Bringing History In: Policy accumulation and general policy alienation

Abstract

Research mainly looked at problems public professionals have with specific policy programmes. However, policies are not developed in a vacuum. Public professionals are often confronted with (a series of) policy changes, intended to refine, replace or complement other policies. This policy accumulation results in professionals having a certain predisposition towards policies in general. To conceptualize this predisposition, we introduce the term general policy alienation. We investigate whether the earlier developed policy alienation scale can be adapted to measure general policy alienation. Our analyses show that the scale performs satisfactorily. Theoretical relevance, as well as directions for practical applications are discussed.

Key words:

• General policy alienation
• measurement scale
• policy accumulation
• public professionals

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 All Mplus output and raw data are available from the first author.