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Courses
Full day
Marleen Brans (KU Leuven) | David Aubin(Université Catholique de Louvain)
Marleen Brans (KU Leuven) | David Aubin
Université Catholique de Louvain
Marleen Brans holds master's degrees from the KU Leuven and Hull University, and a PhD from the European University Institute Firenze. She is currently a professor at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute, where she directs two master's programs: Public Management and Policy; Master of Advanced Studies in European Policies and Public Administration. She currently teaches Policy Analysis, Evidence-based Policy, Policy Advising, and Success and Failure of European Policy Implementation. She has been a guest lecturer at several places in Europe and is currently a guest professor at Université Catholique de Louvain. She conducts research on the production and use of policy advice by actors in and outside government. The reconciliation of expert advice with political control has been a recurrent theme in this research. Recently, within Cost-action CA15207, she contributed to the design and implementation of both large N and qualitative comparative research on advisory roles of academics, one of the collaborative results of which is the open access volume co-edited with Arco Timmermans: The policy advisory roles of political scientists in Europe. Comparing engagements in policy advisory systems (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022). Expert advice is just one input in the formulation of policies, next to interest-based and political considerations that are advanced by other advisory actors. A particularly powerful group, ministerial advisers (who act both as advisers and gatekeepers to advice from others to executive ministers) are at the heart of Brans’ recent research. Also, the roles of advisory bodies and policy analysts in government have been recurrently featured in the applicant’s research on policy advisory systems. Brans was co-founding Vice-President and is currently a member of the EC of the International Public Policy Association. ______________________________________________________________________ David Aubin holds a PhD in political science and is associate professor at UCLouvain (Belgium) where he teaches policy analysis, policy evaluation, and environmental policies. He is also involved in various training programmes for civil servants. Embedded in Belgian and European collaborative research projects, his comparative research activities concern policy advice, sustainability policies, and learning processes in collaborative networks. He was invited scholar at Université de Montréal, KU Leuven and University of Colorado Denver, and published in journals such as Policy Sciences, Journal of Public Policy, and European Policy Analysis. He has also edited the book Policy Analysis in Belgium with Marleen Brans (Policy Press, 2017).
Advising the Policy Process
The reduction in the means and capacities of administrations, combined with the shift in governance and the rise in power of interest groups, has led to a change in the way policy-making is viewed. States are no longer considered as autarkic organizations that have the necessary information and an autonomous capacity to steer society. Policy-making relies on multiple sources of information and opinions that emanate both from public organizations at different levels of power and from civil society (for example, trade unions, employers' organizations, academics, the voluntary sector, think tanks or research centers and other idea incubators).
This configuration of policy advice providers and their relation to policy-makers constitutes the policy advisory system, which is defined as: “the interlocking set of actors and organizations with unique configurations in each sector and jurisdiction that provides recommendations for action to policy-makers” (Halligan, 1995). Policy advice provides the merits of policy options and their potential to deliver the desired outcomes. It formulates recommendations or opinions about future courses of government action. Not reducible to information provision, policy advisers propose an analysis of problems and/or assessment of possible solutions (Halligan, 1998).
The concept of policy advice unites under its banner several families of researchers who are dedicated to the study of the relationships between different stakeholders during the formulation of public policies. The idea of a family is that the different members share common attachments and attributes without being totally assimilable to each other. In the case of policy advice systems, the different streams of research they bring together share an interest in contributions to understanding policy-making, but they differ in the concepts they mobilize, the frameworks of analysis they develop, and the epistemological postures on which they rely. However, all groups of researchers have the same ambition to move from the description of policy advice production and consumption to their conceptualization and theorization.
The lecture will present the state-of-art in four streams of literature that share an interest in understanding policy advice and advising: Policy advisory systems (Craft and Howlett, 2012; Craft and Wilder, 2017; Hustedt and Veit, 2017; Manwaring, 2018; Aubin & Brans, 2020), knowledge utilization (Radaelli, 1995; Boswell, 2008; Blum, 2018 ; Caby, 2021), policy work (Colebatch and Hoppe, 2018) and political advisors within the executive triangle (Shaw et Eichbaum, 2018 ; van den Berg, 2017; Gouglas et al., 2017). The course invites students to reflect on further theorization in this specific field of policy analysis. In particular, it will consider the use of different kinds of evidence in policy-making and the role of formal advisory bodies and experts.
Frank Fischer(Humboldt University in Berlin)
Frank Fischer
Humboldt University in Berlin
Frank Fischer has until recently been a Distinguished Professor of Politics and Global Affairs at Rutgers University in the USA. Currently, he is a research scholar at the Institute of Social Sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is co-editor of Critical Policy Studies journal and Handbook of Public Policy Series editor for Edward Elgar. In addition to widely lecturing around the world on environmental politics and policy analysis, he has published 16 books and numerous essays. These include Citizens, Experts and the Environment (Duke 2000), Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices (Oxford 2003), Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics and Methods, co-edited with Mara Sidney and Gerald Miller (Taylor and Francis 2006), Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry (Oxford 2009), The Argumentative Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicative Practice, co-edited with Herbert Gottweis (Duke 2012), the Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, co-edited with Douglas Torgerson, Anna Durnova and Michael Orsini ( Elgar 2015) and Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect (Oxford 2017). In addition to research in the United States and Germany, he has conducted field research in India, Nepal and Thailand on citizen participation and local ecological knowledge. He has also received numerous awards, including the Harold Lasswell Award for contributions to the field.
The Public Policy Process in Critical Perspective: Comparing Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
This course examines the theory of the public policy process, with an emphasis on political, conceptual and methodological issues. It begins with an exploration of the evolution of theory development in public policy studies, including an emphasis on the interplay among competing analytical criteria--efficiency, equity and legitimacy—in policy decision processes. The discussion then turns to an investigation of each phase of the policymaking process, from the politics of agenda setting (emphasizing interest group competition, parties, movements and the media), policy formulation (focused on policy advice, cost-benefit analysis and epistemic policy communities), policy decision-making and adoption (concerned with state imperatives and models of power), implementation (conerned with program design, bureaucratic politics, and program recipients), and policy evaluation and learning (comparing technocratic versus constructivist approaches). Along the way, the role of the role the multiple streams model, the advocacy coalition framework, the institutional perspective, and the discourse-deliberative approach are considered. In the process, the course pays special attention to the kinds of knowledge and inquiry appropriate to each phase of the policy process. The methodological debates between quantitative and qualitative approaches that this gives rise to are also explored.
Philippe Zittoun(University of Lyon)
Philippe Zittoun
University of Lyon
Philippe Zittoun is a Research Professor of political science at the LAET-ENTPE of the University of Lyon and the General Secretary of the International Public Policy Association (IPPA). He is co-editor of the International Series on Public Policy for Palgrave-McMillan and serves on the Editorial board of many scientific journals (Critical Policy Studies, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Policy Studies Journal, Policy and Society, Policy Research Journal, etc.). He has been a visiting Professor at Yale University and has given lectures in different universities around the World. He has published 7 books and a large number of articles. His most recent books include "The Political Process of Policymaking, a pragmatic approach to public policy" (Palgrave 2014), "The Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy: Theories, Controversies, and Perspectives" (Palgrave, 2016) (with Guy Peters), and "Policy Analysis in France" (Policy Press, 2018). His studies focus on a constructivist and pragmatist approach to policy making.
Studying Policy Process with Constructivist, Pragmatic and Qualitative Approaches
This course focuses on how to study Policy Processes by mobilising different qualitative perspectives, from Constructivist to Pragmatic Approaches. Its main objective is to identify and discuss how we can empirically and methodologically grasp the policy process by observing and defining the struggles around the problem but also around the meaning of proposed solutions. Special attention will be paid to the building of coalitions, existing powerful dimensions, and the solutions to the different challenges encountered along their path. Why do some solutions manage to make it to the decision-making process whereas others fail? Under what conditions and at what price do solutions make it to the solution agenda? How do some actors succeed in "domesticating" "wicked" problems? First, this course will explore the career of a public problem, from emergence to agenda-setting. Second, it will explore the career of the proposal as it passes through different areas such as bureaucracy, the advice system, and the political arena. Policy problems and solutions will be observed on the basis of three games: the game of language where a statement takes on meaning and becomes a problem/solution, the game of actors where this definition is stabilized through coalition building, and the game of power through the formation of multiple levels of power. The course will draw on the studies undertaken by key authors in the field and will explore how they perceive the political dimension in the policy process. It will also propose different concepts and approaches to help grasp the policy process from a different perspective.
Peter Hupe(KU Leuven)
Peter Hupe
KU Leuven
Peter Hupe chose a career as a policymaker in the Dutch national civil service, where he discovered the relevance of policy implementation. He made that choice, having a master’s degree in Political Science (cum laude, Free University Amsterdam) and before obtaining a doctorate at Leiden University. At Erasmus University Rotterdam he taught and undertook research in Public Administration for more than thirty years. From that institutional basis he had academic affiliations in Leiden, Leuven, London, Oxford and Potsdam. Retired from his position in Rotterdam, he currently is Visiting Professor at the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is also Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK. The major part of his research regards the theoretical-empirical study of the policy process, particularly policy implementation and street-level bureaucracy. He is especially interested in the work of professionals in public service and its consequences for government performance and has published about these matters in, among others, Policy & Politics, Public Administration and Public Management Review. In 2019 the Research Handbook of Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Ground Floor of Government in Context came out. With Tony Evans he edited Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom (2020). The fourth, expanded, edition of Implementing Public Policy, written with Michael Hill, was published in 2022.
Policy Implementation and Street-level Bureaucracy
When the objectives of a public policy have been formulated and decided upon, the rest seems just a matter of implementation. The latter is assumed as a purely administrative activity. After all, the policy goals are supposed to provide instructions which only have to be followed. However, it is in the process of realizing those goals that public policies get their final substance and form. Particularly crucial is what happens in and around the encounter between individual citizens and the public officials working at the street level of government bureaucracy. This makes policy implementation, more than a subordinate ‘stage’, a multi-dimensional and dynamic part of the policy process. While specific attention is given to the role of street-level bureaucrats, the objective of the course is to better understand these dynamics and the multiple dimensions involved.
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY ASSOCIATION
LAET-ENTPE, 3 Rue Maurice Audin
69120 Vaulx en Velin, France
Tel. +33 (0) 72 04 72 53
icpublicpolicy@gmail.com