DPA 323 Public Policy and Program Administration

Approaches to Policy
Analysis and Models of
Policy-Making
Policy Analysis
• The knowledge of the “process by which policy
is formulated, implemented, and evaluated;
Strategies for optimization and selection of
alternatives; and distinct attributes of
policy relative to specific functional areas.”
-Douglas T. Yates Jr., The Mission of Public Policy Programme: A
Report on Recent Experience.
Approach

• A scholarly strategy or mode of analysis

which provides a set of intellectual
tools for the study and understanding of
political phenomena.
Approach
• In political inquiry, may provide for an
expeditious means of gathering, arranging,
extracting meaning from, establishing
relationships among, and evaluating data; in
its sophisticated forms. It may in itself
constitute a major body of theory or it may
take form of a simulation model.
Approach

• The main objective of an approach is to

give order to a diverse range of
political phenomena by fitting them
within a limited set of concepts.
Model

• Commonly known as a working intellectual

construct by which social or physical
situations, real or hypothetical, can be
represented.
Model
• “The mental image of the world around you which
you carry in your head is a model. One does not
have a city or a government or a country in his
head. He has only selected concepts and
relationships which he uses to represent in real
system. A mental image is a model.”
-Jay Forrester, famous policy modeler.
Policy Model
• Descriptive Model seeks to explain and or predict
the causes and outcomes of policy choices.
• Normative Model is not only to explain and or
predict but also lay down rules and
recommendations for some value optimizations.
 DPA 323 Public Policy and Program Administration

Approaches to Policy Analysis

Approaches to Policy Analysis

• Historical Approach
• Functional Approach
• Investigative-Substitutive Approach
• Innovative Approach
 Historical Approach
Public policies are formulated and implemented in a system
which has its own environment and culture. The formulators
always make the policies which in one way or the other exhibit
keenness to resolve an issue and to satisfy the increasing
demands of the public to that effect. The examination of a
policy in a historical perspective definitely amounts to
possible results or outcomes which policy will have.
 Historical Approach

The policy needs to be analyzed in historical

perspective in order to make out clearly the
possible impact and outcome of a given policy.
 Functional Approach

“When the purpose of policy are unclear and

incompatible, each successive stage in the
process of implementation provides a new
context in which further clarification is
sought.”
-Martin Rein, “Social Science and Public Policy”
 Functional Approach

On analyzing the purposes of legislation, we

normally find that the political and
ideological objectives, and the goals of
public policy, are open to many
interpretations. Ambiguity seems to be
essential for agreement.
 Investigative-Substantive Approach

The study of public policy is basically concerned

with the range of human needs and the political
institutions created to meet them. There is no agreed
and adequate definition of need, and much confusion
prevails about the distinction between need, preference
and political problems. Public policy has multiple,
conflicting and ambiguous objectives.
 Innovative Approach
Political, administrative, and economic constraints
coupled with changing social circumstances and conflicting
objectives of the policy restrain its development. It is a
fact that a policy gets formulated because of the
compromise among contending interests, purposes, and goals
to contain the contradictions and limitations and this
provides it the political acceptability.
 Innovative Approach
“When long-term treatment is the orthodox and accepted
model, the importance of short-term services needs to be re-
emphasized. When a good deal of attention is paid to
diagnosis, one should balance this by stressing concrete
services when community care and deinstitutionalization
become the accepted ideology of the helping professions, the
benefits of institutional care need to be reassessed.”
-Martin Rein
 DPA 323 Public Policy and Program Administration

Models of Policy-Making
Models of Policy-Making
• Group Theoretic Model
• Elite Theoretic Model
• Incremental Model
• Institutionalist Model
• Rational Model
• Game Theoretic Model
• Systems Theoretic Model
Group Theoretic Model

• Interaction and struggle among different

societal groups is the central facet of
political life.
Group
• A collectivity of individuals distinguished
by some common attribute or shared
relationship. A formal or organized, such as
political party or interest group, has
recognized goals and structures, affecting
group interaction. Informal group lacks such
explicit goals and organizational theory.
Group Theory
• An approach which seeks to explain political
behavior primarily through the study of the nature
and interaction of social as well as political
groups. Often associated with process and
equilibrium analysis that offer systemic
approaches to the study of group objectives, the
balancing of group interests, and the process of
adjustment.
 Group Theory

“An interest group is a shared-attitude group

that makes certain claims upon other groups in
the society and it becomes political when it
makes a claim through or upon the institution of
government.”
-David Truman, The Government Process.
 Group Theory

Aims at viewing all significant political activity

with regard to group struggle. Policy formulators
are termed as succumbing to pressures of groups
through bargaining, negotiating and compromising.
Another important dimension of the group struggle is
the maintenance of equilibrium in the system.
 Group Theory

In the ongoing process of group struggle,

public policy gets attention in favor of the
interests of those gaining influence against the
interest of those influence.
 Elite Theoretic Model

Public policy is the product of elites, reflecting

their values and serving their ends. The society is
divided into the few who have power and the many who
do not have it. Policy is not determined by the
masses. It is the ruling elite which decides public
policy and which is then carried out by the
bureaucracy.
 Elite Theory
A body of though aimed at explaining the nature and role
of those groups in the society in which decision-making power
is highly concentrated.
In all societies- from the meagerly developed having
barely attained the drawings of civilization to the most
advanced and powerful societies- two classes of people appear
– a class that rules and a class that is being ruled.
 Elite Theory
The class that rules always the less numerous, performs all
political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the
advantages that power brings. While the class that is being
ruled is directed and controlled by the former, in a manner
that is more or less legal, more or less arbitrary and violent
and supplies the former, in appearance, at least with material
means of subsistence and with the instrumentalities that are
essential to the validity of political organism.
 Elite Theory
Every society has elite competing with each other for
power which ultimately paves its way to formulate public
policy.
 Incremental Model
Associated with the name of Charles Lindblom and David
Braybrook. It draws attention to several real-life
constraints on public administration like time, cost,
information, and politics. As Lindblom points out, the
prescribed functions and constraints of the public
administrators “restrict their attention to relatively few
values and relatively few alternative policies.”
 Incremental Model
Policy making, from this viewpoint, is conceived
realistically as marginal and uncoordinated adjustments in
situations of conflicting demands and interests and in the
fear of unforeseen consequences that are likely to flow out
of actual division.
 Incremental Model
The incremental approach presents a picture of successive
limited comparisons in the background of historically evolved
chain of past decisions which, under practical circumstances,
cannot be thrown overboard. Past decisions more often than
not accepted as the basis of future choices.
 Incremental Model

“Democracies change their policies almost

entirely through incremental adjustments. Policy
does not move in leaps and bounds.”
-Charles Lindblom
 Incremental Model
“The concept of political feasibility is often closely
associated with an idea of incremental change. The theory of
disjoined incrementalism holds that, in the end, muddling and
compromise are the only rational approaches to the management of
conflicting multiple and ambiguous goals. The incrementalists
see resistance to change not as stupidity but as muffled
rationality which is the outcome of political bargaining.”
-Martin Rein, Social Science and Public Policy
 Incremental Model
“A sudden transformation of the public policy making system is not possible; neither
I am advocating one. Improving public policy making must be a continuing endeavor,
requiring sustained effort over a long period. The most harmful effect of the
incremental-change argument (which devices the possibility that significant
improvement could be made in public policy making by some innovative , jumps) is that
it paralyses efforts, and thus tends to be self-fulfilling prophecy. Granted the
difficulties exist, whit we need is an even stronger effort to overcome them. The
difficulties of the problems faced by public policy making make improvements in it
necessary, and the knowledge we are now developing makes such improvements possible;
we must therefore mobilize energy needed to carry out these difficulties.”
-Yehezkel Dror, Public Policy Reexamined.
 Institutional Model
“"The presence of an array of potent interacting institutions,
capable of checking each other elevates the need for compromise
and test the political skills of their incumbents. Institutions
with their greater and lesser positions of authority and
influence and their career ladders cause policy-makers to
emphasize considerations of advancement in both the executive
and legislative branches in disposing of policy issues".
-Louis Koeing, An Introduction to Public Policy.
 Institutional Model
Institutionalism has a deep bearing on public policies
because the policies are formulated and implemented through
various institutions of the government. Institutionalism
can be usefully put to use for policy analysis. There is a
feeling that when the institutions and public policies have
that great interrelationship then if the institutional
structure changes would the public policies also change.
 Rational Model
It is an efficiency-maximization model which postulates
calculation of policy efficiency (hence rationality) on the
basis of all social, economic and political values achieved
and or sacrificed by the adjudication of public policy. In
framing a policy, all relevant values have, therefore, to be
explicitly considered and sacrifices of some values must be
more than compensated by the attainment of some other values.
 Rational Model
"The first phase of decision-making process - searching the
environment for conditions calling for decision - I shall call
intelligence activity (borrowing the military meaning of
intelligence). The second phase - inventing, developing, and
analyzing possible courses of action - I shall call design
activity. The third phase - selecting a particular course of
action from those available - I shall call choices activity."
- Herbert Simon, The New Science of Management Decision
 Rational Model
A common criticism against the rationalist model has been
that it is unrealistic as it does not quite fit in with the
actual goings-on in administration. Still, this model has
proved attractive because of its neatness and amenability to
quantitative representation. In the present computer age,
the Simon model has inspired data and information based
decision-making which is steadily gaining the popularity.
 Game Theoretic Model
Game situations may be described as "two persons zero sum",
in which one player's gain equals the other's loss; "two
persons-non-zero sum" in which several players are involved and
the losses must equal gains; and "n-person-non-zero sum"
wherein losses and gains among several players may not be
equal. Gaming relies heavily on the use of mathematical models
of decision-making.
-Von Neumann and Morgentern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
 Game Theoretic Model
“Game theory is an abstract and educative model of policy
making. It does not describe how people actually make
decisions, but rather how they would go about making decisions
in competitive situations if they were completely rational.
Thus game theory is form of rationalizing but it is applied in
competitive situations in which the outcome depends on what two
or more participants do".
-Dye, ‘Understanding Public Policy’
 Systems Theoretic Model

“A system of action is a set of variables so

related, in contradictions to its environment, that
desirable behavioral regularities characterize the
internal relationships of the set of individual
variables to combinations of external variables.”
-Abraham Kaplan, ‘American Ethics and Public Policy’
 Systems Theoretic Model
“Environmental inputs affect the content of public policy
and the nature of political system; public policy affects
the environment and subsequently demands for action; forces
or factors in the environment act to generate demands upon
the political system; political system is able to convert
demands into public policy and preserve itself overtime".
-James Anderson, ‘Public Policy Making’
Dynamic Response Model
 Dynamic Response Model
Demands and supports from the environment flow into the
political system as inputs. Demands and claims of individuals
and groups on the political system for public action to
satisfy their interests. Support is rendered when individuals
and groups accept the decisions and actions of the political
system that are made in response to demands. Environment
stands for all those conditions and events external to the
boundaries of political system.
 Dynamic Response Model
There is a concept of feedback in this model which
indicates that public policies may later change the
environment and the demands generated therein. Policy
outputs are likely to generate demands which will lead
to further policy outputs. So, there is a never ending
flow of public policy making.
 Dynamic Response Model
This model is a highly generalized model of the
political system which has been utilized by policy
scientists for understanding the policy making process.
It does not shed light on what goes on within the “black
box” called the political system. It tells very little
about how decisions are actually taken in government.
 DPA 323 Public Policy and Program Administration

Thank you for listening!