Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

analysis has declined as a framework by being overtaken by an even more rigorous
rational model of economics. The key theoretical cornerstones of the public
management approach are private management and economics, particularly economics
of the microeconomic or public choice kind. This goes a stage further
than the rational models of policy analysis, by declaring the good to be maximized
by those involved to be economic utility, and deriving policy from there.
It is arguable whether the increased use of economics in public policy-making
is part of formal policy analysis or something separate. Given that public policy
people came from political science, it may be quite separate and belong to a
quite different intellectual history.
A faulty model of science
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A more controversial criticism, perhaps, is of the scientific basis used for policy
analysis. Of course, any exercise aiming to be scientific must have a conception
of the kind of science it aims to follow. There is reason to believe that
public policy analysis is based on a faulty, or at least old-fashioned, model of
science. It was mentioned earlier that the derivation of empirical methods from
those of political science was both a strength and a weakness. The strength was
that techniques for gathering data were well recognized, most often by sample
survey. Ways of processing data through computer software became readily
available, and what was being done under the name of policy analysis was a
slight extension of political science methods into areas of policy. However, this
also meant a reliance on the same theory of science used in political science
during the 1960s and 1970s.
A clue to the problem this engenders can be gained from the third of the scientific
skills mentioned earlier from the work of Putt and Springer (1989, p. 24).
This was ‘information-analysis skills guide the analyst in drawing conclusions
from empirical evidence’. This points to a key problem, not only in policy
analysis, but in behavioural political science from where its theories derive.
A large part of the philosophy of science in the second half of the twentieth
century was concerned with showing that data do not lead to conclusions, that
such inductive science is inherently flawed (Popper, 1965). Most social science
from the very beginnings of collection of data or sample surveys has been
expressly inductive, that is, based on the idea that from gathering masses of
information, inferences can be made. As Popper and others have argued, this
cannot be done in the natural sciences, so it follows that a social science based
on inductive processes is also gravely flawed.
Despite criticism (for example, deLeon, 1997) a major part of the success of
economic public policy in recent years is that it is expressly deductive, that is,
based on theory leading to predictions. If evidence for those predictions can be
found, it supports the theory. The theory is never proven, but can stand because