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Chapter 11 Policy Analysis Policy analysis is ubiquitous. You can hardly go through the day without bumping into it. You wake up to a talk radio show spewing vitriolic opinions on a new presi¬dential proposal. As you eat breakfast reading the local morning newspaper, you are exposed to more analysis on regional issues such as school taxes and crime rates. At work your officemates freely give you their analyses of the behavior of a political leader caught in the latest financial or sex scandal. Returning home from work you review your mail and find more analyses in the magazines to which you subscribe and in the unsolicited junk mail from public interest groups and political parties. Finally, you conclude your day by falling asleep watching even more analyses on television news and talk shows. It seems that almost everybody is constantly complaining or explaining about something. If journalism represents the first rough draft of history, it is also the first policy analysis that most people will hear or read on a new issue. The powers that be make policy but it is then reported and explained to the public by the journalistic media. All the major news organizations, both print and television, have reporters that spe¬cialize in various policy areas. Thus there are White House, congressional, Supreme Court, education, medical, consumer, and financial correspondents among others. It is these specialists that are almost always the first analysts to tackle a new policy issue. Scholarly analysis is usually years behind—unless, of course, it is done by the rela¬tively small group of academics who also write for journalistic sources. The op-ed pages are full of college professors and think tank denizens telling the public what the implications are of any new policy. 397 Policy Analysis All this—from the current buzz at work to the weekly news magazines—is informal policy analysis. These "quick and dirty" critiques of current issues are both widespread and essential to a flourishing democracy. While they may be made with style, wit, and true depth of feeling, they tend to lack the methodological rigor of a formal policy analysis. Formal policy analysis uses a set of techniques that seeks to answer the question of what the probable effects of a policy will be before they actually occur. A policy analysis undertaken on a program that is already in effect is more properly called a program evaluation. Nevertheless, policy analysis is used by many to refer to both before- and after-the-fact analyses of public policies. All policy analysis involves the application of systematic research techniques (drawn largely from the social sciences and based on measurements of program effectiveness, quality, cost, and impact) to the formulation, execution, and evaluation of public policy to create a more rational or optimal administrative system. It was Jeremy Bentham's (see Chapter I) desire to see this kind of formal, methodologically rigorous analysis applied to all policy issues. To the extent that we make judgments on governmental policies from affirmative action to zoning variances, we all do policy analysis. Any judgment on a policy issue requires an analysis however superficial. Policy analysis can be viewed as a continuum from crude judgments made in a snap ("The governor is an idiot and all his policies are stupid!") to the most sophisticated analysis using complicated methodologies ("I have just administered anl.Q. test to the governor and he really is an idiot."). In 1854 Abraham Lincoln wrote this: The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or can not so well do, for themselves—in their separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.

What Lincoln was calling for, though he didn't use the term, was a cost-benefit approach to ascertain whether goods and/or services should be provided collectively rather than individually. This is the test that James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock proposed for all public policies in their classic analysis, The Calculus of Consent (1962). They ask: "When will a society composed of free and rational utility-maximizing individuals choose to undertake action collectively rather than privately?" The answer is that the rational person takes collective action to obtain a collective good, anything of value (such as clean air, safe streets or tax loopholes) that cannot be denied to a group member. A group can vary from all of society to any subset of it Economist Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action (1965) found that small groups are better at obtaining collective goods. The larger the potential group, the less likely it is that most will contribute to obtain the "good." Just as in military strategy concentration is the key. Thus a particular industry is better able to obtain tax loopholes for itself than the general public is able to obtain overall tax equity (fairness and justice in how taxes are assessed and administered). The problem with collectively provided goods, those paid for by tax dollars, is that the demand will always exceed what can be supplied. After all, if something appears to be both desirable and "free," demand for it will only continue to rise. This leads to budget deficits and the kind of destruction illustrated by Garrett Hardin, in his article, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science (December 13, 1968), reprinted here. This shows that the principle that the maximization of private gain will not result in the maximization of social benefit. Garrett asks you to "picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching and disease keep the numbers . . . below the carrying capacity of the land." Eventually there "comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the com¬mons remorselessly generates tragedy?' Because then each herdsman seeks to maxi¬mize his gain. . . . The rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another, and another . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a com¬mons." When herdsmen sought to maximize individual gain by adding more and more cattle to a common pasture, the common was overgrazed. The resulting tragedy was that no one was able to effectively use the common for grazing. "Ruin is the des¬tination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all." The concepts involved with the tragedy of the commons apply to societal prob¬lems, such as pollution and overpopulation. Neutral competence is a long-standing concept in public administration. It his¬torically refers to a continuous, politically uncommitted cadre of bureaucrats at the disposal of elected or appointed political executives. This ethic of neutrality has now been borrowed by the policy analyst.