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Do policies develop like scientific paradigms? On occupational safety and health legislation in Finland
Author(s) -
AHONEN Guy
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1986.tb00837.x
Subject(s) - legislation , conservatism , structuring , politics , function (biology) , process (computing) , social protection , public economics , law and economics , economics , political science , law , computer science , evolutionary biology , biology , operating system
. The article adds to the attempts to describe and explain legislation as an extended process. The case of Finnish labour protection policy is used as an illustration. It is argued that the labour protection policy is pursued in accordance with an established labour protection paradigm, which consists of the way of cognitively structuring the safety and health problem, of the accepted methods to deal with the problem and of the values underlying the policy. It is argued that the Finnish labour protection paradigm does not correspond with the real function of labour protection. Generally, the paper suggests that the paradigm‐nature of public policies implies an inherent conservatism, allowing only partial adaption to social and political change.