Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn his classic 1976 article on the state of policy studies in Canada, Richard Simeon explicitly warned against following the path toward a policy science. Simeon was suspicious of the normative agenda embedded in the policy sciences project and worried that it would submerge politics in a broader set of interdisciplinary concerns. Was Simeon right? The policy sciences have not developed the way their principal proponent, Harold Lasswell, had anticipated or hoped, but neither has the study of public policy developed exactly as Simeon advocated. Both Lasswell and Simeon believed strongly in an empirical orientation and Lasswell, more than Simeon, focused on creating a tool kit of techniques. Schools of public policy have moved beyond both critique and technique to estimate risk, ameliorate error and mobilize knowledge. This new agenda requires students of public policy to acquire and employ practical knowledge steeped in the particular and instructed by policy narratives.

Abstract.Political scientists are increasingly studying public policy in interdisciplinary environments where they are challenged by the political and normative agenda of other disciplines. Political science has unique perspectives to offer, including a stress on the political feasibility of policy in an environment of power differentials. Our contributions should be informed by the insights of cognitive psychology and we should focus on improving governance, in particular the competence and integrity of decision makers. The discipline's stress on legitimacy and acceptability provides a normative anchor, but we should not over invest in the idea that incentives will achieve normative goals. Creating decision situations that overcome cognitive deficiencies is ultimately the most important strategy.Résumé.Les politologues étudient les politiques publiques dans des contextes de plus en plus interdisciplinaires, où ils sont remis en question par les préoccupations politique et normatives d'autres disciplines. La science politique a des perspectives uniques à offrir, y compris un accent sur la faisabilité politique des politiques publiques dans un contexte de relations de pouvoir asymétriques. Nos contributions doivent être informées par les idées associées à la psychologie cognitive et nous devrions nous concentrer sur l'amélioration de la gouvernance, et notamment la compétence et l'intégrité des décideurs. L'accent de notre discipline sur la légitimité et l'acceptabilité fournit un point d'ancrage normatif, mais il ne faut pas trop investir dans l'idée que des mesures incitatives permettront nécessairement d'atteindre des objectifs normatifs. Créer des situations de décision qui surmontent les lacunes cognitives des acteurs est finalement la stratégie la plus importante à adopter.

Charles Lindblom never abandoned the incremental version of decision-making he introduced in 1959, but as his work progressed he increasingly lamented the impaired quality of inquiry that characterizes public (and private) decision-making. Lindblom did not identify the precise origins of socially created incompetence, but he made it clear that incrementalism is not the source. This article suggests that two lines of intellectual inquiry—one based on institutionalism, one on behavioral economics—provide persuasive accounts of the reasons for Lindblom's lament. In each case the status quo is a central concept and its persistent hold over decision-makers is the reason for less than timely responses to policy deficiencies. Neither line of inquiry is inconsistent with incrementalism, but each improves on Lindblom's original formula.

AbstractThis article analyzes the recent constitutional turmoil in Canada by arguing that disenchantment with political institutions can be traced to confusion and indecision about the kind of democratic regime Canadians want. Using the work of Johan Olsen and James March, the author outlines two models of democratic political institutions, both centred on the concept of popular sovereignty but each offering its own version of how popular rule is to be achieved and legitimated. While the Canadian state was originally established on "integrative" principles and processes, recent years witnessed the rise of "aggregative" ideals. This development has had a profound effect on constitutional politics as well as on "normal" politics. The result is that Canadians now have a different democracy than the one they inherited from their British forebears, one with its own capacity to generate stalemate and disappointment.