Policy Paradox: the Art of Political Decision Making Essay Example

above. ” The theory of rationality professes to offer a correct vantage point, from which we can judge the goodness of the real world. Policies should be made to attain the goals in life of equity, efficiency, security, and liberty. "Policy is the rational attempt to attain objectives... [the goals] are often invoked as justifications for a policy, for a government action, or for the government's not taking action"(573) . Many times these goals come into conflict with each other.

For instance, if the United States provided everyone with a vehicle for the purpose of transportation, in this particular aspect everyone would be equal, but not everyone would be free to choose what type of car they would like to have; you would have to take whatever was given. This is just one example similar to Stone’s idea of equality that may not be so equal. It depends on one’s point of view. Stone says that the problems with efficiency are that people have different views about the best ways to do something.

One example that she uses is welfare. Some feel that welfare is good because it gives money to the poor; others feel that welfare only gives an incentive to stay poor. Instead, some might propose that the rich get tax cuts, in order to give incentive for the poor to become millionaires (572). According to Stone, policies include a number of things; goals, problems and solutions are to name a few. In the Policy Paradox, Stone creates a model of reasoning that demonstrates how decisions should be made in a series of well-defined steps:

• Identify objectives
• Identify alternative courses of action for
  

achieving objectives

The model of reasoning which is broken down above is what Stone notates as that rational decision making and this is the recommended method by which decisions should be made. There are four other models that are mentioned directly: model of political reason, this model say Stone, “ought to account for the possibilities of changing one’s objectives, of pursuing contradictory objectives simultaneously, of winning by appearing to lose and turning loss into appearance of victory, and most unusual , of attaining objectives by portraying oneself as having attained them. ” Then you have the model of society, which according to Stone is the market. . . ociety is viewed as a collection of autonomous, rational decision makers who have no community life. Their infractions consist entirely of trading with one another to maximize their individual well-being. ”

The market model is not restricted to things we usually consider markets, that is, to systems where goods and service are bought and sold. The model of policy making in the rationality project is production is a production model, where policy is created in a fairly orderly sequence of stages, almost as if on an assembly line (574-75).

Stone does an excellent job in pointing out some of the inconsistencies with the government and then giving possible solutions to the issues of policymaking and how they can be properly addressed. Much of what is emphasized within the excerpt given is on the models, and orientating oneself

to goals Stone carefully takes each model and breaks it down listing the remunerations, the shortcomings, and then makes a comparison to each other; this one might think, seems to make the models appear flawless.

However, that is not the attempt, rather to… “express a logic of problem solving that is widespread in the policy analysis literature…. ” It would have been great to have had her to rate the policies more and give her own views of them, instead of relying on other experts. In conclusion, this was by far the best article that I have read through the entire book of classics. The excerpt within this book has certainly encouraged me to read the book in its entirety. The author’s objectives for writing the book are clear and understandable from the very beginning.

Up until now it was not necessary to offer a view point because the readings were all somewhat convoluted and lacked substances in many areas which makes it very difficult to write a good and object summation. Overall, I thought this book was very good. I learned a lot about policy making and the problems that occur when people have different beliefs and points of view about the policy in question. It was a pretty easy read because of the examples that she gave. Most were very simple, yet had a very strong point attached to them.