P a r t ic i p a t o r y P o lic y A n a ly s is : P r e s c r ip t io n and P re c a u tio n
von P e te r deLeon
PRESCRIPTIONS AND PRECAUTION*
Peter deLeon
Graduate School of Public Affairs University of Colorado - Denver
INTRODUCTION
A most current and recurrent theme among public policy scholars is that the "traditional" or "conventional" modes of policy analysis are delivering much less than the early proponents had promised in terms of effective policy programs; benefit-cost analysis, still extolled by many as the policy analytic exemplar, is an oft-cited bugbear. Two harsher critics have claimed that
"professional social inquiry" has scant analytic merit, that
"ordinary knowledge" and mere chance would be as efficacious a set of interventions as the studied deliberations eminanting from the policy research community.*1 More temperate observers neatly dismiss the problem by encouraging the policy researchers not to worry, important decisionmakers pay them no mind no how except in the most generalized, "enlightenment" fashion.2 One supportive study concluded that policy research was neglected by policymakers because it was not sufficiently empirical.3
Others claim that policy research too often misses its mark or,
*William Ascher (Duke), Lawrence Mead (NYU), Duncan MacRae, Jr. (University of North Carolina) , and Aaron Wildavsky (University of California - Berkeley) all commented generously and incisively on an earlier draft of this paper. I regret that I was unable to accommodate all their good advice in this paper.
1Charles E. Lindblom and David K. Cohen, Usable Knowledge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
2An observation most often attributed to Carol H. Weiss, Social Science Research and Decision-Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).
3Janet A. Schneider et al., "Policy Research and Analysis: An Empirical Profile," Policy Sciences. Vol. 15, No. 2 (December 1982), pp. 114-136.
in practical fact, attacks the wrong question. Indeed, the more skeptical would claim that in fields as disparate as national security and social welfare, the positivistic-oriented policy sciences have been highly worrisome and, in some cases, actually counterproductive, that is, made conditions worse than before.4 Paris and Reynolds argue that the basic assumptions and philosophical tenets of the policy sciences are fundamentally incoherent and normatively suspect; therefore, their product must be fatally flawed.5 And Stone says that the very criteria policy analysts pose for themselves are internally contradictory and hopelessly vague, thus undercutting whatever claims they might make towards objective validity.6
If there is anything this cacophony of critics can agree upon, it is that the policy sciences (or policy analysis in some literatures) has not delivered a worthwhile product to its sponsors, to the point, it has not been particularly effective in ameliorating public sector woes. Wildavsky suggests two forms of policy analytic "failure’1; a failure to devise an effective policy or a failure to have a policy adopted.7 The first is an error in
"science," the second in politics. Nevertheless, both seem to be laid at the feet of the policy research community. Given that the primary desiderata of the policy sciences approach has been the societal relevance (read: applicability) of its research towards the improvement of the human condition, this is a lethal charge, one its more sensitive practitioners have been quick to identify and tilt against. These defenses generally have argued that the
4See Gregg Herkin, Counsels of War (New York; Knopf, 1985), and Charles Murray, Losing Ground (New York; Basic Books, 1984).
5David C. Paris and James F. Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry (New York: Longman, 1983).
6Deborah A. Stone, Policy Paradox and Political Reason (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foreman, and Co., 1988).
7Aaron Wildavsky, Personal Correspondence, January 4, 1989.
steadfast adherence to "value-neutral" appearances of many policy researchers (especially those of an operations research or economics mien) or the continued belief in a practical fact-value dichotomy is the base cause for the noted malaise.8 Many have pointed out that the positivist trappings espoused by a natural sciences model are inappropriately debilitating.9 Moreover, the problems confronted by the policy sciences are genuinely difficult- -many are possibly intractable10— and should not be expected to be easily resolved. The more responsible among these observers have tried to move past the current obstacles, to move policy research into what is called a "post positivist" mode, one that can make the policy sciences more likely to alleviate the problems articulated by its charter proponents. The question still remains: what is to be done?
One consideration that has been advanced under a variety of rubrics is what I shall call "participatory policy analysis." This is a methodological proposal which would expand the range of actors (in the policy patois, "stakeholders") involved in the making and execution of public policy in a discursive or deliberative mode.
(A related strategy would be to expand the range of actors consulted by the analyst/expert.) Succinctly, it would require the inclusion of a greater representation of those who effect and are affected by a given policy or, on a more concrete basis, program.
The actual mechanism would be through an extended series of public
®A representative sample of these critics is found in Frank Fischer and John Forester (eds.), Confronting Values in Policy Analysis; The Politics of Criteria (Newberry Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1987).
9Inter a l i a , Ronald D. Brunner, "The Policy Sciences as Science," Policy Sciences. Vol. 15, No. 2 (December 1982), pp. 114- 136; and Paris and Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry, chap. 2.
10A point made by Peter deLeon, "The Contextaul Burdens of Policy Design", Policy Sciences Journal. Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter 1988/89), pp. 297-309.
fora with proscribed rules of evidence and argumentation. The legal/judicial system is the obvious conceptual precedent, environmental impact statements (EIS) (mandated by the National Environmental Protection Act [NEPA] of 1969) the operating analog.
That this is proposed as a methodological innovation should not disguise the profound influence such a mechanism would have on the policy sciences— both conceptually and procedurally— as they are practiced today. For instance, it implies a more horizontal than hierarchial policymaking process, one more democratic than administrative in nature, and one in which policy and process must consonantly reinforce one another. It could also resurrect the long-smoldering issue of policy analysis (and its "objective"
trappings) versus policy advocacy. It therefore behooves us to examine with some precision exactly what participatory policy analysis might portend in terms of prescriptions and pitfalls before urging its adoption as yet another approach in a discipline and profession that might appear to many critics as already too methodologically rich and product poor.
This paper will present a brief overview of the conditions which seemingly have made the conventional approaches to policy research less than satisfactory in terms of effective programmatic recommendations and results. It will then offer a model of participatory policy analysis, describing its promises and its inherent dangers. While most of this is necessarily speculative, there are a few examples which will be drawn upon to illustrate the arguments.
THE PROBLEMATIC CONTEXT
Before setting out what is meant and implied by participatory policy analysis, it is necessary to describe what disturbing conditions it is meant to address and hopefully redress; that is, what are some of the current shortcomings of policy research which participatory policy analysis might hope to relieve. First, it is important to recognize that it is not meant as a cure all. For
instance, many of the theoretical and practical deficiencies which Ascher and others have ascribed to computer modelling11 will be left untouched. Nor does it directly confront the fact-value problem set forth by inter alia Fischer and Rein,12 although a fundamental working assumption of participatory policy analysis is that values must be explicitly and overtly incorporated into policy designs.
Specifically, it adopts Diesing's admonition that "differences of perspectives plus their associated value differences...prevent tolerance, understanding, and communication,"13 thereby recognizing that even perfect understanding and communications will not necessarily result in harmonious policy resolutions. One can realistically hope to identify and grease the frictions in the system, not to eliminate them.
Braving a charge of reductio ad absurdum, much of the litany of charges against the policy sciences has been centered on its positivistic, rather technical orientations, stemming in large parts from the Weberian tradition with the disciplinary contributions of operations research, systems analysis, and economics. These heritages have had numerous ramifications, but, for present purposes, we shall emphasize two general effects.
First, they have created an elite corps of policy analysts, beholding principally to a funding client and largely insulated from the ultimate recipients of their designed programs (e.g., the homeless, the student, the medically indigent, the foot soldier).
11 William Ascher, Forecasting: An Appraisal for Policymakers and Planners (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) ; and Martin Greenberger et al., Caught Unawares: The Energy Decade in Retrospect (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1983).
12Frank Fischer, Politics, Values, and Public Policy: The Problem of Methodology (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980); Martin Rein, "Value-Critical Policy Analysis," in Daniel Callahan and Bruce Jennings (eds.), Ethics, The Social Sciences, and Policy Analysis (New York: Plenum Press, 1983), chap. 4.
13Paul Diesing, Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences (New York: Aldine Publishing Co., 1982), p. 13.
The relevance of their methodologies was similarly suspect.14 The policy sciences were effectively captured by a technocratic elite.15 An ancillary condition is that analysts have become part of the governing "establishment," thus further isolating themselves from the populace. Restricted to problematic survey instruments, shadow pricing, cumbersome social experiments, and visceral impressions, it is not surprising that policy researchers have consistently misread what was wanted (as opposed to what they thought was needed) and, therefore, even less surprising that their recommended policies were rarely adopted and, if they were, frequently went awry.16
Second, primarily for procedural and methodological reasons, the values inherent in policymaking were neglected. However theoretically elegant Pareto optimality or labor economics might be, they have failed to capture the norms and values which motivate the body politic. Free market mechanisms, so favored by economists, did little to resolve the energy crisis; strategic arms policies are not dictated by Air Force targetters bunkered in the Pentagon's inner rings; and health care issues continue to defy efficiency experts (as witnessed by the consistent failures of cost containment strategies). Policy recommendations in these (and numerous other issue areas) floundered on their inability to
14See the virulent criticism of Ida Hoos, Systems Analysis and Public Policy (Berkeley,: University of California Press, 1983);
a more focused criticism is John Byrne, "Policy Sciences and the Administrative State: The Political Economy of Cost-Benefit Analysis," in Fischer and Forester (eds.), Confronting Values in Policy A n a l y s i s , chap. 3.
15Stemming, perhaps, from the larger societal phenomenon of an emerging technocracy; c f . , Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage, 1964), with Daniel Bell, The End to Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1960).
16A fine exposition of these themes is Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Democratic Politics and Policy Analysis (Pacific Grove, CA:
Brooks/Cole, 1989-forthcoming).
incorporate the substantive motivating values into the policy research design. In other words, there was an abiding inability to reconcile rational effectiveness with political desirability.17 18
In short, the policy sciences deliberately moved away from what its charter members referred to as the "policy sciences of democracy," one "directed towards knowledge needed to improve the practice of democracy." This concept, almost certainly growing out of Lasswell's fearful premonitions of the garrison state and the fascisms of the recently defeated Axis powers, was essentially designed to provide "intelligence pertinent to the integration of values realized by and embodied by interpersonal relations," which
"prizes not the glory of a depersonalized state or the efficiency of a social mechanism, but human dignity and the realization of human capacities."19 But the evolution of the policy sciences as practiced was to veer from this vision. Supposed efficiencies and rationality were substituted for personal values; cultural differences were subverted to overall (and often ill-conceived) notions of societal balance.20 The reasons were not hard to understand: values are, by their very nature, immensely contentious and rarely amenable to reconciliation, let alone analysis. In a logical extention, some advocated that analysts
17The distinction is posed and illustrated by Richard Rose,
"The Political Appraisal of Employment Practices," Journal of Public P o l i c y . Vol. 7, No. 3 (1987), pp. 285-305. For a more generalized statement, see Paris and Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry.
18Harold D. Lasswell, "The Policy Orientation," in Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell (eds.), The Policy Sciences
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1951), p. 15.
19Harold D. Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950) , pp. xii and xxiv, respectively.
20See Aaron Wildavsky, "Choosing Preference by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation," American Political Science Rev i e w . Vol. 81, No. 1 (March 1987), pp. 3-22.
simply not try to incorporate values into the analytic exercise.21 Better they be left to politicians. Cultural distinctions are almost equally fractious. And neither values nor cultures lend themselves to objective analysis which was the supposed "value added" of the policy research community. The problem was not so much that policy analytic approaches were wrong. It was that they were seriously incomplete in terms of concept, data, and application. Lost was the recognition that virtually all components of public policy and, consequently, public policymaking and public policy analysis were value-laden.22 To lose sight of this most fundamental component was to subscribe to the Lindblom- Cohen thesis that luck was as reliable as analysis in remedying public sector problems.
These charges of failure are almost too easy to document.
Billions of dollars have been poured into the American education system but with little consensus about what should be taught, i.e., what is valued. As a Department of Education report proclaimed, the United States is, educationally speaking, A Nation at R i s k . Therefore, it should come as no shock when large numbers of American high school students are defined as "scientific illiterates," when they cannot locate Illinois or Massachusetts on a map, or local school bond issues are repeatedly rejected by their electorates. This does not imply that multiple values cannot be incorporated into the American system of education.23 Rather, it contends that the full panoply of values subsumed by education was not explicitly considered when new education programs are designed
21For instance, Douglas J. Amy, "Why Policy Analysis and Ethics Are Incompatible," Journal of Public Policy and Management. Vol.
3, No. 4 (Summer 1984), pp. 573-591.
22Peter Brown,"Ethics and Policy Research," Policy A n a l y s i s . Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 1976), pp. 325-340; also see Paris and Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry.
23Although Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), might disagree.
and implemented. Likewise, the Vietnam war was conducted almost as an arrogant logistic exercise with little appreciation for the combatting cultures, the diehard dedication of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese,24 and the equivocal commitment of the American public. President Lyndon Johnson's Senate-learned and -tested dictum— ’’Come let us reason together"— was irrelevant, perhaps even destructive, because there were no shared frames of reference which could serve as a basis for reasoning and reconciliation. Can there be any question how a White House-staged drug drama entitled "Just Say No" will play in urban ghettos, regardless of the sincerity of its producers? Or that the crucial issue in federal AIDS programs is less one of public health and more one of life styles? If not, it easily follows that any analytic exercises addressing them (or similar) topics will prove fatuously fallow.
At issue, then, is not whether personal, institutional, and societal values are a critical missing component of the policy process; they unquestionably are. The pivotal concern for the policy research communities is how can they most readily and accurately— perhaps even rigorously— be incorporated into policy research and policymaking. This is one of the promises of an expanded policy research endeavor which emphasizes the explicit inclusion of a larger number of stakeholders, what we are terming
"participatory policy analysis." Although it might not be a complete answer, it can hopefully provide valuable information towards that objective at an affordable expense.
PARTICIPATORY POLICY ANALYSIS: SOME PRESCRIPTIONS
Participatory policy analysis, as defined above, is an approach which expands the range of contributors to the policymaking process. It is an acknowledged return to Lasswell's injunction of the "policy sciences of democracy," in which an extended population of affected citizens would be involved in the formulation and
pz
Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake; The Vietnamese and the American in Vietnam (New York; Random House, 1971).
implementation of public policy through a series of discursive dialogues. As such, it is a linear manifestation and affirmation of the theories of a participatory democracy,25 reacting in part to the threats posed by narrow interest groups in a pluralist setting.26 27* According to Paris and Reynolds, "the plurality of rational ideologies supports the use of roughly and broadly republican or democratic decisionmaking procedures.1,27 Forthrightly, it represents a conscious effort to translate and aggregate with fidelity individual preferences into public policy.
Lindblom sets out the reasoning directly: "Instead of serving the needs of officials alone, help for the ordinary citizen."
Reduced to its starkest form, participatory policy analysis would involve extensive open hearings involving a broad range of concerned citizens. In Baber's words, the "NEPA [EIS] seeks to bring desirable outcomes and procedural issues back into close proximity."29 These hearings would be structured to prompt individuals, interest group, and agency contributions to policy formulation or what is becoming known as policy design.30 The
25See Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); C. George Benello and Dimitrios Roussopoulus (eds.), The Case for Participatory Democracy (New York: Grossman, 1971); and Stuart Langton (ed.), Citizen Participation in America (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1978) .
26Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston:
Little, Brown) 1976); and Robert A. Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982).
27Paris and Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry, p. 260.
Charles E. Lindblom, "Who Needs What Social Research for Policymaking?" Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization. Vol.
7, No. 4 (June 1986), p. 361.
29Walter F. Baber, "Impact Assessment and Democratic Politics,"
Policy Studies R e v i e w . Vol. 8, No. 1 (Autumn 1988), p. 173.
^Increasingly this stage is being viewed as the pivotal point in policymaking; see Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram,
rationale underlying the proposed approach is straightforward:
public programs should encompass as much understanding of the stakeholders' and recipients' needs as possible in order that the ensuing policies might fulfill as many of the deficiencies as might be possible. This assumption implies that information is needed which describes these needs. Taken one step further, this would require that credible fora and agreed-upon operating procedures be established that can implement this "policy sciences of democracy"
so that the various participants will view the system as credible and respondent to their interests.31 They might not be happy with the outcome but at least they can be satisfied with the process.
Certainly there is nothing novel about this proposal from either the conceptual or practical perspectives. Its roots can linearly be traced back to the tenets of Jeffersonian democracy. What is epistemologically innovative and attracts our present attention is the ability to test the value of participatory policy analysis in a real world, political laboratory. From a conceptual standpoint, Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School have consistently argued
for a "critical theory" approach to public policy issues, characterized by "practical discourse" and "communicative competence."32 Forester summarizes the brief for critical theory
"Systematically Pinching Ideas: A Comparative Approach to Policy Design," Journal of Pubic P o l i c y , Vol. 8, No. 1 (1988), pp. 61-80;
and David B. Brobrow and John S. Dryzek, Policy Analysis By Design (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987).
310f course this concern is not restricted to the Western democracies, as Gorbachev's efforts towards glasnost indicate; for a more specific example, see Bill Keller, "Public Mistrust Curbs Soviet Nuclear Power Efforts," New York T i m e s . October 13, 1988, pp. Al, A6.
32Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests and A Theory of Communicative Action (both Boston: Beacon Press, 1971 and 1984, respectively). Attempts to apply the Habermasian standards to specific contexts are collected by John Forester (ed.), Critical Theory and Public Life (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1985).
in terms of planning:33
In a nutshell...: critical theory gives us a new way of understanding action, or what a planner does, as attention-shaping (communicative a c t i o n ) , rather than more narrowly as a means to a particular end (instrumental a c t i o n ) . If planners do not recognize how their ordinary actions may have subtle communicative effects, the planners may be well- meaning but counterproductive nonetheless. They may be sincere but mistrusted, rigorous but unappreciated, reassuring but resented.
Drawing upon a neo-Marxian perspective, Habermas and his followers assert that biassed (including nonexistent) communications fundamentally warp the policy process. They argue for open fora abiding by consensually acceptable rules ("ideal speech conditions") which would permit all contending parties their
"day in court." Likewise, Majone favors the judicial model as a means of introducing and resolving policy uncertainties: "The supreme analytic achievement is no longer the computations of optimal strategies, but the design of procedural rules and social mechanisms for the assessment of incomplete and often contradictory evidence."34 The confrontational nature of the fora and the procedures with the accepted rules of validity and evidence would promise that the relevant positions and underlying values would at least be recognized if not actually reconciled.
This approach has been proposed, if somewhat abstractly, for policy issues by a number of observers, such as MacRae, who advocates it as a way to "encourage reasoned discussion of the ethical foundations of public policy."35 Rivlin, in her review of
33John Forester, "Critical Theory and Planning Practice," in Forester (ed.), Critical Theory and Public L i f e , p. 203.
34Giandomenico Majone, "Technology Assessment and Policy Analysis," Policy S c i e n c e . Vol. 14, No. 2 (June 1977), p. 174.
35Duncan MacRae, Jr., "Scientific Communications, Ethical Argument, and Public Policy," American Political Science R e v i e w . Vol. 65, No. 1 (March 1965), pp. 38-50, at p. 39; and i d e m .. The Social Function of Social Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Jencks' Inequality, described "forensic social science...[as] an extremely healthy development. It reduces the hypocrisy of pseudo
objectivity and hidden bias. If well used it can sharpen public issues and make social scientific research more relevant to real policy than it ever has been in the past."36 Brown suggests that an appropriate forensic forum can more clearly illustate competitive normative positions.37 Proponents of participatory democracy would hold that the very act of encouraging a wider citizen involvement translates into greater public knowledge and commitment to policymaking and its resulting actions.38 And Churchman talks about a "dialectical communication" process analogous to formal debates.39 Fischer neatly encapsulates the proponents7 case: "Such policy argumentation starts with the recognition that the participants do not have solid answers to the questions under discussion, or even a solid method for getting the answer. With this understanding the policy analyst and decision maker attempt to develop a meaningful synthesis of perspectives."40 Thus, the idea of participatory policy analysis has both substantive and procedural benefits. It explicitly blends an expanded, concerned information set into the policy process as well as participants which might otherwise be overlooked or neglected.
Both should beneficially influence policies in terms of their improved effectiveness and overall societal equity.
Press: 1976).
36Alice M. Rivlin, "Forensic Social Science," Harvard Educational R e v i e w , V o l . 43, No. 1 (February 1973), p. 62.
37Brown, "Ethics and Policy Research."
"58
See footnotes 21 and 22, s u p r a .
39C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems (New York:
Basic Books, 1971).
40Fischer, Politics, Values, and Public Policy, pp. 49-50.
It needs to be emphasized that participatory policy analysis is quite different than the relatively restricted professional (as opposed to "open") fora which some have proposed. Sabatier hypothesizes that professional exchanges will enhance policy learning, hence resulting in better policies:41
The purpose [of these exchanges] is to force debate among professionals from different belief systems in which their points of view must be aired before p e e r s . Under such conditions, a desire for professional credibility and the norms of scientific debate will lead to a serious analysis of methodological assumptions, to the gradual elimination of the more improbable causal assertions and invalid data, and thus probably to a greater convergence of views over time concerning the nature of the problem and the consequences of various policy alternatives.
While professional confrontations might reduce methodological shenanigans, they make no provisions for including the perspectives of the wider policy audiences recruited by participatory policy analysis. Indeed, this restricted cult of expertise has been increasingly indicted for many of the problems that plague the nuclear energy arena and the strategic weapons debate,42 postures which will increasingly be less acceptable within the American polity. Even if they were more encompassing, and there were greater some confidence in their filtered findings, it is, in fact, the restricted nature of this professional forum against which
t <1
Paul A. Sabatier, "An Advocacy Coalition Framework of Policy Change and the Role of Policy-Oriented Learning Therein," Policy Sciences. Vol. 21, No. 2/3 (1988), pp. 129-168, at 156, emphases added; c f . with Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, "Analytic Debates and Policy Learning: Analysis and Change in the Federal Bureaucracy," Policy Sciences. Vol. 21, No. 2/3 (1988), pp. 169-212.
42Irving C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian, Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved (New York: Basic, 1987); Martin Shubik and Paul Bracken, "Strategic War: What Are the Questions and Who Should Be Asking Them?" Technology in Society. Vol. 4, No. 2 (1982), pp. 155-179. Peter deLeon, The Altered Strategic Environment (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1987), chap. 5, traces the increasing public participation in strategic arms debates.
participatory policy analysis enjoins. Moreover, there is little evidence that this type of forum will produce the results its advocates suggest; the 1969 anti-ballistic missile defense debate over the proposed Safeguard system, as performed before Congress and monitored by the Operations Research Society of America, was far from a decorous exchange of information and resolution of factual differences.43 Therefore, these professional exchanges represent only one part of the participatory purview.
Similarly, participatory policy analysis is distinct from
"empowerment,” or the immediate and direct involvement of the citizenry in policymaking or political decisionmaking, such as was the purported purpose of the War on Poverty's Community Action Program. The differentiation is derived from the basic precepts of policy analysis, to inform and advise the decisionmaker, rather than making the actual decision. Therefore, the question is not one of more power to the people; it is one of greater access to and visibility in the halls of power. Whatever new leverage is obtained to influence the decisionmaker or the policymaking process is indirect; whatever "new" power is gained would be couched in terms of information, not coercion. In short, participatory policy analysis should not be confused with participatory policymaking.
Lastly, we are not viewing increased citizen participation as a means of educating the public or creating a broader body of expertise, although this would probably be an inevitable and laudatory by-product. The declared purpose is to gather information so that policy advisers and policymakers can make better (i.e., more completely informed) recommendations and decisions. For this reason, discussants need not necessarily be experts in the technical sense of the term in order to present their particular preferences based upon their idiosyncratic rationale. The first-order criterion for participation is plainly
43ORSA, "Treatment of Operations Research Questions in the 1969 Safeguard Debate," Operations Research. V o l . 19, No. 5 (September 1971), pp. 1175-1245.
one of being involved or demonstrably affected.
There have been, of course, many examples of a participatory policy analysis model, most noticeably in the EIS over such topics as the trans-Alaskan pipeline, nuclear power facilities, and various proposed dams.44 Congressional hearings on, for example, social welfare policies have, upon occasion, been geographically dispersed so as to facilitate grass roots testimony. The Carter Administration's Domestic Policy Review for solar energy deliberately solicited wide-spread popular participation. Perhaps the best example was the work of the Berger Commission. Berger, a Canadian jurist, was tasked to assess the "social, environmental and economic impact regionally" of a trans-Canadian natural gas pipeline. To carry out his mandate, Berger scheduled hearings among the affected Indian communities which would have been directly affected but otherwise effectively disenfranchised. The public hearings were held in the local townships and native languages. The Berger Commission Report later commented on the value of the extended hearings:45
No academic treatise or discussion, formal presentation of the claims of native people by the native organizations and their leaders, could offer as compelling and vivid a picture of the goals and aspirations of native people as their own testimony.
In no other way could we have discovered the depth of feeling regarding past wrongs and future hopes, and the determination of native people to assert their collective identity today and in the years to come.
Thus, as we can see, the theory and practice of participatory policy analysis are not without precedence or analog. Nor is the
44A number of different impact statements from the United States and abroad are studied in a special section on Policy and Impact Assessments are compiled by Robert Bartlett and published in Policy Studies R e v i e w . Vol. 8, No. 1 (Autumn 1988).
45The Berger Commission Report is quoted in Douglas Torgerson,
"Between Knowledge and Power: Three Faces of Policy Analysis,"
Policy Sciences. Vol. 19, No. 1 (July 1986), pp. 45-46.
approach lacking enticing benefits. But before one makes the enthusiastic case for such an approach, it is politic to pause while weighing the relative merits and demerits of the approach, to ask if the analytic candle is worth the participatory game.
PARTICIPATORY POLICY ANALYSIS: SOME PRECAUTIONS
There is little doubt that on the surface, participatory policy analysis should reward— perhaps greatly— all concerned. Affected parties would be assured a meaningful role in the policymaking process should they elect to participate. (This participation is far from certain, of course. One need only examine voter turnout rates to fear for the effectiveness of participatory policy analysis.) Policy analysts would be able to draw from a greater information base and have a more accurate catalog of the values being considered; hence, more effective programs could be devised.
Policymakers could have greater confidence that a more complete spectrum of evidence and had been incorporated into the analytic exercise, therefore providing a greater chance for a policy's or program's (read: personal) success. Yet, upon fathoming, a number of conceptual and operational shoals can be charted which, if left unmarked, could eviscerate the rafts of benefit promised by participatory policy analysis.
From a conceptual standpoint, one must ask at what stage of the policy process participatory policy analysis would most usefully occur. If it should happen prior to the problem setting or definition stage, then the expanded circle of problem definers and their respective requirements might explode the analysis well beyond manageable bounds.46 If it were to occur as late as the policy implementation stage, its effects would be doubtful because many of the major decisions would have already been made and the
46A discussion of the important of the definition exercise is provided by Janet A. Weiss, "The Powers of Problem Definition:
The Problems of Government Paperwork," Policy Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 1989), pp. 97-122.
credibility of the approach would be gravely endangered.
Therefore, it would seem most politic to embed the participatory mechanisms in that stage during which policies are being defined,
formulated, and their respective effects estimated. But even within this more restricted arena, it is difficult to understand at what point the contributions of the affected parties could be most efficiently gathered and analytically incorporated into the policy formulation deliberations. Probably prior to the delineation of policy recommendations so as to insure that these contributions are accounted for before the policy recommendations begin to gel. Still, it could readily be argued that public commentary could be more definitive and constructive if there were clear targets (i.e., an articulated set of recommendations) against which these comments could be directed. The traditional proactive versus reactive arguments from the organizational development literature would be pertinent here.
Concomitantly, proponents need to determine a consensual set of criteria to identify those issues which will be addressed by participatory policy analysis. Almost certainly not every public policy issue is equally amenable to the approach or, more pointedly, warrants the resources which would need to be expended.
Although neither lacks serious public policy implications, national defense policymaking would be of greater interest (hence, more suitable for) broad-scale public deliberations that the formulation of techical environmental protection standards. The criteria which would drive these determinations should certainly be grounds for public debate. The demarcations are not presciently lucid; is the determination of individual bus routes less important that the planning of an entire urban transit system? Probably so, but the answer would be a function of exactly who was asked. Regardless, unless it was unscrupulously objective (a condition difficult to imagine in any political arena), the choice of what issues would employ participatory mechanisms could present sizable conceptual problem which might bedevil the procedure from the very start.
Furthermore, participatory policy analysis resurrects the long
standing advocacy versus analysis poltergeist. Nominally, it should present no problem: participatory policy analysis merely provides the analyst with greater amounts of information which can be impartially analyzed, a mere matter of scale question. But the selection process— that is, which groups are nominated and by whom to present their cases— could quickly impugn the putative neutrality of the analyst and taint the subsequent objectivity of the process. To preclude parent groups from education debates simply because they are less organized than teacher unions would place any derived curriculum reforms in mortal jeopardy. Likewise, the type of forum could critically affect the process and manifest a comparative advantage to one group, i.e., reflect a certain predetermined advocacy.47 Both situations resurface the divisive debates pitting advocacy against analysis. The tension is inescapable because in choosing respondent groups, deliberative ground rules, and even the location and number of the meetings, the analyst must make selective choices which necessarily include some stakeholders and preclude others. These are, at bedrock, political choices, bluntly identifying who wins and who loses, at least in the first round. Certain groups are bound to be seemingly favored, while opponents discriminated against; it is as inevitable as any political process. The analyst might find himself promoting a relatively invisible, less vocal, or somehow disadvantaged group out of his concern for justice and equity. Depending on his position, the convener will either be praised as an analytic paragon or lambasted as a callous advocate. So, at base, pivotal decisions must be made by the analyst on what might appear to be
47Jenkins-Smith, "Analytic Debates and Policy Learning," pp.
202-03, distinguishes between "professional" and "closed" fora.
Neither, of course, closely coincides with the participatory policy analysis paradigm. Also see H. Theodore Heintz, Jr. and Hank C.
Jenkins-Smith, "Advocacy Coalitions and the Practice of Policy Analysis," Policy Sciences. Vol. 21, Nos. 2/3 (1988), pp. 263-278, at p. 270.
discriminatory, arbitrary grounds. And these decisions surely mark the transition— however subtle— from analyst to advocate. While this boundary is repeatedly obscured among even the most conscientious analysts, the uncertainty and subjectivity of the standards could discredit the system. Considering the fragility of the assumptions (e.g., principally a fair hearing) which would motivate individuals or groups to participate, this conceptual obstacle could, in fact, fatally infect the procedure before it even had an opportunity to prove its policy mettle.
Lastly, one should consider the most fundamental question of representation: who in fact is accredited to speak for "the people"? That is, who will participate in participatory policy analysis? The testimony of every single affected individual would be impossible, but then what are the grounds for aggregation? In order words, how far removed from the individual should be representative be? Class action lawyers might claim the responsibility. Civil activitists would be another. And, of course, we could easily get back to elected representatives and their appointed bureaucrats, or approximately where we are today.
The conceptual problems are unquestionably daunting.
Unfortunately, the operational problems may prove even more of a hindrance to the implementation of a comprehensive participatory policy analysis procedure. As implied immediately above, the selection of which interest groups would be represented would be extremely problematic. Obviously some winnowing rules must be devised and enforced; otherwise, the number of participants and amount of information garnered would simply overwhelm the system, thereby defeating its very purposes. To this worry, the primary question would be just how broadly one casts the "affected"
network, that is, those who are thought to be particularly advantaged or disadvantaged by the program, especially when dealing with "public goods" as provided by the public sector. One could legitimately claim that every man, woman, and child in the United States (if not the entire global population) is or, more correctly,
could be affected by American strategic arms policies; similar arguments could be construed for matters dealing with education curricula, public health services, agricultural programs, environmental protection, and social welfare policies. Yet, short of a bluntly inarticulate popular referendum, they could never have the views thoroughly opined. Just where does the forum convener draw the line between the ’’intimately,” the "kind of," and the
"casually" affected clientele? Are appeal mechanisms in place and, if so, how are they made known and available?
This has important implications regarding a second cause for concern, namely how the system could process all the information or, in the language of systems engineering, prevent system overload and failure. Extensive hearings could easily result in extensive findings, perhaps so voluminous as to be unmanageable. Yet to preclude or parse the proffered testimony, for whatever honest reasons of efficiency or information management, would cast doubt on the evenhandedness of the process. Those groups whose contributions "got lost" in the information shuffle might justifiably observe that the process was a farce, at best a facade to legitimate predetermined positions, and chose to reject its findings. Such claims, if substantiated, would destroy whatever credibility participatory policy analysis might portend. A third issue is a matter of timing. Quite often, by the time problems become public policy issues they assume a crisis nature;
something must be done sooner rather than later. The 1 9 6 0 zs War on Poverty, the 1 9 7 0 's energy shortfalls, and the 1 9 8 0 's Social Security solvency frights are representative of issues in which the government felt that it had to act quickly and decisively to alleviate the particular situations. To schedule and hold prolonged public hearings would possibly add years to the policymaking process, a cost few would wish to impose or accept.
Justice Department attorneys spent decades in court arguing anti
trust cases (e.g., Alcoa, IBM, and AT&T), hardly an auspicious antecedent for forensic policy analysis. Likewise, EIS
preparations and debates have greatly increased the time spent in bringing many environmental programs to fruition. As economists remind us, time is money and participatory policy analysis could add greatly to the cost of program design; the staggering expenses incurred by nucleaer power plants as they proceed through the fractious— hence glacial— permitting process is an expensive illustration. Maybe a policymaker is willing to accept those costs, however taxing they might be, but that stance should not blind one to the fact that these costs exist and could be substantial, perhaps intolerable. But, in any case, they cannot be ignored and must be paid.
Finally, one must give serious thought to the operating rules by which evidence is presented and evaluated; the judicial example is the obvious precedent.4849 There are perhaps some salient guidelines outside the legal system. For instance, Toulmin and his colleagues distinguish among several types of argument— legal reasoning, argumentation in science, and so forth.50 Forester extends his Habermas-based framework to include "enabling rules."51 Still, little thoughtful attention has been paid to the relevant rules and procedures. Rivlin, in remarkable oversight, pays no attention to the matter of how one implements her proposed forensic social science.52 But important differences have been observed among types
48A literature search has uncovered surprisingly little in terms of analytically assessing the National Environmental Protection Act-mandated EIS; one exception is Stuart L. Hart et a l . (eds.), Improving Impact Assessment (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984).
49Majone, "Technology Assessment and Policy Analysis."
50Stephen Toulmin et al., An Introduction to Reasoning (New York: Macmillan, 1979). Also Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951).
51Forester, "Critical Theory and Planning Practice."
52Rivlin, "Forensic Social Science."
of fora, their subject matter, and the degree of pre-existing consensus. Toulmin et al. postulate that different modes of argumentation should only be compared on an intra-, not an inter
case basis and that there are critical distinctions between adversarial and consensual situations; and Jenkins-Smith cautions against confusing professional and closed fora.53 This evidence indicates that devising a single, uniform operating code could be extremely dangerous, perhaps to the point of undermining the entire concept before it even was tested, an observation supported by the insistently contextual requirements of the policy sciences.
Although many examples of these difficulties can be referenced, the fractious disagreements over energy policy are generally representative and widely documented.54 In partial explanation, Thompson suggests that the policy debates were conducted by separate cultures or what he calls tribes, thus vitiating any inter-group compromises.55 Indeed, Robinson asserts that a consensual U.S. energy policy was impossible to formulate because the contending parties, such as nuclear and renewable energy factions, were unable to agree on any mutually acceptable bases for the resolution of their differences; moreover, the very nature of the debate was set by preconceived positions and paradigms; they were, in Robinson's telling metaphor, comparing apples to horned toads.56 Since policy formulation is generally more characterized
53Toulmin et al., An Introduction to Reasoning; and Jenkins- Smith, "Policy Debates and Analytic Learning."
54Inter a l i a . Martin Greenberger et al., Caught U n a w a r e s ; The Energy Decade in Retrospect.
55Michael Thompson, "Among the Energy Tribes: A Cultural Framework for Analysis and Design of Energy Policy," Policy Sciences. Vol. 17, No. 3 (November 1984), pp. 321-339. For some implications of these problems, see Aaron Wildavsky and Ellen Tenenbaum, The Politics of Mistrust (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981).
56John Bridger Robinson, "Apples and Horned Toads: On the Framework-Determined Nature of the Energy Debate," Policy S c i ences.
by conflict than harmony, it is most likely that the rules of the game or the evaluation criteria would be a major source of conflict, perhaps ultimately disabling the concept. And this does not even broach the question of how the evidence will be weighed or by whom.57
THREE CASES
Empirically there are numerous case studies which cast genuine shadows on the illuminating qualities of participatory policy analysis. We will summarize three here, without having to delve into the details of the material; along with the aforementioned Berger Commission report, the "lessons learned" are more germane to our purposes than the actual incidents. Although none of these cases represents a pure illustration of the approach, they do imply that some of the concerns raised above are less hypothetical and more pressing than proponents might candidly wish to acknowledge.
Laird's analysis of the Carter Administration's Domestic Policy Review (DPR) for solar energy by the Department of Energy (DOE) warrants extensive quotation:
The DPR participation measures took place early on, and continued throughout, the process. In addition, participation was promoted actively by actors both inside and outside the government. On the inside, the staff members running the DPR were proponents of and worked for an open, participatory process....
Moreover, the scope and depth of the program far exceeded what they were required to do by their superiors.... In short, the solar DPR seems to be a case where all the factors favored a participation program that would truly reflect and involve the wishes of the interested public.
Yet, in the end, the DPR failed to reflect accurately the wishes of the public as expressed in the
Vol. 15, No. 1 (November 1981), pp. 23-45.
57Paris and Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry, chap. 8, argue that polities can distinguish and chose among "rational ideologies" but their implementation advice is not very compelling.
participation programs.... [T]he original technocratic definition of the issue [as set forth by the DPR staff] resulted in a study that ignored most of the concerns expressed by the public. This focus was not due to indifference on the part of the government officials to the wishes of the public.
It was, rather, that they saw the core of the problem in highly technical terms, and the lay public had nothing to say that could help them solve that problem.
Laird's review forces him to conclude: "...when it came time to write the report..., the issues with which [DPR and DOE] officials grappled could only be discussed by experts. The technocratic definition of the problem rendered the level of participation moot.
Because they lacked a certain rather esoteric knowledge, a group of interested citizens were effectively disenfranchised from a policy debate in which they had an intense interest."58
In the late 1970s, the British government conducted extensive public hearings over the plans by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) to construct a nuclear waste reprocessing plant at Windscale. One hundred days of inquiry were conducted to determine in the words of the final report "the implications of the proposed development for the safety of the public and for other aspects of the national interest." Kemp examined these hearings and their findings from the precept that "Public hearings into a wide variety of sociopolitical issues have become accepted practice in the majority of Western industrialized societies, part and parcel of the everyday fabric of democratic life." Utilizing a framework derived from the writings of Jurgen Habermas (for example, Habermas' concept of an "ideal speech situation" and its four validity requirements), his conclusions were brusquely pessimistic:
...in the main, public inquiries... serve to legitimize the actions and interests of dominant groups in advanced capitalist societies. Outcomes of public hearings are rarely objective, rational,
58Frank N. Laird, "Technocracy Revisited: Knowledge and Power in Technical Decisions," paper presented at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., pp. 7, 8, 10-11, respectively.
and egalitarian; they are manipulated to further the interests of both state and capital.... I contend that a primary mechanism through which this is achieved is the systematic distortion of the communication process that takes place at public inquiries.
Even if one's acceptance of Kemp's conclusions is tempered because of their neo-Marxian roots, his illustrations of how the British government restricted the intervenor's access to classified materials, the apparent advantages resulting from BNFL's technical expertise, and the constraining effect of the intervenor's limited financial and research resources are indicative of the types of naggingly practical problems inherent with participatory policy analysis.59
A third pertinent example is the history of environmental impact statements (EIS) in the United States. The assessment of their record naturally depends on one's point of view.60 From the perspective of the nuclear power plant industry, EIS have contributed mightily to the destruction of a vital national industry and electric power resource; from the perspective of nuclear power opponents, EIS have been a major weapon in slaying the perilous nuclear power dragon. Similarly clashing viewpoints can be found in a wide variety of economic development versus environmental protection debates across the 1970's and 1980's political landscapes, ranging from water projects in Tennessee to liquified natural gas terminals in California. Unarguably, technical EIS requirements have added a great deal of time to the political decisionmaking process; what is much more arguable is whether that time is well-spent or wasted. Whichever position one defends, the EIS record in terms of extending the policymaking and
59Ray Kemp, "Planning, Public Hearings, and the Politics of Discourse," in Forester (ed.), Critical Theory and Public L i f e , all quotations, p. 177; also see pp. 197-198.
60Again, see Hart et al. (eds.), Improving Impact Assessment and the Barlett collection in Policy Studies Rev i e w .
implementation time horizons underpins the concerns that participatory policy analysis may impose unacceptable time and resource costs on the policy process.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
We have seen that the purported benefits participatory policy analysis could seemingly bestow upon policy process— most particularly, in the policy design exercise— and the very body politic are, upon analysis, more problematic than probable.
Conceptually, the difficulties in bounding the process and assimilating the information are imposing; its operational obstacles are likewise daunting. For every optimistic illustration, such as the Berger Commission, there are numerous pessimistic accounts, such as the Windscale hearings. We need to ask if this evaluation represents a counsel of despair, as well as a blunt recommendation that participatory policy analysis as a proposed improvement to the policy process be set aside before it can do any damage to an already partially discredited discipline.
At first count, this would be a reasonable reading and a supportable conclusion. However, again it would behoove us to pause and contemplate if the conclusion is fully warranted. The reason to reconsider is that while the remedy may not be all that great, perhaps the patient is sufficiently infirmed that radical treatments should be countenanced. Consider the prognosis: facing a cumulatively complex set of conditions with an admittedly inadequate set of concepts and approaches, public policy making is increasingly perceived to be in a shambles. Politicians repeatedly toll the "bureaucratic bashing" tocsin to gain election, overlooking its deleterious effects when it comes to governing through a now-berated, next-disgruntled bureaucracy. The tensions are almost palpable as bureaucracies struggle to adjust to the changing context engendered by growing citizen involvement.61 Even
61 Douglas Yates, Bureaucratic Democracy (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982), offers some suggestions to
those who operate the system seem to be embarrassed and disillusioned; a large plurality of surveyed federal government administrators reported that they would not encourage their children to tread in their professional footsteps. The crux of the issue is the ability of the polity to govern itself representatively and the contributions the policy sciences can make towards that end, or, to reiterative Lasswell's normative injunction, the "policy sciences of democracy."62
If this rueful assessment encapsulates anything approximating reality, then the conventional remedies for deficiencies in the policy sciences approaches— e.g. , expanded applications of benefit- cost analysis or legal reasoning courses in public policy curricula— are otiose bromides at best, cruel charades at worst.
The bedrock problem lies not so much in what the policy sciences community knows and can incorporate into its recommendations, but what it does not know and therefore cannot use. Can federal analysts sequestered in Washington obtain an accurate depiction of what their assumed clients and constituents need or, more to the valuative point, want? If not, is it scarcely surprising that their policies and programs often miss their mark? Finally, and most pertinently, can the policy research and the political decisionmaking communities consciously permit these lacunae to continue to exist?
If the answers to these questions are negative, then it follows that extreme measures should be considered, ones that might be conceptually robust yet risky in terms of their implementation and ultimate success. In other words, the probability of their utility
ameliorate these tensions.
62Fn. 18 and 19, su p r a . Also see Bjorn Wittrock, "Governance in Crisis and Withering of the Welfare State: The Legacy of the Policy Sciences," Policy Sciences. Vol. 15, No. 3 (April 1983), pp.
195-204, and the other articles in this special issue on
"Governance in Crisis;" and Peter B. Evans et al. (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
could be estimated a priori as doubtful. But since the potential payoffs (to name only two, more rewarding public programs and an enhanced public appreciation of the government's capability to meet their expressed preferences) would be great, engaging in a methodological lottery would be a commensurate expenditure.
The lottery metaphor— minimum investment of resources, low probability of payoff, and, if successful, immense returns— is instructive in the case for participatory policy analysis. As we have seen, the conceptual and operational problems inherent to the approach are formidable. But the benefits (i.e., delivering viable programs to needy recipients without imposing unacceptable costs upon others) which could accrue to the effectiveness of the public policy process would be enormous. Therefore, the urgent intellectual charge for the proponents of participatory policy analysis is somehow to assess the probability of overcoming the conceptual and operational hurdles discussed above. Furthermore,
implementation procedures would need to be elaborated in at least a first approximation of operational detail.
These assessments certainly are not quotidian chores. However, neither are they infeasible, especially since the reward could be so great. Drawing upon the record of such analogues as EIS and the expanded legal system, including arbitration and mediation procedures, possible first-order guidelines could be formulated and vetted at relatively low costs. Many plausible reservations, upon examination, might prove exaggerated. For instance, people are more willing to accept "arbitrary" procedures if their origins are made understandable and explicit. Moreover, bothersome conventions might be honored to if they are seen as being ubiquitous, e . g . , applied "unfairly" to everyone as is currently the case in governmental "red tape." Some areas might be found to be more amenable to this process than others, especially where the grounds for reconciliation for not impossible.63 Advanced public
63See Jenkins-Smith, "Analytic Debates and Policy Learning,"
and Heintz and Jenkins-Smith, "Adovacy Coalitions and the Practice
survey techniques and breakthroughs in telecommunications might prove useful. In short, there is no reason to assume that participatory policy analysis must ascribe or aspire to— let alone achieve-— ideal standards, such as exemplified in Habermas' "ideal speech situations". That would be an unattainable grail in the hurly-burly would of politics. More cogently, one needs to ask if it can achieve acceptable standards, not an implausible objective in a political world characterized by compromise, nor an insignificant one. This moderation in goals still does not guarantee that the game is worth the candle, but given the magnitude of the prize and/or the costs of (even benign) neglect, it surely implies that the illuminating vision of the approach merits thoughtful examination.
A FINAL THOUGHT
A final, more generalized observation is warranted. The evolution of the policy sciences and policy analysis has featured a series of trends and cachets.64 At one time, evaluation research was the discipline's signature activity, later implementation analysis; similarly PPBS was displaced by MBO and ZBO. With time, these fads were deemphasized and subsumed into more holistic approaches, like Lasswell's developmental constructs. Still, many of these problematic concepts and their attendant methodologies left an acid residue, a skeptical aftertaste. Policymakers could fairly ask, "Why were these modes pressed upon us when their shortcomings were so glaring?" Thus, the "crisis" in policy research was largely self-inflicted by its very shamans.
The preceding analysis of participatory policy analysis goes beyond a strict assessment of that particular approach by implying a way to avoid a continuation of the crisis. Proposed new
of Policy Analysis."
^Elaborated upon in Peter deLeon, Advice and Consent: The Development of the Policy Sciences (New York: Russell Sage, 1989).
approaches— of which participatory policy analysis is only one—
predicated upon little more than wishes and encomia will do little to alleviate the crisis and probably even less to resolve public policy issues. Borrowing Turgenev's more lyrical expression, "Even nightingales need more than daydreams." The policy research community has the professional obligation to examine itself and its implements as closely and dispassionately as it scrutinizes various problems and programs. This essay has attempted to place participatory policy analysis in the pre-application docket as an example of such an assessment model. Failing to perform these self-audits with both intellectual and professional integrity and diligence, as well as on a consistent basis, could lead to another disheartening canon of inflated promises and dashed expectations, situations which absolutely serve nobody's purposes.
