Swan Song Raymond Vernon

Having put the final number of JPAM’s Volume 4 to bed, I can now take my leave as the Journal’s first editor, singing my swan song as I exit. To sing a swan song is to court a special danger. The singer, facing a sharp decline in responsibility, is especially liable to exaggeration and hyperbole. Therein lies the listener’s opportunity: to hear variations on themes that the prudent or- chestrator would ordinarily suppress.

During these four rewarding years, I have perused 800 manu- scripts and shepherded about 100 to publication. The principal lesson I drew from this schooling is painfully obvious: The profes- sional field over which APPAM claims sovereignty has some con- siderable distance to go in defining itself.

A s the onlooker surveys the broad field of policy analysis and management, the first impression is that of a terrain crisscrossed by numerous high fences, creating a great number of cloistered glens. Within each walled-off glen, isolated from the others, a small band of actors is furiously engaged in pursuing its own obscure objectives. In each glen the game is different. The health experts passionately struggle over quality, access, and cost; the education specialists debate basics, buses, and benefits; the tax savants argue over neutrality, progressivity and equity. None of the players is learning from the common elements of the various games being played; none seems to have either the incentive or the opportunity to try.

At other times, however, the field of public policy seems broad and open, the scene of a great struggle between opposing armies. One side is labelled economists; the other side is a motley coalition bearing different banners, joined mainly by a common urge to stop the advancing economists. What the armies are struggling over is often plain enough. It may be unemployment policy or trade policy or nuclear control policy, or other areas of bitter contention. But using their word processors as weapons, the op-

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 4, No. 4, 573-581 (1985) 0 1985 b the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Publishedlby John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0276-8739/85/$04.00

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posing armies pound out their hostile messages in distinctly different tongues. The actual battle, therefore, is seldom joined. Even within the coalition that is arrayed against the economists, the various members have difficulty in communicating; only when they speak of the enemy do they readily understand each other.

Enough of metaphor. On to plainer language. Most of those who teach, research and practice in public policy and management think of themselves as professionals and specialists of one kind or another. But as a rule, they think of their specialty as economics or law or journalism or accounting, rather than as public policy or public management. This self-identification holds not only for practitioners in the public sector but also in academia. The faculties that conduct most of the educational programs in public policy in the United States are made up of academics who see themselves largely in these traditional categories. It is as if a faculty of clinical medicine were being drawn mainly from experts in chemistry, plumbing, butchery and statistics.

Public managers who occupy the various government agencies of this country have yet another problem of career identification. Although many Americans make their career in public management, the spirit of Andrew Jackson is still abroad in the land. Any citizen can take a hand in running government, whether trained in Wall Street, Hollywood, or Courthouse Square. Maintaining a civil service may be a useful policy; but mainly to provide incumbents for the routine tasks of the bureaucracy or to curb flagrant favoritism in the parcelling out of public jobs. Unlike many other countries, we do not look to the professional civil service for the leaders who will shape the broad strategies of the public sector.

The qualified status of the career bureaucrat is not unrelated to the strife and confusion in the faculties of public policy. To sustain a claim of professional status as a public manager, the career bureaucrat must be able to point to some body of concepts and techniques mastered, some distinctive capabilities acquired. A t the present stage in the development of the field of policy analysis and management, the career bureaucrat experiences some difficulties in making such a claim. He or she can, perhaps, point to a record of acquired skills in economics or law or operations research; but laying claim to any special capabilities in policy analysis and management proves somewhat more difficult.

Happily, our prospects are not altogether bleak. To begin with, I take comfort in recalling that the current effort to create a profession is comparatively new-twenty or fifty or one hundred years old, depending on how one dates its origins. In a relatively brief period such as matters go, the effort has secured the support of a devoted core of scholars and professionals drawn from eco- nomics, politics, statistics, organizational theory, history, law, and management science, all determined to contribute to a new syn- thesis. Chafing under the restl-aints of their respective disciplines, such leaders have characteristically moved out of the comfortable niches in which they had earlier established their positions of prominence in order to work for the creation of a new professional

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field. JPAM would not have survived its first four years without such pioneers as authors, advisors, and members of its Editorial Board.

These innovators, however, have had only a limited impact upon the values, habits, and procedures of the many institutions in which policy analysts and managers do their work. Few universities, for instance, have been prepared to create a separate faculty to conduct a program in public policy and management. Instead, of the several dozen universities that have established such programs, most have staffed them with instructors who have been assigned from departments of economics, political science, statistics, and the like. The conservatism of most universities in this respect is easy to understand. To begin with, some elements in an academic program in policy analysis and management may be reasonably clear, but others are in an amorous state. Besides, although the graduates of such programs do not appear to encounter any over- whelming difficulties in getting launched on their careers, the value of such graduates’ credentials in entering the labor market or climbing the career ladder is somewhat difficult to establish.

The decision of many universities to staff their programs in policy analysis and management by borrowing from existing de- partments and schools has posed difficult choices for faculty, es- pecially young faculty. Scholars seek tenure and professional rep- utation as well as knowledge and personal satisfaction. Senior faculty members, being already secure in job tenure and professional reputation, have often seen public policy programs as an opportunity to escape from the restraints and formalisms of their established disciplines or of their designated professions. But junior faculty cannot easily indulge such desires, except at high risk. In the end, a junior’s status and security are likely to be determined by “peers” drawn primarily from traditional departments.

For those associated with certain disciplines or professions, that fact may not be overwhelmingly threatening; young lawyers or political scientists, teaching in public policy programs, may manage to produce research and publications that more or less survive the scrutiny of their peers. For other disciplines or professions, however, the young scholar who concentrates on the problems of public policy and management is exposed to a palpable risk.

Economics, of course, represents the outstanding case. The per- formance required of the young economics scholar, as evidence of an acceptable degree of virtuosity in the profession, is by now quite stylized. The acceptable refereed journals are well identified; the subjects for consideration, well delineated; the techniques ap- propriate for analysis, well defined. Only occasionally does a young economist in an academic institution manage to survive outside the familiar territory of the discipline. Young economists from economics departments usually take a gamble when they are bor- rowed to teach in public policy programs. Eventually, they may be obliged to face a jury that is dominated by other economists.

Even when young faculty member aspirants are part of a separate faculty in a school devoted to policy analysis and management,

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they may still be at high risk, especially when they deviate from the norms of their discipline or profession by publishing on un- acceptable subjects in unacknowledged journals. As long as they cannot be sure of tenure, these young faculty members face the problem that they may eventually be compelled to turn back for employment in traditional departments and professional schools. In that case, they may be required to leap over the conventional hurdles demanded by the faculties of these institutions in order to make a successful bid for tenure.

These very practical considerations of professional career have profoundly affected the quantity and character of the stream of offerings that have passed over the editor’s desk. To be sure, senior authors from academic institutions have often submitted their articles to JPAM out of a sense of responsibility, to help build JPAM’s reputation as a journal and to contribute to the strengthening of a young and uncertain profession. I have the strong impression, however, that junior authors have approached JPAM more warily, unsure if publication in its pages would be communicating the “right” signals to key peer groups.

Despite the obstacles, JPAM has managed to publish a consid- erable number of articles by junior members of the community. Of the 107 authors from academic institutions whose articles were published in Volumes 1 through 4, 9 were graduate students, 21 were assistant professors, 27 were associate professors, and 5 were lecturers. In the end, the compelling need of young scholars to publish has apparently overcome the wariness of these young authors, thus producing a steady flow of submissions for JPAM.

The need of young authors to publish, however, has sometimes been insufficient to lead them to produce publishable manuscripts. From time to time, such manuscripts have proved opaque, simply because the writer had not yet learned to write clearly or was unaccustomed to making the extra effort. Grossly impacted phrases such as “federal income maintenance program executives” have been the hallmark of such manuscripts, accompanied by the liberal use of parenthetical asides and by frequent elaborations dangling in footnotes. Predictably, authors who were prepared to work through two or three more drafts have produced some of the finest of JPAM’s offerings.

The most intractable problem for young authors in producing publishable manuscripts, however, has been an unwillingness or inability to think about the implications of their research for policy analysis and management, or to communicate their ideas to policy analysts in an idiom that would enhance the chances that the message would be heard.

Once again, the economists have provided some of the more egregious illustrations. Many young economists (and some older ones as well) have peppered their manuscripts with references to x-efficiency, OLS estimates, turnpike theorems, Monte Carlo sim- ulations and the like. Sometimes they have broken into a flow of ordinary English words with “Consider O<i< 1 ”. These shorthand references have been laid on top of a use of code words intended

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to convey meanings to other economists that would elude persons from other disciplines, words such as “efficiency,” “optimal,” “ra- tional,” and “distorted.” For economists, of course, each of these words has a sharply restricted technical meaning, one that is much narrower and more explicit than when used by other professions. A s a means of easy communication among economists, such usage is perfectly acceptable, even indispensable. for a more heterogeneous group of readers, however, such words must be used more judiciously.

Economists are not alone in their preference for an “in” language, designed to identify the user and shut out the uninitiated. Envi- ronmental specialists have souught to speak to each other through JPAM’s pages by cryptic references to key Supreme Court cases, landmark statutes, and authorities that are bywords in their special field. Health specialists have done the same, using a different cast of characters and a different set of cases; and so on for each special subset of functional specialists. In short, an editor must live with the persistent threat that JPAM will deteriorate into a channel for coded messages, each targeted to a different glen on the field of battle.

The pages of JPAM cannnot be purged of all shorthand expressions, terms of art, or references to luminaries whose light is limited to only small corners of scholarship-nor would such a goal be de- sirable. Most subscribers to JPAM are probably already familiar with some of the shorthand. And the names of some luminaries strike a responsive note even beyond their specialized fields. From an expository viewpoint, therefore, the editor need not strive for a universal language. More modest objectives are appropriate, such as signalling the unwary reader that an Edgeworth box is not used for packaging, or that a “dirty float” is no less sanitary than a clean one.

More difficult than overcoming the problems of language, how- ever, has been overcoming the parochialism of authors arising out of their various specializations. Economists have dealt with the aspects of their problems that they regarded as “economic,” leaving questions of politics, management, ethics, or ideology for others to consider. Political scientists, no less ethnocentric, have usually left questions of efficiency for economists.

Sticking to one’s own knitting is, of course, the most prudent and least painful strategy from the author’s viewpoint. But from the viewpoint of the editor of a policy journal, the result is often disconcerting. Consider an article about acid rain. Economists might we11 begin with the declaration, implicit or overt: “Assume that the government acts as would a unitary rational actor. Assume further that its objective is to maximize gross national product over the long run.” Useful assumptions for some purposes; un- productive and unrealistic ones for most, although unlikely to produce results sufficient to create a basis for public policy. One of the persistent ambitions of this editor, in the interests of enriching the field of policy analysis, has been to try to persuade the author to consider relaxing their preferred assumptions, if only a little, before regarding their analysis as half-way complete.

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1

Some authors regard such suggestions as dangerous, perhaps even subversive. Some, however, take up the challenge, gratefully allowing their minds to explore beyond the usual limits imposed by their disciplines and their sense of caution. These brave warriors produce articles that most enrich the field of policy analysis.

As JPAM’s first editor, I have seen its main function as helping to speed the day when policy analysis and management will describe a recognized professional field-a field that encompasses a hard core of methodologies, a considerable body of accumulated wisdom, and a common language for the communication of such ideas. Such a profession can never be self-regulating and exclusionary as in the case of medicine and law. But its intellectual and technical base can be at least as solid. By its nature, such a field is a long time building. I think we have made a solid start.

***

I have provided the annual tables that describe the flow and disposition of manuscripts over the past year, as well as comparable data for each of the prior years in the four-year period. There has been little to distinguish the most recent years from those that went before. The number of submissions continued to subside a little; but the flow was sufficient to permit the editors and referees to be able to select judiciously from the offerings. Processing continued to be quite expeditious; for about 80% of the manuscripts submitted, decisions were reached within 90 days of the date of submission. The Journal continued to operate with scarcely any backlog from one issue to the next, a fact that authors appreciated and editors lamented. Herein lies one of the major challenges that my successor will confront.

As usual, the editors want to record the overwhelming debt they owe to the network of book reviewer writers and referees who have conscientiously contributed to JPAM’s contents. Their profes- sionalism and conscientiousness have been a constant source of inspiration to the editors. The names of those who performed in the referee’s role in the past year follow:

W. J. ADAMS DAVID BRAYBROOKE WILLIAM ALONSO GARY D. BREWER THOMAS ANTON PAUL BROPHY EUGENE BARDACH C. RICHARD BATH HOWELL BAUM

H. JAMES BROWN L. DAVID BROWN GARY T. BURTLESS

DAVID E. BELL BRIAN J. L, BERRY GUTHRIE S . BIRKHEAD ROBERT D. BLACKWILL MARK L. BLAZEY GREGORY CHRISTIANSEN HOWARD S . BLOOM BARRY P. BOSWORTH PETER COUGHLIN DOUGLAS BOHI ROBERT W. CRANDALL

JOHN F. CACY WILLIAM M. CAPRON CAROL M. CERF

PHILIP L. CLAY

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MARTHA DERTHICK WILLIAM T. DICKENS GUNNAR DYBWAD

JOHN ELLWOOD RONALD FERGUSON BARUCH FISCHHKOFF MICHAEL FIX JOHN FORESTER BERNARD J. FRIEDEN BARRY FREIDMAN

IRWIN GARFINKEL JOHN R. GIST JOSE ANTONIO GOMEZ-

IBANEZ LARRY GOULDER EDWARD M. GRAHAM JOHN GRAHAM EDWARD M. GRAMLICH BRUCE GREENWALD W. NORTON GRUBB SUSAN G. HADDEN STEPHAN HAGGARD DAGMAR S. HAMILTON DAVID HARRISON, JR . SAMUEL HAYES ROBIN G. HOLLISTER GARY HORLICK

WILLIAM A. JOHNSON BARBARA S. JORDAN

JOSEPH KALT HERBERT C. KELMAN STEVEN J. KELMAN ROBERT 0. KEOHANE ALBERT V. KNEESE JACK L. KNETSCH WINTHROP KNOWLTON MARTY KRAUSS

HENRY LEE JOHN C, LEGATES ROBERT LEONE HERMAN B. LEONARD HARRY LEVINSON RICHARD J. LIGHT MICHAEL LIPSKY

GIANDOMENICO MAJONE JESSE W. MARKHAM

NANCY ALTMAN-LUPU

PETER J. MAY SHEP R. MELNICK MARTHA MINOW MICHAEL MORRIS RICHARD J. MURNANE ROBERT MURRAY

PETER NAVARRO RICHARD H. NELSON MICHAEL O’HARE MARY M. O’KEEFFE TREVOR O’NBILL OLIVER OLDMAN JANET ROTHENBERG

KAREN R. POLENSKE ROGER PORTER JOHN W. PRATT JEFFREY PROTTAS FRANCINE F. RABINOVITZ BRIAN RATCHFORD ROBERT B. REICH GILBERT J. REILLY STEVEN RHOADES MARC ROBERTS

LYNNE B. SAGALYN ROSEMARY SALAMONE WILLIAM SCANLON THOMAS C. SCHELLING JURGEN SCHMANDT JAMES I(, SEBENIUS JOHN B. SHEAHAN EUGENE B. SKOLNIKOFF GILBERT STEINER EDITH M. STOKEY MICHAEL A STOTO RAYMOND J. STRUYK WILLIAM B. T’YE

ALBERT UTTON JAMES W. VAUPEL JAMES VERDIER AVIS C. VIDAL RICHARD VIETOR W. KIP VISCUS1 ALVIN C. WARREN DONALD WARWICK E. ROY WEINTRAUB

PACK

SUSAN ROSE-ACKERMAN

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BURTON A. WEISBROD PHILIP WELLONS LOUIS T. WELLS, JR. MICHAEL WHEELER ROBERTON C. WILLIAMS JOHN WILLIAMSON RICHARD J. ZECKHAUSER JAMES Q. WILSON

JULIE B. WILSON CHARLES E. WOLF, JR. LAWRENCE H . WORTZEL

DAVID B. YOFFIE

MARTIN B. ZIMMERMAN

Table 1. Disposition of articles submitted August 1980-February 28, 1985. ~~ _____~ ~ ~~~~

TOTAL August 1980- March 1982- March 1983- March 1984- August 1980- February 1982 February 1983 February 1984 February 1985 February 1985

Number Number Number Number Number of of of of of

articles % articles % articles % articles % articles" %

Accepted 24 9 28 14 30 19 25 18 107 15 Rejected:

by internal review 143 53 81 40 59 36 55 39 338 42 by referee

recommendation - 38 - 92 - 46 - 73 - 45 - 6 0 4 3 3 2 6 - 43 TOTAL 268 100 201 100 162 100 140 100 771 100

Excludes 13 articles pending with referees on February 28, 1985.

Table 2. Articles classified by time elapsed from receipt at JPAM to disposition August 1980- February 28, 1985.

TOTAL Submitted Submitted Submitted Submitted Submitted

August 1980- March 1982- March 1983- March 1984- August 1980- February 1982 February 1983 February 1984 February 1985 February 1985

Number % Number % Number % Number % Number %

Rejected by internal review:

10 days or less 96 68 61 75 29 49 40 73 277 67

13 5 TOTAL 143 100 81 100 59 100 55 100 338 100 Rejected or accepted

11-20 days 26 I8 16 20 18 31 8 14 68 20 over 20 days - 20 - 14 - 4 - - 12 - 20 - 7 - 13 - 43 -

after referee review: 30 days or less 16 13 12 10 8 8 12 14 48 1 1 31-60 days 59 47 49 41 40 39 33 39 181 42 61-90 days 27 22 30 25 33 32 22 26 112 26

21 Is 21 - 21 92 - 91 days and over - TOTAL 125 100 120 lo!, 103 100 85' lw 433" 100

24 22 - 18 - 29 - - 23 -

Excludes thirteen articles in referee hands on February 28, 1985.

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Table 3. Affiliation of authors of articles submitted August 1980-February 1985.

Number of Authorsa August '80- March '82- March '83- March '84- February '82 February '83 February '84 February '85

~~

Academic institutions Government 269 202 151 157 Research and 30 28 17 22

counsul ting 42 31 38 20 Other TOTAL 34 1 268 206 199

- - 7 - - - - -

a Exceeds the number of articles because some articles were co-authored.

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Beginning with Volume 5, Number 2, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management will carry book reviews of two to four pages in length, as well as a list of recent titles of interest. Books for review should be addressed to Janet Rothenberg Pack, Public Policy and Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.