KAY 386: PUBLIC POLICY

1
KAY 386 PUBLIC POLICY

• LECTURE 1
• Readings Parsons, pp. xv-xviii, 1-16
• Goldhamer, p. 7-27.

2
Agenda

• Topic What is public policy?
• Website
• http//yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/myildiz/

3
GoldhamerHistorical Background WHY

• Good decision-making dominates material force
• Information is power
• Ruler as a lonely and isolated (wo)man
• Providing political wisdom and moral instruction
• The leaders dependance on advisors
• Especially when they are young inexperienced

4
Historical Background WHAT

• The Advisor
• Definition
• No well-established meaning
• Not strictly defined by law or custom
• Teaching kings what to do and what not to do
• Great variety of roles
• Friend, educator, conscience, eyes ears,
  executor...

5
Historical BackgroundWHO

• Man of religion as moral and political advisors
• Separation of the favorite mistress from the
  advisor
• Clashes between these groups
• Today, the mass media become the critics and
  admonishers of political leaders

6
Historical Background HOW

• Tasks of the Advisor
• Advising on specific problems of public policy
• Educating the leader in a way to improve his/her
  own judgement and knowledge
• Criticizing the leaders own ideas and plans

7
Historical Background HOW

• The word wazir derives from the words helpand
  load (Ibn Khaldun)
• Help carry the rulers burdens
• Close personal relationship with the ruler
• Oral and/or Oral Advice
• E.g. Mirrors of Kings Books of Instruction
• Need for governing information
• Advisors may filter and interpret information
  reaching the political leader
• Establishment of spy networks

8
ParsonsPublic Policy Studies

• Interdisciplinary (multi-disciplinary)
• Integrates knowledge from different disciplines
• Public adm., political science, sociology,
  psychology, economics management
• Multi-method
• Qualitative and quantitative
• Problem-focused, action-oriented
• Analyzes public choices decision-making
• We expect governments to have policy

9
What is public policy?

• Focuses on the public its problems
• What governments do, why they do it what
  difference it makes?
• How issues problems are defined constructed
• How they are placed on the political policy
  agenda

10
PUBLIC POLICY FRAMEWORK

• What is a public?
• The idea of public policy presupposes that
  there is a sphere or domain of life which are so
  designated as public, as opposed to private.
• The public comprises that dimension of human
  activity which is regarded as requiring
  governmental or social regulation or
  intervention, or at least, common action.
• People as a whole
• Res publica in Romans the public thing
  Buildings, property, funds and other physical
  resources involved in the performance of public
  office vs. Res priva
• Public versus Private
• Different but related

11
Hannah Arendts Analysis of the Dichotomy in
Greeks

• Public
• Polis
• Freedom
• Male
• Equality
• Immortality
• Open

• Private
• Household
• Necessity
• Female
• Inequality
• Mortality
• Closed

12
PUBLIC

• Not only government units and officers
• Elected, appointed and contracted
• Public purposes of non-governmental actors
• Hospitals and schools built by private persons
  and firms (e.g. public-private partnerships)
• Elements of civil society
• Member serving organizations e.g. Political
  parties
• Public serving organizations TEMA
• E.g. Reports of associations

13
PUBLIC POLICY FRAMEWORK

• What distinguishes public problems?
• Scale/ Bigness Problems confronting whole
  populations
• Complexity Many different views and preferences
• Actors
• Public, Private and Civil Society Sectors and
  multiple combinations
• Question How much government is required?

14
ACTORS OF PUBLIC POLICY
Use of various combinations

• Three sectors compete cooperate for doing
  public work
• How much government is required? At which level?

15
Kaynak B. Ayman Güler, http//politics.ankara.edu
.tr/bguler/kytk-semasi.pdf, (26.02.2007)
16
YÖNETIM BIRIMLERI (2008)

• Tasra Birimleri
• 81 Il
• 850 Ilçe
• Yerel Yönetim Birimleri
• 81 Il
• 3.215 Belediye
• 16 Büyüksehir Belediyesi
• 35.000 Köy

17
POLICY PROCESS

• What is it?
• A cyclical problem-solving activity
• Analytical, legislative, budgetary and
  administrative steps
• Why is it complicated?
• Diverse population, many stakeholders
• Frame the issues differently
• Special-interest groups
• Different priorities, gridlock
• How to discover the collective will in diversity?

18
POLICY CYCLE
In the real world, there are no defined or
distinct phases.
19
Different Approaches to Government Involvement

• Thomas Hobbes 17th C.
• Leviathan
• Adam Smith, 18th C.
• The Wealth of Nations
• Invisible hand
• Alexis De Tocqueville, 19th C.
• Democracy in America
• Power of associations

20
Degree of Government Involvement in Economy

• Limited Involvement
• Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
• Invisible hand
• Government is best when it does the least
• The aggregate of peoples self interests make up
  of the public interest
• (clear distinction well-defined boundary)

• Larger Involvement
• Hobbes
• Public order
• Reasons
• Externalities
• Monopolies
• Imperfect Information
• Some Actions
• Break up monopolies

21
Historical Development

• Woodrow Wilson (1880s)
• Distinction between politics administration
• Bureaucracy as a defender of public interest
• Weber (Early 1900s)
• Bureaucratic rationality
• Simon Lindblom
• Irrationality bounded-rationality
• Public choice/ New Right literature
• Bureaucrats have distinct goals of their own
• The relationship between public private is best
  defined by the market freedom of choice

22
Harm, Utility Market Failure Criteria

• The private is that sphere which did no harm to
  others (J. S. Mill)
• The greatest happiness to the greatest number
  (Mill Bentham)
• The role of the state is to manage the public and
  its problems so as to deal with those aspects of
  social economic life which markets are not
  capable of solving (Keynes, Roosevelt-New Deal)-
  1950s to 1970s

23
New Right

• After the stagflation of the 1970s, beginning
  from the 1980s New Right
• The attempt to use public policy to promote the
  public interest was wrong (Hayek Friedman)
• New Rights recipe is to expand the use of the
  market mechanism
• New Public Management

24
Some reasons of why we need government
intervention

• Externalities
• Public Goods
• Monopolies
• Imperfect Information

25
PUBLIC GOODS
RIVALRY NON-RIVALRY (If one person consumes it, the amount available remains the same )
EXCLUDABLE PRIVATE GOOD ( A car) TOLL GOODS (Cable TV)
NON- EXCLUDABLE (Non-payers cannot be excluded from the benefits ) COMMON POOL GOODS (Trees in a forest) PUBLIC GOODS (National Security Clean air)
26
How to sell policy to the public?

• Policy involves creating a plausible story which
  secures the purposes of the policy maker.
• In liberal democratic systems, political elites
  have to give rational reasons for what they
  propose or what they have done.
• Claim of legitimacy