Rethinking Public Policy-Making (Blunden, Dando, 1994, 1995)

Rethinking Public Policy-Making (Blunden, Dando, 1994, 1995)

Public administration and public policy, in the broadest sense of the governance of states in all their aspects, are faced with profound complexities in the contemporary world. Rethinking Public Policy Making offers a critical review of public policies at the end of the twentieth century. In particular, the book examines the relations between individual responsibility and institutional policy, between personal independence and social interdependence. Throughout, the contributors illustrate the ways in which public policy requires decisions of an ethical nature - on conduct of societies, on the relations between present and future generations, on international relations, and on the future of the world environment.

Addressing these questions and both their impact on current policies in areas such as health care, medicine and education, and their interpretation in current debates on rights and duties, autonomy and responsibility, liberalism and communitarianism, the contributors illustrate the ways in which the work of Sir Geoffrey Vickers remains a central point of departure for understanding the problems of contemporary governance and potential ways forward. Drawing on ideas from his work, the book shows how a full and moral understanding of systemic processes offers important insights not only for the study of public policy-making but also for wider concerns of political and social development.

p.52 Another significant characteristic of the structure of consciousness is its partly tacit nature. Indeed, Michael Polanyi (1958) suggested that tacit knowing is more fundamental than explicit knowing: "We can know more than we can tell and we can tell nothing without relying on our awareness of things we may not be able to tell" (p.x). Polanyi elaborates on this assertion, which runs counter to the logic of scientific-analysis mind-set, by distinguishing between focal and subsidiary awareness. Skilled wielders of paintbrushes, brooms, or indeed, any tool, have as their focal point of awareness the tip of the implement. Yet it is the complex movements of their hands, of which they are only aware in a subsidiary way, that actually guide the tool.

p.137 As he stressed in the foreword to his last major study, Human Systems are Different (Vickers, 1983):

The essence of systems thinking, as I understand it, is the concept of form or order, sustained through time by a self-correcting process, that notices deviations from the standards which define order and responds with actions which sustain or restore it (p.vii)... To a mind accustomed to systems thinking, time is an ever present dimension, and the preservation of order through time is the basic problem both in understanding the past and in influencing the future [italics added]. Stability, even more than change, demands to be explained, aspired to and regulated (p.viii)

p.137 "human societies survive only so long as they can resolve or contain the conflicts which they generate" (Open Systems Group, 1984, p.177)

p.138 The mark of a successful individual or a successful society is that it manages to sustain through time a host of different relationships, keeping each in accord with some standard of expectation, while containing all within the resources available; and developing all these standards in the process ([Open Systems Group, 1984,] p.180)