REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1983.tb00518.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1983 |
| Date | 01 June 1983 |
REVIEWS
POLICY STYLES IN WESTERN EUROPE
Jeremy Richardson (ed.)
George
Allen and Unwin, 1982. 213pp.
€15.00.
POLITICS, POLICY AND THE EUROPEAN RECESSION
Andrew Cox
(ed.)
Macmillan, 1982.
277pp.
€20.00.
Students of literature are interested
in
the contents as well as the form of the novels they
study, in the plot as well as the style. Political scientists do not on the whole share this
balanced approach. They look at the style of politics and neglect contents. This focus may
give political science its disciplinary distinction but that is all that can be said in its favour. It
produces a flow of half-educated students who know a great deal about the process
of
politics and almost nothing about what is actually processed.
It
leads to books about the
policy-making system which are peculiarly abstract in character because they virtually
ignore the substance of policies
-
the real stuff of political controversy.
As
a teacher of
politics, the first has long struck me as odd, while the second must strike ’lay’ readers in the
same way.
In ’human‘ terms, one might expect students of policy-making to be interested in the
range of policies on offer to solve the problems of society. In ‘scientific’ terms, one may ask
whether the focus on political aspects of policy-making does not lead to an underrating of
the influence of theories (their internal logic) on decision-makers. True, what policy is
adopted in a particular field (inflation, crime, education
...)
is usually the result
of
power
constellations, but do the arguments of economics, criminology and educational theory
never prevail asarguments?Moreover, even if politics determines the final outcome in many
cases, the policy-making process involves a good deal of analysis within the policy-making
institutions (e.g. the civil service) in which alternative solutions to a problem are examined
in a rational manner. There
is
almost no mention of this process in works of political science.
Is
it their ignorance of the disciplines which contribute to thisdebate which leads political
scientists to play down its role?
We have here a volume entitled
Policy
Styles
in
Western
Europe.
The editor opens with the
comment that unemployment, inflation, crime, the threatened energy shortage and
pollution are common features of all West European states. But it
is
not with the policy
responses to these problems (i.e. the substance of policies) that the book is concerned. The
first contribution, headed ‘The Concept of Policy Style’, declares: ‘By policy style we
perhaps, more cumbersomely, really mean policy-making and implementation style’. That
is not a more cumbersome definition but simply a misuse of language. Policy style and
policy-making style are quite different things.
Even allowing for this misleading definition which sets the framework of the book, we
might expect to find something about the policies which have actually been adopted in the
countries subsequently examined. In fact, an almost superhuman effort must have gone
into eliminating any reference to policy contents; the student of politics will as usual learn
about how countries are governed rather than about what governments
do;
nor is there
anything for the reader who wants to participate in policy debates himself and hopes to pick
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