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Public Policy
Public Policy
In this section I’ll outline, as best I can, what the term “public policy” refers to, and specifically address
these three questions.
What is public policy?What is the public policy process?
What is policy analysis?
Now, a definition
Definition
Public 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.
Some random, and possibly helpful, links:
Wikipedia: Public PolicyAn online course in public policy.
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.
A current example – as of April 2012.
Why are we even dealing with Obamacare?
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.
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.
This tells us that the public policy process is complex and sometimes
never ending.
Here’s another definition:
Public Policy is whatever governments choose to do or not
to do.
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 . . .
So public policy isn’t just what government does,
its how it does it.
Every single thing governments do can be looked at as a policy issue
examples
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
And that’s incomplete
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.
Madison argued that the powers of the national government are few
and defined and the powers of the states are many and undefined.
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.
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 government’s expansion into drug and civil rights policy is based on the commerce clause, for example.
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.
Examples of state public policy
Two major policy think tanks in Texas
Conservative: Texas Public Policy FoundationLiberal: Center for Public Policy Priorities
States also have the power to grant city charters, which allow them to determine what sorts of policies
they can influence.
As a consequence, public policy exists within the broader context
of federalism, which simply makes it even more complex.
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.
One way to approach the study of public policy is to think of it as a
process – an ongoing process actually
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.
And for what its worth, The Laws of the Public Policy Process
.
Take this tongue in cheek.
Most scholars argue that there are five steps to the public policy
process.
1 – Agenda Setting2 – Policy Formulation
3 – Policy Adoption4 – Policy implementation
5 – Policy Evaluation
As a point of comparison, here is an 8 step version of the process:
Issue identificationPolicy analysis
Policy instrument developmentConsultationCoordination
DecisionImplementation
Evaluation
And depending how the policy is evaluated – especially if the
evaluation is very negative – the policy may wind up back on the public’s agenda and the entire
process might begin all over again.
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.
Let’s walk through the process and highlight the different actors in
each step, as well as the different circumstances present in each
step.
First Step: Agenda Setting
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 public’s agenda, and then on the government’s
agenda.
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.
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.
Here’s an academic approach to the issue of agenda setting.
There is tremendous competition to influence not only what the
media covers, but how they cover it. How do they define a problem?
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.
What is the exact problem that need to be addressed? And how is
it to be address?
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.
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.
One of the functions of a think tank (see this list) it to
generate ideas and proposals regarding public issues
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 don’t they can be defeated in elections.
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.
But just because a law is proposed and introduced in Congress doesn’t mean that it will be taken seriously.
It has to be supported – or opposed - by some vested interest.
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.
Once an policy is on the agenda, it goes through the formation phase.
Second Step: Policy Formation
This is the process by which a specific policy to address a given policy is put together by decision
makers.
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.
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.
It is very important for members of Congress from Texas to be on the
House Energy and Commerce Committee.
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.
This is the heart of an iron triangle.
More on this far below.
They each – as well as the constituents of members of
Congress – attempt to influence how policies are formulated.
Once formulated, the policy has to be adopted.
Step Three: Policy Adoption
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?
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?
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.
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.
What was necessary in the Senate to ensure that the bill would not be
filibustered?
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.
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?
Once passed into law, the policies now adopted have to be
implemented.
Step Four: Policy Implementation
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.
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.
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.
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.
The key tool the bureaucracy has in implementing laws is rulemaking.
Rulemaking at the Department of LaborRegulations.gov
FCC: The Rulemaking ProcessOffice of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Federal Register
Since the implementation process involves actually attempting to make legislation work on the ground, the process can be
frustrating.
External constraints are common.
For further reading, here’s a paper detailing the problems USAID has had implementing
democratization policies.
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.
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.
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.
Step Five: Policy Evaluation
Once policies are implemented, the evaluation process begins.
Sometimes this occurs regularly and systematically with studies –
both inside and outside government – that attempt to
determine whether policies successfully had their desired
effect.
Did the stimulus bill work? Did our policy in Iraq work?
The bank bailout? The bailout of the auto industry? Etc…
And if they did or didn’t, why?
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.
9/11, the Gulf oil spill, the Trayvon Martin shooting, etc …
Debates over the success or failure of a given policy often place a
policy back on the public’s agenda.
This leads back to the beginning of the process.
The cycle can be never ending.
A final point
Policies and programs, once established, are very difficult to
terminate.
Constituencies develop to maintain them. These often take the form of
an iron triangle.
The classic example is the military industrial complex referred
to in a speech by Eisenhower.
