Abstract
Policy dissonance – defined as a discrepancy or lack of harmony between what policy makers say or publish and what they do in terms of finance, regulation, administration, or coercion – is the object of four different political economic literatures: forecasting errors, time inconsistency, electoral pledges, and the partisan cycle hypothesis. This introduction reviews these four literatures. It then proposes two conceptual approaches to the inclusion of speech in political economic explanations – speech as the expression of preferences and speech as a policy tool – to raise the issue of rationality and bounded rationality, the issue of the function of policy speech – information, persuasion, or manipulation – as well as the issue of the tradeoffs between the democratic demand for transparency and the efficiency requirement of secrecy. The introduction concludes with the description of the contribution of each chapter to the understanding of dissonance in policy processes.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For an account, see Howlett and Ramesh 2003: 88–91.
References
Auerbach, A. J. (1999). “On the Performance and Use of Government Revenue Forecasts.” National Tax Journal 52(4): 767–782.
Backus, D. and J. Driffill (1985a). “Inflation and Reputation” The American Economic Review 75(3): 530–538.
Backus, D. and J. Driffill (1985b). “Rational Expectations and Policy Credibility Following a Change in Regime.” The Review of Economic Studies 52(2): 211–221.
Bardach, E. (1980). “Implementation Studies and the Study of Implements.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, August 30–September 1.
Breton, A., G. Galeotti, et al., Eds. (2007). The Economics of Transparency in Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Budge, I. and R. I. Hofferbert (1996). Comparative Textual Analyses of Government and Party Activity: The Work of the Manifesto Research Group. Comparing Government Activity. L. M. Imbeau and R. D. McKinlay. London: Macmillan, 82–100.
Budge, I., H.-D. Klingemann, A. Volkens, and J. Bara (2001). Mapping Policy Preferences, Estimates for Parties, Governments and Electors 1945–1998. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, B. and E. Ghysels (1995). “Federal Budget Projections: A Non Parametric Assessment of Bias and Efficiency.” Review of Economics and Statistics 77: 17–31.
Campbell, B. and E. Ghysels (1997). “An Empirical Analysis of the Canadian Budget Process.” Canadian Journal of Economics 30(3): 553–576.
Cohen, D. and P. Michel (1987). “Théorie et pratique du chômage en France.” Revue économique: 661–675.
Crettez, B. and P. Michel (2001). Cohérence temporelle des politiques macroéconomiques. Dictionnaire des sciences économiques. C. Jessua, C. Labrousse and D. Vitry. Paris, PUF, 155–156.
Dahl, R. A. (1963). Modern Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
David, J.-F. and E. Ghysels (1989). “Y a-t-il des biais systématiques dans les annonces budgétaires canadiennes?” Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques 15(3): 313–321.
Feenberg, D. R., W. Gentry, et al. (1989). “Testing the Rationality of State Revenue Forecasts.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 71(2): 300–308.
Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hood, C. C. (1986). The Tools of Government. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House.
Hood, C. C., and H. Z. Margetts. (2007). The Tools of Government in the Digital Age. Houndsmill: Palgrave.
Howlett, M. and M. Ramesh. (2003). Studying Public Policy: Policy cycles and policy subsystems. Second Edition ed. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press.
Imbeau, L. M. (1996). “Introduction: The Comparative Observation of Government Activity.” In Comparing Government Activity, ed. L. M. Imbeau and R. D. McKinlay. London: Macmillan.
Imbeau, L. M. (2004a). The Political-Economy of Public Deficits. Politics, Institutions, and Fiscal Policy: Deficits and Surpluses in Federated States. M. Imbeau and F. Pétry. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 1–19.
Imbeau, L. M. (2004b). “Public Deficits and Surpluses in Federated States: A Review of the Public Choice Empirical Literature.” Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice 23(3): 123–145.
Imbeau, L. M., F. Pétry, and M. Lamari (2001). “Left-Right Party Ideology and Public Policy: A Meta-analysis.” European Journal of Political Research 40(1): 1–29.
Klingemann, H.-D., R. I. Hofferbert, and I. Budge (1994). Parties, Policies, and Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Kydland, F. E. and E. C. Prescott (1977). “Rules rather than discretion: The inconsistency of optimal plans.” Journal of Political Economy 85(3): 473–492.
Laver, M., K. Benoit, et al. (2003). “Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data.” American Political Science Review 97(2): 311–331.
Mocan, H. N. and S. Azad (1995). “Accuracy and Rationality of State General Fund Revenue Forecasts: Evidence from Panel Data.” International Journal of Forecasting 11: 417–427.
Ohlsson, H. and A. Vredin (1996). “Political Cycles and Cyclical Policies.” Scandinavian Journal of Economics 98 (2):203–218.
Oudiz, G. and J. Sachs (1984). International policy coordination in dynamic macroeconomic models. International Economic Policy Coordination. W. Buiter and W. Marston, Cambridge University Press.
Paleolougou, S. M. (2005). “Political Manoeuvrings as Source of Measurement Errors in Forecasts.” Journal of Forecasting 24: (311–324):311.
Rider, M. (2002). “A History of Revenue Forecasts.” Public Finance and Management 2(3): 470–487.
Riker, W. H. (1986). The Art of Manipulation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Rubin, I. S. (1987). “Estimated and Actual Urban Revenues: Exploring the Gap.” Public Budgeting and Finance 7:83–94.
Salamon, L. M. (1981). “Rethinking Public Management: Third-Party Government and the Changing Forms of Government Action.” Public Policy 29 (3):255–275.
Salamon, L. M., Ed. (2002). The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Imbeau, L.M. (2009). Dissonance in Policy Processes: An Introduction. In: Imbeau, L. (eds) Do They Walk Like They Talk?. Studies in Public Choice, vol 15. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89672-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89672-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-89671-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-89672-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)