American Public Policy

1
American Public Policy

• Some Basic Models
• And More
• Political Science 316
• Mark Stephan

2
Last Class and Todays Class

• Institutions and Policy (some basics)
• Why model at all?
• Some Basic Models
• Policy Theory beyond the basics

3
Why model?

• Whats a model?
• Why model?
• Modeling Policy different angles

4
Institutional Model

• The institutions that make policy
• Constitutional structure
• Fragmentation overlapping powers
• Federalism
• Reinforcing Incrementalism

5
Elitism and Pluralism

• Elite action maintaining economic and political
  power
• Elite agreement
• Social Movements? Civic unrest? Public opinion?
• Group competition that does occur through
  institutions, but where the groups have the key
  political power

6
Rationalism, Public Choice, Game Theory

• Costs and benefits
• Maximum social benefit
• Economic models to explain non-economic
  situations
• Decision-making games
• Playing Chicken
• Too simplistic?

7
Policy Process

• A cycle identify, prioritize, formulate,
  legitimate, implement, evaluation, and then back
  to the beginning
• Identifying and defining problems political and
  objective criteria
• Setting Agendas (including non-issues)

8
Policy streams

• When do new policies get passed into law?
• John Kingdons model
• Problems, policies, politics
• Three streams (Stephans addition the dam?)

9
More Aspects of the Cycle

• Problem solvers think tanks
• Legitimizing organizations?
• The Bureaucracy control and discretion
• State governments
• Self-evaluation versus independent evaluations
• Systematic versus unsystematic
• Advocacy Coalition Framework helping explaining
  why change occurs

10
News Flash!!

• Disaster management implementation and
  evaluationand the implication of public policy
  mistakes.

11
Policy Instruments and Theory

• Any questions about the distinctions between
  regulations, direct services, indirect services
  (tax/spend), market mechanisms, and education?
• Lowis three, examples
• Wilsons 2x2 box

12
Preview of Next Class

• Keep up with the readings
• Policy Analysis