The Policy Paradox: Interpreting Goals Through the Market and Polis PA 306 Farley

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The Policy Paradox Interpreting Goals Through
the Market and PolisPA 306Farley
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Reasons for Book

• 1. Rationality is narrow conception of how humans
  behave.
• Paradox and ambiguity are constant.
• Politics helps us view things from multiple
  perspectives.
• 2. Economics is dominant in policy analysis, but
  very limited.
• People are individuals, but rather social
  creatures.
• 3. No satisfactory models for how policy gets
  made.
• Unplanned outcome of everyone acting in self
  interest?
• Assembly line?
• 4. Conventional models worship objectivity and
  determinate rules.
• We need a model in which analytical concepts,
  problem statements, and policy instruments are
  political claims themselves.

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Rationality project depends on three pillars

• model of reasoning
• rational decision making vs. role for emotions,
  importance of metaphor, how we see things vs.
  what they are.
• Model of society
• homogenous globules of desire in a market
  setting, vs. interdependent society, cooperation
  as well as competition?
• Oxytocin and dopamine.
• Model of policy making
• production model or struggle over ideas?

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Political claims vs. truth claims

• Are there such things as universal truths?

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What is the public interest?

• Counterpart to private interest in the market
• Individual interests held in common
• Things you want for community that might not be
  in individual interest
• Goals on which there is consensus.
• Things that are good for community as community.

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Concept of Society

• The Market
• The Polis
• As the commons
• As civil society
• See figure on page 33

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How are Goals Determined?

• Influence
• Who influences who?
• When does influence turn into coercion?

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Cooperation

• Politics involves seeking allies and organizing
  cooperation in order to compete with opponents.
  Stone P.24
• Cooperation is often a more effective form of
  subordination than coercion. Authority that
  depends solely on coercion cannot extend very
  far Stone p.25

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Information

• Spin Because politics is driven by how people
  interpret information, much political activity is
  an effort to control interpretations Stone p.28

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Passion

• The more often an order is issued and obeyed,
  the stronger the presumption of compliance.
  Stone P.31
• The affective dimensions of decision-making

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Power

• Is a phenomena of communities.
• Its purpose is always to subordinate individual
  self-interest to other interestssometimes to
  other individuals or group interests, sometimes
  to the public interest. It operates through
  influence, cooperation, and loyalty. It is based
  also on strategic control of information. And
  finally, it is a resource that obeys the laws of
  passion rather than the laws of matter. Stone
  P.32

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Groups are important

• People belong to institutions and organizations.
• Policy making is not only about solving public
  problems, but about how groups are formed, split,
  and re-formed to achieve public purposes.

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Public Interest Informed by Market
Perspectives

• In market terms, public interest is understood
  as the net result of all individuals pursuing
  their self-interest In a market, in short, the
  empty box of public interest is filled as an
  afterthought with the side effects of other
  activities. In the polis, by contrast, people
  fill the box intentionally, with forethought,
  planning, and conscious effort.
• Stone P.22

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• Shared meanings motivate people to action and
  meld individual striving into collective action.
  Ideas are at the center of all political
  conflict. Policy making, in turn, is a constant
  struggle over the criteria for classification,
  the boundaries of categories, and the definition
  of ideals that guide the way people behave.
  Stone P.11

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• Policy is a rational attempt to attain
  objectives.

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Goals

• are often invoked as justifications for a
  policy, for a government action, or for the
  governments not taking action. They are also
  used as criteria for evaluating public programs
  In this way, they functions as standards against
  which programs are assessed. They are often
  called values, suggesting a more complex array of
  considerations rather than a definitive
  endpoint. Stone P.37

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Equality

• Same size share for everybody
• Can redefine what is being shared
• The cake or the meal?
• What counts as income for medicare? For financial
  aid?
• Can redefine who is sharing
• Blocks (e.g. men, women citizens, non-citizens
  minority, non-minority)
• Ranks (lecturers, VPs seniority)
• Are we rewarding the appropriate things?
• Process vs. outcome
• Equal probabilities, equal votes, equal
  opportunity
• Are markets fair?

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Efficiency

• What is efficiency?
• Maximizing value from given resources?
• Who determines value?
• What happens when we have multiple objectives?
• Is it an end in itself?
• Are there trade offs with equity?

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Security

• Minimum requirements for biological survival.
• What are human needs?
• Are needs satiable?
• Do we consider relative as well as absolute
  needs?
• Individual needs, or relational needs?

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Liberty

• People should be free to do what they want
  unless their activity harms other people.
• When should liberty be constrained?
• Harms to individuals
• Harms to community

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• These conceptions can be understood as
  overlapping and competing with each other
• Ones assumptions about these goals drive the
  manner in which policy issues are perceived.