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Terra Incognito Australis: A Search for New Directions in Comparative Public Policy Analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Francis G. Castles
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I DECIDED TO ENTITLE THIS ESSAY ‘TERRA INCOGNITA Australis’ — a rubric appropriate for more than one reason, as will become apparent later — since, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that what we profess to know concerning the determinants of public policy outcomes has much the same epistemological status as the shapes that appeared in the Southern Hemisphere of sixteenth-century cartographers. The objective of the essay is to substantiate this charge in respect of the prevailing explanatory parad’ ms which inform as to the best way to proceed to give some more definition to the map in future. The charge is a serious one insofar as comparative public policy analysis is currently a boom area in political science. I could be accused of attempting to create a ghost town before the shafts are driven deep enough to hit ‘pay dirt’, but I can only claim that this is not my intention. I have been working in the area which is currently described as comparative public policy for more than a decade now and the explanatory paradigms I criticize are ones to which I have variously subscribed over the years. Since I believe that there is valuable ore to be found, and found in roughly the area in which we are looking for it, I would argue that criticism and redefinition of paradigms are useful tasks, since they improve our eventual chances of hitting a lode-bearing seam.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1985 , pp. 370 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1985

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References

1 This research was in part funded by the Nuffield Foundation and I wish to acknowledge this invaluable support.

2 Castles, F. G., The Social Democratic Image of Society, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978 Google Scholar.

3 For a summary of the major hypotheses in the field, see Castles, F. G. (ed.), The Impact of Parties, London, Sage Publications, 1982, ch. 2Google Scholar.

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6 See Altvater, E., ‘Notes on Some Problems of State Interventionism’. Kapitaktate, 2, 3, 1972 Google Scholar; Offe, C., ‘Advanced Capitalism and the Welfare State’, Politics and Society, 2, 1972 Google Scholar; and O’Connor, J., The Fiscal Crisis of the State, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1973 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 Schmidt, M., ‘The Role of Parties in Shaping Macroeconomic Policy’, in Castles, F. G. (ed.), op cit., 1982, p. 104 Google Scholar.

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13 Castles, F. G., (ed.), op cit., pp. 9–11 Google Scholar.

14 See, for example, Tufte, E., Political Control of the Economy, Princeton University Press; 1978 Google Scholar; Stephens, J., The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, London, Macrnillan, 1979 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Castles, F. G. (ed.), op cit.; Flora, P. and Heidenheimer, A. J. (eds), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, New Brunswick and London, Transaction Books, 1981 Google Scholar.

15 See Borg, S. and Castles, F. G., ‘The Influence of the Political Right on Public Income Maintenance Expenditure and Equality’, Political Studies, 1981 Google Scholar.

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18 Castles, F. G., (ed.), op cit., p. 42 Google Scholar.

19 See Roberts, G., ‘The explanation of politics: comparison, strategy and theory’, in Lewis, Paul et al, The Practice of Comparative Politics, London, Longman, 1978, p. 294 Google Scholar.

20 F. G. Castles, (ed.), op cit.

21 Much the best work in establishing the existence of conjunctural patterns in respect of both welfare and various aspects of macroeconomic policy has been undertaken by Manfred Schmidt of the Free University of Berlin. See, for instance, Schmidt, M., ‘The Welfare State and the Economy in Periods of Economic Crisis’, European Journal of Political Research, Volume 11 number 1, 1983, pp. 1—26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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