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Zombie Ideas: Why Failed Policy Ideas Persist B. Guy Peters - Coggle…

- - - - 2) Organizational (most elites don’t function alone, but are members of organizations, and those organizations will have commitments to policy ideas)
      - 3) Society/ Individual (finally, zombie ideas are likely to finally die if there is no popular support for them)
      - 1) Elites (These elites are primarily political, but political elites usually can not be absolved of blame for continuing policy failures from poor ideas. They choose experts that will support their political preferences and use those preferences)
    - - 1) Simple Path Dependence (The path dependence argument is especially important for understanding policy ideas that have been successful at some point in their history but later began to fail. The logic is that an institution-once created–will tend to persist until there it is replaced by another, usually through a rather extreme punctuation).
      - 2) Beliefs and Ideology (Persistent patterns of belief may be individual, but as noted above organizations also play a major role in the persistence of ideas. Groupthink has been identified as the tendency of small groups not to challenge the conventional wisdom within the group. This approach to decision-making argues that groups develop internal beliefs that they use to justify their actions and to maintain internal cohesion within the group
      - 3) Politics, and Power (They must have an audience that accepts at least some of the logic of the ideas-> Corporatism is a structural feature with a potential impact on Zombie Ideas. In corporatist systems privileged groups gain access to government decision-makers. They become incorporated into the “extended state” and are supposed to guarantee a rather risk-free policy implementation while demolishing political conflicts).
      - 4) Filtering Information and Ideas (organizations (and individuals) responsible for making policies need to exercise some filtering to minimize the negative effects of the “blooming, buzzing confusion of the world”. While bounded rationality and associated filtering devices is crucial for minimizing decision-making costs in the public sector, it can be a source of error, and the persistence of zombie ideas. The organization places limits on range of ideas and inf considered and, in the process, may perpetuate poor solutions)
      - 5) Biases–Disciplinary and Other (The biases that exist among disciplines and between academe and the world of practice represent important examples of the social division of knowledge)
      - 6) Absence of Alternatives (Governments are in the position of having to respond to policy problems when they lack the capacity–intellectual or physical–to do so effectively. In the case of policy ideas for addressing these problems, governments will simply have to go back to what they have done in the past, even if it weren’t effective)
      - 7) What is a Failure? – What is the Evidence? (Failure is politically constructed, The outcomes may appear positive in general but the problem being addressed is not resolved totally, that reduce the overall positive impact of the policy. Thus, when a policy is implemented the outcomes may, be definite successes, while in the eyes of the opponents the outcomes may be failure. So, the policy ideas can survive, especially if there is no clear alternative to the existing policy. The ambiguity of policy results can be seen as a result of the political process that, policies must be “oversold” as they are being legitimated by legislatures. This overselling of the policies creates a very high bar for success for a policy being implemented in a challenging and complex social setting. The standard becomes not amelioration but solution, and as has been demonstrated a number of times solutions tend to be short lived)