Notes Introduction: The Political Process of Policymaking * The English version of this book was translated by Eunice Sanya Pelini with the help of the author. 1 . “For the actions of a new prince are more narrowly observed than those of a hereditary one, and when they are seen to be able they gain more men and bind far tighter than ancient blood” (Machiavelli, 2005, p. 287). Machiavelli stresses the importance of winning the esteem of one’s subjects through “great enterprises” not only in military affairs but also in the internal affairs of state. 2 . Pierre Favre borrows this expression from Canguilhem. 3 . “The raison d’être of politics is human plurality. ( ... ) Politics deals with the community and the reciprocity of different human beings. Men organise them- selves politically according to certain essential commonalities found within or abstracted from an absolute chaos of differences ( ... ) From the outset, poli- tics organises completely different human beings by considering their relative equality and disregarding their relative diversity” (Freund, 1986, p. 21). 2 Creating Social Disorder: Constructing, Propagating and Policitising Social Problems 1 . Followers of the Chicago school of political sciences, such as Harold Lasswell or Herbert Simon, strongly affirm his influence on their own thoughts. He is also often cited by authors such as Charles Lindblom, Charles Jones, and David Smith. Nevertheless, one of the historians of political sciences is more subtle on Dewey’s influence and stresses in particular the complex and ambig- uous relationships that he maintained with political sciences and politicists (Farr, 1988, 1999). While he does not deny his direct influence among some authors, Farr points out the relatively low number of references to Dewey in the two major journals of Political Sciences, the American Political Science Review (APSR) and the Political Science Quarterly during the 20th century. He further explains John Dewey’s aversion to political sciences as was devel- oped then. Dewey considered political sciences, but also all social sciences in general, as immature and far from genuine scientific approaches. 2 . Some attribute it to Layme Hoppe “Agenda-setting strategies: the case of pollu- tion problems”. Unpublished papers, annual meeting APSA, 1970. 3 . “Underlying our work in this book is an understanding of political decision making that is firmly based in bounded rationality. ( ... ) We argue in The Politics of Attention that policy is a function of two distinct sources. The first is “friction” in the “rules of the games” that make it difficult for any action to take place in a political system. ( ... ) The second source of stability may be found in the cognitive and emotional constraints of political actors – the bounds of their rationality.” 193 194 Notes 4 . “Long periods of stability are interrupted by bursts of frenetic policy activity” (Baumgartner and Jones, 2005, p. XVII). 3 Defining Solution: A Complex Bricolage to Solve Public Problems 1 . “As if discourse, far from being a transparent or neutral element where sexuality is disarmed and politics is pacified, is in fact one of the places where sexu- ality and politics exercise in a privileged way some of their most formidable powers” (Foucault, 1971, pp. 11–12). 2 . “[Discourses] are to be treated as ensembles of discursive events; ( ... ) [where an event] is not immaterial; it takes effect, becomes effect, always on the level of materiality: events have their place; they consist in relation to, coexist- ence with, dispersion of, the cross checking accumulation and the selection of material elements” (Foucault, 1971, p. 55). 3 . “What confuses us in the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy ( ... ) Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. ( ... ) Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life? In use it is alive ( ... ) One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that” (Wittgenstein, 1958). 4 . “Commentary limited the hazards of discourse ( ... ) [it] limited the hazards of discourse through the action of an identity taking the form repetition and sameness. The author principle limits this same chance element through the action of an identity whose form is that of individuality and the I” (Foucault, 1971, p. 31). 5 . http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-education- reform-national-urban-league-centennial-conference 6 . The 9/11 commission report: Final report of the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the United States . US Independent Agencies and Comm- issions, 2011. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf 7 . “Some couplings are more likely than others. Everything cannot interact with everything else. For one thing, the timing of an item’s arrival in its stream affects its ability to be joined to items in other streams” (Kingdon, 1995, p. 207). 4 Propagating Solution: Argumentative Strategies to Cement Coalitions 1 . Ricoeur makes reference here to Balzac’s Peau de chagrin where the leather talisman shrinks each time it grants a wish. 2 . “The task of the mayor and the Development Administrator was to persuade them that a particular proposal satisfied their own criteria of judgement, whether these were primarily the criteria of businessmen concerned with traffic and retail sales, trade union leaders concerned with employment and local prosperity, or political liberals concerned with slums, housing, and race relations” Dahl, pp. 1965, 136). Notes 195 3 . “Thus the men who were most influential in redevelopment constantly struggled to shape their proposals to fall within what they conceived to be the limits imposed by the attitudes and interests of various elements in the community” (Dahl, 1965, p. 138). 4 . “The play of power is not a substitute for policy analysis, simply resolving those issues unsettled by analysis, policy analysis is incorporated as an instru- ment or weapon into the play of power, changing the character of analysis as a result” (Lindblom, 1968, p. 30). 5 . “As politicians know only too well but social scientists too often forget, public policy is made of language. Whether in written or oral form, argument is central in all stages of the policy process. Discussion goes on in any organiza- tion, private or public, and in any political system, even a dictatorship; but it is so much at the heart of democratic politics and policy that democracy has been called a system of government by discussion. Political parties, the elec- torate, the legislature, the executive, the courts, the media, interests groups and independent experts all engage in a continuous process of debate and reciprocal persuasion” (Majone, 1989, p. 1). 6 . “In sum, the argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning represents practical, theoretical and political advances in the field. Practically, the focus on argumentation allows us to examine closely the communicative and rhetor- ical strategies that planners and analysts use to direct attention to the prob- lems and options they are assessing. Theoretically, the focus on argumentation allows us to recognize the complex ways analysts not only solve but formu- late problems, the ways their arguments express or resist broader relations of power and belief, and the ways their practical arguments are inescapably both normative and descriptive. Finally our focus on argumentation reveals both the micro-politics of planners’ and analysts’ agenda setting, selective repre- sentations, and claims, and the macro-politics of analysts’ participation in large discourses, whether those are articulated in relatively organized discourse coalitions or through more diffuse, if perhaps more subtly influential, ideolo- gies and systems of political belief.” (Fischer and Forester, 1993, p.14). 7 . Interview with the Director of Construction of the Housing Ministry, conducted in 1998. 8 . Authors such as Heclo and Wildavsky (1974), Lowi (1972), Richardson, Gustafson and Jordan (1982), Kingdon (1995), Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) come to mind. 9 . “We conclude that partisan mutual adjustment is a method for coordinating decisions of strategic problem solvers. ( ... ) There is a paradoxical quality to this argument. One ordinarily assumes that the more numerous the decision makers, the more difficult the process of coordination. We are instead suggesting that given that decision making is incremental and disjointed, more rather than fewer decision makers can facilitate coordination” (Lindblom, 1965, p. 148). 5 Policy Statements to Legitimise “Decision-Makers” 1 . “Authority, on the other hand, is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance. Against the egalitarian order 196 Notes of persuasion stands the authoritarian order, which is always hierarchical. If authority is to be defined at all, then it must be in contradistinction to both coercion by force and persuasion through arguments. (The authoritarian rela- tion between the one who commands and the one who obeys rests neither on common reason nor on the power of the one who commands; what they have in common is the hierarchy itself, whose rightness and legitimacy both recognise and where both have their predetermined stable place),” Arendt, 1958, p. 82). 2 . “When elite resort to propaganda, the tactical problem is to select symbols and channels capable of eliciting the desired concerted acts. There is incessant resort to repetition or distraction. ( ... ) Propaganda, when successful, is astute in handling: Aggressiveness, Guilt, Weakness, Affection. ( ... ) Propaganda, then, is conducted with symbols which are utilized as far as possible by elite and counter-elite; but the intensity of collective emotions and the broad direction and distribution of collective acts are matters of the changing total context” (Lasswell, 1936, p. 37).