HABERMAS’ MODELS OF DECISIONISM, TECHNOCRACY AND PRAGMATISM IN TIMES OF GOVERNANCE: THE RELATIONSHIP OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, POLITICS AND SCIENCE IN THE ALCOHOL PREVENTION POLICIES OF THE SWISS MEMBER STATES
| Author | FRITZ SAGER |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2007.00646.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
EUROPEAN
FORUM
Public Administration Vol. 85, No. 2, 2007 (429–447)
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Fritz Sager is Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Evaluation at the Institute of Political Science,
University of Berne.
HABERMAS ’ MODELS OF DECISIONISM,
TECHNOCRACY AND PRAGMATISM IN TIMES
OF GOVERNANCE: THE RELATIONSHIP OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, POLITICS AND
SCIENCE IN THE ALCOHOL PREVENTION
POLICIES OF THE SWISS MEMBER STATES
FRITZ SAGER
This article assesses the effects different constellations of science, administration and
the political sphere display on the policy process in the fi eld of alcohol prevention
policy in the Swiss member states. First, it is argued that Habermas ’ models of
Decisionism, Technocracy, and Pragmatism can be interpreted as distinct modes of
governance that take place in today ’ s policy-making and implementation. Second,
as for the effects of these different constellations of science, administration and poli-
tics, the fi ndings from a written survey of the Swiss cantons reported here imply that
a broad and adequate policy design is found in cantons with an alcohol prevention
policy that is dominated by administrative actors. Output performance proves to be
comparatively higher in cantons with a high infl uence either of scientifi c actors or of
political actors. In an overall comparison, a combined model of administrative dom-
inance with strong affi liation to the scientifi c community is shown to prevail against
the other models considered.
INTRODUCTION
In 1963, the sociologist Jürgen Habermas came up with three models of how
the two social subsystems of science and politics work together. In his article
‘ The Scientization of Politics and Public Opinion ’ ( ‘ Verwissenschaftlichte
Politik und öffentliche Meinung ’ ), Habermas (1976 , pp. 120 – 45) developed
430 FRITZ SAGER
Public Administration Vol. 85, No. 2, 2007 (429–447)
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
the idea that a political system ’ s response to the growing complexity of mod-
ern society can be threefold: (1) scientifi cally little informed politics dominate
a professional administration; (2) a highly specialized and scientifi cally well
informed administration dominates the politics; or (3) both work together in
a pragmatic and non-hierarchical way in order to fi nd the best solutions for
the social problems under discussion.
The article presented here has a double aim: fi rst, it is argued that
Habermas ’ models can be interpreted as distinct modes of governance that
are actually found in today ’ s policy-making and implementation; second, as
an exploratory effort, the article aims to assess the effects these different
constellations of science, administration, and the political sphere actually
display in the policy-making process. In order to reach this goal, two
measures for the quality of policy-making and implementation are chosen,
namely the policy design and the output performance, and applied in the
fi eld of alcohol prevention policy in Switzerland. The fi eld of alcohol preven-
tion policy is argued to be an adequate venue to test the questions raised,
for three reasons. First, the political fi eld of alcohol prevention policy is
regulated with singular inconsistency, since the cantons, that is, the middle
federal rung in the Swiss state structure, are equipped with very extensive
programming and implementation competencies, leading to a pronounced
heterogeneity and correspondingly interpretable statistic variance in can-
tonal prevention efforts ( Sager 2003 ). Second, alcohol prevention as a public
health policy is characterized by the need to meet the standard of distributive
equity since it has a very heterogeneous target group ranging from the gen-
eral public to the actual alcohol addicts. This means that cantonal differences
in performance effi ciency are not only of theoretical, but also of immediate
practical signifi cance ( Meier 1994; Cattacin and Lucas 1999 ). Third and
fi nally, studies in the area of addic tion policy in particular have proven the
positive infl uence of scientifi c-professional administrative actors on the in-
novative ability of public action. Thus, Sabet and Klingner (1993 , p. 263) fi nd
‘ that a high degree of professionalism among those administrators respon-
sible for policy adoption will increase the likelihood that public agencies will
adopt innovative administrative policies, and those policies probably will be
more radical than incremental ’ .
The article proceeds as follows: In the section that follows, a refi nement
of Habermas ’ models in the light of governance theory is presented. Next,
both the policy design and the provision of the respective services are intro-
duced as adequate measures for the assessment of the theoretical models in
question and eight respective hypotheses are formulated. The research de-
sign in which the Swiss member states are shown to be an appropriate test
for the theoretical models, the operationalization of the variables, and the
methodology are presented in the section that follows. Subsequently, the
results will be reported and the hypotheses will be tested. The conclusion
will consist of a fi nal analysis summarizing both the theoretical arguments
and the empirical fi ndings.
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
