Theories of Policy Processes: Ways to Think about Them and Use Them
Why should students, especially those eschewing academic careers, learn theories of policy processes? Students in professional degree programs, such as a Master in Public Administration, often ask this question. Theories, after all, seem divorced from everyday practice. Many students also expect their professional degrees to help them get a job and, consequently, want marketable skills, such as budgeting, data analytics, and so on. In response to such concerns, this essay offers ideas for thinking about theories and a guideline for analyzing them.
What is theory?
We use the term “theory” to help understand the world and possibly make decisions.[1] The most common purposes for traditional theories include a combination of description, explanation, or prediction. Policy process theories apply to the past (e.g., explaining what happened when implementing a public policy), present (e.g., describing a current political situation), and future (e.g., anticipating distributional impacts of a policy decision). Theories usually entail simplifying and organizing a chaotic and arguably incomprehensible reality.
Theories consist of words that signal or indicate phenomena in policy processes deemed important or relevant. We call these words “concepts.” Concepts can lean abstract (e.g., trust) or concrete (e.g., name of an employer). As theories are built from concepts, policy scholars spend substantial amounts of time formulating and refining them to distinguish their essential and nonessential characteristics (Goertz, 2012).
We not only construct theories from concepts, but we also interrelate those concepts to render an impression of the complex interdependencies and dynamics of policy processes. We might phrase these interrelations formally as hypotheses, propositions, principles, expectations, axioms, etc. (Weible, 2018). Other times, we might just describe these interrelations informally in the text of a theory.
Scholars have drawn practical lessons from policy theories (Cairney, 2015; Shipan and Volden 2012; Weible et al., 2011; Weible and Cairney, 2018). In contrast to the field of public administration and management, these lessons tend to concentrate less on managing organizations and delivering public services and more on general strategies for influencing political behavior, composing persuasive narratives and discourse, formulating and designing public policy conducive for implementation and successful governance, and more.
Theories also represent reservoirs of knowledge or what we might know about a topic. For example, we might never know how to write a persuasive story in political discourse, but we know something about the common components of stories and how to analyze them, which is based on the compilation of ongoing empirical studies moored to a theoretical scaffolding (Shanahan et al., 2018). Theories, thus, are not divorced from practice but have been and continue to be informed by it.
As theories develop in response to empirical research, temporal lags and topical gaps inevitably surface and persist between actual policy processes and theories. Yet, sometimes theoretical insights endure and inform practice. The design principles for governing common pool resources, for example, continue to inform the formulation of public policies (Ostrom, 1990).
Additionally, theories usually emerge around perceived deficiencies in understandings of policy processes. As time passes, we often take for granted the insights embedded in theories and previously made progress. For example, Baumgartner and Jones (1993) showed with empirical evidence that previous understandings of patterns of policy change should not be viewed solely as incremental but as a combination of incremental and occasional punctuations. If students took a course in policy processes in 1990 instead of 2020, our teaching about patterns of policy change over time would be radically different.
Many theories populate studies of policy processes because these phenomena are multifaceted with spatial and temporal dimensions. We need multiple theories to create and discover the different faces of policy processes and how they vary across space and time. We also create multiple theories about policy processes because they, in part, emphasize different perspectives and values of researchers. Diverse academic communities and phenomena will coincide with diverse theories.
Theories as a Lexicon
One of the difficulties in learning theories is learning their lexicons. As theories build from concepts, any effort to learn theories necessitates learning new vocabularies and, thus, different ways of thinking. Even more challenging, theories take commonly used words or phrases and give them specialized meaning. A short list includes “advocacy coalitions”, “ideas”, “focusing events”, “action situations”, “devil shift”, “diffusion of innovation,” and more.
Through learning lexicons, theories affect what we notice and how we think. Figure 1 visualizes a two-way relationship between the world and our thinking through theories. We create theories that shape how we perceive policy processes and, in turn, policy processes shape how our theories and thinking, an argument that draws from many philosophers.
Theories as Lenses
“Through the lens” is an idiom, which means seeing the world from a particular perspective. We cannot escape our own lens and we should not devalue it: our lens, after all, forms part of who we are. We will always view the world through our mental faculties, which has benefits, especially in bringing reflexivity into our research (Durnová and Weible, 2020). Yet, we can embrace our own lens and still learn to view, at least in some ways, the world through different lenses. Multiple lenses — that is, multiple theories — can help us see policy processes through different perspectives.
Theories as Critical Thinking
Multiple theories foster critical thinking. A wide range of definitions and interpretations of critical thinking exist. I adapt Wade’s (1995) strategies for critical thinking to illustrate the benefits of knowing multiple theories, as shown in Table 1. Table 1 outlines how strategies for critical thinking links with learning multiple theories, which includes broadening understandings, increasing tolerance and questioning, and avoiding over simplifications.
Guidelines for Analyzing Theories
The difficulties in learning and using theories reflect their abstractness, lexicon, and complex foci. In an attempt to assuage these difficulties, I provide a guideline for analyzing theories. (See Appendix for a compressed version that I use for teaching.)
1. What is the scope? Scope refers to the type of questions or objectives that a theory helps answer or achieve. It also refers to phenomena or settings that the theory most likely applies. For example, a theory might best apply to a particular decision-making function of government, such as agenda setting (Herwig et al., 2018). Equally important is what lies outside of a theory’s scope and what happens when a theory is applied there.
2. What were the original knowledge deficits or source materials? All theories emerge from prior understandings and perceived knowledge deficits about policy processes. To understand a theory, pay attention to its original inspiration and foundations. Ask what inspired its creation? This helps tie the theory to the historical development of the field and to the broader literature as well as to give insights about its purpose.
3. What are the assumptions? All theories take something in the world for granted, declare aspects of the world as given, or promote (or demote) the importance of something in the world. For example, some theories might take a particular decision-making setting, such as a legislative session or a multi-stakeholder collaborative situation, and elevate it as the principal unit of analysis. Other theories might emphasize structure, such as rules, in shaping (and being shaped by) human behavior, whereas other theories might emphasize individual agency. Even when the focus is on individual agency, theories might make different assumptions about people regarding their motivations, mental faculties, and so on. Theories might accentuate different causal drivers or sources of power, common examples of which include individuals, organizations, collectives, discourses, and contexts.
4. What are the key concepts? Theories build from concepts and their definitions. When identifying concepts, ask whether the definition covers the essential characteristics of the phenomenon, distinguishes it from other phenomena, and fosters common understandings and reliable observations and measurements.
5. How are the concepts interrelated? All theories interrelate concepts in some kind of relational form, often called causal processes. This might be visualized in a flow diagram or a 2x2 table, or this might be described in the text. This might be posited in a set of hypotheses, propositions, expectations, or principles. Such interrelations usually involve feedback loops to reinforce notions that policy processes continuously evolve without beginning or end. At the same time, most theories have a focal output or outcome. For example, when policy change is the focal output, the feedback loop then becomes how one instance of policy change conditions the next.
6. What are the sources of empirical support? All theories have been applied to understand policy processes on a variety of topics and settings using a variety of methods. Ask how the theory has been applied, what empirical evidence supports its arguments (i.e., its causal process), and what knowledge has been gained since its original creation. More critically, inquire about the mix and quality of applications (different settings, topics, methods, etc.) and revisions and adaptations to the theory in response to empirical findings.
7. What are the current research deficits and future research ideas? No theory is without current deficits and challenges. Indeed, a vibrant theory continuously evolves in response to criticisms and limitations that prompt new research and revisions.
8. What are some implications for practice? All theories should offer some insights into policy processes. These insights will not be deterministic in specifying what to do all the time and in all settings. Examples of the type of practical implications include better understanding of, and ways to, organize complexity of policy processes, a better understanding of patterns and forces that drive policy change, different ways to form and maintain political associations, strategies for approaching agenda setting, the role of information, science, and stories in policy processes, and more.
Theories as Threats
Policy process theories, as a collective, represent one way to view the world and such views can hinder creativity, individuality, and observations. Each policy process theory or any collection of them can become dogmatic in restricting and distorting how we think about the world. This might happen, for example, in using a theory to impose a particular conceptual classification scheme on a situation. Theories can then represent a type of hegemony in thinking and suppress other ways of thinking. A couple ways to mitigate such threats is to maintain a commitment to open mindedness and to try and learn different ways of knowing and research techniques that fall outside of mainstream theory-based traditions (Durnová and Weible, 2020).
Regardless of how we approach policy processes as a science, we should strive to maintain awareness of the innate human tendency to gravitate towards simplified and singular understandings and, instead, embrace the multiplicity of policy processes, which includes its uncertainty, ambiguity, and uncontrollability.
Of course, the usefulness of using theories in professional degree programs depends on the quality of teaching, something we all need to improve. Ideally, this essay contributes to such efforts or at least gives another way to think about it.
References
Baumgartner, F. R., & Bryan, D. Jones. (1993). Agendas and instabilities in American politics. University of Chicago Press.
Cairney, P. (2015). How can policy theory have an impact on policymaking? The role of theory-led academic–practitioner discussions. Teaching Public Administration, 33(1), 22–39.
Durnová, A., & Weible, C. M. (2020). Tempest in a teapot? Toward new collaborations between mainstream policy process studies and interpretive policy studies. Policy Sciences.
Goertz, G. (2012). Social science concepts: A user’s guide. Princeton University Press.
Herweg, N., Zahariadis, N., & Zohlnhöfer, R. (2018). The multiple streams framework: Foundations, refinements, and empirical applications. In Theories of the policy process (pp. 17–53). Routledge.
Loehle, C. (1987). Hypothesis testing in ecology: psychological aspects and the importance of theory maturation. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 62(4), 397–409.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge university press.
Peters, B. G., & Zittoun, P. (2016). Contemporary approaches to public policy. Theories, controversies and perspectives. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schlager, E., & Weible, C. M. (2013). New theories of the policy process. Policy Studies Journal, 41(3), 389–396.
Schlager, E., & Cox, M. (2018). e IAD Framework and the SES Framework: An Introduction and Assessment of the Ostrom Workshop Frameworks. In Theories of the policy process (pp. 225–262). Routledge.
Shanahan, E.A., Jones, M. D., McBeth, M. K., & Radaelli, C. M. (2018). Narrative Policy Framework. In Theories of the Policy Process (pp. 183–224). Routledge.
Shipan, C. R., & Volden, C. (2012). Policy diffusion: Seven lessons for scholars and practitioners. Public Administration Review, 72(6), 788–796.
Wade, C. (1995). Using writing to develop and assess critical thinking. Teaching of psychology, 22(1), 24–28.
Weible, C. M., Heikkila, T., DeLeon, P., & Sabatier, P. A. (2012). Understanding and influencing the policy process. Policy sciences, 45(1), 1–21.
Weible, C. M. (2018). Introduction: The scope and focus of policy process research and theory. In Theories of the policy process (pp. 1–13). Routledge.
Weible, C. M., & Cairney, P. (2018). Practical lessons from policy theories. Policy & Politics, 46(2), 183–197.
Weible, C.M., & Sabatier, P. (2018). Theories of the policy process, 4th edn. Routledge.
Appendix
[1] Theories can also be defined through the frameworks-theories-models distinction, which sometimes affords analytical lucidity (Schlager and Cox, 2018). Other times, however, the distinction can hinder creativity and progress. Policy process theories, as mentioned, refer to those in the study of public policy, as might be found in, but not limited to, Peters and Zittoun (2016), Schlager and Weible (2013), and Weible and Sabatier (2018). Such a focus captures part of the public policy literature but obviously not all.
