Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I (1983),63-85
Martin Minogue
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Introduction
Both the interest and the complexity of the study of public policy lies
in its propensity to disrupt disciplinary boundaries, and to call for exam-
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context both for decision and policy. In brief, the policy analyst, who
seeks to provide description of and prescription for specific decisions on
particular policies, cannot ignore the overall policy process which is
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Decision Making
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* decision making under risk: where action is broken down into a set
of possible specific outcomes, to each of which a quantified level of
'probability' can be attached;
* decision making under uncertainty: where a range of possible out-
comes may be predicted, but where it is not possible to attach levels
of probability to specific outcomes.
In theory, the information and the arithmetic combine to produce
the most profitable, or 'best' choice, or decision, and therefore the best
outcome.
In systems analysis, there is less reliance than in CBA on quantitative
methods, more reliance on judgement. Essentially, systems analysis
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builds models which abstract from 'reality', but represent what are held
to be the crucial relationships in reality. Objectives are taken as specified,
but as likely to be imprecise and in need of clearer definition. The claim
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made for systems analysis is that it can clarify objectives, cut the costs
of meeting these objectives, and identify bottlenecks which are causing
problems: in short, the aim of systems analysis is to eliminate inef-
ficiency, and to create a more effective 'system',
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1. Objectives
The assumption is either that objectives are given, and the question is
only what are the best means to achieve these ends; or that objectives,
if not already properly established, can be given clear definition and
closely related to specific means; and in both instances, an assumption
that public organisations are predominantly concerned with a rational
relationship between means and ends.
The policy scientist knows that the 'actual life' of government does
Minogue: Theory and Practice in Public Policy and Administration 69
not offer much support for these assumptions. First, governmental organ-
isations rarely have clear and precisely defined goals; indeed, such stark
definition is deliberately avoided. This is because, characteristically, any
specific policy arena is marked by conflict over objectives. The conflict
may take a partisan form: i.e. conflict between political ideologies, or
between political groups competing for office. Or conflict may take an
organisational form: i.e. conflict within public organisations, e.g. minis-
ters vs. officials, higher officials vs. lower officials, departments vs.
departments, ministers vs. ministers, and so on; yet again partisan con-
flicts and organisational conflicts will frequently be inter-related, through
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resistance.
A second assumption to be challenged even where objectives are speci-
fied, is that these are the real objectives, and that there is unity over ob-
jectives. Organisational analysis tells UslOthat organisations are made up
of interests, which are engaged in a competition for resources and power
(or influence). The competition may be far more significant than the
policies upon which competition turns; means are likely to be of much
greater concern than ends. Indeed, characteristically, the means~the
construction of powerful organisation - often becomes the principal end
for those who inhabit the organisation. In relation to British government,
you only have to read the Crossman Diariesll to see the force of this state-
ment: or note, for example, a quotation from Crossman's famous
eminence grise, Lady Evelyn Sharpe, who said of the British machinery
of government that the distribution of functions did not proceed on the
basis of analysis and judgement, but on a basis of guesswork and person-
alities. In British central government the definition of the whole range
of organisational objectives would be (and is) impossible for the outsider,
and undesirable (if possible) for the insider. Yet managerial philosophies
insist that objectives can be rationally defined and efficiently achieved.
In truth, objectives are the products of interaction between key partici-
pants, not the prime mover of such interaction.12
2. Information
A further managerial assumption is that necessary and sufficient infor-
mation is available to the decision maker. There are two comments to
be made here. First, in public policy-making, information is frequently
70 Policy and Politics
We may, I think, conclude this part of the discussion with the view that
the claims for rational techniques to make an actual and potential contri-
bution to better public decision making, need to be treated with consider-
able scepticism.
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Implementation
Let us tum, then, to an alternative claim for managerial ism: that it offers
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of State, for police and prisons, for laws and decrees - nothing of the
sort. Just as in an orchestra all the performers watch the conductor's
baton, so here all will consult the statistical reports and will direct their
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work accordingly.'20
But we see that in practice, the Soviet state has notably failed to 'wither
away', and indeed represents a strong example of the pervasiveness of
state bureaucracy, and arguably of the 'bureaucratisation of politics'.
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ment; second, is politics necessary? The first point may be dealt with by
borrowing the formulation (by Christopher Hood) of a model of perfect
administration. Hood proposes the model and then 'relaxes' it to accord
with real administration. It takes five pages to propose the perfect model;
and 195 pages to give an account of real organisational life which leaves
the model in shattered pieces.22 The model may be summarised as
follows:
(a) An administrative system should be unitary like a large army with
a single line of authority: there must be no conflicts of authority, for
this would weaken administrative control;
(b) Objectives must be given, uniform, explicit, and known throughout
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the system;
(c) Clear and authoritative objectives must still be implemented: to
achieve this the system must ensure either perfect obedience, or per-
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Stalin used to be shown films of tables groaning with fruit, poultry and
agricultural produce to illustrate the successful implementation of the
rural collectivisation programme; in actuality, the collectives were
famine-stricken and impoverished.24 A different sort of example is pro-
vided by World War II fighter pilots, who consistently exaggerated the
number of enemy planes they had shot down: they gave to each other,
and their superiors (and thence to the wider public), not the truth, but
the false information that everyone wanted to hear,25 We know from
studies of real organisations that not only may real information be
screened out if it doesn't accord with established beliefs and prefer-
ences;26 but that competent critical people may also be 'screened out' in
favour of incompetent uncritical people: we need to look no further than
the Nixon Administration in the USA for an example.
Evaluation
A closely related question is that of ignorance, the lack of information
or knowledge. This may be an organisational matter too; for as Michel
Crozier says, 'People who make the decisions cannot have direct first
hand knowledge of the problems they are called upon to solve. On the
other hand, the field officers who know these problems can never have
the power necessary to adjust, to experiment, and to innovate.'27 Even
if policymakers had the best of intentions, they would still come up hard
against the real limits imposed by ignorance. Public policies are
addressed to a world of social and economic interaction of such com-
plexity and scale that our ignorance of it is probably more substantial
than our knowledge. In this context, public policies might more usefully
Minogue: Theory and Practice in Public Policy and Administration 75
I propose now to set out some judgements based on these prior argu-
ments, about the limitations of managerial ism as an approach to the
study, teaching, and practice of public policy.
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(I) Managerialism constructs a false and naive view of the policy pro-
cess; in leaving out politics, it puts out the baby with the bathwater.
Decisional 'systems' which leave out politics will produce unreal,
unworkable, or unacceptable decisions.
(2) Efficiency is not enough, if it leaves out problems of choice, and the
analysis of choice is inept if it leaves out values. In short, manageria-
lism leaves out morality. Can we say that a state, like the German
Third Reich, which cheaply and with great efficiency achieves a
specified objective, that is, the extinction of a significant group of its
citizens, is a 'good', a well-managed state? Insofar as managerialism
leaves aside consideration of the desirability of objectives it may
actually be dangerous. Indeed, Rein suggests that the dilemmas posed
by competing objectives are 'desirable, because they pose moral
choices and hence permit a debate about moral purposes'.31
(3) Managerialism addresses itself too much to the future, too little to
the past or the present. The answer to 'bad management now' is 'bet-
ter management in the future'; in the end, managerial ism is an 'if
only' conception. It is not rooted in present realities. Far from
addressing itself in a practical way to practical men, it is principally
in the business of mythmaking.
(4) Managerialism conceals the inner politics of bureaucracies, by
bureaucratising political exchanges which are articulated as organis-
ational exchanges.32 This is a deception convenient both to managers
and to managerial analysts. The danger here is that managerial ism
may lead to enormous policy errors if it succeeds in neutral ising pol-
itical exchanges or reducing political intervention in policy dis-
cussion: Henderson's account of the AGR reactor programme gives
Minogue: Theory and Practice in Public Policy and Administration 77
those who teach and theorise about public policy. This partly explains
the 'remoteness' of theory from the real world of policy, but also tends
to promote a greater respect for theory than for practice, since academics
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move in a world where the highest value is placed upon the construction
and refinement of theory; even the application of theory may be pursued
in an intellectual rather than a practical context. Indeed, some policy
studies specialists would quite deliberately avoid any involvement in the
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real world of policy on the ground that this might impose upon them
unwanted intellectual constrictions, as well as quite practical constraints.
It is not difficult to understand this tension between academic and prac-
titioner: each threatens to interfere with the activities and preferences of
the other. The theorist wishes to distance himself intellectually from the.
real policy world to avoid the ideological contamination which inevi-
tably comes from actual participation in an area of policy. The prac-
titioner tends to avoid over-exposure to a wide range of ideas, and is
rarely anxious to cultivate external critical analysis. C. H. Sisson, himself
a former British civil servant, put this rather well: 'the official is a man
who has been trained to a practical operation, not to an exposition of
theory or a search for truth. There is no need for the administrator to
be a man of ideas. His distinguishing quality should rather be a certain
freedom from ideas. '37
An unfortunate consequence of the gap between the theoretician and
the practitioner is that each manifests something uncomfortably close to
contempt for the other, a contempt strengthened rather than weakened
by being based in a defensive insecurity (the academic insecure about the
crisis of theory, the practitioner insecure about the failures of practice).
It might be held that decisional and other techniques at least offer to
bridge the divide; but the antagonistic feelings of the practitioner are
strengthened when he perceives the weaknesses and limited use of such
techniques; in any case, the able official will manipulate these techniques
and their findings in the political arena, and is able therefore to manipu-
late the policy analyst. The policy adviser, who is concerned less with
techniques than content, and perceives the real policy process more ac-
curately than the 'technician', will be a stronger opponent. But the
Minogue: Theory and Practice in Public Policy and Administration 79
danger then is the tendency for the policy adviser to think that he is the
sole repository of truth, and that his perceived truth must prevail of its
own force. Martin Rein makes the point that the policy adviser who
seeks to influence practice enters an arena in which several holders of
'truth', as they see it, fight their comer. 38It is not a question so much
of 'speaking Truth to Power':39 Power decides what Truth is. To the
extent that the policy adviser wishes his version to be chosen, he must
enter the power struggle: and once he does so, to the extent that he has
to participate in bargains and accommodations, so will the value of his
real insights or knowledge be reduced. Rein makes some other interesting
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suggestions:
(i) that action is significant to the policy analyst because it generates
inquiry, not (as the purist would like to think), the other way about;
(ii) knowledge is not always cumulative: decision makers do not always
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'b. When the goals and values of a particular client contradict basic
beliefs of the policy scientist, the policy scientist should resign ...
c.... a policy scientist should not hide an alternative because it con-
tradicts his own personal values and preferences ...
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as value free social science, so there is no such thing as value free admin-
istration or value free public policy-making. At least some policy scien-
tists acknowledge the impossibility of detachment: most bureaucrats
would not, and the failure of the official to comprehend the ideological
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Conclusion
The foregoing analysis might seem to lead to pessimistic conclusions: if
the prospects for the efficient management of effective public policies are
so constricted and uncertain, is there any point in teaching policy studies,
and pursuing policy research and analysis?
The study of public policy is fashionable, of practical importance, and
theoretically incoherent: it follows that, though it increasingly attracts
students, it is not an easy subject either to teach or to learn: indeed
Wildavsky once wrote that policy analysis may be learned but not taught!
A subject which holds immense fascination can be turned into a tedious
rehearsal of tired concepts, especially where too much emphasis is laid
on theory, too little on the investigation of real issues and problems. In
the last resort, teachers will follow their own noses, but should be careful
to remember that students have noses too, and may not relish the same
smells. It is tempting, given the current disarray of the social sciences,
to suggest that we should avoid the worship of what usually tum out
to be false gods, and seek to develop new ways of tackling the subject,
and new ways of involving students in it. Yet the thrust of this paper
suggests that the pursuit of the timehonoured method of discrete analysis
of issues and problems, on the basis of sound historical groundwork, and
informed by a strongly developed consciousness of the primary influence
of politics, remains the most interesting, and illuminating method; for
it combines a decent analytical method with the theoretically sound per-
ception that issues of public policy do not lend themselves to neutral,
Minogue: Theory and Practice in Public Policy and Administration 83
NOTES
I. Marxist political economy has been strangely neglected in public policy
studies: yet the burgeoning interest in the state and its relations with society
owes at least as much to this radical strand as it does to the work of more
conventionally located policy theorists; for example, Ian Gough The
Political Economy of the Welfare State (London: MacMillan, 1979); R. K.
Mishra, Society and Social Policy (London: MacMillan, 1977);
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3. See for example, the extract from Sir Richard Clarke, New Trends in
Government (1971) reprinted in Martin Minogue ed. Documents on Con-
temporary British Government, Vol. I. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977), 239-241.
4. The same comment holds good for 'Social Administration': see Michael Hill,
Understanding Social Policy (Oxford: Blackwell & Martin Robertson, 1980)
Chap. I.
5. P. Self, Administrative Theories and Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972
edn.),14-15.
6. A. Wildavsky The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis (London: Macmillan,
1980),3.
7. The following analysis draws on Wildavsky's articles, 'The Political Econ-
omy of Efficiency: Cost Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis, and Program
Budgeting', Public Administration Review, Vol. 26 (1966), 292-310; and
'Rescuing Policy Analysis from PPBS', Public Administration Review Vol.
29, (1969), 189-202.
8. Graham Hough, in The London Review of Books, 1980.
9. Note C. E. Lindblom's concepts of 'disjointed incrementalism' and 'partisan
mutual adjustment', elaborated as a critique of the 'comprehensive rationa-
lity' approach; see The Intelligence of Democracy (New York, Free Press,
1965) and The Policymaking Process (New York: Prentice Hall, 1968).
Lindblom's incrementalist approach has attracted much criticism, most no-
tably from Y. Dror, Public Policymaking Re-examined (Chandler, 1968).
10. The literature is well surveyed in A. Dunsire, The Execution Process Vol.
I, (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978), 16-90.
II. R. H. S. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister (3 vols, London:
Jonathan Cape and Hamish Hamilton, 1975-77).
12. For a discussion of the ways in which problem definition is manipulated and
can be linked to policy failure, see Joan K. Stringer and J. J. Richardson
'Managing the Political Agenda: Problem Definition and Policymaking in
Britain', Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 33 (1980), 23-39.
13. Quoted in Michael Ellman, Socialist Planning (Cambridge University Press,
1979).
84 Policy and Politics
14. P. D. Henderson, 'Two British Errors; their probable size and some possible
lessons', Oxford Economic Papers, July 1977.
15. Ibid.
16. E. S. Quade, quoted in Wildavsky (1966).
17. Notable examples in the British system are provided by the Fulton Com-
mittee's Report on the Civil Service (1968); and more recently by the initia-
tives endorsed by the Thatcher administration: see especially Michael
Heseltine, 'Ministers and Management in Whitehall', Management Services
in Government (May 1980), and J. M. Lee 'The Machinery of Government
under Mrs Thatcher's Administration', Parliamentary Affairs (Autumn
1980). For a full account of the 'management movement' in British central
administration, see John Garrett, Managing the Civil Service, (London:
Heinemann, 1980).
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18. A useful survey of this literature is provided by Michael Hill and Susan
Barrett in 'Implementation Theory and Research: a new branch of policy
studies, or a new name for old interests?',unpublished paper based on their
report to the SSRC Central-Local Government Relations Panel.
19. B. J. Loasby, Choice. Complexity and Ignorance (Cambridge University
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Press, 1976),89.
20. N. I. Bukharin & E. Preobrazhensky, The ABC o/Communism (1920, trans.
Penguin, 1969) quoted in Ellman (1974).
21. Garrett, op cit.
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