Most existing policy analytical frameworks relate to process but do not deal effectively with the relationships between policy ideas and institutions and the issues arising from them. Despite this, it is important to outline some of the salient features of these frameworks. Ideas and concepts arising from the analytic
frameworks allow insights into policy processes. Another point here is to understand that policy concepts explained in this chapter are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Mostly they are different ways of viewing and interpreting a process or issue. In some cases, one concept or analytical method will produce more explanatory traction than other concepts in that case. As will be seen from this chapter, learning by policy principals or policy actors will almost always be capable of arising from many circumstances, whether within an epistemic community or advocacy coalition or through analysts attempting to find contingent events in an historical sequence or path.
It is necessary to begin with an understanding of epistemic communities, as these in one form or another pervade the fabric of this technical policy domain. This will be evident in later chapters such as Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. This study will not identify particular epistemic communities but, because their presence may be mostly well hidden but often have a role, it is important to understand their nature. The notion of epistemic communities (Haas 1992) has been a powerful explanatory mechanism for analysis in international politics and policy. Its worth at national and sub-national level also is valuable because of the obvious effect such communities have on policy in a technical area.
Epistemic communities are networks of experts sharing the same normative ideas and principles about their particular field of expertise. Such networks can have a great deal of power and influence because of their technical grasp of the policy subject. Their power and influence also arises through the mutual lateral
reinforcement of conviction about the desirability of particular policy measures that are then placed with policy decision-makers through multiple points. The process generates a self-reinforcing authority borne out of expertise. Applying the principle on a federal level we could imagine the more technically oriented national
epistemic community that is wider than the committee and may be dispersed across a number of agencies and research organisations. The point is that the actors within an epistemic community are known to each other and reinforce commonly held views about the particular subject matter of the policy domain. There are policy learning opportunities, often highly politicised, which Eccleston finds (2007:24), are often forged in the realms of policy elites such as think tanks, policy experts, entrepreneurs and others appropriately positioned within policy networks. For the present study technical experts in CSIRO, universities and research institutes should be added.
Prerequisites for successful epistemic community operation are lack of dissension within the community and a particular policy item focus. This can be borne in mind while reading Chapter 5. Indeed, in an integrated vegetation policy framework, a suite of statutory advisory committees as will be suggested in Chapter 6 would, I suggest, need to be prepared for the influence of epistemic communities. The highly technical nature of some of the subject matter of the policy domain in this thesis invites the formation of committees, advisory committees, reference groups, working groups and steering committees.
The distance between epistemic agents and principal policy actors will vary widely depending on the circumstances (Dunlop 2010). Separation of principal policy actors from epistemic communities may not be a bad thing, provided other general filters are used to place over such advice originating from this source. A balance between the benefits of experts‘ views and broader policy considerations need to be struck in many cases.
Policy efficiency arising from an epistemic community is predicated on low
autonomy from the political principal. The credibility of such advice (Dunlop 2010) is achieved where decision-makers draw advice from socially legitimate epistemic communities. Dunlop points out that government selects some epistemic
communities who exercise control over the produced knowledge. Epistemic
communities must have access to decision-makers to have their views embedded in policy. Aspects of this pervade the Tasmanian vegetation policy domain and manifestations will be seen in Chapter 4 for example, especially in the formulation of the first Nature Conservation Strategy.
While the concept of epistemic communities is a recent concept, the lens of power, conflict and ideology has been extant for longer. That politics originates in conflict and the management of conflict determines the direction of politics and, by
extension, public policy (Schattschneider 1960) is a valuable insight provided by conflict-oriented theory of political organisation. It could be applied to many aspects of the vegetation (especially forests) commentary. For example, Flanagan‘s (2007) contribution could arguably be cast as an escalation of a minority view through the process of socialisation of conflict.
Other writers have argued that there is a need to link up policy studies with the three vital elements of ―power, conflict and ideology‖ (Simeon 1976:550), and that ―policy-making is a matter of conflict‖ (Simeon 1976:550). Some groundwork for theory development is laid, however, in the call for more effort to develop
appropriate theory and to ―posit theoretically relevant categories, typologies, or classifications of the different dimensions of policy‖ (Simeon 1976:553).
A strong analytical focus based around power, conflict and influence has been the overwhelmingly favoured model in much of the policy analysis and writing about natural resource debates in Tasmania. The state has been the location of some major political contests over land use and natural resource issues. This will be expanded in Chapter 3. These began with proposals by government or government agencies to allow access for natural resources such as timber in Mt Field National Park in the early 1950s. It continued with development of hydro-electric resources in a national park in the 1970s and again in wilderness areas and sites of prehistoric cultural significance in the 1980s (Mercer and Peterson 1986). Tasmanian natural resources policy analysis increased with the controversy over the Serpentine River
impoundment that flooded the original Lake Pedder (Jones 1971, McKenry 1972, St John 1973). These studies best demonstrate the conflict-oriented approach to
analysis evident in the way they dissect decision-making processes, in the way they analyse power and influence, and the way they identify the nature and terms of particular conflicts in attempts to demonstrate where decision-making had gone wrong. They identify winners and losers and apportion blame. Out of these perspectives lessons can also be learned, so such approaches are not mutually exclusive.
The early 1970s saw an expansion in policy analysis. In a review article in 1972, Heclo pointed out the newness of the sub-field of political science called public policy studies. He grappled with the definition and considered it to be ―something ‗bigger‘ than particular decisions, but ‗smaller‘ than general social movements‖ (Heclo 1972:84). Heclo reviewed the scant literature but noted a rising number of studies in this field. There were many analytical case studies in substantive policy areas, but barely anything resembling an analytical framework or any body of empirically tested theory. He called for empirical analyses of learning—temporally, geographically and across policy subject areas—to understand the nature of any adaptive learning by governments. Heclo (1974) proposed the importance of experience in changed behaviour and that the acquisition and use of knowledge provided a better understanding of policy than conflict-based theories, and elaborated this view in his studies of European social policy. Policy analytical theory has developed considerably in the last two decades to the extent where a case study approach such as presented in this thesis is able to use some well-developed theoretical insights to examine the subject matter. A fundamental theoretical tool is the policy stages heuristic, but even in 1991 Sabatier (1991a:145) was claiming that ―researchers have tended to focus exclusively on a single stage with little
recognition of work in other stages. The result is weakened theoretical coherence across all stages‖.
The policy-learning literature examined broadly falls into two categories: (a) what are generally considered to be the seminal works on the concept, and (b) the literature that attempts to empirically test policy learning concepts using case
studies. Some studies further develop the theoretical work, sometimes in the context of particular substantive policy areas. Heclo‘s (1974) classic study of policy
learning using a comparison of Scandinavian and British social policies falls into the first category.
The policy learning approach will be a productive and constructive primary lens for analysis of Tasmanian vegetation policy. This may have more appeal to those whose background may be more favourably disposed to a logical positivist
approach; that is, whose experience is rooted in a scientific background. However, in this thesis the matters in the policy domain will not be used to test the theory,
rather the theory will be used to explore and explain the policy domain.
Additionally, the concept of policy learning has many dimensions and is applicable at all levels. It can arise in tandem with the working of other processes.
Before proceeding to a more detailed discussion of policy learning, a range of other concepts will be discussed. In a call for more work on a theoretical basis for the policy process, Sabatier (1991a) claimed that in this field of political science, the seminal work of Easton (1965) provided a good theoretical basis for the whole policy process. Sabatier (1991a) claimed that in the previous twenty years most of the research on public policy could be divided into four identifiable types.
Substantive area research, the first of these, is characterised by largely theoretical studies and is useful to practitioners in their substantive areas. Evaluation and impact studies allowed important steps to be made in integrating such studies into policy studies research. Policy process, the third type, appeared to have been the most productive area of research over the period while fourthly, policy design focused research on policy instruments. Policy process perhaps typifies the nature of this thesis.
It has been urged that the ―stages‖ heuristic be replaced as it had outlived its usefulness. Sabatier (1991b) claimed that it threw no light on cause and effect; but in my view he overstated the case. The stages heuristic is a useful start to analysis because it imposes some sense of understanding at a high hierarchical level. In the broadest sense it is surely a useful starting point beyond which more detailed theories may be invoked in order to seek causal explanations. I have used it in this way in this thesis. While learning, for example, may be the core business in the evaluation phase, there can be no hard and fast boundaries. Policy learning takes place at all stages of the policy cycle.
Policy implementation has had some focus as part of the policy cycle. May (1986) reviewed what attention had been given this missing part of the policy cycle. He focused in particular on ―political feasibility‖ (May 1986:110), looking at the relevance of certain political science theories to political feasibility.
In response to a challenge (Sabatier 1991) to improve policy process theory, an increased effort resulted in some new approaches, with Schlager and Blomquist
(1996) comparing three of these. The approaches are the Advocacy Coalition Framework of Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993); the institutional rational choice approach, explained by Ostrom (1990); and the politics of structural choice
approach developed by Moe (1990). The salient feature of the Advocacy Coalition Framework is that policy change over a long period (at least 10 years) is viewed in the light of competing advocacy coalitions in a policy sub-system, external factors, and the effects of fairly stable variables such as institutional and administrative arrangements.
In the Institutional Rational Choice approach ―Actors‘ strategy choices are guided by their perceptions of expected benefits and costs, conditioned by the decision situation‖ (Schlager and Blomquist 1996:653). The Politics of Structural Choice view of policy process advocates a political theory involving the roles of conflict and power in a political process of institutional development and modification. All three approaches have benefits (Schlager and Blomquist 1996), with the approaches perhaps best being applied to particular areas of policy or types of policy problems.
The advocacy coalition framework is an appealing approach because the use of policy information is cultivated, encouraged and deployed. Davis (1980) used this approach in examining some Australian environmental conflicts. There is a belief in the need to convince other actors of the veracity of a position and the consequences of various alternatives. The advocacy coalition framework was used as an
explanatory mechanism for policy change in British Columbia (Lertzman et al. 1996) where both a development advocacy coalition and an environmental advocacy coalition were identified. These authors were interested to see whether policy learning and policy change could be detected. They tried to understand the role played by key ideas in instigating learning within dominant advocacy coalitions (some of their claims are contested by Hoberg 1996).
They found that adaptations taken on by a dominant advocacy coalition as a result of any unspecified key idea might cause a major policy shift. Their invocation of paradigm shifts in this case may be out of place. These are major changes that are usually bound up with a whole cluster of changes outside a narrow field. A
paradigm shift though may well arise completely independently of an advocacy coalition framework. The authors seem to understand paradigm shifts as a concept including less than major shifts in thinking. Some interesting observations are made in relation to advocacy coalition frameworks in respect of the British Columbia forest industry, but the contribution to policy change theory in the context of an advocacy coalition framework (ACF) approach appears thin. Importantly, these authors observed that some advocacy coalitions change through time if a component individual or groups have their direct wants satisfied.
They also note that adaptation is a form of learning, that politicians and bureaucrats can move into ―policy broking‖ and ―acceptable policy space‖ and that the
dominant advocacy coalition can cultivate new epistemic communities by using the encouragement of committee memberships and research funding.
A list of hypotheses in respect of policy change, policy learning and advocacy coalitions themselves has been developed (Sabatier 1988, Sabatier and Jenkins- Smith 1999) and these that have been tested in the context of Spanish national water policy (Bukowski 2007). Bukowski characterises the two main advocacy coalitions (which she calls ―environmentalists and marketizers‖) in terms of actors, deep core beliefs, policy core beliefs and secondary aspects. The interaction of a paradigm shift wrought by a change from a dictatorship to a liberal democracy and the concurrent questioning of the old prevailing ―hydraulic paradigm‖ (Bukowski 2007:39) was a major concern in water policy—an exogenous shock. This appears to have been a causal factor in the shift to a new water policy paradigm—one that has become more reinforced by European Union rules and regulations in respect of aspects such as environmentally sustainable water use and river catchment
management.
Bukowski‘s work supports the ACF hypothesis but she highlights further research being required on the ACF hypothesis by stating ―external perturbations are a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of change in the policy core attributes of a government program (Bukowski 2007:55). Questions also emerge as to what factors inhibit policy change, whether there any significant delays between exogenous shocks and the occurrence of policy change, and how any type of delay might be affected by the commitment to core beliefs or other variables.
Policy actors from different tiers of government should not be assumed to belong to the same advocacy coalition either. A convincing example is given where a
coalition containing local and state authorities in Denver in the US secured environmental approval at a cost of studies worth $40 million to build water infrastructure at Two Fork (Ellison 1998). The Federal Government, in responding to the national constituency it perceived, vetoed the construction.
Such examples are to be found in Australian government jurisdictions where the Commonwealth Government acts against the position of various states by vetoing a large development or over-rides states to impose a program or policy regime. At the same time this is juxtaposed with processes such as harmonisation, policy diffusion, lesson-drawing and policy transfer—processes that are likely to increase policy acceptability and authority. Tasmania‘s position as one jurisdiction in a
Commonwealth federation leads, one might expect, to numerous examples of convergence of policies. The extent to which this occurs is touched on in Chapter 5 but a typology of convergence follows here to provide a theoretical basis to what will come later.
Policy convergence is a phenomenon described in comparative policy literature. It must be conceived, according to Bennett (1991), as a dynamic process so that what is described is not merely similarity of policies. Convergence is a process and not a static description of comparable policies at a particular time. Bennett (1991)
fashions taxonomy of policy convergence at a mid-scale level. On a large scale, ―convergence‖ has been applied to a notion that social and economic factors converge across post-industrial societies; however, Goldthorpe (1984) argues that contrary to convergence theory, industrial societies are either moving towards corporatism or dualism. Bennett (1991) describes five different types of policy convergence, summarising them as convergence of policy goals, content,
instruments, outcome, and style. Bennett (1991) further identifies four processes of convergence and these are shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Four processes of policy convergence identified by Bennett (1991)
Convergence
through emulation Not the same as diffusion (the latter is more spatial and structural) Should not be inferred without ―evidence of conscious copying,
lesson-drawing or adaptation‖(Bennett 1991:220)
Doesn‘t explain policy outcomes or styles
―Evidence of learning is not evidence of emulation‖ (Bennett
1991:222)
Can occur at different stages of the policy process
Convergence through elite networking and policy communities
International ―issue networks‖, ―policy communities‖ or ―subgovernment‖ (Bennett 1991:224) groups of actors share
expertise and information
May allow lesson-drawing through professional networks
Convergence through harmonisation
The need for a common response by governments is understood to be needed so bad inconsistencies or adverse consequences
don‘t occur
International regimes are a powerful influence for this type of convergence
Convergence
through penetration Governments are forced to act for the sake of conformity with actions taken elsewhere Much occurs as a result of global business pressures (i.e. a
business sector demanding a uniform regulatory framework for its products)
Australian policymakers might be expected to form an interest, at least at a