PUBLIC POLICY

AuthorBRIAN W. HOGWOOD
Published date01 March 1995
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1995.tb00817.x
Date01 March 1995
PUBLIC POLICY
BRIAN
W.
HOGWOOD
Public policy is not simply a subset
of
public administration, but draws on and contributes
to a number
of
aspects
of
public administration, political science and other disciplines.
This article traces the growth
of
interest in a policy
focus
in
Britain during the
1970s
and
early
1980s,
and its subsequent partial displacement by the emphasis on public manage-
ment. Despite this partial displacement, the policy
focus
is now institutionalized in
academic research, textbooks, journals and teaching. The recent lack
of
interest in generic
policy analysis by British central government
is
reflected in the way in which the policy
aspects have been an afterthought to managerial and organization changes. There is
plenty
of
scope for further refining the
skills
of
those who research, teach and are taught
in public policy.
In discussing public policy in the context of public administration in Britain,
there
is
a fundamental problem, quite apart from the question of whether public
administration itself constitutes a separate discipline in Britain. The problem is
that public policy as a set of analytical approaches
is
not simply a subset of
public administration or even political science. One of its key features as it
developed in the
1960s
and
1970s
was its aspiration to be interdisciplinary in the
theories and techniques it drew on, thought it is questionable how far such
integration actually took place. This ambiguous relationship is sometimes ex-
pressed in the use of the double-barrelled description ‘Public Administration
and Policy’, or
vice
versa.
A
related point is that even those who
see
their
specialism as lying within the broad area
of
public administration do not see
public policy as being a separate subspecialism, since such writers, including
myself, are often fascinated by the relationship between policy change and
organizational change. This article therefore attempts to provide an overview of
the state of public policy as it is most likely to interest those who have a public
administration perspective, without treating this as an exclusive subset of
public administration.
Brian Hogwood is Professor in the Department
of
Government, University of Strathclyde. He would
like to thank two anonymous referees
for
their constructive comments on how this article might
be
improved.
Public Administration Vol. 73 Spring 1995 (59-73)
0
Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1995,108 Cowley Road, Oxford
OX4
IJF,
UK and
238
Main Street, Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA.
60
BRIAN
W.
HOGWOOD
A
further feature in Britain is the separate existence of Social Administration
and Social Policy as a discipline. This was reflected in the structure of the Joint
University Council, with a separate Public Administration Committee, Social
Policy Committee, and Social Work Education Committee. There was already a
substantial literature on British social policy prior to the upsurge of interest
in
public policy in the
1970s
discussed below, much of which was descriptive of
current provisions or the development of each set of provisions, and often with
an explicit or implicit normative support for the maintenance or further devel-
opment of welfare provisions. There is some straddling of the divide, but the
fact that those with an interest in public policy
on
the public administration or
political science side are normally in different departments from those on the
social policy and social administration side has undoubtedly hindered the
development of shared insights and also the achievement of a critical mass of
research and teaching which could be seen to
be
theoretically informed, analyti-
cally rigorous, and relevant to the policy concerns of government at all levels.
Individual policy areas
such
as
housing policy and education policy also have
academic specialists who will often not be in public administration or politics
departments, and again will not normally consider themselves to
be
part of a
generic public policy
focus.
Other policy areas, such as regional policy, tend to
be dominated by a particular discipline, economics in the case of regional
policy, which means that only a limited range of methodologies are brought to
bear.
A
further problem in discussing public policy in the context of the state of the
discipline is the wide range of emphases and terminology employed, not neces-
sarily corresponding to a distinction between academic and applied study.
Hogwood and Gunn
(1984,
pp.26-8) suggest a possible classification of ap-
proaches to the analysis of public policy:
(1)
Studies of
policy
content.
(2) Studies of policy process.
(3)
Studies of policy outputs.
(4)
Evaluation studies.
(5)
Information for policy-making.
(6)
Process advocacy, concerned with improving the policy process.
(7)
Policy advocacy.
(8)
The analysis of analysis: the critical appraisal of the assumptions, metho-
These range from essentially descriptive activities (even
if
theoretically in-
formed) at
1-4,
to prescriptive activities at
5-7.
Evaluation studies at
4
can
provide a descriptive purpose by improving our understanding of the factors
which shape policy, as well as providing information which can be used in
future policy-making. Thus, we have two overlapping groupings, with
1-4
being concerned with knowledge
of
policy and the policy process and
4-7
with
the use of knowledge
in
the policy process. In subsequent sections of this article
we will explore why the first group, the study
of
policy and the policy process,
dology, and validity of policy analysis.
@
Basil
Blackwell
Ltd.
1995

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