Martin Rein - From Policy to Practice

First published 1983 by M.E. Sharpe

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright 1983 by Martin Rein

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 82019672

ISBN 13: 978-0-87332-194-5 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-17910-0 (ebk)

The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following publishers and co-authors to reprint earlier versions of the essays in this volume:

The chapters in this book were written as separate articles between 1975 and 1980; the final product, however, is more than a collection of independent essays. As I wrote, I began to realize I was developing an implicit framework, which I wish to make explicit in this introductory essay.

A common method, concern, and argument underlie all of the essays. The method is value critical. The concern is with a more institutionally grounded understanding of why governments do what they do. The argument is substantive, dealing with concrete issues such as the claim for economic resources, social protection, and the organization of social services. After discussing these themes, I review how I develop them in individual chapters.

The method is critical rather than analytic. The critical approach probes the assumptions that organize evidence and provides a way of identifying what is significant and what is problematic. The canonical (that is, the conventional and normative) view is thrown into question, on the implicit assumption that things do not work as expected, that there is inherently a difference between the text and the message. This skeptical approach becomes value critical because it assumes that values provide a framework for interpreting, and hence understanding, the actions we take, and that values are crucial in the formulation of what we accept as problematic and what we accept as given. The task of the critic is to ferret out the implicit rather than the expressed, i.e., the unnoticed normative or value assumptions that guide action and thought, and then to subject it to critical review. A value-critical approach looks beyond the canonical stories that frame understanding and action. The task of disengaging ourselves from our own faith is difficult when we challenge values we passionately hold.

By contrast, an analytic approach takes the problem as given and disaggregates it into its components. At its best, analysis separates wholes into parts as a way of understanding events and actions. A critical approach, on the other hand, starts with parts and tries to grasp the whole that integrates them. The outward expressions need not have logical relationships to each other, though they derive from a common origin. Thus, an illness may have a series of what appear to be logically unrelated manifestations that, in fact, derive from a common origin. I do not wish to push this partwhole analogy too far, but only to suggest that an analytic approach takes as its task dividing an accepted whole into logically consistent categories; the intellectual challenge is to identify common features that are congruent or consistent with each other. A critical approach takes the given whole as problematic.

Our next concern is the relationship between the critical and the conventional analytic approach. I take the view that the relationship between the two must be complementary. In the social sciences it is a mistake to view them as alternatives to each other. We are all positivists to some extentin other words, we are all in search of objective, analytic understanding. But although there is common ground, there are also important differences.