CHAPTER THREE
Bozeman, B. (1979). Public Management and Policy Analysis. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Policy Philosophies,
Public Management, and
the Public Interest
Before turning to the “meat” of the book—the chapters related to theory and practice in the management of public organizations—this chapter is a fanciful fling at ~the broad philosopht6~l-value premises of public management and public policy. In this chapter there is no concern with social science, observable data, verification, operational concepts, and all those other matters dear to the hearts of analytically oriented students and practitioners of public administration. This chapter is designed to encourage reflection about “good” and “bad” in policy and administration, with particular attention to that old bugaboo of empirically oriented social scientists, the public interest.
The concept policy philosophy is introduced here to help us explore the value component of policy. The basic notion is that a relatively small number of primal values have influenced policy and administration throughout the ages. These clusters of values—and this is the substance of a policy philosophy, a cluster of values—filter into the policy process through the political culture, the legal system, and even the psychological predispositions of individual decision-makers. Another of the ways that policy philosophies have been influential is through various conceptions of the public interest. If a policy philosophy is an enduring set of values about the basic ends and means of government, any particular conception of the public interest may be thought of as a conclusion drawn from the premises of a policy philosophy.
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PHILOSOPHIES, MANAGEMENT, AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST 61
POLICY PHILOSOPHIES
To reiterate, a policy philosophy is a set of values about the purposes of government or the most desirable means of achieving purposes. The policy philosophy concept should not be taken as absolute and should not be rigidly defined, nor should the particular policy philosophies identified in this chapter be taken as an exhaustive list. The policy philosophies discussed here have been subjectively developed and loosely defined, and others may wish to develop additional or alternative policy philosophies that are more in accord with their subjective interpretation of the basic value clusters influencing policy and administration.
Six policy philosophies will be discussed here—protectorism, rationalism, brokerism, pragmatism, transferalism, and egoism. The values associated with each are discussed, the place of the policy philosophy in modern and classic political thought is alluded to, and in a later section the relation of each to various conceptions of the public interest is explored.
Protectorism
The chief premise of protectorism is that policy exists to protect people from one another and from themselves. The political executive as protector is a theme that emerges early in political philosophy. One of the first protectorist philosophers was Plato. While there is a strong antidemocratic element involved in the elevation of restraint to a guiding principle, the antidemocratic bias is only one aspect of protectorism and not the most important. The pillar of this conception of governing is a negative view of mankind—both in regard to abilities and, more important, to intentions. Man is, by this view, a natural troublemaker and a consistent malefactor. The view that the common man is ill-equipped for political participation is clearly assumed in Plato’s Republic; the inevitability of conflict and the need for a legitimate enforcing and regulatory agent are beliefs that pervade Hobbes’s Leviathan. The underpinnings of protectorism lie, then, in these assumptions—man must be protected because of his limited knowledge and abilities; man must be protected from his aggressive and avaricious nature.
The implications of this policy philosophy are far-reaching. First, the prospects for an open government arc dim. Both Plato and Hobbes viewed governing as a matter to be entrusted to the few. Plato divides society into three classes—the guardians, a largely hereditary
PHILOSOPHIES, MANAGEMENT, AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST 61
Box 3.1: Philosophical Roots of Protectorism
Such transgressions as the Watergate cover-up, the CIA excesses, and other instances of the “politics of lying” might be viewed as embodying the values of egoism—mindless self-aggrandizement at any price. But a more charitable interpretation Is that many such instances of government deceit are misguided attempts at espousing protectorism. Consider Plato’s commentary on the politics of lying:
If anyone, then, is to practise deception, either on the country’s enemies or on its citizens, it must be the Rulers of the commonwealth, acting for its benefit; no one else may meddle with this privilege. For a private person to mislead such Rulers we shall declare to be a worse offence than . . . for a seaman to misinform his captain about the state of the ship.
But for the quintessential protectorist we must turn to Thomas
Hobbes:
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasts by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by nature to protect themselves when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished. . . . The end of obedience is protection, wheresoever a man sees it either in his own or in another’s sword, nature applies his obedience to it, and his endeavor to maintain it.
Source: The Republic of Plato, trans. F. M. Cornford (Oxford university Press, 1945). Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651).
ruling class of philosophic rulers; the auxiliaries, a class of military men and civil servants; and the class of producers and artisans which composes nearly the entire population. The closed society of Hobbes is a result of the need to unify power to the greatest degree possible in a single sovereign.
A more important implication of protectorism is in connection with the activities of government. If the chief purpose of governing is protection, the activities of government are regulatory and enforcing. Conferral of collective benefits, redistribution of society’s resources, and representation are government activities foreign to protectorism.
A modern curator of protectorism is Edward Banfield, and his The Unheavenly City embodies several of its values. In assessing the social programs of the 1960s, Banfield observes:
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Faith in the perfectibility of man and confidence that good
intentions together with strenuous exertions will hasten his
program onward and upward lead to bold programs that promise
to do what no one knows how to do and what perhaps cannot
be done...1
In outlining his own twelve-point programs for amelioration of urban problems, Banfield relies heavily on regulation and enforcement and largely ignores structural solutions. Intensified law enforcement, abridgement of offenders’ freedom, and promotion of individual rather than social responsibility for misdeeds are all important elements of the Banfleld proposals.
The policy philosophy of protectorism appears to exert some influence in the policy making and activities of a great many bureaucratic agencies, and in some it is the dominant theme. Agencies that are chiefly involved in regulatory or enforcing activities are most likely to be operating with a protectorist conception of the public interest. Examples of agencies that are predominantly protectorist include the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Trade Commission, both of which protect people from others, and, in a very different sense, the Social Security Administration, which protects people against their own thriftlessness.
Any agency may manifest several policy philosophies, or parts of several policy philosophies in their activities. The Social Security Administration is an example of a mixed type, whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a purer type. It should be expected that most agencies will embody several policy philosophies. One reason for this is that policy philosophies, as conceived here, involve not only the ends of bureaucracy but also the means. Protectorism is chiefly concerned with ends; rationalism, by contrast, is chiefly concerned with means.
Rationalism
The policy philosophy of rationalism is rooted in a faith in man’s reason and the assumption that problems of governance are amenable to reasonable solution through scientific analysis, logic, and systematic inquiry. The prototypical rationalist administrator is the management scientist.
Rationalism as a policy philosophy is reflected in the writings of several classic philosophers. The writings of empiricists such as Berkeley, Hume, and Locke include themes that are related to this policy philosophy, but typically their empiricism—even that of Locke— is less related to governance than to a more general philosophy of
Box 3.2: Rationalism and the Value of Human Life
In a sense, rationalism is the most optimistic policy philosophy. It says that the world may be complex but by employing reason and developing analytical tools, we can manage complexity. But if rationalism is optimistic in its prospect for the human (and policy) condition, its hard-nosed adherence to objectivity and technique (and its lack of regard for the intangible and subjective) can lead to cold-blooded approaches and outcomes.
There are few better examples of hard-hearted rationalism than policy analysts’ calculations of the value of the “most qualitative” of values~ human life. As Steven Rhoads notes in a recent article, analysts find themselves groping for figures representing the value of life when considering such matters as government sponsorship of kidney dialysis machines ($30,000 per year to keep one patient alive) and costs of pollution control devices (recently the Council on Wage and Price Stability questioned the costs of coke-fume standards: $4.5 million per worker saved).
The most common technique used by policy analysts to evaluate human life is the discounted future earnings (DEE) approach. Rhoads describes it: “The basic DEE approach takes the average age at which death of people killed by a certain type of disease or accident occurs and computes what their expected future income would have been if they had lived a normal term. This future income is discounted since a dollar received today can be invested, and is thus worth more than a dollar received in future years. The ‘present value’ figure that results is taken as the value of life for the average member of the group in question.”
This approach, despite an undeniable logic, can lead to bizarre conclusions, such as that males are usually more valuable than females; young, white adults are the most cherished segment of the population; lives are additive. In an example used by Rhoads, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare studies showed that a media campaign encouraging the wearing of motorcycle helmets might save a life for $3,000; a cervix cancer program that was also being contemplated would save a life for about the same cost. But DEE figures showed the programs not to be even close in “return on investment” The benefit ratio for the motorcycle-helmet program was 55.6 because the lives saved would chiefly be those of young adult males, while the benefit ratio for the cancer program was only 8.9 because the lives saved were chiefly those of older females.
Source: Steven Rhoads, “How Much Should we Spend to Save a Life?,” Public Interest, 51 (Spring 1978), 74—92.
inquiry. There is also a strong element of rationalist policy philosophy in Aristotle’s Politic, but it is a less than perfect example because of his organic conception of the state. As conceived here, rationalism implies an instrumental conception of the state that places value on planning and assumes that effective administration involves design.
The pre-twentieth-century philosopher who provides the best illustration of the rationalist approach to public affairs is Bacon. The ideal of the scientist—public official is realized to the fullest in Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620). Bacon’s “House of Solomon” is a decision-making body composed entirely of scientists.
In modern political theory the link between science and public decision making is of a more specialized nature; while it is true that some scholars advocate a bureaucracy composed of a greater number of liberally trained scientists,2 the more routine means of bringing the blessings of the scientific approach to the administration of public affairs is by the inclusion of scientific management techniques in the curriculum of would-be public servants. Taylorism was an approach (a partly bogus approach) to bringing science to administration. The writings of Taylor, whether or not scientific, certainly gave impetus to a concern with the possibilities for a science of public administration.
Another important contributor to rationalism in public administration was the German sociologist Max Weber. Unlike Taylor and his disciples, Weber never made a strong argument for applying science to public affairs, but his classic typology of bureaucracy provided a framework that enhanced the application of social science methods and techniques to the study of public administration.
Of the several contemporary theorists involved in the development of a scientific administration, two of the most prominent are C. W. Churchman and Russell Ackoff.5 These two pioneers of systems analysis and operations research have been especially influential in the development and popularization of quantitative approaches to management and administration. The recent spread of management science in both public agencies and private industry has been remarkable, and the entrance of large numbers of management scientists into the federal bureaucracy has produced a basic change in the approach of several agencies to administration. The agency that has been in the forefront of this movement has been the Office of Management and Budget.
The impact of rationalism on bureaucracy has been so extensive as to virtually defy analysis. At the level of the individual greater acceptance of and familiarity with scientific analysis in administration and management has had an impact on the day-to-day operation of
bureaucracy. From a broader perspective the policy philosophy of rationalism has been influential in policy making because it inspires confidence. It says that though the world may be complex and its problems of great magnitude, social, economic, and political problems may be understood and perhaps solved. The rationalist brings a Lockean optimism to public affairs. The human condition is not irremediable, policy processes need not inevitably entail conflict and power politics; there is a best way to proceed, and by resorting to reason we may find that best way (or at least a close approximation). Thus, unlike several of the policy philosophies, rationalism encourages government by design—planning, social engineering, and intervention.
Brokerism
The pluralist conception of government is a strong theme in brokerism. Society is conceived as an amalgam of group interests, and government is a glue that helps hold society together by balancing interests and serving as an integrating force. David Easton views politics as the allocation of values and resources in society by an agent (the government) that is perceived by the affected parties as a legitimate authority. Easton’s is a brokerist view of policy making.4