Etextbook 978 0205252572 Public Policy Analysis

eTextbook 978-0205252572 Public
Policy Analysis
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/etextbook-978-0205252572-public-policy-analysis/
C A S E S T U DY C O N T E N T S
LESSONS FROM PRACTICE

Forecasting Technological Impacts with a Goeller Revenue Forecasting and Environmental
Scorecard 22 Justice 184
Using a Spreadsheet to Evaluate Benefits and Costs Opportunity Costs of Saving Lives—The 55 mph
of Energy Policies 24 Speed Limit41 240
Constructing an Influence Diagram and Decision Understanding Policy Outcomes:The Political
Tree to Structure a Problem in Energy Economy of Traffic Fatalities in Europe and
Policy 25 the United States 306
Using Argument Maps to Structure a Problem The Economics of Moral Judgment—Evaluating
in International Security and Foreign Living Wage Policies 335
Policy 27
Pros and Cons of Balkan Intervention 376
Are Policy Analysts Technocrats? 60
Images and Arguments, and the Second Persian
Understanding the Uses of Policy Analysis 64 Gulf Crisis, 1990–91 377
Structuring Problems of Risk in Mining and Translating Policy Arguments into Issue
Transportation 112 Papers, Position Papers, and Letters to the
Brainstorming Across Disciplines—The Elevator Editor—The Case of the Second Persian
Problem 116 Gulf War 400
Conceptual Errors in Regression Analysis— Communicating Statistical Analyses to Multiple
The Anscombe Quartet 183 Audiences: Regulating Leaded Gasoline 404
vii
V I S U A L D I S P L AY C O N T E N T S
FIGURES FOR ORGANIZING THINKING

1.1 The Process of Integrated Analysis 6 C3.1 Pareto Chart—Cumulative Frequency of
1.2 Four Strategies of Analysis 10 Rival Causes of Traffic Fatalities 114
1.3 Elements of a Policy Argument 19 C3.2 Pareto Chart—Cumulative Frequency

of Criteria for Evaluating Research on
C1.3 Influence Diagram and Decision Tree 26 Risk 115
C1.4.1 Simple Argument Maps Are Static and 4.1 Three Types of Societal Futures: Potential,
Uncontested 28 Plausible, and Normative 121
C1.4.2 Complex Argument Maps Are Dynamic and 4.2 The Logic of Extrapolation: Inductive
Contested 30 Reasoning 125
2.1 The Policy-Making Process Has Multiple 4.3 The Logic of Theoretical Prediction:
Functions and Stages 44 Deductive Reasoning 126
2.2 The Process of Integrated Policy 4.4 The Logic of Conjecture: Abductive
Analysis 53 Reasoning 127
3.1 Problem Sensing versus Problem 4.5 Demonstration of a Secular Trend;Total
Structuring and Problem Sensing 68 Arrests per 1,000 Population in Chicago,
3.2 Hierarchy of Types of Policy Issues 72 1940–70 129
3.3 Phases of Problem Structuring 76 4.6 Demonstration of Cyclical Fluctuations:
Total Arrests Per 1,000 Population in
3.4 A Symbolic Model 83
Chicago, 1868–1970 130
3.5 Simulation Model 84
4.7 Two Properties of Linear Regression 132
3.6 Assumed Effects of X on Y 85
4.8 Five Classes of Nonlinear
3.7 Map of Transportation Nodes in Central Time Series 137
Region 87
4.9 Growth of Federal Government
3.8 Solution for Nine-Dot Problem 87 Organizations in the United States
3.9 Pareto Chart—Estimated Boundary by Presidential Term, 1789–1973 139
of Problem 91 4.10 Linear Versus Growth Trends 140
3.10 Set Union 94 4.11 Four Types of Causal Arguments 149
3.11 Set Intersection 95 4.12 Arrow Diagram Illustrating the Causal
3.12 Classification Scheme 95 Structure of an Argument 151
3.13 Crossbreak 95 4.13 Path Diagram Illustrating a Model of Public
Choice Theory 154
3.14 Hierarchy Analysis of the Causes of Fires 98
4.14 Scatterplot Illustrating Different Patterns
3.15 The Process of Assumption Analysis 105 and Relationships Between Hypothetical
3.16 Distribution of Warrant by Plausibility Annual Maintenance Costs and Annual
and Importance 107 Mileage per Vehicle 157
viii
Visual Display Contents ix
C4.1 The Anscombe Quartet 183 6.10 Connecticut Traffic Deaths Before and After
5.1 Simple Model of Choice 191 the 1956 Crackdown on Speeding 286
5.2 Cost-Effectiveness Comparisons Using 6.11 Interrupted Time-Series Graph Displaying

Four Criteria of Adequacy 198 Connecticut Traffic Fatalities Before
and After the 1956 Crackdown on
5.3 Three Types of Good in the Public and Private Speeding 287
Sectors 205
6.12 Control-Series Graph Displaying Traffic
5.4 Supply and Demand Curves and the Equilibrium Fatalities in Connecticut and Control States,
Price–Quantity Combination 206 1951–59 288
5.5 Classification of Costs and Benefits According 6.13 Threats to Validity as Objections 290
to Four Types of Questions 210
6.14 Tie-Breaking Experiment and Regression-
5.6 Objectives Tree for National Energy Discontinuity Analysis 294
Policy 220
6.15 Graphic Display of Results of Regression-
5.7 Value-Critical Debate 223 Discontinuity 300
5.8 Simplified Partial Cost Model for Total 8.1 Structure of a Policy Argument 340
Initial Investment 225
8.2 Argument Map—Privatizing
5.9 Constraints Map for National Energy Transportation 342
Policy 228
8.3 Argumentation from Authority—Unintended
5.10 Comparison of Discounted and Consequences of the U.S.-NATO Attack on
Undiscounted Costs Cumlated for Two Yugoslavia 346
Programs with Equal Effectiveness 230
8.4 Argumentation from Method—Intransitivity
5.11 Threats to the Plausibility of Claims About the of Preferences for Nuclear Power 348
Benefits of the 55 mph Speed Limit 235
8.5 Argumentation from Generalization—Statistical
6.1 Regulative and Allocative Actions and Their inference as a Basic for Success in Community
Implementation Through Agencies, Programs, Nutrition 351
and Projects 249
8.6 Argumentation from Classification—
6.2 General Framework for Monitoring 254 Challenging Claims about Authoritarian Rule
6.3 Sample Research Survey Form 268 and Terrorism 352
6.4 Two Graphic Displays of Motor Vehicle 8.7 Argumentation from Theoretical Cause—
Deaths, 1970–77 270 Competing Deductive-Nomological Explanations
of the Cuban Missile Crisis 355
6.5 Spurious and Plausible Interpretations of Data
on Municipal Firefighting Activities 271 8.8 Argumentation from Practical Cause—Rival
Explanations of the Effects of the
6.6 Bar Graph Showing Total Municipal Personnel
Connecticut Crackdown on Speeding 358
Costs per Capita for Cities with Growing and
Declining Populations and for New York 8.9 Argumentation from Sign—Quantitative
City 272 Indicators Such as Correlation Coefficients and
6.7 Histogram and Frequency Polygon: Number of P-Values Do Not “Prove” Causation 359
Persons Below the Poverty Threshold by Age 8.10 Argumentation from Motivation—Support for
Group in 1977 273 the Equal Rights Amendment 362
6.8 Lorenz Curve Showing Distribution of Family 8.11 Argumentation from Intuition—A
Personal Income in the United States in 1989 Counterintuitive Solution Avoids
and 1975 274 Certain Death 363
6.9 Interrupted Time Series Showing Effects and 8.12 Argumentation from Analogy—The Equal
no Effects 285 Rights Amendment and False Analogy 364
x Visual Display Contents
8.13 Argumentation from Parallel Case—The Intervention to Force the Withdrawal of Iraq
Dutch Model and False Parallel 365 from Kuwait (November 29, 1990) 379
8.14 Argumentation from Ethics—Income 9.1 The Process of Policy Communication 383
Distribution and Justice as Fairness 367 9.2 Lead Use in Gasoline Production and Average
C8.2 Senate Arguments Supporting and Opposing NHANES II Blood Lead Levels 407
U.S. Involvement Under Security Council 9.3 Data Samples with Identical Correlations
Resolution 678 Authorizing Military but Different Regression Lines 410
TABLES FOR ORGANIZING THINKING

C1.1 Scorecard 23 4.11 Cross-Impact Matrix Illustrating
C1.2 Scorecard and Spreadsheet 25 Consequences of Mass Automobile
Use 173
2.1 Phases of the Policy-Making Process 43
4.12 Hypothetical Illustration of the First Round
2.2 The Voters’ Paradox 47
(Play) in a Cross-Impact Matrix 175
3.1 Differences in the Structure of Three Classes
4.13 Feasibility Assessment of Two Fiscal Policy
of Policy Problems 73
Alternatives 179
3.2 Comparison of Methods of Problem
4.14 MARTA Receipts, 1973–2010 186
Structuring 89
3.3 Number of Households Living Below Poverty 5.1 Complex Model of Choice 193
Level, 1968–2006 93 5.2 Transitive and Intransitive Choices 194
4.1 Contrasts Between Goals and Objectives 122 5.3 Criteria of Adequacy: Four Types of
4.2 Three Approaches to Forecasting with Their Problems 197
Bases, Appropriate Techniques and 5.4 Comparison of Benefit-Cost Ratio and Net
Products 128 Benefits as Criteria of Adequacy (in thousands
4.3 Time-Series Data on Total Energy of dollars) 200
Consumption Used in Linear 5.5 Ten Tasks in Conducting a Cost-Benefit
Regression 133 Analysis 213
4.4 Linear Regression with an Even-Numbered 5.6 Methods and Techniques for Prescription 219
Series 134
5.7 Cost Element Structure 224
4.5 Square Root and Logarithm of a Time Series
Exhibiting Rapid Growth 143 5.8 Internal, External, and Total Costs of
Maternal Care 229
4.6 Linear Regression with Logarithmic
Transformation of Time Series 145 5.9 Calculation of Present Value of Cost Stream
at 10 Percent Discount Rate over Five Years
4.7 Worksheet for Estimating Future
(in millions of dollars) 232
Maintenance Costs from Annual Mileage per
Vehicle 159 5.10 Sensitivity Analysis of Gasoline Prices on
Costs of Training Programs 234
4.8 Calculation of Standard Error of Estimated
Maintenance Costs 161 5.11 Measuring the Costs and Benefits of the 55
mph Speed Limit: A Critical Appraisal 241
4.9 Types of Items and Scales Used in a Policy
Delphi Questionnaire 169 6.1 Types of Policy Actions and Policy Outcomes:
4.10 Hypothetical Responses in First-Round Inputs, Processes, Outputs, and Impacts in
Policy Delphi: Desirability and Feasibility of Three Issue Areas 250
Drug-Control Objectives 170 6.2 Four Approaches to Monitoring 252
Visual Display Contents xi
6.3 Some Representative Social Indicators 257 6.16 Worksheet for Regression and Correlation:
6.4 Case-Coding Scheme 266 Investment in Training Programs and
Subsequent Employment of Trainees 291
6.5 Sample Results of the Research Survey
Method: Empirical Generalizations, Action 6.17 Distribution of Cities by Scores on a
Guidelines, and Levels of Confidence in Hypothetical Index of Pollution Severity 295
Generalizations 267 6.18 Results of Regression-Discontinuity Analysis
6.6 Techniques Appropriate to Four Approaches for Hypothetical Experimental and Control
to Monitoring 269 Cities 296
6.7 Grouped Frequency Distribution: Number of 7.1 Basic Value Typology:Terminal and
Persons Below the Poverty Threshold by Age Instrumental Values 317
Group in 1977 273 7.2 Criteria for Evaluation 322
6.8 Computation of Gini Concentration Ratio for 7.3 Three Approaches to Evaluation 323
Violent Crimes Known to Police per 100, 000 7.4 Types of Formal Evaluation 324
Population in 1976 276
7.5 Techniques for Evaluation by Three
6.9 Poverty Rates in 1968, 1990, and 2006 Approaches 331
by Age and Race 277
7.6 Interview Protocol for User-Survey
6.10 Number of Rearrests among 241 Offenders Analysis 331
in Three Treatment Groups 277
Chapter Summary 332
6.11 Use of Consumer Price Index (1982–84 100)
to Compute Purchasing Power Index 279 8.1 Modes of Policy Argumentation with
Reasoning Patterns 344
6.12 Real Weekly Wages in the United States,
2001–10 279 8.2 Guidelines for Identifying Invalid Arguments
and Fallacies 372
6.13 Maximum Concentration of Pollutants
Reported in Chicago Philadelphia, and San 9.1 Two Kinds of Policy Disciplines 387
Francisco for Averaging Times of Five Minutes 9.2 Elements of an Issue Paper and Methods for
and One Year 281 Creating Information Relevant to Each
6.14 Implicitly Weighted Aggregative Quantity Element 389
Index to Measure Changes in Pollutants in the 9.3 Basic Regression Model for Estimating the
United States, 1970–75 282 Effects of Gasoline Lead on Blood Leada 415
6.15 Duration of Exposure to Pollutants and 9.4 Present Values of Costs and Benefits of Final
Consequent Damage to Health and the Rule, 1985–1992 (millions of 1983
Environment 283 dollars) 421
CONTENTS
Preface xvii Case 1.2 The Spreadsheet—Evaluating Benefits and

Costs of Energy Policies 24
Acknowledgements xix Case 1.3 The Influence Diagram and Decision
Tree—Structuring Problems of Energy Policy
and International Security 25
Case 1.4 The Argument Map—Problem Structuring
Part I Methodology of Policy in National Defense and Transportation Policy 27
Analysis 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 1 Policy Analysis in the Policy-Making
Process 31
The Process of Policy Analysis 2
Objectives 31
Objectives 2
The Historical Context 32
Methodology of Policy Analysis 3
Early Origins 32
Policy Analysis—A Multidisciplinary The Nineteenth-Century Transformation 35
Framework 4 The Twentieth Century 37
Policy-Relevant Information 5
The Policy-Making Process 42
Policy-Informational Transformations 7
Policy-Analytic Methods 8 Models of Policy Change 45
Comprehensive Rationality 45
Four Strategies of Analysis 10 Second-Best Rationality 46
Prospective and Retrospective Analysis 10 Disjointed Incrementalism 48
Descriptive and Normative Analysis 13 Bounded Rationality 49
Problem Finding and Problem Solving 13 Mixed Scanning 50
Segmented and Integrated Analysis 14 Erotetic Rationality 51
The Practice of Policy Analysis 15 Critical Convergence 51
Reconstructed Logic versus Punctuated Equilibrium 52
Logic-in-Use 15
Policy Analysis in the Policy Process 53
Methodological Opportunity Costs 16
Potential Uses of Analysis 53
Critical Thinking and Public Policy 17 Uses of Analysis in Practice 56
The Structure of Policy Arguments 18 Chapter Summary 58
Chapter Summary 21 Review Questions 58
Review Questions 21 Demonstration Exercises 58
Demonstration Exercises 21 Bibliography 59
Bibliography 22 Case 2.1 Are Policy Analysts Technocrats? 60
Case 1.1 The Goeller Scorecard—Monitoring and Case 2.2 Understanding the Use of Policy
Forecasting Technological Impacts 22 Analysis 64
xii
Contents xiii
Part II Methods of Policy Case 3.2 Brainstorming Across Disciplines: The

Elevator Problem 116
Analysis 65
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 3
Forecasting Expected Policy
Structuring Policy Problems 66 Outcomes 117
Objectives 66 Objectives 117
Nature of Policy Problems 67 Forecasting in Policy Analysis 118
Beyond Problem Solving 67 Aims of Forecasting 118
Characteristics of Problems 69 Limitations of Forecasting 119
Problems versus Issues 71 Types of Futures 121
Three Classes of Policy Goals and Objectives of Normative Futures 122
Problems 73 Sources of Goals, Objectives,
Problem Structuring in Policy and Alternatives 123
Analysis 75 Approaches to Forecasting 124
Creativity in Problem Structuring 75 Objects of Forecasts 124
Phases of Problem Structuring 76 Bases of Forecasts 125
Errors of the Third Type (EIII) 78 Techniques of Forecasting 128
Policy Models and Problem Extrapolative Forecasting 128
Structuring 80 Classical Time-Series Analysis 129
Descriptive Models 80 Linear Trend Estimatiom 131
Normative Models 81 Tables 4.3 and 4.4 136
Verbal Models 81 Exhibit 4.1 SPSS Output for
Symbolic Models 82 Nonlinear Time Series 137
Procedural Models 83 Exponential Weighting 141
Models as Surrogates and Data Transformation 142
Perspectives 84 Catastrophe Methodology 144
Methods of Problem Structuring 88 Theoretical Forecasting 147
Boundary Analysis 88 Theory Mapping 148
Classification Analysis 92 Theoretical Modeling 152
Hierarchy Analysis 96 Causal Modeling 153
Synectics 97 Regression Analysis 155
Brainstorming 99 Point and Interval Estimation 160
Multiple Perspective Analysis 101 Correlation Analysis 163
Assumption Analysis 103 Exhibit 4.2 SPSS Output for
Argument Mapping 106 Table 4.7 164
Chapter Summary 108 Judgmental Forecasting 165
Review Questions 108 The Delphi Technique 165
Cross-Impact Analysis 172
Demonstration Exercises 109 Feasibility Assessment 176
Bibliography 110
Chapter Summary 180
Case 3.1 Structuring Problems of Risk in Mining and
Transportation 112 Review Questions 180
xiv Contents
Demonstration Exercise 181 Demonstration Exercise 240

Bibliography 181 Bibliography 240
Case 4.1 Conceptual Errors in Regression Analysis: Case 5.1 Opportunity Costs of Saving Lives—The 55
The Anscombe Quartet 183 mph Speed Limit41 240
Case 4.2 Revenue Forecasting and Environmental
Justice 184
CHAPTER 6
Box 4.1 Transit Equity: A Look At
MARTA 184
Monitoring Observed Policy
Outcomes 245
CHAPTER 5 Objectives 245
Prescribing Preferred Policies 188 Monitoring in Policy Analysis 246
Objectives 188 Sources of Information 247
Types of Policy Outcomes 248
Prescription in Policy Analysis 189 Types of Policy Actions 249
Prescription and Policy Advocacy 189 Definitions and Indicators 250
A Simple Model of Choice 190
Box 5.1 The Over-Advocacy Trap 191 Approaches to Monitoring 252
A Complex Model of Choice 192 Social Systems Accounting 255
Forms of Rationality 194 Social Experimentation 259
Criteria for Policy Prescription 196 Social Auditing 262
Research and Practice Synthesis 264
Approaches to Prescription 203
Public versus Private Choice 203 Techniques for Monitoring 269
Supply and Demand 205 Graphic Displays 269
Public Choice 206 The Gini Index 274
Cost-Benefit Analysis 207 Tabular Displays 276
Types of Costs and Benefits 209 Index Numbers 278
Tasks in Cost-Benefit Analysis 212 Interrupted Time-Series Analysis62 283
Cost-Effectiveness Analysis 215 Control-Series Analysis 288
Regression-Discontinuity Analysis 289
Methods and Techniques for Exhibit 6.1 SPSS Output for Table 6.17 292
Prescription 218 Exhibit 6.2 SPSS Output for Tables 6.17 and
Objectives Mapping 218 6.18 298
Value Clarification 219
Chapter Summary 301
Value Critique 221
Cost Element Structuring 222 Review Questions 301
Cost Estimation 224 Demonstration Exercise 303
Shadow Pricing 225 Bibliography 305
Constraint Mapping 226 Case 6.1 Understanding Policy Outcomes:
Cost Internalization 227 The Political Economy of Traffic Fatalities
Discounting 229 in Europe and the United States 306
Sensitivity Analysis 233
A Fortiori Analysis 234
CHAPTER 7
Plausibility Analysis 234
Chapter Summary 238 Evaluating Policy Performance 309
Review Questions 238 Objectives 309
Contents xv
Ethics and Values in Policy Analysis 310 Classification 352

Thinking About Values 310 Cause 353
Ethics and Meta-ethics 313 Sign 357
Standards of Conduct 315 Motivation 361
Descriptive Ethics, Normative Ethics, and Intuition 362
Meta-ethics 316 Analogy 364
Descriptive Value Typologies 316 Parallel Case 365
Developmental Value Typologies 317 Ethics 366
Normative Theories 318 Evaluating Policy Arguments 368
Meta-ethical Theories 319 Some Hermeneutic Guidelines 369
Evaluation in Policy Analysis 320 Box 8.2 Guidelines for Interpreting
Arguments 370
The Nature of Evaluation 320
Guidelines from Informal
Functions of Evaluation 321 and Formal Logic 371
Criteria for Policy Evaluation 321
Chapter Summary 374
Approaches to Evaluation 322
Pseudo-evaluation 323 Review Questions 374
Formal Evaluation 323 Demonstration Exercises 374
Varieties of Formal Evaluation 325 Bibliography 375
Decision-Theoretic Evaluation 327 Case 8.1 Pros and Cons of Balkan
Methods for Evaluation 330 Intervention58 376
Case 8.2 Images, Arguments, and the Second
Chapter Summary 332 Persian Gulf Crisis, 1990–91 377
Review Questions 332
Demonstration Exercise 333 CHAPTER 9
Bibliography 334
Case 7.1 The Economics of Moral Judgment: Communicating Policy Analysis 381
Evaluating Living Wage Policies 335 Objectives 381
Box 9.1 Producing Policy Analysis—A Poorly
Part III Methods of Policy Managed Lumber Mill 382
Communication 337 The Process of Policy Communication 382
Tasks in Policy Documentation 382
CHAPTER 8 Tasks in Oral Presentations and Briefings 385
Box 9.2 Contingent Communication 386
Developing Policy Arguments 338 The Policy Issue Paper 386
Objectives 338 Issues Addressed in the Policy Issue Paper 387
Elements of the Policy Issue Paper 388
The Structure of Policy Arguments 339
Types of Knowledge Claims 341 The Policy Memorandum 389
Policy Maps 341 The Executive Summary 390
Box 8.1 Mapping a Policy Argument 343 The Letter of Transmittal 390
Modes of Policy Argumentation 344 The Oral Briefing and Visual Displays 391
Argumentation from Authority 345 Policy Analysis in the Policy-Making
Method 347 Process 393
Generalization 349 Characteristics of Information 394
xvi Contents
Modes of Inquiry 394 Case 9.2 Communicating Statistical Analyses to

Structure of Problems 395 Multiple Audiences: Regulating Leaded Gasoline 404
Political and Bureaucratic Structures 395
Interactions among Stakeholders 396 The Policy Issue Paper 422
Chapter Summary 396 The Executive Summary 429

Review Questions 397 The Policy Memorandum 433
Demonstration Exercise 397
Planning Oral Briefings 440
Bibliography 399
Case 9.1 Translating Policy Arguments into Issue Author Index 448
Papers, Position Papers, and Letters to the Editor—
The Case of the Second Persian Gulf War 400 Subject Index 453
P R E FA C E
M
y aim in writing the several editions of this book has been to produce a
critical synthesis of the field, while at the same time offering students,
instructors, and practitioners a body of knowledge and skills that is
applicable to real-world problems. This is not a text in the narrow and conven-
tional sense of the term.
Ever since the publication of the first edition of Public Policy Analysis more
than thirty years ago, I have become more and more convinced that the methodology
of policy analysis rests or should rest on epistemological foundations that differ
from those of the disciplines of which policy analysis is composed. For this reason,
I continue to define policy analysis as an applied social science discipline that
employs multiple methods of inquiry to solve practical problems.
What this means is that the methodology of policy analysis cannot be reduced
to the theories and analytical routines of microeconomics, because solutions for
practical problems demand much more than the analysis of rational choice, expected
utility, and opportunity costs. By the same token, the methodology of policy analysis
cannot be reduced to the study of politics, because solutions for practical problems
require more than the analysis of power, rule, and authority or who gets what, when,
and how. Much more is involved. Finally, because a principal aim of policy analysis
is to improve policies, the methodology of policy analysis cannot be reduced to an
academic spectator sport in which knowledge is prized for its own sake.
NEW TO THIS EDITION

This broadly accessible 5th edition employs a simplified style of writing, cases based
on real-world analytical practices, and visual displays that make complex ideas
understandable. Examples and case materials now include issues in foreign policy and
international security as well as domestic issues including environmental justice,
urban economics, transportation, and public safety. The inclusion of advanced
graphics software for mapping and evaluating policy arguments helps cultivate
critical thinking skills in areas ranging from qualitative forecasting and statistical
analysis to theories of justice. The book also provides students with practical and
marketable skills in communicating policy analysis by writing policy memos, position
papers, and other forms of structured analytical writing. Finally, new study sugges-
tions and demonstration exercises emphasize active rather than passive learning.
Special instructional devices and learning strategies are again employed throughout
the book:
䊏 Advance organizers. The book uses advance organizers, especially visual
displays, to introduce students to the logic and organization of methods.
The advance organizer for the book as a whole is the information-processing
model of policy analysis presented in the first chapter.
xvii
xviii Preface
䊏 Learning objectives. At the beginning of each chapter is an explicit statement

of the learning objectives that students should be able to attain by reading the
chapter and completing its study questions and demonstration exercises. I have
tried to state these objectives in terms of the acquisition of knowledge and skills
to do or perform something—that is, behaviorally defined learning objectives
that involve recognizing, defining, understanding, explaining, predicting, evalu-
ating, and applying. By stating objectives in this way, the emphasis is on active
rather than passive learning, on application rather than regurgitation.
䊏 Review questions. Knowledge and skills must be reinforced. For this
reason, review questions are provided at the end of each chapter. The review
questions address higher-order knowledge and skills (e.g., explaining or
applying) as well as lower-order knowledge and skills (e.g., calculating or
estimating). Review questions may be used by students for self-study and by
instructors who are developing written assignments, examinations, and tests.
䊏 Demonstration exercises. Knowledge and skills are not acquired or retained
without frequent opportunities for application to real-world problems.
For this reason, each chapter contains opportunities to demonstrate the
application of knowledge and skills to significant practical problems. The
attempt is to draw students away from “blackboard policy analysis” into
the real world of messy problems and provisional solutions.
䊏 Cases. Cases in policy analysis are the focus of the demonstration exercises.
Cases span a number of issue areas including foreign policy and security,
transportation policy, occupational health and safety, and urban policy. Some
cases are primarily conceptual; most are methodological in nature.
䊏 Bibliographies. In addition to literature cited in footnotes, each chapter is
accompanied by a list of readings that are keyed to the subject matter of that
chapter. I have attempted to include literature that is representative of many
of the most important developments in public policy analysis.
䊏 Guidelines for written and oral communication. Students who master
methods almost always face difficulties when they must communicate the
results of analysis through policy memoranda, position papers, issue papers,
and oral briefings. To help overcome these difficulties, appendices present
step-by-step guidelines and checklists.
䊏 Argument maps. Analysis is about making and understanding policy
arguments. This edition uses numerous argument maps created with Rationale,
an exceptionally useful and innovative computer program available at
www.austhink.com. Elsewhere I have expressed my gratitude to Professor Tim
van Gelder, one of the originators of the program, for his help.
SUPPLEMENTS
WEBSITE A special website (www.policyonline.org) supports users of this book by
providing slides keyed to each chapter and data sets related to cases covered in the
chapters. Many of the slides can serve as teaching notes.
ARGUMENT MAPPING SOFTWARE Users of this book may purchase Rationale at a
student and instructor discount by visiting www.austhinkconsulting.com/dunn.
Preface xix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would not have begun this ambitious multidisciplinary project without the
encouragement of the late Paul F. Lazarsfeld, who challenged me to investigate and
write about what he called the “policy sciences movement.” Lazarsfeld, one of a
handful of premier applied social scientists of the twentieth century, was skeptical
of the enterprise, as it had been sketched by Lasswell, Kaplan, Lerner, and others.
Its aims seemed to him unwisely all-encompassing and grand, an assessment that
holds some truth today. Lazarsfeld did not self-identify as a sociologist, but as an
applied social scientist and, for this reason, he was University Professor of Social
Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
Some ten years later, we made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to fill
Lazarsfeld’s vacant chair with another premier applied social scientist, Donald
T. Campbell, who virtually revolutionized the methodology of the applied social
sciences in the twentieth century. Campbell, like Lazarsfeld, did not self-identify
with his original discipline, which was social psychology. Instead, he viewed
himself as a multidisciplinary applied social scientist specializing in program and
policy evaluation and the philosophy and sociology of science. Campbell’s
mentorship has had a profound effect on the way I think about the strengths and
limitations of policy analysis and program evaluation. His imprint can be seen
throughout this book.
At about the same time, I was asked to join a team of faculty who were
developing curricular materials on policy analysis for practitioners in local
governments. The group had wisely contracted specialists in learning theory and
curriculum development, including Doris Gow and Jyotsna Vasudev. I learned
from them the important pedagogical lesson that abstract subjects such as policy
analysis can be more effectively taught by focusing on behaviorally defined
learning objectives. I am grateful to them for making me see that much of the
literature we assign in courses is not easily or successfully tied to learning
outcomes, which means that we often cannot say why we want students to read
the materials we assign. This was a revelation.
I have been fortunate to meet and work with colleagues who changed my mind
about many things, including the important role that the philosophy and sociology
of science play in the applied social sciences. These colleagues include Ian
I. Mitroff, Burkart Holzner, Gerald Zaltman, and my former student and now
professor, Bahman Fozouni, who introduced me to yet other colleagues in the Center
for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I learned much
about the pragmatic importance of policy analysis and the applied social sciences
from Robert F. Rich, Thomas D. Cook, and Carol H. Weiss, all of whom were and
are committed to investigating and deliberately changing the conditions under which
the social sciences may be used to solve practical problems.
Faculty and students in the Graduate School of Public and International
Affairs (GSPIA), University of Pittsburgh, have challenged my thinking, writing,
and teaching. They include Alex Weilenman, Louise Comfort, Tom Pavlak, John
Mendeloff, Hector Correa, Michael Sabath, Soumana Sako, Sam Overman, Tony
Cahill, Kevin Kearns, Dave Miller, Mary Jo Dukes, Ralph Bangs, Jan Jernigan, and
Andrea Hegedus, all of whom were affiliated with the doctoral program in Public
Policy Research and Analysis at GSPIA. Most recently, two new colleagues have
xx Preface
been important to me in writing this edition. The first is my new junior colleague,
Ilia Murtazashvili, whose critiques of many of the ideas in this book have helped me
question and improve my thinking and writing. I am also indebted to Tim van
Gelder of the University of Melbourne and Austhink Consulting for introducing me
to Rationale, a brilliant new computer program that enables users to map policy
arguments, probe the assumptions underlying policy claims, and practice critical
thinking. Argument maps created with Rationale appear throughout this edition of
Public Policy Analysis.
In the past thirty years and more, this book has been used in degree and
certificate programs in universities, think tanks, and governments in this country
and abroad. Translations into Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Macedonian,
Romanian, and Spanish are completed or under way. The book has been used in
training programs and projects in countries of the European Union, Southeastern
Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. The revisions incorpo-
rated in this edition reflect much of what I have learned from the participants and
organizers of these programs.
I am also deeply grateful to students and faculty at the Graduate Center for
Public Policy and Management in Skopje, Macedonia, a great but now inactive
institution with some of the best students I have taught. In addition, my friends and
colleagues at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Free University of
Amsterdam, particularly Matthijs Hisschemoeller and Eefje Cuppen, have been a
constant source of ideas about participative methods of policy analysis. I also want
to thank reviewers of this and previous editions. In addition to anonymous
reviewers, they include David Nice of Washington State University, David Houston
of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and Louise Comfort of the University of
Pittsburgh. Sheila Kelly, Lien Rung-Kao, Sujatha Raman, Ranjan Chaudhury, Eric
Sevigny, Kate Freed, Bojana Aceva-Andonova, Erin McGrath, Alla Golovina
Khadka, and Jessica Reyes assisted in preparing materials for this and previous
editions. Finally, I am grateful for the splendid editorial assistance of Integra
Software Services Pvt Ltd, in Pondicherry, India, and to Stephanie Chaisson and
other editors at Pearson. Special mention goes to Toni Magyar, political science
editor at Pearson, who provided masterful editorial support and exceptionally
creative guidance in helping me with this fifth edition.
William N. Dunn
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
University of Pittsburgh
PART
Methodology of Policy
Analysis
POLICY
PROBLEMS
Problem
Forecasting
Structuring Practical
Inference
OBSERVED POLICY EXPECTED

OUTCOMES PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES
Evaluation
Monitoring Prescription
POLICY
ACTIONS
CHAPTER
The Process of Policy

Analysis
OBJECTIVES
By studying this chapter, you should be able to
䊏 Define and illustrate phases of 䊏 Distinguish prospective and
policy analysis. retrospective policy analysis.
䊏 Describe elements of integrated 䊏 Describe the structure of a policy
policy analysis. argument and its elements.
䊏 Distinguish four strategies of policy 䊏 Understand the role of argument
analysis. mapping in critical thinking.
䊏 Contrast reconstructed logic and 䊏 Interpret scorecards, spreadsheets,
logic-in-use. influence diagrams, decision trees,
and argument maps.
P
olicy analysis is a process of multidisciplinary inquiry aiming at the
creation, critical assessment, and communication of policy-relevant infor-
mation. As a problem-solving discipline, it draws on social science methods,
theories, and substantive findings to solve practical problems.1
1
For a sample of alternative definitions see Harold D. Lasswell, A Pre-view of Policy Sciences
(New York: American Elsevier Publishing, 1971); Yehezkel Dror, Ventures in Policy Sciences: Concepts
and Applications (New York: American Elsevier Publishing, 1971); Edward S. Quade, Analysis for
Public Decisions, 3d rev. ed., ed. Grace M. Carter (New York: North Holland Publishing, 1989); David
L. Weimer and Aidan R. Vining, Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992); Duncan Mac Rae Jr., The Social Function of Social Science (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1976).
2
Methodology of Policy Analysis 3
METHODOLOGY OF POLICY ANALYSIS

As used here, the word methodology refers to a process of reasoned inquiry
aimed at finding solutions to practical problems. The aim of methodology is to
help us understand not only the products of policy inquiry but also the processes
employed to create these products.2 The methodology of policy analysis is not
confined to the analytical routines of specialized social science fields—for
example, benefit-cost analysis in economics or implementation analysis in
political science—because none of these holds a privileged place in policy inquiry.
Nor is the methodology of policy analysis constrained by the doctrines and
principles of obsolescent philosophies of science such as logical positivism, which
mistakenly claimed that scientific knowledge, properly understood, is objective,
value free, and quantitative.3 On the contrary, policy analysis is methodologically
eclectic; its practitioners are free to choose among a wide range of scientific
methods, qualitative as well as quantitative, as long as these yield reliable
knowledge. In this context, policy analysis includes art, craft, and reasoned
persuasion, all of which are scientific to the extent that they succeed in producing
reliable knowledge. 4 Ordinary commonsense knowing and well-winnowed
practical wisdom—both products of evolutionary learning across generations of
2
Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science (San Francisco, CA:
Chandler Publishing Company, 1964), pp. 23–24.
3
Logical positivism (or logical empiricism) was abandoned by most philosophers of science more than
50 years ago, although its epistemological pillars—the correspondence theory of truth, the empirical
criterion of meaning, and quantificationism—are still venerated by many social scientists. For alterna-
tives to logical positivism in economics and political science see Daniel Bromley, Sufficient Reason:
Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2006); Henry E. Brady and David Collier, eds. Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse
Tools, Shared Standards (Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield, 2004); Deirdre N. McCloskey, The
Rhetoric of Economics, 2nd ed., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998; Stephen Thomas
Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs
Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Paul Diesing, How Does
Social Science Work? Reflections on Practice (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991);
and Mary Hawkesworth, Theoretical Issues in Policy Analysis (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1988).
4
Larry Laudan has argued that the demarcation between science and non-science, including art and
craft, is a pseudo-problem that should be replaced by focusing on the distinction between reliable and
unreliable knowledge. It is not necessary to ask whether knowledge is “scientific,” only whether it is
reliable. “The Demise of the Demarcation Problem,” in R.S. Cohen and L. Laudan, Physics, Philosophy
and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science,
Vol.76 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983), pp. 111–127. Aaron Wildavsky and others have used the terms art
and craft to characterize policy analysis. See Aaron Wildavsky, Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and
Craft of Policy Analysis (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1979); and Iris Geva-May and Aaron Wildavsky,
An Operational Approach to Policy Analysis: The Craft, Prescriptions for Better Analysis (Boston, MA:
Kluwer, 1997). The term policy science(s) is Harold Lasswell’s. See the short methodological history of
the policy sciences in Ronald Brunner, “The Policy Movement as a Policy Problem,” in Advances in
Policy Studies since 1950, vol. 10, Policy Studies Review Annual, ed. W. N. Dunn and R. M. Kelly
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1992), pp. 155–97 and contributions to Michael Moran,
Martin Rein, and Robert E. Goodin, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006).
4 CHAPTER 1 The Process of Policy Analysis
problem solvers—often permit conclusions that are more trustworthy and

reliable than those produced by means of policy analysis and other specialized
forms of professional and scientific inquiry.5
The rationale for policy analysis is pragmatic. For this reason, it is unmistakably
different from social science disciplines that prize knowledge for its own sake. The
policy-relevance of these disciplines depends not on their status as sciences but on
the extent to which they are successful in illuminating and alleviating practical
problems, problems that come in complex bundles that are at once economic,
political, cultural, ethical, and more. Practical problems do not arrive in separate
disciplinary packages addressed to departments of economics and political
science—to name two of the most important policy disciplines. In today’s world,
multidisciplinary policy analysis seems to provide the best fit with the manifold
complexity of public policy making.
POLICY ANALYSIS—A MULTIDISCIPLINARY

FRAMEWORK
Policy analysis is partly descriptive. It relies on traditional social science disciplines
to describe and explain the causes and consequences of policies. But it is also
normative, a term that refers to value judgments about what ought to be, in con-
trast to descriptive statements about what is.6 To investigate problems of efficiency
and fairness, policy analysis draws on normative economics and decision analysis
as well as ethics and other branches of social and political philosophy—all of which
are about what ought to be. This normative orientation stems from the fact that
analyzing policies demands that we choose among desired consequences (ends) and
preferred courses of action (means). The choice of ends and means requires contin-
uing trade-offs among competing values of efficiency, equity, security, liberty, and
democracy.7 The importance of normative reasoning in policy analysis was well
stated by a former undersecretary in the Department of Housing and Urban
Development: “Our problem is not to do what is right. Our problem is to know
what is right.”8
5
On the contrasts between scientific and professional knowledge on one hand, and ordinary
commonsense knowing on the other, see Charles E. Lindblom and David K. Cohen, Usable
Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1979). On the frequent soundness of evolved practical knowledge—but the periodic need for
supplemental scientific testing—see Donald T. Campbell, “Evolutionary Epistemology,” in
Methodology and Epistemology for Social Science: Selected Papers, ed. E. S. Overman (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989).
6
One classic statement of the difference between positive and normative knowledge in economics is
Milton Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953). This
same positive-normative distinction is present throughout the social sciences.
7
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, rev ed. (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2001).
8
Robert C. Wood, “Foreword” to The Study of Policy Formation, ed. Raymond A. Bauer and Kenneth
J. Gergen (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. v. Wood is quoting President Lyndon Johnson.
Policy Analysis—A Multidisciplinary Framework 5
Policy-Relevant Information
Policy analysis is designed to provide policy-relevant information about five types of
questions:
䊏 Policy problems. What is the problem for which a potential solution is sought?
Is global warming a human-made consequence of aircraft and motor vehicle
emissions? Or is global warming a consequence of periodic fluctuations in the
temperature of the atmosphere? What alternatives are available to mitigate
global warming? What are the potential outcomes of these alternatives and what
is their value or utility?
䊏 Expected policy outcomes. What are the expected outcomes of policies designed
to reduce harmful emissions? Because periodic natural fluctuations are difficult or
impossible to control, what is the likelihood that emissions can be reduced by
raising the price of gasoline and diesel fuel, compared with requiring that aircraft
and motor vehicles use biofuels?
䊏 Preferred policies. Which policies should be chosen, considering not only
their expected outcomes in reducing harmful emissions, but also the value of
reduced emissions in terms of economic costs and benefits? Should distribu-
tional criteria involving environmental justice be used along with criteria of
economic efficiency?
䊏 Observed policy outcomes. What policy outcomes are observed, as distin-
guished from the outcomes expected before a preferred policy is implemented?
Did the preferred policy actually result in reduced emissions? Were other
factors such as political opposition to governmental regulation responsible for
the limited achievement of emissions targets?
䊏 Policy performance. To what extent do observed policy outcomes con-
tribute to the reduction of global warming through emissions controls? What
are the benefits and costs of government regulation to present and future
generations?
Answers to these questions yield five types of information, which are policy-
informational components. These components are shown as rectangles in
Figure 1.1.9
A policy problem is an unrealized need, value, or opportunity for improvement
attainable through public action.10 Knowledge of what problem to solve requires
information about a problem’s antecedent conditions (e.g., school dropouts as an
antecedent condition of unemployment), as well as information about values (e.g.,
safe schools or a living wage) whose achievement may lead to the problem’s
solution. Information about policy problems plays a critical role in policy analysis,
9
The framework was originally suggested by Walter Wallace, The Logic of Science in Sociology
(Chicago: Aldine Books, 1971). Wallace’s framework addresses research methodology in sociology,
whereas Figure 1.1 addresses the methodology of policy analysis.
10
Compare James A. Anderson, Public Policymaking: An Introduction, 7th ed. (Boston, MA:
Wadsworth, 2011); Charles O. Jones, An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy, 2d ed. (North
Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, 1977), p. 15; and David Dery, Problem Definition in Policy Analysis
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1984).
POLICY
PROBLEMS
Problem
Forecasting
Inference

Evaluation
PREFERRED
POLICIES
FIGURE 1.1
The process of integrated analysis
because the way a problem is defined shapes the search for available solutions.
Inadequate or faulty information may result in a fatal error: defining the wrong
problem.11
Expected policy outcomes are likely consequences of one or more policy alterna-
tives designed to solve a problem. Information about the circumstances that gave rise
to a problem is essential for producing information about expected policy outcomes.
Such information is often insufficient, however, because the past does not repeat itself
completely, and the values that shape behavior may change in the future. For this
reason, information about expected policy outcomes is not “given” by the existing
situation. To produce such information may require creativity, insight, and the use of
tacit knowledge.12
11
Defining the wrong problem is a type III error, as contrasted with type I and type II errors committed
when the level of statistical significance (alpha) is set too high or too low in testing the null hypothesis.
An early statement of this contrast is Ian I. Mitroff and Thomas R. Featheringham, “On Systematic
Problem Solving and the Error of the Third Kind,” Behavioral Sciences 19, no. 6 (1974): 383–93.
12
Dror, Ventures in Policy Sciences; Sir Geoffrey Vickers, The Art of Judgment: A Study of Policy
Making (New York: Basic Books, 1965); and C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems;
Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization (New York: Basic Books, 1971).
A preferred policy is a potential solution to a problem. To select a preferred policy,

it is necessary to have information about expected policy outcomes as well as informa-
tion about the value or utility of these expected outcomes. Another way to say this is
that factual as well as value premises are required for policy prescriptions. Fact alone—
for example, the fact that one policy produces more of some quantity than another—do
not justify the choice of a preferred policy. Factual premises must be joined with value
premises involving efficiency, equality, security, democracy, or some other value.
An observed policy outcome is a present or past consequence of implementing a
preferred policy. It is sometimes unclear whether an outcome is actually an effect of
a policy, because some effects are not policy outcomes; many outcomes are the result
of other, extra-policy factors. It is important to recognize that the consequences of
action cannot be fully stated or known in advance, which means that many conse-
quences are neither anticipated nor intended. Fortunately, information about such
consequences can be produced ex post (after policies have been implemented), not
only ex ante (before policies are implemented).
Policy performance is the degree to which an observed policy outcome con-
tributes to the solution of a problem. In practice, policy performance is never perfect.
Problems are rarely “solved”; most often, problems are resolved, reformulated, and
even “unsolved.”13 To know whether a problem has been solved, resolved, reformu-
lated, or unsolved requires information about observed policy outcomes, as well as
information about the extent to which these outcomes contribute to the opportunities
for improvement that gave rise to a problem.
Policy-Informational Transformations
The five types of policy-relevant information are interdependent. The arrows connect-
ing each pair of components represent policy-informational transformations, whereby
one type of information is changed into another, so that the creation of information at
any point depends on information produced in an adjacent phase. Information about
policy performance, for example, depends on the transformation of prior information
about observed policy outcomes. The reason for this dependence is that any assess-
ment of how well a policy achieves its objectives assumes that we already have reliable
information about the outcomes of that policy. The other types of policy-relevant
information are dependent in the same way.
Information about policy problems is a special case. Information about policy
problems usually includes some problem elements—for example, potential solutions
or expected outcomes—and excludes others. What is included or excluded affects
which policies are eventually prescribed, which values are appropriate as criteria of
policy performance, and which potentially predictable outcomes warrant or do not
warrant attention. At the risk of being overly repetitious, it is worth stressing again
that a fatal error of policy analysis is a type III error—defining the wrong problem.14
13
Russell L. Ackoff, “Beyond Problem Solving,” General Systems 19 (1974): 237–39.
14
Type I and type II errors are also known as false positives and false negatives. Other sources on type III
errors include A. W. Kimball, “Errors of the Third Kind in Statistical Consulting,” Journal of the American
Statistical Association 52 (1957): 133–42; Howard Raiffa, Decision Analysis (Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley, 1968), p. 264; and Ian I. Mitroff, The Subjective Side of Science (New York: Elsevier, 1974).
Policy-Analytic Methods
The five types of policy-relevant information are produced and transformed by
using policy-analytic methods. All methods involve judgments of different
kinds:15 judgments to accept or reject an explanation, to affirm or dispute the
rightness of an action, to prescribe or not prescribe a policy, to accept or reject a
prediction, and to formulate a problem in one way rather than another.
In policy analysis, these procedures have special names:
䊏 Problem structuring. Problem-structuring methods are employed to produce

information about which problem to solve. One example of problem-structuring
methods is the influence diagram and decision tree presented in Case 1.3 of this
chapter (The Influence Diagram and Decision Tree—Structuring Problems of
Energy Policy and International Security). Other examples of problem-structuring
methods include critical thinking tools such as argument mapping (Case 1.4:
The Argument Map—Problem Structuring in National Defense and Energy
Policy). Chapter 3 of this book covers problem-structuring methods and their
application.
䊏 Forecasting. Forecasting methods are used to produce information about
expected policy outcomes. Although many kinds of forecasting methods are
covered in Chapter 4, an example of a simple forecasting tool is the score-
card described in Case 1.1 (The Goeller Scorecard—Monitoring and
Forecasting Technological Impacts). Scorecards, which are based on the
judgments of experts, are particularly useful in identifying expected
outcomes of science and technology policies.
䊏 Prescription. Methods of prescription are employed to create information
about preferred policies. An example of a prescriptive method is the spread-
sheet (Case 1.2: The Spreadsheet—Evaluating the Benefits and Costs of
Energy Policies). The spreadsheet goes beyond the identification of expected
policy outcomes by expressing consequences in terms of monetary benefits
and costs. Benefit-cost analysis and other methods of prescription are
presented in Chapter 5.
䊏 Monitoring. Methods of monitoring are employed to produce information
about observed policy outcomes. The scorecard (Case 1.1) is a simple method
for monitoring observed policy outcomes as well as for forecasting expected
policy outcomes. Chapter 6 covers methods of monitoring in detail.
䊏 Evaluation. Evaluation methods are used to produce information about the
value or utility of observed policy outcomes and their contributions to policy
performance. Although evaluation methods are covered more fully in
Chapter 7, the spreadsheet (Case 1.2) may be used for evaluation as well as
prescription.
The first method, problem structuring, is about the other methods. For this reason, it
is a metamethod (method of methods). In the course of structuring a problem, analysts
typically experience a “troubled, perplexed, trying situation, where the difficulty is, as
15
John O’Shaughnessy, Inquiry and Decision (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972).
it were, spread throughout the entire situation, infecting it as a whole.”16 Problem

situations are not problems; problems are representations of problem situations.
Hence, problems are not “out there” in the world, but they stem from the interaction
of thought and external environments. Imagine a graph showing the growth of
defense expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product. The graph represents
a problem situation, not a problem, because one analyst will see the graph as evidence
of increasing national security (more of the budget is allocated to defense), while
another interprets the graph as an indication of a declining budget for social welfare
(less of the budget can be allocated to social services). Problem structuring, a proce-
dure for testing different representations of a problem situation, is the central
guidance system of policy analysis.
Policy-analytic methods are interdependent. It is not possible to use one
method without first having used others. Thus, although it is possible to monitor
past policies without forecasting their future consequences, it is usually not possi-
ble to forecast policies without first monitoring them.17 Similarly, analysts can
monitor policy outcomes without evaluating them, but it is not possible to evaluate
an outcome without first establishing that it is an outcome in the first place. Finally,
to select a preferred policy requires that analysts have already monitored,
evaluated, and forecasted outcomes.18 This is yet one more way of saying that
policy prescription is based on factual as well as value premises.
Figure 1.1 supplied a framework for integrating methods from different policy-
relevant disciplines. Some methods are used solely or primarily in some disciplines,
and not others. Program evaluation, for example, employs monitoring to investigate
whether a policy is causally relevant to an observed policy outcome. Although
program evaluation has made extensive use of interrupted time-series analysis,
regression discontinuity analysis, causal modeling, and other techniques associated
with the design and analysis of field experiments,19 implementation research within
political science has not. Instead, implementation researchers have relied mainly on
techniques of case study analysis.20 Another example comes from forecasting.
Although forecasting is central to both economics and systems analysis, economics
has drawn almost exclusively on econometric techniques. Systems analysis has made
greater use of qualitative forecasting techniques for synthesizing expert judgment,
for example, the Delphi technique.21
16
John Dewey, How We Think (Boston, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1933), p. 108. The original
statement of the difference between a problem and a problem situation is attributable to philosophical
pragmatists including Charles Sanders Peirce.
17
An exception is predictions made on the basis of expert judgment. The explanation of a policy is not
necessary for predicting its future consequences. Strictly speaking, a prediction is a causal inference,
whereas a projection, extrapolation, or “rational forecast” is not.
18
Causation may be assumed but not understood. Recipes claim only that a desired result is a conse-
quence of action. Joseph L. Bower, “Descriptive Decision Theory from the ‘Administrative’ Viewpoint,”
in The Study of Policy Formation, ed. Bauer and Gergen, p. 10.
19
See, for example, William R. Shadish, Thomas D. Cook, and Donald T. Campbell, Experimental and
Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).
20
Paul A. Sabatier and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, “The Advocacy Coalition Framework: An Assessment,”
in Theories of the Policy Process, ed. P. A. Sabatier (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 117–66.
21
See Chapter 5.
FOUR STRATEGIES OF ANALYSIS

Relationships among policy-informational components, policy-analytic methods,
and policy-informational transformations provide a basis for contrasting four
strategies of policy analysis (Figure 1.2).
Prospective and Retrospective Analysis

Prospective policy analysis involves the production and transformation of informa-
tion before policy actions are taken. This strategy of ex ante analysis, shown as the
right half of Figure 1.2, typifies the operating styles of economists, systems analysts,
operations researchers, and decision analysts.
The prospective strategy is what Williams means by policy analysis.22 Policy
analysis is “a means of synthesizing information to draw from it policy alternatives
and preferences stated in comparable, predicted quantitative and qualitative terms
as a basis or guide for policy decisions; conceptually, it does not include the
gathering of information [emphasis in original].” Policy research, by contrast,
RETROSPECTIVE (ex post): PROSPECTIVE (ex ante):

What happened and what POLICY What will happen and
difference does it make? PROBLEMS what should be done?
Problem
Forecasting
Inference
PROBLEM FINDING:
What problem
should be solved?

PROBLEM SOLVING:
What is the solution
to the problem? Evaluation
PREFERRED
POLICIES
FIGURE 1.2
Forms strategies of policy analysis
22
Walter Williams, Social Policy Research and Analysis: The Experience in the Federal Social Agencies
(New York: American Elsevier, 1971), p. 8.
Four Strategies of Analysis 11
refers to “all studies using scientific methodologies to describe phenomena and/or

determine relationships among them.” Prospective analysis often creates wide gaps
between preferred solutions and actual efforts to implement them. Perhaps no more
than 10 percent of the work actually required to achieve a desired set of policy
outcomes is carried out before policies are implemented: “It is not that we have too
many good analytic solutions to problems. It is, rather, that we have more good
solutions than we have appropriate actions.”23
Retrospective policy analysis is displayed as the left half of Figure 1.2. This
strategy of ex post analysis involves the production and transformation of informa-
tion after policies have been implemented. Retrospective analysis characterizes the
operating styles of three groups of analysts:
䊏 Discipline-oriented analysts. This group, composed mainly of political

scientists, economists, and sociologists, seeks to develop and test discipline-
based theories that describe the causes and consequences of policies. This
group is not concerned with the identification of specific policy goals or with
distinctions between “policy” variables that are subject to policy manipula-
tion and those that are not.24 For example, the analysis of the effects of party
competition on government expenditures provides no information about
specific policy goals; nor is party competition a variable that policy makers
can manipulate to change public expenditures.
䊏 Problem-oriented analysts. This group, again composed mainly of political
scientists, economists, and sociologists, seeks to describe the causes and conse-
quences of policies. Problem-oriented analysts, however, are less concerned with
the development and testing of theories believed to be important in social science
disciplines than with identifying variables that may explain a problem. Problem-
oriented analysts are not overly concerned with specific goals and objectives,
primarily because the practical problems they analyze are usually general in
nature. For example, the analysis of aggregate data on the effects of gender,
ethnicity, and social inequality on national achievement test scores provides
information that helps explain a problem (e.g., inadequate test performance) but
does not provide information about policy variables that can be manipulated.
䊏 Applications-oriented analysts. A third group includes applied economists,
applied sociologists, applied psychologists, and applied anthropologists, as
well as analysts from professions such as public administration, social work,
and evaluation research. This group also seeks to describe the causes and
consequences of public policies and programs and is not concerned with the
development and testing of discipline-based theories. This group is concerned
not only with manipulable policy variables but also with the identification of
specific policy goals and objectives. Information about specific goals and
objectives provides a basis for monitoring and evaluating outcomes and
23
Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, MA: Little,
Brown, 1971), pp. 267–68.
24
James S. Coleman, “Problems of Conceptualization and Measurement in Studying Policy Impacts,” in
Public Policy Evaluation, ed. Kenneth M. Dolbeare (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications,
1975), p. 25.
impacts of policies. For example, applications-oriented analysts may address

early childhood reading readiness programs that can be manipulated in order
to achieve higher scores on reading tests.
The operating styles of the three groups reflect their characteristic strengths
and limitations. Discipline-oriented as well as problem-oriented analysts seldom
produce information that is directly useful to policy makers. Even when problem-
oriented analysts investigate important problems such as educational opportunity,
energy conservation, crime control, or national security, the resultant information
is often macronegative. Macronegative information describes the basic (or “root”)
causes and consequences of policies, usually by employing aggregate data to show
why policies do not work. By contrast, micropositive information shows what
policies and programs do work under specified conditions.25 It is of little practical
value to policy makers to know that the crime rate is higher in urban than
rural areas, but it is practically important to know that a specific form of gun
control reduces the commission of serious crimes or that intensive police
patrolling is a deterrent.
Even when applications-oriented analysts provide micropositive information,
they may find it difficult to communicate with practitioners of ex ante policy
analysis, who in most cases are professional economists. In agency settings,
ex ante analysts, whose job it is to find optimally efficient solutions, often have
limited access to information about policy outcomes produced through retrospec-
tive analysis. For their part, practitioners of ex ante analysis often fail to specify
in sufficient detail the kinds of policy-relevant information that will be most
useful for monitoring, evaluating, and implementing their recommendations.
Often, the intended outcomes of a policy are so vague that “almost any evalua-
tion of it may be regarded as irrelevant because it missed the ‘problem’ toward
which the policy was directed.”26 Legislators, for example, usually formulate
problems in general terms in order to gain acceptance, forestall opposition, or
maintain neutrality.
Contrasts among the operating styles of policy analysts suggest that disci-
pline-oriented and problem-oriented analysis are inherently less useful than
applications-oriented analysis—that retrospective (ex post) analysis as a whole
is perhaps less effective in solving problems than prospective (ex ante) analysis.
Although this conclusion may have merit from the point of view of policy
makers who want advice on what actions to take, it overlooks several important
benefits of retrospective analysis. Retrospective analysis, whatever its shortcom-
ings, places primary emphasis on the results of action and is not content with
information about expected policy outcomes, as is the case with prospective
analysis. Discipline-oriented and problem-oriented analysis may offer new
frameworks for understanding policy-making processes, challenging conven-
tional formulations of problems, questioning social and economic myths, and
shaping the climate of opinion in a community or society. Retrospective analysis,
25
Williams, Social Policy Research and Analysis, p. 8.
26
Ibid. p. 13; and Alice Rivlin, Systematic Thinking for Social Action (Washington, DC: Brookings,
1971).
Four Strategies of Analysis 13
however, “has been most important in its impact on intellectual priorities and
understandings, and not nearly so effective in offering solutions for specific
political problems.”27
Descriptive and Normative Analysis

Figure 1.2 also captures another important contrast, the distinction between
descriptive and normative strategies of policy analysis. Descriptive policy analysis
parallels descriptive decision theory, which refers to a set of logically consistent
propositions that describe or explain action.28 Descriptive decision theories may be
tested against observations obtained through monitoring and forecasting.
Descriptive theories, models, and conceptual frameworks originate for the most part
in political science, sociology, and economics. The main function of these theories,
models, and frameworks is to explain, understand, and predict policies by identify-
ing patterns of causality. The principal function of approaches to monitoring such as
field experimentation is to establish the approximate validity of causal inferences
relating policies to their presumed outcomes.29 In Figure 1.2, the descriptive form of
policy analysis can be visualized as an axis moving from the lower left (monitoring)
to the upper right (forecasting).
Normative policy analysis parallels normative decision theory, which refers to a set
of logically consistent propositions that evaluate or prescribe action.30 In Figure 1.2,
the normative strategy of policy analysis can be visualized as an axis running from the
lower right (prescription) to upper left (evaluation). Different kinds of information are
required to test normative and descriptive decision theories. Methods of evaluation and
prescription provide information about policy performance and preferred policies, for
example, policies that have been or will be optimally efficient because benefits
outweigh costs or optimally equitable because those most in need are made better off.
One of the most important features of normative policy analysis is that its propositions
rest on disagreements about values such as efficiency, equity, responsiveness, liberty,
and security.
Problem Finding and Problem Solving

The upper and lower halves of Figure 1.2 provide another important distinction.
The upper half points to methods that are designed for problem finding, whereas the
lower designates methods for problem solving. The problem-finding strategy has to
do with the discovery of elements that go into the definition of problems, and not to
their solution. How well do we understand the problem? Who are the most impor-
tant stakeholders who affect and are affected by the problem? Have the appropriate
objectives been identified? Which alternatives are available to achieve objectives?
27
Janet A. Weiss, “Using Social Science for Social Policy,” Policy Studies Journal 4, (Spring 1976): 237.
28
Bower, “Descriptive Decision Theory,” p. 104.
29
See Thomas D. Cook and Donald T. Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues
for Field Settings (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1979); Shadish, Cook, and Campbell, Experimental
and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference.
30
Bower, “Descriptive Decision Theory,” pp. 104–05.
Which uncertain events should be taken into account? Are we solving the “right”
problem rather than the “wrong” one?
Problem-solving methods, located in the lower half of Figure 1.2, are designed to
solve rather than find problems. The problem-solving strategy is primarily technical
in nature, in contrast to problem finding, which is more conceptual. Problem-solving
methods such as econometrics are useful in answering questions about policy causa-
tion, statistical estimation, and optimization. How much of the variance in a policy
outcome is explained by one or more independent variables? What is the probability
of obtaining a coefficient as large as that obtained? Another problem-solving method
is benefit-cost analysis. What are the net benefits of different policies? What is their
expected utility or payoff?
Segmented and Integrated Analysis

Integrated policy analysis links the four strategies of analysis displayed in Figure 1.2.
Retrospective and prospective strategies are joined in one continuous process.
Descriptive and normative strategies are also linked, as are methods designed to find
as well as solve problems. Practically speaking, this means that policy analysts bridge
the several main pillars of multidisciplinary policy analysis, especially economics and
political science. Today, this need is not being properly met by specialized social
science disciplines, which tend to practice segmented policy analysis. The job of
bridging segmented disciplines—to convert intellectual knowledge into practical
knowledge—is carried out by multidisciplinary professions including public adminis-
tration, planning, management, and policy analysis. The American Society for Public
Administration (ASPA), the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and
Administration (NASPAA), the American Planning Association (APA), the
International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA), the
Academy of Management (AM), the Operations Research Society of America
(ORSA), and the Association for Public Policy and Management (APPAM) are
organizations that represent these professions. So far, these professions have been
more open to the disciplines of economics and political science than those disciplines
have been open to them, notwithstanding a consensus among policy scholars and
practitioners that the substance and methods of these and other disciplines are
essential for producing policy-relevant information.
In summary, the framework for integrated policy analysis (Figure 1.1) helps
examine the assumptions, strengths, and limitations of methods employed in disci-
plines that tend to be overly segmented and excessively specialized to be useful in
practical problem solving. The framework identifies and relates major elements of
policy analysis—policy-informational components, policy-analytic methods, and
policy-informational transformations—enabling us to see the particular roles
performed by methods of problem structuring, monitoring, evaluation, forecasting,
and prescription. The framework (Figure 1.2) identifies different strategies of policy
analysis: prospective (ex ante) and retrospective (ex post), descriptive and normative,
and problem finding and problem solving. The framework integrates these strategies
of analysis and explains why we have defined policy analysis as a problem-solving
discipline that links social science theories, methods, and substantive findings to solve
practical problems.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

Etextbook 978 0205252572 Public Policy Analysis

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Etextbook 978 0205252572 Public Policy Analysis

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Etextbook 978 0205252572 Public Policy Analysis

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

eTextbook 978-0205252572 Public

LESSONS FROM PRACTICE

FIGURES FOR ORGANIZING THINKING

1.3 Elements of a Policy Argument 19 C3.2 Pareto Chart—Cumulative Frequency

5.2 Cost-Effectiveness Comparisons Using 6.11 Interrupted Time-Series Graph Displaying

TABLES FOR ORGANIZING THINKING

Preface xvii Case 1.2 The Spreadsheet—Evaluating Benefits and

Part II Methods of Policy Case 3.2 Brainstorming Across Disciplines: The

Demonstration Exercise 181 Demonstration Exercise 240

Ethics and Values in Policy Analysis 310 Classification 352

Modes of Inquiry 394 Case 9.2 Communicating Statistical Analyses to

Chapter Summary 396 The Executive Summary 429

NEW TO THIS EDITION

䊏 Learning objectives. At the beginning of each chapter is an explicit statement

OBSERVED POLICY EXPECTED

The Process of Policy

METHODOLOGY OF POLICY ANALYSIS

problem solvers—often permit conclusions that are more trustworthy and

POLICY ANALYSIS—A MULTIDISCIPLINARY

OBSERVED POLICY EXPECTED

A preferred policy is a potential solution to a problem. To select a preferred policy,

䊏 Problem structuring. Problem-structuring methods are employed to produce

it were, spread throughout the entire situation, infecting it as a whole.”16 Problem

FOUR STRATEGIES OF ANALYSIS

Prospective and Retrospective Analysis

RETROSPECTIVE (ex post): PROSPECTIVE (ex ante):

OBSERVED POLICY EXPECTED

refers to “all studies using scientific methodologies to describe phenomena and/or

䊏 Discipline-oriented analysts. This group, composed mainly of political

impacts of policies. For example, applications-oriented analysts may address

Descriptive and Normative Analysis

Problem Finding and Problem Solving

Segmented and Integrated Analysis

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

You might also like