Defining the Field(s) of Public Policy Studies
Lacking a general definition of public policy means the various disciplines with policy orientations can adopt their own definitions and not worry that other supposed policy scholars seem to be studying something very different, and for very different reasons. From this perspective there is not a field of public policy studies, there are fields—plural—of public policy studies. This plurality is not necessarily such a bad thing. For one thing, it frees the study of public policy from the insular intellectual silos that constitute traditional academic disciplines. Policy scholars are free to jump fences, picking whatever pasture seems most suited to the issue or question at hand. Rather than defining a single concept as the core focus of different activities, then, perhaps it is better to define the field (or fields) rather than the core concept. Some may argue this restates the definitional problem rather than solves it. The field of policy studies, for example, has been defined as “any research that relates to or promotes the public interest” (Palumbo1981, 8). Such broad definitions make the field of policy studies as vague and non-general as the concept of public policy appears to be. Definitions for the “policy sciences”—for our purposes a synonym for “policy studies”— include the “application of knowledge and rationality to perceived social problems” (Dror 1968, 49) and “an umbrella term describing a broadgauge intellectual approach applied to the examination of societally critical problems” (P. deLeon 1988, 219). From the field-level perspective, then, the study of public policy is about identifying important societal problems that presumably require government action in order to be effectively addressed, formulating solutions to those problems, and assessing the impact of those solutions on the target problem (P. deLeon 2006). Under this general umbrella are a range of subfields that have developed quite independently of each other. These include policy evaluation, policy analysis, and policy process. Policy evaluation seeks to systematically assess “the consequences of what governments do and say” (Dubnick and Bardes 1983, 203). Policy evaluation is typically an ex post undertaking that uses a wide range of methods to identify and isolate a causal relationship between a policy or a program and an outcome of interest (Mohr 1995). The fundamental question in policy evaluation is
empirical: what have we done? Whereas policy evaluation is largely an empirical exercise, policy analysis is more normative. Policy analysis focuses on ex ante questions. The most fundamental of these is: what should we do? The object is to determine the best policy for public authorities to adopt to address a give problem or issue of concern. The challenge for policy analysis is coming up with some comparative yardstick to serve as a decision rule for “best.” Efficiency and effectiveness, for example, are both defensible criteria for judging what is, or is not, the best policy to address a particular problem or issue of concern. Yet the most efficient policy is not necessarily the most effective, and vice versa. If policy evaluation asks questions about what have we done, and policy analysis asks questions about what should we do, policy process research is focused on the how and why of policymaking. Those who study
policy process are interested in finding out why governments pay attention to some problems and not others (agenda setting), why policy changes or remains stable across time, and where policy comes from. Imposing organization and order onto the field of policy studies through a taxonomy of its constituent subfields such as policy analysis, policy evaluation, and policy process can in one sense lead us back to the definitional dead ends we found in trying to squeeze specificity and clarity out of the underlying concept of public policy.Most of these fields have an intellectual history that mimics the definitional struggles surrounding the concept public policy. Policy analysis, for example, has been defined as “a means of synthesizing information including research results to produce a format for policy decisions” (Williams 1971, xi), and as “an applied social science discipline which uses multiple methods of inquiry to produce and transform policy-relevant information that may be utilized in political settings to wresolve policy problems” (Dunn 1981, ix). Parsing out such definitions leads to either loopholes (shouldn’t the definition say something about who is using the information and to what purposes? See Weimer and Vining 2005, 24), or to vacuous generalities (policy analysis covers everything dealing with government decision making). This approach, however, does provide at least one clear advantage. By carving the field into broad, multidisciplinary orientations such as policy or program evaluation, policy analysis, and policy process, it is possible to identify within each some roughly coherent framework. If nothing else, this approach clarifies a series of research questions central to the field of public policy studies as a whole: how do public authorities decide what problems or issues to pay attention to? How does government decide what to do about those problems? What values should be used to determine the“best” government response to a particular problem or matter of concern? What do government actions intend to achieve? Have those goals been achieved? If so, to what extent? If not, why not? These questions systematically sort and organize different policy subfields such as policy process (the first two questions), policy analysis (the second two questions), and policy evaluation (the last questions). And within each of these particular orientations identifiable conceptual frameworks have been either constructed or appropriated to provide systematic answers to the underlying questions. Even accepting the difficulties with defining the concept of public policy, most would agree these are important questions and finding the answers is important, both as a means to improving the lot of society and to better understanding the human condition generally. Although it is not immediately clear what connects, say, the work of a political scientist studying the formation of coalitions within a particular policy subsystem, to, say, a program evaluator running a randomized field trial on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of a particular government activity, the connections definitely exist. For one thing, most (if not all) of the subfields under the policy studies umbrella trace to a common historical root. There may be fields (plural) of policy studies rather than a field (singular), but the original intent was to till all with a common intellectual plow.
The Policy Sciences: A Very Short History of the Field of Policy Studies
It is not hard to extend the history of policy studies back to antiquity: what governments do or do not do has occupied the attention and interest of humans ever since there were governments. All advisers who whispered in the ears of princes, and their rivals who assessed and countered the prince’s decisions, were students of public policy. All were interested in answering the research questions listed just a few paragraphs ago. Using these questions as a means to define its intellectual heritage, policy studies can legitimately claim everyone from Plato (who laid out a lot of policy recommendations in The Republic) to Machiavelli (who in The Prince had some definite ideas on how policymaking power should be exercised) among their intellectual founders. Other political thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, James Madison, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill qualify as policy scholars under this definition. They all were broadly concerned with what government does and does not do and were often interested in specific questions of what the government should do and how it should go about doing it as well as in assessing what impact
the government has on various problems in society. Most students of public policy, however, consider the field of policy studies a fairly new undertaking, at least as a distinct academic discipline. Public administration, economics, and political science consider their respective policy orientations to be no more than a century old. Many claim a lineage of less than half of that. Systematic policy analysis is sometimes attributed to the development and adoption of cost benefit analyses by the federal government (mostly for water projects) in the1930s (Fuguitt and Wilcox 1999, 1–5). Others trace the roots of policy analysis back no further than the 1960s (Radin 1997). Whereas any claim to identify the absolute beginning of the field of public policy studies and its various subfields should rightly be taken with a grain of salt, most histories converge on a roughly common starting point. That starting point is Harold Lasswell, who laid down a grand vision of what he called the “policy sciences” in the middle years of the twentieth century. Even though his vision has been, at best, imperfectly realized, most of the various policy orientations discussed thus far share Lasswell as a common branch in their intellectual family tree, even as they branch off into very different directions elsewhere. In some ways Lasswell’s vision of the policy sciences was a vision of what political science should become (see Lasswell 1951a and 1956). Yet though Lasswell gave political science a central place in the policy sciences, his vision was anything but parochial. The policy sciences were to draw from all the social sciences, law, and other disciplines. The idea of the policy sciences was an outgrowth not just of Lasswell’s academic interests but also his practical experience in government. Lasswell was one of a number of profhigh profileial scientists who helped government formulate policy during World War II (Lass
การกำหนดเขตของการศึกษานโยบายสาธารณะLacking a general definition of public policy means the various disciplines with policy orientations can adopt their own definitions and not worry that other supposed policy scholars seem to be studying something very different, and for very different reasons. From this perspective there is not a field of public policy studies, there are fields—plural—of public policy studies. This plurality is not necessarily such a bad thing. For one thing, it frees the study of public policy from the insular intellectual silos that constitute traditional academic disciplines. Policy scholars are free to jump fences, picking whatever pasture seems most suited to the issue or question at hand. Rather than defining a single concept as the core focus of different activities, then, perhaps it is better to define the field (or fields) rather than the core concept. Some may argue this restates the definitional problem rather than solves it. The field of policy studies, for example, has been defined as “any research that relates to or promotes the public interest” (Palumbo1981, 8). Such broad definitions make the field of policy studies as vague and non-general as the concept of public policy appears to be. Definitions for the “policy sciences”—for our purposes a synonym for “policy studies”— include the “application of knowledge and rationality to perceived social problems” (Dror 1968, 49) and “an umbrella term describing a broadgauge intellectual approach applied to the examination of societally critical problems” (P. deLeon 1988, 219). From the field-level perspective, then, the study of public policy is about identifying important societal problems that presumably require government action in order to be effectively addressed, formulating solutions to those problems, and assessing the impact of those solutions on the target problem (P. deLeon 2006). Under this general umbrella are a range of subfields that have developed quite independently of each other. These include policy evaluation, policy analysis, and policy process. Policy evaluation seeks to systematically assess “the consequences of what governments do and say” (Dubnick and Bardes 1983, 203). Policy evaluation is typically an ex post undertaking that uses a wide range of methods to identify and isolate a causal relationship between a policy or a program and an outcome of interest (Mohr 1995). The fundamental question in policy evaluation isประจักษ์: อะไรเราเสร็จ ในขณะที่การประเมินนโยบายเป็นส่วนใหญ่การออกกำลังกายที่ประจักษ์ วิเคราะห์นโยบายเป็น normative มาก วิเคราะห์นโยบายเน้นอดีตถามอีก พื้นฐานที่สุดของเหล่านี้คือ: ควรเราทำ เป้าหมายคือการ กำหนดนโยบายดีที่สุดสำหรับหน่วยงานภาครัฐเพื่อนำมาใช้อยู่ปัญหาให้หรือเรื่องที่เกี่ยวข้อง ความท้าทายสำหรับการวิเคราะห์นโยบายจะตามมา ด้วยบาง yardstick เปรียบเทียบเป็นกฎการตัดสินใจสำหรับ "ส่วน" ประสิทธิภาพและประสิทธิผล เช่น มีทั้งเกณฑ์ defensible สำหรับตัดสินอะไร หรือไม่ นโยบายดีที่สุดเพื่อแก้ไขปัญหาเฉพาะหรือเรื่องกังวล ยังไม่จำเป็นที่มีประสิทธิภาพสูงสุด นโยบายมีประสิทธิภาพสูงสุด และในทางกลับกัน ถ้าประเมินนโยบายถามคำถาม เกี่ยวกับสิ่งที่เราทำ และวิเคราะห์นโยบายถามคำถามเกี่ยวกับสิ่งที่ควรเราทำ นโยบายการวิจัยเน้นวิธีการ และเหตุผลของ policymaking การ ผู้ที่ศึกษาpolicy process are interested in finding out why governments pay attention to some problems and not others (agenda setting), why policy changes or remains stable across time, and where policy comes from. Imposing organization and order onto the field of policy studies through a taxonomy of its constituent subfields such as policy analysis, policy evaluation, and policy process can in one sense lead us back to the definitional dead ends we found in trying to squeeze specificity and clarity out of the underlying concept of public policy.Most of these fields have an intellectual history that mimics the definitional struggles surrounding the concept public policy. Policy analysis, for example, has been defined as “a means of synthesizing information including research results to produce a format for policy decisions” (Williams 1971, xi), and as “an applied social science discipline which uses multiple methods of inquiry to produce and transform policy-relevant information that may be utilized in political settings to wresolve policy problems” (Dunn 1981, ix). Parsing out such definitions leads to either loopholes (shouldn’t the definition say something about who is using the information and to what purposes? See Weimer and Vining 2005, 24), or to vacuous generalities (policy analysis covers everything dealing with government decision making). This approach, however, does provide at least one clear advantage. By carving the field into broad, multidisciplinary orientations such as policy or program evaluation, policy analysis, and policy process, it is possible to identify within each some roughly coherent framework. If nothing else, this approach clarifies a series of research questions central to the field of public policy studies as a whole: how do public authorities decide what problems or issues to pay attention to? How does government decide what to do about those problems? What values should be used to determine the“best” government response to a particular problem or matter of concern? What do government actions intend to achieve? Have those goals been achieved? If so, to what extent? If not, why not? These questions systematically sort and organize different policy subfields such as policy process (the first two questions), policy analysis (the second two questions), and policy evaluation (the last questions). And within each of these particular orientations identifiable conceptual frameworks have been either constructed or appropriated to provide systematic answers to the underlying questions. Even accepting the difficulties with defining the concept of public policy, most would agree these are important questions and finding the answers is important, both as a means to improving the lot of society and to better understanding the human condition generally. Although it is not immediately clear what connects, say, the work of a political scientist studying the formation of coalitions within a particular policy subsystem, to, say, a program evaluator running a randomized field trial on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of a particular government activity, the connections definitely exist. For one thing, most (if not all) of the subfields under the policy studies umbrella trace to a common historical root. There may be fields (plural) of policy studies rather than a field (singular), but the original intent was to till all with a common intellectual plow. นโยบายศาสตร์: สั้น ๆ ประวัติด้านการศึกษานโยบายไม่ยากที่จะขยายประวัติความเป็นมาของนโยบายการศึกษาไปโบราณ: ที่รัฐบาลทำ หรือทำไม่ได้ครอบครองความสนใจและสนใจของมนุษย์นับตั้งแต่มีรัฐบาล ประการทั้งหมดผู้กระซิบในหูของปริ๊นซ์ และคู่แข่งของผู้ประเมิน และตัดสินใจของเจ้าชาย countered มีนักเรียนนโยบายสาธารณะ ทั้งหมดมีความสนใจในการตอบคำถามการวิจัยที่แสดงเพียงสองหรือสามย่อหน้าที่ผ่านมา ใช้คำถามเหล่านี้เป็นวิธีการที่สามารถเป็นมรดกทางปัญญา การศึกษานโยบายสามารถถูกต้องตามกฎหมายเรียกร้องทุกคนจากเพลโต (ที่วางมากข้อเสนอแนะนโยบายในสาธารณรัฐ) เพื่อมาเคียเวลลิ (ที่อยู่ในเจ้าชายที่มีความคิดบางอย่างแน่นอนว่า policymaking พลังควรจะใช้) ในหมู่ผู้ก่อตั้งของปัญญาได้ อื่น ๆ thinkers เมืองมัส ฮอบส์ Thomas จอห์นล็อก James เมดิสัน อาดัมสมิธ จอห์นสจ๊วตมิลล์รับรองเป็นนโยบายภายใต้ข้อกำหนดนี้ พวกเขาทั้งหมดถูกทั่วไปที่เกี่ยวข้องกับรัฐบาลใดไม่ทำ และก็มักจะสนใจ ในคำถามเฉพาะที่รัฐบาลควรทำอะไรและอย่างไรนั้นควรไปเกี่ยวกับการทำ และ ในการประเมินผลกระทบสิ่งthe government has on various problems in society. Most students of public policy, however, consider the field of policy studies a fairly new undertaking, at least as a distinct academic discipline. Public administration, economics, and political science consider their respective policy orientations to be no more than a century old. Many claim a lineage of less than half of that. Systematic policy analysis is sometimes attributed to the development and adoption of cost benefit analyses by the federal government (mostly for water projects) in the1930s (Fuguitt and Wilcox 1999, 1–5). Others trace the roots of policy analysis back no further than the 1960s (Radin 1997). Whereas any claim to identify the absolute beginning of the field of public policy studies and its various subfields should rightly be taken with a grain of salt, most histories converge on a roughly common starting point. That starting point is Harold Lasswell, who laid down a grand vision of what he called the “policy sciences” in the middle years of the twentieth century. Even though his vision has been, at best, imperfectly realized, most of the various policy orientations discussed thus far share Lasswell as a common branch in their intellectual family tree, even as they branch off into very different directions elsewhere. In some ways Lasswell’s vision of the policy sciences was a vision of what political science should become (see Lasswell 1951a and 1956). Yet though Lasswell gave political science a central place in the policy sciences, his vision was anything but parochial. The policy sciences were to draw from all the social sciences, law, and other disciplines. The idea of the policy sciences was an outgrowth not just of Lasswell’s academic interests but also his practical experience in government. Lasswell was one of a number of profhigh profileial scientists who helped government formulate policy during World War II (Lass
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