PPA 503 The Public PolicyMaking Process

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PPA 503 The Public Policy-Making Process

• Lecture 3a Official and Unofficial Actors and
  Their Roles in Public Policy

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Introduction

• Political science traditions.
• Institutionalism focus on texts of
  constitutions, laws, and other written statements
  of policies and the relationships between formal
  government institutions.
• Behaviorism focus on political motivations of
  individuals, acting singly and in groups, often
  through polling, game theory, and statistical
  techniques.
• Neo-institutionalism focus on organizations and
  systems in which individuals interact and achieve
  political and policy goals through explicit or
  implicit rules and operating procedures.

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Introduction

• Main categories of actors in the policy process.
• Official actors statutory or constitutional
  responsibilities.
• Legislative, executive, and judiciary.
• Unofficial actors participation with no
  explicit legal authority.
• Interest groups, media.

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Legislatures

• First listed branch in the federal and most state
  constitutions.
• Source of considerable research.
• Primary function is lawmaking. Number of bills
  and resolutions gives some idea of how busy
  legislatures are.

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Legislatures
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Legislatures

• Burden eased by staff.
• Bills sifted by committee structure at both the
  federal and state level.
• Committee chairs wield significant power.
• Most bills fail to move past their first
  committee hurdles because they are largely
  symbolic gestures.

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Legislatures

• Other critical functions performed by legislators
  that affect public policy.
• Casework activities to help constituents with
  government agencies or to gain a privilege or
  benefit.
• Supports reelection.
• Oversight Monitor the implementation of public
  policy.
• Government Accountability Office www.gao.gov.
  Studies public programs and makes recommendations
  to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and
  accountability.
• Public hearings.
• Help understand issues.
• Reveal shortcomings in current policies.
• Make political capital.

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Legislative Organization
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Legislative Organization

• California process.
• http//www.leginfo.ca.gov/bil2lawx.html.

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Legislative Organization

• What you see on C-SPAN does not represent the
  bulk of legislative action on policy.
• Most of the critical work on public policy is
  done in committees, which review legislation,
  propose and vote on amendments, and, in the end,
  decide whether a bill will die at the committee
  level or be elevated for consideration by the
  full body.
• One of the most critical elements of legislative
  organization is the organization on party lines.

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Legislature Critiques of Public Policy Process

• Many people argue that legislatures are out of
  touch with the people.
• To understand why legislatures work as they do,
  you need to understand two elements of the
  legislature the nature of the members of the
  body and the organization and nature of the
  branch itself.

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Legislature Critiques of Public Policy Process

• The primary goal of the typical legislator is
  reelection. Casework allows legislators to
  please voters.
• Home style and hill style.
• Legislatures are decentralized institutions,
  especially Congress.
• Committees and subcommittees.
• Decentralization and centralization of party
  leadership.
• Issue networks and policy subsystems.

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Legislatures Implications for Policy Making

• Decentralization and casework focus makes complex
  and change-oriented legislation difficult to pass.

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The Executive Branch

• For the sake of discussion, the executive branch
  can be considered in two parts the
  administration, staff, and appointees and the
  bureaucracy.
• Advantages of an elected executive in the policy
  process.
• Veto power.
• Unitary branch of government.
• Media and public attention.
• Informational advantage over the legislature.

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The Executive Branch

• Elected executive limitations.
• Power to persuade.
• The size of the Executive Office of the
  President.
• Elected executives focus on agenda-setting.

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Administrative Agencies and Bureaucrats

• Characteristics of bureaucracy.
• Fixed and official jurisdictional areas.
• Hierarchical organization.
• Written documentation.
• Expert training of staff.
• Career, full-time occupation.
• Standard operating procedures.
• Key complaints about bureaucracy.
• Size.
• Red tape.

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Administrative Agencies and Bureaucrats

• What Do Government Agencies Do?
• Government agencies provide services that are
  uneconomical for the private sector (public goods
  free-rider problem).
• Public goods are indivisible and nonexclusive.
• Complaints tend to focus on speed, efficiency,
  and effectiveness of public service delivery.

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Administrative Agencies and Bureaucrats

• Bureaucracy and the problem of accountability.
• The key problem is the question of
  accountability. Most public employees are
  appointed on merit, not accountability to elected
  officials.
• Early thinking focused on separation of politics
  and administration.
• Modern thinking Agency decisions are political
  and in the realm of administrative discretion.
• Problem no single, agreed-upon definition of the
  public interest.
• Administrative discretion ability to make
  decisions with minimal interference.

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The Courts

• The ability to interpret legislative and
  executive actions judicial review.
• Courts are the weakest because their authority
  rests on the legitimacy of the law and their
  ability to argue their case.
• Legislatures and executives initiate public
  policy, while courts react to the practical
  effects of such policies.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Individual citizens.
• Low political participation.
• Voting.
• Other forms of participation campaigning,
  contacting, etc.
• Despite this, citizens can be mobilized
• Recall election in California.
• Generally speaking, individuals want the most
  services for ourselves while paying the least
  taxes for those services.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Interest groups.
• Interest groups have been part of the political
  scene since the founding.
• Madison and the dangers of faction.
• Since the 1960s the number of groups has greatly
  expanded.
• Transportation, mass communication, expansion of
  government.
• Few legal barriers to the creation of groups.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Interest groups.
• The power of interest groups varies.
• Knowledge, money, information.
• Group size, peak associations.
• Intensity, direct economic interest, ideological
  commitment.
• Social movements (combinations of interest
  groups).

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Types of interest groups.
• Institutional versus membership groups.
• Economic (private) versus public interest versus
  ideological groups.
• Benefits, free-rider problems.
• Activities of interest groups.
• Lobbying.
• Campaign contributions.
• Access (well-off).
• Mass mobilization, protest, and litigation.
• Riots and protest marches.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Political parties.
• Functions.
• Voting cues.
• Transmission of political preferences.
• Creation of packages of policy ideas.
• Organization of the legislative branch.
• Think tanks and other research organizations.
• Brookings, Cato, Urban Institute, Rand, American
  Enterprise Institute.
• Ideological, scholarly, and methodological
  distinctions.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Communications media.
• The news media are important actors in the policy
  process.
• Newspapers National versus regional versus
  local.
• TV is the central news medium. Older population,
  networks younger population, cable news.
• Entertainment programming can be equally
  important.
• Movies, t.v., videogames.
• Medias primary function in policy process is
  agenda-setting. Media coverage correlates with
  institutional attention.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Communications media.
• News media are not just passive actors.
• Interest try to arouse media focus.
• Time and space constraints require discretion.
• Profit-driven businesses.
• Competitive biases of news gathering dramatic
  and narrative qualities of the story.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Subgovernments, issue networks, and domains.
• Policy domain is the substantive area of policy
  over which participants in policy-making compete
  and compromise.
• The political culture and legal environment
  influence the domains.
• Policy community inside the domain consists of
  the actors actively involved in policy making in
  that domain.
• Iron triangles one way of organizing the policy
  community.
• Issue networks may be more accurate description.

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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy

• Subgovernments, issue networks, and domains.
• Prying open policy networks (major corporate
  interests usually dominate).
• But, policy change is possible by prying open a
  domain.
• Focusing events.
• Social movements and mobilization.
• Exploiting the decentralization of American
  government.
• Going public.