Public Policy
Madjid Vahid
Abstract
The purpose of this contribution is to shed light on the evolution of public policy studies in France. It should be noted that this discipline was born in the United States in the 1950s mainly based on the works of Harold Lasswell who is known as the founding father of the discipline. Lasswell and his ...
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The purpose of this contribution is to shed light on the evolution of public policy studies in France. It should be noted that this discipline was born in the United States in the 1950s mainly based on the works of Harold Lasswell who is known as the founding father of the discipline. Lasswell and his collaborators aimed to study the actions of the State to then be able to help decision-makers act more effectively and of course more democratically. It was in the 1980s that this discipline entered the scientific field in France. We believe that four steps are distinguishable in this regard.
1- The attempts of synthesis aimed at bringing and knowing the discipline in France. The works of Madeleine Grawitz and Jean Leca, Yves Mény and Jean-Claude Thoenig, and Patrick Hassenteufel are notable in this regard. They brilliantly managed to clarify the foundations of the discipline and the research carried out in the United States and France in its frameworks. They were convinced that this new branch of political science would help to better understand the logic of public action, which would logically lead to its improvement.
2- The multiple works carried out since the 1980s were inspired by the sociology of organizations. Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg have particularly prepared a fruitful ground for public policy researchers to access epistemological, theoretical, and methodical tools to analyze French public policies. Of course, the sociology of organizations reveals its American inspirations, and the specialists of the Center for the Sociology of Organizations have not hidden it. The sociology of organizations emphasizes the theoretical values of some concepts such as actor, system, power, areas of uncertainty, and rationality of actors, which show a convincing capacity in the analysis of the strategies of the actors within the organizations and in the analysis of the organizations themselves which are the main frameworks of action in modern societies.
3- Research leading to cognitive analysis of public policies in France. Here, we should emphasize the founding works of Pierre Muller and Bruno Jobert. The elaboration of concepts such as representation, mediator, and référentiel in their analyses has opened very useful routes for future researchers to know the logic of public policies in France and the possible means of their change, especially since the 1990s. These researches show a certain utility in the analysis of some major turning points in French politics, among which the neoliberal turn made under the presidency of François Mitterrand, however socialist and attached to left-wing values.
4- A new direction of research is known by the studies and analyses of researchers such as Gérard Noiriel, Renaud Payre, and Gilles Pollet. They are at the origin of a new approach in the study of social phenomena and actions of public authorities. Gérard Noiriel in a part of his works gives an overview of an approach that is known as the socio-historical approach. Renaud Payre and Gilles Pollet are among the leading researchers who apply this approach in the field of public policy and the actions of public authorities. They reveal the sociological and historical foundations of policies and actions and show precisely how socio-history differs from historical sociology or sociological history. In the field of analysis of public action, socio-history provides useful tools for researchers to deepen their knowledge in areas such as the emergence of new social categories (unemployed, immigrants, etc.), the transfer of knowledge and experience from one country to another, and the establishment of regional entities such as the European Union.
In conclusion, we note that we had, throughout the writing of this article, an implicit objective in our mind: Clarifying the efforts made over the decades in France to be able to import a discipline that has proven its innovative abilities in its original cradle. Public policies are now part of the integrated disciplines in Iranian universities and it is of course necessary to know how the scientists of a developed country attached to its independence and originality, France, have worked at the entrance of a new scientific discipline created outside their country to be able to benefit from it for their development and be at the origin of its development in turn. We hope that Iranian academics and scientists will follow the example of their French colleagues, which appears fully promising.
Public Policy
Yasser Roostaei Hosein Abadi
Abstract
The theory and practice of policy making in today's world has found a very vital role because the legitimacy of governments which is measured by the ability to solve public problems through public policy. If the government lacks the ability to solve public problems, no other element can legitimize its ...
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The theory and practice of policy making in today's world has found a very vital role because the legitimacy of governments which is measured by the ability to solve public problems through public policy. If the government lacks the ability to solve public problems, no other element can legitimize its continued rule. From perspective of public policy making discipline, there is no achievement for any public policy unless policy makers and citizens have active and intense participation in the policy making process as well as policy implementation. Because in a public policy making relationship, one side as a policy maker is obliged to solve the problem of the other side. This relationship, as one of the most influential relationships on people's life quality, needs to be carefully regulated and guaranteed. The law, as a normative discipline is supposed to regulate relations between these two agents. In the initial conception of representative democracy, as a legal and political frame work of governing society, people were completely removed from political and policy-making processes by electing representatives and were only subject to the decisions of their representatives. In other words, in classic version of representative democracy, almost all of political power is in the representative bodies’ hands. It is possible that minority and pressure groups try to present their issues as public problems by influencing such institutions. In democratic age there is a political and legal tendency to maximizing the role of citizens in policy making process in order to prevent any legitimation's crisis which may be raised from representative democracy shortcomings. The mentioned weakness can be considered as systematic and deep corruption in a decision-making system. In order to fix this weakness, the basic step is to redistribute powers and jurisdictions between different actors of the process of policy making, because studies on current democracies demonstrate that, the first step in policy making process, i.e., recognizing the public problem, is the most important, critical and crucial one. In other words, if the people do not have any role or influence in the first step of public policy making, the whole process will be at a very serious risk. This paper, using descriptive and analytic approach, criticized legal framework of recognizing the public problem in Iran. In Iran, due to the great legal authority and authority of the legislative body, such mechanisms have not been foreseen for the people and even other institutions. Even a powerful institution like the presidency cannot resist the decisions of the legislative body. So, it seems democracy in Iran is still very similar to the classical type of representative democracy and needs to be revised and accompanied by recent developments in the knowledge of politics and law. By distinguishing between representative-centered and citizen-centered approach to policy making, the author, proposed a shift from former approach to latter, in interpretation of legal documents specially Iran's constitutional law. The shift will lead to participatory democracy and multi-level policy making. This new approach, by emphasizing the role of people as diagnosers of public problems, reduces the risk of semi-public problems being included in government programs and policies. The proposed approach says no problem is a public problem unless it affects the ordinary life of reasonable number of citizens. Before reaching to this stage, the government should not allocate any budget to solve it. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran has provided the possibility of interpretation in favor of the proposed approach in many parts considering the decisive role of the people, including in Article No.: 59. Creating mechanisms to realize such a role for the people is one of the necessities of Iran's current decision-making system. By considering the countries experiences such as Italy and USA, suggestions such as veto rights for the people regarding the issues raised in the policy-making institutions, and the right to raise the issue for them to be discussed in the same institutions can be proposed as necessary mechanisms. In these countries, at the request of the people and upon reaching a certain number, the legislative assembly will be required to remove an issue (a semipublic-problem) from the agenda, or put an issue on its agenda.
