113310 Session 25: Taking a decision and ethics Decide!

- Eugene Bardach Eugene Bardach is Public Policy professor at California University, Berkeley. He has plenty of experience in research and teaching. He invites us to decide based on the analysis done. The trade offs and the possible conflicts should be taken into consideration before doing the final recommendation; if they are not, maybe a benefit cost analysis was not properly done. One you have the recommendation, you should be convinced about it; if you are not you should avoid presenting it to an auditorium or in order to avoid confrontations left the choice to your client. Ethical dimensions of public policy - Henry Shue. Henry Shue is Senior Research Fellow in Politics, Merton College, Oxford. Who and what matters in the policy decision? This questtion needs to be answered before any
risk, benefit or cost analysis is started. What matters the most? What doesnt matter that much? The answer to these questions is answered with an ethical judgement. This article prooves that policy decisions are strictly related to ethical decisions as well; they cannot be separated. Most of the analysis are done without ethical valorations, but they are not sustainable that way. Benefit-cost analysis worths nothing if the benefit for the society is not consdered in it. This does not means solutions will bring utilities to everyone, this means the cost should be considered beyond numbers.

Discretion1 in the policy process- Ham and Hill Christopher Ham is Health policy professor at Birmingham and Michael Hill teaches in Bristol and graduated from Sydney University. Discretion is a concept used in the discussion of public policy implementation in several ways. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon, linked to the inherent and logical control limits. In social policy the main concern is the distinction between rules and discretion implementation. In law enforcement, analysis of discretionary power is linked to the analysis of bias and discrimination. Ideas about discretion come from a number of different normative. The social policy workshop held in 1979-1980 on Britain expressed skepticism about the value of a priori definitions of discretion. The a priori definitions of discretion tend to be either arbitrary or prejudiced A study of discretion must involve a study of rules and may alternatively be defined as being concerned with the extent to which actions are determined by rules. Whenever a task is delegated a certain amount of discretion is given because wherever work is delegated the person who delegates loses some amount of control; this always links discretion with communication, control and coordination problems One cause of the problems is the gap
According to Oxford American Dictionaries, discretion is the freedom to decide what should be done in a particular situation: it is up to local authorities to use their discretion in setting the charges | a pass-fail grading system may be used at the discretion of the department.
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113310 between intention and outcomes of all the involved people; another cause of problems is the discretionary freedom subverting the intentions of another and so on; but the main concern in organizational theory is about the boundaries balance between rules and discretion. Tension exists among the application of discretion and rule breaking, and they are closely related. Whenever there are rules in conflict you need to interpret them but while discretion is a high trust situation, rule breaking is a low trust situation. Measures have been developed to treat this conflict, but none of them have been effective. Discretion is a ubiquitous phenomenon in bureaucracy as well and t face similar conflicts. Davies and Jowell are starting to stress the importance of the role of law in public policy in which discretion is recognized as a fundamentally important phenomenon. Policy must be seen in a wider social an d political context, which is likely to affect the way discretion manifests itself and the attempts that are made to control it. Discretion may arise from ambiguity, sometimes deliberately in public policy. While there are political sources of discretion we have not disregarded the extent to which this phenomenon arises as a consequence of inherent limits to control. There is a need to analyze discretion as a facet of organizational life, in a complex relationship to rule breaking. We conclude discretion is a normative concern. Varieties of strategies of organization control have developed to try to deal with it. Identification of the ubiquitous nature of the phenomenon has led rather to attempts to structure it, through systems that have been described as loose- tight. There are certain areas of public policy that cannot be subjects to discretion like social security and regulation. Toward professional ethics- Weimer and Vining David L. Weimer is public relations and politics professor at Wisconsin-Madison University and Aidan Vining is Business and Government Relations professor at Beedie Business School. Policy analysis cannot be separated from politics it has important practical and ethical implications. No single values, such as economic efficiency, can provide an adequate basis for all public decision making. We must pay attention to the nature of relationships between the interests and vales of analysts and clients. In this chapter the authors consider values relevant to the general question of how analysts should conduct themselves as professional givers of advice. Three values seem paramount; analytical integrity, responsibility to client and adherence to ones personal conception of good society. These values give three different conceptions of how public policy should be done: objective technicians, the clients advocate and issue advocates. The analyst should attempt to keep all three values under consideration; the ethical problem involves deciding how much of each value can be sacrificed when conflicts arise. When an analyst is facing a problem they have three options: let them know he doesnt agree (voice), resign (exit) and stay there without fully following the orders (disloyalty) Rather than waiting for a code of ethics they suggest we should work towards an ethical codes towards the new profession; policy analysis. How is these related to class? The first class the professor mentioned policies are value oriented. The authors in this session agree, most of them. While Bardach is just mentioning the analysis should be made considering all the possible trade offs and ethical decisions should be left to the client, Weimer and Vining are telling us we should not marry that scenario of the objective technicians analysis. Weimer

113310 and Wining tell us conflict will arise every time we need to take a decision, because public policy affects human lives and that simple fact make this decision an ethical one. Values will confront each other within beneficiaries of the policy, clients values, and the analyst values as well. This is where decisions using discretion came into place. Ham and Hill offer a full analysis of how it is used and how discretion is abused; they also confirm conflicts will arise but this time among other aspects of the analysis. The conflict they identify is between the analysts team. Conflicts are part of policy, we should recognize that part of the process of public policy; there is no recipe to solve that conflict, because the solution depends on the values and the objective pursued in each policy and we also need to be aware there is no universal and magic solution. Trade offs will always need to be chosen, but that decision is up to the client or the analyst. Bibliography: Bardach, Eugene (1998) Los ocho pasos para el anlisis de polticas pblicas : un manual para la prctica (1 Ed.). Mxico: CIDE Ham, C. y Hill, M. (1984) The policy process in the modern capitalist state (2 Ed.). Brighton, Inglaterra: Wheatsheaf Books. Moran, M., Rein, M., Goodin, R. (2006) The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy (1 Ed.). Oxford, Inglaterra: Oxford University Press. Weimer, D. y Vining, A. (1999) Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice (3 Ed.). New York, Estados Unidos: Prentice Hall.