Policy-Making in the Real World
| DOI | 10.1111/j.2041-9066.2011.00051.x |
| Author | Michael Hallsworth |
| Published date | 01 April 2011 |
| Date | 01 April 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Feature |
• process (the actions recommended to produce policy);
• qualities (the way in which these actions should be
carried out);
• structures (the institutional arrangements to support
better policy-making); and
• politics (the way in which political aims and desires
contribute to policy-making).
Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as ‘who gets
what, when and how’; these four aspects arguably
represent the ‘what, how, who and why’ of the policy
process.
All the many attempts to improve policy-making have
suffered from a gap between theory and practice. Either
they have presented unrealistic models of policy-making,
or have failed to provide the support to turn desired
practices into reality. It seems that there is a ‘reverse
elephant’ problem: government has found it relatively
easy to come up with a definition of policy-making, but
practitioners have had difficulty in recognising it. As a re-
sult, civil servants often know what they should be doing,
but experience difficulties putting it into practice. Those
Policy-Making in the
Real World
A former civil servant once remarked that policy
is like an elephant: you recognise it when you
see it, but cannot easily define it. We are always
identifying good policies and bad policies, and claiming
to analyse and evaluate them, but we usually stumble
when trying to explain what makes something ‘a policy’
in the first place.
From 1997 onwards, the previous Labour government
made great efforts to meet this challenge. There were re-
peated attempts to define and rationalise policy-making,
and shape it into a professional skill. Nevertheless, civil
servants, politicians and academics continue to express
concerns about the volume of policy-making, the quality
of advice given to ministers and the seeming inability to
learn from past failures.
These concerns need to be taken seriously. The
strength of policy-making is integral to the strength
of government as a whole, and that of the country at
large. There would be a compelling case for studying
policy-making even if Whitehall could look forward to
a period of stability – but, clearly, this is not the case.
Departmental administration budgets are being cut by a
third on average over the next four years; expectations
of public services continue to increase; and the prime
minister has promised ‘a total change in the way our
country is run’, through the rise of decentralisation, the
Big Society and payment by results.
All these changes present profound challenges to the
way government makes policy. There is an urgent need
to assess how well recent attempts to improve policy-
making have worked, and how well they will cope with
future challenges.
A Recent History of Policy
Reviewing the condensed history of attempts to improve
policy-making over the last 15 years can be a bewil-
dering experience. New units, frameworks, guidance,
reviews and initiatives emerge every few years, often
overlapping or seeming to merge with one another. But
it is possible to identify four main areas of focus in all
this activity:
Formulating successful policies is a key challenge for any government. So far attempts to reform
UK policy-making have failed to deal with the real-life pressures policy-makers face, but a survey
of past policy successes points towards useful new directions. Michael Hallsworth reports.
Attempts to
improve policy-
making have
suered from
a gap between
theory and
practice
FIGURE 1 Qualities of policy-making
* Innovative, Flexible and Creative; ** Evaluation, Review and
Learning.
–1.3
–0.9
0.1
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.6
–0.7
–0.7
–0.5
0.3
0.5
0.5
0.6
–1.5 0 1.5 –1.5 0 1.5
Outward Looking
Evidence Based
Inclusive
Forward Looking
Innovative*
Joined up
Evaluation**
Ministers
(Average Score: 4.0)
n=17
Civil Servants
(Average Score: 4.3)
n=41
10 Political Insight
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