By James Nicholls and Paul Cairney, for the University of Stirling MPH and MPP programmes.
There are strong links between the study of public health and public policy. For example, public health scholars often draw on policy theories to help explain (often low amounts of) policy change to foster population health or reduce health inequalities. Studies include a general focus on public health strategies (such as HiAP) or specific policy instruments (such as a ban on smoking in public places). While public health scholars may seek to evaluate or influence policy, policy theories tend to focus on explaining processes and outcomes,.
To demonstrate these links, we present this podcast and blog post to (1) use an initial description of a key alcohol policy instrument (minimum unit pricing in Scotland) to (2) describe the application of policy concepts and theories and reflect on the empirical and practical implications.
The eight (and final) of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.
This brief lecture is on the role of policymaking environments and the theories that describe them (also based on text in Chapter 13):
"The second part of our universal story is that people respond to bounded rationality within complex policymaking environments. We can describe this environment with reference to five or six constituent parts (John, 2003: 495; Heikkila and Cairney, 2018). First, there are many actors – including policymakers and influencers – spread across many types of policymaking venues. Second, each venue contains its own ‘institutions’, or formal and informal rules governing behaviour. Third, each venue can produce its own networks of policymakers and influencers, and the lines between formal responsibility and informal influence are blurry. Fourth, actors in each venue draw on a dominant set of ideas or beliefs about the nature of policy problems and the acceptable range of solutions. Fifth, natural, social, and economic factors limit policymakers’ abilities to address and solve policy problems. Finally, routine and non-routine events help set the policy agenda and influence the resources available to actors. Combined, these factors produce the broad sense that policymaking environments – or, in some accounts, ‘context’ or ‘systems’ – constrain and facilitate action and are out of the control (or even understanding) of individual actors. Figure 13.1 provides the simplest way to visualize these concepts, partly to compete with the visual simplicity of the policy cycle while maintaining the assumption of complexity"
Relevant posts:
Policy in 500 Words: The Policy Process
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Policy Process
Policy in 500 Words: if the policy cycle does not exist, what do we do?
(see also 12 things to know about studying public policy and 5 images of the policy process).
The seventh of a series of podcasts tying together 500 Words posts.
This lecture is on the distinction between comprehensive/ bounded rationality and how policy actors deal with bounded rationality. It is based on text in Chapter 13, including:
"Theories also describe different ways in which responses to bounded rationality affect policymaking behaviour:
• Policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny proportion of their responsibilities, and policymaking organizations struggle to process all policy-relevant information. They prioritize some issues and information and ignore the rest (Chapter 9).
Policy in 500 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory
• Some ways of understanding and describing the world dominate policy debate, helping some actors and marginalizing others.
Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge
• Policy actors see the world through the lens of their beliefs. Beliefs allow them to select and interpret policy-relevant information and decide who to trust.
Policy in 500 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework
• Actors engage in ‘trial-and-error strategies’ or use their ‘social tribal instincts’ to rely on ‘different decision heuristics to deal with uncertain and dynamic environments’
Policy in 500 words: uncertainty versus ambiguity
Policy in 500 Words: Ecology of Games
Policy in 500 Words: the Social-Ecological Systems Framework
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems
• Policy audiences are vulnerable to manipulation when they rely on other actors to help them understand the world. Actors tell simple stories to persuade their audience to see a policy problem and its solution in a particular way
Policy in 500 Words: the Narrative Policy Framework
• Policymakers draw on quick emotional judgements, and social stereotypes, to propose benefits to some target populations and punishments for others
Policy in 500 Words: Social Construction and Policy Design
• Institutions include formal rules but also the informal understandings that ‘exist in the minds of the participants and sometimes are shared as implicit knowledge rather than in an explicit and written form’
Policy in 500 Words: Feminist Institutionalism
• Policy learning is a political process in which actors engage selectively with information, not a rational search for truth
The sixth of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.
This lecture is on using ‘evolutionary theory‘ to connect Multiple Streams Analysis, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and Complexity Theory
Relevant posts:
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Evolution (see also cairney-2013-policy-politics-evolution.pdf (wordpress.com) )
Policy in 500 Words: Multiple Streams Analysis and Policy Entrepreneurs
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Multiple Streams Analysis
What is a policy entrepreneur?
Three habits of successful policy entrepreneurs – a blog post and paper on how entrepreneurs deal with ‘organized anarchy’
Whatever happened to multiple streams analysis? – introduces an article by Michael Jones and me on MSA studies
Paul Cairney and Michael Jones (2016) ‘Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach’ Policy Studies Journal, 44, 1, 37-58 PDF (Annex to Cairney Jones 2016) (special issue of PSJ)
Paul Cairney and Nikos Zahariadis (2016) ‘Multiple streams analysis’ in Zahariadis, N. (eds) Handbook of Public Policy Agenda-Setting (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar) PDF
Policy in 500 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory
The fifth of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Wordspodcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.
This lecture is on Policy in 500 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework
Here is the ACF story.
People engage in politics to turn their beliefs into policy. They form advocacy coalitions with people who share their beliefs, and compete with other coalitions. The action takes place within a subsystem devoted to a policy issue, and a wider policymaking process that provides constraints and opportunities to coalitions.
The policy process contains multiple actors and levels of government. It displays a mixture of intensely politicized disputes and routine activity. There is much uncertainty about the nature and severity of policy problems. The full effects of policy may be unclear for over a decade
...
Policy actors use their beliefs to understand, and seek influence in, this world. Beliefs about how to interpret the cause of and solution to policy problems, and the role of government in solving them, act as a glue to bind actors together within coalitions.
If the policy issue is technical and humdrum, there may be room for routine cooperation. If the issue is highly charged, then people romanticise their own cause and demonise their opponents.
The outcome is often long-term policymaking stability and policy continuity because the ‘core’ beliefs of coalitions are unlikely to shift and one coalition may dominate the subsystem for long periods.
There are two main sources of change ... see Policy in 500 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework for the rest
Relevant posts
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Advocacy Coalition Framework
The fourth of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.
This brief lecture is on the relationship between rational choice theory, game theory, the IAD, the SES, and Ecology of Games
Relevant posts:
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Rational Choice and the IAD
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: game theory and thought experiments
Policy in 500 Words: the Social-Ecological Systems Framework
The third of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.
This brief lecture describes bounded rationality and its implications for power/ knowledge, the NPF and SCPD
Relevant posts:
Policy in 500 words: uncertainty versus ambiguity
Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge
The second of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students (although, just to confuse you, this podcasts connects to a 1000 Word post) .
This brief lecture is on multi-centric policymaking, as described fully in Making Policy in a Complex World.
From Policy Concept in 1000 Words: Multi-centric Policymaking
Many theories in this 1000 words series describe multiple policymaking venues. They encourage us to give up on the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful national central government. Instead, there are many venues in which to make authoritative choices, each contributing to what we call policy.
The word ‘multi-centric’ (coined by Professor Tanya Heikkila, with me and Dr Matt Wood) does not suggest that every venue is of equal importance or power. Rather, it prompts us not to miss something important by focusing too narrowly on one single (alleged) centre of authority.
To some extent, multi-centric policymaking results from choice. Many federal political systems have constitutions that divide power between executive, legislative, and judicial branches, or give some protection to subnational governments. Many others have become ‘quasi-federal’ more organically, by sharing responsibilities with supranational and subnational governments. In such cases, there is explicit choice to distribute power and share responsibility for making policy (albeit with some competition to assert power or shuffle-off responsibility).
However, for the most part, this series helps explain the necessity of multi-centric policymaking ...
For more, see Policy Concept in 1000 Words: Multi-centric Policymaking
The first of a series of podcasts tying together multiple 500 Words posts. They’ll sound a bit different from the 1000 Words podcasts because I recorded them in front of our MPP students.
This brief lecture is on defining and measuring public policy and policy change. The relevant posts are:
Policy in 500 Words: what is public policy and why does it matter?
Policy in 500 Words: how much does policy change?
The first thing we do when studying public policy is to try to define it – as, for example, the sum total of government action, from signals of intent to the final outcomes. We then conclude that there is no single, satisfying, definition of public policy. Instead, there are many which accentuate different aspects of the policy process, prompting you to consider the additional questions you have to ask to make sense of policy.
Why do we ask more questions?
Think about how to research a specific policy issue. I’ll use the example ‘what is tobacco policy?’ to illustrate the importance of additional questions:
[see Policy in 500 Words: what is public policy and why does it matter? for more]
From Policy Concepts in 1000 words: Critical Policy Studies and the Narrative Policy Framework
‘Critical policy analysis’ (or studies’) is a broad term to describe a wide collection of texts, and it is difficult to come up with a definitive account, beyond the idea that it is perhaps based on the equally broad description ‘post-positivism’ and methods such as discourse analysis (also note the phrase ‘argumentative turn’). However, a discussion of ‘post-positivism’ is incredibly valuable even if you wouldn’t see yourself as post-positivist.
One key account of the intellectual basis of this literature is by Fischer when he describes the failings of ‘positivist’ policy sciences to describe, aid and explain policymaking (at least if measured against certain, rather unrealistic, hopes). In particular, he takes to task the idea of objective science in which we can separate facts from values and accumulate knowledge using scientific tenets such as hypothesis generation, revision and falsification. This argument ties in to one of the big questions about the nature of the world and the extent to which it exists independently of our knowledge or experience of it. Fischer stresses the social context in which knowledge is produced, to argue that scientists do not produce what can meaningfully be called ‘objective truth’. Instead, they are part of communities which produce knowledge according to rules, and that some professions, following particular rules, receive more respect than others in a notional hierarchy of knowledge production. This shifts our focus to the idea of ‘interpreting’ the social world rather than uncovering its truths, and provides a case for considering the value of many (often less respected) approaches even if they do not follow the same ‘positivist’ rules.
This is an important conclusion when we consider that many of the theories discussed in the ‘1000 word’ series would be described by Fischer as ‘positivist’. In particular, debates between Fischer and Paul Sabatier (the ACF) were based largely on their very-different views about how you do science and which approaches deserve support in published academic texts.
On that basis, the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is interesting because a key aim is to take insights from critical policy analysis, about the importance of interpreting and framing the world, and use them to produce work that would satisfy the kinds of scientific requirements associated with Sabatier. They argue that, although the study of policy ‘narratives’ (often using discourse analysis) is associated strongly with post-positivist scholarship, they can be examined in a ‘systematic empirical manner’ – and that the study of narratives can be an important way to hep reconcile (to some extent) positivist/ post-positivist studies.
for more see Policy Concepts in 1000 words: Critical Policy Studies and the Narrative Policy Framework
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Psychology of Policymaking
Psychology is at the heart of policymaking, but the literature on psychology is not always at the heart of policy theory. Most theories identify ‘bounded rationality’ which, on its own, is little more than a truism: people do not have the time, resources and cognitive ability to consider all information, all possibilities, all solutions, or anticipate all consequences of their actions. Consequently, they use informational shortcuts or heuristics – perhaps to produce ‘good-enough’ decisions. This is where psychology comes in, to:
Where does policy theory come in? It seeks to situate these processes within a wider examination of policymaking systems and their environments, identifying the role of:
Putting these approaches together is not easy. It presents us with an important choice regarding how to treat the role of psychology within explanations of complex policymaking systems – or, at least, on which aspect to focus.
Our first choice is to focus specifically on micro-level psychological processes, to produce hypotheses to test propositions regarding individual thought and action. There are many from which to choose, although from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (p 20), we can identify a basic distinction between two kinds ‘System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations … often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice and concentration’. Further, system 1 can be related to a series of cognitive shortcuts which develop over time as people learn from experience, including:
For more see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: The Psychology of Policymaking
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Combining Theories
The combination of multiple theories in policy studies is like a valence issue in politics: few would disagree with the idea, largely because the sentiment is rather vague. Who would not want to combine the insights of a wide range of theories and studies to advance our knowledge? The more problematic and debatable part of this task relates to the details: how do we do it? I outline three main ways in which scholars address this issue and highlight the problems that may arise in each case:
Synthesis. We combine the insights of multiple theories, concepts or models to produce a single theory. One key problem is that when we produce a synthetic theory, from a range of other theories or concepts, we have to assume that the component parts of this new hybrid are consistent with each other. Yet, if you scratch the surface of many concepts – such as ‘new institutionalism’ or ‘policy networks’ – you find all sorts of disagreement about the nature of the world, how our concepts relate to it and how we gather knowledge of it. There are also practical problems regarding our assumption that the authors of these concepts have the same thing in mind when they describe things like ‘punctuated equilibrium’. In other words, imagine that you have constructed a new theory based on the wisdom of five other people. Then, get those people in the same room and you will find that they will share all sorts of – often intractable – disagreements with each other. In that scenario, could you honestly state that your theory was based on accumulated knowledge?
The ‘Complementary’ Approach. In this case, you accept that people have these differences and so you accommodate them – you entertain a range of theories/ concepts and explore the extent to which they explain the same thing in different ways. This is a popular approach associated with people like Allison) and used by several others to compare policy events. One key problem with this approach is that it is difficult to do full justice to each theory. Most theories have associated methods which are labour intensive and costly, putting few in the position to make meaningful comparisons. Instead, the comparisons tend to be desktop exercises based on a case study and the authors’ ability to consider how each theory would explain it.
The ‘Contradictory’ Approach. In that context, another option is to encourage the independence of such theories.
For more see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Combining Theories
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the intersection between evidence and policy transfer
We can generate new insights on policymaking by connecting the dots between many separate concepts. However, don’t underestimate some major obstacles or how hard these dot-connecting exercises are to understand. They may seem clear in your head, but describing them (and getting people to go along with your description) is another matter. You need to set out these links clearly and in a set of logical steps. I give one example – of the links between evidence and policy transfer – which I have been struggling with for some time.
In this post, I combine three concepts – policy transfer, bounded rationality, and ‘evidence-based policymaking’ – to identify the major dilemmas faced by central government policymakers when they use evidence to identify a successful policy solution and consider how to import it and ‘scale it up’ within their jurisdiction. For example, do they use randomised control trials (RCTs) to establish the effectiveness of interventions and require uniform national delivery (to ensure the correct ‘dosage’), or tell stories of good practice and invite people to learn and adapt to local circumstances? I use these examples to demonstrate that our judgement of good evidence influences our judgement on the mode of policy transfer.
Insights from each concept
From studies of policy transfer, we know that central governments (a) import policies from other countries and/ or (b) encourage the spread (‘diffusion’) of successful policies which originated in regions within their country: but how do they use evidence to identify success and decide how to deliver programs?
From studies of ‘evidence-based policymaking’ (EBPM), we know that providers of scientific evidence identify an ‘evidence-policy gap’ in which policymakers ignore the evidence of a problem and/ or do not select the best evidence-based solution: but can policymakers simply identify the ‘best’ evidence and ‘roll-out’ the ‘best’ evidence-based solutions?
To read on, see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the intersection between evidence and policy transfer
see also Teaching evidence based policy to fly: how to deal with the politics of policy learning and transfer
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Policy Transfer and Learning
‘Policy learning’ describes the use of knowledge to inform policy decisions. That knowledge can be based on information regarding the current problem, lessons from the past or lessons from the experience of others. This is a political, not technical or objective, process (for example, see the ACF post). ‘Policy transfer’ describes the transfer of policy solutions or ideas from one place to another, such as by one government importing the policy in another country (note related terms such as ‘lesson-drawing’, ‘policy diffusion’ and ‘policy convergence’ – transfer is a catch-all, umbrella, term). Although these terms can be very closely related (one would hope that a government learns from the experiences of another before transferring policy) they can also operate relatively independently. For example, a government may decide not to transfer policy after learning from the experience of another, or it may transfer (or ‘emulate’) without really understanding why the exporting country had a successful experience (see the post on bounded rationality).
...
The descriptive/ empirical side asks these sorts of questions:
From where are lessons drawn? In the US, the diffusion literature examines which states tend to innovate or emulate. Some countries are also known as innovators in certain fields – such as Sweden and the social democratic state, Germany on inflation control and the UK on privatization. The US (or its states) tends to be a major exporter of ideas. Some countries often learn consistently from the same source (such as the UK from the US). Studies tend to highlight the reasons for borrowing from certain countries – for example, they share an ideology, common problems or policy conditions. ‘Globalization’ has also reduced practical barriers to learning between countries.
Who is involved? Apart from the usual suspects (elected officials, civil servants, interest groups), we can identify the role of federal governments (for states), international organizations (for countries), ‘policy entrepreneurs’ (who use their experience in one country to sell that policy to another – such as the Harvard Business School professor travelling the world selling ‘new public management’), international networks of experts (who feed up ideas to their national governments), multinational corporations (who encourage the ‘race to the bottom’, or the reduction of taxes and regulations in many countries), and other countries (such as the US).
For more see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Policy Transfer and Learning
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the Westminster Model and Multi-level Governance
A stark comparison between the ‘Westminster Model’ (WM) and Multi-level Governance (MLG) allows us to consider the difference between accountable government and the messy real world of policymaking. The WM may be used as an ideal-type to describe how power is centralized in the hands of a small number of elites:
We may also identify an adversarial style of politics and a ‘winner takes all’ mentality which tends to exclude opposition parties. The government is responsible for the vast majority of public policy and it uses its governing majority, combined with a strong party ‘whip’ to make sure that its legislation is passed by Parliament. Power is centralized and government policy is made from the top-down. In turn, the government is accountable to public, via Parliament, on the assumption that it is powerful, responsible and takes responsibility for public policy.
In contrast, MLG suggests that power is spread widely across the political system:
The hook is that we are witnessing a major transformation: from national governing institutions to supranational and sub-national governing institutions; and, from central government to the different levels of government and non-governmental organizations that interact with them. MLG identifies blurred boundaries between formal and informal sources of authority which make it difficult to identify clear-cut decisions or power relations.
[for more see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the Westminster Model and Multi-level Governance]
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Power and Ideas
Compare with Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge
Policy theory is about the relationship between power and ideas. These terms are difficult to disentangle, even analytically, because people often exercise power by influencing the beliefs of others. A good rule of thumb, from classic studies, is that the more profound and worrying kinds of power are the hardest to observe.
Dahl argued that elitism was unobservable; that it was ‘virtually impossible to disprove’ the idea that inequalities in society translate into systematic advantages across the political system. Dahl’s classic statement is that, ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can [or does] get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’. To demonstrate this power requires the identification of A’s: resources, means to exploit those resources, willingness to engage in political action; the amount of power exerted (or threatened) by A and the effect of A’s action on B. Dahl identified ‘key political choices’ involving a significant conflict of preferences – suggesting that the powerful are those that benefit from ‘concrete outcomes’. He identified inequalities in many areas but no overall, coordinated, control of the policy process. His work is often described as ‘pluralist’.
Subsequent debates were based on a critique of pluralist methods. Bachrach and Baratz argued that the ‘second face’ of power is exercised before Dahl’s ‘key political choices’. Power is not simply about visible conflicts. It can relate to two barriers to engagement. First, groups may exercise power to reinforce social attitudes. If the weight of public opinion is against government action, maybe governments will not intervene. In such cases, power and powerlessness relates to the inability of groups to persuade the public, media and/ or government that there is a reason to make policy; a problem to be solved. Second, policymakers can only pay attention to a tiny amount of issues for which they are responsible. So, groups may exercise power to keep some issues on their agenda at the expense of others. Issues on the agenda may be ‘safe’ – more attention to them means less attention to the imbalances of power within society. Schattschneider argues (in A Realist’s View of Democracy) that the structures of government, such as legislative procedures controlling debate, reinforce this problem when determining which conflicts receive attention and which are ignored.
The ‘third dimension’ of power suggests that people or organizations can be powerful without appearing to act.
[see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Power and Ideas for more]
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Context, Events, Structural and Socioeconomic Factors
We need a way to describe the things that policymakers take into account when they make decisions. We also need a way to categorise these things in order of importance, from factors that simply catch their eye, to factors that seem to be out of their control and/ or force them into making particular choices.
For example, ‘policy context’ or ‘structural factors’ may be used to describe the extent to which a policymaker’s ‘environment’ is in her control. It can refer to the policy conditions that policymakers take into account when identifying problems and deciding how to address them, such as a political system’s: geography, demographic profile, economy, and mass social attitudes and behaviour.
Or, we might refer to‘events’, which can be: routine, such as the elections, or unanticipated incidents, including social or natural crises, major scientific breakthroughs and technological change (see Weible).
Or, we might refer to policymaker ‘inheritance’ – of laws, rules, and programs (Rose, 1990). The first thing that a new government does is accept responsibility for the decisions made in its name in the past. New policymakers also realise that they are engaging in governing organisations which often have well-established rules, to which they either have to adapt or expend energy to challenge.
Structure and agency
Our challenge is to find a way to incorporate these factors into a convincing account of policymaking.
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems
There is an unnecessary tendency for proponents of complexity theory to say that it is radically new; a scientific revolution; that it will change the way we think about, and study, the natural and social world. It suggests that we shift our analysis from individual parts of a system to the system as a whole; as a network of elements that interact and combine to produce systemic behaviour that cannot be broken down merely into the actions of its constituent parts. The metaphor of a microscope or telescope, in which we zoom in to analyse individual components or zoom out to see the system as a whole, sums up this alleged shift of approach.
Complexity theory has been applied to a wide range of activity, from the swarming behaviour of bees, the weather and the function of the brain, to social and political systems. The argument is that all such systems have common properties, including:
As you might expect from a theory of many things, the language is vague and needs some interpretation in each field. In the policymaking field, the identification of a complex system is often used to make the following suggestions:
On this basis, there is a tendency in the literature to encourage
..
For more see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Complex Systems
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Evolution
Evolutionary theory is prevalent in policymaking studies and it can be useful if we overcome some initial barriers. First, ‘evolution’ comes with a lot of baggage when we move from a discussion of animals to people. We can blame ‘social-Darwinism’ for the racist/ sexist idea that some people are more evolved than others.
Second, the word ‘evolution’ is used frequently in daily life, and academic studies, without a clear sense of its meaning. When it is used loosely in everyday language, it refers to a long term, gradual process of change. However, evolution can also refer to quick, dramatic change; the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ is that long spells of stability and gradual change are interrupted by relatively short but profound bursts of instability. When we get into the details of studies, there are other sources of potential confusion about, for example, the nature of evolution (does it refer to advancement as well as change?) and the nature of ‘selection’ (do species simply respond blindly to their environments or help create them?).
This sort of confusion can be found in the study of public policy where evolution can refer to a wide range of things, including:
The most prominent theories of politics and policymaking draw on references to evolution in different ways. For example:
...
To describe these processes as ‘evolutionary’, we should use the language of evolution – variation, selection and retention – to describe and explain outcomes. The idea in the natural world is that certain beings (including humans) want to do at least two things: (1) pass on their genes; (2) cooperate with others to secure resources and share them out to their kith and kin. In the political world, the equivalent is passing on ‘memes’ (as described in the 70s by Richard Dawkins) – the ideas (beliefs, ways of thinking) that we use to understand the world and act within it:
The distinctive aspect of applying evolutionary theory to policymaking relates to the idea of passing on memes through the generations.
...
For more see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Evolution
See also Policy in 500 Words: Social Construction and Policy Design
The 5000-word version has a detailed guide to further reading.
From Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the Social Construction of Target Populations:
The ‘social construction of target populations’ (SCTP) literature identifies:
Schneider, Ingram and Deleon identify the importance of this process in three main steps.
First, when competing for elected public office, people articulate value judgements and make fundamental choices about which social groups should be treated differently by government bodies. They present arguments for rewarding ‘good’ groups with government support and punishing ‘bad’ groups with sanctions. This description, which may seem rather simplistic, highlights the tendency of policymakers to make quick and superficial judgements, and back up their impressions with selective facts, before distributing rewards and sanctions. There is a crucial ‘fast thinking’ element to policymaking. Policymakers make quick, biased, emotional judgements, then back up their actions with selective facts to ‘institutionalize’ their understanding of a policy problem and its solution.
Second, these judgements can have an enduring ‘feed-forward’ effect: fundamental choices based on values are reproduced in the institutions devoted to policy delivery. Policy designs based on emotionally-driven thinking often become routine and questioned rarely in government.
Third, this decision has an impact on citizens and groups, who participate more or less in politics according to how they are characterised by government. Some groups can become more or less powerful, and categorised differently, if they have the resources to mobilise and challenge the way they are perceived by policymakers (and the media and public). However, this outcome may take decades in the absence of a major event, such as an economic crisis or game-changing election.
Overall, past policies, based on rapid emotional judgements and policymakers’ values, provide key context for policymaking. The distribution of rewards and sanctions is cumulative, influencing future action by signalling to target populations how they are described and will be treated. Social constructions are difficult to overcome, because a sequence of previous policies, based on a particular framing of target populations, produces ‘hegemony’: the public, media and/ or policymakers take this set of values for granted, as normal or natural, and rarely question them when engaging in politics.
[see Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: the Social Construction of Target Populations for more]
