Philippe Zittoun

Analysing policy failure as an argumentative strategy in the policymaking process: A pragmatist perspective

The purpose of this article is to focus on policy failure as a concept that stakeholders use. Our article will first address how researchers define failure to explore some different dimensions of the concept. Second, we will highlight the political and subjective dimension relative to how policymakers use the concept of failure as critical judgement. Last, we will show that while failure is a critical judgement, it should not be overlooked by researchers seeking to understand the policy process. In this article, we argue that stakeholders’ production and use of critical judgement play a fundamental role in policymaking.

Debates in French policy studies: from cognitive to discursive approaches

Revisiting the emergence and structuring of a scientific discipline is undoubtedly a challenge, even if that discipline has been relatively recently established, as is the case with public policy analysis in France. A much more complete contribution on this area has been published recently by Leca and Muller (2008), but the purpose of our endeavor in these pages is different. We aim to highlight the main trends in public policy analysis in order to explain how, amongst these trends, some have lead to the current debate in which there are opposed two approaches that can be denoted ‘cognitive’ and ‘discursive’. Such a debate is potentially very enriching, but its grounds need to be clarified.

Discursive Approaches to Public Policy: Politics, Argumentation, and Deliberation

Over the last two decades, the so-called discursive paradigm has emerged in both Europe and the USA to analyze policy and grasp policy processes differently. Rejecting the dominance of rational choice theory and condemning the illusion of an objective knowledge for and on policy, this paradigm draws inspiration from the “linguistic turn” in philosophy and the social sciences and builds on constructivist perspectives in social inquiry. The “discursive” approach pays particular attention to the subjectivity of actors; the forms of knowledge these actors assemble; and, in particular, the multiple interpretations they deploy to create meaning. This chapter presents three aspects: the basic acknowledgment that policy is about political argumentation, that argumentation is a deep epistemological issue that changes mainstream objectivism, and that argumentation requires placing interpretation and emotion back into the research agenda.

Defining Solution: A Complex Bricolage to Solve Public Problems

While problems have given rise to numerous studies that have focused on the construction and definitional activities driven by actors, solutions have often been seen as neutral tools requiring no specific definitional activity. Moreover, literature on public policy has employed the term “definition” exclusively to tackle the problem agenda setting process. Authors have generally used the term “formulation” with regard to solutions (Jones, 1970). As a consequence, “to formulate” a solution primarily refers to finding a solution by resolving a problem, rather than defining it. While the concept of “formulation” presupposes a single, unique, and non-debatable meaning, that of definition presupposes varied interpretations. Finally, while “defining” a problem means acknowledging that problems have political implications, “formulating” solutions seems to be more neutral.

Introduction: The Political Process of Policymaking

Machiavelli’s advice to Lorenzo de’ Medici goes beyond the most conservative and traditional issues in political philosophy (Machiavelli, 2005)*. He does not restrict his reflections, unlike many authors who preceded and succeeded him, to the nature of Power or the forms that government must take. Nor does he indulge in what State or society should ideally be.

Policy Statements to Legitimise “Decision-Makers”

In the previous chapters, we have seen that actors define solution proposals within statements that give them meaning and build coalitions in order to support them. While this process makes it possible to understand how actors come together to defend a common proposal, it is insufficient in explaining how a solution is imposed and ultimately transformed into a decision. Certain proposals supported by coalitions and possessing “solid” arguments thus stagnate continuously without turning into “decisions”. Others encounter conflict or opposition, which relegates them to the cemetery of proposals that never see the light of day.

Creating Social Disorder: Constructing, Propagating and Policitising Social Problems

Before we discuss solution-making processes, we would like to begin by addressing problem agenda setting. We focus on agenda setting not only for what we learn concerning the problems stage, but also for what is revealed with regard to the pragmatic approaches used by sociologists and political scientists to understand how problems emerge. For this reason, we have chosen to begin this first chapter by discussing John Dewey’s influential work on pragmatic approaches to problems, The Public and its Problems (1927), before engaging in a brief synthesis of pragmatic studies on problem construction and problem agenda setting.

Propagating Solution: Argumentative Strategies to Cement Coalitions

Analysing language games in discourses “in action” makes it possible to understand how actors use discursive strategies to define policy solutions by assembling an instrument, problems, public policies, and/or values. Solution statements therefore take shape and meaning through the definitional activities we have previously described.

Conclusion: How Public Policy Shapes Politics

According to George Burdeau, politics is what love is to reproduction; a necessary enchantment that responds to an imperative, summoning neither sarcasm nor ridicule (Burdeau, 1979). In the path we have described, public policymaking appears as a necessary political activity which enchants the world by showing that social problems are soluble; that culprits will be punished; that public policies are in place; and that those in authority have the power to decide. Public policymaking thus proposes to restore order that problems, conflicts, and all sorts of disillusions have disordered. As Julien Freund explained, public policymaking is a political activity which reconciles the antinomial dialectics of order and disorder, agreement and conflict, enchantment and disillusionment.