COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS JOHN L. MCCLELLAN, Arkansas, Chairman HENRY M. JACKSON, Washington ABRAHAM RIBICOFF, Connecticut FRED R. HARRIS, Oklahoma KARL E. MUNDT, South Dakota CHARLES H. PERCY, Illinois EDWARD J. GURNEY, Florida EUGENE J. MCCARTHY, Minnesota JAMES R. CALLOWAY, Chief Counsel and Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS HENRY M. JACKSON, Washington, Chairman EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Maine KARL E. MUNDT, South Dakota DOROTHY FOSDICK, Staff Director п INTRODUCTORY NOTE In the 90th Congress, the Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations conducted the first major congressional inquiry into the planning-programming-budgeting system, and the subcommittee is continuing to monitor the application of program budgeting and analysis in national security affairs. We will seek to bring to the attention of the Congress from time to time informed comment and independent evaluation. In this connection, we are pleased to be able to reprint this article by Dr. Aaron Wildavsky on the need for improved policy analysis in governmental decision-making. The issues raised by Dr. Wildavsky warrant serious consideration and frank discussion. We are grateful to the author and to the editors of the Public Administration Review for their cooperation in giving us permission to publish this article in the record of the subcommittee. Dr. Wildavsky is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science and Member of the Center for Planning and Development Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Distinguished analyst of budgeting, he is author of The Politics of the Budgetary Process (1964) and other recent studies. APRIL 8, 1969. HENRY M. JACKSON, Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security RESCUING POLICY ANALYSIS FROM PPBS By Aaron Wildavsky (This article is reprinted by permission from the Public Administration Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, March/April 1969) Everyone knows that the nation needs better policy analysis. Each area one investigates shows how little is known compared to what is necessary in order to devise adequate policies. In some organizations there are no ways at all of determining the effectiveness of existing programs; organizational survival must be the sole criterion of merit. It is often not possible to determine whether the simplest objectives have been met. If there is a demand for information the cry goes out that what the organization does cannot be measured. Should anyone attempt to tie the organization down to any measure of productivity, the claim is made that there is no truth in numbers. Oftentimes this is another way of saying, "Mind your own business." Sometimes the line taken is that the work is so subtle that it resists any tests. On other occasions the point is made that only those learned in esoteric arts can properly understand what the organization does, and they can barely communicate to the uninitiated. There are men so convinced of the ultimate righteousness of their cause that they cannot imagine why anyone would wish to know how well they are doing in handling our common difficulties. Their activities are literally priceless; vulgar notions of cost and benefit do not apply to them. Anyone who has weathered this routine comes to value policy analysis. The very idea that there should be some identifiable objectives and that attention should be paid to whether these are achieved seems a great step forward. Devising alternative ways of handling problems and considering the future costs of each solution appear creative in comparison to more haphazard approaches. Yet policy analysis with its emphasis upon originality, imagination, and foresight, cannot be simply described. It is equivalent to what Robert N. Anthony has called strategic planning: "... the process of deciding on objectives of the organization, on changes in these objectives, on the resources used to attain these objectives. . . . It connotes big plans, important plans, plans with major consequences." While policy analysis is similar to a broadly conceived version of systems analysis, Yehezkel Dror has pointed up the boundaries that separate a narrow study from one with larger policy concerns. In policy analysis, 2 1. Much attention would be paid to the political aspects of public decisionmaking and public policy-making (instead of ignoring or condescendingly regarding political aspects).. 2. A broad conception of decision-making and policy-making would be involved (instead of viewing all decision-making as mainly a resources allocation). .. . 3. A main emphasis would be on creativity and search for new policy alternatives, with explicit attention to encouragement of innovative thinking.... 1 Robert N. Anthony, Planning and Control Systems: A Framework for Analysis, (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 16. Aaron Wildavsky, "The Political Economy of Efficiency," PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, December 1966, pp. 298-302. ... 4. There would be extensive reliance on qualitative methods... 5. There would be much more emphasis on futuristic thinking. ... 6. The approach would be looser and less rigid, but nevertheless systematic, one which would recognize the complexity of means-ends interdependence, the multiplicity of relevant criteria of decision, and the partial and tentative nature of every analysis....3 Policy analysis aims at providing information that contributes to making an agency politically and socially relevant. Policies are goals, objectives, and missions that guide the agency. Analysis evaluates and sifts alternative means and ends in the elusive pursuit of policy recommendations. By getting out of the fire-house environment of day-to-day administration, policy analysis seeks knowledge and opportunities for coping with an uncertain future. Because policy analysis is not concerned with projecting the status quo, but with tracing out the consequences of innovative ideas, it is a variant of planning. Complementing the agency's decision process, policy analysis is a tool of social change. In view of its concern with creativity, it is not surprising that policy analysis is still largely an art form; there are no precise rules about how to do it. The policy analyst seeks to reduce obscurantism by being explicit about problems and solutions, resources and results. The purpose of policy analysis is not to eliminate advocacy but to raise the level of argument among contending interests. If poor people want greater benefits from the government, the answer to their problems may not lie initially in policy analysis but in political organization. Once they have organized themselves, they may want to undertake policy analysis in order to crystallize their own objectives or merely to compete with the analyses put forth by others. The end result, hopefully, would be a higher quality debate and perhaps eventually public choice among better known alternatives. A belief in the desirability of policy analysis-the sustained application of intelligence and knowledge to social problems-is not enough to insure its success, no more than to want to do good is sufficient to accomplish noble purposes. If grandiose claims are made, if heavy burdens are placed on officials without adequate compensation, if the needs of agency heads are given scant consideration, they will not desire policy analysis. It is clear that those who introduced the PPB system into the federal government in one fell swoop did not undertake a policy analysis on how to introduce policy analysis into the federal government. 4 In a paper called "The Political Economy of Efficiency," written just as PPBS was begun in national government, I argued that it would run up against serious difficulties. There is still no reason to change a single word of what I said then. Indeed, its difficulties have been so overwhelming that there is grave danger that policy analysis will be rejected along with its particular manifestation in PPBS. In this essay I shall assess the damage that the planning-programmingbudgeting system has done to the prospects of encouraging policy analysis in American national government. Then I would like to suggest some ways of enabling policy analysis to thrive and prosper. Yehezkel Dror, "Policy Analysts: A New Professional Role in Government Service," PUBLIC ADMINIS TRATION REVIEW, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, September 1967, pp. 200-201. See also Dror's major work, Public Policy-Making Reeramined (San Francisco: Chandler, 1968). Aaron Wildavsky, op. cit. |