BOOK REVIEW

Understanding the Policy Process
John Hudson and Stuart Lowe
Bristol, Policy Press, 2009, 336 pp., £21.99.
ISBN 978 1 84742 267 5


Hudson and Lowe's review of the policy-making process is an engaging text that seeks to provide readers with the conceptual tools to understand how social policy is conceived, developed and delivered. Whilst its primary function is to introduce students of social policy to the key themes of policy analysis, the book has a clear authorial voice in making the case for how and why the policy process needs to be adequately theorised. It is a textbook with a mandate.

Three core ideas underpin the book. The first is that social policy is traditionally an under-theorised subject that relies too heavily on 'well-worn pathways of empirical, policy-related research' (p296). The book is presented, therefore, as a corrective that injects the theoretical insights of political science into social policy analysis so as to enable the latter to reach its full potential as a multi-disciplinary field of inquiry. Secondly, the book emphasises the importance of the concept of 'path-dependency' in terms of the need to ground policy analysis in socio-historical context. The trajectory of welfare policies in any particular country can, the authors argue, only be understood by considering how social and cultural formations that have developed over time influence the policy process. The third idea is that theoretical analysis of social policy can be best approached using a three-tiered conceptual map of the scale at which policy-making is shaped and implemented: the macro, meso and micro levels (see below). Within this typology, the meso-level at which institutions and networks operate is identified as the most neglected element of social policy analysis. Accordingly, the book makes the case for a new emphasis on applying concepts from political science given its innate disciplinary capacity to explore the policy process at this level.

The book is divided into three parts that correspond to these three layers of the policy process. Part One concentrates on macro-level analysis with chapters on globalisation, political economy, the post-industrial economy, technological change and structures of power. Part Two introduces concepts relating to meso-level analysis with chapters on the changing nature of governance, policy networks, institutions and policy transfer. Part Three centres on the micro-level analysis of the policy process with chapters exploring decision-making and personality, implementation and delivery, and evaluation and evidence. Each chapter is topped with an overview and key concepts and tailed with a well-written summary as well as questions for discussion and suggestions for further reading.

The explicitly eclectic and theoretical approach to policy analysis taken by the authors is both comprehensive and convincing. The three-tiered structure of analysis largely works well and will undoubtedly help students appreciate the plurality of the spaces, actors and institutions that shape policy-making. As befits a text written by two political scientists, the meso-level analysis of the institutions is particularly well-constructed. For example, Hudson and Lowe argue convincingly that meso-level networks (e.g. the policy community or producer networks) and institutions (e.g. voting systems or welfare state agencies) filter broader macro-level factors in a way that encourages incremental rather sweeping change. As the authors note, this provides a compelling reminder of the need to avoid overemphasising the transformatory potential of macro-level phenomena such as globalisation and the 'Information Revolution'. The ability of well-organised groups with the medical and social care professions to resist the imposition of new Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) systems by the British government is a case in point.

There are some ambiguities, however, within this tripartite conceptual framework. In the macro-level section, for example, globalisation is presented as an almost unstoppable force that 'undoubtedly compelled significant reappraisal of the post-1945 Beveridge welfare state’ (p25, my emphasis). Such a claim overlooks the possibility that the economic dimensions of globalisation have themselves emerged from within the same 'ideational paradigms' (43) that supported the rollback of the welfare state. As Harvey's (2005) account of neoliberalism emphasises, economic change is, at least in part, the consequence of a carefully orchestrated political and ideological project that successfully supplanted Keynesianism with neoliberalism as economic orthodoxy. In other words, globalisation is not some external, implacable force driving social policy change but shaped itself by the same political processes that have reconfigured the welfare state. At times, the model deployed by the book oversimplifies this relationship by implying that macro-level forces like globalisation are catalysts for policy change, when perhaps the two should be seen as mutually constitutive.

Such contradictions do not detract however from this thoughtful, engaging book that has much to offer to both undergraduate students new to the policy process and those looking for a detailed review of the conceptual tools that can be used to aid analysis of any policy domain. Whilst it does not focus on any particular policy area, it uses well-chosen examples form a range of policy fields including housing, health and employment to support theoretical points. Moreover, the book is written in a lively and readable style that avoids the pedestrian tone characteristic of all too many textbooks. It is also unafraid to use popular, cultural examples such as The Matrix film or Alice in Wonderland to illustrate complex, theoretical points about the nature and distribution of power. Such examples are used sparingly but effectively and would certainly assist in teaching those new to the subject.

On the whole, the book delivers on its promise to demonstrate the value of infusing social policy analysis with conceptual insights from political science. Perhaps the only discordant note is the claim that this is important because of the 'overexposure' (p296) of social policy to the disciplinary influence of sociology. Given the authors' assertion of the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to policy analysis, it may be more productive to emphasise the complimentary strengths that each discipline offers. If sociology undoubtedly suffers from neglecting the role of political institutions and processes that pattern social change, then political science is perhaps equally inattentive to how those processes shape stratification. Hudson and Lowe's own account, for example, pays little heed to the way in which policy reforms can reinforce inequalities or create new divisions along race, class or gender lines.

Moreover, the book does not discuss how the capacity to construct welfare recipients as deserving or undeserving also plays an important role in shaping the parameters for policymakers to act (see for example Levitas, 2005). It is much easier to impose to impose workfare-style programmes, for example, if those targeted are deemed to lack motivation rather than to be the victims of a shortage of jobs. This is not to argue that such ideas should have been included in what is already a dense and comprehensive account, but to suggest that sociology has important insights to offer social policy, including insights that help us understand how policy is formed. These are minor criticisms, however, of a book that brings together an impressive range of theoretical insights to provide an innovative and refreshing perspective on understanding the policy process.

Richard Crisp
Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR)
Sheffield Hallam University, UK.


References

Harvey, D. (2005) A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lister, R. (2005) The inclusive society? Social exclusion and New Labour. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.