REVISED: July 29, 1996
PRINTED: November 21, 2005
REF: ART\ESNDM
(approx 2300 words)
DRAFT
Prepared for the annual meeting of xx. Comments welcome. I would like to thank Prof. Clarence N. Stone xx for their assistance, encouragement and/or intelligent commentary. The author remains solely responsible for such errors as remain.
Bachrach & Baratz's (1962) concept of "nondecision- making" has long been a subject of theoretical controversy. Some theorists hold that it is not an empirical concept at all, claiming it cannot be tested even in principle against observable data. Other theorists claim that it can be tested empirically. In this paper I argue that nondecision- making is a real phenomenon, but that empirical evidence alone cannot distinguish between the alternative hypotheses, "This policy option was suppressed by a nondecision-making process" and "Why should such a foolish option be considered at all?" Such alternatives differ in their normative content, not the empirical facts they adduce, so in this sense the empirical study of non-decisionmaking does require a normative position.
Bachrach & Baratz's (1962) concept of "non-decisionmaking" has long been a subject of theoretical controversy. Some theorists hold that it is not an empirical concept at all, claiming it cannot be tested even in principle against observable data. [xx Discuss theorists here.] Other theorists claim that it can be tested empirically [xx Discuss examples here: Stone, 1982, at least], and have attempted to do so [xx Discuss examples here: Parenti (1970) & Crenson (1971), at least]. In this paper I argue that non-decisionmaking is a real phenomenon, but that empirical evidence alone cannot distinguish between the alternative hypotheses, "This policy option was suppressed by a non-decisionmaking process" and "Why should such a foolish option be considered at all?" Such alternatives differ in their normative content, not the empirical facts they adduce, so in this sense the empirical study of non-decisionmaking does require a normative position. In this paper I propose to ignore the details of data- gathering: questions of method, access, bias, reliability, and observer effect will not be my concern. Instead, I will examine the basic logical form that any study of nondecision-making must take. Further, in this paper I will give little attention to the theories surrounding how nondecision-making occurs. Stone (1982) lays out three different "levels" at which policy options can be dismissed, some more visible than others. Wright (19xx) outlines a specifically Marxian set of forces producing class oppression. It is intellectually interesting and certainly empirically important to specify such mechanisms, but I am not concerned with them here. Even though the researcher must employ different methods and different forms of evidence to observe the different levels and processes of nondecision-making, as Stone (1982) points out, the basic logical structure of the argument remains constant. I have referred a couple of times to the basic logical structure of the argument, and it is time to say what that is. All proofs of the existence of a nondecision-making process build upon the statement, "A nondecision-making process must be in operation in this situation because such- and-such a policy option was not raised [or put on the public agenda, or passed once it was on the public agenda], and it should have been." It is important to note that the first section of the argument alone would not be sufficient proof that an ndmp ["nondecision-making process"] was operating, because a critic could easily reply that the given policy option was not raised simply because it was a stupid idea. Radicals are not perturbed that some policy options are excluded from debate and adoption but that a certain type of reasonable policy option is excluded. This type of option is defined not empirically, however, but normatively. The claim is, "A group of reasonable policy options [for example, those which attempt to alter the system by which the owning class dominates the working class] are systematically excluded from debate (and even more so from adoption) through ndmp's." Empirical research is undoubtedly capable of assessing whether any specific policy option has been subject to a ndmp. But falsification of the hypothesis requires an assessment of whether the policy option examined is a member of the group identified -- in particular, whether it is reasonable. As Ricci (1971: Chapter 11) noted years ago, the debate over ndm has been an odd one, considering how long it has continued and how much research has been advanced on either side. Ricci sees the question "Is the United States democratic or not?" as the root of the difficulty. First, it produces a "logic of polemical disputation", in which opponents (mis-)label one another's positions and thereby refuse to look at the others' evidence and arguments. Second, the all-encompassing sweep of the question produces contradictory results, since the United States can be found to be democratic in some arenas and not in others. In my view, however, the problem lies with an unacknowledged difference in normative perspective. First, pluralists do not acknowledge...
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NOTES
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- Strategic vs. decisional power (Stone, 1982)
- Stone's focus on the exercise of strategic power is interesting & fruitful in many areas, but I think it is ultimately misleading. Certain social systems could be maintained even if people paid no conscious attention to maintaining them. He does note something like this in what he calls "structural conditions" (1982:286), but he focusses on them only as sources of bias, not as sources of power. This is o.k., narrowly speaking, but it misses an impersonal ("no-hands") source of injustice. After all, we can make collective decisions on the structural conditions we permit. Stone seems to concentrate only on those biases stemming from individual decisions. [This may be too glib.]
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[This is a previous abstract I found for a draft article entitled, "Is Normative Evaluation Required in Nondecision Research?":]
Bachrach and Baratz's (1962) concept of non-decision has been criticized [e.g., by Wolfinger (1971)] as empirically nonresearchable, since the contention that a nondecision has been made rests on a normative assertion that certain unconsidered policy alternatives are morally superior to those actually considered. Frey (1971) argues that nondecisions can be studied empirically through use of a properly refined theory of power. This paper makes a series of points. First, it argues that important nondecisions can occur. The conclusion follows that social science MUST come to terms with the phenomenon. Refusal to research nondecisions on the grounds of nonresearchability reveals a philosophical weakness in social science. Ironically, and on by accident, the refusal to research nondecisions constitutes in itself a nondecision. Second, the paper clarifies the nondecision- theory phrase, "fundamental challenges to the existing system", distinguishing FUNDAMENTAL challenges from merely extensive challenges. This clarification is based on a Piagetian understanding of cognitive development, and in particular on Kohlberg's (1981) work on the development of moral reasoning. Third, the paper concludes that nondecision research is possible if one uses a theory of normative evaluation that, as Kohlberg claims of this theory, is both empirically correct and ethically justified. Finally, drawing on Kohlberg and Rawls (1971), the paper attempts to describe the form that "fundamental challenges" U.S. American society take.
I. Community power studies implicitly depend on normative claims
A debate has raged for years over the existence and nature of the power structure of political communities. The debate goes back at least to Marx, who set forth the concept of "false consciousness" and, in The German Ideology, argued: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas; i.e. the class, which is the material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production....
Political Science is, with the partial exception of sociology, uniquely fortunate within the social sciences for having retained within itself a concern with normative questions. Economics, Anthropology, Social Psychology, and to a great extent Sociology have excluded normative questions or, at best, relegated them to the arcane ministrations of Philosophy. Even in Political Science, however, normative questions have become largely the concern of specialists in political theory. The newer fields of social choice theory and positive political theory do not so much create new philosophy as they explicate the consequences of certain normative cum empirical assumptions. Despite this trend, normative questions insist on intruding into nominally objective problems of Political Science. A previous work (Chilton 1988; see also Chilton 1991) pointed out that normative questions had to be answered not only in conceptualizing but also in studying political development. It is the purpose of the present paper to argue that normative questions also must be answered in order to study community power. Let me be more blunt: empirical community power research "always already" raises normative claims that MUST be redeemed, whether early or late, before its "empirical" claims can be accepted. Objective facts can be gathered, but their interpretation inevitably requires normative argument. The demonstration of this proposition is the subject of the first section of the paper. This proposition demonstrates that the traditional, cherished wall between the domains of normative justification and empirical research is illusory. Normative assumptions are implicit in all community power research, and the second part of the paper points out how these assumptions are made, both in so-called "pluralist" and "neo-elitist" work. The separation of normative evaluation from empirical research has seemed desirable for many reasons. First, we do not wish to have a normative orthodoxy imposed on research findings. The example of Lysenko is well understood as the consequence. Nor does this paper advocate in any way a return to such an orthodoxy. Second, we would like to believe that propositions can be proved or rejected by objective evidence--that we have a "court of last resort". It should not be strange to the reader that this belief, already destroyed for the "hard sciences" by Kuhn (19xx), is equally or more untenable in the social sciences.The good news is, however, that there remains a court of last resort to which political scientists can turn--or at least such a court can be created. Such a court involves both normative and empirical discourse, and it is described in the third paper of the paper.
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