Avoiding Policy Failure: A Workable Approach (original) (raw)

From Preface: While there will always be unanticipated consequences (particularly over the long term), a deeper understanding of policy may lead to interesting insights into how we might take more consequences into account as we develop more effective policy. Policy success means we have an understanding of the world such that our plans are successful and we reach our goals. While there are many successful actions, there are few quantifiable policy successes. In contrast, there are many examples of policy failures. Ecologically, economically, militarily, and politically, we don’t seem to be able to create effective policy. Recent advances in critical metapolicy suggest new approaches for analysis based on insights from complexity theory. Specifically, that we can quantify the complexity and the co-causal relationship between the propositions within a policy. And, critically, that there is a correlation between the quantifiable structure of a policy and the effectiveness of that policy in practical application. It has been suggested in the literature that we can use methods such as propositional analysis (PA) to determine the effectiveness of a policy prior to implementation based on the policy text. Such an approach would enable scholars to develop more effective policy and provides a new tool for practitioners to choose between competing policies. In this book, I test that assertion by applying PA to six policies in three comparative case studies. Cases include military policy, economic policy, and international policy. Because of the great difficulty associated with finding policies that were effective (let alone comparable cases), these studies may be seen as somewhat obscure. I certainly invite all readers to join in an effort to find additional cases for more comparisons. In each case comparison, the quantified structure of the policy is compared with the historical consequences of implementing the policy. Generally, the results of the study support the assertion. I found that policies with higher levels of structure (higher internal integrity and greater complexity) tend to be more effective in practical application. And, conversely, policies of lower complexity and less internal integrity tend to be less effective. Additional insights are also discussed along with implications for future research and application. Some important next steps for this line of research would be to conduct additional case comparative studies as well as larger scale, statistical analyses. The usefulness of this methodology across a range of policy fields suggests that it is generalizable across most, perhaps all, areas of policy interest.