Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

What is a reliable way to code policies to represent belief systems? According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, public policy may be viewed as manifestations of belief systems. Belief systems include both positive beliefs about cause-and-effect relationships and the nature of problems, as well as normative beliefs about appropriate policy instruments and the relative value of different outcomes and groups. The notion that belief systems are embodied in public policy is important because it trains our focus on belief conflict, and the use of scientific evidence to mediate conflict in the policy process.

To date there has been very little research on systematic, rigorous methods to measure the belief system content of public policies. We present an innovative coding framework to do this. With a focus on urban water governance in Arizona, we measure policies through content analysis of sources including memoranda, ordinances, meeting minutes, plans, program guidelines, and news to systematically code approaches meant to influence outcomes in water management. We organize coded policies into a typology of common approaches identified in the urban water governance literature, which include old and new technology, regulation, education, and market-based techniques.

Each type of policy approach has unique implications for social, economic, and ecological aspects of sustainability, and beliefs about these valued objects of sustainability can vary by individual. We measure beliefs, then, by surveying decision makers from local water governments on 1) perceived threats to sustainability, 2) effective policy mechanisms to address these threats, and 3) the extent to which these mechanisms are deemed appropriate (effective policies may not always mitigate threat in different local conditions). Intercoder reliability tests will help refine and further develop the coding frame as a reliable measurement instrument. Lastly, application of this coding frame across different urban water scenarios can improve scholars’ ability to gain traction on hypothesis development, and we propose that this measurement technique can be adapted to other policy domains for the same purpose.