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Scholarly Keynotes

Policy Paradox and Policy Prospects: Editors’ Introduction to the Keynote Speech by Deborah Stone

Nikolaos Zahariadis and Philippe Zittoun
p. 90-93

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1With this article, the editors of the International Review of Public Policy inaugurate a new section within the Forum of our journal. It includes plenary lectures delivered at the biennial conference of the International Public Policy Association. We believe that such lectures are important in two very important ways. First, they involve ideas that major policy thinkers and the audience at the conference think are important and should be debated. We believe that such ideas should not be confined to this particular context and audience. Rather, they should be publicized to the wider policy community who, for one reason or another, were unable to attend. Second, there are critical aspects of our profession that do not find space in the usual academic outlets. Although the lectures were delivered in a specific context, they contain important ideas that draw attention to issues, solutions, and concerns that are of interest to every policy analyst around the world.

2We strongly believe that the lectures play an important socialization role in the profession. We benefit from their delivery when it occurs and wish to share the text with the wider policy community, inviting comments or concerns in the process. As a matter of editorial policy, we leave the text as the author submits it, with all the colloquialisms and issues that oral delivery brings to the written word. We mark where we intervene for editorial purposes.

3Deborah Stone needs no introduction. Most of us have read her book, Policy Paradox (2012 [1988]), and are familiar with some of its arguments. In her lecture, she raises four very important questions that have given us, the editors, pause for reflection. This is not a summary of her lecture, just a list of items perhaps provocatively posed as food for thought. We invite comments from our readers, in the form of Forum papers, to elaborate on or refute any of the points raised.

4Is it policy sciences or policy studies? Although the disciplinary history of the field has yet to be written (Deleon, 1988), a gap we hope to partially fill soon, the two terms are not interchangeable. Policy sciences is a field coined by Harold Lasswell and his collaborators in the years during and after World War II in the United States (McDougal, 1979). It was an optimistic era in the sense that the worst, the war, was behind us and things could only improve. But the collective effort and advances in science and technology that had aided the war effort could also be used to improve the peace and enable the stabilization of democracy in Europe (Lasswell, 2003). Policy sciences was the academic effort to utilize methods and knowledge (sciences) derived from many disciplines to solve “man’s greatest problems.” This so-called “problem orientation” (Lasswell, 1951) has a practical, interdisciplinary and very non-political conceptualization of policy-making (Turnbull, 2008) and constituted a project of applied social sciences that would act as a mediator between academics and decision-makers (Fischer, 2003). It was further developed in the US in the 1960s and 1970s with new methods and programs of problem solving, such as the Policy Planning Budgeting System (PPBS) and various methods of policy analysis (Garson, 1980). As Graham Allison explains, this dynamic contributed to the emergence of many new public policy schools and departments in the US to train future “policy analysts” (Allison, 2006).

5Policy studies grew largely out of American political scientists’ dissatisfaction in the 1960s with the perceived lack of theoretical and practical attention to what Easton (1965) called the political system, with its inputs and outputs. Criticizing Lasswell for abandoning a comprehensive approach to the political question, Easton (1950, p. 19) contributed to a new orientation in policy studies that focused more on the policy process (Zittoun, 2019). Although interdisciplinary in scope, policy studies as a field aimed, at least in the minds of some scholars, to develop a more satisfactory theory of political action (e.g., Ostrom, 1972; Cook & Scioli, 1972). In their critiques of analytical methods such as PPBS (Wildavsky, 1969), scholars proposed that the political dimension of the policy process be taken seriously, thereby legitimizing the role of political scientists in this new field. There was no need for the term “science” in the title as it was already claimed to have emerged from US political science. Perhaps this background can help contextualize some of the comments and their emphasis on expertise.

6What is democracy and why should we care? Professor Stone raises a big question here, one that policy analysts and political scientists profess to understand and that many espouse. But she argues that we do not fully comprehend the dilemmas and their implications. This is probably the greatest weakness of our field. We claim to be agnostic advocates of truth, transparency, and fairness (democracy), but our models of policy-making often fail to explore the democratic element (or lack thereof) of the policy process. We fail to recall that interest in public policy also arose out of dissatisfaction with democratic theory and practice (at least as it was implemented in the United States).

7It is interesting to recall that there is a fundamental paradox in Lasswell’s “Policy Sciences for democracy” (Lasswell, 1951, p. 10). On the one hand, he considers the apolitical dimension of the concept of “policy” to be essential because “policy is free of many of the undesirable connotations clustered about the word political which is often believed to imply partisanship” or “corruption” (p. 5). On the other hand, the apolitical “policy sciences” have the political goal of developing democracy. This fundamental paradox echoes the one that Deborah Stone encountered and that contributes to the title of her book: “I was supposed to teach the students how to get their ideal policy solutions through the political maze and implemented.”

8The paradox of the link between policy and democracy is a recurring theme in the US academic literature. One of the major political science controversies of the 1960s was about US democracy: “who governs” and “who are the policymakers” (Dahl, 1961)? It is a worthwhile exercise for all of us to read Schattschneider’s (1960) Semisovereign People and Lowi’s (1969) The End of Liberalism, among others of course, and to reflect on the many democratic policy implications of these classic books.

9Should we, as policy students, engage in public action? This is a very interesting and controversial idea because we live in ivory towers, however much we would like to deny it. Living in relative isolation provides the comfort and luxury of “free” thought and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Getting involved in the policy process taints this image. We become part of what we study as “objective” observers. There is no right or wrong answer, but it is an idea whose time has inched closer, if not come.

10And finally, the elephant in the room: is money in search of science? We are provoked to think about our dark secrets: first comes money, then comes science? Or does it matter if science follows money? For we are certain, without money there is no science. In the era of the commercialization of knowledge where many world-class universities measure a scientist ’s worth by the amount of dollars, euros, or yen that he or she brings to the institution, we have to ask ourselves: what is science, and what is our role as experts in the policy process? If the answer is to keep business out of academia, then the question becomes: who should fund science? Government, i.e., bring politics back in?

11Professor Stone succeeds in her task of alerting us to these and other difficult issues that affect our profession. We take no position, but rather invite our readers to reflect on the points raised and to offer their own responses in the form of peer-reviewed Forum articles.

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Bibliography

Allison, G. (2006). Emergence of Schools of Public Policy: Reflections by a Founding Dean. In E. Goodin, M. Moran and M. Rein (Eds.)? The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy (pp. 58-79). Oxford University Press.

Cook, T., & Scioli, F. (1972). Policy Analysis in Political Science: Trends and Issues in Empirical Research. Policy Studies Journal, 1(1), 6-11.

Dahl, R. A. (1961). Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. Yale University Press.

Deleon, P. (1988). Advice and Consent: The Development of the Policy Sciences. Russell Sage Foundation.

Easton, D. (1965). A Systems Analysis of Political Life. Wiley.

Easton, David. (1950). Harold Lasswell: Policy Scientist for a Democratic Society. The Journal of Politics, 12(3), 450‑477.

Fischer, F. (2003). Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices. Oxford University Press.

Garson, G. D. (1980). From Policy Science to Policy Analysis: A Quarter Century of Progress? Policy Studies Journal, 9(4), 535‑544.

Lasswell, H. D. (1951). The Policy Orientation. In D. Lerner, & H. D. Lasswell (Eds.). The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method (pp. 3-15). Stanford University Press.

Lasswell, H. D. (2003). Memorandum On the Policy Sciences in 1943: Personal Policy Objectives. Reprinted in Policy Sciences, 36(1), 71‑98.

Lowi, T. (1969). The End of Liberalism. W. W. Norton.

McDougal, M. (1979). Harold Dwight Lasswell 1902-1978. Faculty Scholarship Series, January.
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/2663.

Ostrom, V. (1972). Theory of Public Policy. Policy Studies Journal, 1(1), 11-14.

Schattschneider, E. E. (1960). The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Stone, D. (2012 [1988]). Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision-Making. 3rd ed. Wiley.

Turnbull, N. (2008). Harold Lasswell's “Problem Orientation” for the Policy Sciences. Critical Policy Studies, 2(1), 72-91.

Zittoun, P. (2019). The Two Lasswells: Implications for Critical Policy Studies. Critical Policy Studies, 13(2), 211‑215.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Nikolaos Zahariadis and Philippe Zittoun, Policy Paradox and Policy Prospects: Editors’ Introduction to the Keynote Speech by Deborah StoneInternational Review of Public Policy, 6:1 | 2024, 90-93.

Electronic reference

Nikolaos Zahariadis and Philippe Zittoun, Policy Paradox and Policy Prospects: Editors’ Introduction to the Keynote Speech by Deborah StoneInternational Review of Public Policy [Online], 6:1 | 2024, Online since 01 April 2024, connection on 17 July 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/irpp/4082; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/11whn

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About the authors

Nikolaos Zahariadis

Mertie Buckman Chair and Professor of International Studies, Rhodes College, USA

By this author

Philippe Zittoun

Research Professor in Political Science, University of Lyon, France

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Copyright

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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