or action language: policy and planning; policies and measures;
policies and practices; policies and plans; policies and strategies. Here is
a citation from the preamble and another from the section on guiding
principles:
2. During the World Conference, States also reiterated their commitment to
address disaster risk reduction and the building of resilience to disasters with
a renewed sense of urgency within the context of sustainable development and
poverty eradication, and to integrate, as appropriate, both disaster risk
reduction and the building of resilience into policies, plans, programmes and
budgets at all levels and to consider both within relevant frameworks.
(UNISDR/Sendai Framework, p. 9)
h) The development, strengthening and implementation of relevant policies,
plans, practices and mechanisms need to aim at coherence, as appropriate,
across sustainable development and growth, food security, health and safety,
climate change and variability, environmental management and disaster risk
reduction agendas. Disaster risk reduction is essential to achieve sustainable
development. (p. 13)
Policy as can be seen, does have a role and a contribution, but what is
it actually? Here, a companion United Nations document, post-Sendai,
is helpful in that it deals specifically with disaster risk reduction
terminology.11
A global, agreed policy of disaster risk reduction is set out in the United
Nations endorsed Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030,
adopted in March 2015, whose expected outcome over the next 15 years is:
‘The substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and
health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets
of persons, businesses, communities and countries’. (p.16)
Policy here is more like a midfield notion that brings together positions,
priorities and stances from the one side and outcomes from the others. It
has more of a sense of mission than of directives and there are moral
undertones that this is important. In other parts of the same text, policy is
seen as offering guidance and usually can be found together with plans
and strategies. Guidance, again, is also a midfield notion; partly tech-
nical, partly experience and partly stance and position. But it is part of
dealing with disaster; one of many bits and pieces. Public policy, as
practice, may be part of governing, but so are budgeting, planning,

programming, directives, decisions, laws, bills and a host of other social
languages that can be found in use both generally and also, as it were,
with specific versions or dialects in individual thematic areas. To imagine
a middle manager in a public agency or a programme coordinator faced
with objectives, a budget constraint, a court order and a plea on rights:
which route will be more ‘just’? This is where guidance comes in and as
an expression it shares a lot of the midfield sense of policy as priority or
position. Some may talk of policy guidance, but others will dispense the
policy.
The issue is, in looking at these different arenas of discussion and
returning to Chapter 3, to move away from the debate on how an
expression should be defined and follow the path of how it is practically
being defined in use. The route is not from the definition to the use, but
from the use to the definition. The question becomes: with what words
are things being done? In the disaster-risk area, and despite its critics,
governance seems to be useful: this is from the same document on
disaster risk terminology.
Disaster risk governance: The system of institutions, mechanisms, policy and
legal frameworks and other arrangements to guide, coordinate and oversee
risk reduction and related areas of policy. (Annotation: Good governance
needs to be transparent, inclusive, collective and efficient to reduce existing
disaster risks and avoid creating new ones). (p.16)
A CHALLENGE FOR POLICY – BUT ALSO FOR

GOVERNANCE
There are a number of different lines that could be pursued in order to
think more about how policy got itself into its current position. There is
still a sense of its usefulness, but scholars are increasingly lost as to what
it is and why. Unfortunately, different to rights and objectives, it does not
have universal appeal. You don’t need to be a lawyer to talk about rights,
at least nowadays, and most people have no problems with the question
‘what are you trying to do?’ – which can come with the intonation on the
what, the you and the trying, making at least three different utterances.
Social movements will ask for action, community leaders will discuss a
plan for the protest and most people know that, in today’s world, if you
don’t have it you can’t spend it. In other words, many of the social
languages from the governing arena of public action have drifted, in
Nash’s sense (1993), into the vernacular, or into some hybrid field where
they are mutually accessible, even though they may be adapted into
different settings and dialects. There may be questions about whether this
leads to a ‘managerialization’ of social life but being more widely
available they also can be more collectively controlled.
The same applies to the inversion of the general and the specific.
General ideas, in whatever social language, need to be implemented in
specific places and, even when implementation is changed to translation
and the idea is translated, there is still a question of direction, because
frequently who makes the general statements is in a different place from
those who are involved in the translation. But if action begins with a
problem, a decision to do something and some ‘why not’ experimentation
in a specific place (because that is where the problem is), then nothing is
implemented, rather it is done. Implementation is, as it were, inverted.
The posture is there, because something is seen as a problem that it is
important to do something about; there is some guidance, but the social
technologies are quite soft.
The different welfare states, of which only two were looked at in
Chapter 4 and then only partially, got to where they did without policy in
its later sense. But they produced a version of society as a caring
government with an increasingly expansive agenda. Here, there was
clearly a role for the professions as was seen in Chapter 4, but there
was also the persisting separation of politics from administration that can
even be found today. Planners help to make plans, that is quite technical;
but how to discuss the broader issues, to provide advice to government
without being political? Policy sciences, as conceived by Laswell (1970)
and the broad network of scholars from different countries who talked the
idea into prominence, were interdisciplinary and concerned about the big
issues; those questions that were key to society. Their way of talking
about policy, as the initial number of Policy Sciences well illustrates,
were the conceptual and quantitative approaches of what today would be
called ‘soft’ operations research as an interdisciplinary field. That is, the
analysis of decision and action processes in complex settings. Political
science in the 1970s, however, was anything but quantitative; that move
was to happen later. Could that have been one of the problems? That one
part of the argument, providing advice to government on what to do
about issues, was accepted and, although this was by no means a new
practice, it received the new expressions ‘policy advisor’ and ‘policy
analysis’. However, the other half of the package, the study of the policy
process, went in many different directions, involving many academic or
professional disciplines, few of them with interdisciplinary traditions.
With each discipline doing its own studies of the practical side of
government, with its own concepts and its own specific interests, there
was no way that some accepted view of policy could be held together. To
play with words: there were no checks and balances. As a result, perhaps,
policy just drifted away by itself to mean many things to many people
and became a taken-for-granted.
Using ‘policy’ as a way of providing advice is, to return to Chapter 3,
not just something that involves the advice giver, but the whole evolving
narrative of advice itself: givers, listeners, users, takers and the way in
which they frame their conversations. It involves a multiplicity of voices
for whom policy, as a reference to what is taking place, seems to be
useful. Nash (1993) used the expression ‘sales talk’ to look at the way in
which jargon is used to plead acceptance for some kind of product,
‘whether in the form of goods, or ideas, or political policies, and which
seek to control the potential consumer’s response to the product’ (p.12).
Perhaps it might be added, even the idea of policies. The current UK
government website (www.gov.uk) has thousands of references to policy,
and policies is one of its principal categories. There are policies in all
areas of government work and also details of policy professional stand-
ards, and development goals. But it is very difficult to find out what
actually is meant by a policy. It is presumed as obvious. Planning, on the
contrary, is clearer as it is very much linked to the production of ‘plans’,
which are clear statements of restrictions, incentives and of what is going
to happen. This is the opening part of the ‘Plan making’ section of the
UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s National
Planning Policy Framework.12
15. The planning system should be genuinely plan-led. Succinct and up-to-
date plans should provide a positive vision for the future of each area; a
framework for addressing housing needs and other economic, social and
environmental priorities; and a platform for local people to shape their
surroundings.
16. Plans should:
a) be prepared with the objective of contributing to the achievement of
sustainable development;
b) be prepared positively, in a way that is aspirational but deliverable;
c) be shaped by early, proportionate and effective engagement between
plan-makers and communities, local organisations, businesses, infrastructure
providers and operators and statutory consultees;
d) contain policies that are clearly written and unambiguous, so it is evident
how a decision maker should react to development proposals;
e) be accessible through the use of digital tools to assist public involvement
and policy presentation; and
f) serve a clear purpose, avoiding unnecessary duplication of policies that
apply to a particular area (including policies in this Framework, where
relevant). (UK Housing, 2018, p. 8)
In addition to the close relationship between planning and policy which

has appeared in various places throughout the book, item 16(d) above
expresses a relationship between policy and decision which also goes
back to notions of guidance and even earlier foreign policies: ‘so it is
evident how a decision maker should react’. The document also intro-
duces, on page 5, the idea of ‘presumptions’: ‘So that sustainable
development is pursued in a positive way, at the heart of the Framework
is a presumption in favour of sustainable development’ (UK Housing,
2018, p. 5; emphasis in the original).
But, it could be argued, these are ways of working that are specific to
urban and regional planning; where actions take place both by govern-
ment and by many other different parts of society that apply for
permission to do things. Planning, indeed, has the advantage of a long
history of being part of the soft technologies of the administrative tool
kit: at least back to POSDCORB in Chapter 4. Perhaps because of this, it
is more easily kept in check by its colleagues in the administrative ideas’
arena. Policy too can be found in different ways in different professional
areas, but here there is very little to hold it in check or to stop it drifting
back into the policy of stance or posture; which is not what current
analysts of policy processes seem to want and certainly wasn’t the idea of
the Policy Sciences. Here is an example from the area of education:
Policies do not normally tell you what to do: they create circumstances in
which the range of options available in deciding what to do are narrowed or
changed. A response must still be put together, constructed in context, off-set
against other expectations. All of this involves creative social action not
robotic reactivity. Thus, the enactment of texts relies on things like commit-
ment, understanding, capability, resources, practical limitations, cooperation
and (importantly) intertextual compatibility. Furthermore, sometimes when we
focus analytically on one policy or one text we forget that other policies and
texts are in circulation and the enactment of one may inhibit or contradict or
influence the possibility of the enactment of others. (Ball, 1993, pp. 12–13)
Ball’s description may be in part general, but it is much easier to imagine

a school administrator or a teacher trying to deal with these circum-
stances than a nurse in the neighbourhood health centre or a policeman
on her or his rounds. That this should be so is by no means problematic;
it only becomes a problem if social languages are treated as reductive,
homogeneous and not heterogeneous.
While policy is only one amongst many social languages to be found
amongst the many different fields and places of state action, it is a timely
reminder that the absorption of policy as part of the ‘woodwork’ of
government takes place in late modernity. There is government, there are
the governed, there are representatives, the governed elect the representa-
tives who guard the government and somehow policy seems to hold this
together as a serious and reasoned approach to improving society. It
allows new concepts of social issues to emerge, for example the sustainable
development agenda or the even more recent notion of well-being,13
all of which are important but, as an equal number of chapters have
shown, are only half the story of how, collectively, questions are raised
and resolved. Here it is necessary, even in a brief way, to turn to the
discussion on governance. Could or does governance offer a better angle,
as some suggest, on the complexities of public affairs?
LEARNING FROM GOVERNANCE

Most of the social languages that can be found around the different
dimensions of public action reached visibility in moments and periods
before the present; that odd mix of yesterday, today and tomorrow that
forms the lived-in horizon of most readers of this book. Some, such as
vulnerability, have relatively bounded trajectories and have remained
relatively contained. The vulnerability of the late 1970s in disaster affairs,
or the 1980s in relation to AIDS, is something to which most can relate.
Policy, public policy and policies have gone in a different direction, often
with many different and at times contradictory meanings. What then can
be said about governance?
To begin with, following the overall approach of the book, there is the
simple observation that people seem to find that it helps discussion about
aspects of ‘governing’ that can’t be resolved by government alone. To be
repetitive, they use it because it is useful. As has been commented in the
previous chapters, these themes, key words, ideas, narrative forms and
practices that make up social languages do not drop out of the sky. There
will certainly be interests around, but the heterogeneity of different
languages present makes imposition unlikely. Mainly, as has been seen,
they move slowly, from one conversation to another, gradually spreading
out as more and more people, then forums and organizations, find them
useful as a way of bringing certain questions into talk.
Governance is very much part of today’s lived-in horizon, even though
the basis of the expression has a long, and at times, very material history.
The current Governor of the Bank of England can look back on over 400
years and 119 predecessors, but it was only in 1997 that the Bank
became independent and was allowed to set monetary policy; however,
during all this time the notion of someone who keeps ‘the house in order’
was a constant part of the vernacular. Most people who have been to a
science museum or have looked at a steam engine have seen a centrifugal

governor. A gadget with arms and large brass balls at the end that rotates
and rises as the velocity of the shaft increases. When the arms get beyond
a specific level, the ring that holds the arms acts to cut off power to the
engine, in the early cases steam, and in doing so maintained the speed
within limits. The centrifugal governor had been around as an idea since
the seventeenth century; but it would take until the following century
before Boulton and Watt transferred the idea into Watt’s steam engine.
From that materiality came many socialities, including the use of the
notion of its dynamic balance mechanism in early evolutionary theory
and later cybernetics.
Schools had boards of governors, there were governors of territories
and many other governors and governesses whose role was the same: to
keep the balance and maintain the house in order. Very much like
vulnerability, it had been around for a long time before it was suddenly
catapulted into public affairs. (Whether it is relevant that this happens in
the same period as the emergence of vulnerability is an interesting
question.)
Governance appeared in the discussion of international organizations
such as the United Nations, which are not government but are not just an
association. It appeared in discussing the changing forms of the European
Community, again not a government but no longer a simple consortium.
It appeared in the self-regulation of openly quoted capitalist enterprises
and the creation of mechanisms for local development in the international
aid community, amongst others.
Governance may have found its way into public affairs from a variety
of different angles, but usually has in common the notion of multiple,
public, private, community-based actors and organizations that are linked
together as part of a problem and its resolution but are neither hierarchi-
cally or institutionally related.14 Dynamic balance, maintaining limits,
negotiating agreements, hybrid forums, networked governance are all
evoked as a way of saying these are mechanisms that have public
accountability, are useful, involve governments but aren’t government.
But does that mean that government is giving way to governance, as
some authors suggest, or that, similar to policy, other bits are being added
on?15
Like policy, there are those who see the discussion of governance as
moving away from the balancing approach to being normative, as in the
criticisms of good governance in the development and aid arenas.16 Offe
has commented on the unresolved polysemy of the concept that:
… enables its protagonists to connect it to all kinds of positive adjectives and

to embed it in a harmonizing rhetoric. The attributes used to describe
governance are adjectives such as non-corrupt, transparent, informal, citizen-
friendly (“bürgernah”), legitimate, efficient, responsible, collective goods
producing, effective, common good oriented, horizontal, problem-adequate
and participatory; and nouns such as interplay, collaboration, participation,
informal governing, agreement, interaction, consensus, mutual learning,
cooperation, convergence of viewpoints, adaptation, leadership through con-
sensus, etc. (…) Governance, according to the prevailing use of the concept,
is a limine, a game without losers, leading to the achievement of ‘good
results’. (Offe, 2009, p. 557)
While this demonstrates very well the way in which the adjectives and
nouns gravitate around social languages with various intentions and, as
such, applies to other social languages as well, it also is a warning about
the way that ‘good’, ‘neutral’, ‘non-political’ meanings can get attached
to, and weaken, very useful terms. The image of Boulton and Watt’s
strange contraption holds a very clear notion of adjustment and self-
control, but the different parts are designed to work together – they didn’t
assemble themselves. There is no a priori reason to assume that talking
about governance means mutual adjustment and success. It took a lot of
time and effort to get to the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, back in 1948, and much more time, decades of time,
before most parts of the world recognized it as a very useful and practical
idea.
Governance also, as with policy, can lead to a certain depoliticization
of what is in debate. Here there are at least two linked lines of discussion.
In one, as Offe continues: ‘Participants in the discourse on governance
tend to adopt the perspectives of negotiating organizational elites without
taking into account the significance of conflicts of interests and values
that take place in the public outside the negotiating room’ (2009, p. 558).
In the other line of discussion, also as with policy, the depoliticization
needs to be thought of in terms of what Foucault called the dispositif.
Despite the many discussions on how to translate the term, and the fact
that it wanders in and out of Foucault’s teachings and is rarely defined, it
remains a very powerful analytic notion. The usual description comes
from an interview in 1977:
What I’m seeking to characterize with this name is, first of all, an absolutely
heterogeneous assembly which involves discourses, institutions, architectural
structures, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific
enunciation, philosophical, moral, and philanthropic propositions; in short:
as much the said and the un-said, these are the elements of the dispositive.
The dispositive is the network which is arranged between these elements (…)
I said that the dispositive is by nature essentially strategic, which indicates

that it deals with a certain manipulation of forces, of a rational and concerted
intervention in the relations of force, to orient them in a certain direction, to
block them or to fix and utilize them. The dispositive is always inscribed in a
game of power and, at the same time, always tied to the limits of knowledge,
which derive from it and, in the same measure, condition it. (Foucault, 1977,
in Bussolini, 2010 pp. 91–92)17
It is here, perhaps, where policy and a number of other social action

languages can learn from governance, for while helping to make democ-
racy more effective they also can create a setting in which the obvious is
not so obvious as it seems. Returning to the example at the beginning of
the chapter, governance arrangements can look and feel very different for
those who are within them than they can for those who are outside.
Similarly, policy can seem a naturally positive contribution from the
viewpoint of the serious analyst who is concerned with the public good,
or the cooperative service coordinator, but can be very different for the
person who is running to get to the queue to be attended before the local
government office shuts for the night. Both share the same working
hours, but one is an hour away from the other.
Foucault’s dispositif was coined as part of his wider discussion of
society, within which the earlier question as to the importance of policy
as a product of the welfare state and more open democracies certainly
has a part. He made a distinction between this and the more specific
apparatus (appareil) of the state, almost as a subset of the dispositif,
which brings in a much wider set of power relations that are multifac-
eted, may change or may persist in new forms. It is – once more –
heterogeneous, and draws attention to many other bits and pieces,
materialities and socialities that are around.
Despite what may happen to governance or to policy – whether they
will go on growing in use or be relocated on more specific, firmer ground
as part of the many social languages found around governing – they
will all only be part of the story. As has been seen in the previous
chapters, there are many publics, many approaches to the public good
and many concerns around about what government does or does not do
and what local communities, movements, churches and wider associa-
tions assume for themselves. All of these are also bits and pieces of
materiality and sociality, from the charity shops on the high street to the
angry protests and cracked windows, tear gas and police on horseback.
They are put together, assembled, in particular places, and are performed
in talk. They are also part of the story: but does the story need to have a
name? Is the state taken too seriously? In 1977 Abrams commented: ‘The
state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice.
It is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is’
(1977/1988, p. 76).
Here it is helpful to borrow from the discussion by Sassen (2005)
about citizenship and the national state in the global arena, in relation to
international human rights and the emergence of multiple actors and
communities that no longer automatically identify with a nation as
represented by the state.
It is quite possible to posit that at the most abstract or formal level not much
has changed over the last century in the essential features of citizenship. The
theoretical ground from which I address the issue is that of the historicity and
the embeddedness of both categories, citizenship and the national state, rather
than their purely formal features. Each of these has been constructed in
elaborate and formal ways. And each has evolved historically as a tightly
packaged bundle of what were in fact rather diverse elements. The dynamics
at work today are destabilizing these particular bundlings and bringing to the
fore the fact itself of that bundling and its peculiarity. Through their
destabilizing effects, these dynamics are producing operational and rhetorical
openings for the emergence of new types of political subjects and new
spatialities for politics. (p.80)
Unbundling the neatly packaged units not only of citizen, rights and
state, but also of the various bits that hold this together in terms of social
languages for governing and ordering everyday life, also calls attention to
the ways in which these bits and pieces become partially put together.
Latour (2005) refers to this as assembling, and Sassen – when discussing
new cross-border systems – as assemblages: ‘These cross-border systems
amount to particularized assemblages of bits of territory, authority and
rights that used to be part of more diffuse institutional domains within
the nation-state or, at times the supranational system’ (Sassen and
Wennerhag, 2006, p. 8). Transferring these observations to the spaces and
places where different social languages may come together provides a
key to the everyday of social activity as reflected in what each person
was doing, thinking, performing or involved in, yesterday, today and
tomorrow. This is no longer the neatly nested and hierarchical whole
reflected in many public administration texts that may discuss different
kinds of service but assume that this happens in the same language. Nor
is it a space of totally fragmented and disconnected anomie, to remember
Durkheim. It is the flat social (Latour, 1996), where a variety of partially
linked bits and pieces come together side by side. After all the president
or prime minister may be in the capital city, but that is not somewhere up
in the sky floating around like a space station looking out on public
affairs; indeed, often, many other millions of people are also living there.
PUBLIC ACTION LANGUAGES AND THE

NEGOTIATION OF POSSIBILITIES
The proposal developed throughout the previous chapters is that public
action as a fairly straightforward expression provides a practical way of
approaching this dispersed, heterogeneous, connected and disconnected
terrain. It may not be the most elegant of concepts, but it recognizes that
there will be conflict and that different bits and pieces are not neatly
nested inside each other nor can they be isolated to form discrete
bundles. It is a reference to areas of superposition, areas of independence
and also hybrid connections. It can be called public affairs, in that it is
‘of’ the people and ‘concerns’ the people but, as has been pointed out,
concerns and people(s) may at times be stable, are more usually dynamic
but can change radically.
Modern liberal democracies may be more or less social and may have
arrangements for issue-based plebiscites that are more or less direct in
form. But for most of the time, the formal institutional relationship
between people and government is through some form of representation.
People may choose their representatives in a variety of ways or decide
not to choose. What the public action approach suggests is that while this
is an important part of the way in which public affairs are conducted, it is
only a part. There are many other ways in which the public takes part in
defining issues and deciding on actions, alongside and with governments.
Moreover, there is an equally large, if not larger, arena in which can be
found themes being talked into becoming public issues; themes which are
public but are not on government agendas and are subject to pressure and
protest and those which public(s) take(s) care of by themselves. To return
to Thoenig (2005): ‘As a first approximation one can characterize public
action as the way in which a society builds and qualifies collective
problems, elaborates replies, contents and processes to deal with them.
The emphasis is placed on the wider society and no longer on the single
institutional sphere of the state’ (p.300).
While different authors place emphasis on different parts of assuming,
being and doing public affairs, the idea of the public as active for, in and
of itself is always present. For example, the concern of Dreze and Sen
was with questions of famine and hunger, where:
The collaboration of the public is an indispensable ingredient of public health
campaigns, literacy drives, land reforms, famine relief operations, and other
endeavours that call for cooperative efforts for their successful completion.
On the other hand for the initiation of these endeavours and for the
government to act appropriately, adversarial pressures from the public
demanding such action can be quite crucial. (Dreze and Sen, 1989, p. 259)
Other authors have focused on the way that alternative economies and
solidarity movements have sprung up to create new kinds of non-market
relations, social banks and cooperatives (França Filho et al., 2006). In the
development studies area, questions about the possibilities of democratic
governance have helped to make visible many different experiences that
are embedded within the specificities of places, with their own political
history and socio-cultural logic. In an eight-country study of different
cases of local democratic governance and poverty reduction (Spink et al.,
2009) it was possible to focus on another part of this vast arena of
possibilities, that of the way that those involved created and negotiated
relationships that involved co-production and co-governance in often
hybrid formats. The results are always imperfect with ‘messy storylines
that never quite reach resolution; of actors that fail to fit the tidy
categories required of development policy analysis; of ambiguous polit-
ical position’ (Hossain, 2009, p. 87).
What is important in all the uses of public action is the common thread
of action and public service not only through different kinds of public
institutions but, more broadly, as all activities that are being articulated in
the public sphere and being carried out in reference to a common good.
Moving away from a governing-centred perspective does not imply that
government is weakening in any way, or that these are the new times of
third-party contracts and a shrinking state, about steering rather than
rowing. On the contrary, none of the authors involved with public action
has any doubt that government agencies and public services are part and
parcel of the everyday. It is rather, as Thoenig put it so well, ‘the
empirical recognition that the public powers do not have the monopoly
on political life nor the work of public affairs, their treatment and
management’ (1997, p. 22).
Public action is a concept that may have emerged in French sociology,
especially amongst those concerned with the actions of different organ-
izations and the different levels and forms of relationship of a state that is
both centralized and decentralized but with very important territorially-
based arrangements. But it is not a school of thought nor a theory. Ideas
always emerge from somewhere and move around, as the various
chapters and examples in the book have shown. If this hadn’t happened,
the Northern European countries would still be presenting their accounts
in Roman numerals, and only politicians in the USA and the UK would
be making a fuss about policies. Delvaux, in a literature review for a
European research programme in knowledge and policy in education and
health, was to point out that, while in 2007 the use of public action was
largely limited to the French-speaking world, ‘the events contributing to
its formation are not limited to one country, but rather are the result of a
wider process which first emerged in English language literature’ (2007,

p. 63). Here the reference is to the implications of implementation
studies, of policy networks, of actor-centred analysis and a more
bottom-up type of approach.
Ideas, fortunately, move backwards and forwards. The result, as has
been shown over the various chapters, is a move away from an oversim-
plified linear and hierarchical model of what governments may or may
not do, towards an approach that is more horizontal, with a variety of
actors who are ‘public’ for a variety of reasons. In this sense, as Delvaux
argues:
Its supporters advocate moving beyond the traditional tools of political
science and applying concepts and theories taken primarily from sociology,
but in their work they make use of all sorts of concepts and theories.
Effectively, they all want to move away from an over-simplified model, but
have not been able to – or have not wanted to – agree on a standard
conceptual framework. (2007, p. 61)
Public action and public action languages, the book has argued, are an
approach: a way of looking at, trying to get closer to and addressing the
field of public affairs. There are those who might use the expression
public action on a tighter rein, where government or the state is more
present, and those who work with looser reins and work with the many
different ways of relating the governmental public with the various other
publics. There are also those, like the author, who conclude that there is
no point in reins because heterogeneity is precisely that: there are
connections and disconnections, cooperation and conflict, some social
languages form part of each other and others remain quite independent.
Power is often very unequal and at times indeed the issue is about this
inequality.
There is a role for policy and for governance, but also for the other
social languages that are around on all sides of the street, the rivers and
the fields. There will be disciplinary differences, but there are also
differences in the types of settings in which people are working and
talking as activists, advisors, practitioners, public(s), researchers and
service providers of all types. In their study of scientists’ discourses,
Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) would say: ‘The ability of social actors to
characterize a given set of activities in various different, and sometimes
apparently incompatible, ways becomes understandable if we accept that
social activities are the repositories of multiple meanings’ (p.7). Some-
times these settings will be relatively harmonious and the different
languages present will connect, but at times it will be as if, following
Williams’ comment at the beginning of his study of key words, ‘they just
don’t speak the same language’ (2015, p.xxiii). Sometimes this will lead
to a breakdown in discussion and the unfortunate failure of hybrid
relations can also lead to disasters.18
Finally, there are also the times in which other elements are present,
including the different spoken languages and mother tongues. Many
countries in which social languages used to take place in a single
‘national’ language, albeit with their dialects, are now recognizing the
many other spoken languages that are present amongst established
majorities, minorities and newly arriving migrant groups. All of which,
like any spoken language, are key performers of culture and everyday life
and have put a new turn on the notion of diversity.19 In all these cases,
the public action languages approach provides a stimulus to look for and
recognize the multiplicity of what is taking place. It takes heterogeneity
as a starting point and doesn’t assume that all these different bits and
pieces are neatly held together by some common performative notion. It
does not pretend that this is easy but does suggest that it forms a different
basis on which to take on the challenge of building links between
repertoires – of negotiating possibilities.
NOTES
1. Sommer (1990).
2. M.J.P Spink (2017).
3. Holston (2009).
4. SMADS (2013).
5. Another social action language, Beer (1975).
6. Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2000), see also Scott (1998), Seeing like a State.
7. Guasch (1998), Martinez and Santibañez (2015), Iñiguez-Rueda and de Oliveira (2017).
8. UN – Sustainable Development Goals, accessed on 6 September 2018 at https://www.un.
org/sustainabledevelopment/
9. UN – Sustainable Development Goals, accessed on 6 September 2018 at https://www.un.
org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/
10. UNISDR, accessed 11 September 2018 at https://www.unisdr.org/files/43291_sendai
frameworkfordrren.pdf
11. Report of the open-ended inter-governmental expert working group on indicators and
terminology relating to disaster risk reduction. United Nations General Assembly A/71/
644 1 December 2016.
12. UK Government (2018).
13. Bache and Reardon (2016).
14. See Frederickson (2005) for a discussion of governance in relation to public adminis-
tration.
15. Goodin et al. (2006, p. 12).
16. Sundaram and Chowdhury (2012).
17. Dispositif has often been translated as an apparatus, similar to a device, but in the Latin
languages dispositivo is used. The major study is by Giorgio Agambem (2006) in Che
cos’è un dispositivo?
18. See the study by Herndl et al. (1991) on the accident at Three Mile Island and the Shuttle
Challenger Disaster.
19. See the study on healthcare access and superdiversity by Phillimore et al. (2018).
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Index
Abrams, Philip 195 authoritative instrumentalism 22, 23,
accounting 88–9 171
accounts 16, 20, 22–3, 29, 44, 79,
87–9, 124, 134, 148, 182, 194, Bache, Ian 57, 200
198 Bagehot, Walter 15
actantes 32, 56 Bakhtin, Mikhail 7, 64–5, 130
action languages 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 25, Bank of England 192
27–9, 31, 33, 35, 40, 47, 55, 56, Barnardo, T.J. 49–50, 185
57, 67, 72, 78, 80, 87, 90, 92, Barrett, Susan 117–18
104, 105, 107–8, 115, 142, 145, Basedow, Johann 48
147, 151, 159, 161, 163–4, 172, Battle of Solferino 51
180, 187, 195, 197–200 Belgium 88, 142
action publique 10 Bendix, Reinhard 82, 90
actor network 78 Benedict XV 51
advocacy coalition 77 Berger, Peter L. 71
advocate(s) 32, 199 Bevan, Aneurin 96
Agambem, Giorgio 83, 200 Beveridge Report 27, 86, 95–8, 114
The Age of Rights 144 Billis, David 57
Albigensian Crusade 59 Blockson, Charles, L. 38
Alinsky, Saul D. 155–6, 159 Bobbio, Norberto 144, 146
Alliance for Progress (1961) 128 Bolivia 36
Allied Control Council 11 Bolivian Revolution 36
Almond, Gabriel A. 53–5 Bouckaert, Geert 123, 125, 131, 133
Amalric, Abbot Arnaud 60 Bourdieu, Pierre 77, 79
anglophone 67, 75 Brandião, Hugo, J. 137
Brazil 3, 26–7, 35–7, 56, 74, 83, 90,
Anglo-Saxon 153
92, 120, 126, 133–40, 147, 151,
anthropology 72
155, 165–7, 172, 174, 186
Appleby, Paul H. 101 Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association
Arato, Andrew 56, 170 for AIDS (ABIA) 139
Argentina 37, 126, 173 Brazilian School of Public
assemblage 196 Administration (EBAP) 136
assembling 110, 196 Bretton woods 126
Association for Public Policy Analysis British 11, 12, 14, 16–17, 21, 31, 39,
and Management 120 54, 75, 80, 83, 87, 95, 97, 117
Attlee 86, 95–9 British Civil Service 110
post-war government 86 British Colonial Policy 17
Austin, John L. 68–9 British Housing and Town Planning
Australia 125, 154 Act 90
227
Columns Design XML Ltd / Job: Spink-Beyond_Public_Policy / Division: Index /Pg. Position: 1 / Date: 10/4
British Parliament 86 citizen(ship) 4, 10–11, 24, 32, 43,

British Psychological Society 21 54–6, 60–61, 72–3, 82, 90–91,
British Zone WWII 11, 12 98, 101, 103, 130, 143, 147, 149,
Brownlow Committee (Report 1937) 150–52, 154, 158, 164, 166–7,
81, 86–7, 90 180–82, 194, 196
Brownlow, Louis 85, 113 Citizen Organising Foundation 158
budget(s)(ing) 2–4, 7, 9, 27, 52, 66, civic(s) 10, 20, 25, 27, 28, 33, 43–4,
70, 72, 75, 84, 86–92, 99, 105–6, 99, 106, 150–53, 157, 159, 169,
108–9, 112, 122, 124–5, 127–9, 170, 173
133, 136, 141, 146–7, 152, action 152, 169
arena 25
164–6, 174, 178–9, 182, 187–8,
collective 150–51
bureaucratic authoritarianism 128
culture 53–5
Burke, Peter 15, 29, 39, 82 driven change 152
Bussolini, Jeffrey 83 engagement 27, 53–6
Butler, Judith 72 Civil Code 67, 88, 126
civil disobedience 27, 149–54, 169
Caiden, Gerald E. 126, 129, 133 civil parishes 44
Callon, Michel 169 civil rights 42–3, 102–3, 143, 178
Calvert, Peter 128 Civil Rights Act of 1964 103
Calvert, Susan 128 Civil Service Department (CSD) 111
Cambridge History of British Foreign civil society 9, 10, 25, 26, 33, 41–8,
Policy 17 54–5, 63, 82, 92, 132, 140,
Cambridge University Library 17 150–52, 159, 162, 172
Campos, Luiz C. 141 Clarke, John 152
Canada 32, 125, 154 classification(s) 70–73
CAPES 134–5 clients 72, 130, 133, 166, 175
Carlos III 36 Cnaan, Ram 46–7, 57
Carpenter, Mary 50 co-governance 198
case studies 27, 29 Cohen, Jean L. 56, 170
category-mistake 83 Cold War 143
Cathars 59, 108 Colebatch, Hal K. 22, 171
Catholic Church 44, 50, 138, 158, collective vocabularies 69
168, 175 collectives 7, 151
Catlaw, Thomas J. 83 collectivist organizations 40
Central Banks 126–30, 132 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
centrality 4–5, 21, 28, 60, 171 13, 116, 121–2, 142
Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) Common Law 67
111 communicative action 69
Centre for Public Administration and communicative rationality 154
Government 138 communities of discourse 124
charities 47–52 community-based action 25, 173
Charlton, James I. 163 community organization 27, 157
Charter of the Forest 1–2 complexity(ies) 3, 56, 64, 71, 77, 96,
Chicago Sun-Times newspaper 155 113, 172, 177, 183, 192
Christianity and Social Service in The Condition of the Working Class in
Modern Britain 99 England (Engels) 147
Church of England 45, 50, 57 congregation(s) 43–7, 57, 155–8
Index 229
Congress of Westphalia 61 dignity 9, 41, 144–50, 159, 170

consumers 13, 72, 76, 102, 130, 190 Dikeç, Mustafa 161
controversy(ies) 103, 149–55, 162, diplomacy 4, 17, 26, 60–61, 64, 87
169, 178 diplomats 37, 73, 80, 127, 131, 142
Cooke, Alistair 81, 83 directives 4, 11–13, 68, 99, 116,
cooperative(s) 26, 39–40, 64, 94, 195, 176–7, 179, 182, 185, 187–8
197–8 disability rights 163
COPS (Communities Organized for discourse 10, 55, 64–5, 73, 116, 124,
Public Service) 157–8 194, 199
Coram, Thomas 48 discourse analysis 7, 29
Cortes, Ernesto Jr 156, 157 discursive democracy 55
Council of Clermont (1095) 58–9 discursive genres 130
‘Cours de Comptes’ 88 discursive practices 7, 65
critical policy studies 115 dispositive (dispositif) 83, 194–5, 200
The Crowd (Le Bon) 161 Dorsey, Ellen 143, 147
crowd psychology 160 double entry book keeping 89
Croxton, Derek 60–61 Dreze, Jean 10, 197
crusade(s) 26, 43, 57, 58–9, 88 Drury, John 161
Curtis Report 49 Dryzek, John S. 123, 162, 164
customers 73, 130 Dunant, Jean Henri 51
Customs in Common (Thompson) 159
Earl of Chatham 14
Dagnino, Evelina 151 Economic Commission for Latin
Dahrendorf, Ralf 47 America and the Caribbean
Dallek, Robert 102–3 (ECLAC) 127
decision(s) 4, 5, 11, 18, 20–23, 27, Economic Opportunity Act (1964) 108
32, 40, 45, 66–8, 72, 83, 90, 92, Edwards, George C (III) 23
101, 103, 105–6, 109–12, 116, efficiency 9, 76, 84, 86–7, 90, 127,
118–19, 124, 136, 147, 156, 129–30
161–2, 164, 169, 177, 179–80, Ehrenberg, John 54
184, 188–91, 194 Elazar, Daniel 57
decision process 20, 112, 124 Elementary and Secondary Education
Decline of Redemptive Truth and the Act (1965) 107
Rise of a Literary Culture 79 enactment 7, 72, 191
Delvaux, Bernard 198–9 Engels, Friedrich 147
Democracy on the March Lilienthal The English Constitution 15
94 English Press 161
democratic 4, 26–7, 45, 53, 57, 70, Enlightenment 47, 92, 151
76, 85–92, 94, 102, 131, 133, An Essay on the History of Civil
137–8, 142, 147, 157, 164–5, Society (Ferguson) 47
178, 198 ethnomethodology 69
Department of Housing and Urban European Economic Community
Development (HUD) 47, 104 (EEC) 121
Desmond, Matthew 178, 182 European Union (EU) 11, 116, 121,
development planning 91, 127 142
Dewey, John 32–4, 38, 122, 152–3 evaluation 20, 105, 107–9, 116–17,
dialogical 73 129, 132
Expert Group Meeting (1979) 185 Germany 11–12, 48, 90, 121, 125,
128, 154
faith based organizations 9, 46–7, 177 Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV)
Federal Housing and Community 134, 138, 166
Development Act (1974) 157 Giddens, Anthony 70
Ferguson, Adam 9, 47–8 Gilbert, Nigel G. 30, 73, 83, 199
Fibonacci 88–9 Glennerster, Howard 97
field theory 77 Glickman, Norman 102
Finland 125 Gorham, W. 105
First World War 13, 51 Goodin, Robert E. 164
Fischer, Frank 76 Goodnow, Frank J. 16
flat social 79, 178, 179, 196 governability 118
Fleck, Ludvik 7, 71 governance 5, 22–4, 28, 45, 66, 70,
Ford Foundation 41, 109, 138, 141, 91, 99, 133, 164–5, 168, 171,
166 188, 192–5, 198–9
foreign policy 15, 17, 95, 98, 102–3, governing 2–6, 11, 22, 24, 25, 28, 96,
105, 122 102, 115, 118, 157, 171, 188,
Forester, John 76 192, 194–6, 198
Foucault, Michel 83, 194–5 government(s) 2–6, 8–9, 11–12,
foundling hospital 48 14–16, 18–20, 22–8, 31–4, 36,
France 3, 16, 29, 39, 44, 48, 59–61, 38, 42–8, 52–3, 55–6, 62, 66–7,
64, 66, 72, 88, 93, 111, 120, 71, 80–1, 84–90, 92–5, 97–112,
125–6, 128, 142, 160 115, 117–26, 128–43, 150–53,
Francis, Kimberly 109 155–7, 159, 162–3, 167–8,
Frederickson, H. George 83, 130, 147 171–2, 174–5, 178–81, 184,
freedom 8, 12, 38, 42, 97, 99, 102, 189–93, 195, 197–9, 200
144, 146, 178 governmentality 23
Freire, Paulo 155 governor(s) 12, 49, 138–9, 192–3
French Civil Code 67, 126 Graham, Billy 59
French Colonial Policy 17 Gramsci, Antonio 54, 151
French Revolution 161 Great Depression 85, 93
Friedmann, John 55, 92, 181 Great Society 105–6
Friedrich, Carl J. 100 Guarani 36, 37
Friend, John 180–81 Gulick, Luther 85
friendly societies 40 Gutmann, Amy 146
Frumkin, Peter 109
Fudge, Colin 117–18 Habermas, Jürgen 56, 69, 82, 154
Fuller, Steve W. 30, 71, 142 Hacking, Ian 32, 72, 78
Fulton Report 27, 110–11, 114 Hale, Dennis 24
Fung, Archon 164–5 Hall, David D. 44
Halpern, Charlotte 120, 125
Garfinkel, Harold 69 Hammond, J.L. Le Breton 17
Geneva Conventions 51, 185 Handel, George Friedrich 49
Geneva Declaration of the Rights of Hans, Nicholas 17
the Child 52, 186 Hanseatic League 26, 61–2
Genro, Tarso 166 Harris, Joseph P. 85
George V 80 Haussmann, Baron 91
Index 231
Heclo, Hugh 153 international associations 26

heterogeneous social languages 25 International Committee of the Red
Highlander Folk School 155 Cross/Red Crescent 51, 53 185
Hirschman, Albert O. 10, 170 International Covenant on Civil and
history 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, 17, 22, 24, 26, Political Rights 143
28, 35–6, 45, 48, 54, 57, 62–3, International Covenant on Economic
74, 84, 87, 96–7, 113, 119, 126, Social and Cultural Rights 143
136, 142, 177, 185, 191–2, 198 International Political Science
history of concepts 62 Association (IPSA) 24
History of the Policy of the Church of International Working Men’s
Rome in Ireland (Phelan) 17 Association 39
History of Russian Educational Policy interpretive repertoires 7, 73–6
(Hans) 17 issue networks 153
HIV/AIDS 27, 134, 138–42 issues 4, 6, 9, 13, 15, 17, 19–21,
Hogarth, William 49 24–6, 32, 34, 38, 42–4, 50, 53,
Holquist, Michael 64 56, 57, 72, 74, 95, 99, 102, 104,
Holy Innocents’ Day 51 109, 114, 125, 135, 139–40, 149,
Holy Land 58–9 153–4, 156–9, 161–2, 165, 171,
Holy See 145 175–7, 179, 181–3, 189, 192,
Horton, Myles 155 197
House of Commons 15 Italy 61, 66, 89–90, 142
housing 5, 12, 13, 31, 102, 108,
147–8, 158, 174, 177, 183–4, Jackson, Mahalia 42
190 jargon(ing) 9, 21, 74, 190
Housing and Town Planning Act Jebb, Eglantyne 51, 186
(1909) 90 Jefferson, Thomas 59, 82, 96
How to Do Things with Words 68 Jesuit missions 26, 37
Human Rights Commission 145 Johnson Administration 27, 56, 86,
hybrid 25, 47, 57, 188, 197–8, 200 102
arenas 28 Johnson, Lyndon B. 102–8, 156
forums 166–70, 193 La Jornada 163
I, Daniel Blake (film) 172 Kemmerer, Edwin Walter 126, 132

implementation 13, 23–4, 27, 55, 92, Kennedy, John F. 42, 103, 105
97, 100, 107, 109, 116–19, 129, Keynes, John Maynard 51, 93
169, 179–82, 187, 189 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture
Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Society (Williams) 69
154–7, 170 King, Luther Jr 41, 43, 57
Inspection Générale de Finances 88 Kipling, Rudyard 81
Institute of Social Studies 152 Knowles, Chris 11–13
institutional vulnerability 28, 181, Koselleck, Reinhart 62–3
182 Kötz, Hein 66
institutionalization 63, 70, 129 Kynaston, David 96
Inter-American Development Bank
(BID) 103 Laborier, Pascal 10
interest groups 23, 130 Labour Government (1945) 27
interfaith 6, 43, 154, 156, 158, 162 Labour Party 95
language(s) Luckmann, Thomas 71

action 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 25, 27–9,
31, 33, 35, 40, 47, 55–7, 67, Macy, John 105
72, 78, 80, 87, 90, 92, 104, magic concepts 73
105, 107–8, 115, 142, 145, Magna Carta 1–2
147, 151, 159, 161, 163–4, Mahatma Gandhi (Father of Modern
172, 180, 187, 195, 197–200 India) 149
heterogeneous social 25 Majone, Giandomenico 117
social action 4, 13, 25, 33, 57, 72, managerialization 189
95, 159, 161, 180, 195 Mandela, Nelson 8
Lasswell, Harold D. 18–20, 99, 120
Maritain, Jacques 145
Latin 37, 55, 59, 61–2, 64, 87, 89,
The Marquis of Pombal 91
163, 185, 200
Latin America 26–7, 29, 44, 67, 106, Marres, Noortje 152, 153
113, 120, 126–34, 158 Marshall, Thomas H. 143
Latin American Centre for Marston, Sallie A. 179
Administrative Development Mason, Edward S. 100
(CLAD) 128, 132–3 materia(lity) (ies) 3, 14, 17–18, 26,
Latour, Bruno 32, 77–9, 179–80, 196 28–9, 32, 39–40, 52, 59, 62, 65,
law 4–5, 23–4, 32, 40, 44, 66–7, 70, 77–8, 95, 101, 117, 120, 153,
76–8, 81, 83, 102, 113, 118–19, 172–3, 175, 178, 180–82, 192–3,
125–7, 129, 137, 146, 150, 152, 195
161, 163, 165, 176–8, 188, 194 matrix 32
Law, John 78 McKeon, Richard 145–6
Le Bon, Gustave 160 McLaughlin, Hugh 83, 130
Lectures on History and General Medeiros, Antonio C. de 137
Policy (Priestley) 17 medieval 2, 26, 54, 55, 61, 76
legal families 66, 74 Merkel, Wolfgang 178
Legislative History of America’s Merriam, Charles E. 85
Economic Policy towards the Messiah 49
Philippines (Reyes) 17 Mexico 128, 163
Leonardo da Pisa see Fibonacci military developmentalism 128
Lerner, Daniel 99
mini publics 164, 170
Letter from America 81
mission 37, 109, 125, 187
liberation theology 44, 138, 158, 175
lifeworld 152 mobilization 27, 33, 139–40, 175
Lilienthal, David 94–5 Mol, Annemarie 78
Lincoln Memorial 42 moral arena 151
Lindblom, Charles E. 92, 112, 124 moral assumptions 3
linguistic turn 7 moral community 41
Lipsky, Michael 57, 57, 130 ‘Moral Economy’ 160
livelihood 52, 172, 177, 181–2, 184, moral high ground 52, 59
187 moral universe 150
Loach, Ken 172, 178 Mosher, Frederick C. 76
London Citizens 43, 158 muddling through 124
London Docks 75 Mulkay, Michael 30, 73, 83, 199
London Living Wage 159 municipal(ities) 35–6, 44–5, 56, 89,
London School of Economics 99, 118 137–8, 140, 166–8, 173–6, 183
Index 233
Municipal Secretary for Social Northcote–Trevelyan Report (1854)

Assistance and Development 86, 110
(SMADS) 175 notion of rights 143
Murrow, Edward R. 82 Nucleus for Public Policy (NEPP) 135
Myrdal, Gunnar 107 Nunca Mas Sin Nosotros (Never again
without us) 163
Napoleon 67, 88
Nash, E. Gee 188, 190 O’Donnell, Guillermo 128
Nash, Walter 74–6 Offe, Claus 193–4
National Aeronautics and Space Office of Economic Opportunity 104
Administration (NASA) 75 Office of Research Plans, Programs
National AIDS Commission and Evaluation (ORPPE) 109
(CNAIDS) 141 Old World 60
National Education Plan 176 operational decision 18
National Health Service (NHS) 85, Organization for Economic
96–100 Cooperation and development
National Health Service Act of (OECD) 27, 123, 129, 133
1946 96 orphanage(s) 26, 39, 47–53
National Planning Policy Framework Orren, Karen 22
5, 190 Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz)
National Public Health School 139 139
National School of Administration Oxford English Dictionary on
(ENA) 125 Historical Principles (OED) 59
naturalize(ation) 76, 151–2 Oxford Handbook of Public Policy
negotiating possibilities 28, 172, 180, 119
200
Nelson, Paul 143, 147 Pacioli, Luca 89
Netherlands 120, 121, 125, 182 package phrases 75
networks 6, 16, 21, 23, 37, 48, 51, 55, Paine, Thomas 151
74, 77–9, 82, 83, 153, 168, 175, Pallares-Burke, Maria Lúcia 15
181, 189, 193, 194, 199 Paraguay 37, 173
Paris Commune 26, 38, 160
New Deal 44, 86, 93
parish(es) 6, 9, 12, 26, 41–7, 50–51,
New International Dictionary of the
91
English Language 18 parish council 12, 57
New Public Management 66, 123, 133 parish hall(s) 9
A New Public Management for Latin participative budgeting 27, 90
America 133 Particulars of Reckonings and
New Society 31 Writings 89
New World 35, 48, 56, 60, 91 patients 73, 96–7, 130
New Zealand 125 Patterson, Annabel 69, 83
Newbold, Stephanie P. 84 performance (measurement) 124
NGOs (non-governmental performatic(s) 80–81
organizations) 52, 71, 103, 132, performative(s) 4, 6–8, 24, 26, 67–9,
138–41, 155, 167–8, 185 72, 75, 77, 80, 86, 88, 112,
non-profit 41, 44, 52, 109 129–30, 137, 146, 151, 161
North, Douglass C. 132 performative turn 70
The Peripheral Cultural Movement social 9, 17, 27, 97–9, 102, 113,
151 122, 136, 137, 177, 183
persona 81 space 180–81
Phelan, William 17 state 22
philanthropy 26, 41, 48, 57 talk 100
philantropines 48 UK National Planning Policy 5, 190
Philippines 17, 127 Policy and Administration (Appleby)
pilgrimage 58–9 101
place 4, 7–9, 11–13, 17–18, 21–4, 27, Policy Planning Staff 106
29, 34–7, 39, 43–4, 46–9, 51, 54, Policy Schools 109
The Policy Sciences 18, 19, 60, 76,
57–67, 70, 72, 73, 75–7, 79, 81,
109, 189, 191
83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 91–2,
Policy State 22
100–104, 108–9, 111–12, Politics and Administration
116–17, 120, 124–5, 128, 131–4, (Goodnow)
138–41, 145–9, 153, 155, 158, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How
160, 164, 167–9, 171, 175, (Lasswell) 18
179–80, 182, 189–91, 194–8, Pollitt, Christopher 123, 125, 131, 133
200 polysemic 119, 123
plan(s) 5, 9, 16, 66–8, 72, 78, 90–91, Pope Paul III 144
93–5, 97–9, 105, 110, 126, 141, Pope Urban II 58
147, 152, 165, 174, 176–7, 179, Portugal 67, 83, 91, 116, 142
182, 187–90 POSDCORB 86, 127, 191
planning 4–5, 7, 18, 20, 27, 55, 62, post-empiricism 7
76, 84, 86–7, 89–95, 99, 105–12, postmodernism 7
113, 116, 127–9, 136–7, 164–5, PPBS (Planning, Programing and
178, 182–3, 187–8, 190–91 Budgeting Systems) 89, 105,
planning policy 5, 190 108, 112, 114, 136, 137
Planning Units 111 Pressman, Jeffrey L. 97, 116–17, 129
policy pressure groups 6, 21, 32
advisors 3, 7, 27, 112, 115, 189 Priestley, Joseph 17
analysis 22, 24, 76, 77, 92, 112, Prochaska, Frank 50, 99
119–20, 123, 125, 136, 189, professional state 76
198 professions 26, 28, 73, 77, 189
community(ies) 77 program(me)(s) 24, 84–6, 93, 103–4,
documents 3, 7, 52, 98, 119 106–9, 112, 122, 128–9, 133,
domestic 95, 98, 102, 105, 106, 108 138–41, 153, 156, 166–7,
economic 17, 93, 95, 122, 131, 136 179–80, 183, 188, 198
foreign 17, 95, 102, 103, 105, 122 Programme Analysis Review 112
health 98 protests 6, 8–9, 27, 33, 43, 51, 60,
planning 5, 187, 190 160, 149, 151, 158, 160–61, 179,
policy-making 19, 20, 101, 111, 188, 195, 197
113 public action 6–11, 25–6, 28–9, 35,
public 2–13, 17–18, 21, 23–4, 38, 47, 67, 75, 77–8, 87, 92, 96,
27–9, 46, 57, 72, 100, 102–9, 115, 147, 151, 162–4, 172, 188,
115–20, 129, 134–8, 143, 166, 192, 197–200
172, 177, 184–8, 192 public action languages 171–200
science(s) 13–20, 109, 112, 189 challenge for policy 188–92
Index 235
and governance 192–6 ‘Resistance to Civil Government’ 149

negotiation of possibilities 197–200 Reveille for Radicals 155
overview 171–2 Revista de Administração Pública 135
public policy survival 184–8 Reyes, J. S. 17
and state 176–7 rhetoric(al) structure 5, 15, 42, 81, 96,
street and flat social 178–84 132, 160, 194, 196
and urban vulnerability 172–6 Richter, Melvin 63
public administration 4, 24, 28, 35, The Right to the City: Bridging the
66, 76–7, 84, 86, 90, 100, 105, Urban Divide 147–8
113, 119, 121, 123, 126–8, 130, rights
132, 136–8, 147, 167, 196, 200 age of 144–9
public affairs 2–3, 6–7, 9–11, 13, civil 42–3, 102–3, 143, 178
22–3, 25–9, 31, 35, 37–8, 40, 45, controversies/issues/struggles
48, 57, 59, 70, 73–4, 80, 85–6, 149–54
91–2, 107, 109, 123–4, 152–3, cooperation, alliances and hybrid
159, 172, 179, 186, 192–3, forums 166–70
196–9 overview 143
public domain documents 29 political 143
The Public and its Problems (Dewey) social 99, 143
33 Rights of the child (1924) 47–53, 186
public health 31, 138–40, 197 Rio de Janeiro State University
Public Management and Citizenship (UERJ) 139
Program 138, 166 risk 12, 14, 91, 98, 153, 175, 184,
public management reform 123–4, 186–8, 200
128 Robertson, Brian 12
public planning 27, 92, 109 Rochdale 40, 64
public policy 2–13, 17–18, 21, 23–4, cooperative store 26
27–9, 46, 57, 72, 100, 102–9, Rome(an) 27, 37, 51, 60, 113, 121
115–20, 129, 134–8, 143, 166, Roosevelt (Administration) 17, 26, 44,
172, 177, 184–8, 192 81–2, 84–6, 93, 95, 99–101, 105,
Putnam, Robert D. 53 113, 145, 170
Roosevelt, Eleanor 84–5, 93, 144
quilombo(s) 35–6 Rorty, Richard 7, 79, 83
Rosanvallon, Pierre 9, 10, 25
Reardon, Louise 57, 200 Rosenbloom, David 84
ragged school movement 49 Rothschild-Witt, Joyce 40–41
reform 17, 27, 32, 45, 102, 123–33, Rothwell, Charles E. 18–20
136–40, 158, 165, 197 Rules for Radicals (Alinsky) 155, 159
refugee(s) 12, 32–3, 78 Ryle, Gilbert 83, 123
women 32
Reicher, Stephen D. 161 San Antonio Community
relational materiality 78 Development Block Grant 157
Renaissance 26 São Paulo State AIDS Program 139
repertories 28 Sassen, Saskia 196
representation 3, 6, 8, 36, 45, 156, Saussure, Ferdinand de 79
162, 164, 197 Save the Children Fund 51
resistance 9, 14, 26, 37–40, 137, 149 Schlesinger, Robert 103
Schmidt, Vivien A. 83 social science 5–6, 28, 31, 62, 65, 85,
school district 45–6 164
Schulkind, Eugene 39 social scientist(s) 3, 18, 46, 54, 57
Schultze, Charles 108 Social Security and Social Policy 98
Science of Muddling Through Social Security Bill of 1935 17
(Lindblom) 92 society 2, 4, 6–7, 9–10, 14, 19–22,
Sea Change 75–6, 121 25–6, 31, 33, 38, 40–48, 50–1,
Searle, John 71 54–5, 63, 65, 69–70, 81, 82, 83,
Second World War 11, 17, 53, 81, 85 87, 91–2, 94, 103–6, 118, 125,
Sharkansky, Ira 23 132, 134, 140, 150–52, 156, 159,
self-building 174 161–2, 171–2, 177–9, 185–6,
Selznick, Philip 70, 113 189, 191–2, 195, 197
semiotic(s) 32, 56, 78 socio-technical 8
Sen, Amartya 10, 197 ‘soft’ operations research 189
Sendai Framework 187 Spain 3, 15, 37, 52, 60, 67, 91, 120,
sensemaking 14, 51, 71, 185 142
Shaw, George Bernard 162 Spanish civil war 38
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 97 speech
Shriver, R. Sargent 106 genres 7, 62–7, 73
Skowronek, Stephen 22 making 80–81
slave(s)(ry) 26, 35–8, 42, 144, 149 writers 26, 80
Sloan Foundation 120 writing 80–82
slums 31, 42 Spink, M.J.P. 73
social(ity)(ies) 32, 62, 78, 153, 193, Spruyt, Hendrik 61
195 staff 18, 39, 43, 81, 82, 85–6, 90,
social action languages 4, 13, 25, 33, 102–3, 106, 108–9, 111–12,
57, 72, 95, 159, 161, 180, 195 127–8, 132, 139, 158, 185
social administration 118 state action 162, 181, 191
social assistance 177 State Health Secretariat 139
social capital 132, 159 state planning 92
social construction 53, 132, 159 state reform 130–33
social epistemology 71 statutory requirement 5
social language 4–9, 24–8, 35, 70–71, steering 24, 198
73, 86, 88–91, 106, 147, 152, Stillman, Richard J. II 125
154–5, 160, 162–4, 170–72, Stott, Clifford C. 161
176–7, 179–80, 182, 185, 188–9, street and flat social 178–84
191–2, 194–6, 199–200 street level workers 130
and fields 76–9 structuration 7, 70, 133
and interpretive repertoires 73–6 Sublimus Dei (1537) 56, 144
and speech genres 62–7 Sustainable Development Goals 184–5
social movements 6, 27, 44, 55, 63, Sweden 61, 88, 111, 125
92, 132, 138, 150–51, 158, 188 synagogue(s) 9, 43–4, 47
social organizations 14, 26, 32, 36, system(s) 4–5, 7, 20, 34, 53, 65–7,
139, 141, 177, 181 73, 75, 82, 84, 88–9, 98, 110,
social policy 9, 17, 27, 97–9, 102, 118, 124, 128, 133, 136–7, 140,
113, 122, 136–7, 177, 183 148, 153, 167, 175, 177, 181,
social reality 71, 180 184–6, 188, 190, 196
Index 237
Taine, Hippolyte 160–61 United Nations Conference on

TELCO (The East London Environment and Development
Communities Organisation) 158 (1992) 136
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 86, United Nations Declaration 148
93–5, 100 United Nations Disaster Relief
Territorial Base Organizations 36, 168 Coordinator (UNDRO) 185
territory 32, 36, 42, 44, 60–62, 130, United Nations Educational Scientific
168, 173, 176, 179, 182, 183, and Cultural Organization
193, 196, 198 (UNESCO) 27, 121–2, 145, 149
Texas Industrial Areas Foundation 157 United Nations High Commission for
Theodoulou, Stella Z. 23 Refugees (UNHCR) 33
Third Sector 159 United Nations Organization 52
The Third UN World Conference on United Nations Universal Declaration
Disaster Risk Reduction 187 of Human Rights 194
Third World 152 Universal Declaration of Human
Thoenig, Jean-Claude 10, 197–8 Rights (1948) 143–5, 194
Thomas Coram Foundation for urban poverty 31
Children 49 urban vulnerability 172–6
Thoreau, Henry David 149–50 Uruguay 173
thought collective(s) 7, 71 USA 3, 16–17, 20, 22, 26–7, 29, 37,
Titmuss, Richard M. 123 41, 45–6, 57, 86, 88, 90, 97,
Towards a Social Policy (Hammond) 100, 102, 106–7, 112, 117, 120,
17 125–6, 128, 136, 143, 149,
Trafalgar Square London 51 154–5, 172, 178, 182, 198
transparency 9, 66, 74, 124 USA–Mexican War 149
Treaty of Lisbon 11–13 US Department of Housing and
Treaty of Rome 27, 121 Urban Development (HUD) 57,
Treaty of Westphalia (1648) 26, 60 104
Trom, Dany 10 US General Accounting Office 127
users 41, 45, 55, 72–3, 130, 139, 190
underground railroad 37–8 utterances 7, 65–6, 68, 73, 188
UK 3, 5, 14, 16, 27, 29, 31, 44, 46,
49–50, 55, 57, 80, 85–6, 88, 95,
van Ginneken, Jap 161
97, 99–100, 104–5, 109, 112,
117–20, 125, 127–8, 142, 154, Venezuela 126
158–9, 161, 164, 172, 178, 180, Venice 48, 61, 88, 89
185, 190, 198, 200 Verba, Sidney 53–5
UK Deposit Libraries 16 Vidda, Pela 139
UK Ministry of Housing 190 Vietnam War 85
UK National Planning Policy 5, 190 voluntary action 34, 41, 129
UK Parliament 14 volunteering 41
UN HABITAT 147 voters 102, 130
UN Human Development Report 186 vulnerability 49, 177, 185–6, 192, 193
Unified Health System 136, 137, 140 institutional 28, 178, 181, 182
United Nations (UN) 27, 52, 127, material 178, 182
132, 143, 148, 184, 185, 187, social 182
193 urban 172–6
Wagenaar, Hendrik 182 Wilson, Harold 110, 112

Waldo, Dwight 76, 90 Wilson, Richard 119
War on Poverty 103, 106–8, 156 Wilson, Robert H. 157
Washington Consensus 131 Wilson, Woodrow 16
Webber, Carolyn 88, 89, 93, 113, 183 women refugees 32
Wedel, Janine E. 83 Workers’ Party 137
Weick, Karl E. 71, 185 World Bank 130, 132, 140
welfare state(s) 6, 24, 26, 31, 34, 46, World Risk Report 186
85, 99, 108, 195 World Series 74
White House Ghosts (Schlesinger) 103 World Urban Forum (2010) 147
wicked problems 113, 183
Wildavsky, Aaron 88, 89, 92, 112, Young, Iris M. 154
116–17
William Pitt the Elder 14 zero based budgeting 89
Williams, Raymond 69 Zumbi (dos Palmares) 35, 36
Williamson, John 131 Zweigert, Konrad 66

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JOBNAME: EE3 - Spink PAGE: 1 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Tue May 7 12:32:46 2019

Beyond Public Policy

NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY

Beyond Public Policy

Peter Kevin Spink

NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY

Cheltenham, UK + Northampton, MA, USA

© Peter Kevin Spink 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

A catalogue record for this book

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930814

This book is available electronically in the

ISBN 978 1 78811 874 3 (cased)

Typeset by Columns Design XML Ltd, Reading

1 Collective concerns: from policy studies to public action 1

the limits of my bibliographical ability, I have tried to be as fair as

viii Beyond public policy

Program Officer, Michael Lipsky; the Swedish International Develop-

1. Collective concerns: from policy

2 Beyond public policy

be comforting to trace the discussion of rights or budgeting (in the case

4 Beyond public policy

government and the practice of governing brings certain assumptions

Centrality might make normative sense as a device for organizing books

6 Beyond public policy

SOCIAL LANGUAGES AND PUBLIC ACTION

large extent by the debate in philosophy on language and action. In

8 Beyond public policy

stage social language comes along, is not a straightforward task. To begin

Passive resistance campaigns, boycotts and congresses are just as much a

10 Beyond public policy

come together, what allows all of their activities and discourses to be

It is not uncommon to find reference to ‘action by the public’ in

as a reference to the fact that most public services depend on public

GETTING THINGS DONE WITH OTHER WORDS – THE

12 Beyond public policy

The directives focused on rebuilding economic and political life. In

POLICY BEFORE THE POLICY SCIENCES

14 Beyond public policy

they were at least a partial cross-section of parliamentary themes and

In describing a host of different traditional customs and practices and

16 Beyond public policy

British constitution. It was certainly something that he and his fellow

assuming that giving titles to books is a social process that happens in

18 Beyond public policy

is understood today – especially when it acquired the extension ‘public

WHY ARE POLICY SCIENCES DIFFERENT?

Easton Rothwell’s description in the preface follows similar lines. He had

20 Beyond public policy

he had been the Executive Secretary to the preliminary United Nations

Both Lasswell and Rothwell were concerned with major questions of

themes to work on and made so many contributions in so many areas,

IS THERE REALLY A NEED FOR A CHANGE?

22 Beyond public policy

and Wagenaar, 2003) and also in earlier texts on argumentation and

24 Beyond public policy

The Public Policy and Administration Research Committee of the Inter-

26 Beyond public policy

28 Beyond public policy

A BRIEF NOTE ON METHODS

standpoints. From discourse analysis – as well as learning how to seek

30 Beyond public policy

2. From publics, parishes and