European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 125

European Policy Analysis

Formal accounts
of policy processes:
warrantable,
generalized statements

codified

travels easy
uncodified

Experiential
accounts of
policy work:
practices,
results

concrete

abstract

hardly travels

Figure 1. Representation policy science and performation in policy practice

Policy Process Accounts in the values are authority, association, and
problematization. In this section, we will
Representative Idiom
Three “Families” of Policy Process Framings

I

t is common for accounts of the policy
process to refer to its “complexity”; it
is less common to explain the source
of the complexity or to discuss how the
analysis should be framed so as to deal with
this complexity. Our analysis starts from
the proposition that “policy” is a particular
way of making sense of governing,
distinct from other concepts in use such
as “politics”, “professional judgment”,
“strategy”, or “public management”. These
concepts attribute particular values to
the action, and different constructs
relate to different values, and these may
complement one another, or compete for
attention, or simply run in parallel, or
even undermine each other. Even within
the concept of “policy”, there are multiple
values, and we argue that the three key

show how these values inform the sorts of
accounts that analysts construct, and how
both analysts and practitioners deal with
the multiplicity of accounts in use.
One
prominent
account
constructs policy as a process that leads
to reasoned and authoritative choice
about the goals and means of collective
action. In this frame, the focus is on
what Easton has called the “authoritative
decision makers,” that is, leading
politicians in government or parliament,
top-management of big (multinational)
corporations, leaders of inter- and
transnational global organizations, and
top-level civil servants. The account sees
policy as invoking joint political and
scientific authority or expertise in tackling
collective action problems. It posits actors
as representatives of “governments” who
have clear preferences and develop goals
which will achieve these preferences.

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