POLICY ANALYSIS

Policy analysis offers serious guidance as to how to go about handling policy problems, since it produces rules and guidelines that allow the exercise of some discretion and choice within acceptable limits. Lasswell (1951, p. 5) identifies the scope of policies with the set of choices. He stated that the word “policy” is commonly used to designate the

most important choices made in an organisation or an institution. Perhaps such a general definition of the concept of a policy was never strictly adhered to, as the connection between policy and the public sector has remained a very close one.

Laswell’s perspective on policy analysis is not simply the understanding of policies as important public choices but also the need to locate data and provide interpretations of the policy problems, which according to him, are often the fundamental, and neglected problems. The writer, in an attempt to examine the policy problems existing within the local shipping system, has located a wide base of data, which are used to evaluate and interpret the underlying policy problems.

In policy examination there is tension between objectivity and subjectivity, and between neutrality and relevance. But any approach to policy examination and formulation has further implications, for it includes, in addition to knowledge about the policy-making process itself, the assembly and evaluation of knowledge about the policy problems (Lasswell, 1951, p. 14).

C. Ham and M. Hill (1984, p. 4) differentiate between ‘analysis of policy’ and ‘analysis for policy’. They advocated that this distinction is important in drawing attention to policy examination as an academic activity, for it is concerned primarily with the advancement of understanding of policy formulation as an applied activity and its contribution to the solution of the existing policy problems.

There are sometimes problems in identifying the characteristic properties of the policy examination process, the proper techniques to be employed during this process and the congruence between the theoretical position and the resultant practical recommendations. While Lasswell underlined the practical aspects of the policy orientation and warned strongly against too close a contact between policy analysts and political life, Y. Dror (1974) advocated the opposite position.

Two of Dror’s main components in policy making are economic rationality and the use of qualitative knowledge. Economic rationality is considered in Chapter Four under the section examining economic options.

Since there is little quantitative information available for policy-making purposes, the writer will only use qualitative data and “extra-rational” mechanisms, such as intuition, non-routine behavior and guesstimate. This policy analysis needs to be based on a set of principles, which are expected to guide the overall process. But according to Dror (1974, p. 198), such principles are not enough, as there must also be an ‘optimal policy- making structure’ which in this case, is the Maritime Administration, as discussed in Chapter Five.

Dror, (1974, pp. 197-213), also identified certain characteristics of an optimal policy- making structure, which the writer wishes to endorse as being useful in policy examination and formulation. They are of a formal kind and include:

1. Participation by many and diverse groups

2. A minimum amount of formalisation of the policy process in assigning various policy tasks to different groups

3. Redundancy between groups and tasks as well as isolation of some groups from the others

4. Integration of groups and periodical reexamination and reform of the structure This idea of having an actual policy-making structure, according to Dror (1974, p. 261), is to establish and reinforce this special organisation for policy examination and formulation that is charged with taking a fresh look at basic policy issues.

E. Quade’s (1976, p. 21) interpretation of policy analysis is that it seeks to help a decision-maker make a better choice than would otherwise have been made. It is thus

concerned with the more effective manipulation of the real world, which should be accomplished with a full understanding of the underlying phenomena.

Quade further outlined a model of policy analysis that involves both intellectual cogitation and social interaction with policy-makers. He pointed out that there are three stages associated with policy analysis. First, discovering the best and feasible alternative. Second, acceptance of the findings, which are incorporated into a policy or decision. Third, implementing the policy or decision (Quade, 1976, p. 254).

According to Wildavsky (1979, p. 17), policy analysis is an activity that solves tensions between resources and objectives, planning and politics. He observed that the specific policy challenge is to resolve these tensions.

As policy in real life involves ends and means, so policy analysis must be a set of theories about the relationship between ends and means. Policy analysis implies rationality, which means searching for ends as well as responsibility, and the proper resources needed in achieving suitable objectives. Since policy analysis deals with contested and value-ingrained materials, it must be practical, evaluative and reconstructive, and based on solid theoretical foundations.

Wildavsky wrote that these, then, are the tasks and tensions of policy analysis, relating resources to objectives by balancing social interaction against intellectual cogitation (1979, p. 19). Few would argue with this sound identification of policy analysis since it creates opportunities for a better appreciation of the concept particularly as it relates to the development process of policy in the society as a whole and the maritime industry in particular.