The following interview was conducted with Phil Haynes,
He is Professor of Public Policy and researches and teaches public policy
and management, as applied to a variety of contemporary circumstances.
His research focuses on the application of complex systems theory, often
using applied statistical methods. His research has been funded by the
ESRC and the government and voluntary sector. He has published in a
wider variety of journals including Social Policy and Administration and Public Management Review. He is author of several books including Managing Complexity in the Public Services (2015) now in its second edition.
His most recent book, which is part of our complexity in social sciences series at Routledge, is aptly titled, SOCIAL SYNTHESIS: Finding Dynamic Patterns in Complex Social Systems.
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
How
is it possible to understand society and the problems it faces? What
sense can be made of the behaviour of markets and government
interventions? How can citizens understand the course that their lives
take and the opportunities available to them? There has been much debate surrounding what methodology and methods
are appropriate for social science research. In a larger sense, there
have been differences in quantitative and qualitative approaches and
some attempts to combine them. In addition, there have also been
questions of the influence of competing values on all social activities
versus the need to find an objective understanding. Thus, this aptly
named volume strives to develop new methods through the practice of
‘social synthesis’, describing a methodology that perceives societies
and economies as manifestations of highly dynamic, interactive and
emergent complex systems. Furthermore, helping us to understand that an
analysis of parts alone does not always lead to an informed
understanding, Haynes presents to the contemporary researcher an
original tool called Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) – a rigorous method
that informs us about how specific complex social and economic systems
adapt over time. A timely and significant monograph, Social Synthesis will
appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, research
professionals and academic researchers informed by sociology, economics,
politics, public policy, social policy and social psychology.
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Thanks, Professor Haynes,
for doing this interview…
1. To begin, can you tell us a bit about your academic
background? More specifically, how did you end up in policy evaluation and
applied social science?
HAYNES: My first
degree was in combined social sciences and social work. Over four years it
provided a great interdisciplinary foundation. The last two years increasingly
focused on social work practice.
It was a
fantastic four years. When I graduated, I got a job as a generic court
probation officer and then later specialised in developing new services for
substance misuse. At that point, I started to get involved in research and
training.
All the
new substance treatment programmes had to have evaluation built into them. It
was immediately apparent that evaluation was complex and did not easily provide
straightforward answers. For example, for the most dependent substance
misusers, it was very difficult to estimate which service users would do best
with different treatment types. I really enjoyed the research challenge and
enrolled for an MSc in advanced social research methods at the UK Open
University.
2. What
got you involved in the development of methods?
HAYNES: After
completing my MSc, I started a PhD examining how to use mixed methods to plan
social services. My PhD soon started to show up the severe limitations of using
traditional statistical methods for modelling historical patterns in order to
plan future services. This took me into complexity theory. I moved permanently
into an academic post. This was in the 1990s.
A number
of seminal pieces about the application of complexity theory to the social
sciences were published at that time in the US, and just beginning to influence
Europe. I was fortunate to have David
Byrne as my PhD examiner and he was publishing his important book in the UK, Complexity theory and the social sciences.
The late Paul Cilliers monograph, Complexity
and postmodernism came out at a similar time.
After
that, David’s approach encouraged me to try methods like cluster analysis and then
QCA. This resulted in me succeeding in getting ESRC funding to apply these
methods to comparing the social networks of older people alongside different
government expenditure patterns. It was a comparative study across several
countries. Cluster analysis and QCA allowed the study to demonstrate that there
were different patterns within the data and not one aggregate pattern. For
example, Scandinavian, Northern Europe, and Southern Europe all demonstrated
their own separate patterns, but also with dynamic and evolving changes over
time.
In more
recent years, I got frustrated with the competing strengths and weaknesses of
cluster analysis and QCA and trying to decide which was the best method to use
in a given research situation. It then occurred to me, the answer was staring
me in the face, to bring them together into a mixed method. Then you could get
the best characteristics of each method counter balancing the weakness in the
other. That is how Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) was born.
3. Can
you provide us an overview of what you mean by social synthesis? For example, why
is social synthesis so important for social science?
HAYNES: Social
synthesis is the art of examining social issues and social practices through a
more holistic lens rather than a narrow hypothesis. It is founded on the idea
from complexity theory that cases and social phenomena are often dynamic and
highly interactive with each other. It is closely related to systems theory in
this respect. Therefore, experimental and quasi-experimental approaches are
extremely difficult to design with regard to knowing what to include and what is
left out. Of course, experimental methods can work with replication and
incremental adjustments, but that is resource and time intensive and not
necessarily the best starting research design. This made me favour initial
explorative approaches to large datasets, like using cluster analysis.
There are
still limitations. Social synthesis cannot be a ‘theory of everything’, it has
to have modelling boundaries, but it starts with the premise that is best to
look more broadly rather than to focus its measurements too quickly and too
soon into a reduced area of coverage.
4. What
is your method Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) about, relative to this issue of
synthesis? For example, how do you see
it as an advance on case-comparative method?
HAYNES: Dynamic
Pattern Synthesis starts with an explorative synthesis rather than an explanatory
hypothesis (although the latter can be introduced later in the method via QCA,
if appropriate). It keeps the focus on being able to identify and compare each
case rather than getting aggregate measures that are supposed to represent
large groups of cases. It is very much a case based method, but one that tries
to maximise the variable evidence for why a case is located where it is.
5. Is
there any link to critical realism?
HAYNES: I think
the contextual aspect of critical realism is highly relevant. When using
critical realism, generative mechanisms and causality are situated in a
changing social context. This frames
and restricts any attempts at generalisation. It is a realistic and partial
perspective on causality.
6. The
case studies in your book are excellent. I found them very useful because
of their depth and variety, which helped me to see how your method works in
different instances. How did you happen to choose those case studies?
HAYNES: Because
of the pressures of time and resources, my approach to the case studies was
pragmatic and based on my previous research with secondary data. I had been
involved in some research looking at the relationship of economics with public
policy, post the 2008 financial crisis, so the Euro case study emerged from
that stream of work. I also have a history of using secondary data to
understand the changing demography and care needs of older people. Similarly, I have focused previously on
issues of territorial justice and the differences between local governments.
Probably
the most innovative and speculative case study for me was trying to see if DPS
made any sense with a small sub sample of micro data about older people. I
think it is interesting how the resulting issues are very similar to challenges
in qualitative research. It is hard to find meaningful consistent patterns over
time at the most micro level. Social patterns seem easier to identify and work
with at scale, at the meso and macro level, and that fits with the application
to policy studies and evaluating policy at governmental levels.
7. What
are the one or two most important things you want readers to come away with
reading your book?
HAYNES: I would
really like other researchers to try out DPS and to see how it works with
different data sets in different contexts. I would also like to see this kind of
method taken up in heterodox economics/political economics to reach a better
understanding about macroeconomic theory and future interventions in the post
financial crisis world. I think there is currently a normative imperative to be
adventurous with macroeconomic research, to look for new public policy
interventions in the economy.
8. What
is the next step in your development of DPS?
HAYNES: I really
want to communicate the basics of how the method works and to share the
mechanics of this, and to encourage more case studies and more use, and to get
other academics to ‘add-on’ to the mix of methods used in DPS. The
methodological purpose is clear, to identify case patterns (that are likely to
be time and space limited) and what the socio-economic meaning of these
patterns is. DPS is not the only way to identify and name these patterns, there
will be future evolutions of DPS as a method and better alternatives - I am sure. I would also really like to see if I could
find and persuade collaborators to attempt to develop R packages in DPS. I do
not have the skills and time to do many of these things alone, so I need to network
and collaborate.
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