Values and Policy Analysis

Nathan Briley’s Blog Post:
When using the social sciences approach to construct a policy analysis, a considerable emphasis is placed on identifying the values that drive the rest of the analysis. Performing policy analyses with a plurality of values in mind makes a lot of sense, but it leads to an important political question: whose values? For example, should justice, quality of care or economic efficiency drive health care reform? One plausible answer is that the will of the people should determine this. If the people desire an efficient health care system, then the goals of our policy analysis should reflect that value. Of course, if we hold this principle for determining which values drive policy, we then face the additional problem of determining what the people actually value and then integrating that into our policies. No small task. For one potential solution to this general political problem, we can turn to what the State of Oregon has created through their Oregon Shines program. In brief, the Oregon Shines program allows state legislators to systematically determine what the citizens of the state value in regards various policy areas. State legislators are then supposed to be guided by these citizen created values and associated goals. Instead of simply assuming that political representatives will actually craft policy with the values of the citizens in mind, the Oregon Shines program provides an additional mechanism for ensuring that the values of the people being governed are the values driving policy decisions.