week 5 inter Flashcards
! What are arguments that show that power is shifting in executive’s favor?
- government complexity
- delegated legislation
- organizational disadvantages of executives
- mass media
- party organization
- emergency powers
What is the Law of anticipated reaction by Karl Friedrich?
most bills are introduced by executives and likely to become law, but this may be do to executives creating bills that they know will have higher chances of passing
What are two ways of recruiting and training top bureaucrats?
- generalists: wide variety of top jobs (UK&Ireland)
- specialists: technocratic tradition (France&Germany)
what are three types of senior bureaucrats?
- permanent administrators
- political appointments: danger of clientelism
- policy advisors
! what are three policy types
- distributive: giving attention to one group/problem
- regulatory: negative and positive / creating rules, standards, behaviors
- redistributive: transfer of wealth across groups
! What are the six features of the policy process?
- agenda-setting
- decision-making
- choice of means
4.implementation - outputs and outcomes
- evaluations
! explain agenda-setting
- deciding what is to be discussed
- list of priorities (problems); short vs long term problems, of which the latter is hard to take into account
- who are the actors? politicians / mass media / reality (crisis) / civil society
! explain decision-making
- what is the best course of action?
- constraints: money / time / knowledge
- creates winners and losers
! explain choice of means
- wide variety of possible policy instruments
taxing / regulations/ subsidies or grants
! explain implementation
- begins after decision-making
- bureaucracy is the one that implements policy
! explain outputs and outcomes
- outputs reflect political decision
- outcomes are result of output
! explain evaluation
‘cinderella elements’
- policies judges on objective
-makers don’t want failures evaluated
- makers don’t care
- little money for evaluation
- government evaluates own policy
- efficiency is difficult to measure
! explain rational-comprehensive model of decision-making
- how rational individuals make decisions in complex situations
- assumes centralized decision-making body and efficient government
- individual or state has a clear problem and objective, who has clear means to achieve objective and possess full information
- decision is made after cost-benefit analysis
- critics: how decision should be made, not are made and lack of information and resources
! explain the incremental method of decision-making (Charles Lindblom, ‘muddling through’)
- decisions based on small, marginal changes from existing policies;
- reality is complex, there are assumptions watered down in rational model
- decisions in insufficient information where most is unknown
- bounded rationality and satisfying decions, limited rationality
- action: small steps after cost-benefits analysis
- critics: no explanation for innovation / is it rational without full information? / psychological and ecological fallacy
! What does the bounded rationality of Herbert Simons hold?
- emphasized the boundaries to rational decision-making created by personal values of decision makers, the culture and structure of organizations they work in and the complexity and unpredictability of political events.
