ppb and the public policy-making system: some reflections on the papers by bertram m. gross and...

PPB and the Public Policy-Making System: Some Reflections on the Papers by Bertram M.Gross and Allen SchickAuthor(s): Yehezkel DrorSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1969), pp. 152-154Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/973695 .

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152 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

PPB AND THE PUBLIC POLICY-MAKING SYSTEM:

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE PAPERS

BY BERTRAM M. GROSS AND ALLEN SCHICK

YEHEZKEL DROR, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The RAND Corporation

THE VERY RICHNESS OF IDEAS presented in the papers by Bertram M. Gross and Allen Schick, which makes it so difficult to identify in them any clear image of PPB, is a reflection of the characteristics of the subject matter itself. It just is not clear what PPB is, and no single-dimensional and simple description can do adequate justice to the heterogenous phe- nomena and ideas using that name. Indeed, this is clearly recognized by the two authors who, in an illuminating way, try to bring out some of the main elements of the mix called alternatively "PPB" or "PPBS."

Granted this difficulty in circumscribing the boundaries of PPB and its contents, I am, nevertheless, troubled by the question of whether Schick might not have provided a more focused view of PPB and its problems if he had withstood the temptation to use PPB as a looking glass for examining the American political scenery.

True, PPB is closely related to politics, being strictly constrained by politics, trying a little to change politics, and serving as one of the symptoms of the state of politics. But, after all, not every symptom is a useful starting point for analyzing a complex series of devel- opments and I, for one, doubt whether PPB is a necessary or useful jumping board into the faster-moving streams of politics. These doubts are much reinforced by the central parts of Schick's paper. However interesting and important by themselves, they beg the ques-

This paper is based on comments presented at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the American Political Sci- ence Association. Any views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They should not be inter- preted as reflecting the views of The RAND Corpo- ration or the official opinion or policy of any of its governmental or private research sponsors.

tion of whether the problems of the scope of governmental activities, the need for a "new politics," the roles of ideology in modern society, and so on, are really salient for a discussion of PPB. My reaction to their treatment by Schick is that it is preferable to write a paper on changes in American politics-in which PPB is treated in a few paragraphs- rather than putting together excellent remarks on PPB with a highly interesting, but irrelevant, discussion of quite distinct issues.

Had he done this, Schick would have avoided a number of unclear points into which he was forced by the logic of his treatment, such as the rather doubtful distinction between "process" and "system" (PPB certainly depends on belief in a rational process; and the "process school" was also interested in some outputs, such as consensus); the negative evaluation of "ideology" (is not belief in democracy and human values also an "ideology" essential for the idea of a public interest separate from aggregate group interests, rightly emphasized by Schick?); and the discussion of politics as a variation of the market mechanism without recognizing the need to justify explicitly any assumption of isomorphism and analogue between politics and market.

These problems in no way impair the main and basic message of Schick: Incremental change through interaction between partisan interests is inadequate for meeting the now all too obvious difficult problems of the United States, even though this is the richest and strongest country in the world. Spontaneous processes cannot any more be relied upon to adapt action to needs and to regulate goal- succession. Instead, we must try and utilize our intellectual capacities of explicit analysis better to face the present and future problems,

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PPBS REEXAMINED 153

and PPB is one tool for doing so. This I regard as an important message which provides us with some perspective for evaluating PPB, and it is this message which constitutes one of the highly significant contributions of Schick to this symposium.

The paper by Gross avoids the pitfalls of irrelevance and is full of significant observa- tions on PPB, including, for instance: important insights on the plasticity of PPB and the need and opportunity to reshape it so as to fit different conditions and environments; rec- ognition of PPB as a frame of mind rather than a technique; and a view of PPB as part of broader processes of resources recruitment, resources allocation, and planning. But I miss a more general and unified framework which can serve as our guide through the perplexities of PPB in its many variations.

Gross reaches the point of providing an organizing framework for looking at PPB within the processes of planning and budgeting near the end of his paper when presenting the need for a sustained application of systems concepts. But, in this paper, he does not yet take the next step of looking at PPB as a part of the policy-making system, probably because the scarce resource of space had run out. Therefore, the paper by Gross still looks perhaps too much at particulars without suffi- ciently viewing planning and budgeting (including PPB) in a broader framework. The paper by Schick, on the other hand, uses in part a framework too broad and general for dealing with the peculiarities of PPB. These are my main critical reactions to both of these excellent articles: They suffer from a some- what misplaced allocation of emphasis.

To substantiate this point, let me propose and outline a view of PPB as part of the public policy-making system. By doing so, a number of additional comments on the papers by Gross and Schick will be made in a hopefully constructive and positive way.

Using a very simple version of systems theory, I regard public policy making as an aggregative process in which a large number of different kinds of units interact in a variety of part-stabilized but open-ended modes. In other words, public policy is made by a system, the public policy-making system. Even in this

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very simple form, this systems perspective leads to two relevant conclusions:

1. As public policy is a product of complex interactions between a large number of components, similar changes in the output can be achieved through many alternative variations in the components. This means, for our pur- poses, that different combinations of a variety of improvements may be equally useful in achieving equivalent (or different if desired) changes in the quality of policy making. This is a very helpful conclusion, because it permits us to pick out of a large repertoire of poten- tially effective improvements those which are more feasible under changing political and social conditions. This view also emphasizes the open-ended (or, to be more exact, "open- sided") nature of any search for improvement- suggestions: there is, in principle, unlimited scope of adventurous thinking and invention. Therefore, any concrete proposal, such as PPB, should be regarded as only one out of a large list of possible and useful improvements.

2. A less optimistic implication of the systems view of public policy making is that improvements must reach a critical mass in order to influence the aggregative workings of the system. Improvements which do not reach the relevant impact thresholds will, at best, be neutralized by countervailing adjustments of other components (e.g., a new planning method may be reacted to in a way making it an empty ritual), or, at worst, may in fact reduce the quality of aggregative policies (e.g., through possible boomerang effect, reducing belief in capacity of human intelligence, with possible retreat to some types of mysticism, leader-ideology, etc.; or by making and imple- menting wrong decisions more "effectively," and thus abolishing a basic social protective mechanism-inefficiency as reducing the dan- gers of foolish decisions and permitting slow and tacit learning).1

Implications

Applying this admittedly oversimplified framework to PPB, the following two implications emerge:

1. There is a big difference between introducing PPB as a prescribed procedure and



154 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

introducing PPBS, as a set of synergetically related changes in personnel, structure, procedure, and "organizational climate." The easiest thing is to introduce by fiat a new procedure, but this, at best, is of very limited use. Pre- paring new professional staff, changing attitudes of the senior staff, gaining the support of the politicians, and similarly changing other related components of the policy-making system-this is very difficult, but essential. Thus, for instance, the efforts of the Bureau of the Budget to supply adequately prepared professionals for the analytical positions seem quite inadequate. This, if true, is a serious problem, deserving more attention than it received in the papers by Schick and Gross.

2. PPB, and even PPBS, is only one out of a whole range of possible improvements in the policy-making system. What improvements are most urgent, while still being feasible, depends on needs. Thus, it may well be that the present problems faced in urban affairs, education, international relations, race relations, and so on are much more in need of new ideas and novel social inventions than better analysis.

True, a good system for better analysis may serve as a stimulant and result in search for new ideas and incentives. But analysis by itself is not enough and may even hinder adventurous thinking because of an inbuilt bias of analysis in favor of predictable outputs and against the uncalculable uncertainties of new

ideas. (So, in contradiction to Schick's ap- proach, PPB may be quite conservative and incremental in effects.) Therefore, improvement in analysis should go hand in hand with other improvements of public policy making, designed to combine with analysis synergetically, so as to improve overall public policy making.

To mention just a few illustrations, better analysis (including PPBS) should be accom- panied by better designs for social experimen- tation, real efforts to learn from past experi- ence (e.g., through systematic study of the results of past legislation), establishment of social science advisors throughout the govern- ment, improvement of single-person focused decision centers,2 new types of grants to en- courage individual creativity in respect to social problems-to mention just a few of the more feasible and most urgent policy-making system improvements.3

My conclusion is that PPB must be per- ceived and considered within a broad framework of efforts to improve the public policy- making system. Only such a framework can provide us with the perspective for under- standing the present difficulties of advancing PPB and with a basis for better prescription. The absence of such a framework is the miss- ing link in most of the literature on PPB and -what is even more dangerous-in most of the efforts to introduce and advance PPB in public administration.

Notes

1. See the author's paper, "Some Normative Im plications of a Systems View of Policymaking" (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, P-3991, December 1968).

2. The lack of attention to this most important type of decision situations by research and improvement alike well illustrates the weaknesses of the study of policy making. Some attention has been given to presidential crisis management, thanks to writings by insiders on the Cuban crisis. But despite the high importance of personal decisions by the President, heads of agen- cies, mayors, and other high-level officials, little

attention has been given to improving such decisions by better information inputs, access chan- nels for adverse and unconventional opinions, structure of advisory staff, feedback arrange- ments, etc. The large variety of possible useful improvements does permit tailoring of the concrete designs to fit individual requirements and tastes-thus combining full scope for personal judgment and subjective styles with explicit judgment-supporting designs.

3. See the author's Public Policymaking Reexam- ined (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 217 ff.

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