Andres Bernal.
As the opening portion of last week's end of class discussion, we discussed the idea of public policy with the state as a point of departure. More precisely, our conversations flowed around the idea of what the state does or not does not do and what constitutes as a public policy whether formal or informal.
In this week's readings Howlet et al (2009) begin chapter 2 by positioning modern policy science as emerging in the years following World War 2 and the public ambitions taken up by the newly constructed democratic social welfare states in reformed Capitalist societies. Before this era, it is pointed out out that political life was studied through the normative and political lens of governance and the functioning of institutions. Today's study of policy however, predominately centers around the creation of a "policy science" with generalizable laws about the policy process and role of governments in promoting the public welfare. While there are variations to the political orientations of scholars and theoretical traditions, such as public choice theory vs new-institutionalism, the world of policy analysis and policy science is predominately influenced by the logical positivist tradition. This approach mainly consists of the application of principles and debates from the field of welfare economics. Logical positivism in policy science, attempts to generate objective scientific truths through empirical data, quantifications, and analytic rationalism about how government actually functions and then offer analysis and guidance to policy makers and state officials that can increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Jose's précis centers around an argument in favor of an increase in public participation, transparency, government intervention in the economy, and the role of collective action in creating more effective public policy. However, it is important important ontological, methodological, and often political differences in policy paradigms highlighted in the section on positivist vs post-positivist traditions.
The framework of normative economics applied to policy sciences mainly rooted in the positivist tradition attempts to focus on efficiencies, pareto optimums, effectiveness, and costs. The extraction of data and knowledge is meant to provide policy makers with the "right" decision and path based on what's most rational. It's important to think about some of the factors around the historical era in which this approach to policy came to be and its epistemological influences. Intellectually influential currents of the previous two centuries were that of the enlightenment, the rise and dominance of the scientific method, and the technological development associated with modernism and the idea of progress. All of these roots played a role in the assumptions underlying how we understood states and their functionality. What was held in common however was the idea that technology, expertise, empiricism, and rationality would move nation states and societies towards progress, power, and control in a globalizing world.
The great depression however, played a role in "falsifying" to some extent the scientific certainty that market forces and the profit motive alone brought about social welfare. I would argue that Stieglitz's (1998) ideas of imperfect information and market failures comes from this legacy through which he advocates for more openness, transparency, and democracy with more participation. The rise of Keynesianism at the time challenged the validity of market self-regulation. The rise of Fordism as a model of mass production and consumption also centered understanding around management and large scale centralized planning. Lastly, the Marxist-Leninist reality and Cold War with its adherence to scientific marxism also drew influence from logical positivism in an attempt to construct a science of history and economic development. It is in this context I believe that an understanding of the role(s) of the state in practice comes into being whether it is to advocate for self-regulating market forces, for heavy government involvement, or for the abolishing of private property and markets via the state.
This understanding of policy science and the state has led to a view of governments as entering into a natural and preexisting world of markets in order to intervene on market failures, help markets enter their natural state of efficiency, or reduce transaction costs (Zerbe and McCurdy 1999). Under this paradigm, quantification and the monetization of value have priority over other forms of social phenomena and knowledge.
Another way to view government intervention comes from Sanjay Ruparelia whom in the Rethink Capitalism course discussed it as de-commodifiying certain aspects of society, following the Polanyian tradition (2001). Moreover, In the Marxist sense, although there is a lot of talk of transcending the state, it has in practice almost exclusively centralized its power over society and economy. This dilemma is engaged with the work of polycentric governance systems (Ostrom, 2010) and other works on the commons (Bollier, 2013), as well as economic sociologists such as Fred Block (2005) whom attempt to move beyond the market-state binary.
In today's varying democratic capitalist society's, many of which currently exist in a state of crisis, it is increasingly popular (at least in theory) to demand higher levels of participation, more public input, and accountability as a response to the neoliberal era, with what I would argue has been little success in the articulation of a post neoliberal and techno-positivist path.
The post-positivist or argumentative paradigm of analysis may offer new pathways for democratic politics and participation in policy making. It may furthermore allow for a reconceptualization of markets and states not as natural structures with governing laws, but as social cultural artifacts contingent to historical context and power relations. as Howlett et all note (p. 31) policy analysis as discursive, deliberative, argumentative, interactive, and participative may be used in addition to empirical data and expertise to produce more participative democratic governance. Furthermore, Political theory in the form of Marxism, feminism, governmantility (Lemke, 2012), or Polanyi's brand of economic sociology, provide critical theoretical lenses in order to include power in the process of policy making along with meaning making, ideological framing, and argumentation.
Works Cited:
Bollier, D. 2013. The Wealth of The Commons. Levellers Press.
Howlett, Ramesh and Perl, Chapter 2: “Understanding Public Policy: Theoretical Approaches”.
Lemke, T. (2012). Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique. Paradigm Publishers.
Ostrom, E. 2010. Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric governance of large complex economic systems. American Economic Review.
Polanyi, Karl. (2001). The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Beacon Press.
Smelser, N. Swedberg, R. 2005. The State and The Economy. Handbook of Economic Sociology 2nd edition.
Stiglitz, J. (1998) The private uses of public interests: Incentives and institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12 (2), pp. 3-22.
Zerbe, R. O. & McCurdy, H. E. (1999) The failure of market failure. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 18 (4), pp. 558-578.Paragraph. Haz clic aquí para editar.
As the opening portion of last week's end of class discussion, we discussed the idea of public policy with the state as a point of departure. More precisely, our conversations flowed around the idea of what the state does or not does not do and what constitutes as a public policy whether formal or informal.
In this week's readings Howlet et al (2009) begin chapter 2 by positioning modern policy science as emerging in the years following World War 2 and the public ambitions taken up by the newly constructed democratic social welfare states in reformed Capitalist societies. Before this era, it is pointed out out that political life was studied through the normative and political lens of governance and the functioning of institutions. Today's study of policy however, predominately centers around the creation of a "policy science" with generalizable laws about the policy process and role of governments in promoting the public welfare. While there are variations to the political orientations of scholars and theoretical traditions, such as public choice theory vs new-institutionalism, the world of policy analysis and policy science is predominately influenced by the logical positivist tradition. This approach mainly consists of the application of principles and debates from the field of welfare economics. Logical positivism in policy science, attempts to generate objective scientific truths through empirical data, quantifications, and analytic rationalism about how government actually functions and then offer analysis and guidance to policy makers and state officials that can increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Jose's précis centers around an argument in favor of an increase in public participation, transparency, government intervention in the economy, and the role of collective action in creating more effective public policy. However, it is important important ontological, methodological, and often political differences in policy paradigms highlighted in the section on positivist vs post-positivist traditions.
The framework of normative economics applied to policy sciences mainly rooted in the positivist tradition attempts to focus on efficiencies, pareto optimums, effectiveness, and costs. The extraction of data and knowledge is meant to provide policy makers with the "right" decision and path based on what's most rational. It's important to think about some of the factors around the historical era in which this approach to policy came to be and its epistemological influences. Intellectually influential currents of the previous two centuries were that of the enlightenment, the rise and dominance of the scientific method, and the technological development associated with modernism and the idea of progress. All of these roots played a role in the assumptions underlying how we understood states and their functionality. What was held in common however was the idea that technology, expertise, empiricism, and rationality would move nation states and societies towards progress, power, and control in a globalizing world.
The great depression however, played a role in "falsifying" to some extent the scientific certainty that market forces and the profit motive alone brought about social welfare. I would argue that Stieglitz's (1998) ideas of imperfect information and market failures comes from this legacy through which he advocates for more openness, transparency, and democracy with more participation. The rise of Keynesianism at the time challenged the validity of market self-regulation. The rise of Fordism as a model of mass production and consumption also centered understanding around management and large scale centralized planning. Lastly, the Marxist-Leninist reality and Cold War with its adherence to scientific marxism also drew influence from logical positivism in an attempt to construct a science of history and economic development. It is in this context I believe that an understanding of the role(s) of the state in practice comes into being whether it is to advocate for self-regulating market forces, for heavy government involvement, or for the abolishing of private property and markets via the state.
This understanding of policy science and the state has led to a view of governments as entering into a natural and preexisting world of markets in order to intervene on market failures, help markets enter their natural state of efficiency, or reduce transaction costs (Zerbe and McCurdy 1999). Under this paradigm, quantification and the monetization of value have priority over other forms of social phenomena and knowledge.
Another way to view government intervention comes from Sanjay Ruparelia whom in the Rethink Capitalism course discussed it as de-commodifiying certain aspects of society, following the Polanyian tradition (2001). Moreover, In the Marxist sense, although there is a lot of talk of transcending the state, it has in practice almost exclusively centralized its power over society and economy. This dilemma is engaged with the work of polycentric governance systems (Ostrom, 2010) and other works on the commons (Bollier, 2013), as well as economic sociologists such as Fred Block (2005) whom attempt to move beyond the market-state binary.
In today's varying democratic capitalist society's, many of which currently exist in a state of crisis, it is increasingly popular (at least in theory) to demand higher levels of participation, more public input, and accountability as a response to the neoliberal era, with what I would argue has been little success in the articulation of a post neoliberal and techno-positivist path.
The post-positivist or argumentative paradigm of analysis may offer new pathways for democratic politics and participation in policy making. It may furthermore allow for a reconceptualization of markets and states not as natural structures with governing laws, but as social cultural artifacts contingent to historical context and power relations. as Howlett et all note (p. 31) policy analysis as discursive, deliberative, argumentative, interactive, and participative may be used in addition to empirical data and expertise to produce more participative democratic governance. Furthermore, Political theory in the form of Marxism, feminism, governmantility (Lemke, 2012), or Polanyi's brand of economic sociology, provide critical theoretical lenses in order to include power in the process of policy making along with meaning making, ideological framing, and argumentation.
Works Cited:
Bollier, D. 2013. The Wealth of The Commons. Levellers Press.
Howlett, Ramesh and Perl, Chapter 2: “Understanding Public Policy: Theoretical Approaches”.
Lemke, T. (2012). Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique. Paradigm Publishers.
Ostrom, E. 2010. Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric governance of large complex economic systems. American Economic Review.
Polanyi, Karl. (2001). The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Beacon Press.
Smelser, N. Swedberg, R. 2005. The State and The Economy. Handbook of Economic Sociology 2nd edition.
Stiglitz, J. (1998) The private uses of public interests: Incentives and institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12 (2), pp. 3-22.
Zerbe, R. O. & McCurdy, H. E. (1999) The failure of market failure. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 18 (4), pp. 558-578.Paragraph. Haz clic aquí para editar.