Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)

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one hand, they should ensure that a reasonable amount of time elapses, so that a new program or project has a chance to produce results. On the other hand, they need to be wary of allowing a new practice to become so entrenched that it can’t be easily altered if evaluation shows it is misguided.

In this phase, policy entrepreneurs need political leadership skills as they attempt to influence administrative policy decisions and maintain or even expand the advocacy coalition. They also require ethical leadership skills, as they appeal to formal and informal courts that can enforce the ethical principles, laws, and norms undergirding the changes being implemented. They are likely to need visionary skills as they convene forums to understand implementation difficulties and develop new processes, mechanisms, or structures for resolving the difficulties. More guidance about implementation and evaluation is offered in Chapter Eleven.

Continuation, Modification, or Termination

Once a new policy has been substantially implemented, policy entrepreneurs review it to decide whether to continue, modify, or terminate the policy. They can take advantage of the routines of politics (upcoming elections, budgeting cycles, annual reporting) to organize forums in which the review occurs. Visionary leadership skills become especially important as these entrepreneurs focus on what is really going on: What constitutes evidence of success, or of failure? Has the original problem been substantially remedied? Has it worsened? Are the costs of the new policy regime acceptable when weighed against its benefits? If the answers indicate that the new regime is generally successful, policy entrepreneurs will seek to maintain or modify the enacted policy only slightly. They should marshal supportive evidence and maintain constituency support to ward off any effort to drain resources away from the new regime. If major modifications or an entirely new policy is warranted, a whole new pass through the policy change cycle is required. Policy entrepreneurs must rally their troops to reformulate the problem concerning them so they can consider new solutions to be placed on the public agenda. More guidance about this phase is in Chapter Twelve.

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A Hierarchy of Process

In addition to the distinction between off-cycle and on-cycle policy making, another useful way of viewing the phases of the policy change cycle is to assign them to different levels of the “game of politics.” Each level typically involves its own participants, addressing certain kinds of challenges, with differing rhetoric, all of which together has a significant impact on the character of the action and outcomes of the game (Schattschneider, 1975, pp. 47–48; Kiser and Ostrom, 1982; Throgmorton, 1996; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Forester, 1999).

Lawrence Lynn (1987) describes three such levels of the public policy-making process: high, middle, and low. He argues that participants at each level must answer a different question. At the high level, the question is whether or not there is a public problem that requires action by policy makers, and if there is, what the purpose of that action should be. In terms of the policy change cycle, the high-level activity is principally one of issue creation. This activity, as we noted earlier, involves articulation and appreciation of emergent or developmental problems in terms of the values, norms, or goals used both to judge why the problem is a problem, and to seek optimal solutions.

In the middle level, the question is what strategies or policies should be pursued to achieve the agreed-upon purpose. The main challenges at this level are programming problems, as change advocates add detail to their preferred solutions. They have to specify policy mechanisms (taxes, subsidies, vouchers, mandated or voluntary agreements, deregulation or regulation, reliance on government service delivery or on contracts with business or nonprofit providers) and decide which government agencies, nonprofit organizations, or businesses will be responsible for applying and overseeing these mechanisms. They must also decide how statutory roles and financial, personnel, and other resources should be allocated among implementing agencies or organizations. In terms of the policy change cycle, middle-level action moves the process into the policy formulation and review and adoption phases.

At the low (or what we would call the operational) level, the questions revolve around the implementation details of plans, programs, budgets, rules, and projects. Exactly what management routine will be adopted? What schedule will be followed? What

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evaluation questions will be asked, and how will evaluation data be collected?

This analysis of the game of politics reinforces the importance of focusing on issue creation. It is here that stakeholders engage in passionate debate (and, ideally, considerable reflection) about values, civic responsibility, and justification for a policy decision. As Lynn notes, this debate “focuses on the right thing to do, on philosophies of government and the fundamental responsibilities of our institutions, on what kind of nation and society we should be, on social justice and our basic principles” (1987, p. 62).

Enacting the Common Good

So how do policy entrepreneurs discern and enact the common good in the policy change process, particularly if they are likely to personally identify with their causes, given the sense of importance and “rightness” they are sure to attach to the change effort? Not only that, as opposition intensifies they undoubtedly see the wellbeing of their own group as being synonymous with the common good and shut out any alternative version (Price, 2003; Gray, 2003). At worst, they may decide that their overwhelmingly virtuous ends justify immoral means (Price, 2003).

Before offering our own views of how policy entrepreneurs and their supporters can discern and enact the common good, we want to explore an array of conceptions of the common good, because it is a phrase that (like the word leadership) has a taken-for-granted quality that overlays vast differences of opinion about what it really means.

As we have considered how the common good appears in ordinary conversation, in philosophical treatises, and in political exhortations, we have noted that it may be applied at more than one level. Most often, it is connected to the condition of an entire community or society. Frequently, though, it has a much narrower application: to an organization or smaller group. Less often, the term is applied to a global region or the entire planet.

Our examination of philosophical and political pronouncements about the common good reveals that the term is actually part of a family of concepts. This “common good family” includes “the good society” (Galbraith, 1996; Bellah and others, 1991; Friedmann,

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1979), “the commons” (Lohmann, 1992; Cleveland, 1990), “commonwealth” (Boyte, 1989), the “public interest” (Campbell and Marshall, 2002), and the “public good” (Campbell and Marshall, 2002). Other closely related concepts are community, the collective, and the just society. These concepts can be seen as distinct from, or in relation to, a contrasting set of concepts that include the individual, the personal, and the private.

The distinction between the two sets can be seen as central to an age-old debate about the relationship of the individual and society. The debate often stems from an understanding that what is best for a group of people or an entire society is in some way different from what might be best, or most advantageous, for a particular member of the group or society. Debate also arises from awareness that at least some people and groups will attempt to maximize their own interests at the expense of others.

Additionally, many philosophers argue that human beings can truly thrive only if they establish generally beneficial arrangements that provide services and goods that individuals are unable to obtain for themselves. These arrangements include governance mechanisms that balance individual and collective interests, sometimes by constraining and sometimes by liberating individual behavior. Debate then arises as to which governance mechanisms are best and how to provide collective goods and services. Traditionally, protection of the common good or public interest has been assigned to government. As Aristotle argued in his Politics, “True forms of government . . . are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view towards the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, the few, or the many, are perversions” (Aristotle, 1943, p. 139).

Guidelines for Thinking About the Common Good

Our examination of multiple views of the common good revealed four main themes that appear with a varying degree of emphasis in philosophical and political writings:

1.The relation between the individual and the community

2.The group whose common good is important

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3.The content of the common good

4.The means of achieving the common good

From these themes, we have developed four guidelines for thinking about the common good:

1.Clarify your group’s views of human nature and the relationship between the individual and society.

2.Decide whose common good is important.

3.Develop a general idea of what the common good might be.

4.Choose the means of achieving the common good.

Clarify Your Views on Human Nature and Society

Clearly, any conception of the common good rests on an understanding of the connection between the welfare of the individual and the society of which he or she is a part.

A minimalist stance is based on the recognition that individuals have differing goals and interests, and that some societal referee (government) is needed to deal with conflict among individuals. Government thus has the minimal (or negative) goal of preventing one person’s actions from harming another. A more expansive stance is based on the recognition that society contributes to individual well-being above and beyond acting as a protector of individual freedom. Government has positive goals of supplying public goods, such as universal education, that help individuals thrive (see Berlin, 2002).

Thus one starting place for people trying to clarify their thinking about the common good is to explore how they see the relation of the individual and society, and perhaps how they view human nature. They might consider questions such as these:

•How does or should the community enhance individual development?

•Are people mainly self-interested, mainly concerned with and about others, or some mixture?

•Are people fundamentally equal?

•Is human life sacred? Less abstractly, are individual human beings sacred? Where is the line of sacredness drawn between individual human beings and human life generally?

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Decide Whose Common Good Is Important

Major policy change efforts often arise from the perception that the common good of some large group, or of an entire society, is being undermined, or certainly not fulfilled. Policy entrepreneurs naturally focus on the well-being of the groups with whom they identify; it might be the advocacy coalition they’ve assembled, or some group within the coalition, or even some large category such as women or the poor. There are pragmatic as well as ethical reasons, however, to think more expansively. The pragmatic argument is that those whose interests are not considered in a change effort are quite unlikely to be committed members of an advocacy coalition and much more prone to join an opposing coalition. If they are not part of the coalition, they can be expected to resist the coalition’s proposals. The ethical argument is that most ethical systems require adherents to consider the well-being of others. The life of every human being is deemed sacred by the majority of religions and by widely accepted treatises such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ethically, policy entrepreneurs need to ask how any proposed changes affect everyone within the political unit in which they are operating. Even more expansively, they may have to consider how the change will affect those outside the unit (even all the other citizens of the world). Indeed, they might want to include future generations in their consideration. There are, of course, practical limitations on how many stakeholder groups can be thoroughly considered and involved in a policy change effort. The stakeholder analysis methods we offer help policy entrepreneurs and their supporters think about the interests of a diverse array of stakeholders, and certainly those most affected by a public problem and proposed changes.

Many of the policy entrepreneurs in the AIDS case cared most passionately about particular groups of people: gay men, children of drug users, hemophiliacs, Haitians. At the same time, many of them were deeply concerned about all the groups that were contracting AIDS and about the threat the disease posed to everyone in the United States. Some of these leaders would eventually become involved in efforts to fight AIDS in other societies around the world.

Leaders in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development have thought expansively from the beginning because of

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their concern for the well-being of future generations and poorer countries. However, they have also clearly focused their efforts on business stakeholders. In the African American Men Project, Mark Stenglein possibly cared most about the interests of the voters in his district, and Gary Cunningham had a lifelong commitment to the advancement of African Americans, but both also had to care about the well-being of all Hennepin County citizens. Jan Hively and her colleagues in the Vital Aging Network may be most concerned about the effects of ageism on older adults, but they also care about younger adults and children in Minnesota.

Develop a General Idea of What the Common Good Might Be

In the simplest terms, the common good might be viewed as the flip side of “the common bad”—the public problem that a group sets out to remedy. Since the problem affects a diverse group of stakeholders, the common good might be any new arrangement that substantially reduces the harmful effects on stakeholders. More extensive notions of the common good are grounded in an idea of what it takes for human beings to flourish (and such ideas are based in turn on a view of human nature). For Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Kenneth Galbraith, and other philosophers, the emphasis is on freedom and equality of opportunity. Galbraith, for example, argues, “The essence of the good society can be easily stated. It is that every member, regardless of gender, race, or ethnic origin, should have access to a rewarding life. . . . There must be economic opportunity for all” (1996, p. 23).

For some, the good for an entire group is equated with the interests of an elite few (a certain class, those who control the government). The notion is captured in phrases such as noblesse oblige, l’état c’est moi, father knows best. The utilitarians (notably Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) are more egalitarian and offer a common sense formula—“the greatest good for the greatest number”—for deciding whether a policy is in the public interest or promotes the common good.

Others view the common good as connection to God or a communal tradition. For example, the Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain describes a host of “material and immaterial” endowments (from public roads to cultural treasures and spiritual riches)

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that are vital for a society to enjoy “communion in good living” (1947, p. 41). The communitarian philosophers of recent years would fit here.

The most egalitarian philosophers—Karl Marx comes readily to mind—equate the common good with a classless society. More recently, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania combined elimination of class distinctions with communal tradition into what he called “ujamaa socialism.” He sought to revive tribal traditions in which each person cared for the welfare of others in the tribe and in which each person could depend on the wealth of the community and enjoy a sense of security and hospitality (Duggan and Civille, 1976).

Another vision of the common good is the “caring community,” described by philosopher Nel Noddings and planning theorist Peter Marris (Noddings, 1984; Marris, 1996). In such a community, citizens give primacy to nurturing other human beings. In this work, they draw on the moral intuition and commitment that arise from parent-child relationships or from moral education. Reciprocity governs political life (Marris, 1996).

Given these diverse views, it’s not surprising that the phrase the common good is so full of ambiguity and dispute. The loudest debate swirls around the pros and cons of utilitarian thinking and around issues of distributive justice. Critics of utilitarian thinking want to know what happens to those not included in “the greatest number.” They also want to know who decides what the greatest good is. Contemporary utilitarians offer a ready calculus known as “costbenefit analysis”; once we determine the costs of a course of action and compare it to the worth of the outcomes, we can decide whether one course is better than some other. Cost-benefit analysis certainly is an extremely useful tool, but skeptics still question the wisdom and accuracy of even attempting to put a price on every aspect of life. Additionally, it is impossible to precisely predict costs and benefits of many proposed actions.

The most egalitarian visions of the common good require considerable redistribution of material and immaterial goods to those who are poor and disenfranchised. Obviously, those who are advantaged by existing distributions may think this is a bad idea; even if they favor a more egalitarian arrangement, they are rightly skeptical of massive government “social engineering” that is fraught with dangers to human freedom. Some philosophers—for exam-

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ple, Iris Marion Young—question the whole idea of a common good. They fear that any attempt to promote a common view of the common good will founder on the reality of power relationships, leading ultimately to the dominance of some elite’s ideas (Young, 1990).

Our own general sense of the common good is captured by our definition of regimes of mutual gain: a set of principles, laws, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures that achieve lasting benefit at reasonable cost and that tap and serve the stakeholders’ deepest interest in, and desire for, a better world for themselves and those they care about. This idea of mutual gain, as exemplified by the cases emphasized in this book, draws on several of these perspectives on the content of the common good. The African American Men Project has emphasized the quest for equal opportunity and for a community in which everyone cares about the well-being of everyone else. The Vital Aging Network too is fighting for equal opportunity, but in this case for older adults; Vital Aging leaders have also emphasized the societal benefits of enabling older adults to have a rewarding life. Leaders of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development talk about improving opportunities for smalland medium-sized business owners in “developing nations and nations in transition.” They emphasize that businesspeople have a responsibility for caring for the environment and the world’s poor, and they argue that ultimately this approach benefits business as well.

Choose the Means of Achieving the Common Good

Perhaps views vary most about how to achieve the common good. Let’s consider several methods that have been widely used around the world, often together in the same society; some of them are a ready match for the general ideas of the common good noted earlier.

•The authoritarian state, which enforces a particular group’s view of the common good throughout society.

•The market, which allows people to obtain goods and services through buyer-seller exchange. A market transaction is, in effect, cost-benefit analysis in action; participants decide whether to

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engage in an exchange depending on the cost versus the benefit of the product or service involved. At the societal level, policy experts or government officials use a similar analysis to decide whether or not a program or project achieves the greatest good for the greatest number.

•Representative government, in which elected representatives hash out the common good. They are responsible for protecting minority interests and handling public needs (called commons problems) that are imperfectly handled by the market. Among the political philosophers who have elaborated this approach are Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, and James Madison.

•A religious regime that enacts and enforces policies aimed at enforcing what religious leaders deem to be God’s will for human society. Examples are seventeenth-century Puritan societies in North America and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

•Expert judgment, in which professional policy analysts research societal issues and recommend best policies, on the basis of learning from the past and predicting the future.

•Informed public, or civic republic, in which citizens of a state debate, discuss, and persuade each other about the policies that government should pursue in dealing with public problems. This public deliberation also includes consideration of candidates for public office. Experts are involved, but their role is to furnish facts for the public to consider. The operations of government itself must be transparent so that citizens can evaluate their efficacy. This approach is associated with Thomas Jefferson and the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey.

•Active citizenry, or civic engagement, in which citizens themselves name public problems, make collective decisions about what should be done, and involve government officials and experts as needed. They carry out some decisions themselves, and they judge the results (Mathews, 1997). They perform what Harry Boyte and Nancy Kari (1996) call “public work.” They form a civil society, “where all versions of the good are worked out and tested” (Walzer, 1997, p. 15). Philosopher Hannah Arendt (1958) emphasized the simultaneous equality and diversity of the participants in this society; philosopher Cornel West echoes this perspective in his call for radical democracy (Lerner, 2002). Iris Marion Young argues that this public work does not require overall agreement on the nature of