INTRODUCTION
it is
The writings of Scotta and Shore, Horowitz, and Tribe provide a more
detailed picture of the emergence of policy science. A group of converging
factors, such as war, poverty, crime, race relations, and pollution are seen to be
responsible for producing a great interest in policy science vis-a-vis
governments in the late 1960s. Brooks therefore adds: Policy science is the
most recent and certainly the most explicit, manifestation of this quest for an
independent vantage point, above the political fray, affording objective criteria
upon which policy decisions can be made5.
The study of public policy thus, prepares and helps us to cope better
with the future. It improves our knowledge about the society and their needs.
developed
countries,
policy
analysis
has
been
However, as Gibson Winter has pointed out this is not the case in
developing countries and therefore the depth of this kind of study in countries
like India? For example if we take a look at the Dictionary of Public
Administration it defines policy analysis as a systematic and data-based
alternative to intuitive judgments about the effects of policy or public options7.
It uses further the following instruments of assessment and monitoring, decision
tool and the process called evaluation, to measure public policy.
From Lass well to Dror to the present, the central idea in policy science is
that it entails a theory of choice for development and an approach to the
Future Shock11. The future requires new policies and choices. What is trivial
today may be of colossal importance in a future decade. We can understand the
future by extrapolation of the present trends.
projecting some key social trends into the future. Our collection of data for
these purposes my include changes in population growth rates, education,
public health and the like. We can carry the process further by forecasting what
these projections might look like in a decade. People cannot avoid being
concerned with the consequences of public policy. As Gibson Winter observes;
the problem of policy is ultimately how the future is grasped and appraised. The
essential meaning of responsibility is accountability in human fulfillment in
shaping of the societys future12.
Further, the study of public policy is of vital importance for the present
to tune the future. It deals with the definition of a policy problem. The
definition of a problem that may generate more conflict then consensus. In
policy making, political power tends to impose upon the definitions of a
problem. In this context Schatt Schneider says; He who determines what
politics is about runs the country, because the definition of alternatives is the
choice of conflicts, and the choice of conflicts allocates power. Thus, present
policy making can be thought of as problem solving behavior, realizing that the
definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power that may in
future bring about the space needed for the development process to achieve the
goal set for it from time to time.
of
technology,
social
organization,
industrialization
and
urbanization are focusing their attention to fulfill the demands that emanate
from them. At present the functions of practically all governments, especially of
the developing countries, have significantly increased in manifolds. They are
now concerned with the more complex functions of nation building and socio
economic progress. Today the government is not merely the keeper of peace,
the arbiter of disputes, and the provider of common goods and day to day
services. For better or worse, government has, directly or indirectly, become the
principal invocator, the major determiner of social and economic programmes
and the main financer as well as the main guarantor of large scale enterprises
that ensures that the process of development traverses without hindrances to
achieve the goals desired by the Governments.
10
Michael Teitz on the other hand describes the outreach of public policy
in terms of the citizens life cycle: Modern urban man is born in a publicly
financed hospital receives his education in a publicly supported school and
university, spends a good part of his time traveling on publicly built
transportation facilities, communicates through the post office or the quasi
public telephone system, drinks his public drinking water, disposes of his
garbage through the public removal system, reads his library books, in public
library picnics in
health system, eventually, he dies, again in a public hospital and may even be
buried in a public cemetery. Ideological conservatives notwithstanding, his
everyday life is inextricably bound up with government decisions on these and
numerous other public services14.
The line of argument developed here is that all of us are greatly affected
by the myriad public policies in our everyday lives. The range of public policy
11
is vast: from the vital to the trivial. Today public policies may deal with such
substantive areas as defense, environment protection, medical care and health,
education, housing, taxation, inflation, science and technology, and so on. The
expanding sphere of public policy is reflected in the plan documents such as of
the Planning Commission of India etc, and the scientific study of the same at
the state level and its understanding in terms of its implications as a process of
development in the newly (experimented) formed coalition government in
Karnataka ** forms the scope of this study.
12
13
14
special central/State policy units to carry out the work of policy formulation
and policy analysis, to ensure the fact that there is some amount of continuity
in the policies formulated and implemented by the democratically elected
governments in view of planned development, while there remains scope to
include or exclude a programme or programmes under the canopy of such
policy in order to reach out the developmental goals of a new government
which is democratically elected.
15
That the
feedback will be enough for the central policy cluster to provide evaluation and
control and that, on the basis of such an evaluation, adjustments and revisions
will be made on the policies and plans. These four aspects viz., implementation,
reporting reviewing and readjustment are interdependent, and must be treated as
whole. In brief, it must be emphasized that policy making, planning and
budgeting should be approached as an integrated whole to control government
performance and there by measure the scope for continuity/change of a policy
for development therefore the need for the study of policies and the relevance
of understanding it. In this sense one can clearly conclude to state that the
Development process as it unfolds invariably exposes the government
preferences to continue or change the policies that previously existed and thus
makes the study socially relevant and academically innovative.
16
the problems of society. It brings out the factual data and enables those at the
help of affairs of government to find alternation in decision making. Although
the objectives of research explained above are manifold, it is important to note
that these objectives vary from one research subject to the other. In this sense,
the objectives of this particular research in five fold;
A sincere effort is made to figure out these taking few policy issues of
common concern under the coalition government of Karnataka.
Survey of Literature
17
Y. Dror and most writers on the subject seem to agree on the fact that
policy science constitutes an interdisciplinary approach which is concerned
mainly with improving the policy process through the use of systematic
knowledge, structural rationality, and organized activity. What Dror emphasizes
is that the policy science is not directly concerned with the substantive contents
of discrete policy problems but rather with improved methods of knowledge,
and systems for better policy-making. In a similar way, Lass Well also stresses
the knowledge of the decision process implies systematic and empirical studies
of how policies are made and put into effect to get the desired development,
While most authors on the subject seem to agree on the basic aims of policy
science, they generally do not provide an operational definition of the concept
due to the cross disciplinary nature of knowledge involved in the formulation,
implementation and evaluation of policy issues. Its boundaries are not precisely
delineated.16 They cut across such disciplines as sociology, psychology,
political science, public administration, management science, etc. on the other
hand
Some writers on the subject argue that policy science, like physics and
18
that policy science constitute a breach in the solid wall separating contemporary
sciences from ethics and philosophy of values, and should build up an
operational theory of values including value morphology, taxonomy,
measurement, etc (but not the substantive norms themselves) as part of policy
science.17 The empirical aspect to policy science is stressed by Lass well thus:
to insist on the empirical criterion is to specify that general assertions are
subject to the discipline of careful observation. This is a fundamental
distinction between science and non-science. 18
19
In all sum, policy science can have an influence upon the political
agenda of Development through sensitizing both policy makers and the mass of
people. Nagel and others also argues that policy analysis provides new insights
and enables policy makers to make better informed choices and by implication
better policy.21 Stokey and Zeckhauser also declare that no sensible policy
choice can be made without careful analysis of the advantages and
disadvantages of each course of action.22 Dror, in fact being the most forceful
advocate of policy sciences, argues that the maturation of policy science would
effect the state of knowledge in three ways: It would lead to bringing the gap
between basic and applied research through a synergic relationship between
normal science and policy science. With the emergence of policy scientist, a
specialist in general approach and method, the dichotomy between specialist
and generalist would be irrelevant; and Interdisciplinary in policy research
would finally give way to supra-disciplinary, in consequence of: (a)
20
individualism,
efficiency
and
maximized
production.
21
intended to afford these analysts objective criteria upon which policy decisions
can be made.25
22
23
24
35
25
explored area, more so, when there is an attempt to relate is with coalition
government under these circumstance one can confidently argue that this
research will contribute chicly to the existing literature and that thee is enough
scope for further research in this area.
Hypotheses
26
Methodology
27
therefore is a challenge to this kind of study and this could well turn out to be
its limitation also. Yet the object is to develop general theories about public
policy that are reliable, and that apply to different governmental agencies and
different policy areas. Policy analysts clearly prefer to develop explanations
that fit more than one policy decision or case study explanations that stand up
over a time in a variety of settings.
i)
28
ii)
iii)
iv)
29
disciplinary subject it is
Sociology, political science, and other social and even natural sciences. As
Eugene Bardach observes; unlike most social science research, most policy
research is derivative rather than original. That is, it is produced by creative
play with ideas and data already developed by other. Hence in this study it is
proposed employ documentary analysis besides those mentioned earlier as a
primary method and to strengthen it though the case studies method involving
some specific and some general policies that have been experimented and
evaluated to measure the change or continuity of such policies in the short term
coalition that Karnataka Government has had reinforcing such study through
interviews* wherever possible only helps us to format the study in its fullness.
This of course is the proposed methodology employed in this study. It is not to
state that this kind of maiden study is not without its limitations. As a
researcher, this awareness is with me and an attempt is made to overcome it
here.
Chapterisation
30
Thus the pattern chosen to present the research out put is provided here
to the reader to enable a fuller understanding of the subject chosen for research.
End Notes:
31
10
Development Process.
11
12
13
F.Cortses and others, Systems Analysis for Social Scientists New York:
Wiley, 1974, p.11
14
32
**
government formed by JD(S) and BJP during the period headed by Sri.
Kumaraswamy as the Chief Minister.
*
Because, mostly political parties in India plan and wish to execute them
during their regime and when there is a change for any political reason it
is unlikely that such policies/programmes of the previous
governments
16
18
19
20
21
Herbert Simon, Madels of man: Social and Ratioinal (New Yorki: John
Wiley, 1957), p.198.
22
23
24
33
26
27
28
Ibid., p. 105
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., p.106
31
Ibid., p.105
32
Brian Hog wood and Lewis Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World
(Oxford: Oxford University press, 1984),p.6.
33
James E.Anderson, Public Policy Making, 3rd edition (New York: Holt
Rinehart, 1984),p.19
34
35
36
34