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Western Answers and Southeast Asian Questions:Applying the Concept of PolicyH K ColebatchPublished online: 02 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: H K Colebatch (2004) Western Answers and Southeast Asian Questions: Applying the Concept of Policy,Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 26:2, 181-195, DOI: 10.1080/23276665.2004.10779292

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THE ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION VOL 26, NO 2 (DECEMBER 2004) 181-195

Western Answers and Southeast Asian Questions:

Applying the Concept of Policy

H K Colebatch

Policy is a construct in and about the practice of governing, and like other institutions, it is subject to adaptation. This article argues that "policy "is a distinct account of government, distinguishable from other accounts such as "tradition" or "market failure", and identifies the underlying assumptions of the policy account. The contemporary appeal of "policy" can be traced back to reform currents in American government from the post-war years, which gave rise to the emergence of "policy analysis " as a body of knowledge and afield of practice; the article traces the key elements of this "policy project". It goes on to identify the characteristics of government in Southeast Asia, and asks what questions are raised by the application of the concept of policy to the practice and the analysis of government in the region.

Introduction

Government is a construct, assembled from the knowledge and skills of the people who make it work. They draw primarily on existing practice and the shared understandings on which it rests, but they also draw on practice in other systems, or proposals yet to be adopted, in shaping the pattern of government. "Policy" is a concept that has become central in explanations of government, in the Southeast Asian region as in the industrialised West, but the practices and the understandings about government which are to be found in the Western societies where the term originated are very different to those to be found in the region. So it is appropriate to ask what these are, to what extent they apply in this area, and what questions this raises for the meaning of policy in Southeast Asia.

The adoption of governmental practices and institutions from other systems is, of course, part of normal practice. In 1348 the ruler of Brunei, Alek Beta tar, adopted the Islamic religion and became Sultan Muhammad Shah, the first Sultan of Brunei. In Malaysia, parliamentary institutions were adopted from British models as part of the process of decolonisation, but in Thailand they were adopted without colonial rule. In Vietnam, rule by and through a dominant Communist Party was adopted from Soviet models through a long process of armed struggle. But in most cases, the adopted institutions were also adapted — that is, they were not simple replicas of foreign practices, but took on a distinct local character (Larmour 2002).

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This is because institutions of government are not pieces of machinery, but patterns of social practice which reflect existing practices and organisational forms, and also the shared understandings and values of the people who are doing the adopting. Decolonising metropolitan powers found that institutions like parliaments or political parties or trade unions did not "work" in their colonies and ex-colonies in the way they were "supposed to" (ie in the way that they were believed to operate "at home"). Later, development assistance agencies found that credit unions, or marketing cooperatives, or even business owners, did not operate as expected. They were simply discovering the fact that all institutions are grounded in the knowledge and practices of the people who work through them — that is, they are socially-constructed (see Berger & Luckman 1975; March & Olsen 1989; Scott 1995).

So it is appropriate to ask questions about the social context of policy as a political institution, both in the .countries where the concept originated and those which have adopted it. Policy is now a central element in contemporary accounts of government, both in Western liberal democracies and in Southeast Asia. Over a wide range of concerns, there are statements of policy. There are also officials with responsibility for policy, courses and training activities devoted to improving policy understanding and skills, and international conferences for the development and coordination of policy in particular fields of concern. There is no doubt about the importance attached to "policy".

What is open to question, though, is what the concept means as part of the governmental process — and here, there are clearly cultural factors at play, though these are rarely explored. The British distinguish between "politics" and "policy", but other Europeans do not (Heidenheimer 1986). For many American scholars, legislative endorsement is an essential element of policy. In all of these cases, there is an underlying assumption that the direction of government is in principle contestable, and that existing policy can be countered with alternative policies; the policy analysis textbooks give instructions about how these alternatives might be systematically compared. And the (principally American) texts present as general principles the policy process as it is seen in America.

This is why these accounts of policy often seem inadequate in the Southeast Asian context. The texts seem to be concerned with a world which bears little resemblance to the governmental process as it is experienced in Southeast Asia. This calls for an investigation mto the socio-political context in which the policy literature originated, and a consideration of the way in which the "policy project" has been, and could be, applied in a Southeast Asian context. It is to these questions that this article is addressed.

Policy as an Account of Government

Policy is a term on which there is a broadly-shared understanding, though

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there is no agreed definition (see Parsons 1995; Colebatch 2002). Rather than seeking to impose a definition of our own, it is more fruitful to see policy as a parhcular account of government, and identify what is distinctive about this account. Government rests on accounts that both practitioners and subjects recognise, and "policy" takes its place alongside other accounts, all of which continue to have some force; these other accounts explain government in terms of:

Order: This is a traditional concern of political philosophy, seeing government as essentially about maintaining order, with the argument over coercion (Hobbes) or consent (Locke) as the basis for social order; the continuing relevance of this debate can be seen in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tradition: Government is explained in terms of the maintenance of a customary regime; this account has been less noticeable in the West in recent years (though it appears to be becoming more significant in Russia following the break-up of the USSR), but it remains important in a number of countries in Southeast Asia.

Collective action problems: For liberal social theory, government is an exception in a world of individual exchanges, and economists in particular have constructed accounts which explain government as a response to problems of social order which cannot be resolved through individual exchange — "market failure".

Distribution and redistribution: Some accounts see government as a vehicle for redistributing wealth from richer to poorer (the "welfare state" of late 20th century Europe). The redistributive element of this account has become less prominent in recent years than the distributive element, (though obviously any distribution is a redistribution) but the account of government as a distributor of benefits remains strong, particularly in Southeast Asia. In this context, the basis for distribution becomes an important element in the account: are the benefits being distributed to those who need them? This raises questions about the determination of need, and the consistency and impartiality of the response.

Inertia: This is an account of government as an administrative machine which operates as it has always done, and finds it very difficult either to start a new activity or to discontinue an existing one; it is usually only mobilised as a critique — and it is, in effect, the down-side of the generally-approved perception of government as a way of routinising problems — but it is an account which is widely recognised.

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In this context, "policy" is an account of government as the systematic pursuit of authorised objectives. It stresses outcomes over process, and consistency over discretion. Policy is seen as the selection, announcement and execution of objectives. It is a counter to a focus on process (doing things by the correct procedure, even if nothing is achieved) and to a toleration of randomness or partiality (doing things for some people but not for others). It is an account of the controlled, systematic and effective application of public authority.

It is an account which also stresses authoritative choice — policy is the result of choices by "the policymakers" — and distinguishes these choices ("policy") from their execution ("administration"). This is a well-established distinction in political science, and implies that the operational elements of government are simply dependencies of the policy-makers, existing only to give effect to their choices.

Policy as a Reform Project

The term "policy" has a long history, but has achieved a particular salience in the analysis of government since the 1950s, when we can identify the beginning of a major reform initiative in government which is some times referred to as "the policy project". Predominantly American, this approach rested on a Western, liberal-democratic mind-set containing a number of key values:

Contestability: Anything in government is contestable. All activities can be changed, agencies can be abolished or superseded, the values underlying programs can be challenged — and ultimately, the people in charge can be changed, through a regular process of elections which acts to sharpen differences over policy and the possibility of choice.

Public space: What government does is of public interest, and is open to scrutiny in the media, and to challenge from organised interests and from ordinary people. Policy alternatives should be articulated and discussed in public forums.

The utilitarian calculus: As Jenkins-Smith (1990) pointed out, policy analysis tended to rest on Jeremy Bentham's assumption that the ultimate objective of government was to bring the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people, and has concerned itself with how to work out which course of action would do this.

Electoral validation: Since the activities of government are contestable, a device is needed to determine contests, and elected representatives are seen as the ultimate source of validation. Elections are seen as contests over policy

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alternatives, and their outcomes as determining the future course of government.

The "policy project" can be traced back to the expansion of governmental activity in the US during World War II, and the belief that linking the expertise of the social sciences to the power of government would maximise social progress (see Lasswell 1951). It reflected the structural characteristics of American government, where the Federal government had the money but little ability to act directly, and therefore preferred to act through grants to other levels of government, and to non-governmental bodies.

In this context, Lasswell called for an applied social science in which social scientists would assist authorised leaders to determine the objectives of government, identify alternative means of reaching these objectives, devise techniques for systematically comparing the efficacy of these alternatives, advise on the choice of means, and evaluate the effectiveness of the means chosen in relation, to the declared objectives. It was a formulation based on a model of individual behaviour as calculative, sequential utility-maximisation, but applied to an extended organisational formation called "government". It generated an array of routines for defining problems and identifying programs of activity for dealing with them. The programs had their own stages, with measurements which could be taken as indicators of performance. These provided opportunities to bring in the social scientists to verify performance and act as agents of central control — eg, when a central government agency required independent evaluation as a condition of making a grant. This in turn led to the emergence of "evaluation" as a distinct field in the social sciences, with its own association, conferences and journals.

This approach was seen as having the capacity to draw together into one framework the diverse array of authorities and levels that make up "government". By articulating (for instance) a national policy on youth homelessness, it would draw together the range of activities bearing on the problem — of housing authorities, social workers, schools, police, local government, non-government welfare agencies, and others — and provide a vehicle for them to complement one another. It did provide an opportunity for this sort of integration, but of course it did not supersede the other concerns of these agencies: police continued to be concerned with combating crime, local government with the management of the local area, housing authorities with building accommodation and putting people into it, and schools with moving young people through a hierarchy of educational processes.

Analysts noted, though, that a more potent force for integration was the links that were developed among the diverse participants in the various fields of policy concern — the "policy community", as Richardson and Jordan (1979) tagged it. Policy participants recognised that there were a number of players in the game, that they were in it for different reasons, but that they

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all shared an understanding of the problem, a way of talking about it, and a commitment to recognising the legitimacy of the other players' participation. Hjern and Porter (1981) argued that these links were so strong that they could be seen as making up an organisational form in their own right — an "implementation structure" — built upon the shared commitment to the program whose implementation they were promoting.

In any case, "policy" became strongly institutionalised within government — in the titles of sections and officials, in the practices of governmental organization, and in the discourse of participants, inside government and in the wider community. Whether the rest of the aspirations of the "policy project" were achieved was another question. There was a great deal of money spent on applied social science research on policy, but the researchers consistently complained that their research had little impact on the outcome, even if it might be cited in support of courses of action which had been decided for othejq reasons (see Weiss 1991). In the same way, it was asked to what extent this policy activity was driving government agencies, as opposed to being a by-product of the institutional dynamic. And if was not clear whether (or even how we could tell) that government was more effective as a result of this intensive contemplation of intentions.

Characteristics of Government in the Southeast Asian Region

The map of government in Southeast Asia looks rather different to that which the promoters of the "policy project" might have assumed. There are significant differences between the different polities of the region, but it can be argued that as a group, they have more in common with one another than they do with the Western liberal democratic regimes which spawned the policy project. For a start, the governmental process in South-East Asia does not necessarily start with elected governments. There may be elections, and they may be significant, but government operates through an array of bureaucratic structures. Riggs (1966) described Thailand as a "bureaucratic polity", in which the dynamic of the governmental process was the relationships among the various bureaucratic bodies, and between these bodies and the military (and on occasions, the politicians). The traditional dominance of officials had been reinforced by the colonial impact (in those countries which had been subject to colonial rule), and was in most cases sustained in the post-colonial period. Endorsement of governments through popular elections is becoming more common, but the elections are an accompanying feature of government rather than a major source of ideas.

But the bureaucracy is not a single structure of authority: rather, separate structures have been established, often built around particular technically-defined skills: engineering, medical care, accounting, etc. The extent to which these distinct bodies form a whole, or could be seen as sharing a single set of objectives — that is, the extent to which they make up an entity called

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"the government" — is open to question. They each have their own agendas, they approach government in terms of their own experiences, and they are prone to view other agencies as potential rivals and competitors. And different agencies tend to have command over particular areas of practice, to be able to define what may or may not be done, and in this ways, to thwart the projects of other agencies. This is not, of course, unique to Southeast Asia (see, for instance, Allison 1971), but it is not the image of government in the texts of the policy project.

In particular, the armed forces are likely to play a significant and autonomous role in government. Again, there are significant differences between the different states in the region, but in most cases, the armed forces have played a significant role in the political history of the country and do not see themselves simply as a defence against attack from outside, subject to the directions of the civilian government. In some cases, the military have been directly involved in business. In all cases, a military career is a secure and influential form of bureaucratic employment, sometimes with opportunities for profitable sidelines. In a way, the military are a particular case of the autonomous public agency — with the distinction that they have the capacity to obstruct and even to remove the government by force of arms.

Government in Southeast Asia is also characterised as "elitist". To varying degrees, these societies are characterised by wide disparities of wealth and opportunity, with one end of the spectrum populated by landless peasants and the urban poor, for whom it is all they can do to survive, and at the other, super-affluent families with palatial houses in the capital and investments and student children abroad. And there is a strongly-hereditary element in this differentiation: the senior official is much more likely to be the son of a senior official than of a poor peasant. In this way, government reflects, and reproduces, the existing social structure.

Government is also highly regulatory, being extensively involved in controlling access to opportunities. At the macro level, this means that profitable opportunities — eg, the right to import or sell sought after goods and commodities — are given out to well-connected individuals — "crony capitalism". At the micro level, it means that the need to obtain the approval of some official becomes a central part of ordinary life — "Permit Raj', as Indians call it.

The institutions of representative government — parties, parliaments and elections — are present in most Southeast Asian countries, but their significance varies, and nowhere do they have the significance that they have in the polities where the policy project originated. They were often added to the bureaucratic structure of government as part of the decolonisation process. Even in Thailand, where parliamentary institutions were introduced in a revolt against the absolutist monarchy in 1932, the rhetoric of constitutionalism was used not to introduce democratic

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participation in government, but to legitimate "a polity that would rule on behalf of the bureaucracy" (Riggs 1966: 312), and the military "frequently intervened in the political process, regularly staging coups and rewriting constitutions before allowing parliamentary governments to resume" (McCargo 1998: 137). A change of government as a result of a contested election is almost unknown at the national level, and even in the states where parliamentary institutions are best established, the dominant party (which has held power since independence) commonly uses its command of the police, the legislative process and the courts to marginalise the opposition.

The governmental process, then, is seen as an official activity, not one involving the citizens. Citizens may make appeal to "the authorities", but what is done in response is outside their field of view. There are few organizations outside the official circle that are accepted as legitimate participants in discourse about how public authority might be deployed. Blunt (1988), drawing on research by Hofstede (1980), identified "power distance" as a major cultural value in Brunei: the perception that there is a great distance between ordinary people and those in a position to influence what is done in government. As a consequence, ordinary people (or even officials without any direct responsibility) do not see it as being either relevant or appropriate for them to have views on what government might do. As one military officer in the region put it "We don't really have public opinion in [this country]". Elections (where they are held) are not an occasion for seeking popular endorsement of policy options, but for mobilising support for particular leaders and factions.

But while government is, in this sense, relatively insulated from public opinion, national governments are part of wider patterns of governing, which include both organisational arrangements and expectations about the alignment of activities. All the countries of the region are part of the ASEAN grouping; they are all affiliated with specialist international agencies like the World Health Organisation. Most countries have relationships with aid agencies — of national governments, multilateral bodies like UNDP, or non government organizations. All of these links set up organised relationships between national governments and other audiences, and give rise to calls for these governments to articulate purposes, and to described their activities in particular fields in relation to these purposes — that is, to make statements about "policy". The recent outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) led to a keenly-felt desire for the region to be acting in concert, and calls to the establishment of region-wide governmental bodies in relation to disease transmission.

Questions for the Policy Project

The region, then, has its own distinctive pattern of government, and one

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which cannot be adequately depicted as "policy-makers" seeking to solve "problems". The "policy project" — that is, framing government as the formulation and implementation of authorised plans — should be seen as a reform agenda, an attempt to shift the focus of attention in government. The first question, then, is "whose agenda is this?" To what extent do the moves come from aid donors, for instance, as opposed to "internal" reformers? The next question might be "how do these particular characteristics of government in Southeast Asia affect the application of 'the policy project' there?" We can address this under three headings: where would it be focused; who would be a participant; what would it be producing?

Where Would it be Focused?

(a) The government. Underlying most discussion of policy is an implicit assumption of hierarchy: that policy is ultimately the reflection of choices taken at the top by "the government". It follows from this that policy work is appropriately located at or near the top of the structure of government: it is "advising the Prince". The policy function is implicitly about central control: it is concerned with asserting central purpose over the specialised and partial agendas of operational agencies — the "whole of government" view, as Australian central agencies like to put it. This was the rationale for setting up policy units such as the UK Central Policy Review Staff, to advise the government as a whole rather than individual ministers (see Blackstone and Plowden 1988). This has some appeal in British perceptions of government, but there seems to have been no comparable initiative in the US government, where government is recognised to consist of multiple and overlapping organizations, and the idea of a central place for policy thinking holds less appeal. In the Southeast Asian context, the question is to what extent such a central place would be possible, and whether it would be significant: could it operate to strengthen a shared understanding about the nature of the task? Here, the answer is likely to vary in different countries in the region.

(b) The agency. Alternatively, the policy function can be seen as being essentially one for specific organizations rather than for the government as a whole. Traditionally, policy is seen as being about internal control, through the articulation and enforcement of "standard operating procedures" (Allison 1971). But it has also been an instrument for some reformers, who saw an explicit concern for policy as being the vehicle for asserting political control over the bureaucracy, and for focusing on the outcomes of government activity rather than on process. Wilenski, for instance, argued to policy units reporting directly to the (elected) minister as a counter to the technocratic inertia of officialdom (RNSWGA1979). In this perspective, policy is seen as

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a "staff" function, carried out by a policy unit located close to the CEO of the organization — "advising the Prince" at the organizational level. More prosaically, this can mean that it becomes another specialised function, with a Policy and Planning Branch taking its place alongside Finance, Human Resources, Corporate Services, etc., and focusing its attention on the production of documents — reports, evaluations and discussion papers as well as formal statements of policy. The question is what significance these documents have - within the organization and outside it.

While we can see policy as an internal control function within the agency, it is also a function of the operational level, as working officials and the people they deal with seek to normalise practice through the development of shared expectations and the codification of these as "policy". How, for instance, do officials dealing with housing provision manage the application process? What factors are taken into account, and how are they to be established? This is what Barrett and Fudge (1980) termed the "bottom-up" perspective (as compared to the "top-down" perspective which permeates the "whole of government" or "organisational" approaches to locating the policy function). Here, policy is not a statement of objectives to be attained, but a codification of standard operating procedure; both reflect the underlying values of the practitioners concerned, but they are expressed in different ways. In the political culture of the US, for instance, policies which are statements about standard practice can be important as a way of protecting the official against appeal to the courts, demonstrating that the case in question was properly handled. The question in Southeast Asia is whether the standardisation of practice is valued — by officials, by applicants, or by those to whom they may appeal, such as ministers or courts. Again, this is a very specific empirical question.

(c) Cross-agency. All of these approaches have been cast in what has been called the "vertical" dimension of policy (Colebatch 2002:24). Whether "top-down" or "bottom-up", they see the policy process in terms of the dynamics of a hierarchic relationship. It is argued (Colebatch 2002: 24) that there is also a "horizontal" dimension to policy, encompassing a wide range of structured interaction between participants who may not stand in a hierarchical relationship to one another (or if they do, do not wish to appeal to hierarchy to overcome conflict). This is consistent with the experience of policy workers that they spend much of their time not analysing or planning, but finding out what other participants are doing or thinking and relating it to their own activities. Radin, in her study of the development of "policy analysis" as a specialist occupation in the US (Radin 2000), found that while policy analysis had initially been seen as an attempt to settle disputed questions by detached scientific method, it had become the basis of "duelling swords" used by contesting participants. Policy analysts were now clearly part of a particular organization, and analysis was deployed to advance its agenda. The question was how analytical techniques could be mobilised to

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persuade other participants — that is, policy analysis is about rhetorical construction, or the crafting of good arguments (Majone 1989). It is easy to see this process at work in the US, where the loosely-structured government, the necessity for public persuasion, and the huge supply of similarly-trained "policy analysts", all make for a process of the mobilisation of analytic skills in the construction of a shared rationale for action. What has to be asked in the Southeast Asian context is how much these conditions apply in any particular case. To what extent, for instance, is the interaction between participants mediated by a shared discourse and set of techniques, which can be used to establish a common rationale for action? Is there a need for public argumentation about alternatives? Do participants accept that this is how claims must be presented? Can formal modes of analysis be used to establish a shared rationale?

(d) Policy community. Much of the policy literature of the last couple of decades has been concerned with the collective and interactive nature of the policy process, and the evident importance of participants from outside government. Terms like "policy community", "issue networks" and "policy domains" were coined to describe this important characteristic of policy (see Richardson & Jordan 1979; Heclo 1978; Laumann & Knoke 1987). It became clear that policy work rested on the development of a shared recognition of a field of concern (Haas's "epistemic community") and that on this could be built the organisational forms needed for collective action ("implementation structures") (see Haas 1992; Hjern & Porter 1981). This became particularly important in areas where it was clear that the effectiveness of government initiatives depended on the response of non-bureaucratic actors — industry associations, for instance, or community leaders — and that their participation was an important part of policy­making. Even more broadly, it was recognised that often — eg, population policy-policy was concerned with changing the understanding and the behaviour of ordinary people, and policy work was an exercise in mass mobilisation. To what extent, then, and in what circumstances, do governments in Southeast Asia seek to develop linkages with the "policy community", or seek to mobilise the public in the pursuit of policy agendas?

Who Would be a Participant?

In the "government" framework, policy work is the responsibility of hierarchs and experts: the "decision-makers" and the people who advise them. This was what "policy analysts" saw themselves as doing: providing expert advice for decision-makers. And the expertise was seen as being about the methodology of choice rather than about the subject matter: policy units were distanced from the operational areas so that they would be more impartial (although there was always a tendency for them to become specialised, at least in broad fields like "social policy"). But as has been noted,

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the establishment of central policy units has not been widespread, even in the West, and while in some cases, cabinet secretariats impose some sort of a discipline on policy initiators, most countries do not have a Westminister-style cabinet system. We would have to ask (particularly in Southeast Asia) who would be the bearers of this central concern for "policy", and where would they be located?

In the "agency" perspective, it seems to be more clear-cut, particularly if the agency has a "Policy Branch" or something like it: this would evidently be where "policy work" is done, and there would be officials with titles like "Director of Policy". What sort of person holds this kind of job, what these people do, and what significance it has, is an empirical question, and very much dependent on context. Are they to be knowledgeable about the expertise of the agency, or experts on policy analysis, or skilled communicators and diplomats? Are they addressing themselves to the head of the agency, its operational staff/ or relevant others outside the agency? In each case, it is likely to be some combination of these, but many different combinations are possible.

In the "cross-agency" perspective, perhaps the first question would be what sort of people would be most effective at negotiating policy with other agencies. Does it help to be an expert in the agency's own field — an engineer in the case of the Roads Agency, for instance? Do professionals from the same field find it easier to work together (but perhaps less easy to work with non-professionals)? Is it important to know the other side's expertise, so a social welfare agency might hire economists to negotiate with the finance ministry? But the second question — perhaps particularly in Southeast Asia — is whether this is seen as an important policy function. Traditions of agency autonomy are well established, and there may be little interest in actively promoting strong links with other agencies, which might be seen to compromise autonomy.

In the "policy community" framework, policy participants tend to select themselves, by virtue of their knowledge or their position. Richardson and Jordan (1979) saw the "policy community" as consisting of those who could expect to be consulted — representatives of organised stakeholders, inside and outside of government. Haas (1992) saw it as an "epistemic community", linked by a shared understanding of the problem. Some participants are there because they cannot be left out — eg, teachers' unions and the education policy community. The more difficult question is how to reach the unorganised, such as public transport users, hospital patients, or peasant farmers. In some cases there may be an organisation (eg, a "Consumers' Association") speaking for some unorganised category, but it may not really be speaking to them (though not for want of trying). And in the Southeast Asian case, "civic organising" is less likely than in the urban West to flow through such formal organizations, and the existence or the extent of a 'policy community' may be more difficult to discern.

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What Would it be Producing?

Finally, we need to ask what would be the product of policy activity: what would it be generating? In the Western policy literature, this question is usually self-evident: policy work produces policies, which are seen as statements of authorised goals (or perhaps of practice), while policy analysis is seen as the generation of data on policy problems and options for addressing them. This tends to be (at one level, anyway) the self-presentation of the "government" perspective: that policy work has to do with the making of authoritative choices and giving central direction to the government as a whole. This is linked to the role of the centre in representing the nation to the outside world. For instance, it might be possible in terms of domestic policy for one government agency to be supporting tobacco-growing while another is seeking to reduce smoking, but it is difficult to justify this to the World Health Organization. At this level, consistency among policies tends to be highly valued, but here again, it depends on the context: some regimes are more concerned about consistency than others (and not necessarily those most concerned about control).

In the agency perspective, the desired product is similar, but on a smaller scale: consistency and responsiveness to central direction, demonstrating that the organization is being well-steered. The output is likely to include formal statements of intentions or values, and more specifically, definitions of standard practice, showing that the agency is a "tight ship". Formal research methods ("policy analysis") may be used to evaluate activities, both as a means of internal control and as a demonstration to outside audiences of the integrity and effectiveness of the agency.

In the inter-agency perspective, however, the object of the activity is bureaucratic coordination — that is, the pursuit of consistency across organizations. There maybe comprehensive statements emerging from this (eg, "national policies" on homelessness or IT skills), but much of the activity will be concerned with the attempt by one agency to have the particular policy positions of other agencies amended to make them more consistent with those of the first agency — Lindblom's "partisan mutual adjustment". The question is what vehicles exist for this activity, and how important it is in any specific context — which country or policy field is under consideration.

In the "policy community" perspective, policy activity is also aimed at generating consistency, not only between particular agencies, but among a wider band of stakeholders, inside and outside of government. The aim is less a single statement, and more a shared understanding of the problem to be addressed, the participants who are entitled to be heard, and where this will happen. The more ambitious the policy outreach — eg, to health service consumers rather than organised stakeholders — the less likely it is that there will be a document to point to, and the more participants will look for changes in broadly-shared understandings and practices. Here again, there

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are likely to be great differences between countries, and between different policy sectors. It is widely noted that European countries are much more likely to develop strongly-linked policy communities than is the case in the US, and that "production" (eg, industry sectors) is likely to be more highly organised that "consumption" (eg, health and welfare). In Southeast Asia, the differences between countries and sectors are likely to be even more marked, and to reflect not only local characteristics, but also the extent to which outside influences — aid agencies, investors, multilateral agencies — bear upon local participants.

Conclusion

This article has concluded with an array of questions rather than a set of statements because very little has been published on this topic. We know very little about how the idea of policy is used in the governing of Southeast Asia. Certainly, it has been adopted as part of the Western-derived package of governmental institutions, but this does not mean that it will be used in the same way as the West (and in any case, as we have seen, there are wide variations in policy practice among Western countries). The challenge, then, is to start with the right questions, and generate our own answers.

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H K Colebatch is an Associate Professor at the University of Brunei Darussalam.

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