Activism and the policy process

ANNA YEATMAN

Activism and the policy process

This chapter is concerned with the particular kind of activism which comes into being when policy is understood to involve not only the decisions of policy makers and their directions to others for implementation but also to be a complex process which involves a host of different kinds of actors who are engaged in different stages of the policy process. These stages are: setting the policy agenda, policy development, policy formulation, policy implementation, policy delivery, policy evaluation and policy monitoring. The relationship of these stages to one another is more complex than that of a linear-circular sequence of feedback loops as it is often conceived. These stages can overlap in time and in ways which preclude any neat systemic view of the whole feedback loop.

Policy does not have to be viewed as a complex policy process. The alternative conception of policy is one that sees policy in terms of the policy decisions that are made by the executive government of the day. In the Westminster system, this refers to decisions made by Cabinet. The idea is that an executive government will equip itself so as to be able to make good decisions, and that it uses whatever mechanisms are needed to ensure that these decisions are carried out by those charged with doing this. This model of policy is not just a decisionistic one (see Majone 1991) but an executive one. The focus is on the quality of executive decision-making rather than on the talent, wisdom, skills and vision of all those who are affected by policy and which could be tracked into a more participative approach to policy. Emphasis on an executive conception of policy must privilege what is actually often only a relatively minor, though important, stage of policy-making: deciding what policy direction to adopt. When it is believed that sound policy emanates from strong executive leadership, this is an elitist conception of policy that must privilege the moment of policy-making that seems to exemplify strong leadership: decision-making.

The executive conception of policy is not one that can legitimately excite policy activism except of the kind which is oriented to changing the composition of the executive, either in individual membership or the nature of the party which is in power. However, when policy is conceived as a complex, multi-layered process involving a whole host of different actors, policy activism of various kinds is provoked into being. Thus, there is a phenomenological point to be made here. Policy activism is more or less legitimate, and more or less developed, depending on whether the government of the day favours an executive approach to policy or a participative approach to policy which turns it into a policy process. When the executive model is the one adopted by the government of the day, policy activism is less legitimate and developed even though policy activists of various kinds may resist the executive model. When the participative approach is favoured by the government of the day, policy activism becomes both more legitimate and developed.

For the conception of policy as a policy process to be possible, the work of state administration has to be conceived democratically. What this means is that paternalistic and top-down conceptions of state administration have to be replaced by conceptions which require state administration to be open to public accountability and to public participation. When state administration becomes democratised in this way, the work of turning policy into operational practice can become visible both in its complexity and its dependency on the agency of those who are involved in this work. These agents include:

1 The public servants who are responsible for turning general policy directions into operational policy, plus those who are responsible for turning this operational policy into programme management, and those who co-ordinate the relationships between programme management and the non-government organisations on which government depends for the delivery of policy.

2 The different kinds of service provider who are responsible for delivering policy on the ground.

3 The users, both potential and actual, of policy.

4 All those who give evaluative feedback on the policy process whether these be professional evaluators, ordinary citizens, organised lobby groups or political party organisations.

5 Ombudsmen, administrative lawyers, and sometimes the wider judiciary, who determine whether principles of justice, due process and equity have been adequately responded to within particular instances of the policy process.

6 A number of agencies charged with monitoring and auditing the policy process — these include the Commonwealth and State Auditor-Generals.

The increasing subjection of social life to policy

The areas of social life which are subject to 'policy' have grown extraordinarily over the last two or three centuries. The development of the modern 'interventionist state' extends the scope of conventionalised phenomena, that is phenomena which are understood to be subject to the artful intervention of policy. For a phenomenon to become subject to policy intervention means that it is brought into the domain of political action where it is reconstructed in relation to contesting narratives about who we are as citizens, what it is we think we should do, and why (my debt to Weber 1948, and Arendt 1958, here is evident).

Social life becomes subject to policy to the degree that it is denaturalised, that is, no longer left to the implicit direction of customary practice. In all societies, social actors think about what they are doing and why. In many societies, the grounds of this reflection does not implicate 'policy' but, rather, refers to a body of customary law and practice which requires to be interpreted by those who are seen as closest to its divine source (elders, a priestly caste etc.). Policy occurs when social actors think about what they are doing and why in relation to different and alternative possible futures. To consider different possible futures...