Ethics for Policymaking: A Methodological Analysis

In Ethics for Policymaking,Eugene Meehan presents a sustained argument in favor of a particular perspective on the relationship between normative judgments or arguments and policymaking, based upon a radically different approach to providing a justification for actions, whether individual or collective. Meehan's overall objective is to establish the knowledge requirements, empirical and normative, for defensible/corrigible policymaking and thereby to produce an analytic apparatus that can be used to improve intellectual performance in the conduct of real world affairs. By grounding the meanings of fundamental concepts such as knowledge and policy within a suitable analytic framework, a major source of disagreement and misunderstanding among those concerned to further the quest for useful knowledge is eliminated, and the possibilities of productive knowledge transfers among specialized disciplines are much enhanced.

Following a detailed introductory essay, Meehan approaches his complex subject by developing the intellectual requirements for directing actions, focusing on criteria of adequacy applicable to inductive cognitive systems and on the theoretical assumptions underlying them. After a brief summary of empirical requirements the normative apparatus required for defensible policymaking is examined at length in three stages: first an analysis is made of the kind of conceptual apparatus that the enterprise requires; second, a way of justifying preferences that avoids the major pitfalls inherent in limited human capacity is produced; third, other constraints and possibilities that flow from the need to make policy within a social context are explored. The discussion concludes with a brief examination of the major intellectual, social, and political implications of the analysis. Those involved in activities in which major policy decisions will profoundly affect the well-being of client populations and students and scholars of applied political theory will also find this text invaluable.