Quiz 2 POLI 357 Intro to Public Policy Analysis

Question 1

Policy Context

Answer 1

• setting within which policy making takes place.
• role of ideas, actors, institutions and the relationship between them.
• actor behavior is shaped by social, political and economic structures, how they define interests shaped by ideas and expectations. interactions shaped by expectations

Question 2

Institutions

Answer 2

• formal and informal
• rules, operating procedure, ideas, norms, structures of society
• shape actor behavior by conditioning perceptions of their interests and probability that these interests will be realized in policy outcomes
• enable some actors, constrain others

Question 3

Political-Economic Context

Answer 3

two meta institutions: Democracy and Capitalism

-both affect the capacity of the state to act autonomously

Question 4

Capitalism

Answer 4

• socio-economic system consisting of business actors
• refers to both market oriented political economy or system of production and exchange. goal make profit and wealth accumulation
• a society with control over property required for production (capital) concentrated in hands of small # private individuals.
• public policy: when government offends business, population looses wages, government loses revenue and the gvt loses public support.

Question 5

Liberalism

Answer 5

• ideology
• well organized and institutionalized beliefs advocating for private ownership of means of production.
• fundamental or underlying principle is human progress and freedom (to maximize welfare of individuals).
• primacy of individual, inalienable natural rights that need to be protected by state from collectives.
• maintain and promote capitalism
• argues market is preferred mechanism through which individuals can pursue interests.
• two conceptions of the state:
  1. limited. residual or supplementary. only undertake those activities the market can’t perform
  2. corrective state. state act in a variety of other areas of market activity to correct micro/macro level market failures.
• state inherently anti liberal, threaten individual and market.

Question 6

Democracy

Answer 6

• political organization and decision making mechanisms of day to day control of the state through representative government staffed by periodic elections.
• majority rule where representative government is elected by the electorate which consists of the entire adult population, votes carry equal weight, vote any opinion without intimidation by state apparatus. moderates capitalism.

Question 7

Policy Making Meta-Institutional Context

Answer 7

• principles underlying democracy and liberalism contradictory. helps stop capitalists from dominating public policy making
• policy makers influenced by majority non-elites because politicians want to maintaining power
• can’t serve only state interests and can’t serve only business/capitalist interests

Question 8

How Political and Economic Structure Influence Public Policy

Answer 8

-state capacity to make public policy shaped by supportive societal actors (type determined by internal organization and relationship to the state)
-fragmented social groups: strengthens state autonomy in public policy and weakens capacity to formulate because difficult to mobilize actors.
-united social actors/groups: stable environment, strong social cohesion is a constraint on the state.
Best structure is embedded autonomy, where the institutional arrangement that has both a strong state and strong society with close partnership.

Question 9

Unitary v.s Federal

Answer 9

unitary: top down, clear chain of command and hierarchy. different levels of government linked in a subordinate/super ordinate relationship.national government has public policy decision making power, reduces complexity in public policy process.

federal system: at least two autonomous levels of government each with own policy jurisdiction. weak policy capacity of national government in some policy sectors. weak policy capacity of national governments in some policy sectors. difficult to maintain consistent and coherent policies in intergovernmental agreement areas.

Question 10

Presidential v.s Parliamentary

Answer 10

presidentialism: policy making is diffuse. greater opportunity for interest group influence. checks and balances to constrain presidential power. president needs legislative approval.
parliamentary: generally policy making is centralized in the executive

Question 11

Domestic Policy Actors

Answer 11

• elected politicians: members of the exec and legislators.
• cabinet or government have informational and financial -resources and the use of discretion when it comes to given policy area. constitution is broad. unmatched publicity and access to mass media as well as control of the bureaucracy.
• bureaucracy: appointed officials dealing with the administration of public policy. policy implementation. access to material resources and permanent existence are their greatest advantages. not homogeneous so unified positions are difficult.
• public: voters
• political parties: gatekeepers for access to political power, select candidate and appeal to the electorate.
• interest groups: material interest and social value advocacy on behalf of members. formed around specific problems. offer policy packages not structures for specific policy choices. resource= knowledge. larger groups taken more seriously. peak associations are interest group+business+labour
• think tanks: research to influence policy preferences/ outcomes. can be partisan.
• mass media: agenda setting, identify problems and solutions. decide what is worth reporting.

Question 12

International System

Answer 12

-countries are supposed to be sovereign but the international system shapes domestic public policy. influence determined by structure of international system and a nations positions within it. (some actors constrained and some enabled)
-there may be specific regimes that exist in many policy areas. certain regimes can sanction intervention.
Actors: states, international financial institutions and organizations.
-globalization of the world economy results in policy spillovers. policy diffusion and policy transfer.
-ideas: policy paradigms are a set of high level ideas that structure policy debates. cognitive background assumptions. actor interaction with institutions is justified by ideas.

Question 13

Policy Regime and Policy Networks

Answer 13

Policy Network:
-structure and behavior of networks is determined by the number and type of their membership and the state or societal members that dominate their activities.

Policy Regime:

• persistence of fundamental policy components over fairly long periods of time
• endurance of policy processes and contents over time.

Question 14

Agenda setting is

Answer 14

1. issue or problem identification and
2. issue or problem definition
   - most critical stage b/c if government doesn’t recognize the something as a problem, there will be no policy

Question 15

Agenda

Answer 15

the agenda is the list of subjects/problems to which government officials and other policy actors closely associated are paying serious attention to at any given time. Narrows list of conceivable subjects to a set that actually becomes the focus of attention. doesn’t guarantee it will be addressed.

• raised to to a public problem, finally to that of a public issue and potentially amenable to government action.
• how an issue or subject comes to be interpreted as a public issue liable to gvt action is a question of human knowledge and social construction of knowledge.

Question 16

Positivist Agenda Setting

Answer 16

• assumes problems have objective existence awaiting to be recognized by governments
• problems exist, whether recognized by government or not.

Question 17

Post-Positivist Setting

Answer 17

• problems are socially constructed and recognition is socially constructed
• not mechanical process, sociological process in which frames or sets of ideas w/in which governments and non governmental actors operate and think are of critical significance.
• what is acceptable, what is an undesirable deviation.

Question 18

Objective Construction of Policy Problems

Answer 18

• positivist
• role of social conditions and structures
• assumes problems arise from socio-economic factors.
  1. Convergence Thesis
  2. Resource Dependency Model
  3. Political Business Cycle

Question 19

Convergence Thesis

Answer 19

-as countries industrialize, tend to converge towards same policy mix generally
- issues originate in the level of development of a society
-sets of problems are common to states at similar levels of development
-high levels of economic development and wealth create similar problems and opportunities
-agenda setting as an automatic process as a result of stress on government placed by industrialization and economic modernization
Limitations: oversimplification, misrepresentation of welfare policies in different jurisdictions, ignore economic variation over time and by issue area.

Question 20

Resource-Dependency Model

Answer 20

-industrialization creates needs for programs and generates resources because increases of productivity to allow states to address them. ex) pension, social security
-creation of working class with needs for social security and political resources to exert pressures
-ideology and political threat based.
Limitations:
abstract, difficult to apply to specific instances of agenda setting

Question 21

Political Business Cycle

Answer 21

-governments in the modern era intervene in markets to smooth fluctuations in business cycle (democratic capitalist states)
-the economy has its own internal dynamics that are occasionally altered by political interference
-nature of intervention in the economy is predictable, dependent on ideology and timing of the intervention (proximity to election)
Limitations in its applicability outside the US.

Question 22

Subjective Construction of Policy Problems

Answer 22

• Post Positivists
• Role of policy actors and ideas (paradigms)
• Problems: constructed in the realm of public and private ideas. deattached from socio-economic/political environment
• ideas that actors hold affect their decisions. idealization prisms serve as filters through which individuals conceive problems that inspire their demands to gvt and through which they design proposed solutions to these problems.
• Types of Ideas
• issues arise w/in social discourses depending on pre-existing ideological constructs applied to specific day to day circumstances.
• arise from pre-existing discourse, discursive frames not necessarily as widely and strongly held by all policy actors. agenda setting=clash of frames, naming blaming and claiming

Question 23

Types of Ideas

Answer 23

• Worldview/Ideology: constitute ideas that define universe of problems for action. make sense of complex realities by identifying general policy problems and their motivations. diffused, difficult to translate in to specific views on particular policy problems.
• Principled Beliefs: normative ideas, criteria for right/wrong. just/unjust. direct impact on problem recognition and policy content. creates claims and demands on gvt.
• Causal Ideas: cause of a problem, cause-effect relationship. shared beliefs and strategies for attainment of goals. comes from authoritative decision makers. agenda setting involves constructing a story of what caused the problem under consideration. protects or challenges existing order. causal agent, blame is assigned to political actors to compensate victims and punish the responsible agent.

Question 24

Models of Agenda Setting

Answer 24

1. Funnel of Causality

2. Issue-Attention Cycle

Question 25

Funnel of Causality

Answer 25

• multivariate model
• each factor is nested among other variables.
• relationships among social econ, pol, ideational and inst conditions. interplay.
• all important variables are situated w.in a funnel of causality
• strengths: causal diversity, multivariate.
• weaknesses: little emphasis on how multidimensional influences on policy agendas create any particular effect on policy actors in the agenda setting process. fails to explain why affect agenda.

Question 26

Issue-Attention Cycle

Answer 26

-policy involves interaction of inst ideas and actors
-policy making focuses on issues that momentarily capture the public;s attn and trigger demands for gvt action
-many fade from the center of public attn thus public attn doesn’t remain focused on any one particular issue for a very long time even if it is a continuing problem of crucial importance to society
when operationalized:
1. first type of cycle: initiated by external events, ‘crisis cycle’
2. originated in political leadership then caught the public’s attention
Limitations:
-crisis cycle: issues initiated by external events then mediated by the public. don;t fade away quickly.
-political cycle: issues initiated by political leadership and then catches public attention.

Question 27

Modes of Agenda Setting

Answer 27

Systemic (informal)

• issues meriting public attention
• involving matters w/in legitimate jurisdiction of existing governmental authority
• only few of numerous problems taken up by government for serious consideration
• discussion

(issues are inititated, solutions specified, support expanded, enters inst. agenda)

Institutional (formal)

• issues that government considers, agrees to give serious attn
• action

Question 28

Political Regimes and Mode of Agenda Setting

Answer 28

1. Outside Initiation Model
   - liberal pluralist societies
   - issues arise in nongvt action, expanded to reach public (systemic) and finally institutional (formal) agenda.
2. Mobilization Model
   - totalitarian
   - decision makers attempt to expand an issue from formal informal (systemic)
3. Inside Initiation Model
   - corporatist regimes
   - influential groups w/special access initiate policy and often don’t want public attention
   - entrance on the agenda is virtually automatic because of the privileged place of the initiators

Question 29

Agenda Setting Modes and Policy Windows, Policy Monopoly

Answer 29

state and non state influences of agenda setting (role played by policy entrepreneurs)
4 Window Types:
1. routinized policy windows: institutional procedural events trigger predictable openings
2. discretionary policy windows: behavior of individual policy actors leads to less predictable openings
3. spillover problem windows: related issues drawn into already open window
4. random problem windows: random events or crisis open unpredictable windows.
policy monopolies: attempt to construct hegemonic images of policy problems that allow influential actors to practice agenda denial.

Question 30

Policy Formulation

Answer 30

• when a issue enters the institutional agenda
• process of generating options on what to do to potentially resolve an issue. problems recognized at agenda setting are formalized, refined and identified.
• at this stage, question of is it feasible in terms of resources, personnel and technology. question of is it politically worth it.
• once a problem enters the formal agenda, must decide on a course of action or inaction. can involve identifying and assessing possible solutions using cost-benefit approach.
• solutions can arise from the agenda setting process or the government can come up with new options.

Question 31

Phases of Policy Formulation List

Answer 31

Harold Thomas (2001)
Appraisal
Dialogue
Formulation
Consolidation

Question 32

Appraisal

Answer 32

• generate and receive input
• identifying and considering data and evidence
• research, consultation with experts and stakeholder input

Question 33

Dialogue

Answer 33

more structured or formal

• expert input frustrates new participants
• facilitates communication between policy actors with different perspectives on the issue and potential solutions. public hearings, debate, structured consultation.
• less established organizations add energy and enthusiasm

Question 34

Formulation

Answer 34

• weighing evidence on various policy options by public officials and drafting some form of proposal that identifies which options if any will advance to ratification.
• form of draft legislation or regulation

Question 35

Consolidation

Answer 35

• policy actors providing formal feedback on the recommended options. objections are addressed
• attempts to garner support for the chosen option

Question 36

General content of policy formulation

Answer 36

-involved identifying technical and political constraints though limitations may not be based on fact
-2 constraints:
Substantive: constraints innate to the nature of the problem itself. ex) global warming
Procedural: refers to the constraints that originate from the procedures involved in adopting an option or carrying it out. capacity, financial and administrative. can be institutional or tactical. institutional: constitutional provisions, nature of the organization of the state and society as well as established patterns of ideas and beliefs. Tactical: has to do with government capacity

Question 37

Policy Horizons

Answer 37

-limited sets of acceptable choices for specific actors.