Here is a very brief post to give you a place to make comments, reflections or questions about the issues in week 2: actors and institutions.
You will recall we had Ann Florini helping on Tuesday. The key reading was Chapter 3 of Howlett and Ramesh. You worked in groups on Thursday to generate lists of actors in our hypothetical MyCountry.
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I find it a mental acrobat to keep track of the various actors and institutions that arise these days for every issue that is of public or international concern. Trying to pigeonhole these actors and institutions into general categories (e.g. private/public) is often challenging because their distinctions are not always so clean cut in reality. Like a mess of arms and tentacles, they often share a common goal or purpose, knowingly or unknowingly despite their different background or origins. This throws into greater relief the growing complexity of public policy-making.
It is no wonder that some academics have remarked that the reduction of complex problems into separate, rationally manageable components, is demonstrably notworking adequately in today’s environment.
I agree with Kuek Foo. Its very difficult to pigeonhole some actors into their traditional roles and definitions. For instance, is the conventional separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary still true or is it now construct of history that we retain in our minds?
With coalition politics, a minority party can become the ruling party with support from smaller parties, often making the single largest majority party, the opposition! So is it really the 'ruling party'?
With the legitimacy given to party whips, elected representatives have no choice but to vote according to the party, irrespective of the impact on their constituencies. So are these 'representatives'?
And finally, (my pet peeve) the emergence of PPP (Public Private Partnerships) has redefined the "Public" as being the State, and the public (i.e., citizens) are not present anywhere. PPPs can be nasty, since powerful corporations are able to influence (and in some cases, even draft) government policy. The State provides the legitimacy for the decisions/actions, the corporation makes the decisions, runs the operations and makes money, and the citizen pays for all of this.
When basic services are provided for in the PPP mode, then citizens often lose their identity as citizens, and obtain a new identity as consumers.
So yes, I agree that its tough and often limiting to look at these actors within compartments that were created with a different context.
More than enumeration and classification of all the actors and institutions, we could see it as a way of thinking through any concerned issue. Even though it is of ample merit to categorise them, it is not our ultimate aim to get all of them in neat classified piles.
Under the head "Domestic State System" Howlett and Ramesh did not include any case beyond coalition politics. But the current Indian Govt which Bharath was alluding to- a minority party led coalition that relies on "outside support" to maintain simple majority- is sure to be rare if not unique. This is an example of how newer systems are sure to evolve in the longer run and reminding us that complete classification is not something to be worried about.
Al Gore is working hard to pursuade the US government and people to realize the seriousness of climate change, and to take necessary actions to make things turn for a better. For this reason I do admire and respect him. But if he succeeded in that election, or if he runs for the next UN Secretary-General and succeeds, and if he acts as what he said, we can count more on him to improve the situation...
Another comment on climate change is that developed country and rich people should shoulder more responsibilities as they unquestionably consume much more than others....Would there be any public policies to ensure that "who gets more should pay/do more"?
Since it's difficult to pigeonhole the actors and institutions, we need more case studies on the functions of them. The memo project assigned on last Thursday is a good approach for us to figure out the difference of the actors and institutions.
BTW, is there any difference between the classification of actor and institution?
I also agree that its very difficult to pigeonhole the actors and institutions.
My understanding according to the text of Howlett and Ramesh is that the term policy actors refers to state and societal actors who are involved in the policy making process. They may be individuals or groups who are also collectively identified as a policy subsystem.
Institutions refers to the structures and organizations of the state, society and the international system which constitutes the larger context of a policy subsystem, or what is called the policy universe, which may directly or indirectly affect the policy process.
Both of them are inter related and as policy subsystem is a part of policy universe therefore in my view there should be no difference between the classification of actors and institutions and provided that both of them are coming from within the same mechanism of state. Though it may be very difficult to identify which one plays more important part.
What really surprised me in the exercise last Thursday was the massive array of actors and institutions that deal with climate change in Germany when compared to other countries. The previous government even was a coalition of Social Democrats with the Green party which is very symbolic of the high value that a big part of the German society attaches to environmental responsibility. Sharing this with a Pakistani friend I realised how absolutely unimportant this issue becomes when a country has to face much more basic needs than worrying about a global climate.
In a response to Chen Haitao I believe that it is obvious that those countries that produce more should also pay more. At least from a European perspective this seems to be taking place already. The European Union is investing a lot of funds in environmental protection and upgrading of industries. However, I believe it is important for developing countries to build on the experience made by those countries that can already afford to be more environmentally aware, and to shortcut extensive unresponsible use of natural resources.
The lecture by Dr Wu Fengshi on the transnationalization of China's AIDS Politics highlights the importance of the effects of internalization, one of which is the creation of new opportunities for learning from the policy experiences of others.
The role of transnational epistemic communities and non-governmental organizations in promoting learning activities cannot be underestimated.
Internalization also promotes new patterns of policy-making - when a domestic policy actor loses out in its domestic setting, it now has the opportunity to transfer its policy transferred to the international organizations arena where its position may receive a more favourable reception.
With regards to China, Dr Wu astutely pointed out that the AIDS issue in China has always been transnationalized, and that it goes beyond the conventional state-to-state,official-to-official channels and modes of interaction. Transnationalization is and will continue to increase in China with regards to the AIDS issue, especially in terms of funding, expansion of institutional arrangements, and new access points and inputs which may lead to changes in China's AIDS policy eventually.
As such, there is no doubt that internationalization and the resultant introduction of new international organizations and regimes such as the WTO and the European Union, and various international actors have open up new action channels for domestic policy actors to pursue their interests.
Pigeonholing is the easiest thing to do when looking at actors. From experience, I find it identying those actors difficult. However, the most difficult task, especially in less transparent and not-so-democratic systems, is locating their interests and level of interaction with other actors.
Time was when there was a King and his subjects. The King had absolute power but, in principle, relied on his subjects for support (and resources). In exchange, the King provided protection to them from outsiders. It was a balance that was highly biased (in favor of the king) but it worked.
Today, we have various groups, governments, and personalities who claim to either know what the common good is or represent common interests. But do they really? We need to sift through the public relations spin sometimes to get to the heart.
To use a different metaphor: in the forest of various competing interests and ideas, oftentimes the lowly sapling gets no sunlight.
well i come from an underdeveloped country which i suppose is similar to "MY Country". The question i have is that if countries like mine which contribute so little to global warming are also supposed to do something about climate change by reducing our emissions in terms of indusstrial output, what chances of development do we have? Worse still why should we do something about our "little" emmissions when countries like canada which contributes so much is doing very little about it. I heard sometime back on BBC World that China has a similar arguement as above in the sence that when it wants to develope thats when issues of climate change are getting hot.
To a certain degree i think that developed countries are in a better position to reduce their emmissions because they have already reached the developed status. Can someone convince me otherwise? As Olivia has said, The isue is a bit different for poor countries who are worrying more about their developing status.
Few important remarks can be assorted out of comments posted:
- Mechanisms of government work leave space for huge variety of different power configurations and surprising policy decisions.
- Pigeonholing actors and institutions is often challenging.
- There is a danger of silenced public voice due to huge resources in the hand of businesses.
- We can’t escape actors VS institutions problem (egg or chicken?).
- There is a feeling of absolute relativism; agents compete for mainstream narrative, primary interpretation.
In my opinion, we should focus not only on the present complexity within public policy making, but also remarkable trends that occur within societies and level policy play field – allowing new agents to enter. That is
- Rising - non-conventional forms of political participation (strikes, protests, actions).
- Growing grassroots movements, ad-hoc “issue” groups
- E-participation
Howlett and Ramesh text is very useful to recognize the variety and complexity of policy-making. But when analyzing particular issue I tend to emphasize a) process (at what stage, how and with whom actors interact) and b) resources (what resources actors posses to influence policy making.
I think this course is quite useful for chinese students although it is quite hard due to the uncommon jargons and complecated sentenses.For example, I come to be aware of how to balance the interests of different stake holders or actors such as government, legislature,citizens,etc.through the reading materials for week 2 and 3.You know, In China ,we don't have so many actors in the process of policy making.I hope I can learn more from the future study.
A lot of comments have already been given about policy actors (and institutions as actors) in this blog post, so I’ll focus my comments on institutions as the "rules of the game" actors play by.
Institutions define the parameters of interaction among policy actors. So despite the multitude of actors given a policy issue, their preferences and behavior would be shaped (though not determined) by the nature or design of the institution. So to speak, institutions “level the playing field” for actors with varying capacities and resources (or simply put, between and among strong and weak actors). This is why it is imperative for actors to understand the “rules” they are playing by in order to properly identify and assess the relative value of every option available to them vis-à-vis other actors who are also doing the same (in other words, so they can play the game better).
Mangiza, i share your sentiments with regards to the capacity that the developed countries may have in order to bring down carbon emissions. Yet, i'd like to draw your attention to the aspect of development that you connect to industrial growth. Indeed, on the surface it may seem that if underdeveloped or developing countries are to take action on controlling their emissions then the development process may somewhat be hindered.
But let's view this from another angle. I think it's a big advantage on the part of the underdeveloped or developing countries to act in similar fasion as the developed counties.
Let's look at an imaginary example and see why I believe this is so. Suppose a car factory is to be built in a developing country. Given the emission reduction agenda, what are the chances that this new factory will be more, say, environmentally friendly? What if this factory was to be built a decade ago? To me, it makes a huge difference. Now, the advantage of this developing country in building this new factory is that it does not need to build it using technologies of a decade ago, and so, she will not need to make adjustments to carbon emission regulations, because the new technology already takes care of it. Thus, I believe this developing country is already saving money, to say the least. And just to add on this example, what if this factory is set up to build environmentally friendly cars? Then, you have killed two rabbits with one shot.
Of course, I'm putting this in a very simplistic way, but my purpose is to convey that the underdeveloped or developing countries have an edge over the developed ones if the former are to follow the latter in their development steps, because the former can take advantage of new technologies and thus save resources (at least money) in the long-run; and avoid the risk of emitting too much as their industrial capacity grows.
However, in order to achieve this right from the start we need those actors and institutions to be strong, in particular at the domestic level. If the domestic actors and institutions are not strong then they will fall prey to quick fix development solutions, which in the long-run will prove more costly.
The bottom line is that the domestic actors and institutions should build their capacity to tackle development issues while being armed with up-to-date tools.
I agree, Richard. Knowing who the actors are is just one part. I think that it is also key for one to have a good grasp of the rules in an institution and how to make it work for one's insterests. Most of these rules, however, are implied.
I dont know if we are allowed to make multiple comments. But Mangiza's question and Murad's response were very interesting and I make this comment in the broader context of 'policy windows' opening up.
I cannot disagree with Murad on the broader comment on smaller countries benefitting by being politically aligned with the developed world while also doing something for the environment.
However, in the specific context of climate change (as indeed with similar international issues) I believe that smaller countries could look at climate change discussions as potentially opening up another 'policy window'. The international pressure and resultant geo-political situation today may allow countries to "exploit" (I tried to think of a more positive word!) this situation.
This could take form as a domestic policy reform (as Murad's example suggests) or indeed increased support for some other policy measure. For example, in exchange for voluntarily cutting down carbon emissions, can Zambia seek funds or technology from the CDM for something else?
As Richard Umali eloquently states, its about playing the game better.
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