Framing policy designs through contradictory emotions: The case of Czech single mothers
| Author | Anna P Durnová,Eva M Hejzlarová |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0952076717709524 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
Public Policy and Administration
2018, Vol. 33(4) 409–427
Framing policy designs
! The Author(s) 2017
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through contradictory
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076717709524
emotions: The case of
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Czech single mothers
Anna P Durnova´
Vienna Institute for Advanced Studies, Austria
Eva M Hejzlarova´
Charles University Prague, Czech Republic
Abstract
In public policy scholarship on policy design, emotions are still treated as opposed to
goals, and their presence is assumed to signal that things have gone wrong. We argue,
however, that understanding how and for whom emotions matter is vital to the dynamics
of policy designs because emotions are central to the capacity building of policy inter-
mediaries and, with that, to the success of public policies. We examine the case of Czech
single mothers in their role as intermediaries in ‘alimony policy’. Our interpretive survey
provided single mothers an opportunity to express the way they experience the policy
emotionally. The analysis reveals that the policy goal of the child’s well-being is produced
at the cost of the mother’s emotional tensions and that policy designs defuse these
emotional tensions, implicitly. These contradictory emotions expressed by mothers
show us a gateway to problematising policy designs in a novel way, which reconsiders
construing policy design as a technical, solution-oriented enterprise to one in which
emotional tensions intervene in policy design and are essential for succeeding.
Keywords
Discourse, emotions, goals, interpretive approaches, policy design, single mothers
Introduction
This article seeks to mount a challenge to the widely shared view in policy studies
that emotions are deviating policymakers from success. Although policies are
always animated by emotions, the current language of public policy reduces
Corresponding author:
Anna P Durnova´, Vienna Institute for Advanced Studies, Josefsta¨dterstraße 39, Wien 1080, Austria.
Email: anna.durnova@univie.ac.at
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Public Policy and Administration 33(4)
them to the expression of ‘interests’ and defuses them by the design and implemen-
tation of more or less universally applicable rules and policy measures. We put
forward the example of single mothers regarding Czech alimony policy to show
that the existence of contradictory emotions held by mothers makes design assump-
tions problematic, because it negatively impacts upon both policy outcomes and
the legitimacy of policies in general. We therefore propose an argumentative arena
how to proceed in policymaking when emotions are clearly expressed and also
contradictory.
According to Czech policy documentation, the main goal of alimony policy is
that ‘the child’s well-being’ is covered by the alimony. The eventual emotional
tensions of mothers in dealing with the situation lead, however, to poor policy
impacts in the achievement of this goal and invite us to reconsider the design of
the policy. Our case shows, first, that ‘child’s well-being’ needs to be understood
beyond the measure of the alimony: as a long-term structure designed through
technical–financial and emotional needs of both the child and the parent (see
also Zelizer, 2005), because otherwise the policy goal remains unfulfilled (see also
Hejzlarova´, 2014). This implies, second, that although the current policy design
makes mothers the main policy intermediaries in the achievement of the child’s
well-being (being more often given the child into custody1), it leaves them with a lot
of emotional work to do and often throws them into poverty (Alternativa50+,
20162). This points us to the necessity to build a new kind of policy language that
includes the emotional situation at hand in order to enable capacity building for
mothers in their function of policy intermediaries or to even recast their role of
intermediaries.
We first summarise the up-to-date interpretive research in policy studies that has
emphasised that policy design is an ‘oscillating’ activity (Hoppe, 2005) or a discur-
sive activity framing actors and classifying the values that come along with it (see
Fischer, 2009; Fischer et al., 2015; Stone, 1997; Yanow, 1996, 2003). This perspec-
tive has the aim of suggesting doorways towards more emotion-sensitive policy
designs reflecting the policy process in the complexity in which it is practiced and
experienced. We then move to the particular case of Czech alimony policy, where
we show two dominant, contradictory emotions in mothers’ experience of this
policy: ‘pride–shame’ and ‘anger–resignation’. The current policy design does not
provide any framework for supporting mothers in the emotional work resulting
from these contradictory emotions, which leads to poor policy outcomes for both
women and the children. The case of single mothers invites us to reconsider the way
in which policy designs are thought of as rationalising instruments that defuse
emotions and to suggest a broader picture of policy designs in which emotional
tensions co-produce policy designs and are essential for succeeding.
The issue of single parents is a large one and our article is unable to deal with all
its relevant aspects. Despite the indisputable contribution of feminist debates in
explaining the marginality of women’s’ voices in debates such as these (Annesley
et al., 2015; Cidlinska´ and Havelkova´, 2010; Repo, 2016; Vohlı´dalova´, 2014), we
provide a different reading here. We focus on the way, in which contradictory
Durnova´ and Hejzlarova´
411
emotions put mother’s marginality in operation and how this makes problematic
the contemporary practice of policy design, where gender aspects need not neces-
sarily be the only example. Our analysis cannot go into psychological details of the
evoked emotional tensions, nor do we pretend that each and every single mother
must suffer from these tensions. Our example lays bare the presence or performance
of contradictory emotions in policy discourse, which deliver us important insights
on the practical relevance of policy outcomes. We propose, towards the end of our
paper, a novel notion of a policy design, in which citizens are not mere winners or
losers of public policies and in which the contradictory emotions are thought as key
for success because they can show us how to redesign policy in order to include
marginalised groups.
Including emotions in policy designs
That most policies lack clarity of goals and use rather vague language is scarcely
new in studies on policy design. In their motley projects of establishing policy
instruments and policy schemes (see, e.g. Clemons and McBeth, 2001; Jann and
Wegrich, 2003; Schubert and Bandelow, 2003) policy scholars have called for both
clarifying the complexity of goals (see e.g. Brodkin, 1990; May, 2012; Zahariadis
2007 & 2008) and for purifying policy language (mainly the work of Paul Sabatier,
see, e.g. Sabatier, 2007). Policy design has been in that sense painted as a crucial
tool for policy success because policy designs shape policy instruments, offering
clear administrative shapes to policies (see, e.g. Brodkin, 1990; May, 2012) and
structuring the way the policy is carried out in a more general, symbolic, manner
(Lascoumes and Le Gale`s, 2007; Le Gale`s, 2016; Schneider and Ingram, 1993;
Stone, 1997; Dunlop 2017).
In particular, the public policy research on assumptions and values has brought
important insights to this because it showed that policy designs are both embedded
in, and enacted through, assumptions and values that inform the dispositions of
actors who take part in the creation of policy instruments (see Schneider and
Ingram 1993; Peters, 2011). Interpretive approaches to public policy (Gottweis,
1998, 2006; Stone, 1997; Wagenaar, 2011; Yanow, 1996) have sharpened the
issue of values and assumptions by focusing on policy language and by showing
language is not a surplus structure to communicate policies but that it co-produces
values and assumptions inside these policies through discourses. Explaining how
policies are enacted by discourse of both institutions and actors (Fischer, 2003;
Griggs and Howarth, 2008; Howarth, 2010; Zittoun 2015) has been conceived as an
important explanatory tool to understand particular development of policies, their
eventual misunderstandings, paradoxes (Stone, 2002) and contestations (Yanow,
1996) as they are manifested in discourses on these particular policies.
However, none of these studies have focused on emotional accounts of assump-
tions and values and the related production of policy knowledge. On the one hand,
this absence was apparent in the way mainstream works on policy design
have identified goals around ‘interests’ supporting actions pursued by actors
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Public Policy and Administration 33(4)
(see, e.g. Howlett, 2015, 2009) and have opposed them to ‘wishes’ and ‘anxieties’,
or other emotional accounts of knowledge. These concepts have painted political
actions as ‘rational ones’ (see, e.g. Clemons and McBeth, 2001) in the first place,
causally following each other (Capano, 2009; Howard, 2005; Howlett et al.,
2009). Such a contrast between emotions and so-called rational actions goes
partly back to the Weberian tradition, still very influential in public policy
works, which conceives the administrator as the rational figure without passions,
which would distract him from pursuing his goals (Weber, 1926). If this figure
displays emotions, then these are translated into ‘interests’ reflected in particular
policy designs.
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