Politics: The Basics, 4th Edition

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manual jobs (or are unemployed) and live in Lancashire or Scotland,
see as in the same category.
Similarly the ‘same’ problem may be understood in radically
different terms from different perspectives. Thus the existence of
increasing numbers of young unmarried mothers can be seen
primarily as a symptom of Britain’s moral decline; as a serious threat
to the social security budget; as a consequence of the failure of sex
education; or as a symptom of the emergence of a deprived underclass
on Britain’s former council estates. Alternatively it may not be
regarded as a problem at all – but merely a consequence of changing
individual moral choices. Indeed some would see the phenomena as a
welcome sign of inevitable progress toward the extinction of the
bourgeois/patriarchal family.
Hence, too, a ‘solution’ is an equally contentious matter. In our
example, does this mean no more premarital sex; fathers supporting
financially all their biological children; no more ‘unprotected’ pre-
marital sex; full employment and community renewal in deprived
areas; or abandoning the expectation that all children are brought up
in two-parent families? The terminology of ‘problem’ and ‘solution’,
as de Jouvenal (1963) points out, may also be introducing a mis-
leading mathematical analogy – that reasoning will lead us to a
unique resolution of a defined problem. One might more sensibly
speak of managing a situation.
Further consideration of this ‘problem’ will make clear another vital
point about the nature of policy making. We can see that the same
problem has been seen through different ideological spectacles in the
example (moral majority, ‘Thatcherite’, liberal, socialist, feminist). It
is also clear that different perspectives are also to some extent a
question of from whose eyes we are looking: the moralising detached
observer, the taxpayer, a sympathetic outsider, the mothers, fathers
or children concerned, fellow residents of ‘sink’ estates, etc. In short,
political conflicts are as much about the interests of groups of people as
they are about power struggles, ideas or social management.

The choice of social decision-making mechanisms


Not every social problem is perceived as a public policy problem.
Choices may be left to be resolved through the market mechanism, or

210 POLICIES

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