Recipes for Understanding Public Policy Analysis
What are the different ingredients in the policy process and what models exist to better understand them?
Why is public policy so tricky to analyse? Since the 1980s, the field of public policy analysis has created and used numerous models to help understand the policy process. Here we look at six models and consider their advantages and weaknesses then briefly look at wicked problems and ways to approach problem-solving for unsolvable problems. Models are models, they are not the real thing though they can give us a way to untangle the messes that public policy presents. Over time, the names of these models increase in letter and word-count correlating with a need for more explanation. Ultimately, policy is about people and their behaviours. Before looking at the different frameworks, let’s consider some of the ingredients which flavour the policy process and add to its complexity.
What Keeps the Policy Kitchen so Spicy?
Evidence | fresh coriander
Loved by some, hated by others, it may or may not be available all the time everywhere. It might not be palatable to politicians, it can be contested by different groups (some call it cilantro, others prefer it ground), or just plain neglected for fear of damaging electoral chances.
Failure | cayenne pepper
While ‘failing fast’ or ‘productive failure’ are held up as positive learning opportunities in entrepreneurship and personal development, this does not seem to hold true for policy-makers, for whom cayenne pepper can quickly become bear spray to voters.
Special people | star anise
It takes a special kind of person to achieve a special kind of thing, yet much of research has failed to look at the individual qualities of those people, and whether those characteristics can be learnt, incentivized, or changed.
Engagement | saffron
While more engagement of citizens, academics and different agencies in the policy-making process is often advocated, this is easier said than done. The variation among stakeholder values and how people see the world usually includes contradictions and it’s all too easy for one flavour to overwhelm another. Growing engagement requires a lot of time and work.
Six Frameworks for Public Policy Analysis
1. Stages
The earliest, simplest model is that of stages, which presents a linear progression through: agenda setting, policy formulation, decision making, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. Perhaps due to its simplicity this has remained a prominent model for understanding public policy. The line of stages eventually got curved all the way around to form an ongoing ‘policy cycle’. The criticism is that reality is far more complex, the stages model says little about who is making the decision and who is going to be affected. Ultimately, public policy is about human behaviours which this model doesn’t say much about. Despite these criticisms, this model remains popular — it seems people feel safe in the logic of a circle.
2. Rational
Rational models assume that we start with the result from the policy and rationally plot the means for how to get there. The values of society are reflected in the values of the policymakers and a small number of policy makers control the process from the centre. An organization acts rationally to achieve the maximum social gain. Similarly to the stages model, the rational model assumes a linearity of process which rarely holds true in reality. It also says little about whose values are considered — politicians, government, affected citizens, businesses. — different people hold different values.
3. Incrementalism
Major policy is made in small and steady steps in a particular direction. Fairly limited changes are introduced which allows the waters to be tested, slowly moving from the current status quo to the preferred situation. Policy is continually made and remade. The obvious critique of this is that it doesn’t deal with sudden major changes, especially with a directional change. Naomi Klein would disagree, as her thesis in the ‘Shock Doctrine’ proposes that questionable policies are introduced following a national crisis while people are too distracted to engage and resist effectively.
4. Punctuated equilibrium
Perhaps Naomi Klein would agree with this model, which — in direct critique of incrementalism — explains policy change as a movement from one stable situation to another. It may be because of an external shock, or that the attention for an idea has reached a cumulative mass. Cairney gives a neat demonstration of the different conclusions one reaches depending on the model you are using, with a case study of UK tobacco policy.
5. Multiple streams
In Kingdon’s 1988 model, there are three streams — problems, politics, and policies — which all flow largely independently until at some critical junctures they all cross paths and create a window of opportunity for a policy change to be made. In this model, we see policy process as more chaotic and unpredictable. Including these three streams gives a lot of explanatory power, including the importance of people and groups (such as civil servants, elected officials and NGOs). Choice opportunity is seen like a garbage can into which various kinds of problems and solutions are dumped. Brunner uses this model to explain changes in policy on emissions trading in the early 2000s in Germany. One criticism is its failure to explain for social learning which takes place as policy develops.
6. Advocacy Coalition Framework
Proposed by Sabatier in 1988, learning is a key component. Policy change is understood by focusing on the beliefs motivating collective action. Like-minded actors form coalitions either to maintain the status quo or to effect policy change. To understand the policy process we look at how these coalitions are formed and how they engage with one another. However, though this model focuses on the actors involved, it says little about the decision-making itself and how the coalition’s inputs become a policy outcome (Howlett, McConnell and Perl).
Can we Combine the Different Frameworks?
Given the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different models, it might make sense to see if they can be combined to create a model greater than the sum of its parts. Howlett, McConnell and Perl (2016) tried to do just this, to ‘refine, adapt and blend’ the stages, multiple streams, and advocacy coalition framework to work together. The multiple streams model was originally designed to better understand the agenda-setting stage of policy. To enable it to be used across the various stages, two more streams are added: firstly, the ‘process’ stream, which arises after a policy window and becomes the main stream into which the other streams will now converge; and secondly, the ‘programme’ stream comes in if and when a decision is made and a policy is to be implemented.
This connection between streams and cycle frameworks can encompass qualitatively different kinds of policy-making occurring at each intersection point, depending on exactly what inputs each stream brings to a particular moment in the policy-making process. Howlett, McConnell and Perl (2016)
Yet we still need to account for who is doing what, so the advocacy coalition framework becomes useful. Competing coalitions of interest can affect the meanderings of the problem stream — defining what exactly the problem is. Later, different coalitions will debate the most appropriate process, for example, in how something is to be implemented. By combining these three frameworks, we can have the simplicity of knowing roughly where we are in the stages model, an explanation of the timing of changes (windows of opportunity which can be both man-made or subject to external shocks), as well as looking closely at who is doing what and when. While each of the strengths of one model make up for the weaknesses of the others, the complexity of this model might make it difficult to use.
Wicked Problems
Half a century ago, Rittel and Webber argued that policy problems are ‘inherently wicked’ in contrast to ‘tame’ scientific problems which can be defined, separated, and solutions found. Ten characteristics of wicked problems are given, summarized in the graphic below. Unfortunately, there are no definitive solutions or answers to these problems, but if that’s the case, what can we do other than give up?
If solving wicked problems is beyond reach, research on wicked problems needs to provide a clearer conceptual understanding of the alternatives. Falk Daviter.
Daviter suggests one alternative to trying to solve impossible-to-solve problems is to ‘tame’ instead. Rather than biting off more than can be chewed, the aim is to reduce and control the issue, by portioning off the problem in such a way that it can be addressed through the current administrative structures and expertise.
“Taming necessitates an act of objectification that settles and at least temporarily institutionalizes an answer to the question of what the nature of the problem is and what type of knowledge is needed to address it”.
Lines are drawn to simplify things to make progress. Downsides of this approach include creating larger blindspots and unintended consequences on the areas not in focus. It seems that taming strategies are often used unreflectively and accidentally while imagining to be solving a larger policy problem that is not well understood.
A second strategy is ‘coping’ in which responses to problem governance are fragmented and less coordinated, providing “multiple approximate solutions to ill structured problems”. In this way, solutions don’t depend on a central governing force and instead rests upon ‘decentered and delegated expertise’. The coping approach is fundamentally remedial — policy responses move forward even if the ultimate goal or solution is not known, more strongly emphasizing process than outcomes.
Where does this leave us?
The complexity of policy analysis can be compared to the complexity of ecosystems. We humans still have a fairly limited understanding of how ecosystems function — there are so many different actors, and at every level we see complexity. We can look at planet earth (macro level), a group of people, flora or fauna living within a community (meso), an individual within a family, and that individual’s gut biome (micro). Understanding the infinitely complex web of interactions and interconnections within and across them all is a seemingly impossible task. The existence of a policy problem suggests that there is an imbalance which needs to be addressed. Yet any change or solution will inevitably tug on the vast interconnected web of society, some effects of which we can anticipate and others we might not. What’s more, we can only know the flavour of the society in which we currently live; it isn’t generally possible to measure this against an alternative society in which a different policy or implementation exists (although natural experiments sometimes pop up which allow this). We only know the problems and benefits of the way things are, and can only imagine those associated with alternatives. So when it comes to policy making and analysis, it is especially important to acknowledge our limitations and the significance of what we don’t or cannot know.
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This article was written as a personal interpretation of the materials taught and shared in “Public Policy Analysis 2023–2024” lecture 1 taught by Professor Dennis C. Grube in January 2023 as part of Cambridge University’s Social Science Research Methods Programme. Any errors are mine alone.
References and Further Reading
Ayres, S. and Marsh, A., 2014. Reflections on contemporary debates in policy studies. In Rethinking Policy and Politics (pp. 231–256). Policy Press.
Brunner, S., 2008. Understanding policy change: Multiple streams and emissions trading in Germany. Global Environmental Change, 18(3), pp.501–507.
Cairney, P., 2007. A ‘multiple lenses’ approach to policy change: The case of tobacco policy in the UK. British Politics, 2, pp.45–68.
Cairney, P., 2016. The politics of evidence-based policy making. Springer.
Daviter, F., 2017. Coping, taming or solving: alternative approaches to the governance of wicked problems. Policy Studies, 38(6), pp.571–588.
Howlett, M., McConnell, A. and Perl, A., 2017. Moving policy theory forward: Connecting multiple stream and advocacy coalition frameworks to policy cycle models of analysis. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 76(1), pp.65–79.
Klein, N. and Smith, N., 2008. The shock doctrine: a discussion. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(4), pp.582–595.
Marteau, T.M., 2023. Evidence-neglect: addressing a barrier to UK health and climate policy ambitions. Science and Public Policy, p.scad021.
Mu, R., 2018. Coupling of problems, political attention, policies and institutional conditions: Explaining the performance of environmental targets in the national five-year plans in China. Sustainability, 10(5), p.1477.
Nowlin, M.C., 2011. Theories of the policy process: State of the research and emerging trends. Policy studies journal, 39, pp.41–60.
Peters, B.G., 2021. Advanced introduction to public policy. Edward Elgar Publishing.
