Public Policy

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Public Policy

• GOVT 2306

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In this section Ill outline, as best I can, what
the term public policy refers to, and
specifically address these three questions.
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What is public policy?What is the public policy
process?What is policy analysis?Now, a
definition
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DefinitionPublic policy is a purposive and
consistent course of action produced as a
response to a perceived problem of a
constituency, formulated by a specific political
process, and adopted, implemented, and enforced
by a public agency.
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Some random, and possibly helpful, links
Wikipedia Public PolicyAn online course in
public policy.
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At its simplest, public policy is the term used
to describe what it is that governments do.
Generally these are done in response to a demand
that a certain thing be done, then the question
becomes, how is this thing best done.
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A current example as of April 2012.Why are we
even dealing with Obamacare?
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One answer is that for over 100 years there has
existed support for universal access to health
care and health insurance. The private sector
does not an especially good job of providing
benefits to the poor. Two decades ago,
proposals were made that these ought to provided
through the marketplace. Then after the election
of 2008, and opportunity to create such a policy
presented itself.
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Now of course there are efforts to derail the
policy through the courts. Which means that the
effort to determine how to provide universal
access to health insurance will be delayed until
other ideas come forward.
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This tells us that the public policy process is
complex and sometimes never ending.
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Heres another definition Public Policy is
whatever governments choose to do or not to do.
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Whatever it chooses to do can be done in various
ways and can involve different mechanisms.Public
agencies can be established, regulations can be
imposed, felonies created, incentives provided,
etc . . .
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So public policy isnt just what government does,
its how it does it.
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Every single thing governments do can be looked
at as a policy issueexamples
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Here are some Wikipedia pages on various national
policy arenas

• Agriculture
• Defense
• Domestic
• Drug
• Economic
• Education
• Energy
• Environmental

• Food
• Foreign
• Health
• Housing
• Immigration
• Industrial
• Science
• Social

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And thats incomplete
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As we know from looking at the Constitutions of
the U.S. and Texas as well as city charters
certain functions (powers / policies) are
mentioned in each document.
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Madison argued that the powers of the national
government are few and defined and the powers of
the states are many and undefined.
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Two principal powers are delegated to the
national government. These are primarily
commercial and military. These are two
categories of public policy that the national
government is granted special jurisdiction over.
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Through the elastic clauses, the national
government has expanded authority over other
areas of public policy, as long as they can be
argued to relate to one of the delegated
powers.The national governments expansion into
drug and civil rights policy is based on the
commerce clause, for example.
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States are granted jurisdiction over the reserved
powers, which tend to fall under the heading of
police powers The power to regulate the
health, safety, welfare and morals of a community.
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Examples of state public policy
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Two major policy think tanks in
TexasConservative Texas Public Policy
FoundationLiberal Center for Public Policy
Priorities
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States also have the power to grant city
charters, which allow them to determine what
sorts of policies they can influence.
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As a consequence, public policy exists within the
broader context of federalism, which simply makes
it even more complex.
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Public policy becomes even more complex when you
take into consideration party disputes. Many of
the disputes between the parties come down to
which problems they see as being worth
intervening over and how they should be
addressed.Democrats and Republicans tend to
offer different positions on public policy
matters as well as different theories about how
public issues ought to be addressed. The also
differ in terms of what actual problems exist
that deserve governmental attention.
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One way to approach the study of public policy is
to think of it as a process an ongoing process
actually
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Interesting website A syllabus to Public
Interest Writing, including a discussion of the
public policy process.And a few other random
web sources on the public policy process
thisnation.com, Hofstra, and some power points.
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And for what its worth, The Laws of the Public
Policy Process.Take this tongue in cheek.
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Most scholars argue that there are five steps to
the public policy process.
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1 Agenda Setting2 Policy Formulation3
Policy Adoption4 Policy implementation5
Policy Evaluation
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As a point of comparison, here is an 8 step
version of the process Issue
identificationPolicy analysisPolicy instrument
developmentConsultationCoordinationDecisionImp
lementationEvaluation
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And depending how the policy is evaluated
especially if the evaluation is very negative
the policy may wind up back on the publics
agenda and the entire process might begin all
over again.
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An example as I am writing this (4/22/12), in the
wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, the stand
your ground laws which were used to justify it,
are being reviewed in the public arena.
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Lets walk through the process and highlight the
different actors in each step, as well as the
different circumstances present in each step.
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First Step Agenda Setting
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Before a policy issue can be dealt with, people
have to not only become aware of it, but it has
to presented in such a way that it poses a
defined problem that has a solution that a
government can address. It has to first come on
the publics agenda, and then on the governments
agenda.
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For an example, you might want to click on the
following long to Making an Issue of Child Abuse,
which is the story of how child abuse became a
public interest concern.
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There can be multiple agents responsible for
highlighting problems. Usually, the media play a
huge role in agenda setting because their
business is to communicate things that people
want to hear. Heres an academic approach to
the issue of agenda setting.
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There is tremendous competition to influence not
only what the media covers, but how they cover
it. How do they define a problem?
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Example When covering crime, is it dealt with as
an individual moral problem based on bad decision
making, or as a societal problem based on poverty
and the lack of lawful ways to make a
living?This distinction matters for how
proposals to solve this issue will develop.
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What is the exact problem that need to be
addressed? And how is it to be address?
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Some policies are addressed by establishing an
institution to implement a hoped for
solution. Others are proposed to be addressed
by creating tax subsidies and deductions. These
can make it seem as if there is no real
government policy in place at all. For an
example, read The Hidden Welfare State.
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Even more critically, it has to be proved that a
particular issue presents a problem that has a
solution, rather than a condition (a state of
being) that simply has to be accepted because it
has to real solution.
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One of the functions of a think tank (see this
list) it to generate ideas and proposals
regarding public issues
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Sometimes these issues become politicized, and
people run for office promoting them. Members
of the political branches the legislative and
executive branches can be made to pay attention
to these issues by constituents. If they dont
they can be defeated in elections.
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Even though the national judiciary is supposed to
be removed from politics, appointments are often
based on the supposed judicial philosophies of
the appointees. In Texas, the elected judiciary
often takes explicit positions on policy issues.
Tort reform for example.
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But just because a law is proposed and introduced
in Congress doesnt mean that it will be taken
seriously. It has to be supported or opposed
- by some vested interest.
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The recently passed (as of spring 2012) STOCK Act
had been introduced years before a 60 Minutes
story put public opinion behind the bill and led
to its passage.
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Once an policy is on the agenda, it goes through
the formation phase.
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Second Step Policy Formation
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This is the process by which a specific policy to
address a given policy is put together by
decision makers.
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The most important participants in this process
the ones that matter the most are members of
Congress. Especially those that are members of
standing committees that have jurisdiction over
the subject matter of a particular policy.
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Not only can they be the source of legislation,
they are in the best position to influence the
exact content of legislation.This is why there
is such competition to get on certain committees.
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It is very important for members of Congress from
Texas to be on the House Energy and Commerce
Committee.
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Interest groups and executive agencies make
special efforts to establish and maintain close
relationships with members and the staffs of the
standing committees with jurisdiction over the
polices they have interest in.
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This is the heart of an iron triangle. More on
this far below.
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They each as well as the constituents of
members of Congress attempt to influence how
policies are formulated.
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Once formulated, the policy has to be adopted.
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Step Three Policy Adoption
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This refers to the decision to adopt a specific
way of addressing a problem. Most specifically
it refers to the bills that are signed into law.
Why did that law look the way it did?
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This process can involve a great many compromises
that can distort legislation. What does it take
to pass a specific bill into law? What other
factors might have been taken into consideration
that had nothing to do with the actual content of
the law?
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Recall that laws have to passed by each chamber
of the legislature and signed by the chief
executive in order to become law. This is true
on the national and state level, and with
modifications, the local level as well.
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What deals were necessary in order to ensure that
a law was in fact passed? What did it take to get
those votes? Bills are often criticized because
they are very long, but they can be long because
they contain language necessary to obtain the
votes necessary for passage.
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What was necessary in the Senate to ensure that
the bill would not be filibustered?
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On the national level, loose rules in the Senate
can allow for the inclusion of entire separate
bills in one larger one. This means that some
policies can be adopted, not because there was a
specific call for them to be passed, but because
passage was necessary to get support for other
pieces of legislation.
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The word for this is logrolling.
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The point is that some policies are adopted not
based on their intrinsic merit, but on what was
possible to pass at a given moment in time.
What was politically feasible at the moment it
was being considered in the legislature?
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Once passed into law, the policies now adopted
have to be implemented.
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Step Four Policy Implementation
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This involves the executive branch primarily, see
a definition here.After a law is passed, it is
given to the appropriate executive agency to
implement. It can do so with some discretion
depending on how clearly the law is written.
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The agency is responsible for translating policy
goals into operational rules and to develop
guidelines for the program. They also
coordinate the various actors involved in the
process.
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Sometimes the law establishes a new agency.
Often it is easier to establish a new agency to
implement a new law than to retool an existing
agency to do the same thing.
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Often laws are written vaguely in order for the
legislature to avoid making constituents unhappy.
Policies often require tradeoffs to be made and
these can make re-election difficult. Delegating
these decisions to bureaucrats can be convenient.
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The key tool the bureaucracy has in implementing
laws is rulemaking.
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Rulemaking at the Department of
LaborRegulations.govFCC The Rulemaking
ProcessOffice of Information and Regulatory
AffairsFederal Register
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Since the implementation process involves
actually attempting to make legislation work on
the ground, the process can be frustrating.Exter
nal constraints are common.
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For further reading, heres a paper detailing the
problems USAID has had implementing
democratization policies.
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One major problem is that Congress does not
always provide agencies the resources to
implement the laws they are meant to implement.
This is a convenient way to derail the
operations of agencies members of Congress are
unable to terminate.
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Opponents of the EPA for example have been unable
to terminate it, but have been able to cut its
funding to the point where it cannot do its job
to the extent it was intended to do it.
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Congress has oversight authority over executive
agencies and are able to compel testimony
whenever scandals occur. Agencies also perform
this function internally. Most have offices of
inspector general that are charged with this
function.
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Step Five Policy Evaluation
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Once policies are implemented, the evaluation
process begins.
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Sometimes this occurs regularly and
systematically with studies both inside and
outside government that attempt to determine
whether policies successfully had their desired
effect.
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Did the stimulus bill work? Did our policy in
Iraq work? The bank bailout? The bailout of the
auto industry? EtcAnd if they did or didnt,
why?
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Sometimes items are evaluated because something
occurs an accident or other event which gets
covered in the media and forces the general
population to rethink a policy.
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9/11, the Gulf oil spill, the Trayvon Martin
shooting, etc
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Debates over the success or failure of a given
policy often place a policy back on the publics
agenda. This leads back to the beginning of the
process. The cycle can be never ending.
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A final point
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Policies and programs, once established, are very
difficult to terminate. Constituencies develop
to maintain them. These often take the form of an
iron triangle.
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The classic example is the military industrial
complex referred to in a speech by Eisenhower.
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