Sharpening up Sabatier: Belief Systems and Public Policy
| Date | 01 February 1995 |
| Author | Alison Hann |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1995.tb00016.x |
| Published date | 01 February 1995 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Politics
(1
995)
15(1)
pp,
19-26
Alison
Hann
mat
causes public policies
to
come into
being and to change has been a matter
of
primay concern
to
political scientists
for
a
uey long time.
7%
article examines uey
briefly a few approaches to this problem, and
then focuses
on
one model
in
particular:
that proposed by Paul Sabatier which
looks
at
the relationship between beliefs and policy
making. We then examine some
of
the pro-
blem associated with Sabatier’s approach,
and suggest some possible revisions which
enable the model to be used more efectively.
Do
policy makers act in accordance with their
beliefs, or do they act on the basis of perso-
nal
or political gain, especially in the short
term? Many political scientists have spent
considerable time suggesting that policy
makers are motivated by the ‘interests’
of
their department or organisation; by con-
siderations
of
short-term crisis management,
and/or by calculations
of
political expediency.
Whether or not decision makers are ‘rational
actors’ is still open
to
debate. Simon and Her-
bert (1983) for example remark that ration-
al~~
in
this context means that an actor must
undertake the consideration and comparison
of
all
of
the alternative courses of action and
then in the light
of
all the evidence, choose
that course
of
action that most efficiently
achieves the goal
of
the policy maker. This
ideal of policy making is also described by
Braybrooke and Lindblom (1963), and Lind-
blom.
In
his article ‘The Science
of
Muddling
Through’ Lindblom
(1959)
calls the rational
deductive ideal ‘comprehensive rationality, in
which the policy maker makes an objective
and unbiased and objective decision based
on consideration
of
all
of
the possible solu-
tions and consequences. However,
it
is unli-
kely that any political scientists (Braybrooke
and Lindblom included), consider for one
moment that this process
is
one that actually
takes place. Simon and Herbert (1983) for
example suggest that instead policy makers
engage in a kind
of
‘limited rationality’, and
Lindblom suggests that politicians ‘muddle
through’ by making incremental changes ‘at
the margins’.
Other writers have stressed the important
role
played by issue networks, or policy com-
munities. Whatever approach is considered,
it
becomes clear that policy makers in the ‘real’
world
of
politics are
not
objective sifters
of
evidence, however much we would wish them
to
be, neither are they necessarily possessed
of
expert knowledge. Indeed,
if
we are to
believe Bendor and Moe
(19851,
then deci-
sion makers are endowed with vely
little
knowledge, and those things that they do
know, are rather modest.
All of these approaches seem
to
explain
Ahon
Hann,
De
Montfon
University,
Leicester
0
Political Studies Association
1995.
Published
by
Blackwell Publishers,
108
Cowley
Road, Oxford
OX4
UF,
UK
and
238
Main Street, Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA.
19
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