Public Policies between Traditional, Contemporary Approaches

By: Abdelhak Azzouzi

CAIRO, Jan. 28 (SEE)- Public policy has not been able to exist in the field of science taught in universities and higher institutes in the form of international relations and political sociology except in the last decades of the twenty-first century, especially in Francophone universities. The latter remained hostage to inherited intellectual traditions from Hegel to Max Weber through Marxist supporters who focused on the state, in the sense that it was based on an entity that dominates the society, determines and contributes in directing it.

Scholars of many of the most prestigious Francophone universities in the Mediterranean, led by France, have been held hostage to the legal and philosophical orientations of the state. This is different from the United States of America, that has known the concept since the 1950's when principle of government played a role in the development of Public Policy science in America where many books were written about it, the emergence of a number of theories that were strengthening collective and inpidual interests that formulate "purposeful" and "developmental" policies stemming from a basic rule. This includes, how to think more developmentally and use of less cost since public funds are tax payers' money and because electors express their final word in ballot boxes.

This difference between the Francophone and Anglo-Saxon schools also reminds me of the difference existing in the political science. Is political science about knowledge of the state or the authority? If legal theorists and early French philosophers were asked, they would say, for example, the science of the state, unlike their American counterparts, who would say that it is the science of authority.

We all remember when the Bush Junior's administration wanted to intervene in Iraq in 2003. Most Western countries rejected this in the name of legal and international legitimacy and in the name of the philosophy that states must line up in a military attack of unknown dimensions to a sovereign state. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell were all making shuttle trips to European capitals (except Britain, which was a White House ally) to convince their superiors, but they didn't get the needed support.

We do recall the famous speech of Colin Powell at the UN, carrying a small bottle, saying to the whole world "That if he detonated this bottle, the earth would be blown away by a blink of an eye. This is what Saddam could do because of having weapons of mass destruction." However, French FM Minister Dominique de Villepin at the same meeting said that Powell's statement lacked any evidence, rejecting military intervention outside Article VII of the Charter of the United Nations, which allows the use of international military force in the event of an attack on the borders of a sovereign state unlawfully, or it constitutes a threat to the international system by having for example weapons of mass destruction comprehensive…

This wide gap between the jurisprudential legal philosophy and the strategic direction, in other words, the maintenance of international legal legitimacy and the elimination of the regime of Saddam and his people, at that time shattered the ABC's of understanding about the determinants of the world order led by the United States of America to the extent that Dick Cheney described Western Europe as "the old Europe" unlike the Eastern European countries that supported military intervention …

In this speech, Cheney meant the error of the predominance of French and Western legal and philosophical superstitions on the priorities of the stage in international relations which impose the mobility and the unrealistic illegal strategic reality with a quasi-legal cover … The American and British militaries intervened in Iraq despite the French- Europe's opposition in legal obstructions in the United Nations, and the rest is known.

The terrorism that struck the European civilization in Paris in 2015, undermining of tourism and economic life in many countries, especially Belgium, and the great preparations in the New Year celebrations in all the capitals of Western countries which its population had not experienced fear of any stray attack, led to crystallization and management of public policies in all countries on the agricultural, industrial, commercial and operational fronts, especially in the fields of security, defense policies and armaments. This makes all the theories developed by philosophers and legal experts to be futile in explaining what has been going on in the radical transformations that have plagued Western industrial societies for decades. Today, public policies change politics.

In other words, its reality in light of contemporary international changes dictates to the circles that make decisions to wear glasses that are different from what they were using previously; in the field of security, defense and influence on the components of the global system, it is necessary to use semi-legal strategic glasses instead of purely philosophical legal glasses. Many colleagues in French universities have reached the conclusion reached by their American peers four centuries ago or more in their interpretation of the global system.

This came after a long-standing traditional approaches that reduced the capacity for understanding, explaining, theorizing and influencing both to theorists and the decision-makers.