Choice Among Policy Instruments for Pollution Control

This paper discusses alternative approaches to the problem of pollution control, from the point of view of a closed model in which regulators, regulated, and other interest groups interact in a single decision structure. It is argued that policy instruments cannot be selected only, or even primarily, on the basis of their formal properties, for these allow a number of different, often conflicting institutional realizations. The crucial choices involve not the instruments themselves, but institutionally determined ways of operating them. But to discuss institutional choice adequately, the usual model in which people pursue their self-interest within exogenously determined rules must be extended to cover the determination of the rules themselves. The comparison between, say, an uncorrupted system of effluent charges, and regulatory machinery captured by special interests is then seen to be a specious one. Where effluent charges have been used, they have proved to be as subject to bargaining and as conditioned by considerations of political and administrative expediency as standards, licenses, and other regulatory measures

Standard Setting and the Theory of Institutional Choice

The first elements of a theory of closed behavioral systems, or, more specifically, of a theory of institutional choice, have emerged in the last ten or fifteen years. Buchanan and Tullock (1962), Buchanan and Tollison (1972), Olson (1965), Posner (1974), Goldberg (1974), may be mentioned among the major contributions to the theory. What is common to these different theorists, whose viewpoints arc certainly not homogeneous and whose policy conclusions are often contrasting, is their interest in studying the behavior of people who, in pursuing their own self-interest, try to influence the public choices of institutional constraints. These constraints, once adopted, apply to all members of the community or to well-defined sections of it. Institutional choice differs from the kind of choice situations traditionally considered in economics, since the consequences of the adoption of a given system of institutional constraints cannot be assessed in relation to a single decision, but must be evaluated with respect to streams of future decisions made by a variety of more or less autonomous agents

Technology Assessment in a Dialetic Key

Technology and institutions interact dialectically. Institutional factors affect the range of alternatives considered by innovators, the resolution of disputes over the consequences of innovation, and even the efficiency of technical projects. Thus, technological impacts are determined in the arena of institutional choice just as much as in the laboratory and on the drawing board. Examples from the fields of medical care, nuclear power generation, and broadcasting technology are used here to illustrate this interdependence. Dialectic thinking, in the Greek sense of a systematic critique of assumptions, arguments, and conclusions is necessary to counteract institutional and conceptual biases, and to support unconventional approaches. As the current interest in adversary proceedings and other dialectic modes of discourse shows, the narrow paradigm of decisionism is being replaced by quasi-jurisprudential methods for assessing the adequacy of arguments, the strength of evidence, and the intrinsic limitations of technical solutions

The Craft of Applied Systems Analysis

The central goal of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis is to apply the craft of systems analysis to important national and international problems. To support and improve this work, the Institute explores its philosophical and scientific foundations, as well as the lessons of practice. This paper focuses its attention on the central conceptual issues of the field: the scientific nature of applied systems analysis, the search for standards of quality for it, its relation to problem solving, the craft aspects of the work, and the relation between argument and conclusion. The author has contributed significantly to clarifying foundational conceptions of applied systems analysis in other papers as well. Of these contributions, two related to this paper deserve mention here: G. Majone and E.S. Quade, editors, Pitfalls of Analysis (London: Wiley, 1980), a volume in the International Series on Applied Systems Analysis; and G. Majone, "Policies as Theories," issued by IIASA as RR-80-17 (originally published in Omega, 8, 1980, pp. 151-162). Other papers dealing with the craft of systems analysis are in preparation

Scientific and Social Aspects of Systems Analysis: Proposal for a Conceptual Framework for the State-of-the-Art Series in Applied Systems Analysis

The author argues that the accomplishments, failures, and future prospects of systems analysis can be properly assessed only by taking into consideration the craft characteristics and the social aspects of analytic activity. This broader view of the analytic process will then be used to outline a conceptual framework from which the editorial program of IIASA's Survey Project can acquire direction and meaning

Institutional Choice and Social Regulation: The Case of Environmental and Occupational Health Standards

The institutional approach to policy analysis rests on the simple but important insight that individuals and groups pursue their goals in the policy arena not only by acting within the constraints set by the given institutional framework, but also by attempting to modify those constraints in their favor. The implications of this extension of the traditional model of rational choice, in which institutions are defined exogenously, are far-reaching. Policies which seem superior when judged by criteria relevant to the traditional approach, lose much of their attractiveness in the extended model. In this paper I analyze some recent attempts to control environmental and occupational hazards in the United States and elsewhere. The purpose of the analysis is twofold. First, to show the importance of institution-changing strategies in the formation of regulatory policy. Second, to argue that the usual dichotomy of regulation versus deregulation or, more specifically, "standards" versus "price solutions", is a spurious one -- an artifact, as it were, of the restricted model of social choice implicit in most policy analyses. The fact that health standards are unsatisfactory tools of public policy does not prove that market solutions are necessarily superior in terms of criteria which are acceptable to the policy actors themselves. In fact, the suggestion that economic efficiency should be the basic criterion in choosing among policy alternatives exemplifies a particular type of effort aimed at institutional change -- change in societal values

Pitfalls of Analysis and the Analysis of Pitfalls

The literature of applied systems has devoted considerable attention to the treatment of pitfalls. The present paper extends previous discussions in two ways: by introducing a new categorization of pitfalls: and by examining their epistemological, technical, and conceptual roots. Analytic pitfalls are grouped around four rubrics that closely correspond to the four components of the analytic task: (a) problem setting, data, and information; (b) tools and methods; (c) evidence and argument; (d) conclusions, communication, and implementation. A number of examples are discussed, and it is argued that analytic methods and techniques can be best understood in terms of the pitfalls they are designed to circumvent