PPA 503 – The Public
Policy Making Process
Lecture 4a – Problem Definition
Introduction
• Problem definition has to do with what we
choose to identify as public issues and how we
think and talk about these concerns.
• In recent years, problem definition has acquired
increasing importance in the study of public
policymaking along two often separate tracks.
– First, researchers interested in the appearance of
new issues have investigated how the description of a
given social problem can affect its rise and decline
before government.
– Second, public policy specialists working in diverse
fields have linked such descriptions to the solutions
that government devises.
Introduction
• E.E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign
People, 1960.
– August 1943: a fight in a Harlem hotel lobby between
a black soldier and a white policeman quickly
escalated. Rumors about the conflict spread
throughout the community and angry crowds
gathered around the police station, in front of the
hotel, and elsewhere. Violence soon erupted and
hundreds subsequently were hurt.
– For Schattschneider, this incident illustrated how a
conflict can quickly expand beyond those immediate
involved and how the original contestants maintain
little control over such a struggle once it develops.
Introduction
• Rodney King riots (1992).
– March 3, 1991, a black man, Rodney King was stopped by city
police after a high-speed case. Did not respond to commands to
acquiesce and was beaten severely.
– Incident videotaped and released to the media.
– Charges brought against four policeman who were tried in Simi
Valley, California, a predominantly white community.
– Assumed guilty because of videotape, but jury returned verdicts
of “not guilty”.
– Violence broke out in South Central LA. National Guard called
four days later. 44 dead, 2,000 hurt and property damage of $1
billion.
Introduction
• Competing problem definitions of riots.
– Primary figures blamed.
• Nonblack jury verdict.
• Slow response of Police Chief and Police Department.
• Inflammatory remarks by Mayor Bradley.
– Ethnicity.
• Blacks blamed for taking justice into their own hands.
• Some blamed Mexican-American community.
– Law and order.
• Fine line between protesting injustice and behaving irresponsibly.
– Partisan criticism.
• President Bush blamed failed programs of Great Society.
• Candidate Clinton blamed Republican’s neglect of race relations, urban
programs, and domestic social policy.
– Poverty of values.
• Dan Quayle: Riots related to breakdown of family structure, personal
responsibility, and social order. Led by TV: Murphy Brown.
Introduction
• At the nexus of politics and policy development lies
persistent conflict over where problems come from and,
based on the answer to this questions, what kinds of
solutions should be attempted.
– If you focus on racial and economic inequality as the cause of
the riots, solutions include social justice measures and economic
and educational opportunities.
– If you focus on police inability to control order, you improve
police management, training, and hiring.
– Every retrospective analysis in problem definition is also a look
ahead and an implicit argument about what government should
be doing next.
Introduction
• Problem definition is about much more than just
finding someone or something to blame.
• Further disputes can surround a situation’s
perceived social significance, meaning,
implications, and urgency.
• By dramatizing or downplaying a problem and
by declaring what’s at stake, these descriptions
help to push an issue onto the front burners of
policymaking or result in official’s stubborn
inaction or neglect.
Introduction
• In part, government action is a result of
institutional structure and formal and informal
procedures.
• Partisan balance of power will also affect
decision-making.
• But, public policymaking can also be understood
as a function of the perceived nature of the
problems being dealt with, and the qualities that
define this nature are never incontestable.
Introduction
• The defining process takes place in a variety of
ways.
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Cultural values.
Interest group advocacy.
Scientific information.
Professional advice.
Focusing events.
• Some definitions remain long-term fixtures;
some undergo constant revision or are replaced
by competing definitions.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• Contemporary policy analysis is multidisciplinary in its
techniques and orientation, and perhaps nowhere more
so than in problem definition.
• Social Conflict and Politics.
– Schattschneider (1960) underscored the importance of social
conflict for political life.
– “At the nub of politics are, first, the way in which the public
participates in the spread of conflict and, second, the processes
by which the unstable relation of the public to the conflict is
controlled.
– A conflict’s outcome depends directly on the number of people
who become involved in it. It is always in the interest of the
weaker party to expand involvement by recruiting new
participants to its support. Whoever controls the expansion, by
accelerating or limiting it, gains the political upper hand.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• Social conflict and politics (contd.).
– The entry of new participants is not random. The initially
uninterested enter the conflict in response to the ways
participants portray their struggle. “The definition of alternatives
is the supreme instrument of power.”
– Three levels of political conflict (Baumgartner 1989):
• Whether a problem exists;
• What the best solution is; and
• What the best means of implementation are.
– In political conflict, then, issue definition and redefinition can
serve as tools used by opposing sides to gain advantage.
• To restrict participation, issues may be defined in procedural or
narrow technical terms.
• To broaden participation, issues may be connected to sweeping
social themes, such as justice, democracy, and liberty.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• The social construction of reality.
– The actors involved in the problem-naming process
are called “claims-makers”, (or stakeholders).
– Claims-makers both identify social problems and
typify them by characterizing their nature:
• Advancing a particular moral, criminal, political, or other
orientation.
• Seizing upon representative examples.
– An orientation locates the problem’s cause and
recommends a solution.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• The social construction of reality (contd.).
– Individuals, groups, and societies tend to place
interpretations upon reality – interpretations which
may or may not be true in an absolute sense.
– When applied to the study of social issues, this
perspective emphasizes the distinction between
“objective conditions” and the definition of some
conditions as “problems.”
– The definition of a problem is time, place, and context
bound.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• Social construction of reality (contd.).
– Some ambiguity as to the precise agency of meaning
investment.
• Reflection theory describes the construction as a direct
representation of beliefs, values, and sentiments that are
prevalent in the social psyche.
• Hypodermic theory locates responsibility with particular
powerful political and cultural leaders who impose their
stance on others, thereby achieving an ideological
hegemony.
• A complex open contest involving a wide range of players
who are constrained by shifts in the site of decision-making
as well as accidents of history.
– Criticism: insufficient concern with the impact of
institutional forces.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• Postmodernism.
– Intellectual style concerned with examining
the unquestioned value assumptions
embodied in culture and society.
– Primary method of analysis is deconstruction,
a way of revealing hidden differences and
contradictions within a seemingly unified
whole.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• Postmodernism.
– Applications to problem definition.
• Rejects the notion of impartial rationality and
disputes ideological neutrality.
• Policy becomes a series of conclusions, choices,
and rejections of alternatives that are assembled to
compose a constructed reality.
• Rhetoric is key to the process by which decisions
are justified, promoted, and even placed beyond
questioning.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• A “political” policy analysis.
– Definitions.
• Technical: policy analysis consists of a set of
logical steps for diagnosing problems and devising
cost-effective solutions
• Political: An explicitly political analysis of public
policy making attempts to relate governmental
process and result to the contest of perspectives
among the multiple stakeholders to the problematic
situation.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• A “political” policy analysis (contd.).
– View social problems in terms of a career wherein a
problem first emerges, next gains attention and
legitimacy, and then receives official programmatic
response. With several transitions providing potential
obstacles, successful completion of the career is not
assured.
– Expansion of participation and the characteristics of
the issue can both help determine which issues gain
access to the agenda of society and government.
– Opponents can keep issues off through successful
argumentation against these points.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• A “political” policy analysis (contd.)..
– How an issue is defined and redefined influences.
• The type of politicking that will ensue;
• Its chances of reaching the agenda of a particular institution.
• The probability of a policy outcome favorable to advocates of
the issue.
– Different public arenas have different selection
principles that are satisfied by different problem
definitions.
– The connection between problem definition and
institutional process in this framework is interactive:
rhetoric changes produce venue changes and vice
versa.
Converging Perspectives on
Problem Definition
• A “political” policy analysis (contd.).
– The uses of language are crucial to the political
analysis of public policy making and problem
definition.
• Language can promote or undermine particular definitions of
the problem.
– Four prominent forms of language and symbolic
expression.
• Stories, which provide explanations.
• Synecdoches, in which parts of things are said to depict the
whole.
• Metaphors, which claim likenesses between things.
• Ambiguity, in which multiple meanings are evoked
simultaneously.
Multiplication of Meanings –
Division of Support
• General and phenomenal realities.
– The former refers to the actual bases of
reality.
– The latter to the constellation of feelings,
thoughts, and perceptions that make up
constructed reality.
– The latter is most appropriate to problem
identification.
Multiplication of Meanings –
Division of Support
• The complexity of social reality.
Multiplication of Meanings –
Division of Support
• No one correct way. The world works in all of these ways
all of the time.
• Emphasis – The choice of which cause to emphasize is
a main determinant of differences in problem definition.
• Level of analysis – Where on the continuum from
microindividual behavior to macrosocial forces does the
analyst focus? The 1992 LA Riots a perfect example.
• Measurement – No two analysts will approach the task
of gauging a social problem’s magnitude, rate of change,
or distribution in quite the same way. Political
measurement is more like poetry than science.
• Interconnections – Reactions to an issue can depend on
its perceived relationship to other issues of importance to
the observer.
Multiplication of Meanings –
Division of Support
• The struggle for problem ownership.
– One aspect of problem ownership is the domination of
the way that a social concern is thought of acted upon
in the public arena. Also refers to jurisdictional
control.
– Some problem areas dominated by a community of
operatives that advances the theories and data on
which policies are based. If unchallenged, evidence
of ownership.
– Multiple competing definitions produce struggle over
ownership.
The Rhetoric of Problem Definition
and Its Policymaking Consequences.
• Causality.
– The way a problem is defined invariably entails some
statement about its origins. Individual or impersonal
causes, for example. Intentional and accidental.
– A decision about causality forms the linchpin of a
whole set of interdependent propositions.
– Simple versus complex causality.
– Television: episodic versus thematic. Government
held responsible in the latter, but not the former.
The Rhetoric of Problem Definition
and Its Policymaking Consequences.
• Severity.
– How serious a problem and its consequences are
taken to be. Element pivotal to gaining attention.
– When should labels be applied: “recession”.
• Incidence.
– Perceptions of the frequency and prevalence of a
situation.
• Novelty.
– When an issue is described as novel, unprecedented,
or trailblazing, it can win attention, but it can also
undermine consensus.
The Rhetoric of Problem Definition
and Its Policymaking Consequences.
• Crisis.
– A special condition of severity where corrective action is long overdue
and dire circumstances exist.
– One of the most used terms in the political lexicon.
– The “rhetoric” of calamity.
• Problem populations.
– Afflicted groups and individuals also given definition.
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Worthy or unworthy, deserving or undeserving.
Culpability.
Familiar or strange.
Sympathetic or threatening.
– Four types of socially constructed target populations.
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Advantaged groups – powerful and positively constructed.
Contenders – powerful, and negatively constructed.
Dependents – Weak, and positively constructed.
Deviants – Weak and negatively constructed.
The Rhetoric of Problem Definition
and Its Policymaking Consequences.
• Instrumental versus expressive orientations.
– Ends versus means.
• Solutions.
– The debate over problem definition also extends to
descriptions of the solutions.
– Sometimes solutions determine problem definitions.
– Solutions also predispose the identification of causes.
– Key is solution consensus.
– Key is solution availability.
– Key is solution acceptability.
– Key is solution affordability.