Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

Public Policy and Policy Analysis 129
they say is ‘mixed’, that is, can be used for both description and prescription.
Their model is: (i) deciding to decide (issue search or agenda-setting);
(ii) deciding how to decide; (iii) issue definition; (iv) forecasting; (v) setting
objectives and priorities; (vi) options analysis; (vii) policy implementation,
monitoring and control; (viii) evaluation and review; and, (ix) policy maintenance,
succession, or termination.
This model is atypical. While its roots may be in the rational model, it does,
to some extent, cross between the two kinds of policy set out earlier. Indeed
Hogwood and Gunn argue that their approach is concerned ‘both with
the application of techniques and with political process’ (1984, p. 6). They
argue for a ‘process-focused rather than a technique-oriented approach to policy
analysis’. Analysis is primarily about ‘determining the characteristics of the issue
being analysed and the organisational and political setting of the issue, with the
actual mechanics of particular techniques being secondary and consequential’
(p. 263). It is seen as ‘supplementing the more overtly political aspects of the
policy process rather than replacing them’ (p. 267). Their model may be more
realistic and useful as a result.
The main difference between the two public policy perspectives is the role
given to the political process. Policy analysis looks for one best answer from a
set of alternatives and has a battery of statistical weapons at its disposal to do
so. Political public policy sees information in an advocacy role; that is, it realizes
that cogent cases will be made from many perspectives which then feed
into the political process. Simon goes somewhat further (Simon, 1983, p. 97;
Hogwood and Gunn, 1984, p. 266):
When an issue becomes highly controversial – when it is surrounded by uncertainties and
conflicting values – then expertness is very hard to come by, and it is no longer easy to
legitimate the experts. In the circumstances, we find that there are experts for the affirmative
and experts for the negative. We cannot settle such issues by turning them over to
particular groups of experts. At best we may convert the controversy into an adversary
proceeding in which we, the laymen, listen to the experts but have to judge between them.
There is no single best answer, there is only an answer that survives the political
process in what is often a contest between policy experts on all sides of a
public policy issue.
More recent analysis of the policy process takes the political aspect somewhat
further. John argues there is a ‘new policy analysis’ (1998, p. 157):
Moving from the modest claims of ideas-based empiricism, the new policy analysis
makes claims about the primacy of ideas and the indeterminacy of knowledge. Rather
than rational actors following their interests, it is the interplay of values and norms and
different forms of knowledge which characterise the policy process.
This is less rigid than the sequential view of policy and more open to political
interplay and including a much wider set of influences than earlier policy
analysis. It offers an interesting view for future policy work.