PhD: Abstract

What my abstract looks like according to wordle:

PPA: Implementation and Evaluation

This seminar really should be title "Mind the Gap" which fits perfectly with the new overall course title "How to analyse the Ministry of Magic". Public Policy Analysis seminars offer a vast range of odd examples

Today we discussed the Implementation and Evaluation of policies and tools available to facilitate this. There are two approaches; Top-down and Bottom-up that cover the horizontal and vertical policy space.

The top-down approach is the one I am most familiar approach. A policy is formulated by a high-power (government? Ministry of Magic?) and then the orders for implementation are filtered down a change of command. This can lead to a Broken Telephone effect with information leaking at each step (Is it geeky to admit that I like the visual of heat equations that lose energy in each direction?). How can one improve this? Perhaps offer implementation incentives, improve communication channels. This is an ideal type, there is no policy that fits perfectly into this approach but it is interesting to note why policies failed using it such as poor formulation or power issues. The analysis can show the implementation gap...or Mind the Gap!

The bottom-up approach seems to be a bit more haphazard in nature which conflicts with my personality. The policy is dependent on a network of street-level bureaucrats that share resources and have a level of discretion. How do you analyse this? With great difficulty, there is a horizontal layer with weak structure from what I can gather. Policies are negotiated and there is a great deal of uncertainty. Policies have very vague goals with no associated metrics.

What have I learnt from this 6 seminar course dip into the world of social science? I am very much a quantitative scientist who likes structure, people are confusing and politics even more so. Do I ever want to enter the minefield of policy design, probably not. I think I'd offend too many people by telling them their process sucks.

Suggested Reading:
Paul Sabatier (1986), Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches to Implementation Research: A Critical Analysis and Suggested Synthesis”,Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1986), pp. 21-48.

Is the MEAN meaningless?

After a rather heated debate last night about climate models, betting on the model runs and trying to analyse the data from these massive collections of model runs (ensembles) I have a few thought provoking questions for people:

Is the mean meaningless or useful?
What would you do if the mean is consistently wrong?
Would you bet on the mean of an ensemble?
How do you cater for the variability shown by the forecasts, especially if they encompass extreme that can feasibly happen?
Do you feel its responsible to give a policy-maker or decision-maker the mean without a proper feeling for the envelope of possibilities? Could policy-makers design policies that used that variability? Would these be more robust than the current solutions?

PPA: Decisions: Power and Rationality

Friday our ever decreasing group of public policy students debated the process of making decisions and what types of rationality exist. As the penultimate seminar we have almost completed the policy analysis cycle. Our reading list for the seminar included Lindblom and Dahl. Dahl argues that a key characteristic of a democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals. A political system which has the characteristic of being almost or completely responsive to all its citizens.

You can for the sake of argument and analysis divide most governments in four categories based on Contestation (C) and Inclusion (I). High C / High I, High C/ Low I, Low C/ High I, Low C/Low I. From this can further analyse with respect to:

• How the power is distributed
• Role of the state
• Nature of conflict
• Whose interests prevails
• Basis of power

The other topic up for debate was Rationality. Now this interests me, I've been reading up on rationality in decision-making for modeling purposes. The two we explored were Incrementalism (Partisan Mutual Adjustment?) and Bounded Rationality.

I'm really interested in Bounded Rationality and how people cannot considered more than a certain amount of information, important when asking decision-makers to pick based on multiple criteria or systems with multiple implications.

If by this point you're wondering when I became a social science convert I can quite adamantly profess to this being my only foray into the world of qualitative, mumble-jumble in which there are few wrong answers...I'll even take statistics equations over this world.

Reading List:

• Charles Lindblom (1950), “The Science of Muddling Through”, Public Administration Review, (19), Spring 1950, pp.79-88.
• Robert Dahl (1971), Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, Yale University Press, Yale., Chapter 1: “Democratisation and Public Opposition”

PPA: Social Problems

We attended the third Public Policy Lecture today on Social problems. This is the first week I have actually enjoyed the readings, they made logical sense (I know its a very scientific view). Policy analysis thinks about solving problems (policies are MEANT to solve problems). There are many problems and beliefs as to why they are in fact social problems. Good examples include drug abuse, guns, poverty, energy efficiency. Each has a state in the world and is measurable by some metric.

In framing a problem there are three (well more but the are only looking at three) viewpoints. Positivism, Functionalism and Social Constructivism. When reviewing the problem one looks at the Nature of the problem, Causes of social problem, Methods to review and ways to Intervene.

In Positivism (exogenous), the problem is considered a disease caused by individuals or societies failings (weaknesses). One can measure through observation and remove the cause (excise disease). This approach is expert-driven and undemocratic.

The second Functionalism (endogenous) looks at a problem as a function to society. One needs deviants to know normality. One can once again measure this and then adjust norms to maintain a balance. This approach is also expert-driven.

The last is Social Constructivism and in this you can re-interpret the problem and states that there is no direct access to reality, that everything we do is an interpretation. It believes that social constructions reflect conflicts. Unlike the previous two Social Constructivism is not analytic but rather hermeneutic (interpretive). It challenges dormant constructions. This is one viewpoint I have the most difficulty understanding.

This is a reference that came up during the lecture: Charles Booth who designed the first poverty maps of London, his scale cause a lot of comic relief.

The associated readings:

• Fuller and Myers (1941), “A Natural History of Social Problems”, American Sociological Review, 6:3, pp.320-329.
• Elaine B. Sharp (1994), “Paradoxes of National Antidrug Policymaking”, in David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (1994), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda, University Press of Kansas, Kansas. pp. 98-116

Applying Climate Information in Africa

I'm currently making my way through what seems to be a literature bible for applications of climate information in various African countries across sectors and scales: "Applying Climate Information in Africa, An assessment of current knowledge". The report was written by Anthony Patt of IIASA for NOAA. I would highly recommend it for anyone doing climate work in South Africa.

PPA: Actors and Venues of Policy-Making

Today is the second Public Policy Analysis seminar by Stephen Ney where we discussed actors active or passive in policy making, these could be individuals or institutions at various levels. The diagram below shows the output of the seminar, an idea of the policy network and how they influence each other. Mine looks largely hierarchical and rigid, not as fluid and open as others. Mine also maps funding and knowledge exchanges (in red). Its interesting when writing up your research results with the anticipation that it is policy relevant one can see who to target and possibly how.

Preparatory Readings:
Atkinson and Coleman (1992), “Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance”,Governance, 5(2): 154-180.
Chris Ansell (2000), “The Networked Polity: Regional Development in Western Europe”,Governance, Vol.13, No.3, pp.303-333.

PPA: What is Public Policy Analysis

IIASA/YSSP offers students a series of seminars covering a variety of modeling and social topics. Today is the start of a six part seminar series on Public Policy Analysis by Stephan Ney. The overall objective for the course is "to introduce YSSP students to the approaches, frameworks and methods of contemporary policy analysis".

Today we delved into the realm of sociology to public policy analysis. As a scientist with no/little sociology background the question is firstly what is the definition[1], something I discovered is not actually that easy to answer.

Firstly what is POLICY? Try name some examples. You immediately get Health Care, Foreign, Education, Population etc. What about smaller scale? Gun control, Gas Emissions, Public Procurement, the list goes on. What do they all have in common? A set of rules, intentions, sequence of actions, normative and mostly government initialised. We finally agreed that Policy is an outcome/stance/process that has an underlying theory usually with with desired goals and an evaluative standard.

Some nice definitions include: "web of decisions and actions that allocate values" - Easton or "Policy is rather like the elephant - you recognise it when you see it, but you cannot easily define it" - Cunningham.

Moving on to PUBLIC, what makes a policy public? Start with what is not public like corporate. Then there are "Corporate Social Responsibility" policies. It can be argued (indeed it was) that while the corporate is pursuing some private interest it is of public interest. The consensus is that Public means it is of public interest (collective interest), usually requires some sort of oversight or government action and is defined by civil society.

Now ANALYSIS: Why analyse policies? It affects us, to improve things, efficiency, knowledge acquisition, transparency, evaluation, decision-support, effects of. You could probably name quite a few more.

[1] H. Hugh Heclo (1972), “Policy Analysis”, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.2, No.1 (Jan 1972), pp.83-108