European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 122

The Role of Theories in Policy Studies and Policy Work
frame the activity of governing in a way that highlights a certain set of values . Some simple definitions fall back on conventional state theory which locates sovereign decision making and authority in the state apparatus ; so “ policy ” becomes anything a government chooses to do or not to do ( Dye 1985 , 1 ).
This conceptual fuzziness has left us with a number of problems in the analytical use of the term policy . First , it is not clear precisely what the term means and how it relates to other concepts in the analysis of governing . It rests on a distinction in English between “ policy ” and “ politics ” which has no equivalent in most other languages ( Dutch being the main exception ), and while Dye could confidently assert that “ public policy is whatever governments decide to do or not to do ”, Lindblom saw “ policymaking ” as “ the complex set of forces that together produces effects called “ policies ” … an extremely complex analytical and political process to which there is no beginning and no end and the boundaries of which are most uncertain ” ( Lindblom 1968 , 4 ; Lindblom and Woodhouse 1993 ). Some recent handbooks ( Fischer , Miller , and Sidney 2007 ; Moran , Rein , and Goodin 2006 ) take “ policy process ” and “ policymaking process ” as self-evident concepts not in need of definition .
Second , this leads to a similar vagueness about the activity which produces policy — the “ policy process ” or “ process of policymaking ”. There is an ( often tacit ) assumption that the central element in the activity is a “ decision ”, and Parsons ( 1996 , 82 ) broadly describes policymaking as “ focusing on the relationship between the “ pre-decisional ” dimensions of policymaking and its decisional or post-decisional contexts .” Or the focus may be on the policy as problemsolving design , with the gaze tracked backward in time , seeing the policy process as a selection of events , ( collective or individual ) actors , and actions over time , defined by reference to a particular “ policy ”, that captures ( or explains ) the ( time sequence and / or spatial distribution of ) major events that , jointly , make up the “ becoming ”, “ adoption ”, and the “ destiny ” of that policy ( Van de Graaf and Hoppe 1996 , 95 ). This recognizes that policy is seen as both ex ante intention and ex post results ( performance outputs and outcomes ). But it also raises a question : if policymaking is the construction of an intermediate “ product ” like a “ decision ”, plan or announcement of collective action , why is it framed as a sustained or continuous flow , and not as a staged production process ? Why do policy scholars leave it in the dark where exactly a policy process begins or ends , how to draw temporal and spatial or actorial boundaries around it ; why do these questions remain highly contested in policy studies ?
Third , there is the puzzling relationship between the different sorts of account of policy in governing — the abstract analytic accounts by academics and researchers , the accounts that participants give of their work , and the accounts derived from empirical observation of policy practice . Practitioners may say ( for instance ) that “ the [ stages ] model is really about theory , not practice ” ( Howard 2005 , 10 ); yet see it as important to present the outcome as a “ decision ” of the appropriate authority ( another of the stages ). Empirical accounts of policy practice often find it difficult to relate it to the stages of the abstract model but conclude that , the process is
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