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Policy Paradox 1 PO POLICY PARADOX POLICY PARADOX: THE ART OF POLITICAL DECISION MAKING Third Edition DEBORAH STONE W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • NEW YORK • LONDON 1)(1 W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its (oun,lni ni r, 1 i, crcd William Warder Norton and Mary 1). Ilcrtcr Norton first l,nblished lei ter at the People's Institute, the adult education division of Nees \ stinue, pil libs'!, Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the I n !.1 by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-centur%, 11 pillars of Norton's publishing program—trade hooks and eolle i I,•\N \\ its established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control ,fihc • ',kik', employees, and today—with a staff of four hundred and a compiirable college, and professional titles published each year—W. \\*. as the largest and oldest publishing house owned Nyholly by its eintili iyees Copyright © 2012, 2002, 1997, 1988 by Deborah A. Stone. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Cover art by Josef Albers, Structural Constellation, 195:3-58. Editor: Aaron Jaysicas Editorial Assistant: Cait Callahan Project Editor: Diane Cipollone Production Manager: Eric Pier-Hocking Manufacturing by Maple-Vail Composition by Jouve North America—Brattleboro, VT Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stone, Deborah. Policy paradox : the art of political decision making / Deborah Stone.---3rd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-393-91272-2 (pbk.) t. Policy sciences—Economic aspects. 2. Political planning—Economic aspects. I. Title. H9 7.S83 2019 320.(i—dc23 2011(147217 W W Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 wwnorton.com W W Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WIT 3QT 31567890 For Jim SOMetchere always, alone among the noise and policies of summer Contents Intrciduction: \\Air This Book? PARI I POLITICS 17 Thc Market and the Polk 19 PART II GOALS P3 7 2 Equity 39 3 Efficiency 63 1 \V■Arare 85 5 Liberty 107 6 ScCill'iTV 429 PART III PROBLEMS 155 7 Symbols 157 8 Numbers 183 9 Causes 206 10 Interests 229 11 Decisions 248 PART IV SOLUTIONS 269 12 Incentives 271 13 Rules 289 11 Facts 311 15 Rights 331 16 POWers 354 vii V111 CONTENTS Conclusion: Policy Analysis and Political Argument :;79 Acknowledgments 7 Credits ';9 Index Introduction: Why This Book? Sometime in the second or third week of seventh grade, we had our first fire drill. The drill was one more set of rules to learn in a new school with new routines—a more adult world of homerooms, different teachers for different subjects, class periods, rigid schedules, and bells regulating everything. When the fire alarm went off, we marched outside single file and Were instructed by our teachers exactly how and where to line up on the blacktop. I was standing next to Adele, my friend in the fragile sort of way that kids first come to know and like each other. We had several classes together, and whenever she spoke in class, she seemed very smart, very shy, and very gentle. Adele's skin was dark, dark brown, and she stood out. She was the only black student in the school. Though she was not the first black person I'd ever known, she was the first one my own age. I sensed that her reticence had to do with always standing out so much, because I was painfully shy and I hated standing out. I thought it must be excruciating to be so visible all the time, and I was in awe of Adele's grace in her predicament. Just after our long line had come to a standstill, a boy on a bicycle came rolling out of his driveway. He made lazy curves the length of our line and seemed to be gloating over the fact that he wasn't in school that day and we were. He curved toward our line just in front of Adele and me, and as he reached the point on his arc closest to us, he sneered, "You should go home and take a bath. You're dirty." I felt the searing awfulness of his remark. I wanted to protect Adele, to shield her somehow, but he'd already said it, and I couldn't make it go away. I wanted to say something to her to take away the sting, but I had no idea what to say. I wanted to beat the living daylights out of him, but he was already far away, and besides, I was small and not a fighter and I knew I couldn't beat anything out of anybody. Finally, I thought I could tell the teacher. The boy had been smart enough to make his remark 2 POLICY PARADOX when the teacher was out of earshot, but if I told her, surely she \\ mid punish him and do something to help Adele. All the teachers were strutting around imposing order, demanding silence, and instructing us how to count off our presence by saying ;l1,so- lutely nothing but our names, one by one, down the line. Against lesson in proper decorum and adult ways, shouting out to lily teach, 'r to tell what had happened would have meant breaking the rules by something other than the regulation words we were allowed to si)cali. Afraid to stand out myself and wanting only to be good, I did notliing. I tell this story because it was the first time I confronted a policy para- dox, though I didn't see it that way at the time. (I saw it as inv ow )1 Into ul cowardice.) Here was a social practice—the fire drill—whose purpose was to keep us secure. Yet, with all the seeming control the teachers ii;id over the world, they couldn't stop an act of violence against one of us :11t1 didn't even know that one of us had been hurt. Here was a set of rules that seemed perfectly fair on the surface. They were like traffic regulations, just rules to make sure things ran smootlikt not the kind of rules that clearly confer advantages on one group rather than another. Yet if we followed only those rules, bullies would prevail and their chosen victims would get hurt. Ordinary rules, I realized, couldn't stop bullies or help victims. Here was a set of rules that embodied rightness and goodness. (Follow instructions, Don't talk. Do exactly as you're told.) Good citizens follow these rules. Yet, in my gut, I could feel another set of rules I knew to be right, too. (Don't hurt people. Stop people who hurt others. Help some- one who is hurt. Stick by your friends.) I couldn't be good under both sets of rules. That morning on the blacktop, I had an inkling that even the clearest, simplest, most unambiguous policies could be mighty ambigu- ous indeed. I had a sense that citizenship was going to require learning to live with ambiguity and paradox. Paradoxes are nothing but trouble. They violate the most elementary principle of logic: something can't be two different things at once. Two contradictory interpretations can't both be true. A paradox is just such an impossible situation, and political life is full of them. Here are just a few. WINNING IS LOSING AND LOSING IS WINNING President Mania succeeded in passing three major government pro- grams in his first seventeen months in office: a stimulus program, major health insurance refbrrn, and a finance industry regulatory overhaul. But Introduction: Why This Book? 3 his legislative victories quickly turned into a political liability. Each piece of legislation provided ammunition for conservatives to paint him as a big-government socialist.' As the midterm elections of 2010 drew closer, Obama's victories were becoming a liability for the Democrats and, ironically, it seemed as though his legislative prowess would soon jeopardize his power as president. How- ever, just betbre the midterm elections, when major Democratic losses were all but certain, political analysts saw a victory for Obama in elec- toral defeat. "The reality of presidential politics is that it helps to have an enemy." wrote one. "With Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress, they shoulder responsibility for the country's troubles. But if the Republicans capture Congress, Mr. Obama will finally have a foil heading toward his own re-election battle in 2012."2 What did the analysts mean by claiming that an electoral defeat could be a victory? Politicians always have at least two goals. First is a policy goal whatever program or proposal they would like to see accomplished or defeated, whatever problem they would like to see solved. Perhaps even more important, though, is a political goal. Politicians always want to !reserve their power, or gain enough power, to be able to accomplish their policy goals. Achieving a policy goal can sometimes thwart political gan ,---or vice versa. DEMONSTRATION—DEBATE OR ASSAULT? The Westboro Baptist Church pickets soldiers' funerals, carrying signs such as "Fag Troops," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "You're Going to Hell," "Priests are Rapists," and 'America is Doomed." The church believes 9/1 I was God's punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality, and that it is serving the public interest by publicizing its warnings. The group demonstrated at the funeral of Matthew Snyder, a twenty-year-old Marine killed in Iraq. Snyder was not gay. Snyder's father sued the group for infliction of emotional distress and for intrusion on his privacy.
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