Download PUAD 5001 Exec FALL13 Research Article Critique

1
Course:
Term:
Professor:
Assignment:
Due Date:
Introduction to Public Administration and Public Service
Fall 2013, Executive MPA
Mary E. Guy, Ph.D.
Research Article Critique
August 25, midnight
This assignment requires you to select a research article that pertains to public administration.
Find the article in one of these journals: Public Administration Review, Review of Public
Personnel Administration, Journal of Public Performance and Management, Administration &
Society, Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, Administrative Theory & Praxis,
Public Budgeting & Finance, Government Finance Review, Public Personnel Management,
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary &
Nonprofit Organizations.
The purpose of this assignment is for you to become comfortable critically evaluating and
assessing scholarly research by applying the material you have learned in the class. This
assignment should be about 4 pages in length, double spaced, one inch margins, times new
roman 12 point font.
Topics that your critique must cover:
(1) Cite article and give a brief overview and summary of it.
(2) How did your article overlap with the material you have read in the course? How are the
conclusions similar or different from course readings and class discussions?
(3) Discuss the article’s theoretical approach and make comparisons of this approach to your
practice experience.
(4) Provide an analysis of the methodology and data used in the article. Did the
methods/data influence and/or shape the findings and conclusions? (Quantitative versus
qualitative; representative sample versus non-representative sample; sample size, etc.)
(5) Highlight the administrative implications of the article.
(6) Explain why you liked or disliked the article. Did it lead to ideas you can apply to your
work setting?
(7) How did your article fit into the larger body of public administration commentary and
research?
(8) What did you learn from this assignment?
2
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF A GOOD CRITIQUE. IT WAS WRITTEN BY BRETT
ACKERMAN FOR LAST YEAR’S CLASS.
Fiorino, D. J. (2001). Environmental policy as learning: A new view of an old landscape, Public
Administration Review, 61(3), 322-334.
In his article on policy learning Daniel J. Fiorino (2001) asks the fundamental question,
“Do governments and institutions learn?” Fiorino examines environmental policy in the United
States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and classifies each decade as a cumulative component of a
policy learning process, based on Peter Glasbergen’s (1996) work on environmental policy
learning in the Netherlands. This is a departure from the standard view of U.S. environmental
policy development in the late 20th century, which is often characterized as a conflict-based
series of reactionary policy shifts (Percival, 1997). Fiorino classifies the 1970s as a technical
learning process, often adversarial in nature, in which new policy instruments were developed in
response to narrow objectives. He examines the 1980s as a shift from technical to conceptual
learning, during which policy objectives were reformulated and new strategies were developed.
Finally, he characterizes the 1990s as a period of social learning during which policy makers
developed new forms of collaborative interaction among policy participants in response to the
dynamic problems of environmental policy. Fiorino argues that the environmental policies of
each decade are at least partially cumulative, building on and complementing previous policies
rather than replacing them, and that U.S. environmental policy during these decades has
therefore illustrated a learning process in policy making.
Class readings addressed this issue by exploring the imperfect nature of public policy
making, explaining that the public process is often constrained by powerful factors that are built
into the political system, including economic concerns, intergovernmental competition, and
3
interest group imbalance (Peters & Pierre, 2011). As a result, some policy processes can produce
policies that are generally inadequate which serve as a poor reflection of the public’s desire for
meaningful environmental progress.
Fiorino’s theory of progressively improving U.S. environmental policy is not necessarily
supported by an in-depth examination of the history of public policy processes. Rather than
ensuring that the right policies will ultimately emerge from a continually self-refining policy
process, Ernst (1996) stated, “The greatest danger from the political process is not that it will
ignore environmental issues; it is that the inadequate and reactionary environmental policies that
tend to emerge become acceptable substitutes for meaningful environmental planning and longterm solutions." Ernst recognizes that political action does not necessarily represent policy
progress, and most poignantly, that improperly-conducted political action can actually be
detrimental to an effective outcome, acting to placate the public and minimize the issue to
regulators instead of productively addressing the substance of the subject matter.
The true efficacy of current policy making likely lies somewhere between the perspective
of these two concepts. Our PUAD 5001 class lectures (Guy, 2012) often focused on the
imperfect nature of public policy making, recognizing that the creation and implementation of
effective policy is incremental in nature, and often inadequate, as regulating entities grapple with
difficult technical issues and competing interest groups under the almost ubiquitous sideboards
of economic primacy. Nonetheless, the class recognized that through improved communications
and public input, regulators appear to have increasing interest in improving the command and
control approach of regulations as they are faced with competing interests, new technologies,
evolving theories, and an increasingly informed and educated public. In that manner, some class
discussions support Fiorino’s theory that new policy acts as an evolution of, rather than a
replacement for, previous policy, demonstrating what might be characterized as a learning
4
approach to policy making. However, one might also argue that the policy makers of each
decade in the late 20th Century were simply reacting to the contemporary challenges that
developed from existing policy, thereby retaining a reactionary role rather than one of true
learning.
The author contends that the three types of policy learning described in this article, when
properly employed, lend a perpetual purpose to policy making. He further states that U.S.
environmental policy remains grounded in technical learning, and that the policy adaptivity of
the 1990s was an evolution of the prescriptive policies of the 70s and 80s. His theoretical
approach was that all three types of policy learning must be employed for successful policy
making, and that this process, when properly engaged, teaches the individual participants proper
policy making, and therefore the process has “learned.”
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently signed Executive Order 5 (2011), which
requires rule-making agencies in Colorado to ensure outreach to local jurisdictions when
regulations are anticipated to impose mandates or otherwise affect their business practices. On
behalf of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, I was recently able to illustrate that the agency’s
regulatory process has evolved from a command and control approach to a continually refining
social engagement process, and that its process has developed into an effective public
involvement tool (Ackerman, B. A., personal communication, September 7, 2012). My primary
argument stemmed from the theoretical approach of Fiorino’s article.
The author’s methodology qualitatively examines broad examples of three decades of
U.S. environmental policy. He provides specific examples of policies being incorporated into
long-term environmental problem strategies as a result of policy learning, such as the inclusion
of air emissions offset market-based incentives. The author’s focus is intentionally narrow,
examining only U.S.-based environmental policy. His analysis includes categorizations, such as
5
the five characteristics of the U.S. policy system, but it lacks any substantive quantitative data
demonstrating his thesis or the concept of policy learning in general. As such, Fiorino’s analysis
is qualitatively based on conclusions viewed through a narrow lens within a specific policy
subject matter, but extrapolated into a broader theory affecting all policy making. While Fiorino
doesn’t deny that conflict shapes policy, and that policy is often reactionary, he states, “Viewing
policy making primarily in terms of conflict undervalues the substantial amount of constructive
learning that occurs in a policy system over time” (Fiorino, 2003, p. 323). The administrative
application of this theory is that problems should not simply be addressed with technical
solutions, but must engage the larger public in conceptual learning and social engagement in
order to produce effective policies.
This article contains points of great lucidity, but also makes some relatively obtuse
generalizations. Fiorino contends that policy makers in a learning process are active rather than
reactive, and that social engagement is an imperative component of effective policy making.
However, in making these conclusions he appears to assume that all policy is consistently
evolving into more effective processes, or “learning.” It is important to contextualize this
concept by stating that it represents an ideal in the policy-making process. This article is an
environmental policy piece written from the view of an EPA administrator. Fiorino certainly
understands the U.S. environmental policy-setting process, but one could argue he has a vested
interest in furthering the idea that policy makers are active participants in a continually
improving process.
It is an admirable point of view that policy continues to evolve into better and more
useful governance, but reality is often some number of steps forward and some number back,
with the real possibility that some policies have a “placebo” effect, placating the public and
distracting policy makers rather than addressing the issues in an increasingly effective manner.
6
However, Fiorino’s work served to help me focus on the ideal, which is that good policy should
be evolving into a social policy approach, cumulative upon the command and control approach
of regulations and technical solutions. In addition, it illustrated the importance of understanding
the context under which previous policies were adopted in order to encourage policy makers to
take a building block learning approach rather than a whole scale replacement approach to policy
making.
Wilson (as cited in Peters and Pierre, 2011) summed up public management as, “A world
of settled institutions designed to allow imperfect people to use flawed procedures to cope with
insoluble problems" (p. 197). While this may represent a somewhat sardonic point of view, it
accentuates the fluidity and dynamism of public policy making. The readings of this class,
together with Fiorino’s article have helped validate my belief of the importance of relationshipbased communication. While technical skills and policy instruments are imperative as the basis
of regulatory policy, a broad approach focused on social engagement represents the most evolved
form of policy making.
7
References
Colorado Exec. Order No. D 2011-005, Colorado Register, 35(2), (2011).
Ernst, H. R. (2003). The Chesapeake Bay as a political dilemma. In Chesapeake Bay Blues:
Science, politics, and the struggle to save the bay, (p. 49): Rowman & Littlefield.
Fiorino, D. J. (2001). Environmental policy as learning: A new view of an old landscape, Public
Administration Review, 61(3), 322-334.
Glasbergen, P. (1996). Learning to manage the environment. In Fiorino, D. J. (2001).
Environmental policy as learning: A new view of an old landscape, Public Administration
Review, 61(3), 322-334.
Guy, M. (2012, August). Introduction to public administration and public service. Lecture
conducted at University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO.
Percival, R. (1997). Regulatory evolution and the future of environmental policy, The University
of Chicago Legal Forum, 1997(1), 159 - 171.
Peters, B. G. & Pierre, J. (Eds.). (2011). The handbook of public administration (pp. 190197). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wilson, J. Q. (1989) Bureaucracy: What government agencies do and why they do it. In B. G.
Peters & J. Pierre (Eds.) (2011). The handbook of public administration. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.