Public policy midterm Flashcards
common functions of most governments (5)
- try to maintain their sovereignty
- provide public services
- create a system to preserve order
- try to socialize their youngest citizens
- collect taxes
Kraft and Furlong’s definition of public policy
what public officials within government, and by extension the citizens they represent, choose to do or not to do about public problems
the reasons for studying public policy (3)
- scientific understanding
- professional advice
- policy recommendations
the environment/contexts in which policy is made (5)
- social contexts (African American History Ban)
- economic contexts (funding)
- political contexts (mainly conservative)
- governing contexts (separation of power)
- culture contexts (mostly traditionalistic)
Weimer and Vining definition of policy analysis
client-oriented (client driven, people who are in a position to allocate resources) advice relevant to public decisions (decision oriented, trying to resolve problems rather than just conducting research) and informed by social values
the rationale for government intervention (3)
- political (social movements)
- moral/ethical
- economic
types of market failures with examples (3)
- externality (negative; pollution and positive; education)
- natural monopoly (utilities)
- information asymmetry
externality
affects third parties that aren’t accounted for in the pricing system
negative externality
affects third parties and is not compensated for it (pollution)
positive externality
benefits third parties (education)
information assymmetry
one side, either the producer or consumer, has more information than the other
types of public goods (4)
- pure private goods
- toll goods
- common pool resources
- pure public goods
pure private goods
exclusion is feasible; no joint consumption (computers, automobiles, houses)
toll goods
joint consumption; exclusion is feasible (cable TV, services, electrical utilities, toll road)
common pool resources
exclusion is not feasible; no joint consumption; tragedy of the commons (air, water, grazing, land, oceans)
pure public goods
exclusion is not feasible; joint consumption; no corporation has the incentive to provide these (national defense, public parks)
Peter’s 3 levels of policymaking
- policy choices (who is involved in making the decision or policy actors?)
- policy outputs (how do you put this policy into action?)
- policy impacts (what is the actual effect of the policy on the public?)
subgovernments
how policymaking occurs in less formal settings or venues and involves policy actors within particular issue areas (national defense)
purpose of using policy models
helps us understand what government is and isn’t focused on
elite theory
how the values and preferences of governing elites, which differ from those of the public at-large, affect public policy development
group theory
sees public policy as the product of a continuous struggle among organized interest groups (labor unions)
institutional theory
formal and legal aspects of government structure
rational choice theory
assumes that in making decisions, individuals are rational actors who seek to attain their preferences or further their self-interests (draws heavily from economics)
political systems theory
stresses the way the political system responds to demands that arise from its environment
steps of the policy process model (6)
- problem identification (defining the issue)
- agenda setting (getting problems considered by policymakers)
- policy formulation (proposed policy actions/inactions)
- policy legitimation (providing legal force to decisions)
- policy implementation (putting policy into action)
- policy evaluation (assessment of policy/programs)
problems vs. conditions
a problem is recognized as worthy of attention/action; a condition is a matter perceived as not reasonably open to human efforts to change it
types of agendas
- systemic agenda (public is aware)
- institutional agenda (issues that policymakers are giving consideration)
how an issue moves from a problem to the institutional agenda
issues achieve agenda status when problem, policy, and political streams all intersect and create a policy window
Matland’s ambiguity-conflict model
trying to perceive how a policy is received by looking at ambiguity and conflict
1. administrative
2. experimental
3. political
4. symbolic
Weiss’s definition of policy evaluation
the systematic assessment of the operation and/or the outcomes of a program or policy, compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards as a means of contributing to the improvement of the program or policy
process evaluation
instead of focusing on real results, it focuses on the program in practice and its procedures
outcome evaluation
focuses on the results of implementing a program; used to determine if a program should continue or expand
the covert purposes of evaluations (4)
- postponement
- ducking responsibility
- window dressing
- public relations
postponement
the client of the evaluation may be trying to delay a decision on a program
ducking responsibility
the client may be trying to have the evaluation make their decision
window dressing
the client may be trying to disguise their decision with the evaluation
public relations
the client may be trying to gain support for the program through evaluation
Lowi’s policy typology (3)
- distributive policy
- regulatory policy
- redistributive policy
(criticized for its ambiguity and incompleteness)
history of policy analysis (early origins)
- mesopotamia (legal codes)
- code of hammurabi (rituals & mysticism)
- Plato & Aristotle (policy-relevant knowledge)
- middle ages (expert officialdom - clergy)
orientations to policy analysis (3)
- scientific (search for “truth” and build theory about policy)
- professional (analyze policy alternatives for solving problems)
- political (advocate and support preferred policies)
Bardach’s considerations of defining problems (6)
- will tell how to tell your story
- think of deficit and excess
- make the definition evaluative
- quantify if possible
- diagnose conditions that cause problems
- risky condition (the odds)
economic efficiency (3)
- pareto optimality (one welfare is at cost of another’s benefit)
- Kalder-Hicks compensation
- most highly valued uses (Tiebout Model)
welfare economics
resource allocation
opportunity cost
spend in one, lose in another
marginality
cost of additional unit/good/service
4 sources of government failures
- problems inherent in direct democracy (will of the people)
- problems inherent to representative government (trustee vs delegate representation)
- problems inherent in decentralization (diffuse authority)
- problems in bureaucratic supply (agency loss)
data
facts or representation of facts about the world
information
data that has meaning in the sense that they can help you sort the world into different logical or empirical categories
evidence
information that affects the existing beliefs of important people about significant features of the problem you are studying and how it might be solved or mitigated
how you find reliable evidence for policy problems (5)
- government websites
- academic journals and books
- google scholar
- newspapers
- client or government agency, interest groups or policy think tanks
Weimer and Vining’s 5 categories of government interventions “generic policies”
- freeing, facilitating, simulating markets
- taxes and subsidies (induce behaviors)
- rules (coerce behavior)
- non-market mechanisms
- insurance and cushions (soften blow of market)
Patton and Sawicki 8 strategies of creative policy actions
- no-action analysis (status quo)
- quick surveys
- literature reviews
- comparison to real world situations
- passive collection and classification
- use of analogies and metaphors
- brainstorming
- comparison with the ideal
Scheider and Ingram policy design tools (5)
- authority tools
- inducements and sanctions
- capacity tools
- hortatory tools
- learning tools
leaky bucket
there is often a trade off between economic efficiency and economic equality (leaks = inefficiencies) (adverse effects are bigger than administrative effects)
Kraft and Furlong’s 8 standards of evaluating policy alternatives
- define the problem
- assemble some evidence
- construct the alternatives
- select the criteria
- project the outcomes
- confront the trade-offs
- decide
- tell your story
dilemma of the notion of equality (2)
- process equity (equality of opportunity)
- outcome equity (equality of condition)
Kraft and Furlong’s 4 steps in a cost-benefit analysis
- identify all important costs and benefits
- measure those costs and benefits that can be expressed in $ and either estimate or acknowledge those that can’t easily measure
- adjust the measurements that change in value over time
- sum up and compare all the costs and benefits and conclude whether the costs outweigh the benefits or vice versa
3 guidelines to providing recommendations to your client
- follow from your evaluation of the policy alternatives
- summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the recommended policy
- provide a clear set of instructions for action
3 characteristics that clients generally share
- have a role in shaping the analysis
- busy and face externally driven timetables
- nervous about using the work of untested analysis
history of policy analysis (19th century)
industrial revolution
history of policy analysis (20th century)
- institutionalization of social/behavioral sciences
- analycentric perspective established
distributive policy
a governmental decision to provide specific benefits to specific groups without regard to limited resources
regulatory policy
a governmental decision as to who will be indulged and who will be deprived on the basis of some general rule
redistributive policy
a governmental decision involving broad categories of citizens to whom benefits are extended or from whom losses are taken
5 components of Weiss’s policy evaluation
- an evaluation is a systematic assessment (the accepted methods of social science are used in the analysis of the policy)
- an evaluation can focus on the operations or the processes of the policy
- the outcomes of the policy can also be the attention of an evaluation
- an evaluation will base its assessment on some type of standards or expectations derived from the goals, the actual practice, and/or the stakeholders of the policy
- the evaluation improves the policy
Matland’s Model -administrative
low ambiguity, low conflict; the goals and means are clear; success is related to resources; top down approach (mass vaccination)
Matland’s Model - experimental
high ambiguity, low conflict; local context (street level bureaucrats) often dominates this process; success is determined by local context
Matland’s Model - political
low ambiguity, high conflict; understand what the goals are, but there is disagreement about those goals and the means of achieving goals; top down approach; success is determined by political power (school integration)
Matland’s Model - symbolic
high ambiguity, high conflicts; success is determined by the local actors; often not successful; bottom up will help understand the barriers of implementation
issue networking
a term coined by political scientist Hugh Helco to describe informal arrangements or relationships among policy actors in the making of public policy
