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WEEK 3 READING (BACCHI) (POLICY ANALYSIS STEPS:
1. What is the problem…
WEEK 3 READING (BACCHI)
This reading challenges the common view that policy is the government's best attempt to deal with 'problems'.
The view portrayed is that governments react to fixed and identifiable 'problems' that are outside the policy process.
Hence, the focus of analysis is the competing ways of 'solving' policy problems
VIEW ON WRP APPROACH TO POLICY ANALYSIS:
It suggests that if you look at a specific policy, you can see that it understands the 'problem' to be a particular sort of 'problem'.
Policies therefore give shape to 'problems', so rather than reacting to 'problems', governments are active in the creation (or production) of policy 'problems'
All policies make proposals for change, and by their very nature they contain implicit representations of 'problems'.
Eg. sending police into an indigenous community after reports of child abuse implies that the problem lies among inadequate law enforcement.
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POLICY ANALYSIS STEPS:
1. What is the problem represented to be in the specific policy?
- Policy problems are 'socially constructed'
- Policy problems are not natural and in need of fixing
2. What assumptions underpin the problem representation?
- What does the policy assume about the 'nature' of the world or of the people
- What does it assume they will do, given the certain circumstances
- What background knowledge has been taken for granted?
- includes epistemological and ontological assumptions.
3. How did this representation of the problem come about?
- What caused it to become a problem
- Was there an event/catalyst that led to this policy ending up on the policy agenda
4. What is left unproblematic about this problem representation?
- Are there silences
- Can the problem be thought about differently
- Whose it affecting, are there stakeholders
5. What effects are produced by this representation of the problem?
- How does it effect how we talk about the problem
- How does it effect how we think about the people involved in the problem
6. How/Where has this representation of the problem been produced, disseminated (spread) and defended?
- How could it be questioned, disrupted or replaced
(2) We are not trying to obtain assumptions or beliefs held by policy makers. We are not interested in attempting to identify biases. Rather, the task is to identify the assumptions and/ or presuppositions that lodge within problem representations.
The question becomes not why something happens but how it is possible for something to happen—what meanings need to be in place for something to happen.
The primary goal is to identify deep-seated cultural premises and values within problem representations
(1) A WPR approach builds on the premise that, since all policies are problematising activities, they contain implicit problem representations.
Since how you feel about something determines what you suggest doing about it, it is equally true to say that looking at what is proposed asa policy intervention will reveal how the issue is being thought about.
(3) Two main objectives to this question:
- reflect on the specific developments and decisions (the non-discursive practices) that contribute to the formation of identified problem representations.
- recognise that competing problem representations exist both over time and across space, and hence that things could have developed quite differently.
We draw upon genealogy:
When we seek to trace the 'history' of a current problem representation, we need to follow the twists and turns rather than assume.
Genealogies like this one direct us to find out how a 'problem' took on a particular shape. The focus is on process o n how something came to be.
By identifying specific points in time when key decisions were made, taking an issue in a particular direction, we can see that the problem representation under scrutiny is contingent and hence susceptible to change
(4) We must consider the limits in the underlying problem representations.
The objective is to bring into discussion issues and perspectives that are silenced in identified problem representations.
(5) This is where we must interrogate the problematisations on offer, to see where and how they function to benefit some and harm others, and what can be done about this.
We can identify three kinds of effects that need to be 'weighed up':
- Diverse effects
- Subjectification
- Lived effects (impact on life/death)
(6) This is where we direct our attention to practices and processes that allow certain problem representations to dominate.
At this stage in the analysis it is appropriate to think about the means through which particular problem presentations reach their target audience and achieve legitimacy.
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The goal of Question 6 in a WPR approach is to pay attention both to the means through which some problem representations become dominant, and to the possibility of challenging problem representations that are judged to be harmful.
BINARIES:
What is on one side of a binary is considered to be excluded from the other side.
In addition, there is a hierarchy implied in binaries.
One side is privileged, considered to be more important or more valued than the other side.
Key concepts:
Policies are filled with concepts.
'Health' is a concept, as is 'welfare'.
Concepts are abstract labels that are relatively open-ended.
Categories:
Age categories, zoning categories, disease categories, gender and sexuality categories.
What is the conventional approach to public policy?
The idea that governments ARE responding to problems
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Bacchi states that in contrast to the 'traditional' way of thinking about policy (there is a problem, and we then fix it in a practical manner), policymakers make decisions about not just why a problem exists, but how to address it. This is done by 'framing' a problem as a particular 'kind' of problem, which may only address one aspect of the problem, even if there are multiple or competing ways to think about the problem.