9

PART I:

THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In the first part of the manual, we provide a clear and detailed presentation of the theoretical
framework on which our policy analysis model is based.
 10

CHAPTER 1

THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON POLICY ANALYSIS

Policy analysis consists in the ‘study of the action of public authorities within society’
(Mény and Thoenig, 1989, p. 9). In terms of disciplines, a number of academic sectors
have been and are associated with it. It was adopted as early as 1979 by Wildavsky
(1979, p. 15) in his plea for the development of this approach: ‘Policy analysis is an
applied subfield whose contents cannot be determined by disciplinary boundaries but by
whatever appears appropriate to the circumstances of the time and the nature of the
problem’. Similarly, Muller (1990, p.3) mentions that ‘policy analysis is located at the
junction of previously established knowledge from which it borrows its principal
concepts’.

We start by presenting a quick review of the literature from the traditional policy analysis
schools 3 and then go on to examine the specific theoretical framework adopted in this
book.

1.1 VARIOUS CURRENTS IN POLICY ANALYSIS

The main disciplines that can be observed within the different schools define themselves
in accordance with the theoretical and normative perspectives, on which the positions of
the different authors are based and/or towards which they tend. Thus, after Mény and
Thoenig (1989) and Muller (1990, p 3), it is possible to identify three major currents in
policy analysis which reflect different aims without, however, being mutually exclusive.
These currents differ mainly in terms of their focuses on specific fields of analysis.

Thus, we make distinctions between a first school of thought which associates policy
analysis and the theory of state, a second which explains the way in which public action
works and, finally, a third which focuses on the evaluation of the results and effects of the
latter.

1.1.1 Policy analysis based on the theories of state

For the first group of authors, policy analysis is a means of explaining the actual essence
of public action because policies are interpreted as revealing its nature. This current,
which the political sciences dominates and lays claim to, in France in particular, attempts
to link the policy approach with political philosophy and major questions concerning the
theory of state. Thus, Mény and Thoenig (1989) define their approach in terms of a
contribution to questions concerning ‘the emergence and nature of the state’ or to ‘the
essence of politics’. Similarly, Jobert and Muller locate their work on ‘The State in
Action’ (L’Etat en action) in the context of ‘bridging the gap that today still separates
research on policies and the more general reflections on the state in contemporary
 11

society’ (Jobert and Muller 1987, p. 9). It is subdivided into different schools of thought
which Mény and Thoenig (1989, p. 67) classify on the basis of three ‘theoretical models’:

 The first model is part of a pluralist approach which conceives the state as
a ‘service hatch’ whose purpose is to respond to social demands. From this
perspective, public policies are conceived as responses to social demands and
their analysis is in turn located in a perspective based on the optimisation of
collective choices, the rationality of the decision-making processes and the
behaviour of ‘bureaucrats’ (‘public choice’ school,4 theory of limited rationality5).
According to this concept, the lack of policies in the area of sport, for example, is
a reflection of the fact that there is no public problem to be resolved. However,
this absence could also be interpreted as the result of corporate or private actions
which are aimed at controlling this sector despite the existence of significant
public problems (in particular drug use, corruption etc).

 The second interpretative model places the emphasis on the state as an

instrument at the service of either a social class (neo-Marxist approach6) or
specific groups (neo-managerial approach7). In this context, the analysis of public
action makes it possible to demonstrate the weak autonomy of the state with
respect to capitalist interests and/or with respect to the private actors and
organisations of which it consists. Seen in this way, a social problem can only
become a public problem if its resolution serves the interests of the
(economically) dominant classes. The neo-managerial approach starts from a
similar standpoint in that it replaces the class concept with the concept of elites.

 Finally, the third model stresses the distribution of power and interaction
among and between actors, either through the representation and organisation of
different sector-based or category-base interests (neo-corporatist8 approach), or
through the organisations and institutional rules which frame these interactions
(neo-institutionalist9 approach). Seen from the neo-corporatist perspective, public
sector employees are for the most part ‘captured’ by the interest groups (‘clients’),
with which they maintain privileged and exclusive relationships in the exercising
of public power. In the UK a related approach involves emphasis on the roles of
policy networks and policy communities10. The influence of agricultural interests
has been analysed in this way in various countries. In France, this analysis results
in the emphasising of the role of large state bodies and their privileged
relationships with their colleagues who work in the private sector as a factor that
explains the way the central administration works.

In these theoretical models policy analysis is treated as a way of verifying the hypotheses
underlying the favoured model. In summary, the main characteristic of this first school is
that it does not focus on policies in themselves but as a way of understanding the role of
the public sector in society and its evolution in time, which results in the introduction ‘of
policy’ into the empirical analysis of public action and organisations and in the focusing
of the analysis on this interface.
 12

The status of the thinking, trends and claims of this school is reflected in French work the
fourth volume of the Traité de Science Politique (Grawitz and Leca, 1985) and in Mény
and Thoenig’s (1989) book on policy. More recent and more informal references can be
found in the debates organised by the ‘policy’ group of the French Association of the
Political Sciences, whose findings are published in the Revue Française de Sciences
Politiques (cf. in particular Muller et al.,1996; Majone, 1996). Hill explores the Anglo-
American literature of a similar kind in The Public Policy Process (2005: chapters 2 to
5).

Our own approach is partly rooted in this perspective: firstly, because many of the
authors who inspired it belong to this school and also because the work we have done in
this area facilitates, in part, a real interpretation of the role of the state in society without,
however, making this the primary aim. However our approach borrows more strongly
from the second and third schools.

1.1.2 Explaining how public action functions

The second school aims to explain the way public action works. Thus, in this context, the
function of policy analysis is not to explain the general functioning of the political system
but to act as a way of understanding the operational modes and logic of public action (cf.
Dente, 1985, 1989; Dente and Fareri, 1993; Gomà and Subirats, 1998, pp. 21-36).

This approach does not exclude the adoption of a viewpoint based on the above-presented
theories, which explains why several authors from this second group actually have a foot
in both camps. Here, however, the focus is not on the justification of a theory, but on the
demonstration of continuities, general rules of functioning which are specific to public
actions. In this context, policy analysis makes it possible to understand how the state and,
more broadly, public authorities work.

This second approach actually constitutes the initial set of issues tackled by policy
analysts. Historically, the latter were strongly influenced by American political scientists,
whose initial considerations in this area emerged between 1950 and 1960 and were linked
with a context of the ‘rationalisation’ of public decision-making with a view to improving
its efficacy. Lerner and Lasswell published The Policy Sciences in the United States as
early as 1951, thereby laying the foundations for this approach.

However, this ‘unified approach to the study of public problems and policy ... soon
settled into two main approaches’ (Parsons 1995, pp. 18-19): one which endeavours to
develop a better knowledge of the policy formation and implementation processes (the
analysis of policy), while the other concentrates on developing knowledge that is usable
in and for the policy formation and implementation processes (analysis in and for policy).
It should be stressed, however, that the analyses carried out by one school feed into the
experiences of the other, and vice versa. Thus, in their critique of this approach, Mény
and Thoenig (1989, p. 65) make a distinction between the function of the scientist who is
 13

interested in the progress of knowledge and learning and that of the professional whose
aim is to apply the sciences for the purpose of action.

The second approach adopts its theoretical thrust from several different scientific
approaches: administrative science, the sciences of complexity (particularly systems
analysis), the sociology of (public) decision-making and, more generally, the sociology of
collective action, the economic sciences and the information sciences.

The emergence of this approach was dominated by four major figures (Mény and
Thoenig 1989; Parsons, 1995). The first is the American political scientist Lasswell
(1951) who was the movement’s main source of inspiration and who adopted a
completely ‘managerial’ approach: his work deliberately attempted to construct a
dialogue between social scientific researchers, economic circles and public decision-
makers so as to improve the efficacy of public action. The second is Simon (1957),
whose work on human decision-making processes directed this type of approach towards
the analysis of public decision-making processes (cf. the concept of ‘bounded
rationality’). Lindblom (1959) also impacted on the development of policy analysis by
concentrating the analysis on the limited room for manoeuvre at the disposal of public
decision makers (cf. concept of ‘incrementalism’). Finally, Easton (1965), who was one
of the first political scientists to apply the science of systems analysis to the policy world
as a whole, and made a significant contribution to the development of the main concepts
of contemporary policy analysis.

All of these authors, who belonged to sometimes radically diverging schools of thought,
had an impact on the emergence of this approach, and on the definition of the concepts
used in this type of analysis and discussed in this book. For them the state is no longer
considered as a single actor but as a complex and often heterogeneous political-
administrative system whose workings need to be understood to enable the formulation of
‘predictions’ or ‘recommendations’. Nevertheless, here again there are several different
perspectives.

 Certain authors focused their analyses on the decision-making process and

actor strategies. This type of analysis is related on the one hand to the work of
sociologists of public organisations, whose main representatives in France are
Crozier and Friedberg (1977). It is also connected with the application of systems
analysis to human decision-making in the tradition of the work of Simon (1974),
Morin (1977, 1980) and Le Moigne (1990), and with endeavours to engage in the
analysis of systems-actors or concrete action systems. The professional
consequence of this approach was the emergence of ‘public management’ which
was promoted, in particular, by the work carried out by the OECD. Thus, the
OECD’s Public Management Service (PUMA) regularly publishes literature on
the role of ‘managers’ in public organisations. This approach is not very sensitive
for the analysis of the specific policies implemented by the analysed
administrations.

 Other works in this area are based on the tools and instruments of public
intervention. Economic approaches and, in particular, research on the political
 14

economy predominate here. This work analyses the modes of public action in
terms of their efficacy from either a macro-economic point of view (in the
tradition of Pareto, Keynes (1936) and Musgrave (1959) or from a micro-
economic point of view (in particular, the approach adopted by the clientele of
public services at the centre of what is known as ‘New Public Management’11).

 Other works again focus on the structures, procedures and institutional

forms of public administration. This approach constitutes the essence of the
administrative sciences and administrative law. It describes the way
administrative institutions work and, more generally, studies institutional policies
as defined by Quermonne.12 In France, this term mainly refers to administrative
reforms and, in particular, to the policies for the decentralisation of power. This
approach is of little interest for the concrete policies implemented by the
administrations studied. However, some of the work which forms part of policy
analysis is published in the Revue française d’administration publique13. In
Switzerland, the term ‘institutional policies’ generally refers to the modes of
control employed by the different types of public administration, the questions of
representativeness in the composition of ministries (languages, sexes, age,
political parties etc.), the civil servants’ statute, the (in)formal relationships
between the federal authorities and the cantons etc. In terms of policy, the work
carried out by the political scientist Germann (1996) is closest to these analyses.

 Finally, a specific public policy approach has been emerging for some
years now. It is known as the cognitive approach, ‘which attempts to understand
public policies as cognitive and normative matrices constituting systems of
interpretation of reality, within which the different public and private actors can
register their actions’ (Muller and Surel, 1998, p. 47). This approach stresses the
role of ideas and representations in the formation (and, in particular, the definition
of problems subject to public action) and alteration of public policies. The
distinctive element of this approach is the emphasis it places on general
principles, the argumentation and values which define ‘a global vision’ that
reflects and/or produces the public policy.

In summary, the characteristic feature of this second school is the concern to understand
the complexity of the public decision-making processes by dividing the object of the
analysis into different variables (for example, actor rationality, internal decision-making
processes in organisations etc.). This approach was perpetuated, inter alia, in the public
management and decision aid methods; however it differs strongly from them in terms of
its lack of direct operationalisation.

Our own approach is based on both a scientific and operational perspective. As Friedberg
(1993, p. 22) reminds us, the analyst ‘now has two interdependent tasks: on the one hand
to produce a concrete knowledge of the human reality underlying the context of action
analysed and, on the other, to help the interested parties to both position themselves with
respect to this knowledge and to draw consequences from it and integrate these into their
practices by modifying them’.
 15

1.1.3 The evaluation of the effects of public action

The third school of thought tries to explain the results of public action and its effect on
society from the viewpoint of the objectives pursued and/or in terms of indirect or
undesirable effects. Compared with the previous one, this approach is more evaluative
than explanatory. For the past ten years or so, this approach has become particularly
fashionable in France and Switzerland where initiatives, symposiums and publications on
policy analysis are thriving.14 In the United Kingdom the related concern has been with
‘evidence’ for policy15

It is possible to identify two main concerns in the context of evaluation.

 The first of these involves the development of a methodological approach

and an evaluation ‘tool box’: thus, numerous studies have undertaken to define
evaluation methods that can be applied to the non-market activities of the public
sector. This work is based on the statistical processing of quantitative data, multi-
criteria analysis (Maystre, Pictet and Simos, 1994); (quasi) experimental
comparison, cost-benefit analysis etc. Extensive literature has been published on
this approach. In France, a presentation of its ideas can be found in Deleau et al.
(1986) and in the annual publications of the Conseil scientifique de l’évaluation,
It is also evident in the manuals for the evaluation of socio-economic programmes
recently published by the European Union with the aim of facilitating the
evaluation of programmes associated with European structural funds.

 The second focuses on the process of evaluation and its implementation

in terms of improving public management and influencing decision making. A
significant number of American and, more recently, European authors have
investigated this question, including Rossi and Freeman (1993) for the USA,
Monnier (1992) for France and the collective work of Bussmann et al. (1998) for
Switzerland.

In Switzerland, policy evaluation has become almost a profession: it is

practised by academics at the universities, in the private consultancies and can
also be found within the administrative authorities themselves due to the creation
of a parliamentary and governmental evaluation service (Organe Parlementaire
de Contrôle de l’Administration, Service d’Evaluation du Conseil Fédéral. A
professional association (Société suisse d'évaluation – SEVAL) monitors the
quality of evaluations carried out (meta-evaluations which monitor the adherence
to quality, use and ethical standards etc.; cf. Joint Committee of Standards for
Educational Evaluation, 2000; Widmer 1996).

This trend is equally evident in France. It is associated with the organisation

of evaluation mechanisms at national and regional level and with the development
of European policies that require the organisation of evaluation exercises during
the implementation of European structural funds, for example. A Société
 16

française de l’évaluation was recently created with the aim of rendering this
activity more visible and improving its organisation. However, this movement is
finding it difficult to become institutionalised as a standard practice in public
administration. The disappearance of the interministerial mechanism which was
introduced in 1990 is an indication of this, similarly the absence of transparency
in the work of the Office Parlementaire des Choix Scientifiques et Techniques.
However, it is increasingly the subject of analysis by political scientists (Duran
and Monnier, 1992; Lascoumes and Setbon, 1996; Kessler et al., 1998). Thus, the
French model for the evaluation of public policy appears to be characterised by
the weak involvement of the policy actor and a very much reduced use of the
results of evaluation in the modification or conception of public policies, despite
the interest of actors in policy implementation (Setbon, 1998, p.15).

In the United Kingdom the work of the Audit Commission and the increasing use
of quantitative performance indicators in education, the health service and local
government has had a similar impact (Audit Commission, 2006; Pollitt, 2003).

This evaluative approach is generally accompanied by an explanatory approach, even if it

may be conceptually dissociated from it. It is an inspiration for our own model in the
sense that it is concerned with the effects of public action – effects that are measured on
the basis of the collective problem which a policy tries to resolve.

1.2. POLICY ANALYSIS AS A ‘SCIENCE OF ACTION’

Rather than fitting perfectly within the framework of one of the above-described schools,
our analysis borrows from all three. It is our ambition to establish a diagnostic approach
which demonstrates the factors which explain the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ functioning of public
policies in terms of public administration production and with respect to the efficacy of
its policies and their products. This type of analysis ultimately leads to describing,
understanding and explaining the workings of the political-administrative system as a
whole and its interactions with private actors. Thus, our approach is mainly based on the
explanation of the products or services provided by public administration which are
traditionally referred to as ‘outputs’, and on the explanation of the effects produced by
these services on social groups (‘impacts and outcomes’) which cause and/or are affected
by a particular collective problem.

To the extent that it aims to understand the ‘logic’ of public actions by reconstructing the
hypotheses on which public authorities (sometimes implicitly) base their thinking for the
resolution of public problems, our intellectual reasoning belongs within the framework of
the action sciences.

More precisely, the majority of the concepts presented here are derived from the
publications of the Centre de sociologie des organisations (Crozier and Friedberg, 1977;
Crozier, 1963, 1991; Friedberg, 1993) as well as the work of the German social and
political scientists of the 1970s (i.e. the Frankfurt School), who, in turn, were strongly
 17

influenced by neo-Marxism (Offe, 1972; Habermas, 1973; Grottian, 1974). However, this
influence is limited to the individual heuristic contributions that are particularly well
developed by these authors. This enables us to identify the actors, their networks and
their modes of interaction. As opposed to the ‘systemic forces’ often favoured by these
authors, in our approach, the retraceable strategies, ideas, interests and actor behaviour
essentially depend on factors connected to their resources and their ‘institutional
framework’ and must all be observed empirically. In this sense, our reasoning strongly
resembles actor-centred institutionalism as presented by Scharpf (1997).

The concept of public policy adopted here (as well as most of the definitions and terms
used in this book) originate in part from the work carried out in Germany by the
Forschungsverbund: Implementation politischer Programme at the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft between 1976 and 1981 under the direction of Mayntz,
Scharpf, Kaufmann and Wollmann;16 one of the authors of this book was associated with
this work. It is also based on texts on the implementation of public policy.17 Finally, the
approach presented has been particularly strongly influenced by the international
comparison of public policies, in particular because the comparative approach leads to
the definition of a common analytical frame which is applicable to different countries and
institutional regimes and which constitutes the essential aim of our approach.

As discussed in detail in the following chapters, our approach is mainly characterised by

the fact that it:

 tackles a policy from the angle of its ‘action logic’, thus its starting point
constitutes the arena of the political-administrative and social actors who interact
in a defined sector;

 integrates the influence of institutions on the behaviour of these actors and

on the substantive results of the public action (while the first generation of policy
analysis tended to neglect the institutional variables);

 pays particular attention to the resources mobilised by these actors in

order to assert their interests (which facilitates the combination of policy analysis
and public management).

Finally, our approach, which is essentially based on a retraceable interpretation of

empirical data, differs from other contemporary research currents, in particular:

 Neo-Weberianism which supposes that bureaucratic actors benefit from

the rigidity or at least inertia of certain structures and administrative rules and try
above all to obtain secure income at the cost of the content of the policies for
which they are responsible.

 Neo-Marxism which, despite claiming with justification that in addition to

its primary democratic legitimacy the state must ensure a secondary legitimacy
through the approbation of the ‘quality’ of its public policies by actors powerful
in resources, interprets the latter as acts of domination of one social class or group
 18

over the other. The state and its policies are reduced to an instrument of power
and repression controlled by the minority of these powerful actors. We, on the
other hand, believe that the public actors have a certain margin for manoeuvre in
their choices.

 The theories of rational choice (‘public choice’, ‘game theory’) which

assume that for political parties and bureaucrats, the only value that policies have
is as currency during electoral calculations and/or in the appropriation of personal
advantages (material and immaterial). Much empirical data shows that this theory
is strongly reductionist.

 Neo-corporatism and network theory which suggests that the political-

administrative apparatus is in the thrall of organised sectoral groups and that, as a
result, the state remains unable to develop and implement redistributive
interventions for the benefit of non-organised social groups.

 The classical pluralism which defends a vision of the ‘the State as service
hatch’ which is attentive to all social claims and demands and whose public
policies reflect the priorities for action emerging from all of the members of civil
society . However, as experience shows, numerous social problems are never
politically acknowledged as being worthy of a public policy.

 Simple systematisation which does not grant policy actors the appropriate
autonomy and intentionality. The latter’s behaviour is simply seen as a function of
the role assigned to them by their direct organisational environment. However,
social reality is full of examples that demonstrate the importance of actors even
when the scope for manoeuvre is theoretically very limited.

 The comparative approach in terms of political systems (‘comparative

politics’), which is based on the comparison of statistics and structural data about
political systems and different public authorities without really analysing the
process and more qualitative aspects of the actual content of public policies
(Hofferbert, 1974). We believe these dimensions are too unrefined to analyse the
substantive policies which interest us;

 The critical approach which refuses to consider any positive or

rationalistic approach to policy analysis and concentrates on underlining the
power and domination dimensions implicitly associated with concrete public
actions (Fischer and Forester, 1993, Fox and Miller, 1995, Fischer, 2003).

In actively refraining from subscribing to one or other of these theoretical concepts of the
state, ‘society’ or any other ‘system’ (merely touched on here), our approach remains
completely open to all of the hypotheses originating from these theories. The analysis
model presented in this book aims to remain as neutral as possible with respect to specific
theories so as to be able to accommodate – in terms of working hypotheses to be
empirically verified – the broadest possible range of theories developed in trends as
divergent as neo-Marxism, neo-liberalism and neo-corporatism, on condition that the
 19

researchers take the trouble to use the concepts in accordance with the basic dimensions
proposed with respect to their empirical field testing.
3
This analysis is adopted in part from that presented in the work Analyser les politiques d’environnement (Larrue 2000).
4
The ‘public choice’ school is based on the work of Buchanan and Tullock (1962). A critical review of the main principles
of this school can be found in Self (1993).
5
Cf. Simon (1957) and Lindblom (1959).
6
The neo-Marxist approach was mainly developed in the 1970s by urban sociologists like Castells and Godard (1974) and
German sociologists, such as Offe (1972) and Habermas (1973).
7
The neo-managerial approach is based, for example, on the sociology of administrative elites or, more broadly, the
sociology of organisations (Crozier and Friedberg, 1977).
8
Cf. for France, in particular, the work of Jobert and Muller (1987) and, for Germany, that of Lehmbruch and Schmitter
(1982).
9
Cf. in particular the work of March and Olsen (1984) and our own approach (Chapter 5).
10
Cf. Jordan and Richardson (1987), Marsh and Rhodes (1992), Smith (1993)
11
Cf. in particular the review of this phenomenon by Emery (1995), Schedler (1995), Hood, (1995), Pollitt and Bouckaert
(2000) and Pollitt (2003).
12
Quermonne defines institutional policies as policies whose main object is ‘the production, transformation or decline of
public or private institutions’ (Quermonne, 1985, p 62); cf. also Germann 1996, pp. 5-6.
13
Cf. Chevalier’s reflections (1981).
14
Since 1983, policy evaluation has developed significantly in France, from both an institutional and scientific perspective,
e.g. the article by Duran (1993) and more recently Kessler et al. (1998). For Switzerland, cf. the work of Bussmann et al.
(1998) which summarises the main message of Swiss National Research Programme no. 27 on ‘the effects of state
measures’.
15
See Davies et al. (2000) and the emergence in 2005 of a journal Evidence and Policy.
16
Cf. Mayntz (1980, 1983).
17
Lester et al. (1987) present a good synthesis of the implementation analysis models developed in the 1970s and 1980s in
the USA and in Europe. Cf. also Parsons (1995); Bohnert and Klitzsch (1980); Hill and Hupe, (2002).