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Samenvatting studieboek Policy Paradox van Deborah Stone - ISBN: 9780393912722, Druk: Third Edition, Uitgavejaar: - (vraag ernaar)
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Samenvatting policy paradoxIntroduction
The rationality project
Mission of rescuing public policy from the irrationalities and indignities of politics. Make policy with rational,
analytical and scientific methods. Been at the core of American political culture since the beginning. Field of
public policy was rooted in its own paradox. Devoted to improving governance, yet based on deep disgust for
the ambiguities and paradoxes of politics. Politics were dismissed as an unfortunate obstacle to clear-headed
rational analysis and good policy.
First I aim to construct a mode of policy analysis that recognizes the dark, self-interested side of political
conflict. Second, I argue that the very categories underlying rational analysis are difined in political struggle.
Develop a mode of policy analysis that recognizes analytical concepts, problem definitions, and policy
instruments as political claims themselves, instead of seeing them as universal thruths. And because there is no
gold standard of equality et. Values matter. Third instead of seeing society as a market, so I start from a model
of community.
The project of making public policy rational rests on three pillars: a model of reasoning, a model of society and
a model of policy making. The model of reasoning is rational decision making. Decisions are made in a series of
well defined steps:
1. Identify objectives
2. Identify alternative courses of action for achieving objectives
3. Predict the possible consequences of each alternative
4. Evaluate the possible consequences of each alternative
5. Select the alternative that maximizes the attainment of objectives
This rational decision making model ignores our emotional feelings and moral intuitions, both powerful parts of
human motivation and precious parts of our life experience. Throughout this book a different model op political
reasoning. Political reasoning is reasoning by metaphor and analogy.
The model of society is the market. In this society is a collection of autonomous, rational decision makers who
come together only when they want to make an exchange. They maximize their self-interest through rational
calculation. The market model and the rational decisionmaking model are tightly related. They know what they
want. In real societies people are psychologically and materially dependent, connected through emotional
bonds, traditions and groups. Preferences based on loyalties and images. So it should be seen as a community
and not a market.
The model of policy making is a production model, where policy is or should be created in an orderly sequence.
This model of policy making as rational problem solving cant explain why sometimes policy solutions go looking
for problems. It also fails to capture the struggle over ideas. Policy making is a constant struggle over the
criteria for classification, the boundaries of categories and the definition of ideals that guide the way people
behave.
1. The market and the polis
A market can be simply defined as a social system in which individuals pursue their own welfare by exchanging
things with others whenever trades are mutally beneficial. Participants in a market compete with each other
for scarce resources. In the market model, individuals act only to maximize their own self interest. This does
not mean selfish (caring for family can be a self interest). The competitive drive stimulates people to be
resourceful, creative and productive and ultimately this raises the level of economic well-being of society as a
whole.
Community
,Because politics and policy can happen only in communities, they must be the starting point of our polis. Public
policy is about communities trying to achieve something as communities. But almost always conflict over who
are members and what the goals should be, and goals ultimately must be achieved through individuals. Ulike
market which assumes only individual goals. Polis must assume collective will and collective effort. We can
scarcely speak about societies without seeing it as a collective. We can argue on if consensus impies unanimity
or only majority, or if consensus masks suppressed dissension. But consensus is a feeling of collective will.
A community must have members and some way of defining who is a member. This is a primary political issue.
These rules can be formal (nation states) or informal (racial discrimination). A model of the polis must also
include a distinction between political community and cultural community. A political community is a group of
people who live under the same political rules and structure of governance. A cultural community is a group of
people who share a culture and draw their identities from shared language history and traditions. Most nations
hold more cultural communities. Raises a dilemma, how to integrate several cultural communities into a single
political community without destroying their identity and integrity. Membership in a community defines social
and economic rights as wel as political rights. Mutual aid among members transforms a collection of
individduals into a community. Immigrants tend to stick together in a neighborhood. In the market model,
insurance is a financial product that firms sell in order to make projet and buyers buy to create security for
themselves. In the polis, mutual aid is a good that people create collectively in order to protect each other and
their community.
Altruism
A model of political community must recognize altruism as a powerful human motive. Altruism means acting in
order to benefit others rather than oneself. Paradox of althruism: hwen people act to benefit others, they feel
satisfaction, fulfillment, and a sense that helping others gives their lives meaning. The strict self-interest
paradigm, makes altruism impossible by definition. It is enough to say that in a polis people have both self-
interested and altruistic motivations, and policy analysis must account for both of them. Altruism can be just as
fierce as self-interest, when people believe the rules are unjust and there is a higher moral duty then obeying
rules they do other thing. We cant fully understand how policy gets implemented at the street level.
Public interest
In the polis there is a public interest. It could mean individual interests held incommon, individuals goeals for
their community. Citizens in this view have two sides: a private, self interested side and a more public spirited
side, and the public interest are those things the public spirited side desires. Public interest could also mean
those goals on which there is a consensus, in this view public interest is not enduring, it is what most people
want at the moment and so it changes. Public interest can also mean what is good for a community. There is
virtually never full agreement on the public interest, but it needs to be a defining characteristic of the polis
because so much of politics entails people fighting over what the public interest is and trying to realize their
own definitions of it. This is not to deny that politics also includes persuing self interest, but there is no society
on earth in which people are allowed to do that blatantly and exclusively. Public interest in a market and polis
differ, in market theory the public interest is the net result of all self interests. In community it is more
deliberately planned beforehand.
Common problems
Situations where welf interest and public interest work against each other are known as commons problems.
Commons problems are also called collective action problems because it is hard to motivate people to
undertake private costs or forgo private benefits for the collective good. In market theory, commons problems
are thought to be the exception rather than the rule. Most actions here do not have social consequences. In
the polis they are everything. In the polis it is rare that the benefits and costs of an action are entirely self-
contained. Actions have side effects, unanticipated consequences, second and third order effects, long term
effects and ripple effects. One major dilemma in the polis is how to get people to give weight to these broader
consequences in their private calculus of choices. Especially when there is a culture that celebrates private
consumption and personal gain.
,influence
the gap between self interest and public interest is bridged by some potent forces: influence, cooperation, and
loyalty. Self interest: humans aren’t freethinking atoms, our ideas about what we want and the choices we
make are shaped by our socialization. Actions no less than ideas are influenced by others. The choices they
make, what we expect them to make, by what they want us to do, and what we think they expect us to do. Our
choices are conditional. Influence works not only by putting one individual under a spell of another but also in
ways that lead to collective behavior. Peoples choices are conditional, they will do it only if most people will do
it, or because other are going to do it, or because others are doing it. Influence sometimes spills over into
coercion and the line between it is fuzzy. There is no correct place to draw the line, because coercion is an idea
bout what motivates behavior, a label and interpretation, rather thatn the behavior itself.
Cooperation
In the polis it is every bit as important as competition. For two reasons: first politics involves seeking allies and
cooperating with them in order to compete with opponents. The second reason is that is essential to power,
cooperation is often a more effective form of subordination that coercion, authority that dependcs solely on
the use of force cannot extend very far. In the model of markets, there is no cooperation. In the polis,
cooperation is the norm.
Loyalty
Cooperation goes hand in hand with loyalty. In the market there is no glue in buyer seller ralations (you just get
the best deal with whoever you want). In politics relationships aren’t so fluid. They involve support and future
obligations. political alliances bind people over time. In market it is called buyers and sellers in politics enemies
and friends. You stick with our friends. Friendships are forgiving, because we look at the past, what they did for
us. In the polis history counts for a lot, in the market for nothing. Not to say that political alliances are perfectly
stable, but in the polis there is a presumption of loyalty. People expect that others will normally stick by their
friends and allies. And it would take a major event to switch their loyalties.
Groups
The results of influence, cooperation and loyalty are groups and organizations. Groups are important in three
ways: first people belong to institutions, even when they aren’t formal members, they participate and this
shapes their interests. Second, policy making isn’t only about solving public problems but about how groups are
formed, spit etc. to achieve public purposes. On policy issues of any significance, groups congront each other.
Third groups are important because decisions of the polis are collective. Through formal procedures (voting),
and through public bodies (legislatures, courts). And decisions are always influenced by outside opinion. But
this model is not a pluralist theory, which holds that all important interests have the capacity to form interest
groups and these have equal chances to make voices heard.
Information
In the ideal market, information is perfect. In the polis information is ambiguous, incomplete, strategically
shaded and deliberately withheld. Much of what we know is what we believe to be true. And what we believe
about information depends on who tells us and how it is presented. Also timing matters. Because politics is
driven by how people interpret information, political actors strive to control interpretations. But we all do this.
In the polis, information is never completek, we can never know all the means for achieving a goal or all the
possible effects of an action, especially since all actions have side effects, unanticipated consequences etc. nor
can we know what other people will do in response. Yet often we choose to act on the basis of what we expect
others to do. Information is never fully and equally available to all participants in politics. There is a cost to
acquiring information (time, education). But also because political actors keep information secret.
Passion
In the market, economic resources are governed by the laws of matter, resources are finite, scarce and used up
when they are used. In the polis another set of laws operates alongside the laws of matter, laws of parasox or
, law of passion. Passion feeds on itself, political resources are enlarged or enhanced through use, rather than
diminished, channels of influence for example grow stronger the more they are used. The more something is
done, the more valuable the personal connection and ties become. And the stronger peoples expectations of
doing things the way they have always been done. The more one makes certain types of decisions, the easier it
is to continue in the same path. The market model ignores this phenomenon of resource expansion through
exercise, use, practice and expression. People aren’t born with a limited pile of sentiments and passions.
Another law of passion holds that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And finally things can mean
and therefore be more than one thing at once. Ambiguity and symbolic meanings find no home in the market
model of society where everything has its precise value or cost.
Power
Summary:
1. It is a community, or perhaps multiple communities, with
ideas, images, will, and effort quite apart from individual
goals and behaviour
2. Its members are motivated by both altruism and self interest.
3. It has a public interest, whose meaning people fight about
and act upon
4. Most of its policy problems are commons problems
5. Influence is pervasive, and the boundary between influence
and coercion is always contested
6. Cooperation is as important as competition
7. Loyalty is the norm
8. Groups and organizations form the building blocks
9. Information is interpretive,incomplete and strategic
10. It is governed by the laws of passion as well as the laws of
matter
Power is a phenomenon of communities. Its purpose is always to
subordinate individual self interest to other interests. It operates
through influence, cooperation and loyalty and through strategic
control of information. And finally power is a resource that obeys the
laws of passion rather than the laws of matter.
A model of society should specify its source of energy, the force that
drives change. In the market model this is exchange, which is motivated by the individual quest to maximize
ones own welfare. In the polis change occurs through the interaction of mutually defining ideas and alliances.
Ideas about politics shape political alliances, and wanting to buid and maintain alliances shape the ideas that
people espouse and seek to implement. Ideas and portrayals are key forms of power in policy making. Ideas are
the very stuff of politics, people fight about/for/against them. The passion in politics comes from conflicting
senses of fairness, justice, rightness and goodness. People fight with ideas as well, fights are conducted with
words and ideas. Every idea draws boundaries, the representation of issues is designed to attract support to
forge alliances and break others. Ideas and alliances are intimately connected. The interaction between ideas
and alliances is ever changing and never ending. Problems are never solved.
7. Symbols
A symbol is anything that stands for something else. Its meaning depend on how people interpret it, use it or
respond to it. It can be an object, a person, a place, words, songs pictures, logos and events. Can stand for an
organization or a set of ideas.
In politics, narrative stories are the principal means for defining and contesting policy problems. Most
definitions of policy problems have a narrative structure. Theyse explanations are often unspoken, widely
shared and so much taken for granted that we aren’t even aware of them. Two storylines are especially
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