The policy sciences are concerned with understanding the decision processes of public and private institutions, and with assessing the significance of all knowledge for purposes of decision. The term policy sciences was introduced after the Second World War by Lerner and Lasswell (1951) to refer to the emergence of this focus on decision among specialists in many disciplines. Subsequent developments have been marked by the refinement of conceptual tools; the establishment of policy programmes in universities, government agencies, and the private sector; and by the explosive growth of policy analyses. Policy experts in the aggregate have not yet developed a distinctive professional identity or a shared understanding of their actual and preferred roles in the evolution of civilization.
Policy scientists are traditionally graduates from academic programmes in public or business administration, political science, economics, jurisprudence, and the like. Since the 1960s, policy scientists have also emerged from the physical and natural sciences in increasing numbers. These disciplines have had little contact with traditional policy theory but a great deal to do with the major policy problems of our time. In a typical career pattern, scientists in a laboratory or research institute discover latent interests and talents in an initial attempt to relate their specialized knowledge to the broader environment. The environment tends to nurture and reinforce these initiatives to the extent that knowledge is expected to pay off in national security, domestic political advantage, wealth, well-being, prestige, or in other ways. The aspiring policy expert soon learns to sustain this expectation through delivery of partial results, and to justify further science and scholarship in terms that the environment rewards.
Policy scientists tend to converge on a common outlook, despite their different origins. A distinctive element of this common outlook is contextuality. An enquiry that reduces considerations of realism or worth to those of a single discipline, for example, may be acceptable to a manuscript editor who enforces that discipline’s standards. However, it is not likely to be acceptable to a decision maker, unimpressed by the traditional academic division of labour, who cannot afford to ignore other considerations in the evaluation of alternative courses of action. Another element is a problem-orientation that includes the tasks logically entailed in a rational choice among alternatives. A rational choice entails projections of the probable consequences of alternatives, and preferences for the evaluation of those consequences. Thus specialists in preferences, including some philosophers, gradually learn that priorities among goals are contingent on projections, which in turn depend on the description of trends and the analysis of factors conditioning those trends. Conversely, specialists in projections, mostly scientists, gradually learn to clarify and make explicit their goals in order to guide empirical policy research. (The ‘value free’ connotation of ‘science’ is attenuated, while science as the pursuit of ‘verifiable knowledge’ is retained.) A third element is the synthesis of multiple methods. Each method of observation or analysis tends to divert attention from some potentially important aspects of the situation at hand. The use of multiple methods helps compensate for such blind spots. In general, over-reliance on any partial approach to policy analysis leads to mistakes in practice.
The integration of knowledge from many sources and the application of that knowledge to particular policy problems depends upon conceptual tools. Ideally, such tools crystallize and conveniently label the principal distinctions that have turned out to be useful across broad ranges of experience. They do not provide general answers to particular questions, as empirical and normative theories are sometimes purported to do. Rather, the conceptual tools are heuristics: as principles of procedure, they guide the search for data and insights pertinent to a specific decision. As principles of content, they outline the general considerations involved in a decision and help bring to bear the knowledge accumulated from different times, places and cultural contexts. As short lists of interrelated concepts, they anticipate or implement findings of cognitive psychology on the processing of information within the constraints of short-term memory (Simon 1981). Command of these conceptual tools enables a policy scientist to maximize the potential for rationality within the constraints of time, resources and other factors in the situation.
Lasswell (1971) and his collaborators (Lasswell and Kaplan 1950; Lasswell and McDougal 1992) have refined the most comprehensive set of conceptual tools since the 1940s, but approximate equivalents are persistently rediscovered by others. To understand behaviour, policy scientists postulate that people act selectively to maximize preferred outcomes according to their own perspectives; but the acts are less than fully rational because the relevant perspectives are incomplete, distorted, and unconscious in various respects and degrees. The perspectives are also subject to change. Lasswell’s (1971) ‘maximization postulate’ and Simon’s (1983) ‘principle of bounded rationality’ are essentially equivalent tools for understanding behaviour. To map the contexts that affect (and are affected by) the behaviour of individuals or groups, policy scientists use conceptual models of the decision process and of the broader social process. A model of the decision process, among other things, directs attention to the multiple points at which power has or might be used to shape decisions. A model of the broader social process, among other things, directs attention to the distinctive social bases, justifications, and strategies of the power elite and to the social outcomes and effects of decisions. To orient themselves in the context, policy scientists perform the intellectual tasks entailed in rational decision. These tasks have been conceptualized in nearly equivalent ways by Simon (1983) and many others.
While convergence towards a common outlook and equivalent conceptual tools will continue to be reinforced through practical policy experience, the process of convergence is far from complete (Brunner 1991). For example, disciplinary differences in outlook persist. They are still reflected to some extent in such terms as policy analysis (economics), policy studies (political science), socioeconomics (sociology) and philosophy and public affairs (philosophy). Moreover, restrictive assumptions about human behaviour endure. For narrowly scientific purposes, it is often assumed that behaviour is determined by invariant behavioural laws (despite the existence of choices) or by objective rationality (despite differences in perspectives and behaviour). In addition, reductionist approaches persist. For technical reasons, it is often convenient to exclude what is not easily quantified or formalized, to take preferences as fixed or given, or to assume that decisions are discrete (made once and for all) rather than revised as circumstances change. So long as such partial approaches persist, it is appropriate to restrict policy sciences to the integrative conception of Lasswell and his collaborators, and to refer to the collection of partial approaches as the ‘policy movement’.
The rise of policy experts of all kinds has been expedited by the increasing complexity of modern society. Science-based technology continues to fragment the social division of labour into ever more specialized parts, and at the same time to interconnect the parts more densely and more quickly through modern means of communication and transportation. This complicates problems of decision in the public and private sectors, because more (and more specialized) considerations must be taken into account. In response, decision makers demand more assistance from experts, and educational and research institutions expand to meet the demand. Growth accelerated with the establishment of first-generation policy schools in major universities in the late 1960s. The graduates of these schools have been recruited into offices of planning or evaluation in government agencies, research divisions of organized political groups, private think tanks, and university policy programmes—all of which have expanded and multiplied since the 1970s. In reviewing the explosive rise of policy analyses, Rivlin (1984) found a paradox: no longer was any major issue in US government debated without reference to the many policy analyses of the participants involved. Yet there had been no obvious progress on major issues, like federal budget deficits, in which stalemate and a search for panaceas tended to prevail.
From a broader perspective, there is little doubt that the scientific revolution has failed to abolish zones of poverty amidst plenty, or to civilize the militant structure of world politics before or after the Cold War. In principle, the fruits of knowledge are available to all. In practice, knowledge is often selectively used for the benefit of the few. The rich and the powerful are in a position to compensate or command the services of policy experts. But policy scientists may also serve the weak, the poor, and others who are disadvantaged, as well as common interests. The question of whose interests are served is confounded with professional identities, which remain in flux. One of the continuing tasks of the policy sciences and the policy movement is to appraise their own impact on policy and society. For these appraisals, the search for authoritative criteria can be guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ronald D.Brunner
University of Colorado
References
Brunner, R.D. (1991) ‘The policy movement as a policy problem’, Policy Sciences 24.
Lasswell, H.D. (1971) A Pre-View of Policy Sciences, New York.
Lasswell, H.D. and Kaplan, A. (1950) Power and Society, New Haven, CT.
Lasswell, H.D. and McDougal, M.S. (1992) Jurisprudence for a Free Society: Studies in Law, Science and Policy, 2 vols, New Haven, CT.
Lerner, D. and Lasswell, H.D. (eds) (1951) The Policy Sciences, Stanford, CA.
Rivlin, A. (1984) ‘A policy paradox’, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 4.
Simon, H.A. (1981) The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd edn, Cambridge, UK.
