Chapter 3
How Innovation Happens:
The Policy Change Cycle
For all that moveth doth in Change delight.
— Edmund Spenser,
The Faerie Queene
History is one damn thing after another.
— Robert Sherrill
The general process whereby leaders and followers tackle public problems in a shared-power, no-one-in-charge world can be described as a policy change cycle— the term is adapted from the title of May and Wildavsky (1978)—which is depicted in Figure 3.1. We use the word policy as a generic shorthand for policies, plans, programs, projects, budgets, and procedures — that is, for all the concepts and activities that are used to resolve problems. We must also emphasize that most public decision making occurs “off cycle” in the course of ‘normal day-to-day bureaucratic operations (Jones, 1982, pp. 39—41; Waste, 1989, p. 39). Off-cycle policy and decision making are not part of the public agenda because day-to-day bureaucratic decision making, while it may have widespread indirect effects, does not directly affect most people, and, therefore, few take an interest in it. It is usually routine, incremental, and based on formulas, rules of thumb, or past practice. For example, off-cycle civic decision making might include building and fire code enforcement, water billing, garbage collection scheduling, city employee pension investment decisions, and scheduling of personal holidays.
Nonroutine policy-making, on the other hand, usually occurs “on cycle” as leaders and their various kinds of organizations act on public issues within sets, or structures, of rules, resources, and transformation procedures. These actions, in turn, either reinforce or modify the structures, which, in turn again, shape subsequent actions (Giddens, 1979, 1984). Thus, the change process itself may alter underlying structures in such a way that new meanings, actions, or consequences are made possible. Indeed, the desire to create these new possibilities is typically the reason for policy change (Lynn, 1987).
The policy change cycle can also be viewed as a set of interconnected “games” played by reasonably structured and stable rules. The play, however, is often designed to change the rules. When the rules of the policy game change, meanings, actions, or consequences are also likely to change (Long, 1958; Schattschneider, 1975; Bardach, 1977; Kiser and Ostrom, 1982; Lynn, 1987; Ostrom, 1990). The international headlines of the recent past emphasize what dramatic and fundamental changes in the rules can occur in a relatively short time. Who would have guessed in the mid to late 1980s that the Soviet empire would disintegrate, that we would see the hammer and sickle lowered over the Kremlin for the last time on the last day of 1991, and that the Communist party would give up its monopoly of power in so many erstwhile communist countries? Who would have guessed that South Africa’s apartheid policies would begin to be dismantled, Nelson Mandela freed, and the African National Congress party legalized?
On the domestic scene in the mid 1980s, hardly anyone was worried about ozone depletion or the ethics of conceiving babies to provide human transplant tissue. The idea that black men would be elected governor of Virginia and mayor of New York City by 1990 might have seemed outlandish. And anyone voicing the idea that the defense budget would soon be radically and voluntarily reduced by a Republican president, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Congress might have been taken aside and asked solicitously about her or his mental health.
Turning to the cases prepared for this book, it was hard to imagine in the 1960s that a woman’s right to choose abortion (if she could pay for it) would be taken almost for granted in the 1980s, or that two U.S. presidents would make their personal opposition to abortion an important consideration in their choice of Supreme Court nominees. Participants in the early debates over Minneapolis-St. Paul’s regionwide problems would have been surprised to know that the Metropolitan Council, ten years after its creation, would be generally unquestioned in its exercise of broad regional authority. Change is unstoppable, as both Edmund Spenser and Robert Sherrill saw. Yet people require both changes — to meet their new needs — and continuity— to avoid losing what they still value. The world of public policy is -in constant motion, but it also has regularities.
Organized Anarchies or Anarchy Within Structure
The continual demand for new policies not only creates ubiquitous change but also an anarchic quality in much of the world. Governmental authority is questioned around the globe. Free association and voluntary cooperation among individuals across organizational boundaries and national frontiers is an important value for a large fraction of the world’s people. The dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution may turn out to have been the United States’ most important import and export. When collective action is needed to address important problems, however, citizens’ individual quests for life, liberty, and happiness can lead to considerable confusion, disorder, and stress—in short, to some of the consequences of a shared-power, no-one-in-charge world.
Nevertheless, if much of any public leader’s environment is anarchic, it is also an organizedanarchy, a term coined by
Cohen, March, and Olsen (1972) to capture the disorder, confusion, ambiguity, and randomness that accompany much decision making in large organizations. The term applies, perhaps with even more force, to the shared-power, interorganizational, interinstitutional environment where no one is in complete charge, and many are partly in charge. For example, Kingdon (1984) uses the same concept to make sense of policy-making at the U.S. federal level, while Lynn (1987) uses it to inform his discussion of U.S. federal executives’ management of public policies.
Some characteristics of organized anarchies, especially ones engaged in public policy-making and implementation are offered by Cohen, March, and Olsen (1972); March and Olsen (1979); Pfeffer (1981); and Kingdon (1984), who emphasize the “anarchic,” as opposed to the “organized,” qualities.
Goals and preferences are fairly consistent, at least for a time, within social actors — for example, individuals, organizations, and coalitions — but inconsistent and pluralistic across organizations and coalitions.
The positions of interest groups and the composition of coalitions can change, sometimes quickly.
Conflict is seen as legitimate and is expected as part of the free play of the political marketplace. Struggle, conflict, and winners and losers result.
Information is used and withheld strategically.
Within a social group, actors hold consistent, often ideological, sets of beliefs about connections between actions and outcomes. Across a set of groups, however, there may be considerable disagreement about action-outcome relationships.
The decision process often appears disorderly because of the clash of shifting coalitions and interest groups.
Decisions result from the negotiation, bargaining, and interplay among coalitions and interest groups — indicating that these groups find it necessary to share power.
Despite this evidence of anarchy, there are obvious points of stability and predictability in the public policy change process.
Indeed, shared-power arrangements typically are designed to provide some of this stability. The basic organizing features of the policy change process are the various rules, resources, and transformation procedures that structure and legitimate specific actions. Within a single organization, these organizing features constitute what Downs (1967, pp. 167—168) calls the “structured depths,” and range from the organization’s charter or purpose – the fundamental source of its legitimacy – at the deepest level, through more malleable rules and resources, to its actions. For the United States as a whole, these structured depths begin with a common language, the population’s major demographic and socio-economic characteristics, the Constitution, and ideologies that emphasize democracy, equality, liberalism, and individualism (Huntington, 1981; Kammen, 1986). Above this deepest level are various ideas, rules, modes, media, and methods that are drawn on to create and guide action within sets of often hierarchically organized forums, arenas, and courts.
Of particular importance in policy-making are the reasonably predictable “routines of politics” (Sharkansky, 1970; Bromiley and Marcus, 1987), which include various standard operating procedures and predictable behavior patterns, along with regularized decision and action points. These routines make formal change not only possible but likely. They include professional norms, the inertia that propels day-to-day bureaucratic
decision making (Allison, 1971), and “accepted practices” —norms that emerge from discussions, comparisons, and contrasts among similarly situated actors. They also include the formal requirements of public policy-making, such as annual budget cycles, legislative renewals, and regular reports and addresses.
Our own view, based more on experience and observation than any scientific study, is that policy-making is most anarchic at the federal level, less so at the state level, and least anarchic at the level of cities and counties, interorganizational networks, and communities of place or interest. Smaller scale makes situations more comprehensible intellectually and manageable processually. Local governments, single interorganizational networks, and communities of place or interest generally are smaller and have a correspondingly increased ability to understand and
manage the policy change process. However, even though policy change efforts rarely follow a rigid lock-step sequence in any organization, large or small, it is often possible to predict some of what will happen at particular decision and action points. For example, winning proposals can have predictable characteristics. And politicians can be expected to want to take credit and save face; they need to be able to point to action on important problems. Their need to promote themselves can become a strong incentive for them to promote change (Mayhew, 1974).
In sum, our shared-power world is not as anarchic as it may at first seem. It has many predictable features that, when understood and used properly, can make desirable change more likely. Furthermore, even its anarchy is necessary, because that is what opens up innumerable chances for leaders to take advantage of both the routines of politics and the opportunities for accomplishments that are nonroutine and extraordinary.
What Is Public Policy?
Politics and policy are intimately entwined. Easton (1965, p. 21)defines politics as “the authoritative allocation of values.” The “allocations” are embodied in policies. Gerston (1983, p.6) emphasizes the substantive aspects of policy when he defines public policy as “the combination of basic decisions, commitments, and actions made by those who hold or affect govern-
Went positions of authority.” Lynn (1987, p. 30), on the other hand, emphasizes the symbolic aspects when he says, “Public policy can be said to comprise the meanings or interpretations ascribed by various affected publics to identifiable sequences of governmental actions based on perceived or anticipated consequences of those actions.” For our purposes, it is important to include both substantive and symbolic aspects. We therefore~ define public policy as substantive decisions, commitments, and actions made by those who hold or affect government positions of authority, as they are interpreted by various stakeholders. Thus, public policy is what affected people think it is based on what the substantive content symbolizes to them. People’s perceptions here are absolutely critical because they are politically consequential – even when they are at odds with the “facts” as seen by reasonably objective observers (Lynn, 1987).
Public policies may go by various names in different circumstances; they may be called policies, plans, programs, projects, decisions, actions, budgets, rules, or regulations. Moreover they can emerge deliberately or be “resultants” of mutual adjustment among partisans (Lindblom, 1959; Mintzberg and Waters, 1985). In other words, public policies sometimes are decided upon, and at other times simply “emerge” or “happen.”
The Policy Change Cycle
The partly structured anarchy that we call the policy change cycle is a way of thinking about how policy formulation, adoption, implementation, perseverance, and change occur in a shared-power world. Although we will emphasize the cycle as it applies to public policies, we think the process we describe is typical of “on-cycle” change in large organizations and interorganizational networks (Quinn, 1980; Trist, 1983). However, the particular change setting does matter a great deal, and we will be discussing the situational factors that affect how the process might unfold or be guided in particular circumstances.
The policy change cycle is represented in Figure 3.1 as a seven-phase process. At first glance the process may appear orderly, sequential, and rational. However; policy change is typically “messy” in practice. Therefore, the process is not a precise causal model (Sabatier, 1991), but rather an orienting framework to assist thought and action. It contains a set of repeating and intersecting loops that highlight the frequency and pervasiveness of feedback throughout the cycle. In addition, it is clear that the process actually can, and often does, start almost anywhere in the cycle — at the beginning, end, or somewhere in between.
The seven phases of the policy change cycle are:
1.Initiating and agreeing on a preliminary strategy for policy change
2.Identifying problems that probably can be solved
3.Searching for solutions to identified problems
4.Developing policies that incorporate desirable solutions to the problems
5.Reviewing and adopting the policies
6.Implementing and evaluating the policies
7.Maintaining, changing, or terminating the policies
The remainder of this chapter will be a relatively idealized discussion of these phases. Subsequent chapters will develop a more complex picture.
The first three phases together constitute issue creation, in which a public problem and at least one solution — with pros and cons from the standpoint of various stakeholders — gains a place on the public agenda. By stakeholder we mean any person, group, or organization that is affected by the causes or consequences of an issue. An issue is on the public agenda when it has become a subject of discussion among a fairly broad cross section of a community of place or of interest. Typically4 in order to win a place on that agenda stakeholders develop a new appreciation of the nature and importance of a problem and its potential solution, or solutions. Usually, the three phases are highly interactive. Various agreements are struck as problem formulations and solutions are tried out and assessed in an effort by different actors to push or block policy change. Sometimes efforts to create and place an issue on the public agenda are successful, sometimes not. If they are unsuccessful, the issue remains a nonissue” as far as the general community is concerned (Bachrach and Baratz, 1963; Crenson, 1971; Gaventa, 1980).
Issues — linked problems and solutions — drive the political decision-making, or policy-making, process. Unfortunately, all too often in this process, the real problems and the best solutions get “lost,” if ever they were “found.” Instead, vaguely specified problems search for possible policy options; policy advocates try to find problems their solutions might solve; and politicians seek both problems and solutions that might advance their careers, further some group’s goals, or be in the public interest. The result can resemble a “garbage can” (Kingdon, 1984; Cohen, March, and Olsen, 1972). Politically acceptable agreements may be reached—pulled out of the garbage, as it were—but whether desirable public purposes are served is often an open question. As Will Rogers once said, “I don’t tell jokes; I just watch Congress and report the facts.”
Let us be clear: our purpose in outlining the policy change cycle is not to deny the obvious virtues of political bargaining, negotiation, and decision making. Rather, our purpose is to emphasize that the advocates of change should be clear, at least in their own minds, about the problems they wish to solve and the solutions that will effectively address those problems. An advocate group that is not clear on these points cannot expect to get what it wants (Schultze, 1968; Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987). Issue framing is a prime leadership responsibility, because the way an issue is framed will have a powerful impact both on the politics that surround it and on stakeholders’ perceptions of the meaning of the proposed solutions (Lowi, 1964, 1972; Peterson, 1981; Waste, 1989; Sabatier, 1991). The public’s interpretation of the impact of the solutions will result either in the activation or acquiescence of interest groups that can powerfully influence subsequent steps in~ the process (Wilson, 1967, 1980, 1986; Edelman, 1964, 1971, 1977).
Phase One: Initiating and Agreeing on a
Preliminary Strategy for Policy Change
The purpose of the first phase of the public policy change cycle is to develop an understanding among an initial group of key decision makers or opinion leaders about the need to respond to an undesirable condition and to develop a basic response strategy. The support and commitment of these people is vital if the change process is to succeed. In addition, decision makers or opinion leaders from multiple affected organizations typically should be involved if their groups will have to adopt and implement the resulting public policies.