POLICY AND SYSTEMS MODELS

Policy and Systems Models

Policy and Systems Models

Public policy

Robert Hoppe has expressed the transformation of policy analysis over time well: It has gone from “Speaking Truth to Power” to “Making Sense Together” (Hoppe 1999). In this chapter, the difference between the two statements is illustrated by the models of the rational actor and of mutual adjustment (Beer, 1985).

We analyze some core features of these models, and from there we shall discuss a number of developments within the literature in the second half of the 20th century, in order to gain a better understanding of how theorists have dealt with human interaction in the policy process. Subsequently, we shall go through the way in which various schools of thought have dealt with the resulting pattern of interaction, a pattern that in the early years of the third millennium A.D. is conceptualized as a network by most theorists.

It is a story of how the rational model has conceded to interactive theories of political and administrative processes, and how the conceptions of policy processes have been broadened from being based on the polity and politics in a narrow sense to being a societal affair involving many types of actors.

Organized order versus muddled processes

The classical, rational and the mutual adjustment models form the backbone of this chapter. In this chapter, we shall focus on how these models treat the decision-making processes and the interaction between actors.

Rational Policy-making

“Speaking Truth to Power” (Wildawsky, 1979) indicates a troubled relationship between science and politics, between those finding the true state of the world and those wanting to rule it. Indeed, much of the policy literature is concerned with authority, expertise and order (Colebatch, 1998).

First, the policy literature deals with core activities of governments, setting up authority relations to back up the ideas of the policy ...