Lecture 8: Comparative Public Policy

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Lecture 8 Comparative Public Policy

• SOSC 152

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• Key Topics
• What is Public Policy?
• Agenda Setting and Non-Decisions
• Understanding the Decision Making Process
• Policy Types and the Policy Process
• Implementation

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1. What is Public Policy?

• The way government institutions make decisions in
  response to public demands and the governments
  own interests,
• And the way in which the government provides
  goods and services to the population.
• "Power" as the ability to get someone to do
  something, make governments make policy or
  ability of government to make decisions and have
  them implemented.

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2. Agenda Setting and Non-Decisions

• A. Agenda Setting, Or How Issues Get on the
  Agenda?
• For societal demands or issues to become public
  policy, they must be discussed by political
  leaders.
• How do issues get onto the public and political
  agenda?
• here the role of media, protests, public
  participation
• B. "Second Face of Power" or How Issues are Kept
  Off the Agenda
• one can study how important issues DO NOT get
  onto the political agenda
• look for big problems that do not get discussed
  and assume that someone is stopping it from being
  discussed.
• invisible power, not to make things happen but to
  stop things from happening

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3. Understanding the Decision Making Process

• Who controls how decisions are made? Politicians,
  bureaucracies, public opinion?
• A. Rational Model of Decision Making
• does policy follows this procedure?
• determine the issue (Agenda Setting)
• what are the core values related to the issue?
  What is the long-term goal (equality, growth,
  higher moral values for society, etc.)
• Assess all possible options, will they help
  attain long term goals?
• decision
• Implementation
• Evaluation and adjustment

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• what gets on the agenda is often result of
  politics and power
• long term goals get lost as people fight over
  what policy can attain the goals
• important limits of information and time
• decisions may be affected by personalities of
  participants
• "incrementalism"--best predictor of tomorrow is
  today
• B. Bureaucratic Politics
• policy decisions as outcome of bureaucratic
  conflict or debates among leaders
• outcome often result of negotiation and
  compromise, not best strategy for attaining long
  term goal.
• implementation result of "standard operating
  procedures
• Locus of Decision Making
• outcome affected by where decision is made, who
  is invited to the meeting, who is kept out

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4. Policy Types and the Policy Process

• The types of policies, the extent to which they
  transfer resources and how they do it, can affect
  the way in which the decision process occurs.
• it determines who gets involved, how strongly
  they care or will fight about the issue, where it
  is decided, the amount of time available to make
  the decision, whether the public can get involved
• a. Distributive policy roads,
• everybody benefits, public goods

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• b. Regulatory or Deregulatory Policy airline
  industry
• controls the actions of some members of society,
  setting prices, access to market, rules of
  behaviour
• China's Open Policy as form of "deregulation" of
  links to outside world.
• c. Extractive Policy Taxes, Military Service
• must extract goods and services from society
• d. Redistributive Policy
• transfers goods from one group or social class to
  another

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• e. Ideological or Moral Policies
• human rights, school morality, abortion,
• f. Foreign Policy and National Security
• may suddenly come onto the agenda
• often a crisis decision
• time for decision short, limited information

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5. Implementation

• In developing and socialist states, population
  influences public policy only by adjusting the
  outcome through the implementation process.
• weapons of the weak, undermine implementation
  based on local interests, not state interests.
• pressures on local politicians to consider local
  interests

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• B. State Strength and Implementation
• states often weak, not strong, because they can't
  get policies implemented
• problems of policy compliance
• problems of getting good information about degree
  of compliance
• C. different types of policies face different
  problems
• ideological easy to have false compliance
• public goods confront "free rider problem"
• redistributive policies lead to major conflicts