Understanding Public Policy (in 1000 and 500 words‪)‬ Professor Paul Cairney

By James Nicholls and Paul Cairney, for the University of Stirling MPH and MPP programmes.

There are strong links between the study of public health and public policy. For example, public health scholars often draw on policy theories to help explain (often low amounts of) policy change to foster population health or reduce health inequalities. Studies include a general focus on public health strategies (such as HiAP) or specific policy instruments (such as a ban on smoking in public places). While public health scholars may seek to evaluate or influence policy, policy theories tend to focus on explaining processes and outcomes,.

To demonstrate these links, we present this podcast and blog post to (1) use an initial description of a key alcohol policy instrument (minimum unit pricing in Scotland) to (2) describe the application of policy concepts and theories and reflect on the empirical and practical implications. 

Using policy theories to interpret public health case studies: the example of a minimum unit price for alcohol | Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy (wordpress.com)

The eight (and final) of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the  1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.

This brief lecture is on the role of policymaking environments and the theories that describe them (also based on text in Chapter 13):

"The second part of our universal story is that people respond to bounded rationality within complex policymaking environments. We can describe this environment with reference to five or six constituent parts (John, 2003: 495; Heikkila and Cairney, 2018). First, there are many actors – including policymakers and influencers – spread across many types of policymaking venues. Second, each venue contains its own ‘institutions’, or formal and informal rules governing behaviour. Third, each venue can produce its own networks of policymakers and influencers, and the lines between formal responsibility and informal influence are blurry. Fourth, actors in each venue draw on a dominant set of ideas or beliefs about the nature of policy problems and the acceptable range of solutions. Fifth, natural, social, and economic factors limit policymakers’ abilities to address and solve policy problems. Finally, routine and non-routine events help set the policy agenda and influence the resources available to actors. Combined, these factors produce the broad sense that policymaking environments – or, in some accounts, ‘context’ or ‘systems’ – constrain and facilitate action and are out of the control (or even understanding) of individual actors. Figure 13.1 provides the simplest way to visualize these concepts, partly to compete with the visual simplicity of the policy cycle while maintaining the assumption of complexity"

Relevant posts:

Policy in 500 Words: The Policy Process

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Policy Process

Policy in 500 Words: if the policy cycle does not exist, what do we do?

(see also 12 things to know about studying public policy and 5 images of the policy process).

The seventh of a series of podcasts tying together 500 Words posts.

This lecture is on the distinction between comprehensive/ bounded rationality and how policy actors deal with bounded rationality. It is based on text in Chapter 13, including:

"Theories also describe different ways in which responses to bounded rationality affect policymaking behaviour:

• Policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of their responsibilities, and policymaking organizations struggle to process all policy-relevant information. They prioritize some issues and information and ignore the rest (Chapter 9).

Policy in 500 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

• Some ways of understanding and describing the world dominate policy debate, helping some actors and marginalizing others.

Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge

• Policy actors see the world through the lens of their beliefs. Beliefs allow them to select and interpret policy-relevant information and decide who to trust.

Policy in 500 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework

• Actors engage in ‘trial-and-error strategies’ or use their ‘social tribal instincts’ to rely on ‘different decision heuristics to deal with uncertain and dynamic environments’

Policy in 500 words: uncertainty versus ambiguity

Policy in 500 Words: Ecology of Games

Policy in 500 Words: the Social-Ecological Systems Framework

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems

• Policy audiences are vulnerable to manipulation when they rely on other actors to help them understand the world. Actors tell simple stories to persuade their audience to see a policy problem and its solution in a particular way

Policy in 500 Words: the Narrative Policy Framework

• Policymakers draw on quick emotional judgements, and social stereotypes, to propose benefits to some target populations and punishments for others

Policy in 500 Words: Social Construction and Policy Design

• Institutions include formal rules but also the informal understandings that ‘exist in the minds of the participants and sometimes are shared as implicit knowledge rather than in an explicit and written form’

Policy in 500 Words: Feminist Institutionalism

• Policy learning is a political process in which actors engage selectively with information, not a rational search for truth

Three ways to encourage policy learning

The sixth of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the  1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.

This lecture is on using ‘evolutionary theory‘ to connect Multiple Streams Analysis, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and Complexity Theory

Relevant posts:

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Evolution (see also cairney-2013-policy-politics-evolution.pdf (wordpress.com)   )

Policy in 500 Words: Multiple Streams Analysis and Policy Entrepreneurs

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Multiple Streams Analysis 

What is a policy entrepreneur? 

Three habits of successful policy entrepreneurs – a blog post and paper on how entrepreneurs deal with ‘organized anarchy’

Whatever happened to multiple streams analysis? – introduces an article by Michael Jones and me on MSA studies

Paul Cairney and Michael Jones (2016) ‘Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach’ Policy Studies Journal, 44, 1, 37-58 PDF (Annex to Cairney Jones 2016) (special issue of PSJ)

Paul Cairney and Nikos Zahariadis (2016) ‘Multiple streams analysis’ in Zahariadis, N. (eds) Handbook of Public Policy Agenda-Setting (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar) PDF

Policy in 500 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems

Complex systems and systems thinking

The fifth of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the  1000 Wordspodcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.

This lecture is on Policy in 500 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework 

Here is the ACF story.

People engage in politics to turn their beliefs into policy. They form advocacy coalitions with people who share their beliefs, and compete with other coalitions. The action takes place within a subsystem devoted to a policy issue, and a wider policymaking process that provides constraints and opportunities to coalitions.

The policy process contains multiple actors and levels of government. It displays a mixture of intensely politicized disputes and routine activity. There is much uncertainty about the nature and severity of policy problems. The full effects of policy may be unclear for over a decade

...

Policy actors use their beliefs to understand, and seek influence in, this world. Beliefs about how to interpret the cause of and solution to policy problems, and the role of government in solving them, act as a glue to bind actors together within coalitions.

If the policy issue is technical and humdrum, there may be room for routine cooperation. If the issue is highly charged, then people romanticise their own cause and demonise their opponents.

The outcome is often long-term policymaking stability and policy continuity because the ‘core’ beliefs of coalitions are unlikely to shift and one coalition may dominate the subsystem for long periods.

There are two main sources of change ... see Policy in 500 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework for the rest

Relevant posts

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework

The fourth of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.

This brief lecture is on the relationship between rational choice theory, game theory, the IAD, the SES, and Ecology of Games

Relevant posts:

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Rational Choice and the IAD

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: game theory and thought experiments

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD) and Governing the Commons

Policy in 500 Words: the Social-Ecological Systems Framework

Policy in 500 Words: Ecology of Games