Institutions and Policy Making: A Cultural Approach, Schemes and Mind Maps of Social policy

Download Institutions and Policy Making: A Cultural Approach and more Schemes and Mind Maps Social policy in PDF only on Docsity! The New Institutionalism and Irish Social Policy Kieran Healy1 Princeton University January 1998 1Address: Department of Sociology, 2–N–2 Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544–1010. Email at kjhealy@princeton.edu. Thanks to Frank Dobbin and Seán Healy for helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. This paper appears as Chapter 3 in Seán Healy and Brigid Reynolds (eds), Social Policy in Ireland: Principles, Practice and Problems, Dublin: Oak Tree Press, 1998. 1 Introduction Debate about policy making in Ireland has taken a distinctly institutional turn in recent years. Arguments about this particular change or that specific development have given way to broader questions about how policy actually gets made, and by whom. This change can be traced to the emergence of a distinctive ‘social partnership’ approach in the late 1980s. The extended debate over what that term should mean has put the relationships, rules and assumptions of the policy making process under close scrutiny (see, for example, NESF 1998). This chapter reviews and discusses contemporary work in political so- ciology that bears directly on this issue. Known broadly as the ‘new in- stitutionalism,’ it focuses on the role of state and societal institutions in the creation and implementation of policy. The argument has two strands. First, research into policy conflicts shows that the strategies, bargaining power and participation of interest groups are strongly affected by the insti- tutional context, often regardless of the power that particular groups may have. Call this the regulatory view of institutions. Research in this vein speaks against the claim that success in political struggles is a simple func- tion of a group’s power, strength or support. Second, it is also possible to show that preferences and goals are strongly shaped by institutions. Call this the constitutive view. Research here examines the role institutions play in limiting the range of policies we consider and legitimating the set of poli- cies we implement. It speaks against the claim that policy making is a rational, even–handed process. Both strands describe potentially invidious tendencies within the policy making process, and alert policy makers to easily missed or taken-for-granted aspects of that process which deserve to be explicitly analysed. There are many links and overlaps between regulatory and cultural approaches, and I separate them here simply for ease of presentation. In the following sections, I examine the different aspects of each one in more detail, drawing on the available literature. Where appropriate, I point to examples and applications of these ideas in the Irish case. 4 problems, policy–making institutions are seen as recalcitrant objects that benefit some players more than others. ‘In this perspective,’ says Theda Skocpol, ‘states matter not simply because of the goal–oriented activi- ties of state officials. They matter because their organizational configurations, along with their overall patterns of activity, en- courage some kinds of group formation and collective political actions (but not others), and make possible the raising of cer- tain political issues (but not others).’ (Skocpol 1985: 21) Although writers in this tradition share a commitment to understanding policy conflicts and their outcomes with reference to the active role of the state, their approach to institutions varies. I make a broad distinction be- tween those who see institutions primarily as rules or constraints on the one hand, and those who see them as cultural products or cognitive structures on the other. The former argue that the rules of politics are themselves highly political. Rather than simply facilitating interest group or party competition, the rules of parliamentary procedure, departmental organisa- tion or collective bargaining affect the strategies adopted by different parties, enhance or diminish their bargaining power and shape patterns of partici- pation and exclusion. Comparative studies from this literature show how an institutional analysis can explain the differing strategies and success rates of otherwise similar interest groups. Persistent policy continuities within countries (and differences between them) also become understandable from this perspective. Cultural approaches take a slightly different tack, probing more deeply into the long–term impact of institutions and policy making on individual and group behaviour. The day–to–day reality of abstract rules is to be found in the taken–for–granted routines and understandings of those who work within them. Institutions therefore have an important cognitive component. Institutions tend to live longer than the people who make them up, which means they provide a ready–made environment within which discussion over policy takes place. As such, they tend to create cognitive commitments in 5 the minds of policy makers (Starr 1987). Institutions carry the criteria which people use to assess a policy’s success, or the procedures for assessing alternatives to it, or the methods for implementing decisions that flow from it. Any of these may become so taken–for–granted that they appear to be the only rational way of doing things. This in turn affects the range of alternatives that may be presented as ‘realistic’ possibilities. Institutions provide an array of practices, categories, models and scripts which tend to be accepted as logically necessary, rational and natural, rather than historically contingent, symbolically legitimated and socially constructed (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Institutions as Rules and Constraints Let us first examine the regulatory view. In recent years, a series of political scandals and legislative episodes have made ‘levelling the playing field’ a rather hackneyed expression in Irish political life. The cliché contains a (proverbial) grain of truth, however. Ideally, in any competition both the arena and the rules should be neutral with respect to the outcome of the game. If we take this competitive metaphor seriously, then our institutions should serve to facilitate policy making without doing anything to influence its outcome. Political institutions do not generally attain this sort of neutrality, and it is not hard to see why. Peter Hall defines institutions as ‘the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that struc- ture the relationship between individuals in various parts of the polity and economy. . . they have a more formal status than cultural norms but one that does not necessarily derive from legal, as opposed to conventional standing’ (Hall 1986: 19). On this definition, the institutional context includes ‘the rules of electoral competition, the structure of party systems, the relations amongst the various branches of government, and the structure and organi- zation of economic actors like trade unions’ (Thelen and Steinmo 1992: 2). There are then three broad ways in which institutions tend to influence polit- ical outcomes: they affect the strategies adopted by players, they distribute 6 bargaining power in unequal ways and they rule in advance on the criteria for participation in the policy–making process. Strategies We can assume for the moment that actors — political parties, interest groups, and so on — know what their goals are. (I return to this assumption below.) Trade unions seek wage increases for their members; employer asso- ciations want strike–free workplaces; political parties want special treatment for their supporters, and so on. The way these groups go about securing these goals will be affected by the institutional structure that they operate within. In the simplest cases, differences in institutional design will merely shift the location of conflicts that would have happened anyway, without altering their substance or outcome. However, more interesting are those cases where the character, outcome and long–term influence of particular conflicts will vary along with their institutional expressions. For example, Linz (1994) offers a subtle analysis of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of pres- idential and parliamentary systems. He argues that the different systems strongly influence the character of many aspects of political life, including the tendency to political polarisation (higher in presidential systems) and the stability of cabinets (higher in parliamentary systems). Similarly, Hat- tam (1993) has shown how the constitutionally guaranteed power of the Supreme Court in the United States forced the American labour movement to move away from attempts to pass general labour laws and towards a more sectional strategy built around pressuring specific firms or industries. Realising the institutional problem, one union leader declared in 1894: ‘You cannot pass a general eight hour day without changing the constitution of the United States and the constitution of every state in the Union. . . I am opposed to wasting our time declaring for legislation being enacted for a time, possibly, after we are dead’ (Adolph Strasser, quoted in Mann 1993: 656) In this case, the general conflict between capital and labour was significantly 9 cian in Immergut’s (1992a) study. This sort of frustration is very common: much the same comment might be made about the Irish tax or social welfare systems. The name for this phenomenon is path dependence. Later events in the sequence of institutional development depend on earlier ones. Stephen Krasner puts the point nicely: ‘once an historical choice is made it both precludes and facilitates alternative future choices. Political change follows a branching model. Once a particular fork is chosen, it is very difficult to get back on a rejected path. . . Thus, even if there is widespread societal dissatisfaction with a particular set of institutions. . . the variable costs of maintaining the existing institutions may be less than the total costs of creating and maintaining new ones.’ (Krasner 1984: 225; 235) Institutions escape the intentions of their designers, persist over time and are used and adapted in ad hoc ways that may work against any ten- dency towards efficiency in the long run. It is usually impossible to rework arrangements from the ground up. Groups locked out of a process early on will probably find it very difficult to get involved later. Instead, actors are forced to use whatever is available in circumstances that might be very unsatisfactory. The path–dependent nature of institutions means that they can deci- sively shape the conditions for political conflict and negotiation. A group’s strategic options can be narrowed to nothing, or its bargaining power re- duced to zero. Thelen and Steinmo (1992: 9) note that ‘reconfiguring in- stitutions can save political actors the trouble of fighting the same battle again and again.’ Political actors are generally well–aware of this: it is the reason why gerrymandering is so attractive and conflicts over constituency boundaries so hard–fought. But more is involved here than just the power to disenfranchise voters, or the outright denial of representation at a negoti- ating table. Manipulating the electoral system is a particularly obvious way to secure control over government, but the administrative apparatus of the state allows other institutional victories to be won in less obvious (though 10 no less important) areas. Policy making institutions necessarily incorporate assumptions about who properly represents whom, who deserves to be represented and on what terms. Although these institutions come about in haphazard or even acci- dental ways, once in place they tend to assume a solidity and inevitability of their own. Morrissey’s (1986) account of the emergence of a tripartite system of wage bargaining in Ireland during the 1960s shows that a number of alternatives were possible, given the attitudes and organisation of the State, the ICTU and the FUE. These actors were often unsure of what the right framework would look like, or even whether collective bargaining was a good idea at all. But despite this initial uncertainty, once in place these institutions affected both the motivation and the ability of policy makers to question whether the needs of different groups — women, the poor or the unemployed, for example — were being adequately dealt with. Institutions as Culture and Cognition Most writers in the regulatory tradition treat interest groups as stable enti- ties with well–defined (though often frustrated) goals. Faced with an insti- tutional obstacle course, they do the best they can to implement their goals and pursue their interests. However, the fact that practices and assumptions become entrenched over time means that the relationship between individ- uals and institutions must be more complicated than this. The relatively permanent, naturalised setting provided by institutions affects how individ- uals think and make decisions (Douglas 1986). Just as we to not choose our native language, we take the institutional environment as we find it, an apparently natural medium for policy making and interest representation. This has implications for our understanding of interest groups and their preferences and goals: ‘Once one opens the door. . . to historicity, power, and cross– cultural variation in the interpretation of information, it is a fairly small step from the regulatory view of institutions. . . to 11 the constitutive one’ (DiMaggio 1994: 38). Our own institutions of government and administration present them- selves to us as rational entities, designed by individuals for the satisfaction of collective goals. Getting past this self–image can be difficult. The sym- bolic and ritual aspects of other societies are often obvious, but we are unaccustomed to thinking of ourselves in these terms.2 DiMaggio (1994: 33) notes that ‘the more that Westerners view a country’s citizens are “differ- ent” from themselves, the more likely they are to deploy “culture” to explain their behavior’. In the following sections, I discuss three aspects of cultural approaches to policy making: the study of cognitive commitments, the con- struction of preferences, and the role of ritual and symbols in the legitimation of practices and decisions. Cognitive commitments Recent work in the sociology of culture has concentrated on the cognitive processes and practical actions of individuals and groups.3 This is in contrast to the tendency to see culture as a set of norms or values, passively acquired through socialisation, which constrain actors in various ways. Rather than constraining otherwise rational actors, aspects of culture form the basis for judgement and analysis. This throws the nature and influence of institutions into a new light. We have already seen how institutions are resistant to change. This persistence may be explained by reference to the physical sunk costs of investment, administration or technology. However, ‘these are not the only, or the most important, factors. Insti- tutionalized arrangements are reproduced because individuals 2This is particularly true for those institutions that explicitly deny that they have any cultural aspects: formal organisations, legal institutions, science and so on. This division into instrumental and non–instrumental action and institutions has long been replicated in sociological research. For a critique see Dobbin (1994). 3‘Although cognition sometimes refers to the full range of mental activity, we follow current usage in distinguishing between cognition, on the one hand, and affective or evalu- ative processes on the other. By cognition we refer to both reasoning and the pre–conscious grounds of reasoning: classifications, representation, scripts, schemas, production systems, and the like.’ (DiMaggio and Powell 1991: 35. Emphasis in original.) 14 Carter administration into its ill–fated credit controls’ (Starr 1987: 56). Preferences and goals We are now in a position to examine the origin of preferences and goals, or at least one important aspect of it. It should be clear by now that interest groups are not simply ‘out there’ waiting to be recognised or discovered. Classification by the state or other organisations can certainly hide or elim- inate groups in society, but it may also create entirely new ones. Racial classifications provide a good example. Starr (1992) describes the disap- pearance of mulattoes as a social category in the United States. Recognised legally and socially as a distinctive group in the early part of the 19th cen- tury, they became more subject to political attacks with the approach of the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, dominant whites had ceased to make a distinction between lighter and darker skinned black peo- ple. So had the individuals themselves, as they came to see themselves as black. Although nothing about the pigmentation of particular indiviudals changed, the reordering of their classification was tied up with a reorgan- isation of their social and political interests. The process worked in both directions: Ignatiev (1995) describes ‘how the Irish became white’ in the U.S. at around the same time as mulattoes were becoming black. Examples such as this make it clear that socially contructed categories may have enormous impacts on the outlook, interests and life–chances of particular individuals. It is not difficult to think of other institutional clas- sifications that have exercised a similar force. The condition of illegitimacy, for instance, is no longer recognised in Irish law. At its height, however, people falling into this category found that their social and economic oppor- tunities and interests were significantly influenced by it. Prior to the divorce referendum, the same was true for those classed as legally separated. None of these categories are in any way natural, and none of them arise from pre–constituted interest groups. Rather, the reverse is true: institutions create categories of people who then go about defining their interests (such as demanding the right to divorce). 15 As mentioned already, these phenomena are easier to grasp when we look at others or at our past selves. There is a strong temptation to believe that now we have happened upon the ideal, rational scheme. But the evidence does not bear this out. All sorts of institutional categories have come and gone, despite their apparently enduring — even sacred — quality at any given moment. Historians often catch the strangeness of dead categories, though they tend not to push their the implications of this through to the present. For example, Lee (1989: 341–365; 540–643) gives a perceptive ac- count of policy making in Ireland since the foundation of the state. He is sensitive to the hold that particular measures of progress had over the minds of civil servants. He sardonically dissects the policy contributions of those civil servants in the grip of ‘the Finance view’ of the world. The catalogue of abuse he presents from one such Department of Finance report makes sorry reading, especially given that the authors assumed they were engaged in ‘judicial and scientific’ analysis (ibid: 564–5).4 Lee argues that the Pro- gramme for Economic Expansion was the first policy document to break out of the ‘strait jacket of the balance of payments,’ which had hitherto acted as a yardstick for the health of the Irish economy (ibid: 346). Framing his discussion in terms of ‘the quality of the official mind’ Lee very accurately describes the depth of cognitive and emotional commitment to particular policy formulae found within the Department of Finance in the 1940s: ‘it would be quite unhistorical to call Finance officials, with James Dillon in 1950, “the ‘con men’ par excellence of recent times”. Precisely because Finance was a seething cauldron of emotion, Finance men were not conscious fakirs. They pas- sionately believed in their mission to save Ireland from profli- gacy. . . The Finance mind was a repository of revealed truth. One is constantly struck by the failure of Finance memoranda to appeal to either systematic historical or systematic comparative reasoning. . . Here were no “scientific” physicians and surgeons. 4The report Lee cites criticises its opponents for ‘irrational instability of judgement’, ‘Windy polemics’, ‘A compact of fallacies’ and ‘The public overthrow of the seventh com- mandment.’ 16 Here were crusaders for truth, valiantly defending the ramparts of rectitude against the assaults of the unholy and the unclean.’ (Lee 1989: 572) Lee’s analysis of Irish institutions jibes nicely with the Durkheimian sociological tradition (Durkheim 1995; Douglas 1986), although of course he does not draw on it explicitly. He recognises the sacred quality that particular ideas and institutions may have, and grasps the violence with which they are often defended. However, Lee places this discussion of the ‘official mind’ under the general heading of ‘Intelligence’. This is a little unfair. There is no reason to believe that the civil servants of two generations ago were any less intelligent than the ones we have today. Their writings may seem misguided and their vocabulary outdated, but this has less to do with their native intelligence than with the categories they were thinking through. We no longer find those categories convincing, or even worthy of serious consideration. But it would be complacent to assume that whereas they were simply misguided, we face reality head on. In the next section, I discuss a branch of neo–institutionalist research that takes the scepticism we feel towards foreign or outdated institutions and applies it to our own worldview. Ritual, legitimation and myth When describing national plans and programmes, historians and political scientists will often say something like the following: ‘The modifications [to the Programme for Economic Develop- ment] presumably partly reflect its own psychological impact, which succeeded in substituting hope for despair, at least among the policy–makers themselves’ (Lee 1989: 346) ‘As an economic plan, the First Programme was fairly skeletal, its importance being primarily psychological, as “the absence of such a programme tends to deepen the all too prevalent mood of despondency about the country’s future”’ (Morrissey 1986: 82; quotation from Economic Development) 19 participation. This institutional copycat effect has been well documented. Tolbert and Zucker (1983) studied the spread of municipal civil–service reforms carried out in the United States between 1880 and 1935. These reforms were de- signed to rationalise government employment. The authors found that local authorities which had functional needs for improved authority were the first to adopt the reforms. However, once these reforms were generally believed to be modern and rational all kinds of municipalities adopted the reforms, even though they had no real need for them. By adopting the package, a mu- nicipality signalled to the wider world that it deserved to be taken seriously as a modern, well–administered organisation. A similar branch of research in this area traces the diffusion of affirmative action policies and grievance procedures across U.S. companies since the 1960s (Edelman 1990, Sutton et al 1994). These studies have found that such policies became socially constructed as being necessary to firms, to the point where it was unacceptable for a large, modern company not to have one. The production of consensus happens between states as well as within them. Political economists recognise the existence of a ‘Washington con- sensus’ on policy reform for developing countries. This is a list of fiscal and monetary policies that, essentially, amounts to a recipie that states are required to follow before they are taken seriously by the United States, the World Bank or the IMF (Williamson 1994). One of its proponents re- gards it ‘as embodying the common core of wisdom embraced by all serious economists’ (ibid: 18). Commenting on this, Toye (1994: 39ff) argues that the consensus functions as an ‘Empowering Myth’, and notes that ‘there seems to be some conflation here of what economists believe with what is economic truth.’ Conclusion Concluding his analysis of the energetic state–building efforts of Irish politi- cians between 1919 and 1923, Tom Garvin comments that political systems 20 are ‘devices, or constitutional machines, designed by human beings for human beings to live in; they are also normally designed to suit some human beings more than others. . . They are artificial, not natural, entities and are well or badly designed.’ (Garvin 1995: 196) Garvin is right to stress that political and legal institutions are made and not born, and that they can be made to serve some interests rather than others. In this chapter I reviewed two strands of sociological literature that pursue this insight. The regulatory approach discussed in the first part of the chapter describes the ways in which institutions influence the outcomes of policy conflicts. Both the internal organisation of the state and the struc- ture of its relationship to other parts of society can be shown to decisively influence the strategies and bargaining power of policy makers, and the ca- pacity of the state to intervene in conflicts. It follows that in any policy debate, special attention should be paid to the institutional arena which it is being fought within. This involves asking questions like: What special advantages does this arena confer on the different players? Who does it rule out from participation? To what degree are the strategies of any of the players related to the institution in question? What are the historical origins of present–day frameworks? The cultural approach described in the second half of the chapter is more thoroughgoing in its commitment to the idea that institutions are ‘artificial, not natural, entities’. Writers in this field reject the claim ‘that modern institutions are transparently purposive and that we are in the midst of an evolutionary progression toward more efficient forms’ (Dobbin 1994: 138). Rather than taking the claims of modern institutions at face value, empirical applications of the new institutionalism have emphasised their socially con- structed and historically contingent qualities. This leads us to ask deeper questions about the direction of policy and the assumptions which guide it. The history of policy making often reveals that conflicts which seemed important at the time in fact took place within a framework of shared as- 21 sumptions about the state, economy and society. When these assumptions are no longer plausible, the details of the disagreement become irrelevant to us. We see both sides relying on now defunct concepts. If we see it in the past, we should also be look for it in the present: What does everyone agree on, despite their political differences, and why do they agree on it? What are the social origins of agreement on apparently universal, rational and ob- jective criteria for ‘high and sustainable economic and employment growth’ or ‘the constraints of international competitiveness’ (Partnership document: 5)? Why have our yardsticks for progress,development and policy success turned out the way they have? Forty years ago, the Programme for Economic Expansion made a broad distinction between ‘social’ and ‘productive’ expenditure and argued that the state should concentrate on the latter. I doubt if any such distinction would be viable today as a basis for policy–making. The body of theoretical and empirical work discussed in this chapter can help explain why that is so. While not answering all our questions about the policy process, it does raise a number of penetrating, easily missed issues that challenge makers and analysts of policy to systematically question the self–presentation of modern institutions as neutral, functional, rational and progressively evolving. References Alonso, William and Paul Starr (eds) (1987) The Politics of Numbers New York: Russell Sage Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: a trea- tise in the sociology of knowledge New York: Doubleday Brint, Steven (1990) ‘Rethinking the policy Influence of Experts: From general character- izations to analysis of variation’ Sociological Forum 5 (3): 361–371 Cuikerman, Alex (1992) Central Bank Strategy, Credibility and Independence: Theory and Evidence Cambridge: MIT Press Dahl, Robert (1977) Polyarchy New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 24 ence?’ pp3–87 in Juan J. 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