The Principles of Policy Thought: A Philosophical Approach to Public Policy

169 Pages·2023·5.618 MB·English

by  Hae Young Lee

The Principles of Policy Thought
Policy thought integrates the “why” of political philosophy and the “how”
of public policy formulation.
Lee outlines five key principles for the development of policy thought:
• The Principle of Policy Statism
• The Principle of Policy Goodness
• The Principle of Policy Balance
• The Principle of Policy Practicality
• The Principle of Policy Humans: Interpenetrated Policy Humans with Non-
humans
Each principle is derived from a combination of Confucian and other East
Asian philosophies, as well as contemporary Western political philosophy. In
combination they offer an innovative approach to formulating, configuring
and assessing public policy, with ethics and efficacy.
An essential guide to incorporating big picture philosophical questions
into pragmatic policy for students, practitioners and scholars of public policy
and administration.
Hae Young Lee is Professor of Public Policy at Yeungnam University,
South Korea. He is a former President of the Korean Association for Public
Administration and a former Chairman of the Korean Government Evalua-
tion Commission. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Policy Sciences at the Uni-
versity of Maryland, Baltimore.
Routledge-Solaris Focus on Strategy, Wisdom and Skill
The Series is advised and edited by Charles Chao Rong Phua, the Chairman
of the Solaris Consortium of Management Consultancies.
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Process, Praxis, and Tools
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The Principles of Policy Thought
A Philosophical Approach to Public Policy
Hae Young Lee
The Principles of Policy
Thought
A Philosophical Approach to Public Policy
Hae Young Lee
Designed cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
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© 2023 Hae Young Lee
The right of Hae Young Lee to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-37541-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-37540-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-34069-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003340690
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface viii
1 Introduction: What Is Policy Thought? 1
1.1 Definitional Analysis of Policy Thought 1
1.2 The Principles of Policy Thought 5
1.3 Disciplinary and Heuristic Concerns of Policy Thought 6
1.4 Methodological Questions in the Study
of Policy Thought 8
2 The Principle of Policy Statism 15
2.1 Conceptions of the State 15
2.2 The Principle of Policy Statism 21
2.3 A Hypothesis to Justify Policy Intervention 28
2.4 Revisiting Policy Statism through Confucianism 30
3 The Principle of Policy Goodness 41
3.1 Conceptual Understanding of Goodness 41
3.2 What Is Policy Goodness? 50
3.3 Heuristic Questions on the Policy Goodness Theory 56
3.4 Afterthoughts on the Principle of Policy Goodness 58
4 The Principle of Policy Balance 67
4.1 What Is Policy Balance? 67
4.2 Philosophical Learning for Policy Balance 72
4.3 Heuristic Observations of Policy Balance:
Policy Causation 78
4.4 Methodological Processes of Policy Balancing 80
vi Contents
5 The Principle of Policy Practicality 87
5.1 What Is Policy Practicality? 87
5.2 Intellectual Characteristics of Policy Practicality 89
5.3 Closing Comments on the Policy Practicality
Principle 107
6 The Principle of Policy Humans: Interpenetrated
Policy Humans with Non-humans 115
6.1 Philosophical Observations on Policy Humans 115
6.2 What Are Policy Humans? 119
6.3 What Are Things? 126
6.4 Interpenetrated Policy Humans with Non-humans 130
7 Concluding Remarks 145
Index 152
Figures
1.1 A Philosophical-exploratory Framework of the Principles
of Policy Thought 6
2.1 Policy Statism Featured by Policy Intervention and
Its Justification 29
Preface
It is true that “thought” study is critical and imposing in disciplinary dis-
courses as a path to ascertaining the scientific and collective identities of
each field. Policy thought research challenges the academic individuality of
policy studies, too. In making a case for the mounting importance of this
subject, policy scholars and practitioners have discussed each other to advance
the ideas and values of intellectual and heuristic understandings of policy
thought. In particular, against the backdrop of the global transformation of
digital technology and its application to the State policy and politics, and in
the changing policy context with the COVID-19 pandemic, policy thought
has been championed to avoid past mistakes and failures through the tangled
web of political and practical mismanagement owing to the paucity of meta-
physical reflection and professional consciousness in policy studies.
As a policy scholar, I have been further involved in the demanding work of
identifying and developing principles or theories of policy thought. Having
my personal inspiration and aspirations supported by academic and practical
communities has let me study policy thought through careful examinations
and analyses of several issues: Where theories of policy thought can be ini-
tiated; what they are; and how they can be initiated to identify the scholarly
and heuristic relevance and validity of policy studies.
The overall approach to policy thought has emerged from a focus on the
definitional arguments and knowledge thereof. Although it may be hypoth-
esized as a working paradigm, policy thought refers to intellectual reasoning
and logical interpretation of philosophical thought on the policy nature and
policy itself. In claiming this definitional analysis of policy thought, a fur-
ther question became known: What are the principles and theories of policy
thought? As the theoretical perspective and goal are enunciated, two impor-
tant theoretical topics of how policy thought is conceptualized and how it
proceeds through a series of principles, have been examined.
The reflections of research on the policy nature make the first principle of
policy thought known, i.e., policy statism. That is, Chapter 2 introduces the
policy statism theory, in which the State (with a capital “S”) has dominated
public policy sovereignty over collective and individual decisional domains.
With its prominent policy capacity, the State has mobilized its policy resources
Preface ix
via the State-centered policy intervention, while remaining subject to the
second principle of policy goodness (Chapter 3). Moreover, policy thought
is studied through theories on policy balance (Chapter 4) and practicality
(Chapter 5), consecutively. Finally, the theory of policy humans (Chapter 6) is
discussed by drawing on metaphysical thinking around the policy man who is
interpenetrated or sharing penetration with non-humans in the policy world.
As a challenging idea, the principle of “policy humans” gives rise to a cru-
cial question on the topic that a philosophical approach to humans is revolu-
tionary in contemporary schools of thought. Policy studies, nonetheless, has
regretfully failed to recognize that humans are at the center of and take over
public policy through their metaphysical and physical policy-laden capaci-
ties. The policy humans principle in policy thought develops a hypothesis of
human-centeredness thesis not testing this hypothesis empirically, but vali-
dating it philosophically, in which it becomes an overarching philosophical
framework. To this end, the theory consolidates human notions and ideas of
policy thought into the policy human-centeredness framework. To illustrate
the theoretical significance of policy humans, I place their intellectual values
in an interpenetrated position with non-humans in policy.
In the second place, I engage with Confucian philosophy to inquire into and
observe intellectual supports and arguments for the theories of policy thought
in this volume. Some Western thought such as that of Plato and Aristotle have
observed for the philosophical underpinnings of the paradigmatic evolution of
policy thought principles to contemporary seminal scholars. However, the plenty
of analysis shows that some logical foundations and ideas for such academic work
on policy thought are derived from Confucian thought.
The policy thought principles in this book could not be judged or evalu-
ated as culturally bounded or ideologically inclined theories, yet. In a word,
they are not judged by or confined to Confucian and/or Western ideology or
philosophy. If the policy thought theories in this research book are circum-
scribed by Confucian and/or Western theoretical and philosophical systems
and ideas, it is a second-tier theory. Instead, they are first- or proto-thought
developed by the author’s intellectual arguments and analyses as well as crit-
ical reviews and observations of Confucian philosophies and ideologies. To
be sure, I welcome intellectual dialogues in policy societies on the principles
of policy thought as a first-thought.
Besides, the policy thought principles are not worked and divided by the
dichotomous intellectual and academic traditions of socialism and liberal-
ism. It seems that modern Western political and policy philosophies have
been confined to or hindered by this ideological paradigm. Even if I do not
maintain that the principles of policy thought here would be understood or
viewed as a turning point in thought research works, they are beyond the two
dialectical doctrines of socialism and liberalism.
In addition to the first-thought theory dispute, I refrain from borrowing and
employing philosophical terminologies, semantics, and ideologies associated
with other thought studies in political science, economics, and law. The policy