What is the point of this newsletter?
Welcome to External Processing. I study economics and justice at NORC at the Univ. of Chicago. I am also the co-chair of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives. My work is heterodox. I study crime policy, but my training is mainly in economics and statistics, with a little moral philosophy. Crime is endogenous with every other social problem, so my work touches on public health, workforce, education, and adolescent development.
So, John, what’s your point?
Many years ago, in the middle of my prospectus defense in the pursuit of a public policy degree, it became obvious that my committee was not inclined to approve my proposal. I had presented them my pitch, then answered questions for an hour, then went out in the hall while they deliberated. After too long, they fetched me and faced me, now all looking quite grim. Their concern—the dissertation was not sufficiently theoretical. Sweating while a year of work circled the drain, I asked (probably too loudly) if someone could remind me what the theory of public policy was? That petulance cost me another year.
But my point, if not my timing, was and is a fair one I think. What is the theory of public policy? Neoclassical economics has a taut(ological) theoretical basis for capitalism. Sociology has myriad theories of human behavior, perhaps prioritizing theories of social stratification for public policy. Political science has the median voter theory, not to mention democracy and socialism. And each has many additional theories. But public policy is an amalgamation and takes an openly a la carte approach to theorizing. That may actually be too generous as a theory in public policy is more of an aperitif best accompanied with lively conversation and a crisp modern Pinot Gris.
If there is a theory of contemporary public policy, it is technical in nature and focused on the tools of the trade. These are tools of identification, mainly regression analysis, designed for causal inference, with a soupcon of concern for causal mechanisms (but don’t be overly dramatic about that). Those tools give a public policy type the ability to say something about how the behaviors of the individual affect the whole and how the rules of the whole affect the individual and what can change those relationships. If there was a theory of public policy it would do more—it would say something about how the collective could be shaped to positively affect the individual and how the collective individual could act upon the whole. You are probably quick with an example of why those statements are wrong and such theories do exist. I predict though that on second thought you will conclude that those examples all belong to another discipline.
Anyway, the point of all of this and the point of this blog is not to propose some deep unifying theory of public policy—I have no more insight into that than I do why a denser thing tends to attract less dense things in astrophysics. The point is rather that the lack of theory in public policy leaves big, gaping (w)holes in the kinds of questions that are routinely asked.
One gap is that a public policy discipline focused on technical tools tends to assume that some innovation in public policy exists and that the question of the day is how to test it rigorously, objectively, and transparently. But without theory, there is no space for the creation of new ideas. This is a real problem. Take, for example, the two topics I tend to write a lot about. For one, prevention of social ills before they manifest is such an obviously good investment that it is utterly head-scratching that the US in particular but developed nations, in general, do so little of it. Some of the issues are mechanical and traditional public policy can uncover these obstacles—in places where mechanical fixes have been attempted. But how can prevention be encouraged where the field is barren, where it is barren because prevention has been rejected? What new ideas can take prevention from nothing to something? There is no academic journal exploring those ideas and little public or private funding for that. Replication? Yes. Scaling? For sure. Ideation? Forget it.
Another is Defund the Police. I think it is now plainly obvious to virtually everyone that the criminal justice system in general and policing in America in particular needs serious reform. But in the space between no police and tiny tweaks to the current system lies a vast, unexamined field of possibilities. An atheoretical public policy discipline does not provide a scaffold to build the frame. It’s the same problem—if a demonstration or innovation is underway, public policy has a regression for that. Ideation? That’s your problem.
That reminds me of another digression as metaphor. Early in my career, I did a lot of cost-benefit analyses. At some point, I got interested in how all those analyses could be put together in a portfolio to do all the things a good portfolio does—diversify risk and create complementarity. I worked with a team to build a new regression-based model to do that with modest success. After a couple of years of effort, we had a chance to go to a local government of a pretty big city and present them with the results. I said, if you invest in this portfolio of programs and policies you will make your existing problems smaller and prevent some new problems. They said, “that’s great. Where does the money come from to pay for this?” I said, “I don’t know. That’s your problem.” No, they said, “that’s your problem.”
Henri Poincare was a 19th-century French philosopher who made, in my mind, the most important insight into the limits of modern public policy, long before public policy was a thing. Poincare noted that the central problem of causal inference is that for every null hypothesis—every business as usual predicament we find ourselves in—there are an infinity of alternative hypotheses. The downside to this insight is that it means the truth can never be pinpointed at least scientifically until all alternative explanations are tested and disproved, which is a challenge in an infinite universe. The upside is that for every problem, there are an infinity of potential solutions.
So here we are, bereft of a public policy theory as a mechanism for ideation but overwhelmed with the need for, and the opportunity to generate, more ideas to test. Absent a better platform, this blog is a place for me to throw out some new ideas. To think out loud, hopefully along with you, about things we might think about giving a try.
The idea here is to think out loud a little (which is external processing by definition) about the big ideas I have come across that do not fit into traditional academic publishing. That is, to have a discussion about ideas that can grow up to be refutable hypotheses but that are too young yet to face that gauntlet. I choose to do this via newsletter because the written word is still the most provocative medium and your inbox is still where you look for the next big thing.
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