Discretion in the Policy Process, by Peter Hupe and Michael Hill
Definitions, categories, review of literature. High calibre/status non-activist 2020 book, broadly tolerant or upbeat about discretion in welfare states.
Peter Hupe and Michael Hill wrote:
[MGH: Being a ‘review’ some of literature references have been retained.]
CHAPTER 16
Discretion in the Policy Process
16.1 Introduction
In politics and government discretion has always been a contentious issue. It is usually seen as a necessary evil and sometimes therefore as something to be minimized. Where legislators or policymakers recognize the limits of their control, they may be willing to grant a certain degree of freedom of judgement and even decision-making to relevant others—although always only in a hierarchical relationship. The term implementation gap expresses the standard view on policy implementation, in which discretion is seen as a phenomenon to be curbed. In case of an acknowledged policy failure, that then is exactly the measure taken first: limiting the freedom within which implementation organizations or other actors identified as subordinate can act. In such a case, the target is to reduce the possibility of ‘deviant’ use of such freedom, by specifying the boundaries of legitimate authority more stringently. This being so, discretion may also be approached in positive terms: as facilitating the achievement of policy goals.
In many statements about discretion in the policy process it is seen as stemming from a single source at the top of a hierarchy and, secondly, as exercised generally at a single spot at the bottom of that hierarchy, that is, in rule application at the street level. Such a localization is enhanced by definitions of discretion like the one by Davis (1969): ‘A public officer has discretion wherever the effective limits on his power leave him free to make a choice among possible courses of action and inaction’.
Definitions like this one—widespread as they are—clearly stem from the context of law and legislation. Freedom here is connected to authority and formal rules. Hence the terminology is primarily a judicial one. The space of the ‘hole in the donut’ (Dworkin 1977) is indicated as discretionary authority. The bit of circumscribed freedom at the bottom of a hierarchy is a derivation from the legitimate power exercised from the top.
Actually, this view is a particular one. When discretion is apparent, indeed a message is conveyed to exercise judgement while having the freedom to decide what to do, but there are two qualifying conditions. First, that message may have multiple senders rather than a single one. Therefore, it may be less clear what exactly the content of ‘the message’ entails. And second, the act of conveying can be performed from both horizontal (‘sideward’) and vertical (‘downward’) directions. Therefore, at many spots in the policy process forces are working, in ways which can hardly be directly controlled by a single ‘Authoritative Actor’ at the top. …
16.2 Defining Discretion
Conceptualizations of Discretion
In the context of the study of public administration, public management and public policy the term ‘discretion’ refers to what implementers have—or rather ‘do’—after the goals of a public policy have been formulated and decided upon. Of course, its substance entails some form of limited freedom and a certain room to make choices but, as such, discretion is seen as primarily and perhaps exclusively located at the street level. The variety of meanings the term discretion gets in the relevant literature is explored below. Apart from these conceptualizations, as a descriptive label of the object of street-level bureaucracy research, the term discretion has functional equivalents. Traditionally, discretion has been a central object in the study of law. In his seminal work on this topic Galligan (1990) begins:
A noticeable feature of modern legal systems is the extent to which officials, whether they be judicial or administrative, make decisions in the absence of previously fixed, relatively clear, and binding legal standards.
Discretion for Galligan is about:
The vagaries of language, the diversity of circumstances, and the indeterminacy of official purposes are (…) considerations which guarantee discretion some continuing place in the legal order and make its elimination an impossible dream.
Thus, discretion has ‘more central sense as an express grant of power conferred on officials where determination of the standards according to which power is to be exercised is left largely to them’. Hence the expanded role of the modern state has brought with it an increase in discretion, as ‘control over a wide range of matters is delegated to officials with varying degrees of guidance as to the policy goals to be achieved or the standards by which they are to be achieved’.
Galligan treats discretion ‘not just as a side-effect of having rules, but as a positive way of conferring powers where it is important that officials have more freedom as to the way they are to be exercised than a detailed set of rules might allow’. Discretion raises problems ‘from the point of view of the official who has to translate a broad grant of power into specific courses of action’.
Galligan is quoted here at length, because on the first pages of his book he presents a whole range of issues that can be deemed relevant when the subject of the present chapter, discretion in the policy process, is considered. Those issues as expressed in the subsequent quotes regard, respectively, the abundance of discretion; its inevitability; the granting of power underlying it; a varying degree of guidance concerning policy goals and viable standards, while the ‘conferring of powers’ sometimes explicitly is intended and sometimes not. Hence there is a need but also difficulty of an appropriate translation towards what in given circumstances needs to be done.
Making such an ‘appropriate translation’ on the spot is one thing, analysing it is something different, while evaluating the appropriateness of the translation ultimately concerns a normative question. Reporting on an empirical study, Baker Collins (2016) makes a distinction between discretion as interpretation or ‘space in the rules’ and discretion as ‘space outside the rules’. The latter phrase indicates discretion as existing in those spaces which the rules do not cover (the hole in the donut). Such a space outside the rules is created when street-level bureaucrats are seen as deviating from, subverting, modifying or breaking the rules.
Baker Collins speaks of ‘a workaround’ and says that public employees ‘may use discretion in ways which are responsive to the underlying intent of the policy and on other occasions in ways that prevent intended outcomes’. They ‘decide which rules apply in situations where there may be different but equally valid interpretations of those rules’. Baker Collins speaks of intended discretion when, ‘in situations where there is a gap between law and social reality, discretion allows for the adaptation of policies to individual circumstances and to changing conditions’. Such a flexibility is deemed necessary and assists in policy implementation. Baker Collins calls this dimension of discretion the ‘space in the rules’ where ‘Discretion is driven not only by the need to interpret the rules but by the need to negotiate between competing priorities and contradictions within the rules’.
Baker Collins claims that ‘a straightforward equation of congruent policy implementation with democratic accountability is complicated by policy conflict, ambiguity and poor design’. Her empirical study of an income assistance programme in Ontario addresses how street-level bureaucrats, confronted with rules that make access to benefit difficult, may alternatively choose to be strict rule enforcers or use discretion to avoid undermining what they see as the ultimate objectives of the programme. Case managers spoke of ‘black and white legislation’, meaning policy directives seen as stringent and of ‘black and white implementation’ when it would be possible to read the rules in a very restrictive way. Baker Collins argues ‘that front line workers have a complicated and contradictory relationship with the policies they are required to implement. Often the policies, not the clients, are found wanting’. That last sentence of course entails a value judgement. …
… Baker Collins’ study highlights four insights that have been gained in street-level bureaucracy research over the years. First, discretion and rules are intrinsically connected to each other. It is the hole that makes the donut a donut, while there is no freedom without some kind of force aimed at controlling it. It be noted, however, that in the context of public policy the term ‘discretion’ has a dual meaning. In the policy process, in street-level implementation discretion is used—a dimension of behaviour—but at the level of a ministry such discretion has been granted—as a characteristic of a public policy conceived as a set of rules.
Second, rules never come alone but neither do rule sets. At the street level there is almost always more than one public policy to be implemented. In general, there are various sources of action prescriptions adding up to the range of formal rules. In fact, action prescriptions come in various sorts; apart from formal rules also professional standards, societal expectations and sometimes market incentives as well have to be reckoned with. Hence, at the street level of government bureaucracy—in the broad sense of agencies in the (semi) public sector—there is a multiplicity of both action prescriptions and related accountabilities.
Third, while Baker Collins speaks of ‘bureaucratic discretion’, from the literature a diversity of ‘discretions’ arises. For example, ‘value discretion’, ‘task discretion’ and ‘rule discretion’ are distinguished … At the same time discretion is used as an adjective, as in ‘discretionary powers’, ‘discretionary authority’, ‘discretionary behaviour’ and ‘discretionary practices’. In the context of governance, the term ‘discretion’ primarily refers to what street-level bureaucrats do when implementing public policy .… The present chapter explores not only the different meanings but also the various loci of discretion in the policy process. As a result, it is suggested there may be a need to use an adjective indicating the locus of discretion, as in street-level discretion .… When referring to what happens at the street level, the term discretion is still robust, while it also has equivalents.
Fourth and finally, Baker Collins’ work takes us away from a view that sees rules as essentially rational elements in the policy process regardless of the ways in which those rules have been formulated. As in Davis’ (1969) influential book, such a view is embodied in perspectives that take it for granted that discretion is undesirable. There is a reminder here that rule interpretation itself may be seen as part of a power game, as in Gouldner’s (1954) classic examination of rules within an industrial workplace analysed in terms of the functions they perform for different interests in different situations.
Framing What Happens at the Street Level
… [A] full understanding and explanation of what happens on the ground floor of government cannot do without the aspects central in the theoretical views of all … disciplines… The juridical view highlights the interplay between rules and discretion. The economics view draws attention to issues about control over agents in contexts of divergent interests and the transaction costs involved. The sociological viewpoints at processes of social interaction within and at the borders of organizations. The political science view focuses on legitimacy, the working of power mechanisms and the significance of interest-driven behaviour. …
… Traditional labels for what public servants in the lower ranks of government bureaucracy do have a juridical connotation: ‘law enforcement’, ‘compliance’, ‘rule application’. Apart from ‘exercising discretion’, the concept of ‘street-level decision making’ is used. Somewhat more recent may be scholarly emphases on ‘coping behaviour’ and ‘styles of social interaction’. Bear in mind that here a historical ‘succession’ of terms is suggested, while actually all these different labels are being used next to each other. It can be noted, however, that the labels as sorted here can be ranged from ones with an explicit hierarchical connotation, via an empirically more focused one (‘decisions’), to concepts with a neutral character and even a ‘horizontal’ connotation.
[On a] characterization of street-level bureaucrats as alienated [others] go on to characterize their adaptations as ‘coping’. This refers to dealing with stress through ‘behavioural efforts frontline workers employ when interacting with clients, in order to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis’ …
… [Some authors] distinguish behavioural from cognitive coping and use a classification of three ‘families’ of coping during public service delivery. They formulate the latter in terms of ‘moving towards’, ‘away from’ or ‘against’ clients. Given, as indicated above, the emphasis in some of the literature on the undesirability of discretion, there is a tendency to interpret street-level bureaucracy negatively. That makes it important to note that this research found the ‘largest number of coping instances is related to the coping family “moving towards clients” (43%)’. It is argued that ‘In sum, frontline workers seem to want to perform meaningful public service keying on their clients, even in stressful situations’.
In this work … policy preferences are of key importance . … What is being highlighted is more than simply the fact that preferences vary. In fact, it is a starting point for the exploration of psychological factors. In this approach there is an emphasis on ‘policy alienation’. This needs to be explained but so too does its opposite ‘policy fidelity’ as the default mode, apparently.
Indeed, street-level bureaucrats may feel uneasy with certain policy goals and experience role conflicts. This being so, it can be assumed that public employees working ‘at the frontline’ do not break the rules often because most of the time they will find those rules, one way or another, meaningful for their clients. … [H]owever, with particular new political initiatives—for example, in respect of narrowly conceived quantifiable performance goals—‘policy alienation’ may come into play when the level of conflict with professional ideals is felt to be too high.
This practised public service professionalism implies a neutral stance, driven by the ethos of craftsmanship: doing one’s job as good as one can. While resistance may be the exception, professionals in public service generally will tend to use the freedom of action they have in such a way that they can be held accountable for what they do—accountable in multiple directions: towards political-administrative authorities but also towards their colleagues and peers as well as their clients and the public at large. In other words, rather than the reduction of stress, an awareness of the need for an appropriate fulfilment of public tasks is guiding here. …
Positioning Discretion
The ‘exercise of discretionary authority’—and certainly ‘law enforcement’ and ‘rule application’— have a straightforward hierarchical connotation. Against this background, looking at ‘behaviour’ in the policy process can be welcomed as an empirically more neutral label. There is a chance, however, that this novel object description implies a reductive shift in focus to motivational aspects of behaviour rather than an extension to also consider the wider context of what needs to be taken into account. [Some authors] contend that ‘because street-level research has not sufficiently accounted for broader environmental influences on discretion, it has overstated the agency of workers, who are viewed as exploiting the discretion as afforded to them to maximize their self-interest’.
In contrast, [Granow and Grusky 2013] start from the institutional theory axiom, that agency is institutionally embedded. Their analysis depicts street-level bureaucrats
not as agents with objective interests and preferences, but rather as institutionally constructed actors whose values, interests, and practices are partially determined by the institutional logics that structure the organizational fields in which they operate. Thus, although workers may use their discretion to advance their interests in response to their shared conditions of work, their actions, intentions, and interests are themselves institutionally conditioned in systematic ways.
In their empirical research, Granow and Grusky test the idea that differences in discretionary behaviour are related to the underlying logic of the organizational field in which the work is embedded. In their research, they distinguish between four institutional logics—medical, public health, social movement and multi-service. They argue that particular institutional logics provide
cultural and material repertoires that shape workers’ understandings of the means and ends of their interests. Logics allocate the attention of workers by defining the purpose of their organization, the nature of the problems they face, appropriate organizational responses to these problems, the relevant attributes of clients.
The findings from Granow and Grusky’s research suggest that
worker agency, as expressed through discretionary practice, is embedded in an institutional system that shapes how discretion is exercised by providing institutionally defined means, ends, and interests.
and that
(S)treet-level discretion (as well as the variation in organizational practices it enables) is bounded by the institution in which it occurs.
… It is clear that, certainly at the street level of human service organizations, employees have to deal with multiple social standards, stemming from ‘local communities, professions, clients, and the nation as a whole’ (another author). However, these standards do not necessarily have to conflict directly in ways assumed in the literature about ‘goal-related discretion’. Where multiple standards overlap, workers need to make choices. Which of the multiple standards in the situation at hand are they to follow and how are they to interpret them? Besides, there may be variation in the power to define the institutionalized standards. And then, culturally derived standards may be ‘taken for granted and interpreted in loose ways’.
Patterns of discretion may vary with the social acceptance of the authority of the actors involved. ‘(D)iscretion can be socially sanctioned or granted by default’ (authors). Sometimes overlaps in standards are allowed, ‘when multiple standards are deemed important’ (authors). At the street level, a balancing act is always involved. While the standards to be dealt with, coming from many sides, add up to a ‘toolkit of prescriptions’ (author), ‘shaping discretion involves balancing the standards that apply to a situation’ (author). Policy programmes usually operate ‘with a combination of myths, ceremonies, and various balanced institutional standards’ (author). …
… The emphasis here on the importance of standards brings us back to [Galligan’s point that] discretionary power is often characterized in terms of the authority to choose amongst alternative courses of action. This then implies a concern with the reasons for such choices. This leads [Galligan] to stress that discretionary choice is a function of standard. …
… Accordingly,
Firstly, discretion occurs in a context of standards, and although in the strongest cases of discretion these standards may be offer little guidance or discretion, there are usually some standards guiding, constraining, and influencing the way a discretionary decision is made. Secondly, discretionary powers may be thought of as subsystems of authority within which the official has some degree of freedom and autonomy in acting as he thinks best. (…). Thirdly, there is a characteristic of discretion which is especially pertinent in the administrative context. Here the idea is that the official should not simply formulate rules of decision-making and then apply them rigorously to situations as they arise, but must maintain a special relationship between the general standard and the particular case (Galligan 1990).
Perhaps the point of most importance for our present purposes is Dworkin’s (1977) insistence that officials exercising authority ‘should be able to explain and justify their actions in terms of political principles and constitutional doctrines’. …
A Hierarchy of Discretions
The notion of delegated legislation implies that an initial legislative act gives power to a ministry to take further steps to translate it into action and that the exercise of those powers may create rules that define the discretionary powers of others. It suggests the possibility of speaking of a hierarchy of discretions. …
… [E.g.] ‘political-administrative arrangements’ [i.e.] the fact that decisions may be delegated to other bodies: local governments or specific central government agencies. These may then be given powers to determine exactly how they will carry out their tasks. …
… [E.g.] [American] federalism (and related forms of autonomy on the part of regional and local bodies) and the use of specific separate implementing agencies.
… [The] overall observations may be applied both in one direction to supra-national efforts to developed shared policies (e.g. in the European Union) and in the other to intergovernmental relationships not normally described as ‘federal’. … Here the overriding point is that there may be co-producing layers within governmental systems. Expectations that ‘lower’ layers have roles to play in the policy formation part of the policy process then have been enshrined in taken for granted practices, in specific laws or even in the constitution …
… Also, without the latter dimension being present, the points about formal definitions of responsibility discussed here in terms of territorial divisions may apply. The second point noted above regards the role of specific implementing agencies. … [e.g.] One of the reasons given for the establishment of a ‘board’ to administer social assistance was a need for issues about personal needs to be handled at ‘arm’s length’ from the political system. That would today probably be regarded as a rather dated idea; nevertheless, the case for ‘arm’s length’ implementation is still made in a variety of other ways. This is particularly found in the arguments for New Public Management where partial independence is justified in the cause of more efficient management … This perspective is also closely connected with the idea of the creation of bodies where performance expectations comparable to those imposed by markets can be established, while perhaps actual competition can be required. Hence in a variety of areas—public utilities, transport, healthcare and so on—it is possible to identify delegation of discretionary powers. In relation to these powers, contracts are often important, establishing the terms and limits to this discretion, whilst also perhaps identifying how these organizations may be called to account in this respect.
The result of these various structural features (constitutional systems, systems of democracy, systems of intergovernmental relations, systems of political-administrative relations) and process factors (bureaucratic politics) in many cases will be public policies with a less than a ‘single design’ or ‘programmed’ character. Therefore, if a policy is looked at from the street level, while any discretionary powers may have been directly given by the initial statutes, they may also be the less formal resultant of discretion exercised by other actors involved in the policy process concerned.
There may be a process of structuring discretion through a hierarchical process. Those seeking redress against an act of discretion will see the legitimacy of the products of this process as their main practical concern, rather than the question about the extent to which a discretion has been specifically granted by the legislature. In this context, [author] distinguishes between two approaches to the control of discretion. One is legalization, the ‘process of subjecting official decisions to predetermined rules’ and thus, trying to minimize discretion. The other is judicialization, involving ‘submitting official decisions to adjudicative procedures’. There are also important issues about the interaction between these two approaches. In that sense the issue is then about where ultimate decision-making power – as discretion – is to reside when there is conflict over official decisions. Then those adjudicative procedures may involve the exercise of discretion by courts and tribunals. There is an issue here that ‘judicialization’ may involve the shifting of discretionary powers to a judge or tribunal, with an assumption that such a body is better equipped to exercise discretion than the officials making the original decision.
A search for the provisions that manage discretion at the street level may not necessarily reveal an explicit mandate for action. A distinction may be made between ‘agency’ and ‘individual’ discretion [author]. The former has a recognizable legal definition whilst the latter is the object of managerial instructions to street-level workers. Formally specified discretionary powers may be interpreted and organizations may have rule books that specify these or it may even be left to first-line managers at the local level to brief their subordinates.
The distinction between agency and individual discretion may be important in a public policy context for the identification of responsibility if something goes wrong or a decision is challenged. There are contexts, particularly in regulatory policy, where individuals in the relevant law are identified as the decision makers. However, there will be others where individuals are just ‘agents’ of their organization. This is, however, not a simple dichotomy. The autonomous decision maker may operate in an organizational structure in which first-line managers provide advice and support. The subordinate one in a more strictly controlled situation may not be absolved of responsibility when things go wrong. Much may depend upon the clarity of the mandates provided to street-level officials. This is explored further in the next sub-section. In all cases, the issues about the limits to absolute control explored earlier will apply.
Discretion Beyond Hierarchy
The discussion of discretion in the previous sub-section pre-supposes a clarity about the way in which public policies delegate discretion, essentially following the principal/agent model in which discretion is seen to have a delegated character. The present sub-section explores a number of situations in which this may not be so:
When the initiator of a policy and its implementer are essentially the same.
Where implementation depends upon negotiation between different parties.
Where the case for professional autonomy has been conceded.
In the first case, there may be no delegation of discretion. Logically, that may occur in almost any context and is to some extent thus a function of scale. For example, decisions about social assistance payments or allocation of public housing or public employment may be made by members of the government. This applies where there are clientelist forms of politics with patronage through political favours. It may be seen today in various small nation states around the world, but lies at the roots of political party systems in many countries, including in particular the United States (Key 1942).
More generally, policy processes with high levels of discretion but little or no delegation are particularly evident in international relations (Allison 1971) and in macro-economic policy (Hall 1986). Actions may fall logically within the definition of discretion used here: declarations of war, the making or breaking of treaties, changes to bank interest rates, the granting of major public contracts. They differ however from the main concerns of analyses of discretion inasmuch as there are expectations that these belong within the remit of national political actors.
The second case overlaps with the first case inasmuch as the retention of discretion by the principal actors may be seen as necessary for negotiation with other actors. More generally it may be that decision-making by officials is embedded in a complex governance relationship in which results are achieved through interactions—negotiations, bargains and such—with other parties. The essential point here is made by Scharpf (1978: 347):
(I)t is unlikely, if not impossible, that public policy of any significance could result from the choice process of any single unified actor. Policy formulation and policy implementation are inevitably the result of interactions among a plurality of separate actors with separate interests, goals and strategies.
That is putting the issue particularly strongly and linking formation and implementation. Nevertheless, there are many policymaking activities where interactions often within complex networks are important at the street level [authors].
One feature of the analysis of networks is a recognition that these may contain not just the representatives of more than one public agency, but also that private interest groups may be incorporated into the network. There is a wide general point applying to all of the analysis of discretion, that decisions are made in interactions with other parties—including those who gain or lose from those decisions—in what in fact is a relationship of co-production [authors].
This leads to the third issue identified above: professional autonomy. This is a particularly salient issue where outcomes depend upon interactions between public officials and the public. The issues about professional autonomy in medicine, education and social work have been widely discussed. There have been efforts to constrain decision-making—recommended procedures and limits to activities that may be undertaken in medicine, defined curricula and rules about examinations in education. There are also supervisory and accountability arrangements. Nevertheless, considerable autonomy remains and many of the attempts to restrict discretion involve professional bodies as part of the controlling system. Those professional bodies, particularly in medicine, are themselves the subject of statutes in which their roles in respect of individual discretion are recognized. Another feature of this area of discretion, particularly in the case of medicine, is statutory provisions that determine decisions that should (or must) be made by professionals (e.g. the identification of disability).
Issues about professional discretion also apply in areas of regulatory policy. Here we may find extensive discretionary powers, exercised by experts in identifying and dealing with dangers to the public and other public nuisances. [One author] offers a useful analysis of these issues in terms of standards … where the strict application of rules would be inflexible, leaving no room for negotiation and difficult to change over time.
Finally, bearing in mind what was said earlier about the need to see decisions about resourcing of a policy as an important stage in the structuring of discretion, it is important not to lose sight of one of Lipsky’s key issues about the determination of the street-level task:
(T)he very nature of this work prevents them from coming close to the ideal conception of their jobs. Large classes or huge caseloads and inadequate resources combine with the uncertainties of method and the unpredictability of clients to defeat their aspirations as service workers (Lipsky 1980).
Hence, even if there are relatively explicit tasks at stake, how and where they are to be performed depend on judgements about the use of scarce resources. This is something particularly evident in regulatory work and policing. Even workers with the most constrained rule-related tasks have to make operational decisions about how they use their time. Traffic wardens are charged to impose fines on illegal parkers. Even if aiming to be scrupulously officious, a warden fhas to decide which street to walk down and even which way to look.
There are therefore policy areas where extensive discretionary powers are granted, but it may be difficult to identify clear definitions and mandates for these. What we mean here is that an examination of the law may provide evidence that there is an expectation of a specific activity but no clarity about what that activity involves. This is an assertion which would be difficult to substantiate empirically, because it would require a detailed scrutiny of all the relevant laws and would have to be undertaken country by country. However, the characteristics of discretion identified in this chapter suggests that there are activities where what is to be done and the expertise upon which it will depend, will be difficult to subject to close specification. What is being talked about here are activities often defined in terms of the concept of professionalism.
16.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, discretion has been shown to be an inherent feature of public policy. A view of the relationship between rules and discretion that sees the former as sourced hierarchically and the latter as the issues that arise because of limitations to that process, has been demonstrated to be inappropriate. This is particularly so when attention to the issues is driven by a conception of discretion as something undesirable, regardless of its context.
In respect of that view, Dworkin’s metaphor of discretion as the hole in the donut is helpful in indicating that discretion is exercised within a structure. The ‘hole’, however, conveys a notion of discretion as something entirely undetermined. He might instead have referred to it as a British rather than American donut in which there is jam in the hole. And, he could have taken his metaphor further to recognize that constituting the donut requires decisions on a balance between two elements, the dough and the jam, both of which are malleable.
Attention then needs to be given to the factors that determine these elements. The chapter has identified a number of significant considerations:
the complexity of the activities concerned, particularly inasmuch as issues about ‘standards’ are involved;
the insight that those who exercise discretion occupy a role in which they have to make judgements and effect compromises between alternatives and perhaps collaborate with others (about which they may have more or less strong views that influence their behaviour);
that the transition of a complex policy aspiration into action depends upon a succession of decisions all which may be discretionary in some respects;
and that, whilst many of the processes concerned may be hierarchical in character, this is not necessarily the case.
Such a perspective points us towards the political processes that determine policy. Behind formal public policy decisions, a lot of politics is hidden: democratic politics, party politics but also bureaucratic politics. Indeed, there are various views about what is meant by policy [authors]. It is alternatively defined in very general terms as a ‘stance’ and in very specific terms. In many respects it may simply be seen as a ‘claim’, as in the ordinary usage embodied in the statement ‘My policy is (…)’, a view that becomes problematical when it is a product of a negotiated process. It may also be seen more as an outcome than as an input: a country’s health policy or education policy and so on is what actually is being delivered in practice.
The fact of a plurality of discretionary actors is accompanied by the fact of a multiple character of a public policy as a ‘message’. In other words, in a policy process there are many co-producers of inputs and there are many inputs, which at the street level all function as action prescriptions to reckon with. Much therefore depends on how the many actors perceive their roles when putting policies into practice. [END]
[MGH: I expect to exhibit 2-3 more chapters from this relatively objective niche book in coming months, as relevant to a period in the long history of social order. ‘Welfare State’ literature is a giant low-quality industry, most of it one-sided politically. ]
The Source:
Peter Hupe and Michael Hill, ‘Discretion in the Policy Process’, in Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom, edited by Tony Evans and Peter Hupe, Palgrave Macmillan 2020
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.