European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 135

European Policy Analysis

as some kind of meta-level in order to
judge the outcomes and the quality of the
decision-making process itself.

A second reason for the permanent
influence of the stages frame is that it
corresponds to normative democratic
theory and its translation into the major
events, or decision moments, of normal
practices of separation of power under
conditions of representative democracy
and rule of law. For a democratic
separation of powers and division of
labor to function well, and for the nested
system of democratic accountability to
be transparent and work, there ought
to be politically predefined and visible
decisions on issues on the parliamentary
and governmental agenda, when a policyas-design is formally adopted as legally in
force; and subsequent decision moments
on how adopted designs are translated
into administrative decrees, routines,
contracts, or actions by other collective
and private actors in achieving the results
somehow promised and announced in
the formal policy decision (Jann and
Wegrich 2007; Van de Graaf and Hoppe
1996, 90–92).

Joined together as an ideal of
rational-cum-democratic government,
taught and advised by policy scholars,
and continuously mimicked and applied,
in earnest or “tongue in cheek”, by policy
practitioners, we get the stages heuristic as
a sacred enacted story told in justification
of political and administrative power to
citizens and journalists alike. In policy
studies, we see a lot of research in the
authoritative and instrument choice
paradigm that supports the rational
democracy sacred story of reforms in
policy practice. We limit ourselves here to
just two examples.

First, under the spur of the

revival of evidence-based policymaking
(e.g., Bogenschneider and Corbett
2010), policy scholars have rediscovered
empirical research into how skillful
“rational” civil servants in policymaking
jobs actually are. Apart from the ability
to think in terms of clear and distinct
ideas, these “hard” skills require the
conventional good writing skills, but
these days information technology skills
are also required. Since policy analysts
work in “real-time” and time pressure
is always present, to be able to work onthe-fly, crisply, quickly, and timely also
is a required skill. Large-N surveys are
used to establish to what extent and how
sophisticated these civil servants are
in applying the typical policy analytic
textbook methods and techniques (good
overview in Kohoutek 2013). The results
of such research morph into reforms for
improved human resource management,
professional education, and ultimately,
hopefully improved state competence
and capacity. And here a third advantage
of the stages heuristic kicks in: it has the
benefit of being easily teachable as a kind
of “prototype” or “reference design” (like
in architecture) of how policy studies
understand their own subject. Other
approaches are taught essentially as
(sometimes necessary) “deviations” from
this prototype.

Second, and probably much more
influential, there is a true outpouring
of comparative studies that measure
and standardize all (un)desirable
qualities—like rule-of-law, corruption,
crime rate, public health, sustainability,
sustainable governance, and so on—
of modern, (neo)liberal, democratic,
capitalist, and innovative states. Using
such measurements—all crude or more
sophisticated translations of key concepts

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