1. Questions for Consideration
What is policy?
How do politics affect policy?
How does policy affect politics?
How does policy achieve change?
In today’s lecture we’ll focus on answering four questions:
What is policy?
How do politics affect policy?
How does policy affect politics?
How does policy achieve change?

2. What is Policy?
How would you define policy? What is it?

3. What is policy? Intentions of government actors
Interpretations of various stakeholders
Political compromise among policymakers
By-product of games and relationships
Includes both ‘practices’ and also, the inactions of government
Images of an ideal society
These are some of the ways that people who study policy define it. (What is policy handout). Each of these definitions make certain assumptions about the policy process, about the context in which policy occurs, and about the roles that stakeholders play. Looking at the full definitions on the handout, can you identify some of the assumptions being made?
For example:
Dubnik definition – that policies should solve a problem and are made by government actors
Bryson definition – that policies can be many thing including commitments and actions, that they can be made by government actors AND who affect them, that ultimately what a policy is is determined by how it is interpreted.
Firestone – that many actors in a chain are involved in policymaking and none can control the whole process
Ball – that policies officially authorize certain values over other values

4. What is policy? Policy as Text Policy as Discourse Practice
Policy as Social Practice
Policy also embodies the context, values, and interests involved. Stephen Ball has argued that we can think of policies as text, as discourse practice and as social practice.
Text
Ultimately in the policy process people are trying to construct texts – these texts can be written or spoken. When a school leader holds a meeting with his or her staff, a text is produced. The text includes everything he or she and other participants said during the meeting. It also includes documents associated with the meeting – agendas, minutes, etc. Looking at the text produced can tell you a lot about how Policy is influenced by context, values and interests.
The text may reveal that the leader dominated the meeting, it may reveal that cost was the determining factor in 90% of the decisions. It may reveal that participants use words like pay-off, bottom line, and value-for-money. This text would suggest a system dominated by a leader who has been influenced by market ideology. One would expect subsequent policy to reflect this influence and the values implicit it in.
Discourse Practice
To take this further, we all have practices that govern the production of this text. Rules and traditions shape how meetings occur. For example, they usually have a chair, who decides who gains the floor, how long something should be discussed and how decisions will be made. All these formal and informal rules and traditions constitute a discourse practice. The practice influences what can be said and done as the text is produced. For example, in the meeting just mentioned, knowing how items were placed on the agenda and who appointed tasks would provide important clues in understanding what, who, and how Policies are affected.
Social Practice
Taking this one level further. The school leader and their school are part of a larger education authority. The LEA has its own norms and traditions which are set in the larger universe of norms and traditions for all UK school districts. All of these elements or levels constitute the social practice in which the meeting is situated. They too should be considered when trying to understand how policy is affected.
Think about the context of policymaking in your school? How is the text often constructed? How is the policy text influenced by discourse practice and social practice? Spend a few minutes talking in pairs and then we’ll share some examples you’ve come up with.

5. How do politics affect policy?
So, the norms, conditions, and contexts of policymaking can be very important in helping us understand why or how policy occurs. It helps us understand why some things get into policy and others don’t, it helps us understand why some solutions are considered and others are not.

6. “By behaving as if it were a reality, policy-makers may actually be making it a reality.” Marsh, Smith and Hothi, 2006, p 177
One of the ways that researchers study how this occurs is by focusing on the narratives or causal stories that politicians create which impacts the discourse and social practice of policymaking.
I’ll give you a recent example in my own research with Dominic Wyse on the impetus for the National Literacy Strategy.

7. The key to new Labour economics is the recognition that Britain [has] to compete in an increasingly international market place…. (Blair, 1996 quoted in Watson and Hay, 2003, p. 296) “International comparisons of children’s achievements in reading …. show a long ‘tail’ of underachievement in Britain ... most [people] are agreed that the educational system bears the main responsibility” (Literacy Task Force, 1997, p. 10)
Politicians created a narrative that indicated that Britain’s economy was at risk. When a narrative of risk is created then policymakers must act.

8. the state is forced to concentrate on the regulation of risk, not necessarily because risks are greater than in the past, but because the cultural climate in which risk is experienced and debated has changed radically, simultaneously heightening knowledge of risk, heightening sensitivity to its consequences, and heightening the capacity to mobilize to demand action against those perceived consequences. (Moran, 2003, p. 27)
Again, the perception created is important – the risk doesn’t actually have to exist. In fact, the Literacy Task Force itself admitted that the data didn’t exist to draw the conclusions that were being put forward when they said - “detailed data have not so far been made available nationally on the results in the reading component of English alone” (p. 11)
Through the political narrative, politicians create a sense of urgency, they also construct a causal story that assigns blame and also indicates a policy solution.
Think about a recent policy in your school, how was the narrative constructed to show that it was needed? How did the discourse or narrative lead to the solution? Talk in pairs and then share

9. How does policy affect politics?
While politics certainly affects policy, policy can also result in politics. Some scholars have focused their research on looking at the ways that the various purposes of policies create different political contexts.

10. Lowi’s Techniques of Policy Control
Type
Distributive
Regulatory
Redistributive
Purpose
To give favour or benefit to very specific and narrow interests
To constrain the actions, or sanction the actions, of a group of interests
To take benefits from one group and give them to another
Type of Politics
high access to decision makers, obscure issues with not much public knowledge, low conflict, no policy goal, decisions are made in committees or in the executive
various interests coalesce around the policy issue, the issues focus make the coalitions very unstable, ideological nature means compromise rarely occurs, decision is often a fight with lots of conflict
Pits groups and actors against one another, highly polarized and ideological, typically compromise does not occur but concessions will be made to the loser, administration will eventually become ideologically aligned with winners and then decisions take on only a sanctioning role.
Ted Lowi, in his work, identified 3 different purposes for policies – to distribute benefits, to redistribute resources and to regulate behavior or actions.
Each of these policy purposes sets up a different kind of political context. Lowi argued that Policy makers could control the politics of a situation by shifting the purpose of the policies.
See Table to describe each type and resulting politics.
Ultimately the relationship between policy and politics is reciprocal, We’ve looked at one side, now lets consider this other
Think about the policy you considered earlier (or another one) – what was its purpose? Do you see any emerging politics as a result of this purpose? How could the policy have been constructed differently t result in different purposes?

11. How does policy achieve change?
Our final framework for thinking about policy focuses on the policy as text. Some researchers have investigated the ways that policy can be written to achieve changes.

12. Policy Instruments – McDonnell and Elmore
Mandates
Inducements
Capacity Building
System Change
Persuasion
Loraine McDonnell and Richard Elmore argued that 5 policy instruments or mechanisms exist to translate policy goals into concrete actions – mandates, inducements, capacity building, system change, and hortatory or persuasive policy.
McDonnel and Elmore consider the conditions under which these instruments are most likely to produce the intended effects – they focus on how a particular policy functions.
Mandates are rules that direct choices and actions. They assume that people have the capacity to act but that action would not occur otherwise. Mandates require coercion, create uniformity, set up adversarial relations, create minimum standards.
Inducements exchange money or benefits for desired action. It assumes that no action would occur without reward, that people’s capacity is variable and that reward elicits performance. Inducements raise costs, requires huge oversight, and allows diverse behavior in meeting goals
Capacity Building invests in people so they will act in desired ways. It assumes that knowledge, skill and competence can be developed and that a lack of capacity is limiting desired outcomes. It requires less oversight but creates organizational strain.
System Change redefines the system by reallocating power and authority. It assumes existing institutions cannot produce the desired ends and that changing the distribution of desired authority will change results. It often has a chain reaction effect – it sets off reactions in constituents and creates new policy problems.
Hortatory or persuasive send a signal that goals and actions have a high priority. These policies rely on symbolism and imagery to appeal to values in order to encourage citizens to act on their values. They communicate information and suggest behavior. They are often the first step in a long sequence of policy designed to change behavior gradually. When political support is weak, they may be the only chance of passing something. They have a high cost to dissemination of information. They can easily slip into propaganda and manipulation.
One of the key issues is that these instruments are always combined to achieve the same policy ends.
Think about the school policies we’ve been discussing, what policy text instruments were used? What other policy text instruments could have been used to achieve the same outcomes?