Policy Paradox and Political Reason

Deborah Stone wrote Policy Paradox and Political Reason in reaction to the poverty of policy analysis literature that emphasizes rationality and bargaining among self-interested individuals or groups. Stone advances a different model for society - the polis - where community, loyalty, and public interest play important roles in policymaking. For Stone, politics is not an obstacle to good policy; it is "a creative and valuable feature of social existence." She has a very concrete understanding of what politics is: more than anything, a struggle over ideas. Stone begins by providing a simple framework for defining policy issues: 1. Something is desirable. 2. We need it (or more of it). 3. How can we get it? The rest of the book examines each element of this framework: goals, problems, and solutions. The theme of the chapters on goals is that parties to a political dispute are likely to contend over differing but equally plausible conceptions of abstract goals. Stone examines differing conceptions of equity, efficiency, security, and liberty, and shows how these differences arise from different worldviews. For example, some people judge fairness based on outcomes and others judge fairness based on attributes of distributive processes. Another major difference in worldviews concerns how people view human nature. Some people believe that humans are motivated to work primarily by need. We need the lash of hunger to persuade us to assume the burden of work. Others believe that humans have an innate desire to work and create that is inhibited by need. They might say that the poor want to be more productive but are constrained by a lack of educational opportunities, socialization, adequate child care, and so on. After examining goals, Stone looks at the political arguments that are used to mobilize support for policy initiatives: that is, the second element of her policy framework. Stone examines the use of symbols, statistics, ideas about causes of problems, the role of interests, and how people make political decisions. Not too surprisingly, she finds that political decisions are not often rational ones. In the last part of her book, Stone examines policy solutions: incentives, penalties, laws, and regulations, legal rights, indoctrination, and so on. Her discussion of legal rights is a particularly valuable introduction to the law and rights in general. It is possible to pick at Stone's treatment of some of these issues. A few of her examples - for example, in her chapter on efficiency issues - appear to stretch a point to far, and in a few instances it seems that she is simply assigning complicated labels to well-known phenomena. But similar criticisms could be leveled at almost any book on politics, and most of Stone's analytical concepts have considerable explanatory power. Make no mistake: this book is far above the standard for the political science field. It is also an entertaining read with many surprising insights.