Although public policy is a relatively new discipline in the academic discourse, it has attracted the keen attention of politicians, bureaucrats, economists, businessmen, and civil society organizations because of its diverse nature and complexities.
Probably this is the only subject that does not deal with one or two single issues rather it deals with every issue pertaining to human beings not only of a particular state but also beyond one country’s geographical location.
For example, the Ukraine crisis is not only an issue of two countries or even extended to Europe and the USA, but the whole world is experiencing unintended (also intended) consequences and every country is enacting new public policies, reforming the old ones, and evaluating the existing one as well to meet the demand of time.
Governments across the world have undertaken policy interventions to handle food shortages, inflation, oil price, reserve crisis, and so on. In the end government in power is responsible to encounter social, economic, cultural and security affairs by formulating public policies.
The ubiquitous nature of public policy signifies the importance of studying it rigorously, analyzing critically and adopting sustainably. However, understanding every aspect of public policy making is not simple math to generate a neutral statement that suitably fits all.
Impaired thinking, which is because of cognitive limits, dwindles the intelligence of policy making because each individual is less capable of playing their role in interaction at every stage of the policy process.
The Policymaking process usually starts with the problem. The problem of a particular issue to be dealt with in the public policy intervention is also problematic since the problem is a social phenomenon influenced by other multiple factors.
Moreover, the capacity of the human mind for finding out solutions is found small likening to the size of the problem and the entire environment.
Herbert Simon notes that the complex problem requires objectively rational behavior in the real world or even a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality, which is nearly impossible.
This impossibility is the cognitive limits of human beings, of policy analysts in particular. Because of the cognitive restraints, involved people in the policymaking turn up with the summary statement based on available recourses and understood known methods only.
As a result, even the best analyst could come up only with inconclusive estimates that might turn out to be misleading.
Additionally, people in power could hardly try to keep others on board or think others were more capable compared to them. If the policymakers are intellectually a superior group, their underestimation of the process and possibilities impairs not only their thinking but also produces crippled output.
Researchers found that there is a deep and persistent unwillingness and unacceptability of different opinions in the South Asian culture to acknowledge the difficulties arising from the world’s complexity and humans’ modest cognitive abilities.
As a result, multi-dimensional attempts to understand social problems and solutions to those often go awry from the start and end up with deplorable narratives.
It is evident that the biological limitations of humans are socially plagued impairments to the people’s capacities for thoughtful probing the social problem and policy options.
Policy analysis requires a higher level of knowledge in various disciplines and advanced skills. Policymaking is simultaneously art and science.
Cognitive psychologists find that human beings are more likely to have difficulty in making logical inferences either on personal or social issues.
As a result, people easily form emotional attachments or antipathies to policy narratives that bring vulnerability to simplistic thinking and symbolic manipulations.
Thus, human behavior tends to retreat from complex issues into apathy, acquiring only part of the facts about the total system instead of the totality, and finally, that turns to failure to sense the real problem.
Impaired thinking, which is because of cognitive limits, dwindles the intelligence of policy making because each individual is less capable of playing their role in interaction at every stage of the policy process.
It is also believed that over-politicization contributes to thinking impairments and thus policy-making becomes less democratic and citizen-centric because impaired thinking makes it easier to preserve the interest of social and political elites.
Policymaking is highly influenced by ontological and epistemological issues as these create the perception of policy stakeholders and evaluation of policy narratives and options.
Although there are biological limitations of perception, people cannot simultaneously mull over more than a few angles on a particular problem.
And perceptions and interpretations become distorted in a systematic way because of the tendency to recall only vivid events and forget others.
In addition to the biological limitations, ontological beliefs are shaped usually by the social perspective that guides their worldview.
Because of its ubiquitous nature, public policy is influenced by too many issues and information from where policymakers can hardly fix the highly acceptable solutions rather the situation forces the decision makers to come up with invariably too little.
There is also a possibility of influence by the cognitive limits and produce undesirable policy options. Here comes the necessity of evidence-informed policymaking in order to scientifically convince all.
Here comes the necessity of mastery of handling policy options following epistemological structure. It is often found that making simplistic decisions yield too little and too simple output that eludes the merit.
Limitations of cogitative understanding and a dearth of the epistemological system are found as the key factor behind this.
Policy analysis requires a higher level of knowledge in various disciplines and advanced skills. Policymaking is simultaneously art and science.
It is an art of how multiple issues are synchronized and various stakeholders are considered in order to satisfy the demands of the need and priorities of the government without hampering the cultural and historical perspective.
Again, it is science how each issue involved in every stage is scientifically examined, explained, and monitored in such a way that public policy is never lambasted for its methodological perspective and the unintended consequences.
However, the required skills and knowledge might not be always possible for policymakers to possess and effectively deal with complex present and unforeseen future.
In the policy-making process, there is a significant involvement of numerous stakeholders to set the agenda, formulate the policy narratives, adopt comprehensively, choose the best one, implement it successfully and evaluate for the fate to go further with the current one or abandon it.
There is also a possibility of influence by the cognitive limits and produce undesirable policy options. Here comes the necessity of evidence-informed policymaking in order to scientifically convince all.
Moreover, overcoming the cognitive limitations, and learning required skills can be one the plausible solutions.
Further, if schools, families, and workplaces are the sources of impaired intelligence, changes in these fundamental institutes are necessary in order to improve individual and collective capacities.
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