“GOALS”-policy is a rational attempt to reach objectives. May be
called values. Goals in the polis are not fixed.
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
New York)
PART II: GOALS
PART II: GOALS
Ch. 2-Equity
Ch. 3-Efficiency
Key Concepts
Key Concepts
Equity is the goal in
Efficiency is a way of judging
distributive conflicts. It is
the merits of different ways of
the study of who gets what,
doing things or “getting the
when and how or “treating
most output for a given input.”
likes alike.”
Notes
Notes
*8 Concepts of Equality: see
*Concepts of Efficiency: see
following page
next page
4 Major divides in thought about
Efficiency is difficult to
equity.
define because objectives are
Major divide in equity is whether
constantly changing.
distributions should be judged by
process or rediepients and items.
Markets lead to goal of
1. Nozick’s process justice: a
allocative efficiency if
distribution is just if it came about
1. exchanges are voluntary
by a voluntary and fair process.
2. people make voluntary
2. Nozick’s end-result justice: a
exchanges based on objective
just distribution is one in which
both the recipients and items are
(price, quality and
correctly defined and each qualified
alternative), and subjective
recipient receives an equal share of
(own needs, desires and
of each correctly defined item.
abilities aka preferences)
Rawls’s justice as fairess:
recipients are all citizens and items info.
are social primary goods (things that Allocative efficiency asserts
are very improtand to people but are
only individuals can judge
created, shaped and affected by
welfare, individuals can judge
social structure and political
only their own welfare and
institutions).
societal welfare is the
Second major divide is what kind of
interfrence with liberty one finds
aggregate of individual
acceptable as a price of distributive situations.
justice.
Distributive justice makes
Liberty is freedom from constraints
comparisons between people and
OR liberty is freedom to do what one
judgements about the value of
wants to do.
Process sees liberty as freedom to
items. Defines welfare for
use and dispose of one’s resources as society as a whole.
one wishes without interference. End*Problems with Efficiency as a
result sees liberty as having enough
goal: see next page
basic resources to choose out of
*Equality-Efficiency Trade-Off:
desire rather than necessity.
Third major divide is whether one
sees property as an individual
creation or a collective creation.
Process sees property as individual.
Things of value come into being and
derive their value from individual
effort. End-result sees property as
collective. The whole is greater than
sum of parts.
Fourth major divide concerns human
motivation.
Process sees people are motivated to
work, produce and create primarily by
need. End-result sees people have a
natural drive to work, produce and
create and are inhibited by need.
Conservatism=Process
Liberalism=End-result
see next page
Similar to
Similar to
Differs from
Differs from
“GOALS”-policy is a rational attempt to reach objectives. May be
called values. Goals in the polis are not fixed.
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
New York)
PART II: GOALS
PART II: GOALS
Ch. 4-Security
Ch. 5-Liberty
Key Concepts
Key Concepts
Liberty is the ability to “do as
Security is “the satisfaction
you wish as long as you do not
of minimum human needs.”
harm others.”
Dilemma: how to define needs
Dilemma: sometimes curtailing
versus wants, desires. Needs
individual liberty may be
are essential, but essential
necessary to preserve a community
for what?
in which individuals can thrive
and have free choice.
Notes
Simple definition of need: what
is necessary for sheer physical
survival.
Symbolic concept of need:
recognizes and gives weight to
human differences such as
cultures, histories, social
groups, classes and tastes. SO,
security means protecting
people’s identities as well as
existence. This is why
definition is political not
biological.
Thus, need is relative as well
as absolute.
Relative need is the
perspective of people in
society.
Absolute need is the
perspective of people outside
society or people continually
living in the past alongside
the present.
*5 Concepts of Need: see next
page
Through politics, a society
determines whether needs are
Notes
Harms are political claims
asserted by one set of
interests against another.
*9 Kinds of Harms: see next
page
Harms to others are not
objective phenomena to be
discovered or documented by
science, but rather political
claims which are granted more
or less legitimacy by
government.
The polis is a community with
some collective vision of
public interest, so the liberty
of individuals is also limited
by obligations to the
community. Some restrictions
may be to protect social order
itself.
In the polis, liberties are
usually assigned to roles
instead of individuals. We
grant liberties to certain
types of people and allow them
to cause certain types of harms
because we define their duties
real or legitimate.
Public needs are the needs that
a community recognizes as
legitimate.
*Security-Efficiency Trade-Off:
see next page
Similar to
and obligations according to
their roles and believe that
different roles require
different types of freedoms.
Corporate actors are churches,
trade unions, sports
franchises, professional
associations, business
corporations, trade
associations, trusts political
parties and many voluntary
associations. They have great
power to impact individuals and
the community, the consequences
of their actions are magnified
and their potential for causing
harm is enormous.
*Liberty-Security Trade-Off:
see next page
Modern democracies attempt to
reconcile security and liberty
by creating formal political
rights for the dependent.
Similar to
Differs from
Differs from
Conventionally, problem definition is a statement of a goal and a discrepancy
between it and the status quo.
In the Polis, problem definition is the strategic representation of
situations. Problem definition is a matter of representation because every
description of a situation is a portrayal from only one of many points of
view. Problem definition is strategic because groups, individuals, and
government agencies deliberately and consciously fashion portrayal so as to
promote their favored course of action. Problems are created in the minds of
citizens by other citizens, organizations and groups and are an essential
part of political maneuvering.
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART III: PROBLEMS
Ch. 6-Symbols
Key Concepts
Symbols are words and literary
devices such as stories. It is
anything that stands for
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART III: PROBLEMS
Ch. 7-Numbers
Key Concepts
Numbers is about the language
of counting and measurement.
something else. The meaning is
not intrinsic to it, but is
invested in it by the people
who use it.
Notes
Four aspects of symbolic
representation:
Stories: Narratives with heroes and
villains, problems and solutions,
tensions and resolutions. The most
common are
---Stories of decline, such as story
of stymied progress and story of
progress-is-only-an-illusion.
---Stories of control, such as the
conspiracy story and the blame-thevictim story.
Stories of control offer hope and
stores of decline foster anxiety and
despair.
Synecdoche: a figure of speech in
which a whole is represented by one
of its parts.
---Politicians or interest groups may
select one horrible incident to
represent the universe of cases, and
use that example to build support for
changing an entire rule or policy
that is addressed to the larger
universe.
---Good tool because it makes a
problem concrete, allows people to
identify with someone else, mobilizes
anger and reduces the scope of the
problem to make it manageable.
Metaphor: a likeness is asserted
between one kind of policy problem
and another. Common political
metaphors include organisms, natural
laws, machines, tools, containers,
disease and war.
--the assumptions are if a is like b,
to solve a you do what you would do
with b.
--in all policy discourse, names and
labels are created to make
associations that lend legitimacy and
attract support.
Ambiguity: The ability of statements,
events and experiences to have more
than one meaning.
---Allows people to agree on laws and
policies because they can read
different meanings into the word.
Similar to
Notes
Numbers are the opposite of
symbols, they are not
ambiguous. Something is either
counted or it is not. But
ambiguity—the range of choices
in what to measure of how to
classify—always lies just
beneath the surface of any
counting scheme.
*The political nature of
counting: see next page
*Numerical strategies in
problem definition: see next
page.
Similar to
neoconservatism—paint a picture of a
happy past and show present as a move
away from it.
Differs from
Differs from
WHY COUNTING IS POLITICAL
1. Counting requires decisions about categorizing, about what or
whom to include and exclude.
2. Measuring any phenomenon implicitly creates norms about how
much it too little, too much or just right.
3. Numbers can be ambiguous, and so leave room for political
struggles to control their interpretation.
4. Numbers are used to tell stories, such as stories of decline.
5. Numbers can create the illusion that a very complex and
ambiguous phenomenon is simple, countable and precisely defined.
6. Numbers can crate political communities out of people who
share some trait and can be counted.
7. Counting can aid negotiation and compromise by making
intangible qualities seem divisible.
8. Numbers, by seeming to be so precise, help bolster the
authority of those who count.
NUMERICAL STRATEGIES IN PROBLEM DEFINITION
1. People react to being counted or measured and try to look
good on the measure.
2. The process of counting something makes people notice it more
and record keeping stimulates reporting.
3. Counting can be used to stimulate public demands for change.
4. When measurement is explicitly used to evaluate performance,
the people being evaluated try to manipulate their scores.
5. The power to measure is the power to control. Measurers have
a lot of discretion in their choice of what and how to measure.
6. Measuring creates alliances between the measurers and the
measured.
7. Numbers don’t speak for themselves, and people try to control
how others will interpret numbers.
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART III: PROBLEMS
Ch. 8-Causes
Key Concepts
Causes are the language of
cause, effect and
responsibility. Causes explain
how the world works and how to
assign responsibility for
problems in the polis.
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART III: PROBLEMS
Ch. 9-Interests
Key Concepts
Notes
Policy debate is dominated
by the notion that to solve a
problem one must find its root
cause or causes.
Two primary frameworks for
interpreting the world: 1)
natural world is the realm of
fate and accident; 2) the
social world is the realm of
control and intent.
*Types of causal theories: see
next page
Three types of complex
social causes that cannot be
contained in causal theory
table:
1. complex systems: social
systems necessary to solve
modern problems are inherently
complex. Accidents are
inevitable and make it
impossible to attribute blame.
2. institutional: social
problems are caused by a web of
large, long-standing
organizations with ingrained
patterns of behavior.
3. historical: social patterns
Notes
Interests are the sides in politics,
the groups that have a stake in an
issue or are affected by it. They are
the active side of effects, the
result of people experiencing or
imagining effects and attempting to
influence them. Effects do not become
important until they are translated
into demands.
Objective interests: those effects
that actually impinge on people,
regardless of people’s awareness of
them. “Having an interest in.”
Subjective interests: those things
that people believe affect them.
“Taking an interest in.”
*Concepts of interests: see next
page.
Mobilization: the process by which
effects and experiences are converted
into organized efforts to bring about
change.
Free rider problem: seen in market
as a major obstacle to interest
mobilization. Individuals have little
or no incentive to join groups and
work for a collective good since they
will receive the benefit if others
work for it and succeed in obtaining
it. Therefore interests that satisfy
private and individual wants are more
likely to be mobilized.
3 forces that minimize free rider
problem in polis:
1. People exist not as isolated,
autonomous atoms, but are subject to
the influences of many others.
2. Participation in collective
efforts tends to follow the laws of
passion rather than the laws of
matter.
3. Collective action responds to
symbols and ambiguity. If a group can
tend to reproduce themselves.
Key point: one of the
biggest tensions between social
science and real world politics
is that social scientists tend
to see complex causes of social
problems while in politics
people search fro immediate and
simple causes.
*Causal strategies in problem
definition: see next page
*Uses of causal argument in
polis: see next page
portray an issue in a way that
emphasizes bads, losses and costs it
can more effectively harness
individual energies.
James Q. Wilson states that
diffusion of effects, whether costs
or benefits, inhibits mobilization,
whereas concentration fosters it.
*See chart next page.* The essential
idea is that the distribution of
costs and benefits in any program
determines the type of political
contest it engenders.
A large part of politics consists
in trying to influence how other
people perceive effects of policies
and proposals.
Good weak interests (collective,
diffused, broad, long-term,
spiritual, social, public, workers)
often get squeezed out by strong, bad
interests (individualistic,
concentrated, narrow, short-term,
material, economic, special,
capitalists).
Key point: There is no such thing
as an apolitical problem definition.
An analyst must see how the
definition defines interested parties
and stakes, how it allocates the
roles of bully and underdog, and how
a different definition would change
power relations.
Similar to
Similar to
Heifetz and LInsky: the experience of
change as loss provides an emotional
response.
CAUSAL STRATEGIES IN PROBLEM DEFINITION
1. Show that the problem is caused by an accident of nature
2. Show that a problem formerly interpreted as accident is
really the result of human agency.
3. Show that the effects of an action were secretly intended by
the actor.
4. Show that the low-probability effects of an action were
accepted as a calculated risk by the actor.
5. Show that the cause of the problem is so complex that only
large-scale policy changes at the social level can alter the
cause.
THE USES OF CAUSAL ARUGMENT IN THE POLIS
1. Challenge or protect an existing set of rules, institutions,
and interests.
2. Assign blame and responsibility for fixing a problem and
compensating victims.
3. Legitimize certain actors as “fixers” of the problem, giving
them new authority, power and resources.
4. Create new political alliances among people who perceive
themselves to be harmed by the problem.
CONCEPTS OF INTERESTS
SUBJECTIVE
OBJECTIVE
1. Those phenomena, social arrangements and
policies that people perceive as affecting them.
2. Actions or policies that affect people and that
the affected people understand as affecting them.
1. Things that affect people even if the affected
people are not aware of the effects.
2. The actions or policies that would serve people
best, given the objective effects and consequences
of those policies.
3. The things or policies that meet people’s
essential human needs.
4. The things or policies a person would want if he
or she had knowledge about all the alternatives and
were free to choose.
5. The things or policies that would increase the
well-being of an entire social class (class
interest.)
TYPES OF POLITICAL CONTESTS WITH EXAMPLES
BENEFITS
COSTS
Diffused
Concentrated
Diffused
Social Security
State mandated health
Homeowner mortgage
insurance benefits
deductions
Taxicab medallions
Veterans’ benefits
Concentrated
Food and drug
Union-management
regulation
bargaining
Environmental
Hospitals vs. health
regulation
insurance companies
Auto safety regulation Cable companies vs.
telecommunication
companies
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company, New York)
PART III: PROBLEMS
Ch. 10-Decisions
Key Concepts
In the polis, a Decision is a way to portray a problem by
controlling its boundaries, by choosing what counts as
problematic, how the phenomenon will be seen by others and
how others will respond to it.
Notes
Rational methods of decision making cast problems as a
choice between alternative means for achieving a goal and
rationality means simply choosing the best means to attain a
given goal.
Cost-benefit analysis: consists of tallying up the
negative and positive consequences of an action to see if the
net result is a gain or a loss.
Risk-benefit analysis (or risk analysis): tally up the
negative and positive consequences, but incorporate the
minuses with the likelihood of their negative effects as well
as the magnitude. This technique assumes that a bad result is
less bad if it is less likely to occur. The measure of
magnitude is expected value or expected cost.
Decision analysis: used to determine outcomes when there
is a great deal of uncertainty about the consequences of
actions or when there are trade-offs between different
consequences of the same action. Adopts point of view of a
single person and his/her estimates of the values and
probabilities of outcomes.
All three methods make the following assumptions:
1. Actions are to be evaluated by consequences, not by
principles of right or wrong, processes that produced them or
emotional appeal.
2. Decisional are made by specifying goals and means, and
then by evaluating different courses of action and choosing
the best one.
3. The best action can be found by a single criteria of the
“biggest. “
4. Uncertain consequences can be measured by multiplying
their likelihood times their magnitude.
5. The rational models are individualistic and present policy
problems as the calculus of a single mind.
In the polis:
Hobson’s choice: The author, speaker or politician offers
the audience an apparent choice, when in fact the very list
of options determines how people will choose by making only
one option seem like the only reasonable one.
Issue framing: focusing attention on a particular slice of
an extended causal chain.
Changing labels determines whether we are risk averse or
risk seeking.
Rational model concepts of abstract costs and benefits are
real losses and gains to real people in the polis.
**Decision analysis strategies of problem definition: see
next page.
Similar to
Differs from
DECISION-ANALYSIS STRATEGIES OF PROBLEM DEFINITION
RATIONAL-ANALYTICAL MODEL
POLIS MODEL
1. State goals and objectives
1. State goals ambiguously, and
explicitly and precisely.
possible keep some goals secret
or hidden.
2. Adhere to the same goal
2. Be prepared to shift goals
throughout the analysis and
and redefine goals as the
decision making process.
political situation dictates.
3. Try to imagine and consider
3. Keep undesirable
as many alternatives as
alternatives off the agenda by
possible.
not mentioning them.
Make your preferred alternative
appear to be the only feasible
or possible one.
Focus on one part of the causal
chain and ignore others that
would require politically
difficult or costly policy
actions.
4. Define each alternative
4. Use rhetorical devices to
clearly as a distinct course of blend alternatives; do not
action.
appear to make a clear decision
that could trigger strong
opposition.
5. Evaluate the costs and
5. Select from the infinite
benefits of each course of
range of consequences only
action as accurately and
those whose costs and benefits
completely as possible.
will make your preferred course
of action look best.
6. Choose the course of action
6. Choose the course of action
that will maximize total
that hurts powerful
welfare as defined by your
constituents the least, but
objective.
portray your decision as
creating maximum social good
for a broad public.
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
Key Concepts
SOLUTIONS are the forms of
authority government uses to
change behavior and policy.
Notes
Policy actions are really
ongoing strategies for
structuring relationships and
coordinating behavior to
achieve collective purposes.
The process of choosing and
implementing the means of
policy is political and
continuous.
Similar to
Differs from
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
Ch. 11-Inducements
Key Concepts
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
Ch. 12-Rules
Key Concepts
Inducements are rewards and
punishments or incentives and
sanctions used to change people’s
behavior. Based on the idea that
knowledge of a threatened penalty or
promised reward motivates people to
act differently than they might
otherwise choose.
Rules are commands to act or not act
in certain ways and they are
classifications of people and
situations that determine permissions
and entitlements. Formally they are
laws and regulations; informally they
are social customs and traditions,
family or small group norms, moral
rules or principles, and rules or
bylaws of associations.
Notes
Notes
Similar to
Similar to
Differs from
Differs from
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
Ch. 13-Facts
Key Concepts
Facts are strategies that rely
principally on persuasion.
2 Faces of Persuasion: a) a
rational ideal or reasoned and
informed decision, b)
propaganda and indoctrination.
Notes
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
Ch. 14-Rights
Key Concepts
Rights are strategies that
allow individuals or groups or
organizations to invoke
government power on their
behalf. They are relationships
the government will uphold.
Notes
Similar to
Similar to
Differs from
Differs from
Author
Author
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
Ch. 15-Powers
Key Concepts
Powers are strategies that
alter the content of decisions
by shifting decision making to
different people.
Constitutional engineering
reforms the decision making
process.
Deborah Stone
Title: Policy Paradox: The Art
of Political Decision Making
(2002 W.W. Norton & Company,
New York)
CONCLUSION:
Political Reason
Key Concepts
Notes
Notes
Similar to
Similar to
Reasoned analysis is necessarily
political.
The categories of thought behind
reasoned analysis are themselves
constructed in political struggle
and nonviolent political conflict
is conducted primarily through
reasoned analysis. Policy analysis
is political argument and vice
versa.
Differs from
Differs from