A Habermasian comparative analysis of drug policy developments in the United Kingdom and Poland

This thesis presents a critical realist comparative policy analysis of drug policy developments in the UK and Poland. Using a mixed methods approach, it aims to demonstrate similarities and differences in mechanisms that created stability and change in drug policy in these two countries over the last 25 years. The policy changes this thesis focuses on are: Polish criminalisation of drug possession in the year 2000, British reclassification of cannabis from class B to C in 2004 and its later upgrade back to B in 2009, as well as responses to novel psychoactive substances in both (approximately 2007-2018). Qualitative data was generated from in-depth interviews as well as media analysis and explored mechanisms of stability and change in policy. People interviewed include ministers directly or indirectly responsible for coordination of drug policy, a former UK home secretary, current and former heads of NGOs, academics, senior government officials, senior police officers, and journalists. The quantitative data comes from the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), as well as other sources. It is used to present the closest picture to the 'real' the policy makers had access to in both cases in relation to drug prevalence and attitudes on drugs, and to cross reference the qualitative data, contrasting some of the claims made by interviewees. Using process tracing, qualitative and quantitative data are applied to some of the most widely used pluralist and critical theories of public policy to test their ability to explain drug policy in these countries. The thesis concludes that pluralist frameworks present limited and descriptive accounts of Polish and British drug policies. Drug policy settings, in both countries, do not allow for a rational competition of ideas. Powerful stakeholders in both countries can, and did, use their positions to decide what knowledge was accepted as truth, and who was allowed to join the policy process. Their power is for instance evident in the use of media. In all cases, what will be seen is a vertical stream of political opinion traveling from higher status groups down to ones below, which in turn influences public opinion on drugs and people who use drugs. Most notably this thesis will show how the power enjoyed by stakeholders in Poland and the UK is executed in different ways. Polish stakeholders seem to have acted in a much more direct and absolutist way as, for example, will be demonstrated in their use of legal loopholes. This is contrasting to British stakeholders who were much more focused on creating an impression of a pluralist setting, where deliberations decide on evidence that is then used in informing policy. The differences in deployment of these mechanisms are explainable by how the public spheres developed in both countries.