How Policymakers Formulate Their Decisions

When it comes to implementing policies, it’s important to first understand the way in which decisions are actually made. Associate Professor Daniel Berliner, Course Convenor on the Public Policy Analysis online certificate course from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), suggests that a good starting point is comparing three different types of decisions – namely rational, incremental, and punctuated – and the various influences that shape them. 

Transcript

Have you ever wondered how policy stakeholders decide on what policies to implement? Why is one strategy chosen rather than another? Why do countries such as Germany and the United States address funding for higher education in such different ways? Or, why might two countries choose very different strategies to address illiteracy or poverty?

In order to understand this, we need to look in more detail at the decision-making stage of the policy cycle.

We will compare three different types of decisions: rational, incremental, and punctuated. Rational decision-making proceeds by clearly defining policy goals or objectives, assessing different possible means of achieving them, comprehensively gathering information and considering all relevant factors, and scientifically identifying the most appropriate policy choice for achieving the desired goals. This sounds like an obvious approach to decision-making, and usually what we would prefer policymakers to follow, and yet, this model is often not followed in practice.

The theory of rationality assumes that actors have perfect information and that they are able to identify all possible courses of action before making the choice that will maximise the benefits of a policy. The theory also assumes that stakeholders will be able to predict the outcomes of each possible policy choice in advance in order to make the ideal decision.

It is often more likely that individuals face resource constraints and imperfect information and thus make satisficing rather than maximising decisions.

The incremental decision-making model was developed in order to address this gap by placing more emphasis on the role of politics at this stage of the policy cycle. Charles Lindblom is credited with developing this model in the 1950s, incorporating some of Herbert Simon’s insights about bounded rationality. This theory emphasises the importance of political activities, such as bargaining and negotiation, over the rational analysis of different options. Incremental decision-making is usually shaped more by what is politically feasible, rather than by perfectly following a comprehensively rational process.

As a result of both cognitive and political constraints, policymakers build on the policy solutions that are already in place, which means that policy changes slowly and incrementally. There are also power dynamics built on the existing policy, which means that it may be easier to only incrementally change policy decisions, rather than trying to negotiate a massive change in the political and resource power dynamics.

A prominent theory that looks in more detail at rapid, large-scale policy changes is punctuated equilibrium theory, which was developed by Frank Baumgartner and Brian Jones. As in the incremental model, punctuated equilibrium theory recognises the importance of power in the policy process. But this model also highlights that these cognitive and political constraints on policy changes do not always result in a pattern of incremental policy changes. Instead, policies often remain stable and unchanging for long periods of time, followed by large, rapid changes that take place very suddenly. These are called punctuations.

In practice, the type of policy decision often varies a great deal depending on policy area and institutional context.