Book Review: Deciding Factors in British Politics
| Author | James Barber |
| DOI | 10.1177/014473949201200113 |
| Published date | 01 March 1992 |
| Date | 01 March 1992 |
| Published By | Sage Publications, Inc. |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Teaching Public Administration
Decldlng
Factors
in
British
Politics.
By
JOHN GREENAWAY, STEVE SMITH
and JOHN STREET. (London: Routledge, 1992, pp.266, £19.99.)
This book has
its
origins in a
course
which
the
authors
teach
at
the
University
of
East
Anglia. They have drawn on
their
experience
to
publish
this
case
study
approach
to
British
politics
directed
at
an
undergraduate
market.
The
venture
is a success, and
the
book
can
be
recommended
to
all who
teach
British
politics.
The
authors
set
out
clearly
and intelligently
their
aims and how
they
intend
to
achieve
them.
They emphasise
that
they
are
not
simply
presenting
a
series
of
discrete
case
studies,
but
rather
seeking
to
relate
the
case
studies
to
a
theoretical
framework.
In
doing so
they
claim
a uniqueness
for
their
book
'in
trying
to
look
both
at
the
impact
of
the
theories
on our understanding
of
the
case
studies
and
at
what
the
case
studies
tell
us
about
the
usefulness
of
the
various
theories'
(p.14). As a secondary aim
they
want
the
case
studies
to
throw
light
on and
promote
an awareness
of
broader
accounts
of
British
politics. Claims
of
'uniqueness' always
invite
challenge and
the
approach which
is adopted
here
was used
more
fully in
the
Open University
course
'Decision
Making in
Britain',
and in
that
sense
at
least
has been employed
before.
It
is
none
the
less valuable
for
that.
The opening
chapters
provide
succinct
outlines
of
the
principal decision-making
theories
and
the
models commonly employed in analysing British politics. They
are
followed by
the
six
case
studies: Aids;
the
Falklands; Nuclear Power;
the
Civil
Service
Department;
Trade
Union Legislation; and
Trident.
Naturally
the
authors
dwell on
the
advantages
of
the
case
study approach, claiming among
other
things
that
it
shows how
the
policy making process
actually
operates,
and
it
'makes
politics
come
alive' (p.11). Those claims
are
well made,
but
the
authors
are
not
blind
to
the
shortcomings
of
their
method, and do
not
see
it
as
the
only approach
to
British politics. Among
the
shortcomings
they
note
the
dangers
of
getting
lost
in
detail
(the 'wood from
the
trees'
problem) and
the
difficulty
of
making a
satisfactory
selection
of
cases
from
the
myriad
of
decisions
taken
by
the
government.
Another
limitation
of
the
approach which is
not
emphasised concerns
the
nature
of
the
evidence
available for
the
study.
In
the
absence
of
archival documents
the
scholar
has
to
rely
on published
material
and
that
greatly
influences how
the
case
study
is
presented
and analysed. This is
illustrated
in
the
first
two
studies: Aids and
the
Falklands. The Aids
case
study
is
built
upon evidence
from
the
public pressures and
criticisms
directed
at
the
government and
its
overt
responses
to
these
in
terms
of
published decisions and pronouncements.
In
systems
terms
we
are
presented
with
the
'inputs',
'outputs'
and
'feedback'
but
little
is
revealed
about
the
activities
inside
the
'black box'
of
government.
In
contrast
the
Falklands
study
draws on
the
Franks
Report
which examined
what
happened within
the
government
(the
interplay
of
groups,
departments
and
individuals).
In
Britain
it
is unusual
to
have access
to
such evidence and
the
difficulty
of
knowing
what
goes on in
the
'black box'
may
explain why in
their
conclusions
the
authors
say
they
have found few examples
of
'group
think'.
The
explanation
may
be
that
that
requires
detailed
inside knowledge which is
often
not
available.
The
authors
most
challenging
task
is
to
relate
the
case
studies
and
the
decision-making
theories
and models. They do this with reasonable
but
not
complete
success. The
difficulties
are
in
part
insoluble
because
the
case
100
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