Public Policy Midterm Flashcards
What are the steps in the eightfold path?
- Define the problem
- Assemble some evidence
- Construct the alternatives
- Select the criteria
- Project the outcomes
- Confront the trade-offs
- Decide
- Tell your story
What is the biggest area of federal spending?
Social Security and Medicare
What is the biggest state and local spending?
Education
The Process Model -
Views policymaking as a series of political activities
The Institutional Model -
focuses attention on the effects of political and governmental institutions in public policy
The Rational Model -
Implies that government should choose policies that maximize societal gains and minimize costs
The Incremental Model-
views public policy largely as a continuation of past government activities with only incremental modifications
Group theory -
views public policy as the outcome of the struggle among societal groups
The Elite Model-
views public policy as the preferences and values of the nations governing elite.
Public Choice Theory-
applies economic analysis to the study of public policy
Game Theory-
portrays policy as the outcome of interaction between two or more rational participants
How do we gather evidence?
- People leading to People
- People leading to documents
- Documents leading to documents
- Documents leading to people
Secondary?
When your primary source may not want to provide information. Analogy - relying on a witness rather than on the defendant. ex. Fire chief may not be reliable.
Why do we do define the problem?
- It gives the reason for doing the research and sense
of direction for the evidence gathering. - Quantify if possible
- Don’t include solution in definition
What happens in the assemble some evidence?
- Collect information to assess the nature and extent of
the problem; - Assess the particular features in the situation; and to
assess policies that have worked in similar situations.
What happens in the construct the alternatives?
- Make a list of alternatives you might wish to consider..i mean something like policy options, alternative course of actions, alt strategies of intervention to solve or mitigate the problems.
- Include business as usual
- They are policy options
- Start comprehensive and end up focused
- Model the causes of the problem to cure it
- Check you assumptions before you proceed
What happens in the project the outcomes?
The hardest step
- Construct an outcome matrix
- Avoid excess optimism
- Do a sensitivity analysis
- Breakeven analysis
What happens in the confront the trade offs?
- Which alternative has dominance.
- It is trade-off across outcomes
- Choose between alternatives on weight of
importance of criteria
What happens in the decision stage?
- You should decide what to do, based on your own
analysis - Apply the $20 bill test
- Keep fiddling until you invent a variant of you basic idea that will pass
What mistakes you should avoid in the problem definition?
- Is government intervention necessary?
- Be aware of issue rhetoric
- .The problem should be analytically manageable
What is the eightfold path?
- It is a problem-solving process
- It is iterative and consist of trial and error
- Some of the guidance are practical and some are
conceptual - It is easy to become lost and demoralized
What happens in the select the criteria stage?
- Define the objectives you want obtain
- Criteria are mental standards for evaluating the result
of the action - will the projected outcome solve the policy problem
- Equality, equity, justice
- Polititically acceptable
What happens in the tell you story stage?
- Apply the grandma Bessie test.
- Consider the medium to use
- Avoid showing all your work
- Structure your report
What mistakes should you avoid in the problem definition?
- Is government intervention necessary?
- Be aware of issue rhetoric
- .The problem should be analytically manageable
What is policy analysis?
It is what governments do, why they do it, and what difference it makes
What are the steps in policy making process?
- Identification of the problem
- Set the agenda
- Formulate the policy
- Legitimate the policy
- Implement the policy
- Evaluate the policy
What are problems notification placing on the agenda?
- Interest groups
2, Policy making organizations - Mass media
- Influential individuals
What is legality, effectiveness and equality?
I
What is best practices?
Solutions that have been tried in other jurisdictions, agencies, or locales. Look for those that appear to have worked pretty well and can you apply it to your situation.
Things government do?
- Tax
- Regulation
- Subsides and Grants
- Budgets
- Structure of private rights
- Financing
How do you protect credibility?
- the researcher should take steps to protect the ultimate political credibility of his work from political attacks.
Quote published sources.
Prepare for premature exposure
Seek out experts whom you can attribute views
Lineup experts who would be willing to speak for your report.
What is outcome matrix good for?
Provides visual representation choices and criteria to help us in the decision making process to see if there any clear winners or clear losers.
What are the theory’s of public policy?
Process Incremental Group Public choice Elite Game Rational Systems
Gov. resp have generally _____ in recent years
Grown
Total gov. spending is ____ percent
37
The most expensive undertaking in fed. Gov is
Social Security and medicaire
The study of politics is
The study of who gets what, when and how
The work of a policy analyst includes all of the following except
Prescribing preferences
Prescribing preferences
One problem that researchers have in their attempt to find solutions for public problems is
Disagreements over what problems are
Gross domestic product is a common measure indicating a government’s
True
Policy adv. Is essentially persuasion in favor of a given public policy
True
Models are used for all of the following reasons except to
evaluate the morality of dif. policies
evaluate the morality of dif. policies
Which of the following is not part of the policy process?
Policy input
Policy input
To make a rational policy decision, policy makers must
weigh benefits against cost
The institutional model focuses on governmental structures
True
The incremental method is generally preferred in times of crisis, when profound change is req.
False
Deciding what issues will be decided and what problem will be addressed by the government is part of the
Agenda Setting
In a typical two-year session roughly
10,000 bills are introduced to congress
What is the purpose of a continuing resolutions?
Uninterruptedd functioning of fed. government
Implementation of public policy is the job of
Bureaucracy
The work of think tanks is the greatest at the policy stage of policy making
True
