Transcript The Water Dispute Between Alabama, Florida, and Georgia

Can we ensure that policies succeed?
 No …. However, design them to be technically credible, scientifically
defensible, and politically effective if they are adaptively designed.
 Assume that public policies will fail to fully embrace temporal, spatial,
perceptual, goal based failures.
 incorporate an “error-provocative design” within the policy – i.e., assume
that flaws are inevitable and politically-unavoidable given the interest group
pressures in their design (Ackerman, 1980; Robison, 1994).
 Prepare for these flaws by providing checks and balances in their
implementation – at the first sign of a problem, even a “street-level
bureaucrat” responsible for some policy “mode” can veto a decision; demand
that some problem be inspected, audited, examined, evaluated, or revisited.
 Permit input from a wide range of stakeholders & provide capacity to modify
the policy or program when new information is acquired.
Examples?
 NASA manned-spaceflight missions …. since the space shuttle accidents of
1986 and 2004 (Challenger and Columbia).
 FEMA has begun elements of this …. since Hurricane Katrina.
 Department of Interior/Mining and Minerals Service … since the Gulf oil
spill of 2010.
 Nuclear Regulatory Commission … since Three Mile Island (1979).
 Common denominators? Scandal, accident, tragedy, high-consequence
failure. What is missing, however, is long term planning or anticipation of
problems.
Conclusions – future challenges facing the study of public policy

Worldwide – as nation-states develop, aspirations for a better life grow,
and expectations rise – policy problems are converging in 2 major ways.

Problems becoming comparable the world over – e.g., health care
needed as populations age; demands for more “rights” as countries
modernize; demands for more “cradle-to-grave” protection as
economies become more complex.

Solutions becoming comparably constrained – less revenue + growing
public demands for more of everything = policy-makers under stress
(lack of trust and confidence in policy processes).
Implications of these challenges

In developing countries, greater demands for public participation in
decisions; less tolerance for authoritarian policy-making.

In more developed countries, less trust of “experts” and an “expert
state; greater movement by groups and parties toward center of the
political spectrum for solutions. What is the “center”?

Less regulation, more partnership with civil society, greater devolution of
policy implementation to lower- jurisdictions, more “incremental” or path
dependent innovation – no more New Deals, New Frontiers, or “Wars on
poverty, inflation, cancer.”

Greater demands for policy “thickening” in matters of risk; e.g.,
environmental protection, health and education, and consumer product
safety.
So … what’s the problem?

We simultaneously demand less harm and greater protection (which
implies more government) but at same time we are concerned with fair
allocation of benefits and risks (implying greater liberty):

Requires greater reliance on science and allowance for public participation.
Can these two things be reconciled?
 Myth: scientists produce and deliver information to policy-makers who
then rely on them for making decisions (“loading dock” model).
 Reality: as we have seen, use of science by policy-makers is complicated:
 Scientists/experts may disagree with one another–a policy analysis problem.
 Scientists not always good at translating work into policy information.
 Public has vague understanding of science.
 Change in society partly determined by science, partly by social choices.
AB 32 – The CO2 emissions strategy for California
Translating science for policy
This model was developed for NOAA to
depict how climate information (i.e.,
“forecasts” of weather, long-term
climate trends are translated and used
by decision-makers.
• At tip of triangle scientists and other knowledge-producers share common language
and tools.
• As findings and outcomes become increasingly different, a learning process must
occur for information to be translated (middle of triangle) to policy-makers and public.
• Finally, science must share the stage with ethics, politics and other “uncertain” areas
of information in order to achieve policy “transformation,” including changes in
behavior – i.e., citizen science.
Citizen science as transformation
 Definition – science-society collaboration & production of policy-specific
knowledge designed to solve problems (Gibbons, 1999; Jasanoff, 2004):
 Mobilizes academic and pragmatic knowledge and experience to produce
better solutions to environmental, health, technological problems and issues.
 Grounds broad, theoretical scientific assumptions in a “place-based” setting –
this is where problems must be solved!
 Promotes longer-term thinking about impacts and responsibilities – including
our individual responsibilities to future generations (take what we learn and
apply it to our lives).
 Emphasizes experimentation and two-way communication – i.e., not science
as a “loading dock” but science as a circuitous, iterative learning process.
Example of translational science - The Regional
Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA)
program
- Team members primarily based at universities
though some are based at government research
facilities, non-profit organizations or private sector
entities.
- Research focuses on the fisheries, water, wildfire,
and agriculture sectors – work with citizen groups as
well as agencies on climate-related issues (e.g., flood,
drought, weather variability).
- Program also supports research into climate
sensitive health issues. More recently, coastal
restoration has also become an important research
focus for some of the teams working with NGOs.
Public participation as additional solution
 Public participation variously defined:
 Passive vs. proactive.
 Passive - acquiescence/opposition through expression of favorable or
unfavorable opinion by public (e.g., polling, focus groups).

Currently done in many policy areas – ineffective in creating a sense of community or
policy “ownership.”
 Pro-active - active role in making decisions through legally-sanctioned,
unconventional mechanisms (e.g., advisory boards or citizen-oversight bodies.

Has been attempted in many environmental and community health and development
policies. Can be effective, but it requires much thought in program design!
Public participation barriers
 Many agencies responsible for environmental, health, urban planning
decisions operate under “ethos” of secrecy:
 Closed deliberative processes
 Hierarchical command and control
 Many agencies lack staff with experience, training, inclination to
embrace/guide broad input:
 Public works agencies, anti-poverty and public housing programs
 Hard to convince agencies that while participation may slow decision-making;
it may make decisions more durable & just.
 Defining the “public” is a challenge:
Should participants be those subject to economic or other impacts?
 Should participation be limited to elected officials or NGO leaders/activists?

Keys to participation and policy success
 Practice informed consent: In a democracy, citizens have a need to know the
consequences of decisions that affect their lives. Information needed for
informed consent not always provided, or made understandable.
 Communicate risks effectively: know your audience and talk TO them - not at
them – use non-technical language (P. Slovic; R. Kasperson, M. Rushefsky).
 Acknowledge uncertainties: and acknowledge that people worry about
consequences, not probabilities.
 Provide a forum in which analysts, policy makers, citizens are able to identify a
common idiom for debate: this gets participants to acknowledge there are
alternative points of view on any issue that must be heard if debate is to move
forward – a so-called “epistemic community (Haas, 1990)” (RISA is an example).
Conclusions
 Public policy began as an optimistic enterprise committed to the view
that societies can “engineer” solutions to problems (e.g., Plato, Aristotle,
Montesquieu).
 It is also a field that has had to face the limitations of organizational
democracy and unequal power (e.g., Michels and oligarchy; Weber and
Comte on expertise).
 The duality and complexities of science and ethics has also been a pre-
occupation (e.g., Stone, Radin). We seek to reconcile both because:
 We want to evaluate the efficacy of processes and outcomes.
 We know policies have consequences for efficiency and equity.
 We want to learn how to design policies to serve society’s needs more
effectively (e.g., de Mesquita, Ellis, Pal & Weaver, Levin & Shapiro).