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Studying Public Policy

Richard Simeon

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique , Vol. 9, No. 4.(Dec., 1976), pp. 548-580.

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Studying Public Policy*

R I C H A R D SIMEON Queen's U niversity

In the last few years, the study of policy and policy-making has become one ofthe most fashionable branches of the discipline. It has spawned new universitycourses, an Institute for Public Policy Research, and several new journals,including Policy Sciences, T h e Public Interest, and most recently, CanadianPublic Policy. The impetus to focus on policy, on what governments actually doand why, comes from a great many sources. Partly it may be a reaction against

the so-called behavioural revolution which seemed often to lead us away from aconcern with the stuff of politics. Partly it stems from a growing desire to be insom e sense more "relevant" and to a pply whatever knowledge we have to con-temporary societal problems. Partly it stems from the desires of governmentthemselves to be more systematic in their consideration a nd assessment of alterna-tive pr0grams.l Policy research has also been given urgency by increasing pes-simism ab out the ability of gov ernm ents to cop e in an era of "demand overload"an d "the fiscal crisis of the state.""

Despite this recent preoccupation with what, after all, is one of the oldestconcerns of political science, we have not really advanced very far in increasingunderstanding of how government policies and actions are to be explained orunderstood. There is a proliferation of isolated studies, and of different methodsand approaches, but precious little in the way of explanation. Indeed, we a re noteven sure of wha t it is we want to explain, of w hat ou r dep end ent va riables shouldbe. This paper hopes to provide an assessment and critique of some of theprincipal developments of recent years, and to suggest some potentially more

"This paper is a revised version of a seminar prepared for the Depar tment of PoliticalEconomy, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, in January 1975. I would like to thankthe department and its members for giving me the opportunity, and also to thank several ofmy colleagues at Queen's University, and the University of Essex, for their comments DalePoel, Graham Wilson, John Meisel, Simon McInnes, Allan Tupper, Finn Hoven, andDavid McKay.lFor a discussion of recent developments in this direction in the Canadian federal govern-ment, see G. Bruce Doern, "The Development of Policy Organizations in the ExecutiveArena," in Doern and Peter Aucoin, eds., T h e S t r u c t~ l r e sof Policy-Making in Canada(Toronto, 1971) , 38-78. See also Gordon Robertson, "The Changing Role of the PrivyCouncil Office," Canadian Public Administration 14 (Winter 1971), 487-508; and A.W.Johnson, "The Treasury Board of Canada and the Machinery of Government in the 1970's,"Canadian Jo~lrnalof Political Science 4 (September 1971), 346-66. See also several of thecontributions to Thomas Hockin, ed., A p e x of Power (Scarborough, Ont., 1971).ZSee, among others, Daniel Bell, "The Public Household On 'Fiscal Sociology' and theLiberal Society," The Public Interest 34 (Winter 1974) , 29-68; Anthony King, "Overload:

Problems of Governing in the 1970's," Political StudiesX X

(June-September 1975),284-96; James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis o the State (New York, 1973) ; and RichardRose, "Overloaded Government," European Studies Newsletter v (December 1975), 13-18.

Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, IX no. 4(December/dicembre 1976) Printed in Canada/Imprimk au Canada



L'Ctude des politiques publique s

L au teu r e value et critique les ap proch es les plus re centes utilise es du ns l e tude d espolitiques publiques et formule un cadre de rhfe rence pour la cond uite fu tur e d un etelle e tude. AprP s a voir de montre les limites inhe rentes aux e tudes de ca s ainsi qu a uxapproches fonde es sur la prise de de cision, lesquelles son t surto ut axe es sur despre occupations propres soit l adm inistration publiq ue, soit l analyse des politique s<< policy analysis B , il suggPre q ue l e tude des politiqu es do it ten ir co mp te d un e ventailplus large de fac teur s politiques et ins titut ion nel s qu elle ne l a fait jusqu d pre sent, d efago n, n ota mm en t, d ce que la de termination des polit iques c policy-making B nere fPre plus si mp le me nt am rPg1ement des problPm es << problem-solving B , mais aussid la compe tition et a ux conflits qui 1es ont engendre s.

Selon l auteu r, l e tude c omp arativ e des politiques pu bliques devrait e n premier lieubien identifier l ktendue de l action gouvernem entale, les moye ns don t le gouvernemen tdispose pour atteindre ses objectifs et la rhpartition de s be ne fices et de s colits re sultantd e ses activite s. U n exam en critique des divers modPles utilise s pour expliq uer cestrois dime nsion s lui permet de conclure que l utilite de chac un des modPles est res-treinte a des aspects bien particuliers d es politiques pub liques, si bien qu aucun d entreeu x ne permet, a lui seul, d en fournir une explication ade quate.

f ru itf ul lines of i n q ~ i r y . ~lmost every aspect of policy-making in Ca na da rem ainsshrouded in ignorance if not mystery. The need, therefore, is to develop boththeory and information-gathering together; each mu st inform the o ther. It is alsonecessary t o rescue the study of policy from two o r three holes in which it threatensto become stuck.

First, policy study has become rather closely linked with the study of

bureaucracy and public administration. Obviously, bureaucratic agencies arecentral elemen ts in the policy-making proce ss, an d no study of policy co uld igno rethem. But bureaucrats and politicians operate within a broader political frame-work, defined by such factors as prevailing ideologies, assumptions and values,structures of power and influence, patterns of conflict and division, and so on.They m ake critical choices, but from a rath er limited set of alternatives. More -over, much of the literature on bureaucracy is concerned with questions such asefficiency and effectiveness, which, while important, do not seem to me to be thecentral ones. Policy-making must be broa der tha n pub lic adm inistration.

It is even mor e importan t to rescue the study of policy from what we might callthe technologists, whose main concern has been to develop aids to assist officialdecision -mak ers ma ke in som e sense better decisions. I n this view, exemplifiedby w riters like Yehezkiel D r ~ r , ~olicy-m aking is essentially a technica l question,

Wn e embarks on yet another review of the literature and presentation of a framework withsome trepidation. Should we not actually get on and do the research, rather than endlesslytalk about how to do it? I hope, however, the paper does break some new ground both in itsformulation of the problems and in its attention to the Canadian case. Among the betterrecent assessments of the field are: Austin Ranney, ed., Political Science and Public Policy(Chicago, 1969) ; Richard Rose, Comparing Public Policy: n Overview, EuropeanJournal of Political Research 1 (1 973), 67-94; Hugh Heclo, Review Article: Policy

Analysis, British Journal of Political Scien ce 2 (January 1972), 83-108; Anthony King,Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: A Comparative Analysis, Parts1-111 British Journa l o f Political Science 3 (July and October 1973), 291-313 and 409-23.+Public Policy-M aking Re-examined (San Francisco, 1968). See also Erich Jantsch, FromForecasting and Planning to Policy Sciences, Policy Sciences I (Spring 1970), 31-4, and



550 R I C H R D SIMEON

a matter of developing mor e systematic me ans to c anvass alternatives, assess costsand benefits, an d implement choices. This literature, which app ears to have hadconsiderable influence with government decision-makers themselves, is alsoprescriptive: it seeks primarily not toexplain how or why decisions are made,but to prescribe more effective ways of doing it. It also tends to focus its studynarrowly, suggesting better policy tha t is, policy which is m ore rational, con -sistent, cost-effective, and so on will follow from reform s of adm inistrativestructure and development of new analytical techniques. Randall Ripley dis-tinguishes betw een policy analysis advice on the choo sing of alternativesan d policy theory the exp lanatio n of why certain alternatives are chosen andothe rs are no t. V f we are to unde rstand po litics generally, our study of policymust be firmly rooted in th e latter view.

In seeking to move beyon d th e perspectives of public a dm inistration an d policyanalysis, each of wh ich is useful but lim ited, we need to link up the study of policywith the more traditional concerns of political science and in particular with thethree most vital elements: power, conflict, and ideology. What governments docannot be fully explained either by focusing only on the actions and perceptionsof the proximate policy-makers, O as Charles Lindblo m calls them , or bystressing only the imp erson al forces of th e env ironment, such a s levels of econom icdevelopm ent, urba nizatio n, and affluence, as some of the recent Am erican deter-minants literature suggests. Policy emerges from the play of eco nom ic, social,and political forces, as manifested in and through institutions and processes. Adang er in the em ergen ce of a specialized subd iscipline of policy science is tha tsuch broad forces will be ignored or assum ed.

Second, policy-making;s not, by and large, simply a matter of problem -solving,of taking some comm on goal an d seeking the best or most cost effectivesolution. It is rather a matter of choice in which resources are limited and in

which goals and objectives differ and cannot easily be weighed against eachother. He nce policy-making is a ma tter of conflict. Th ere are very few pure publicgoods,7 that is, those which are available equally to all citizens. M ost go ods dis-tributed by governm ent confer differential benefits som e get mo re than others;some pay m ore than others. M uch of the debate a bou t them is precisely aboutthese question^.^ H en ce the most imp orta nt question to ask in the study of policyis Lasswell's political qu esti on : who gets wh at, when, and h ow?

third basic assumption ab ou t policy flows from this perspective: policy studyneeds to be comp arative across both space and time. W e need to look at the broa d

other articles in the same issue. For a Canadian example, see Economic Council of Canada,Eighth Annual Review, Design for Decision-Making (Ottawa, 1971). A good critique isfound in G . Bruce Doern, Political Policy-M aking: Re view of the Ec ono mic Council sEighth An nual Review and the Ritchie Repo rt(Montreal, 1972).6 Review of Ranney and Dror, American Political Science Review63 ( 1969) , 918

The Policy-Making Process (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968) , 20-1 and chap. 9T o r a discussion of varieties of public goods, see Peter 0 . Steiner, The Public Sector andthe Public Interest, in Robert Havemann and Julius Margolis, eds., Public Expendit~lres nd

Policy Analysis (Chicago, 1970), 21-58. The classic definition is tha t of Paul Samuelson,The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure, Review of Economics and Statistics36 (1954),387-90.8Herbert Jacob and Michael Lipsky, Outputs, Structure and Power, Journal of Politics(May 1968), 510



5 5 1tudying Publ ic Pol icy

evolution of pat tern s of policy over long periods within coun tries, provinces, a ndother units, in the ways they deal with similar problem s as a first step tow ards theprim ary goal of exp laining the differences.

Befo re considering a bro ade r app roa ch, let us examine som e of the generalcharacteristics of the existing policy literature. Most obvious is the striking con-centration on case studies, examining either a single decision, or policy in ageneral area such as pensions, or immigration, o r foreign policy. Indeed th e mostcom mo n frame wo rk sometimes appe ars to consist of m and ato ry theoreticalchapters at the beginning and end which bear little relationship to the detailedhistorical reconstruction of a set of events which takes up the bulk of the book.Such studies can be extremely useful, especially when, as in Ca nad a, we have solittle basic inform ation with which to w ork. Th ey c an prov ide a sense of the richnuance, detail, and complexity of the real world of policy-making, which thoseconcerned with m ore abstract model-building would do well to remember. While

single case can never confirm a theo ry, it is possib le to design case studies whichmay falsify on e ( thou gh the fact is, there are few if any theorie s of policy-makingwell developed enough to be tested). Case studies may also suggest new hypo-theses or generalizations which cou ld be applied and tested la ter in other studies.

In general, it must be said that few of these poten tial benefits ha ve been realized.Individual case studies tend to be isolated and unique, each looking at differentissues, using different methods, and asking different questio ns. This makes com -parison extremely difficult. Th eir focus has often been o n th e details of the policyitself, rather than on using the policy to generalize about politics.1° Cumulativeknowledge and theory cannot simply grow automatically by piling case studies

on top of each othe r. Case studies have also a tendency n ot to focus on th enormal but on the unique, exotic, or imp ortant, soinsight5 gained from themmay actually be misleading. M oreov er, in focusing on a specific decision o r pieceof legislation, case studies tend to ignore thos e issues or alternatives which simplydo no t come up for deb ate. It is easy to get submerged in the minutiae of the issueitself, and therefore to miss what might be much broader factors influencing theoutcome.

Many of these problems might be quite easily overcome. Programs ofcoordinated case studies applying similar questions, frameworks, and methodsto carefully selected issues of different sorts could yield cumulative results.Conversely, applying several different models to a single case, as G rah am Allisondid with three mo dels in the C ub an missile crisis,ll is also useful. S imilarly, mu chis to be gained by very simple com parison s and by th e selection of cases whichoffer particular promise of illuminating wider aspects of policy. One of the mostinteresting examples is Richard Titmuss's The Gi f t Rela t ionship12 a comparisonof the ways in which the United States and Great Britain deal with the commonissue of how t o distribute blood fo r medical p urpo ses: in on e case, it is largely acommercial, market-based activity, in the other entirely voluntary. The case

T h i s is true even o f the best such studies, for example, Kenneth Bryden, Old Age Pensionsand Policy-Making in Canada Montreal, 1974).lOFor example, Freda Hawkins, Canada and Im migrat ion: Public Policy and Public Conce rn

Montreal, 1972)11Essence of Decision: Explaining the C ub an Missile Crisis Boston, 1971)12London, 1970



552 RICHARD SIMEON

allowed Titmuss to explore some of the basic value differences between the twocountries and to show how in a fun dam ental way they helped sha pe policy.

Th e second ma jor weakness of the liter ature is its failure to come to grips withwhat might be called the problem of the dependent variable. As LewisFromansuggests, for reasons which are not har d to analyse, researchers are likely tospend a good deal more time constructing explanations of phenom ena thanin becoming more sophisticated in the description of the behaviour to beexplained. 13 What is it about public policies that we want to explain? Whatdimensions of policy are of special interest to th e political scientist? Until we hav ea much clearer conception of how to answer these questions, policy studies willinevitably be confused and unproductive. Little of the literature seems to trysystematically to link some set of independent explanatory variables with somedependent ones; few deal with substance of content. Instead , we have on the onehand studies which look at a particu lar institution or process cabinet, federal-provincial negotiations, the burea ucrac y, or interest groups but which simplyassume that in some sense they are imp ortant variables w ith an im pact o n policy.Th e assumption is seldom tested, and research tends to c once ntrate on explicatingand describing the pattern s of interaction within the institution or process.

The literature on Congress in theus suffers especially from this malady, asdoes that on the so-called presidentialization of the prime minister in Canada.14T o take another example, Bruce Doern, Peter Aucoin, and others have providedexcellent analyses of th e recent struc tural and analytical changes(PPBS, ministriesof state, strengthened central coordinating agencies, and the like) within thefederal government.15 But th e question rem ains: even if fully implem ented, what

difference do these changes make in what gets done, or for whom governmentserves? On the other han d, we quite often have studies which, as do many of theessays in the recent Doern and Wilson book Issues in Canadian Public Policy,lGexamine substantive policies, but do little to ask what forces led to on e particularset of outcom es rather than an other.

A major exception to this observation is the literature on comparative city andstate expenditure patterns in the United States, which does systematically try tolink a series of independen t variables, bo th political a nd non-political.17 The

1 'The Categorization of Policy Contents, in Ranney, Political Science and Public Policy 43l a e n i s Smith, President and Parliament: The Transformation of Parliamentary Govern-ment in Canada, in Orest Kruhlak et al., e d ~ , he Canadian Political Process (Toronto,197 0) , 367-82ISG. Bruce Doern, The Policy-Making Philosophy of Pr ime Minister Trudeau and hisAdvisers, in Thomas Hockin, ed., Apex of Power (Scarborough, Ont., 1971); Doern, TheDevelopment of Policy Organizat ions in the Executive Arena, in Doern and Aucoin,Structures of Policy-Making 39-78; Peter Aucoin and Richard French, Knowledge Powerand Public Policy Science Council of Canada, Background Study No. 3 1 (Ottawa, 1974)1GG. Bruce Doern and V.S. Wilson, eds., Issues in Canadian Public P olicy (Toronto, 1974).17The lite ratu re is cited and assessed in: Gar y Tompkins, A Causal Model of State WelfareExpenditures, Journal of Politics 37 (May 1975), 392-416; Stuart Rakoff and GuentherSchaefer, Politics, Policy and Political Science: Some Theoreti cal Alternatives, Politicsand Society I (1970), 51-77; John H. Fenton and Richard Chamberlayne, The Literature

Dealing with the Relationships between Political Processes, Socioeconomic Conditions andPublic Policies in the American States, Polity I (Spring 19 69), 388-404; Thomas R. Dye,Und erstanding Public Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972), chap. 11. For another thoroughcritique, see Joyce M. Munns, The Environment, Politics and Policy Literature, WesternPolitical Quarterly XXVIII (December 1975 ), 646-67.



553tudying Public Policy

general finding is that broad environmental factors, rather than political charac-teristics, account for the greatest proportion of the variance, though recent workhas tended to reinstate them somewhat. Unfortunately, many of the correlationsare low, and the selection of variables is rather arbitrary: many of the more inter-esting independent factors cannot easily be built in to the models used, and thedependent variables seldom go beyond raw expenditure figures. More important,these studies have not yet been accompanied by a theory which would accountfor the correlations and indicate the steps by which the environmental differencesare translated into policy differences. Some recent work in this vein has madeinternational comparisons of spending on social security: in general, they findonly weak correlations with economic factors, and indicate that the time of firstintroduction of the policies explains the greater part of the variance, suggestingthat broad political factors like ideology and values are very important, even ifday-to-day variations in political leadership are not.lx

The characteristics of policy which a political scientist might want to explainare very different from those which other specialists would want to. For example,the description of the outcomes of the Canada Pension plan debate given inFederal-Provincial D i pl om ac yl ~o ul d, whatever its merits for a political scien-tist, have been more unsatisfactory for an actuary interested in designing pensionplans, since what he would consider important, I would not. For empirical in-vestigation, it is of course vital to know what those involved felt to be the im-portant characteristics of the policies in question, but we need to go beyondthat to posit theoretically relevant categories, typologies, or classifications of thedifferent dimensions of policy. One problem for political scientists doing policy

research is that the information presented in such sources as the Public Accountsor Estimates is not classified according to such criteria.

third basic danger for policy studier stems from the pressure to be politicallyand socially relevant. Apart from the eclectic case study approach, the most impor-tant recent approach to policy study is what Hugh Helco calls programmatic~ t u d y . ' ~he concern is not to explain existing policies but to prescribe generaltechniques for deciding on policies, and to recommend which among a variety ofalternatives government should choose. Introducing the journal Policy Sciences,its editor stated the purpose as to augment by scientific decision methods andthe behavioural sciences, the process that humans use in making judgements andtaking decisions. In the same issue, Yehezkiel Dror spoke of the supradisci-pline which would use sysrematic knowledge and structured rationality for theconscious shaping of society. 22

'5ee Fredcric Pryor, Public Experldi tures in Comrn~tnistand Capitalist Nations (London,1968); Henry Aaron, Social Security: International Comparisons, in Otto Eckstein, ed.,Studies in the Econom ics of Income Maintenance (Washington, 1967) , 14-38; Felix Paukert,Social Security and Income Redistribution, Internat ional Labour Review 98 (November

1368), 425-50; Koji Tai ra and Peter Kilby, Differences in Social Security Development inSelected Countries, Internutiotlul Social Security Review22 (1969), 139-53.1 Rhard Simeon, Federal-Provincial Dip1ornac l (Toronto, 1972)

20 Policy Analysis, 97-104. See also the essays in Julius Margolis, ed., T h e A n a l y s i s o fPublic Output (New York, 197 0).21E.S. Quade, Why Policy Sciences? Policy Sciences I (Spring 1970), 122Policy Sc ience s, 137. See also Malcolm Rowan, A Conceptual Framework for GovernmentPolicy-Making, Canadian Public Adn2inistration X (Autumn 1970), 277-96.



5 5 RICH RD SIMEON

T o the extent that there is a dependen t variable o r criterion for assessing poli-cies it is efficiency or cost effectiveness. This literature is concerned with the de-velopment of m ore effective analytical tools, and the o bjects of its study tend tobe decision-makers in central coordinating agencies. It is attractive because itlends itself to a problem-orientation and to multidisciplinary techniques, andbecause it suggests political scientists really can be useful to government. AsVe rnon V an Dyke suggests, an all-out focus on policy a nd analysis in this sensewould take us fully into the realm of normative problem s and social engineer-ing. a3

Like him, I find the prospect most und esirable. Partly this is because th e advo -cates of the appro ach mislead themselves abo ut the basic natu re of the policyprocess. It is not simply a rational intellectual process; goals are not simplygiven. A s a guide to decision-makers, P P B S and systems analysis have proved

themselves of limited utility, and this is not simply because the tools are notsufficiently refined. More important, the approach is very narrowly focused; itsimply takes for granted existing values, norms, institutions, and patterns ofpower when it is precisely such broad shapers of policy which need exploration.As Aaron Wildavsky notes, the efficiency criterion assumes the current distribu-tion to be valid so it cannot handle the fact of different peop le hav ing differentpreferen ces. But the question of whose utility function is to prevail is of primeimportance in m aking publicp o l i ~ y . ~

But most important, these approaches do not help usexpl in policy: that isnot their intent. Her e the divergence between the d ecision-maker and the politicalscientist becomes significant. Obviously policy analysis, in the sense of provid ing

tools and giving assessments of the cost and consequences of different alternatives,is desirable for governmen ts (and citizens providing they can have access tothe an alyses ). But t hat objective is quite different from the scholarly one of in-creasing the understanding of political reality. Concentration on the former isunlikely to advance us very far in the latter. Th ere is something of a dang er thatthe lure of influence for academics, and the desire of the federal government topromote mission-oriented contract research, especially in sensitive policy areas,will lead students to a concentration on technique and relevance which will in-hibit the development of a more sophisticated understanding of policy. Studentsof Greek political thought enjoy fewer temptations to stray from the path ofacademic virtue. Prescription, moreover, is to a large extent made possible onlyby explanation: the dang er is that we are being asked to run b efore we can walk,with the resulting possibility of misleading both ourselves and governments.However, without better understanding of the general process and without theattem pt to uncover basic assumptions and constraints, applied research andconcentration on technique become no more than adhoc response to transientevents, and risk degeneration into a m ore fund am ental irrelevance.

Several other problems with the literature may also be mentioned. We havefocused too much on the official decision-makers and not enough o n the influences

Process and Policy as Focal Concepts, in Ranney, Political Science and Public Policy 3524 The Political Economy of Growth, in Ranney, Political Science and Public Policy 59.See also his Cost-Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis and Program Budgeting, PublicAdministrat ion Reviewxxv 1966), 292-3 10



5 5 5tudyin g Public Policy

which shape the alternatives they consider, the assumptions they make, and thekinds of actions they take. One way to look at this is to suggest that at any givenpoint in time there is a large universe of possible problems or issues to whichdecision-makers could pay attention and which they could consider important.Similarly, within each issue area there is a wide unive rse of alternative possiblegovernmen tal actions. In practice, however, we find that only a sm all subset of allproblems, and a similarly small subset of alternatives, is actually considered, andpolicy seldom alters greatly from one time to the next. The question, then, iswhat reduces the agenda to a manageable size, and what principles or forcesserve to limit the range of alternatives considered? I n this sense what politicalactors assume, or take for granted, becomes what is most important for explana-tiomZ5Com pariso n across time, units within a nation, and between nation sagain provides the tool for exploring some of these dimensions. In addition,given the overwhelming evidence of incrementalism and continuity, a longer timespan and emphas is on historica l evolu tion is r e q ~ i r e d . ~ ~

Given these strictures against much of the existing literature, how should weapproach the study of policy? What sorts of models might be useful in providingan over-all unde rstanding of policy and its relationsh ip to the political system?At the outset two caveats should be offered. First, as Richard Bird points out,no on e single clear and simple explanation of something as many-faceted andhuge as mode rn government is likely to be possible, at least with ou r cu rrent levelof knowledge.27 Rath er th an search ing for a very high level of abstraction andone or two crucial variables, our conception should allow us to group andm ake sense ou t of a wide variety of determ inants of policy. Second, a framew ork

designed to illuminate broad p atterns of policy that is, the tendencies and effectsof large sets of individua l decisions may no t be terribly helpfu l in explainingthe particula r cha racteristics of individual decisions, such as why an airpo rt wasbuilt in one location rather tha n anoth er.

I n the latter case, the detailed actions and perceptions of the partic ular decision-makers involved are most crucial; in the former, we see those actions as beinglimited by the operatio n of m uch broader f actors. T he appro ach used here assum esthat the political machinery and the policy-makers at any point in time workwithin a framework w hich greatly restricts the alternatives they consider an d therange of innov ations they make.28 This framewo rk, o r set of constraints an d op-portun ities, defines a set of prob lems considered to be im portan t, a set of accep t-able solutions or policy responses, a set of procedures and rules by which theywill be conside red. T he fram ewo rk is made up of various characteristics of thebroad social and economic environment, the system of power and influence, the

25For a conception of political culture which stresses the assumed or taken for grantedcharacter of cultural factors, see David Elkins and Richard Simeon, A Cause in Search ofits Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?'unpublished paper, 1975.26Good examples of such an approach are H.V. Nelles, The Poli t ics o Development(Toron to, 1974) , and Ronald Manzer, Public Policies in Canada: A Development Perspec-tive, paper presented to the Canadian Political Science Association, Edmonton, June 1975,mimeo.2SThe Growth of Public Spending in Canada (Toronto, 1970), 1372fiThus the Canadian Tax Foundation estimates that onlv 31 per cent of federal exvenditurecould be seen as controllable by Parliament. T h e ~ A i o n a i in an ces 1974-75 oron onto1975), 1-6.



556 RICHARD SIMEON

dominant ideas and values in the society, the form al institutional structures. Th epolicy process itself the interaction of form al an d inform al actors such as politi-cians, bureaucrats, pressure groups, an d the media bargaining with each otherreflects and is shaped by this bro ade r fram ewo rk, and by th e pa ttern of problem s,precedents, and policies received from the past. But the process also has someindep enden t effect o n policy outcom es. This perspec tive suggests a sort of f un nelof causality. A t the most general level, an d most rem ote from th e particular choiceof alternative o r B , is the socioeconomic environment; next come the funda-mental political variables, power, culture and ideology, and institutions; finallythe most proximate source of decision is the operation of the decision-makingprocess itself. T o som e extent, the mo re concerned one is with broad patterns ofpolicy, and with international comparisons, the more one will concentrate onenvironmental, ideological, and structural variables; the more concerned withday-to-day shifts in policy, the mo re on e will assume those prio r fac tors as givenand focus o n the decision-makers themselves, though som e environmental con-straints may enter here too. Muc h of the literature has tended to focus on one endof the funnel without taking account of the othe r. Thus w ork o n the environmentha s tended to ignore the black box of the political process, while work on theprocess ha s tended to ignore the setting within which it opera tes.

T o provide a n effective overview of th e policy system, two things are re quired.First, the characteristics of policy to be explaine d must be specified. Th at sh ouldbe the starting point from which, so to speak, we will work our w ay back into thepolitical proce ss; how f ar back will depen d largely on wha t aspects of policy weseek to ex plain. Second, we must link the factors to each other, trying to delineate

bo th their inter-relationships an d their independ ent c ontribution s to explainingthe central dimensions of policy. How, for example, do current elites define andrespond to problems shaped by received wisdom and general cultural norms?Th is perspective is just that, a perspective or fram ewo rk; it is not a theory, or evena model. It is also imperialistic in the sense that it relates policy to the study ofpolitics generally: indeed, it seeks to bring to bear on the dependent variable,policy, a great many elements of politics which have been brought to bear onother dependent variables, such as democratic~ t ab i l i t y. ~

atterns o policy

Le t us now try to flesh out this perspective by examining the framework in m oredetail. First, how should we conceptualize the dependent variable? Given a com-parative focus, wha t dimensions of pub lic policy ar e most imp ortant? H ow d o wecharacterize that which we seek to explain namely, what governments do, orwhat L L Wa de calls the policy balance. 30 This must be the starting point. Buthow d o we describe the almost infinitely co mp lex policies and program s of acountry like Canada? The task is daunting. Single pieces of legislation may runto hundreds of pages; a 1970 summary of environmental legislation in Canada2QThere is an interesting imbalance in the political science literature generally: increasingsophistication and clarity in the specification and measurement of the independent variables,combined with continued lack of attention to what these high-powered tools are explaining.

Political Science and Public Policy: Review Essay, olicy Sciences 2 (Summer1971 ), 321



557tudyin g Public Policy

took two large volumes.31 Policy includes the revised statutes of eleven govern-ments, their public accounts, numberless ordinances and regulations, whitepapers and rep orts, not to mention th e informal a nd unw ritten actions of officialsin the field. Governm ent activities in a mod ern state defy complete analysis ordescription, observes TIze National finance^ ^^ To fully describe policy in asingle issue area is ha rd ; to characte rize in detail overall patte rns of policy isprobably impossible without some theoretical guidelines.

Despite this complexity, it is possible to summ arize and simplify, and to abstra ctfrom the whole range of government activities some dimensions especially rele-vant for political scientists. The chief criterion for selecting these dimensionsshould be what aspects of policy are most relevant to the study of politics. Thedimensions should also be relevant to the normative c once rns of politics, su chas equality and participation. And, they should enable us to be comparative.Finally, we should, at least in principle, be able to measure them .

To describe policy simply as what governments do raises a host of otherquestions. Virtually every writer in the field feels compelled to offer a definitionof policy. That will not be done here, but one or two points about the position ofthe observer should be m ade. First is the difficult distinction, mad e by IraShar-k a n ~ k y ~ ~nd others, between outpu t and outcome, which is essentially a dis-tinction between what is done and its consequences for the society. In practicethe distinction seems impossible to m aintain : description of governmen tal action

money spent, a bill passed, or whatever seems pointless without considerationof the meanings attached to it by those who decided, by those affected, or byoutside observers. It is perhaps more useful to distinguish between first-order

consequences, which are intended or immediately perceived, and second-orderconsequences, either benign or malign, which are not foreseen. In the categoriesto follow, two scope and means are primarily aspects of outpu t, and on edistribution refers primarily to the effects of policy.

related question is whether, to be called policy, actions of governm entmust be accompan ied by a statement of intentions or purpose. An thony Kingreserves the term policy for a consciously chosen course of action (o r ofinactio n) directed towards some end, and uses the term quasi-policy todescribe situations in which governments m ay have a wide variety of actions,past and present, within a given policy area, without necessarily having adopted

consciously an over-all set of goals. Fo r example, Can adian governm ents do nothave a policy on income distribution, but they do many things which affe ct it;they may have a policy on poverty, but n o dou bt m any activities with consequencefor poverty are not included in it. The broader a policy field and the moreagencies and levels active in it, the more likely it is to be characte rized byquasi-policy. Th e Tr ud eau government, it might be noted, has recently attem pted todraw together federal activities in bro ad fields such as u rban affairs, an d thu s to

~ ~ Ltd, A Digest of Env ironm ental Po ll~ itio n egislation in Can ada(Ot tawa, 1970)32The National Finances 1971-72 (Toron to, 19 72), 7933 Environment, P olicy, Outpu t and Impact, in Sharkansky, ed.,Policy A naly sis in PoliticalScience (Chicago, 19 70 ), 61-7935''On Studying the Im pacts of Public Policies: Th e Ro le of the Political Scientist, inMatthew Holden and Dennia Dresang, eds,What Gove rnmen t Does Sage Yearbooks inPolitics and Public Policy, Vol. 1 (Beverley Hills, 19 75), 298-3 16



8 R I C H A R D SIMEON

turn quasi-policy into policy.35As King suggests, the domain of policy study mustencompass both : to concen trate only on explicitly stated actions an d plans wouldbe to rule o ut a vast prop ortion of go vernment activity.

Finally, there is the question as to whether the categories used by students ofpolicy sh ould be the sam e as those used by decision-makers themselves: is policywhat those responsible for it say it is, o r what the observer infers? It must be thelatter; first, because in m any areas it will be imp ossible to find such statements,and , second, because the decision-makers' categories are unlikely t o be related tothe theoretical concerns of a particular discipline. F o r example, theEstimates d onot classify programs by the extent to which they redistribute across regions, orby whether they meet symbolic or material needs. Thus the order that is to beimposed on the data must come primarily from the observer, though it remains animportant empirical question to examine the relation between decision-makers'intentions and actual activity.3F

F o r research purpo ses, we usefully distinguish between th ree levels of analysis.First are specific programs the Canada Pension Plan, the Canada AssistancePlan, o r the wage and price con trol prog ram. Th is is the level of most existingpolicy study. Pro grams do typically involve statem ents of inten t, desired objec-tives, and specified tools for reaching them. Here, the researcher accepts thecategories and definitions of the policy-makers. Second is policy in particularareas social, economic, cultural, transpo rtation, etc. Policy areas include bothprograms explicitly related to them, as well as the other actions of governmentwhich a ffec t them . So me areas will be defined by the decision-makers; oth ers willbe defined by the researchers' theoretical interests. The notion of policy areas

lends itself to com parison .A researcher can select one are a, such as the environ-men t, and lo ok a t the activities that different countries, provinces, o r cities pursu ewith respect to it, and the reasons behind these activities. Finally, at the level ofpatterns of policy we seek to impose o r discern ord er on , or in, a bro ad range ofactivities. Here the categories and questions used owe little to the decision-makers' perspective; they are guided by the over-riding theoretical concerns ofthe studen t. Policy will thus be carved up and abstracted in different ways to suitthese interests.

In the literature on policy-making we find several suggested definitions of thedependent variable. Policies may be classified according to substantive areasocial security, agriculture, environment, defence, etc. o r by client grou pfarmers , workers, manu facturing indu stry or by the level of governmen tr e s p ~ n s i b l e . ~ ~uch classifications a re useful for so me purp oses, bu t seem to offerlittle theoretical insight. Ano ther set of categories is provid ed by stud ents ofpublic administration who are properly concerned primarily with matters ofefficiency and effectiveness. Two very influential recent classifications are thoseof D av id B ra yb ro ok e an d C harles L i n d b l ~ m ~ ~ th end Theodore Lo~ i .~ o r"See Aucoin and French, Knonsledge, Ponser and Public Policy,chap. 1."See Manzer, "Public Policies in Canada," for an example of such inferences."See Lewis Froman, "The Categorization of Policy Contents," in Ranney, Political Science

and Public Policy.8A Strategy fo r Decision (New York, 1963)

"Lowi's typology, in various formulations, occurs in several places. See "American Business,Public Policies, Case Studies and Political Theory," World Poli t ics XVI (July 1964); and"Decision-Making versus Policy-Making: Towards an Antidote for Technocracy," Public



5 5 9tudying Public Policy

form er, the question is whether policy outcom es are increm ental, that is, are theyonly small adjustmen ts from the preceding status quo, or are they n on-increm entallarge steps? The re is some ambiguity i d Braybroo ke and L indblom because incre-men talism seem s for them to be both a characteristic and a result of the policyprocess. Takin g incrementalism as the dep end ent variable, we find, first, tha t it isnot easily operationalized (w ha t is a large or sma ll step? W ha t ab ou t a lot ofsmall steps resulting in major change?), and, second, that it is not, in itself, aterribly interesting question. Lowi's categories distributive, regulatory, redis-tributive, and constituent focusing as they do on the balan ce between individualand collective action an d o n the degree of coercion, is mu ch m ore im porta nt forstuden ts of politics. Low i also relates his categories to a variety of oth er elem entsof the process, including level of conflict, locus of decision, and the like. Unfor-tunately for our purposes, Lowi himself prefers to use his categories as indepen-dent variables which themselves shape subsequent policy processes. Moreover, itis very hard to operationalize his categories, especially to distinguish betweendistributive and redistributive p~ lic ie s.~ O

Three dimensions of policy are fundamental for political science. First is thescope of governm ent policy. What aspects o r elements of social and e con om ic lifein the society are matters abo ut which governments m ake decisions? W hat is theplace of govern ment in the society? Second is the question ofmeans Wh ich instru-ments or techniques do governments typically use in order to assure approval orcomp liance with their decisions? H ere we follow Low i's emph asis on t he essentialelement of coercion which characterizes governm ental decisions, an d we maybroa dly classify policies along a continuum running from v olun tary com pliance to

coercive compliance. Third, and most important, is thedistributive dimensionWho gets what? H ow a re the costs and benefits of governm ent activity dis-

tributed among the members of the society? To what extent does governmentserve as a mechanism fo r redistribution of inco me o r othe r benefits? T hese thre edepend ent variables thus ask: W hat does government do ? How does it do it? An dwith what effects? On all three dimensions considerable variation across nationsis likely. The task of policy research is to describe growth and change in them,and to assess alternative explanations. Let us exam ine them in a bit more detail.

copeT h e scope of gove rnment refers to the range of ma tters which are subject to pub licchoice and in which governments are involved. W e thus distinguish gove rnmen talchoices characterized by their au th o ri t a t iv en es ~~ ~rom choices made by free

This is because, in an objective sense, virtually all expenditure policies are redistribu tive:to the extent that on e group gets a benefit there is less to give to ot her groups. How ever, onegroup's gain may not be perceived as another's loss, especially in a system with a largeand

expanding pie, with a political style which emphasizes log-rolling, and with a fragmenteddecision structure, in which taxing and spending decisions are taken separately, and decisionsin one area are made without reference t o others. F or a reformulation of Lowi's categories in

this direction , see Ro ber t H . Salisbury, The Analysis of Public Policy: Search fo r Theoriesand Roles, in Ranney, Political Science a nd Pub lic Policy 151 75.

Lowi, Decision-Making versus Policy-MakingJ2Th ere are several problems with the authoritativeness criterion. Mo st im portan t is the factthat decisions by some private actors, for example, Imperial Oil, may effectively be just as



5 6 0 RICHARD SIM ON

individuals, by th e market, o r by non-m arket negotiations between groups. O neof the most obvious characteristics of modern society is how much the range ofgovernment activity has expanded. It is not simply that governments spend moremoney, but also that they spend it on more things. More and more subjectsbecome politicized; private has become public. The causes and consequences ofthis expansion rem ain obscure. Amo ng the causes which have been identified andremain debated are the imperatives i an industrial, urbanized, technologicallyadvanced society, the needs of mono poly capital or techno structure, the d emandsof newly enfranchised groups, the impact of crises such as war, and the simpleava ilabili ty of resource^.^^ No such large literature has examined th e implicationsof growth, though recent wri ters such i s Daniel Bell and James 0 ' ~ o n n o r avediscussed the fiscal crisis of the ~ ta te ~ + te m m in g from a built-in imbalancebetween revenue availability and expenditure demands, problems in the growthof bureaucracy, and changes in patterns of conflict resulting from increasedpoliticization. In both America and Europe such questions appear to be in-creasingly urgent: can governments cope?

There are many ways to assess the growth of government. The simplest is toobserve what proportion of the gross national product is spent by government orpasses through its hand s, or to see what pro portio n of all employees work for th egovernment. E ven within Western capitalist countries, sub stantial variations existwithin a common general trend. or example, between 1967 and 1969, totalpublic expen diture (excluding capital transfers) was 19 .4 per cent of N P inJapan , 31 .7 per cent in the United States, 33.6 per cent in C anad a, 37 pe r cent inFran ce, 38 per cent in Britain, and 43.9 per cent in the Netherlands. In th e

previous fifteen years public spe ndin g had been rising half again as fast asGNP.Public spending, however, captures only some dimensions of governmental

scope, first because it tells us little about the actual content of what is done(Sharkansky's spending-service fallacy ), and , second, because spending isonly one form of government involvem ent. Wh ile it may be true that the budgetis the skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ide~logies, ~~overnmentsalso affect group and individual behaviour through symbolic actions, throughregulation and pro scription in the crim inal code, and in th e activities of regulatoryagencies and the like. Moreover it would be hard to infer many of the mostimportant responsibilities of public authorities through budgetary analysis: the

Policy: Private Governments and the Policy-Making Process, Journal of Politics 37(Fe bru ary 19 75 ), 2-34. On the other hand, governments ' abili ty to comm and complianceisbeing increasingly questioned. Thus King points out that government may be becomingmerely one among a number of contenders for wealth, power and influence, the others

including large companies, trade unions and their members. foreign companies, foreigngovern men ts and international organizations. See Ove rload: Problems of Gov erning in the1970's, 295. Neve rtheless, the term does seem to capture a n essential difference betweengovernmental and non-governmental acts, and so will be retained here, although the need tostud y the public effects of private decisions is no t denied.W i r d , Th e Growth o f Public Spending provides the best summary and critique of explana-tions for the grow th of gov ernme nt, especially those provided by economists.4W0 'Connor,The Fiscal Crisis of the State. This is an important and sophist icated Marxist

analysis of the state. Bell adopts some central aspects of the thesis, though within an entirelydifferent normative frame work , in The Public Household.Organization fo r Econ om ic Cooperation and Development,Expenditure Trends in OE CD

Countries (Par is , 197 2) ,67loIra Sharkansky,Spending in the Am erican States(Chicago, 1 968 ), 110-1 1




extent of public ownership, management of the economy, and so on. Similarly,the significance of the federal bilingualism policy is not evident in the budgetaryallocations made to it. Thus a variety of more sensitive measures, both of thegeneral activity of governments and of particular policy areas, such as socialsecurity, need to be developed. In these areas, too, international variations seemimportant. For example, Canada appears to have a somewhat more fullydeveloped welfare state and a higher level of public ownership than the us

Canadian governments also seem to have played a somewhat greater role ineconomic development than those in the us, and to have more explicitly playeda nation-building role, both economically (the National Policy, the C P R ) andculturally (the CBC bilingualism, etc.)

If we are able effectively to explain such international differences, we will haveprogressed far towards development of theories of policy formation. Differencesin the scope of government and the content of policies should illuminate manyother aspects of comparative politics as well. For example, it would be interestingto know the extent to which the economic imperatives (if such they are) of indus-trialism and postindustrialism lead to a convergence and similarity betweennations, or whether national historical, cultural, and institutional differences per-petuate important differences in scope.

Means

The second dimension of the dependent variable is the means by which govern-ments make and enforce policy choice^.^ ' Several ways of classifying these dimen-sions might be used. The most important stems from the fact that, as Lowiemphasizes, government decisions are characterized by an element of compulsion:they apply to everyone, and all are, nominally at least, obligated to obey. This isespecially true for those policies which, to use Lowi's terminology, are eitherregulatory, defining permissible or impermissible behaviour, or redistributive,taking benefits from one group and giving them to another. In Lowi's third cate-gory of policy outputs, distributions, governments only distribute benefits andare not perceived to be imposing costs. In seeking some goal, governments havein principle a choice of means. They may seek to persuade the recipients through

appealing to their sense of citizen duty, as in Finance Minister Turner's unsuccess-ful efforts to get business and labour to agree on wage and price limitations, orthey may seek to induce them to behave in certain ways by offering rewards orincentives, such as with D R E E grants. In both cases compliance is sought throughprimarily voluntary means. On the other hand, government may direct, prohibit,or require people to do things, using not a carrot but a stick and invoking coercivepenalties for those who do not comply. Within any country various combinationsof these techniques will obviously be used.

second distinction of means, also used by Lowi, is between public and

See Nelles, Politics of Development for a superb discussion of these activities at theprovincial level. Using O'Connors category of economic development spending, about a

quarter of Canadian federal spending in 1967 was on economic development, compared withonly 11 per cent for the us federal government.

Bruce Doern defines the content of policy as means. See The Concept of Regulation and



562 RICHARD SIMEON

private. Th at is, governmen ts may implement policies through their own govern-mental agencies, o r they may delegate some or all of the im plementation t o othergroups: licensing boards made up of doctors, marketing boards made up ofproducer's representatives, and so on. The British and Canadian strategy ofoperating social and medical insurance directly through state agencies contrastssharply with the more com mon continental Europ ean practice of run ning suchprograms through trade unions, employers, and o ther associations.

Third, we may distinguish between situations in which governments act directlyon individuals or groups and those in which it acts indirectly by altering theenvironment within which individuals make their own decisions. For example, ineconom ic manag ement, governm ents might want to restrict individual borrowing:they could use direct controls, or try to influence behaviour by manipulatinginterest rates.

Policy is likely to vary on these th ree dim ensions from issue to issue, from timeto time, an d ac ross systems. It shou ld be possible to suggest a variety of hypotheseslinking these dimensions to various aspects of th e political process, especiallypolitical culture , levels of conflict, and pat tern s of d om inance and subm ission.

istribution

Despite the fact th at who gets what is at the hea rt of politics, we have verylittle information abo ut the distributional impact of governme nt programs. T owhat extent does government act to promote equality? Virtually all spendingprograms have a distributional effect, whether or not they are deliberately

planned. We need to look at both individual programs and policy fields, and atthe over-all impact of government. Yet what is true of theus seems true ofCa nada also : that one is impressed by the lack of knowledge or even raw dataof program impact including the distribution of program benefits. It is as if thesewere impolite if not impolitic questions to raise. jOTh ere are two reasons for thislack of knowledge. First, decision-makers do seem to think of such questions asimpolitic: they much prefer to think they are solving problems and finding solu-tions and that what they do benefits everyone equally. An im portan t part of thepolitician's task, indeed, is to find policies which are, or can be presented as,satisfying as many gro ups as possible. Conflict may be much g reater if all groupscan easily calculate their wins and losses in the political arena. Decision-makingis much ha rder when th e game is perceived as a zero-sum situation.

But even more important are the immense technical problems involved inidentifying a nd weighing the costs and benefits for different groups. Desp ite majo rproblem s involved in making assum ptions abo ut the incidence of m any kinds oftax, it is possible to identify rather clearly the way in which the taxation systemallocates the burdens of financing governm ent an d alters the incom e distributioncurve, as Joseph Pechman and B.A. Okner show in the recent book ho Bears

the Tax Burden?j l But, as Robert Havemann points out, taxes are visible andjVames T Bonnen, The Absence of Knowledge of Distributional Effects: An Obstacle toEffect Policy Analysis and Decisions, in Havemann and Margolis, The Economics of IncomeMaintenance 246-70SlWashington, 1973. For Canada, see Allan M. Maslove, The Pattern of Taxation in Canada(Ottawa, 1 9 7 2 .



5 6 3tudyin g Public Policy

pa infu l while benefits of pub lic expend iture are less visible and often intangible.52Recent work by econom ists53 suggests tha t it is relatively easy to ma ke thesemeasurements with transfer payments such as welfare or pensions, where thegroups benefiting are easily identifiable. Even here, however, the beneficiariesmay be seen less as the recipients and more as those elements in the populationwho benefit from maintaining social peace. Similarly, relatively little problem isposed by pu re public goods, since by definition they affect everyone equally. Buthow does one identify such goods? Even such a classic public good as defencehas a distributional impact to the extent that defence contracts or bases providebenefits to particu lar industries or localities. It gets even m ore complex if on eassumes the benefits from defence spending are proportional to an individual'sstake in the com munity, or if one takes into account th at some people are pacifists,fo r whom spending on arm s is a directillfare. j4

Whole classes of government activity become extraordinarily difficult to dealwith effectively. What assumptions must one make to assess the benefits ofspending on highways or airports? AreD R E E grants providing windfall benefitsto the companies th at receive them, o r, through a trickle-down process, to citizensin the communities where they locate, or to the country as a whole by reducingthe threat to natural integration of regional grievances? Are manpower trainingprograms benefiting the worker who is trained , or the com pany that employs him,or both?

These are all problems associated with expenditure programs. But there areequally severe problems w ith the many governmen t actions which d o not involvedirect spending or transfers. Thus the whole process of law and regulation,

involving rules governing the behav iour of groups in the mark etplace, the pro -visions of licences and the like, confers benefits and alters the com petitiveadvantages of different groups. In ad dition governm ents provide symbolic andintangible benefits. Canada's adoption of the maple leaf flag was a clear psychicbenefit to some a nd a psychic deprivation to others. Similarly in programs such asthe promotion of bilingualism in the federal public service, the symbolic costs an dbenefits almost certainly outweigh the monetary ones. Even in a predominantlyfinancial progr am like welfare, the means by which it is adm inistered may have amajor effect on the sense of dignity and well-being of the recipien t, and o n eitherthe feeling of ou trage or of m oral satisfaction o n the pa rt of the d onors .

One wonders, therefore, whether even in principle it is possible to makeprogress in this area. The answer is a tentative yes, even though the perfectcalculus will probably always elude us. Work by economists, such as Dodge,Gillespie, Johnson, andMaital,55has made considerable progress in attempting

52 Public Expenditures and Policy Analysis: an O verview, in Ha vem ann an d Margolis,Public Expenditures and Policy Analysis (Chicago , 197 0), 1-2053For a very good discussion of some of the necessary assumptions and difficulties in thisfield, see M org an Reynolds and Eugene Smolensky, The Post-fisc Distribution: 1961 and1970 Com pared, ~ Va t i o n u lTu x Journal xxvIr (Decem ber 197 4), 515-27.54The term is Richard Titmuss's. See hisSocial Policy un Introduction (London, 1974 ) , 27.5

Irwin Cillespie, Th e Incidence of Taxation and Public Expenditures in the CanadianEconomy Studies of the Royal Commission on Taxation N o. 2 (Ottaw a, 19 62) ; JamesAJohnson, Tlle lncidence of Gov ern men t Revenue s and Expenditures Study for the OntarioCommittee on Taxation (Toronto,ND ; David Dodge, Impact of Tax, Transfer and Spend-ing Policies, Rev iew o f Income and Wea l th21 (M arch 197 5), 1-52



564 RICHARD SIMEON

to assess the over-all fiscal impac t of governm ent by calculating th e incidence oftaxation, and of spending, and then subtracting the difference. They have beenforced to make some heroic assumptions, and to leave many programs out oftheir calculations because the benefits could n ot be allocated, b ut in a short timeconsiderable ad vances have been ma de. David D odge, using recent d ata, suggeststhe net impact of governmentis progressive, providing large benefits to thosefamilies with incomes of less than $4000 a year, declining benefits to those withincomes between $4000 and $13,500, and a rising net tax to those with higherincomes. But, using a different assumption, Shlomo Maital argues that in theus and to a lesser extent in Canada, the redistribution takes from the middleincome groups a nd gives to those a bove and below.56

In a general review of this literatu re from several countries, S .M . Miller andMartin Rein conclude that, despite a large increase in governmental transfers inrecent years, inequalities of income remain substantially unchanged: it appearsthat increased redistribution has just kept pace with the increased inequality inoriginal incomes (which may in itself have been promoted by governmentpolicies). Go vernm ent moves to prom ote equality have been less than effective,despite the so-called welfarestate. 57 Clearly considerable refinement is needed.Studies have been made of individual programs, such as David Springate's onD R E E . ~ ~imilarly Meyer Bucovetskey and Richard Bird have clearly set out thealterations of the federal tax burden (which turn out to be minima l) of the recentCana dian tax reform process.5

Unfortunately the difficulties in these analyses are more than technical; theyare also norm ative. F or example, Cy Gonick and others argue that the Vast

proportion of public expenditure subsidizes the business comm unity throughthe blue chip socialism of subsidies, tax concessions, and thelike.60 They alsoargue that education spending subsidizes business by socializing the costs oftraining manpower, and that welfare spending subsidizes the failure of the privatemarket. However, spending on social programs such as pensions, welfare,unemployment insurance, and the like is most comm only seen to be progressive,representing redistribution t o the less well off segments of society and compensa-tion to the victims of the failure of the economic system . T h e extension of suchprograms is similarly seen to represent to some degree the increased politicalpower of workers. But for a Marxist analyst of the state, like JamesO'Connor,such spending grows primarily from the needs of mo nopoly capitalists, stemming,in part, from the ir desire to socialize many of the costs of productio n and , in part,from a desire to ensure social peace a nd harmon y. Thu s the fundam ental effect

5'; Is R edistributive T ax atio na Myth? Discussion Pap er No. 122. Institute for EconomicResearch , Queen's University, 19735 Can Income Redistribution Work?Social Policy 6 (May-June 197 5), 3-18, esp. p. 35a Regional Development Incentive Grants in Canada,DBA Thesis, Harvard University, 19725 Tax R eform in Can ada : A Progress Report,h ational Ta x Journal xxv (March 1972) ,15-4 160Cy Gonick, Sociology and the Econom ics of Growthmanship, in Laurier Lapierre, ed.,

Essays on the L ef t (Toronto, 197 I ) , 139. See a lso Ian Adams et a l . ,Th e Real Pover ty Repor t(Edmo nton, 1971 ); and Dimitri Roussopulos,T he Political Ec ono my of the State(Montreal ,19 73 ). F or a lively discussion of socialism fo r the rich, see Da vid Lewis,Louder Voices:Th e Corpora t e W el fa re Bum s (Toronto, 19 72 ); see also Trevor Lloyd, State Capitalism andSocialism: Th e Prob lem of Go vern me nt Handouts in Lapierre,Essays on the Lef t , 161-73.




of social security is to expand productivity, production and profits. Seen in thisway, social insurance is not primarily insurance for the workers but a kind ofinsurance for cap ita lis ts and c~ rp o ra t i o n s . ~ ~Welfare and warfare expendi-tures, he ad ds, are thus not at root contradictory, but a re rather different expres-sions of the sam e needs. Th us as Bertra m G ross suggests, th e recipients ofwelfare may not be the real benefi~iaries. ~ 'Other Marxists, especially Miliband,Poulantzas, and G o ~ g h , ~ ~xplain the welfare state more as the necessary con-cession which must be m ade to e nsure continued do minan ce for the ruling class.It may be impossible to judge between such op posed interpretations of the samephenom ena, derived as they are from such divergent ideological premises. How -ever, examination of the circumstances under which such programs were initiallydeveloped, of the political forces arguing for and ag ainst them , an d of th e justifica-tions by their proponents can help.

In many ways it is the perceptions of benefits and costs which are important;therefore we need to pursue some other avenues of inquiry. For example, casestudies should exam ine the perc eption s of winning an d losing, or of m utual gain,of the participants in the decision process and of those directly affected by it.Similarly, large scale surveys can elicit the pe rceptio ns of v oters. M uc h wo uld begained by increased focus on policy-related que stions in survey researc h, exploringsuch areas as who the voters see government as serving, the degree of theirknow ledge of policy, and their eva luation s of th e packages of services an dprogram s available to them. Some work relating voter opinions to the agendaand decisions of government is available, but m uch m ore needs to be d one. Ho wthey a re perce ived is of cou rse the only way of assessing the distribution of

symbo lic or no n-m aterial benefits.Given the complexity of measuring the tangible benefits and costs (taxes,subsidies, transfers, and the like), the perception of benefits and costs remainsvital, since it is the basis of action. Such perc eption in fact is one of th e m ostimp ortan t of the many un certainties facing political actors. It is im po rtan t there-fore to examine what concepts of fairness they employ, what categories of bene-ficiaries they have in mind, and what rules of thumb they follow in assessingdistribution. Where possible we may compare the objective distribution with theperceived one . Ov er the longer term, the work of historians may le ad us to per-ceive patterns in broad variations in national policies over a long period, such as

shifts from a stress on nation-building and economic growth to the welfare stateor regiona l disparities.

In Canada we need to focus especially on redistribution as it relates to theprim ary cleavages in the social structu re that is, the pattern of benefits and costsas they affect economic classes, regions, ethnic groups, and industrial sectors.Again, a t present, the re a re few dat a classified in these ways. Inde edT N Brewis

T h e Fiscal Crisis of the State, 138Review of France s Fox-Piven and Richa rd Cloward, Regulat ing the Poor: Th e Functions

o f Soci al We l f a r e ,which appeared in Social Policy (Ma y 1972), 576Qalph Miliband, T h e State in Capitalist Society (London, 1969) ; Nicos Poulantzas,Political Power and Social Classes (London, 1973 ); and Ian Gough, State Expenditure inAdvanced Capitalism, Ne w Le f t Rev iew92 (July-August 1975), 53-92

Some aspects of citizen perceptions are found in T o K n o w and B e K n o w n , Report of theTask Force on Government Information (Ottawa, 196 9).



66 RICHARD S I M E O N

observes that it is even impossible at the moment to quantify net transfers fromOttawa to the provinces, despite our p,reoccupation with regional d i ~ p a r i t i e s . ~ ~

Fundamentally this emphasis on distribution links up with some of the basicquestions of d emocratic theory. I n whose interests does government work? D oesit, as Marx and M arxists like Ralph Miliband66 suggest, opera te to maximize theinterests of the economically dominant? Or of some middle majority? Or of theworking class? Does it, as the pluralists suggest, reinforce the status qu o by givingall groups a hearing a nd distributing benefits according to th e resources they canbring to bear, o r is it rather an instrument through which equality is promoted orthe balance between interests altered? The distributive question also confrontsus with the question of social conflict, since it assumes that most of the time allcannot benefit equally, and that policy-making is competition over scarceresources. Finally it poses the fundam ental questio n: W hat is the role of the statein advanced industrial society? The distinction between scope and distributionreminds us that the deve lopm ent of the positive state is not necessarily thesame as the developmen t of the egalitarian state.

xplanations

In ord er to unders tand variations along these dimensions, five general appro achescan be identified.67I will look in turn at policy as a consequence of the environ-ment, of the distribution of power, of prevailing ideas, of institutional frame-works, and of the process of decision-making. Each seems to have some capacityto explain patterns of policy, but none alone provides a full understanding. In

part, they are competing approaches; for example, one might have an environ-mental versus an ideological explanation. However, they are more usefully seenas complementary: each makes some contribution, and policy emerges frommultiple causes. But, for the dimensions of policy outlined, the most powerfulmodels appear to be the power-resources and cultural-ideological ones. More-over, the utility of each approach varies depending on the aspect of policy onewants to explain: aspects of the process are more powerful in explaining small,detailed variations in policy; ideology and the environment explain broadervariations. The approaches are not mutually exclusive, indeed the interactionsbetween them are im portan t objects for study. Together they encompass most ofthe policy literature; some also suggest ways material not so commonly focusedon understanding policy can be incorporated. Here I will sketch only somegeneral characteristics of each appro ach.

E N V I R O N M E N T

First, p atterns of policy may be explained by reference to certain characteristicsof the environment of politics. In the most general sense, these refer to suchbro ad cha racteristics as dem ograph y, geography, an d levels of urban ization,

T.N. Brewis, Regional Econ omic Policies in Canada (Toronto, 1969) , 85. For one attempt

at such a calculation, see Hartley Lewis, Statistics on the Impac t of National Fiscal andMonetary Policies, B C Studies 13 (September 1972 , 43-54.66The State in Capitalist Society67These categories bear considerable resemblance to those suggested by Anthony King inIdeas, Institutions and Policies of Government, op. cit.




wealth, industrialization, and the like. The work of Dye, Hofferbert, and othersin the us suggested that it is such environmental factors, and not any characteris-tics of the p olitical process, w hich best explain variations in the of spend-ing of Am erican states politicians, parties, the extent of maldis tribution of votesin the electoral system, and the like have only marginal effects.68D.J . Falcone andMichael Whittington come to similar conclusions in their examination of trendsin Canadian federal government a~tivity,~ hough other studies find politicalfactors outweighing environmental ones in explaining Canadian interprovincialvariations in con trast to findings for theus and Mexico.70 Som e m ore recentAmer ican work , such as tha t of ~ r i a nrye and Richard winter^,^^ who lookedat the extent of redistribution in state government policies, also suggests that thepolitical variables are indeed more imp ortan t than Dye's work suggests. Som e

international comparative analyses of spending on social security find that varia-tions within developed countries are only weakly related to socioeconomic indi-

cators, and are mo re strongly associated with an historical factor the time atwhich such policies were first introducedi2 an d with such political factors asdegree of centralization.

Thus this literature remains somewhat confused and tentative, and little hasbeen done to trace out the mechanisms through which the environmental factorsactually bring about certain outcomes. ~ e i e r t h e l e s s he setting, geographic,demographic, technological, an d so on, is clearly a n impo rtant starting point fo rpolicy. It both defines a set of problems which need to be dealt with and placeslimits on the resources material, technological, an d intellectual available fo rdealing with them . Thu s the growth in government everywhere in the W est seems

to be clearly related to the imperatives generated by population and economicgrowth and the like, and there are broad similarities in the role of government inall these s o ~ ie ti e s .~ owever, the designation of certain issues or problems asimportant is not simply a matter of objective conditions. And once a problemhas become defined as impo rtant, study of the env ironmen t alone canno t tell usjust how the issue will be herce ived , oi w hat policy responses will be m ade to it.Thus , urbanization generates the need to move people arou nd, it does not tell ushow the costs will be distributed. Environmental changes may benefit somegroups more than others, or they can generate social conflict, but the changesthemselves d o no t tell us which groups' interests will be mo st prom inent in thepolicy responses. Th us environm ental variables alon e have only limited ex plana-

OWee note 17.( ; 'Output Change in Canada: A Preliminary Attempt to Open the Black Box, paperpresented to the Can adian Poli t ical Science Associat ion, Mo ntreal 1972, mim eoi0Jam es Bennett Ho gan , Social Structure and Public Policy, Com parat ive Polit ics 4 (July19 72) , 477-509. See also Dale Poel , Canadian Provincial and America n State Policy, paperpresented to the C anadia n Poli t ical Science Association, M ontreal 1972, mim eo.Brian Fry e and Richard Winters, The Politics of Redistribution , American Political

Science Review 64 (J une 19 70) , 508-227aSee note 18. Fo r the most thorough recent study of this problem , see H arold Wilensky,Th e Welfa re S ta te and Equali ty (Berkeley, 19 75 ) .

73An alternative view of the environment stresses not so much the technological and otherimperatives of such processes as urbanization, but also the specific character of the dominanteconomic system, such as Galbraith 's technostructure. This is an example of the inter-dependence of the various factors, but i t seems more reasonable to deal with the roleotechnocra ts, capitalists, and others und er the heading of power.



68 RICHARD SIMEON

tory value. They probably explain more about the variation in thescope ofgovernment than they do about either the means selected or the distribution ofbenefits involved. To the extent they do shape policy, it is as they interact withcultural an d ideological predispositions, with the distribution of political resourcesamon g social groups, an d the like.

Fo r com parative analysis, the environment serves as a valuable starting point.Given two or more societies with similar environmental characteristics (say anenergy shortage, or a certain percentage of the population below the povertyline), we can ask how and why they vary in their response to them. In somepolicy areas, perhaps those such as fiscal and monetary policy, where the level ofinterdependence among nations is high, where a mode of analysis such as Key-nesian economics has become internationally accepted, and where economic andsocial structures are similar, policy variations may indeed be small. In otherareas, such as cultural policy, they are likely to be g reater. E ven amon g countrieswhich share broad socioeconomic characteristics such as industrialization, thereremain quite large differences in such things as government's share of per capitaincome, proportion of G N P spent on social security, levels of government owner-ship, and the like. It seems unlikely that such large variations are to be explainedsimply by enviro nmental differences.

A final aspect of th e environment is especially impo rtan t for students of policyin Canada. The interdependence of societies means that policies, especiallyecono mic policies, hav e very great spillover effects. Th us, Am erican policies withrespect to matters like inflation crucially affect Canadian well-being and poseproblems for Canadian policy-makers. Similarly, Canadian policy-makers are

greatly constrained in what they can do with respect to taxation, and fiscal ormonetary policy. The limits of these constraints have not often been tested, andthey may indeed be partly imaginary. Nevertheless it seems impossible to fullyexplain Canadian policy in many areas without reference to our dependency onthe us .74Another sense in which the u s presence is important is the extent towhich the Can adian political agenda is set by whatever is on th e Am erican agendaat the time, and the extent to which major policy innovations in the us, likePresident Johnson's War on Poverty, are imported into Canada. Similar pheno-mena of course exist in the interdependencies among provinces, and betweenthem a nd the federal government.

POW R

T he second model suggests tha t we explain what governments do by reference tothe distribution of interests in the society and the resources available to theseinterests. Most simply, the pattern of policy will reflect the distribution of powerand influence, given certain pa ttern s of division and cleavage. Th is is at once themost plausible and most complex of the perspectives. We would expect policyoutcomes, especially the distributional dimensions, to be a function of the numb erof interests involved, the degree of disagreement or conflict among them, and therelative means of influence which each is able to bring to bear in the policy

There is a growing literature in this area. Fo r a variety of appr oach es, see And rew Axline,et al . , Con t inen t a l Commun i ty (Toronto , 197 4) , and Ian Lumsden, ed ., C l o s e r l ~ e49thParallel etc (Toron to , 1970) .



569tudying ublic Policy

process. But grave problems arise in the conceptualization and measurement ofpower itself, and in describing the structure of power in society. The debate be-tween the Millsian elitists, the neo-Marxist class analysts, and the pluralistsshows no sign of abating. Nor does the methodological de bate between those who,like Dahl, argue that power can only be attributed w hen its exercise is visible inconcrete situations of conflict, and those, like Bachrach andbar at^,^^ for whomnon-decisions and the exercise of power through anticipated reactions and limit-ing the political agenda is crucial. Nevertheless, th e elitists and pluralists agreethat power does provide the key to understanding policy. They disagree aboutthe real nature of that structure. For the pluralists, policy distributes benefitswidely, and is usually a compromise among interests, because political resourcesare d istributed widely; for the elitists, policy benefits th e few bec aus e on ly the fewexercise influence successfully. Note that each of these models includes both astatement about the dependent variable (benefits are widely shared or are nar-rowly concentrated) and about the independent variable (power is fragmented,power is centralized).A third model might separate participation in decisionsfrom sharin g of the benefits: thus the Re d Tory image suggests tha t individualcitizens participate little, but that the elites gen erating policy seek t o serve th einterests of the followers. Th e self-interestedness of elites sho uld not b e ass um ed.We obviously cannot resolve these questions here, butI do not think that theirdifficulty should lead us to abandon the influence focus altogether. One strategyfor dealing with the problems is again to focus on the end product, on th e distri-bution of burdens and benefits among social groups. One cannot automaticallyinfer that because g roupA received benefits this was entirely due toA'S successful

exerc ise of influence. Bu t if we take the dis tribu tion as a starting po int, we c anwork back into the political process to examine such things as the role groupAplayed, the attitudes that other groups had towards group A, the patte rn ofalliances that evolved, and so on. One problem with a great deal of the powerliterature has been that it assumes a relationship between power and outcomes,without actually dem onstrating it or even describing the outcom es in very muc hdetail.

We might also consider whether certain particularly illuminating case studiesmight be undertaken. For example, a major study of the Canadian tax reformprocess which began with the appointment of the Carter Commission in 1961

would be especially valuable for two reasons.i0 First, it was clearly an issue inwhich every citizen in the society had a stake and would therefore presumablyhav e an incentive to mobilize whatever resources he possessed. Few things soclearly reveal the naked play of vested interests in any country as do attempts tochange an exis ting fisca l ~ t r u c t u r e . ~ ~econd, it appe ars possible f o r economists

7"obert A. Dahl, A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model," American Political ScienceRev iew 52 (June 1958), 463-9; and Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, Power and Pover ty(New York, 1970), chaps. 1-2. See also Raymond Wolfinger, "Non-Decisions and the Studyof Local Politics," and Frederick Frey, "Comment," American Poli t ical Science Review 65(October 1971), 1063-80 and 1081-1 101.W e e Bucovetsky and Bird, "Tax Reform in Canada"; and Bucovetsky, "The Mining Industryand the Great Tax Reform Debate," in A. Paul Pross, ed., Pressure Gr ou p Behaviour inCanadian Politics (Toronto , 1975), 87-114.77Richard M. Bird, "The Tax Kaleidoscope: Perspectives on Tax Reform in Canada,"Canadian Ta x Journal X V (Sept.-Oct. 1970), 444.



570 RICHARD SIMEON

to measure rather precisely the impact of the tax burden. I n the Canad ian ta x re-form process we had : TI, the preexisting tax system, distributing costs in certainways; a political process occurring within a royal commission, leading to theproposal T,, which would have altered the distribution of the burd en; an otherpolitical process, including public debate, pressure o n the governm ent, and so on,leading to T,, the White Paper, which again altered the distribution; anotherpolitical process including parliamentary comm ittee hearings and Edg ar Benson sexercise in participatory democracy, culminating finally in g the legislation.research project which, on the on e han d, concentrated on m easuring the shifts intax burdens for a large variety of social a nd econom ic groups at each point a nd,on the other h and, closely investigated the political process in between each poin twould seem to offer considerable prom ise of directly relating process to outco mein a way which would likely cast con siderab le light on the real pa ttern s of influ-ence in the country. It would also be relatively easy to extend the analysis toexperiences with tax reform in other countries.

Despite the difficulties, power seems obviously related to all three dimensionsof policy I have outlined. In the capitalist societies, at least, the expansion of thescope of government seems to have coincided with the accession of previouslyexcluded grou ps to a share of political power, though some writers argue that thisexpansion has also been turned to the benefit of the already pow erful; for example,Galbraith s notion of socialism for the rich an d free enterprise for the po or, orThe odor e Lowi s no tion tha t expansion of the role of governm ent was accom -panied, in the u s, by parcelling ou t the responsibility to privategroups.78KennethBryden s recent study of p ension legislation in C ana da shows how social reform

can become domesticated, so that current pension policies provide little in theway of redistribution among incom e classes.79 Similarly, the m eans by w hichpolicy is carried out is related to the level of conflict and to the distribution ofpower: the more widely influence is distributed, as in the pluralist model, themo re voluntaristic the m eans; the m ore intense the conflict, the less the likelihoodof comp romise, and the mo re chance of coercion.

IDE S

Th e third appro ach focuses on cultural and ideological facto rs: policy is a functionof the do minant ideas, values, theories, and beliefs in the society.s0 Fundam en-tally, these factors may be seen as providing the basic assum ptions and fram eworkwithin which policy is considered. By culture here we mean simply such basicorientations to the political system as the definition of the relevant com munity towhich obligation is felt; optimism or pessimism regarding man s ability to changehis world; orientations to political activity; orientations towards conflict, and thelike. By ideology, we mean more explicit, detailed, and politically focused ideas,which explain the political world, provide a framew ork for interpreting particula revents, and offer a recommendation and prescriptions for future action. For theanalysis of public policy, three dimensions seem particularly important.

First, we can distinguish between proc edura l an d substantive ideas. Proced ural

7SThe End of Liberalism (New York, 1969)7gOldAge PensionsSoIbid.,




norm s or values suggest rules of t he gam e or meth ods which are considered legiti-mate. They include such things as the decision-rules to be employed (majorityrule, proportionality, unanimity), perceptions of the situation as 0-sum or not,views about what tactics are permissible, views about who the legitimate partici-pan ts in the policy process are and a bou t how much secrecy is permitted, and thelikeeB 1Very im portan t he re, I think, is the extent to which the participants in thepolitical process are basically self-regarding or public-regarding in their ap pro ac hto politics. Such factors appear to be to a large extent (bu t not com pletely) inde-pen den t of individual issues, or levels of conflict, and thu s seem to h ave an inde -pendent effect on how the policy process operates, and to influence especiallythe m eans.

Pe rha ps the most fully developed recent statem ent of a proce dura l hypothesis isLowi's discussion of the pub lic philoso phy of interest grou p liberalism , wh ichhe suggests can account both for the procedures of Am erican policy-making andfor some of its distributive characteristics, such as its con tinual reinforcement ofthe status Work by Geo rge and others on the operational code and byPutnam on e lite a tt itudes is al so importan t in this ~ e i n . ~ W u g heclo provides aninteresting contra st between th e proced ural styles of Swedish and B ritish policy-mak ing which ha d some imp ortan t consequen ces for policy results: in general,Swedish discussions of soc ial policies have begun from an as sum ption tha t th eprim ary requisite for policy decision is mo re inform ation, clarification and analy-sis among the interested parties. British discussion has generally begun from theassumption of divergent interests resolvable only through partisan conflict, andcertainly not through joint committee work. g+ n the Canadian case a variety of

procedural analyses of this type hav e been mad e, as in the em phasis on Ca nad iandeference to elites, lack of en trepren eurial tale nt, and relatively greater Can adiancollectivism identified by writers like Lipset, Porter, Presthus, and others. Weneed more detailed studies of the procedural values of political elites. Somevaluable insights are foun d, for exam ple, in Presthus's study of Ca nad ian interestgroups and Meisel's analysis of Liberal h u b r i ~ . ~ ~

Substantive values relate to what governmentsshould do; what general goalsshou ld be pursu ed. T he m ost obvious aspect here is of cou rse th e left-rightdimension, which is closely related to scop e and distribution. M ore generally, sub-stantive values relate to such things as the emphasis on econom ic growth. Oth er

"For an interesting analysis of the interplay between culture and the policy process, seeThomas Anton, "Policy-Making and Political Culture in Sweden," Scandinavian PoliticalStudies 4 (19 69) , 88-102.8z''The Public Philosophy: Interest G roup Liberalism," American Poli t ical Science Review61 (March 196 7), 5-24SSAlexander George, "The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of PoliticalLeaders and Decision-Making," International Studies Quarterly 13 (June 1969), 190-222;Robert Putnam, "Studying Elite Political Culture: The Case of Ideology," American PoliticalScience Review 65 (1971) 651-81, and "The Political Attitudes of Senior Civil Servants inWestern Europe," British Jorrrnal of Political Science 3 (July 1973), 257-90; and ThomasAnton et al., "Bureaucrats in Politics: A Profile of the Swedish Administrative Elite,"Canadian Public Admin istrat ion 16 (Winter 1973), 627-5 1.eQ4 dern Social Politics in Britain and Swe den (Ne w Haven, 1974) , 3 13-14asRobert Presthus, Eli te Accommodation in Canadian Poli t ics (Toronto, 1973), chs. 2, 11;John Meisel, "Howe, Hubris and 1972," in his Wo rkin g Papers in Canadian Poli tics (3rd ed.,Montreal, 1 974)



57 RICH RD SIMEON

aspects of substan tive ideology are also imp orta nt, especially in the Canadiansituation; the most im portan t ones have to do w ith the definition of the Ca nadia nnation an d views abo ut French-English relations, regional disparities, and therelative ro les of fed eral and provincial gove rnm ents.

It is unlikely that particular policies a re very often simply deduced from someexplicit ideological framework (tho ugh Tr ude au's policies in the area of bilingual-ism come close to a clear implementation of ideas enunciated previously), butideas do seem to provide a general framew ork within which discussion of particu-lar options takes place. Thus the developm ent of the welfare state was not simplya result of a changed environment, or of the accession to power of the workers,it was also a pro duc t of changes in ideas about w hat the role of the state shouldbe, what its obligations to citizens are, and so on. Anthony King makes a goodcase for what he ca lls "ideas" as being the fundam ental causes of t he relativelysmall scope of government in the United States as compared with other indus-trialized coun tries, and of its relatively poor ly developed welfaresystem.86

More narrowly, it is useful to examine what might be called the prevailingtheories held by decision-makers about the causes of problems and how to dealwith them. J.M. Keynes observes that "the ideas of economists and politicalphilosophers are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the worldis ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be exempt fromany intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of som e defunct economist."Keynes's own influence bears him o ut : "one cause above all others" accounts forthe success of full employm ent after the Second World War the publication in1936 of the General Theory.87Ron Manzer's study of developmental sequences

of policy in Canada similarly stresses the importance of theories of poverty andcrime and punishment, and the ways in which theories shaped policy in thoseareas.88 The se ideas or theories stem n ot only from generalized ideologies, bu talso from contemporary knowledge in social sciences, learning from the experi-ence of o the r coun tries, and the like.

Th e second distinction is between elite and mass values. W hat role do citizensplay are they subjects, participan ts, spectators, or rebels? Are the elites rela-tively constrained or relatively free and autonomous? Are citizens willing todefer to political authority, or do they demand a voice? Similarly what aboutelite orie nta tion s: how do they view their role? Much of the conflict in recentyears surrounding the demand for greater governmental responsiveness andgreater participation is related to changing views abou t the citizen's role, o n on ehand, and an inability or unwillingness of governmental institutions to respondon the o ther. In understanding the m aking of individual policies, elite orientationsare probably most important factors. Several suggestions are found in the Cana-dian literature, for example the view of Canadian politicians as brokers, or asirrationally preoccupied w ith problems of national unity, or a s cooperative elitesin the consociational democracy model holding the country together by over-arching coop eration while keeping the masses quiescent. None of these observa-tions is particularly well founded, but much room for research is available.

8wCIdeas, nstitutions and the Policies of Gov ernme nts"87Michael Stewart, Keynes and Af t e r (2nd ed. , Harm ondsworth, Eng.,1972 , 13. The quoteAom Keynes is onp. 25.



5 7tudying P ublic Policy

Third, we need to look at the dimension of ideological homogeneity andheterogeneity. Ideology in general may play two roles: it may serve to supportand legitimize the existing status quo the existing institutions, procedu res, powerstructures, and patterns of policy. O r it may play a role of opposition , attemp tingto mobilize people to challenge the existing order or the existing patterns ofpolicy. The policy process and policy outcom es ar e likely to be very different insocieties where one ideology is dominan t (indeed such societies may be seen, assome Am ericans see themselves, as non-ideological ) than they are in situationsof ideological diversity and conflict. In b oth cases, ideology is very closely linkedboth to patterns of power, either challenging or legitimizing them, and to theinstitutional structure, which may be seen to embody or support the existingideological order. In this sense, ideas, like power, need to be related to thegroups whose interests they prom ote or defend.

Like King, lean strongly toward s ideas and differences in dom inant ideasfrom country to country as the basis for explaining policy differences, thoughwould place mo re stress on the link between ideas and t he interests a nd influenceof different groups. Ideas seem to be the essential both to the substance and tothe means by which policy is made. Th ey a re especially useful, I think, in under-standing broad policy shifts over long periods of time, such as the developmentof the welfare ~ t a t e , ~ % n dn understanding the more gross differences in thepatterns of policy in different countries. They are less useful the more rigid theenvironmental constraints. Ideas do not provide complete explanations. Theytend to be general and thus to account for broad orientations rather than thespecific details of policy; in this sense they are especially important in providing

the assumptions which define the problems and limit the range of policy alterna-tives considered at any point.It might be objected that the stress on ideas implies an unrealistic view of the

policy process, seeing it as explicitly goal-orientated, in which some group ofdecision-makers with clear ideological purposes simply promotes policies thatcon form to its ideology.A contrasting view sees the policy process as much morechaotic and incoherent, with policy the result of the clash of many interests inwhich no central thread is discernible. This viewpoint also stresses the impo rtanceof unanticipated consequences, the possibility of people agreeing on policy eventhough they disagree on final ends, and so on. This is indeed the case : policiesare the result of long accumulations of small decisions; decision-makers, especi-ally in non-crisis situations, seldom do self-consciously select a single purpose;policy is the result of a complex bargaining process. But that process does go onwithin a fram ewo rk of assum ptions, norm s, and values concerning both the p ro-cedure and the substanc e of policies, and from a long-term and com parative per-spective it is this fram ework that is most impo rtant.

I N S T I T U T I O N S

T he fourth ap pro ach concentrates on the policy consequences of the institutionalstructure the fo rm al rules and regulations of the political system. T he way inwhich government is organized, the degree of centralization or d ecentralization,

8QFora statemen t of this view, see Richard Titmuss,Social Policy: An Introduction 22

See the work of Lindblom , and Braybrook e and Lindblom cited ab ove ; and Judit h Sklar,



57 RICH RD SIMEON

the way authority is shared, the formal mechanisms for registering decisions areall involved here. Thu s, for example, A.H . Birch argues that it is the complica-tions of federalism which acco unt for the rather late developm ent of the welfarestate in C anada.91 Or E.E . Schattschneider,R. MacGregor Burns, and a host ofothers argue that certain features of American political institutions so fragmentauthority that innovation is systematically prevented and irnmobilism results.Similarly, many have argued impressionistically that somehow cabinet systemsare able to move m ore decisively and effectively than systems with th e se para tionof powers. Or, to use another example, N.H. Lithwick argues that the presentstructure of urban government in Canada is inherently incapable of dealing withcontemporary problem^.^^

Now to sort ou t the indep end ent effect of institutional fac tors is extreme lydifficult. Institutions a re obviously the result of bro ad er political factors: Ca na dahas federalism because regional and linguistic divisions are strong; the UnitedStates has the separation of pow ers at least in part because Jam es M adison andothers wanted t o limit the scop e of governm ent an d con trol the pow er of thema sses. Similarly, in th e long run , if p olitical pressu res are sufficiently strong ,institutional hurdles can be cleared and institutions cha nged. But in the short run,institutions do place constraints on decision-makers and help shape outcomes.Th ey d o so in primarily a negative sense, by making some solutions harder, ratherthan by suggesting positive alternatives. It does not seem u nreaso nab le to suggestthat the greater the num ber of veto points, or the greater the em phasis o n gainingthe co nsent of all, the fewer innovations the re will be, a nd the m ore limited willbe the scope of th e governme nt.

There is considerable debate about the effect of institutional factors. AnthonyKing points o ut that in theus it is not so much th at radical proposals were vetoedbecause of institutional fragmentation, but that they were never seriously pro-posedeQ3On the other hand, governments exercizing very centralized constitu-tional powers may, because of their ow n internal divisions, o r the pressures o nthem, act extremely cautiously. Similarly, J Roland Pennock finds none of thedifferences in agricultural policy in Britain an d the U nited States that might havebeen predicted from differences in institutional structu reeQ 4 n the other ha nd, inhis com pariso n of Am erican , Can adian , and Swedish air pollution policy, Le nn artLundq vist concludes that structures do indeed matter. Although it is equallyclear that other factors influence policy choices, political structures have con-siderably mo re impac t on the cho ice of alternatives than on e would have ex-pected, given the similarity of th e problem s and t he similarity of (possib le)ava i lab le so lu t ions . ~Arnold Heidenheimer, examining social policy in theUS

and W estern Eu rop e, argue s that it is the interactio n of interest groups an d insti-tutions which best explain difference^ ̂ ^

QlFedera l i sm,Finance and Social Legislation (Oxford, 1955), 204Urb an Canada: Problems and Prospec ts (Ottawa, 1970)''Ideas, Insti tutions and Policies, 416

responsible Government, Separated Powers and Special Interests: Agricultural Subsidiesin Britain and America, Am erica n Polit ical Science Re viewLVI (September 1962), 621-33SL Do Political Structures Matter in Environmental Politics? Canadian Public Administra-

l ion 17 (Spring 1974) , 13996 The Politics of Public Education, Health and Welfare in the US and Western Europe,



575tudying P ublic Policy

Institutional factors may also influence the means: the more veto pointsthere are, the more consensual and voluntaristic the means, and the more policiesare likely to be distributive rather than redistributive. Finally, institutions mayhave implications for distribution, for who gets what. We may see institutions inthis sense as conferring formal authority, as requiring that certain formal stepsbe taken before policy is enacted, and giving certain authorities the right to makethose decisions. To the extent that these authorities are linked to certain interestsand groups within the societies these actors are likely to exert more influence.Thus in Canada, federalism does have some fairly clear policy consequences. Ittends to structure our thinking about policy problems, so that we see them inregional terms. It gives special weight to certain interests which are regionallybased, and disadvantages to some others which are nationally distributed." Be-cause of the process of federal-provincial negotiation on the Canada Pension Planwhich federalism engendered, it seemed clear that certain elements in pensionpolicy were given great weight; others, which would have been more prominenthad the institutional framework been different, were neglected.

The institutional factors are so bound up with the other approaches that itseems impossible to weigh their over-all impact on policy. The most fruitfulapproach will probably be to conduct comparative studies of similar issues acrossunits with clear institutional variations. We should also remember that institutionsthemselves have no particular policy content; their effects lie in the way in whichthey interact with other social forces, and in the way they give advantages tosome interests and disadvantages to others. The way institutions structure politi-cal competition and therefore policy debate can also be examined in the sense

that they may provide incentives to politicians to pursue some kinds of strategiesas opposed to others, as Alan Cairns suggests is the case for political parties inthe Canadian electoral ~ystem. '~

In a longer-run perspective, institutional arrangements may themselves beseen as policies, which, by building in to the decision process the need to consultparticular groups and follow particular procedures, increase the likelihood ofsome kinds of decisions and reduces that of others. For example, a legal require-ment that public hearings be held before a development project can go aheadincreases the bargaining resources of local residents and environmentalists. Theestablishment of new Departments and agencies reflects not only the growth inthe scope of government, but also the recognition of the importance of newlymobilized groups and interests, which can then use these new institutions topromote favourable policies. Change in governing structures may thus be seen inpart as a process of institutionalizing interests. Hence institutions are bothdependent variables, reflecting earlier decisions, and independent factors, con-ditioning the future play of political forces.

PRO ESS

Closely associated with institutions, and in a way almost indistinguishable fromthem, is a focus on the process of decision-making itself. The vast bulk of the

"See Richard Simeon, "Regionalism and Can adian Political Institutions," Queen's Quarter ly82 (Winter 1975), 499-51 1.98"The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada," in Orest Kruhlak et al., eds.,



7 RICHARD SIM ON

policy literature, of course , is primarily conce rned with this level, in describingthe ways in which the proxim ate policy-makers bureau crats, politicians, interestgroup leaders inte rac t with each othe r in the making of policy. Much of thisliterature takes the form of the rather sterile deba te between the disjointed incre-mentalists, the rationalists, and the mixed scanning advocates, a deb atemarked by a confusion about whether these models are actually descriptive orp r e ~ c r i p t i v e . ~ ~

We need to look at process in this sense in two ways. First, it is these decision-makers who actually make the form al decisions and carry them ou t. It is throughthem that the broader political forces operate. Their agenda and behaviourreflect the pressures of the environm ent, the play of political influences surro und -ing policy disputes, the norms, assum ptions, and values fou nd in the culture andthe ideology, and the opportunities and constraints imposed by the institutions.The causal arrows do not jump straight from environment to legislation; power

and influences are exercised and brought to bear on particular decision-makers;and assumptions, norms, and values must be made concrete. Up to this point,the models we have ske tched have been rath er static; they are sets of variableswhich the process sets in motion. T his perspective has im portan t implications fora research strategy. Power, ideology, and the other factors can all be studied inthe abstract; indeed, they usually are. The problem has been to bring them tobear in explaining policies. I n pa rt I have suggested we d o that through examiningthe outcomes themselves: Whose interests have been served? What values areimplicit? What means have been used? Examining the process can show howthese results came abo ut. Th us co mparative case studies can illuminate many of

the broader aspects the earlier approaches implied. We can interview the par-ticipants to find out not only what happened when, but also to probe deeper.How did the problem come to be defined in this way? Why were alternativesab, and c considered, but n ot d and e? Which g roups was it imp ortant to listen to,and why? And so on. In exploring the actions, assumptions, perceptions, andstrategies of participa nts, we should begin to see more broad ly how these widerfeatures of the political system impinge on the policy process. Th rou gh com-parison we are able to highlight what may be the most important facts: thosewhich are simply taken for granted by the participants themselves. Process, then,becomes the bridge on which we work forw ard from w hat we know abou t institu-tions, ideology, power, etc., to policy outcom es; and on which we work b ackwardsfro m variations in policy ou tcomes to seek explanations.

Process is important in another sense; that is, as an independent contributionto policy outcomes. The proximate policy-makers may have their own interests,such as the bureaucratic need for maintenance and expansion, and their ownties to clientele groups. Similarly, writers like M arch and Simon, an d B raybrookeand Lindblom, have stressed certain characteristics of the situation facing thedecision-makers themselves: complexity, uncertainty, a limited capacity foranalysis, and the like. They have suggested some of the strategies, such as incre -

mentalism and satisficing, by which decision-makers can simplify their decisionprocesses a nd which do have consequen ces for outcom es.

)For a good discussion of this deba te, see Peter Au coin, Theory and Research in the Study ofPolicy-Making, in Do ern and Auco in,T h e Structures of P olicy-Making in Canada 10.38.




Related to a process approach but also closely linked to the power andinstitutional dimensions is the wo rk of public choice theorists. Th is newpolitical econom y, unde rtaken prim arily by economists, seeks to build deductivemodels of individual behaviour and collective decision from a simple set ofassumptions, the most important being the assumption of self-interest. Thus,politicians are vote-maximizers, and bureaucrats are motivated to increase thesize of the ir agencies. Give n constraints such as inform ation an d transaction costs,predictions abou t behaviour an d outcom e are deduced. In addition, much of thisliterature is norm ative, asking what justifies replacem ent of individu al o r marke tchoice mechanisms with public or governmental choices. The parsimony andlogic of many formulations are persuasive, indeed beguiling. They provideimportant insights and may be a useful baseline against which to observe realworld activities. The abstract and general character of this mode of analysis,however, renders it of somewhat limited value in exploration of substantivepolicy. Moreover, man y of the assumptions abo ut motives, structural constraints,an d the like take for granted factors which have argued must be investigated.F o r example, we m ay accept the self-interest motivation, but w hat an actor willdefine as his self-interest is not evident. Politicians may seek to maximize votesand bureaucrats the size of their budgets; what they will have to advocate tosucceed in these goals depends heavily on the distribution of political resources,the do min ance of certain ideas and th e like.100

There are a multitude of frameworks available for the study of policyprocess. lOlM any suggest a temporal or fun ctional sequence ranging from placingan issue on the agenda, to formal decision, to implementation, appraisal. and

determination. Most such fram eworks are simply a way of organizing information.Tw o process approac hes which do fairly clearly relate the character of the processto the character of the outcome are those of Allison inEsse nce of D ecision andLindblom in T he Intelligence o f D e m o c r ~ c y ~ ~ ~

Lindblom emphasizes both an intellectual process, incrementalism, and apolitical bargaining process, partisan mutual adjustment. In his model, decision-makers do not attempt to consider all alternatives or to ask the grand questions;they take the existing situation as given and seek to m ake only marginal improve-ments. Individual decision-makers do not try to take into account each other'spoint of view; rather, each acts selfishly. But bargaining resources are widelydistributed and the actors engage in m utual adjustment. Th e result for Lind blom

but not for Lowi who by and large accepts Lindblom's description of whatgoes on is policy outcom es in which the largest num ber of interests a re likelyto have got at least some of what they wanted, in which there is considerablecomp romise, in which policy changes in only sm all steps, an d s o on.

looThere is a large and diverse literature in this field. Some important examples are: AlbertBreton, Th e Economic Theo ry o f Rep re sen fa five Gove rn tnen t(London, 1974); James M .Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, Th e Ca lculus o f Consent (Ann Arbor, Mich., 196 2); MancurOlson, T h e Logic of Collect ive Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Anthony Downs, n

Econo mic Tlleory of De mocracy ( N e w York, 1957); Robert Bish, Th e Public Econo my of

Metropoli tan Areas (Chicago, 1971). For a good summary of the literature and an applica-tion to the study of Canadian and Australian Federalism, see M.H. Sproule-Jones, PublicClzoice and Federalism in Ausf ralia and C anada (Canberra, 1975).'OlFor example, Richard Rose, Comparing Public Policy102Lindblom, T h e Intelligence of Dem ocra cy (New York, 1965)



78 R I C H R D SIM ON

Allison, after generally rejecting the view that policy can be seen as therational, clear decision of a single actor such as the president, postulates twoalternative m odels. O ne is similar to L indblom s model: policy is the result ofbargaining among the bureaucratic agencies and leaders involved. The otherstresses the imp eratives of bu reaucratic organization the need to simplify, thefailure to learn from the environment, the inertia, and the commitments tostandard operating procedures. One might also explore how much bureaucraticexpansionism is now a central force in the growth of governmen t itself. Th eresults again are limited flexibility and in crem ental chan ge.

These two models d o generally d escribe the day-to-day operation of the policyprocess. A nd they are likely to have certain independent consequences of theirown, such as marginal change and reinforcement of the status quo. Certainly toexplore minor changes in particular policies we probably would not need to gomuch further th an the im mediate process. Bu t these are only very partia l models.They deal with the routine an d the stable, rather tha n with ch ange or crisis. M oreimportant, they take far too much for granted. Why one set of bureaucraticstructures, and not an other? Why on e set of alternatives being debated a nd not anarrower or broader one? In fact, Lindblom for example,assumes a decentralizedinstitutional structure much like the American, a general consensus, both pro-cedural and substantive, on the basic characteristics of the system, a shared com-mitment to the rules of the game, and limited levels of conflict. Bu t wha t is theprocess like when these characteristics d o not prevail?

In a way much of th is boils down to the question of w hat is the role of the

politician and bure aucra t in the policy process. Fo r som e of the environm entalists,the role is minimal: the black box of politics does not make such difference. Theprocess writers place considerably more emphasis on the political role, thoughtheir results suggest that it is limited too, since policy at any timet is best pre-dicted by seeing what it was at time t l The approach developed here, byemphasizing the framework of the environment, ideas, power, and institutionswithin which the process operates may suggest in one sense that the process andits participants are unimportant. But in another, broader, sense the argument istha t the process is crucial. Fo r it is the focus, the impact point, of all the othervariables. The environmentalists tend to downplay the political variables alto-gether; the bureaucratic process writers, on the o ther hand, study a rather narrowset of political forces. The approach outlined here seeks to define policy-makingas political, bu t in a much w ider sense.

A brief illustration will dem onstra te the so rts of hypotheses w hich might bederived from each of these approaches. Let us take anti-poverty policies, and,for the sake of argument, simply assert that they have failed to achieve socialjustice for the poor . Ho w might each ap proac h try to explain why?

The environmental approach might suggest such factors as the lack of thenecessary resources to fully close the poverty gap; the possibility that to do so

would lead to levels of taxa tion which could not b e achieved given Can ada sdependence on foreign investment; the sim ple lack of information abou t ow toeliminate poverty even if the resources o r the will were there. N one of the se alo neseems very persuasive.



58 R I C H R D SIM ON

and it is a response to the apolitical atheoretical non-cumulative and non-comparative characteristics of much of the recent work in the area. The frame-work here is most unhelpful in one way: it presents not a theory but a way oflooking at policy; it does not simplify study but instead makes it more complex.I hope it has isolated the issues has suggested a guide to the important questionsespecially those concerning what is to be explained and has provided somecriteria for selecting and presenting information.

More generally several suggestions for how we should conduct policy researcharise. First we need much better descriptions of what governments actually dowhat the allocation of values and costs is. At the moment we have too manyindependent variables chasing too few and too vague dependent ones. Second aspolitical scientists our concern at the moment should be primarily with describingand explaining rather than recommending techniques and solutions to policyproblems. Third case studies can be a very valuable tool: but they must be com-parative the cases must be carefully selected and they should be used to pene-trate the political process in order then to ask some of the broader questions. Atthe same time case studies are not enough. We need longitudinal studies of theevolution of policy over long periods and we need to take studies of culturevoting and the like and try to formulate hypotheses by which they might berelated to policy.

The task for policy research outlined here is a vast one. At every level we arefaced not only with a lack of data but also with difficult theoretical methodologi-cal and even ideological problems. Some attempts to provide an over-all viewhowever tentative and to summarise what is already known will be extremely

valuable. But it is not intended that everyone should try to answer all thesequestions. Specialization is inevitable but the perspective outlined here willhave served its purpose if it has sketched a general outline of the whole forestand indicated on which clumps of trees it is most important to concentrate.Similarly specialists will make their greatest contributions if they can keep inmind that it is the forest we ultimately want to understand and that policy studieswill advance to the extent that clear and explicit links between dependent andindependent variables are established.



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Studying Public PolicyRichard SimeonCanadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique , Vol. 9, No. 4.(Dec., 1976), pp. 548-580.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0008-4239%28197612%299%3A4%3C548%3ASPP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

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[Footnotes]

1 The Treasury Board of Canada and the Machinery of Government of the 1970sA. W. JohnsonCanadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique , Vol. 4, No. 3. (Sep.,1971), pp. 346-366.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0008-4239%28197109%294%3A3%3C346%3ATTBOCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

30 Policy AnalysisH. Hugh Heclo British Journal of Political Science , Vol. 2, No. 1. (Jan., 1972), pp. 83-108.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-1234%28197201%292%3A1%3C83%3APA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23

30 Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: A Comparative Analysis: Parts I and IIAnthony King British Journal of Political Science , Vol. 3, No. 3. (Jul., 1973), pp. 291-313.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-1234%28197307%293%3A3%3C291%3AIIATPO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

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7 The Pure Theory of Public ExpenditurePaul A. SamuelsonThe Review of Economics and Statistics , Vol. 36, No. 4. (Nov., 1954), pp. 387-389.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6535%28195411%2936%3A4%3C387%3ATPTOPE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A

8 Outputs, Structure, and Power: An Assessment of Changes in the Study of State and Local

PoliticsHerbert Jacob; Michael LipskyThe Journal of Politics , Vol. 30, No. 2. (May, 1968), pp. 510-538.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3816%28196805%2930%3A2%3C510%3AOSAPAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3

17 A Causal Model of State Welfare ExpendituresGary L. TompkinsThe Journal of Politics , Vol. 37, No. 2. (May, 1975), pp. 392-416.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3816%28197505%2937%3A2%3C392%3AACMOSW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N

17 Review: The Literature Dealing with the Relationships between Political Processes,Socioeconomic Conditions & Public Policies in the American States: A Bibliographical EssayJohn H. Fenton; Donald W. ChamberlaynePolity , Vol. 1, No. 3. (Spring, 1969), pp. 388-404.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3497%28196921%291%3A3%3C388%3ATLDWTR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N

17 The Environment, Politics, and Policy Literature: A Critique and ReformulationJoyce Matthews MunnsThe Western Political Quarterly , Vol. 28, No. 4. (Dec., 1975), pp. 646-667.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-4078%28197512%2928%3A4%3C646%3ATEPAPL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W




http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6535%28195411%2936%3A4%3C387%3ATPTOPE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3816%28196805%2930%3A2%3C510%3AOSAPAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3&origin=JSTOR-pdf

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39 Review: Decision Making vs. Policy Making: Toward an Antidote for TechnocracyReviewed Work(s):

The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olson, Jr.The Policy-Making Process by Charles E. LindbloomPublic Policymaking Reexamined by Yehezkel DrorThe Study of Policy Formation by Raymond A. Bauer; Kenneth J. Gergen

Theodore LowiPublic Administration Review , Vol. 30, No. 3. (May - Jun., 1970), pp. 314-325.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-3352%28197005%2F06%2930%3A3%3C314%3ADMVPMT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W

42 The Hidden Dimension of Public Policy: Private Governments and the Policy- MakingProcessMark V. NadelThe Journal of Politics , Vol. 37, No. 1. (Feb., 1975), pp. 2-34.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3816%28197502%2937%3A1%3C2%3ATHDOPP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

70 Social Structure and Public Policy: A Longitudinal Study of Mexico and CanadaJames Bennett HoganComparative Politics , Vol. 4, No. 4. (Jul., 1972), pp. 477-509.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-4159%28197207%294%3A4%3C477%3ASSAPPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

71 The Politics of RedistributionBrian R. Fry; Richard F. WintersThe American Political Science Review , Vol. 64, No. 2. (Jun., 1970), pp. 508-522.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28197006%2964%3A2%3C508%3ATPOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U

75 A Critique of the Ruling Elite ModelRobert A. DahlThe American Political Science Review , Vol. 52, No. 2. (Jun., 1958), pp. 463-469.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28195806%2952%3A2%3C463%3AACOTRE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L




http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-3352%28197005%2F06%2930%3A3%3C314%3ADMVPMT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3816%28197502%2937%3A1%3C2%3ATHDOPP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-4159%28197207%294%3A4%3C477%3ASSAPPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28197006%2964%3A2%3C508%3ATPOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28195806%2952%3A2%3C463%3AACOTRE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28195806%2952%3A2%3C463%3AACOTRE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28197006%2964%3A2%3C508%3ATPOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-4159%28197207%294%3A4%3C477%3ASSAPPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

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96 The Politics of Public Education, Health and Welfare in the USA and Western Europe: HowGrowth and Reform Potentials Have DifferedArnold J. Heidenheimer British Journal of Political Science , Vol. 3, No. 3. (Jul., 1973), pp. 315-340.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-1234%28197307%293%3A3%3C315%3ATPOPEH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7



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10 studying public policy - simeon.pdf

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