Public Policy in Canada
Allow me to be start this paper by commenting that prior to reading the Pal and Brook text I had a very limited amount of knowledge with respect to the Politics of Public Administration, Policy Analysis as a discipline and Public Policy. The reading of the text was at times difficult, however after detailing notes and reviewing the material at length it eventually made sense and began to fit together in the over view of my political science studies. In this paper, I will attempt to critic Leslie A. Pal's book, Beyond Policy Analysis while concentrating on the Rational Decision-Making Model and incorporate some of the thoughts presented in Stephen Brooks' book, Public Policy in Canada-An Introduction.For over fifty years the Rational Decision-Making Model has been at the heart of what people do when conducting policy analysis and for that same amount of time it has been criticized and challenged. (Pal, p. 20) The Rational Decision-Making Model has as its steps; an emphasis on determining goals, developing options, selecting & designing a preferred option, implementing and evaluating. Many of the criticisms of the Rational Decision-Making Model are come from critics both external and
ere was a multitude of program evaluating taking place. (Pal, pg. 24) Pal posses the question "Was all this program evaluating having an effect on the policy process?" He then presents Carol Weiss' conclusion from a series of studies conducted in the 1970's that: ".. the unforgiving strictures of ration-decision making were so unrealistic in terms of the cognitive and political situations faced by most decision makers that in fact they made choices by "muddling through" (pal, pg. 20) "... Reasoned analysis is necessarily political. It always involves choices to include some things and exclude others and to view the world in a particular way when other views are possible. Policy analysis is political argument and vise versa." horities to address a given problem or inter-related set of problems. Whereas, Thomas Dye (1984, p.1-as quoted in Pal p.4) calls it "whatever government chooses to do or not to do", Howards Lasswall (1951 p.5) calls it "the most important choices". The several definitions sited here all have choices as their key element. The Rational Decision-Making Model of is the model that must be used, even if generally, for each problem/choice before a response can be articulated to respond to that problem. "Policy or strategy is formulated consciously, preferably analytically and made explicit, and then implemented formally". (Mintzberg & Jorgensen, 1987, p.219) (Pal, p. 4.) mate true, especially when dealing with our huge government structure and the enormous speed in which globalization continuously changes economies and markets. Whereas Lindblom takes the incrementalism approach to policy analysis, Stone (1988), another internal critic, takes the postpositive approach. As set out in page 21 of Pal, Stone argues: internal to the discipline of policy analysis, with each having its own validity. To be able to understand the Rational Decision -Making Model and its usage in policy analysis I will begin by first putting for the definition and over view of what Policy Analysis is and then detailing each step of the Rational Decision-Making Model and the critics of it. methods of reasoning to create public policy is via the Rational Decision-Making Model.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Decision-Making Model, Policy Analysis, Despite Weiss', Public Policy, Health Care, Carol Weiss', Information Technologies, System PPBS, Charles Lindblom, Pal Stone, rational decision-making, decision-making model, policy analysis, rational decision-making model, public policy, pal pg, decision makers, public policy analysis, model critics, model decision, pal 26, decision maker, decision-making model critics, discipline policy analysis, public policy canada,
Approximate Word count = 1853
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
