Comparative Public Policy Final Exam - 12/23/24

Garbage Can Model

Define: A theory of organizational decision-making that suggests that decisions result from a chaotic mix of problems, solutions, participants, and choices.
Relates to CPP: Based upon the idea that there are good or worse opportunities for certain policy adaptations or "pushes."
Examples: Unstructured decision-making, "choice opportunities" → a legislator proposing a bill addressing a relatively minor local issue that suddenly gains traction due to high media attention.

Multiple Streams Model

Define: Suggests that policies are formulated through the convergence of three streams: Problem, Policy, and Political.
Relates to CPP: Suggests that to change policy, coupling of problems, solutions and political opportunities is important. Also provides a role for policy entrepreneurs.
Examples: Problem - Indicators, events, definitions. Policy - Multiple subjects of study in a community of experts. Political - Elections, national mood, interest groups.

Policy Entrepreneur

Define: Policy entrepreneurs are advocates who invest resources to promote specific policies for anticipated benefits.
Relates to CPP: Successful entrepreneurs must link the problem, policy, and political streams to capitalize on open agenda windows.
Examples: Environmental activists, healthcare advocates, community organizers.

Pareto Optimality

Define: Refers to a situation in policy where the implications imply that it would make one individual better off without making someone else worse off.
Relates to CPP: Gold standard for policy analysis, can be used for improvement.
Examples: Wheelchair ramps, seatbelts, driving on the right side of the road.

Kaldor Criterion

Define: An economic principle that suggests a policy change is desirable if the winners could hypothetically compensate the losers and still be better off.
Relates to CPP: Can be used to compare costs and benefits of a policy.
Examples: Building a park that requires demolishing some buildings. The happiness from the park would outweigh the loss of the businesses.

SCTP Framework

Define/Relates to CPP: The SCTP literature argues that "social constructions influence the policy agenda and the selection of policy tools, as well as the rationales that legitimate policy choices" (Schneider & Ingram 1993).
Examples:
Positive & Strong: Advanced → Elderly, business, veterans.
Negative & Strong: Contenders → The rich, unions, cultural elites.
Weak & Positive: Dependents → Children, mothers, disabled.
Negative and Weak: Deviants → Criminals, drug addicts, communists.

Welfare Policy

Define: Welfare policy also includes any government activities or programs aimed at promoting the wellbeing of their populations- including healthcare, housing, nutrition, education, and income maintenance
Relates to CPP: Motivations for welfare policy may sometimes be driven by factors other than simply improving citizens' wellbeing. Politicians may frame certain welfare policies as increasing wellbeing when in practice these policies are harming the interests of some individuals.
Examples: It's more than just old age pensions (what americans often refer to as "social security") and need-based assistance like TANF (cash welfare to poor families with children)

Old-Age Pensions

Define: Global trend to better assure a minimum pension income for all people of pension age. Old age pensions are one type of Social Security.
Relates to CPP: The risk of poverty in old age remains a major challenge in many countries. Demographic projections show a need for increased action to extend and improve the adequacy of coverage.
Examples: Poverty among older women requires specific responses. Women face a number of challenges during their active working lives relative to men that can impact negatively on future pension income.

Social Security

Define: Social Security provides financial protection for American people, an anti-poverty relief program of almost 90 years.
Relates to CPP: Social security is more than a fundamental human right. Social security also helps to address a wide array of socio-economic challenges, and society is more resilient as a result.
Examples: Unemployment, disability, parental leave.

Income Maintenance Programs

Define: Government initiative designed to ensure that individuals and families have a minimum level of income to meet basic needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing.
Relates to CPP: The goal is to maintain a basic standard of living for vulnerable populations, often serving as a temporary safety net during periods of financial difficulty.
Examples: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): Provides cash assistance to low-income families with children. TANF has work requirements and a time limit for receiving benefits.

Residual Model (Welfare)

Define: Welfare serves as a "safety net" for those who are worst off, those unable to benefit from family support or succeed in the market.
Relates to CPP: Originated with "poor law" tradition in the UK. Systems based on this model drove down take up of benefits (stigmatizing). Requires considerable administration costs to determine eligibility.
Examples: USA

Institutional Model (Welfare)

Define: Welfare is more expansive and used as part of a country's overall redistributive strategy.
Relates to CPP: Views the provision of welfare not as an exceptional occurrence for the very worst off, but as a resource for the entire population. This approach inevitably imposed cost on virtually the entire population, as taxpayers, to provide the resources required for such an expansive approach.
Examples: Scandinavia, more comprehensive systems developing.

Inst. Redistributive Model

Define: Expansive approach to welfare → welfare benefits are viewed as a resource for the entire population.
Relates to CPP: Views the provision of welfare not as an exceptional occurrence for the very worst off, but as a resource for the entire population. This approach inevitably imposed cost on virtually the entire population, as taxpayers, to provide the resources required for such an expansive approach.
Examples: Scandinavia, more comprehensive systems developing.

Bismarckian Model

Define: Bismarck-type health insurance plans have to cover everybody, and they don't make a profit. Redistributes wealth horizontally. German-style (named for Otto von Bismarck, Prussian chancellor).
Relates to CPP: Maintains or intensifies inequalities, preserves labor market status. Occupational insurance-based programs. Insurance funds that cover groups with similar incomes, pooled risk.
Examples: France, healthcare is successful yet expensive.

Beveridgean Model

Define: Health care is provided and financed by the government through tax payments. Redistributes wealth vertically. British-style (named for Willian Beveridge, designed for the NHS).
Relates to CPP: Inequalities are reduced, not preserve labor market status. Welfare system funded by taxation (rich → poor).
Examples: New Zealand, largely funded through taxes but cost less per person.

Decommodification

Define: Degree to which individuals, or families, can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living independently of market' participation.
Relates to CPP: Esping-Andersen's three 'worlds of welfare capitalism' defined through regime types: (a) liberal, (b) conservative, (c) social democratic. Level of decommodification varies across regime types.
Examples: Scandinavian countries constitute an identifiable, high decommodification group, and that the USA and Australia can be placed in a low decommodification group.

Liberal Regime Types (Welfare)

Define: Low levels of decommodification and redistribution. Based on the idea that people should be largely self-reliant.
Relates to CPP: Encourages the market to provide welfare actively (e.g. tax incentives for private pensions) or passively (e.g. keeping social benefits to a minimum).
Examples: In Liberal systems such as the UK, shifts towards community-based Mental Health Services signalled a recommodification of patients who were previously segregated from The Wider processes of a market economy.

Conservative Regime Types

Define: Modest decommodification. Based on social insurance; benefits are often set at relatively high levels but maintain status differentials (redistributing horizontally across income groups).
Relates to CPP: These regimes stress the role of family and non-state actors (e.g. trade unions, religious organizations) in providing welfare, as opposed to being provided by the state.
Examples: In conservative regimes such as Germany and France, institutionalization only occurred in the mid-1970s, and was not promoted on economic grounds.

Social Democratic Regimes

Define: High levels of decommodification. High levels of redistribution → Reduced levels of income stratification across the population.
Relates to CPP: Benefits guaranteed as a right of citizenship, not based on occupational status in the market.
Examples: E.g. Sweden, Norway, Denmark - note: these systems rested on national commitment to ensuring full employment.

Chauvinist Hypothesis

Define: Some scholars argue that an increase in population heterogeneity as a result of migration will decrease support for the welfare state.
Relates to CPP: Survey questions could have prompted respondents to think about the type of people who might obtain these jobs and, rightly or wrongly, included migrants in their calculation.
Examples: Immigration levels do not have a strong association with welfare attitudes, aside from, and some models, being linked to negative attitudes towards government efforts to provide a job for everyone who needs one.

Compensation Hypothesis

Define: Others contend that the increase in competition in the labor market will increase the demand for compensation via welfare programs.
Relates to CPP: Not necessarily inconsistent with anti-immigration attitudes, since Rising migration could lead to support for these types of spending because they are viewed as compensation for competition in the labor market from migrants.
Examples: Higher migration levels can be associated with support for more, rather than less, spending on health, pensions and unemployment transfers.

Bounded Rationality

Define: Suggests individuals make decisions based on a limited understanding of the available information, cognitive limitations, and time constraints.
Relates to CPP: Used to explain cognitive limitations of policy makers that make it difficult to make rational decisions.
Examples: Choosing a restaurant based on familiarity, buying a product based on a brand.

Satisficing

Define: A decision-making strategy where individuals choose an option that meets a minimum threshold of acceptability rather than seeking the optimal solution.
Relates to CPP: Humans are more often "satisficers" acting to merely satisfy particular demands.
Examples: The idea of the purely rational model vs the complex rationality.

Incrementalism

Define: A decision-making approach that involves making small, gradual changes or adjustments to existing policies rather than implementing large, radical changes.
Relates to CPP: The problem confronting the decision-maker is continually redefined. Incrementalism allows for countless ends-means and means-ends adjustments that have the effect of making the problem more manageable.
Examples: Immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, women's suffrage.

Punctuated Equilibrium

Define: PET seeks to explain why long periods of stasis (stability/incrementalism) are marked by periods of profound change which set policy in an entirely new direction
Relates to CPP: The aim of Baumgarner et al. is to measure and explain these long periods of policymaking stability and policy continuity that are disrupted by short but intense periods of instability and change
Examples: Bounded rationality, disproportionate attention, policy monopolies.

Iron Triangles

Define: Refers to the stable, mutually beneficial relationships between three key actors in policy making: interest groups, bureaucrats, and congressional committees or legislators.
Relates to CPP: The reality of policy making is that it is a more fluid process than the Iron Triangle would suggest.
Examples: Congress - Funding and political support. Interest Group - Electoral support via lobbying, NAR. Bureaucracy - Policy choices and regulation, PTA.

Universal Health Care

Define: Helps underprivileged groups (people in poverty regardless of race). Healthcare is a human right.
Relates to CPP: Centralization, Not wasting money on profit.
Examples: United Kingdom, every citizen in England is entitled to NHS care for no cost.

Privatized Health Insurance

Define: Private companies within the health insurance market (businesses).
Relates to CPP: Even in public systems, governments and public actors will need to interact with private actors in order to purchase equipment, provide physical infrastructure, catering and even Medical Services themselves.
Examples: The UK's Independent Sector Treatment Centres, used to cut waiting lists by undertaking routine operations such as the removal of cataracts and hip replacements.

National Health Service

Define: Governments pay for healthcare services, rather than users, or social or private insurers.
Relates to CPP: In such systems, Healthcare is provided to all on the same basis, regardless of the extent of their contributions through taxation.
Examples: UK NHS → England's main healthcare provider.

Equality of Opportunity

Define: The equality of opportunity perspective assumes that school systems can compensate for existing social and economic inequalities in society.
Relates to CPP: The assumption is that universal education will serve as a leveler. Opponents to this view of education access argue that not everyone will benefit from an education, and that efforts to equalize resources squander resources.
Examples: Regardless of the degree of choice, however, poor children generally face greater barriers to learning than any other children, which then affects their ability to perform well in examinations.

Liberal Arts Curriculum

Define: Broad-based educational framework that emphasizes a well-rounded approach to learning, focusing on developing critical thinking, communication skills, and a deep understanding of various fields of knowledge.
Relates to CPP: The liberal arts model contrasts with more vocational or technical education approaches, which focus on specific job-related skills.
Examples: Civic Engagement - Many liberal arts curricula emphasize the importance of understanding social issues and participating in civic life. This includes understanding political systems, ethical concerns, and the role of individuals in society.

Vocational Education

Define: Specialized training generally provided on a short course basis, often with the support of an individual's employer or trade union.
Relates to CPP: High levels of investment in worker training may be of doubtful utility for firms in a context of high labor mobility, and / or where the skills required are not, generally, firm-specific.
Examples: Germany → Continuation of industrial support for vocational education to the strength of craft reunions and viability of manufacturing industry.

Centralized Education System

Define: E.g. Unitary political systems are traditionally characterized by centralization of educational decision-making authority at the national level.
Relates to CPP: State level governments exercise considerable power over education. Regional level control over education can result in different educational structures, curricula and even languages of instruction.
Examples: The British system moved from being extremely decentralized to more centralized following the Balfour Act of 1902.

Decentralized Education System

Define: Federal systems tend to be more decentralized, delegating responsibility for education to the local level.
Relates to CPP: In some countries sub-regional bodies exercise considerable power over education. In many industrialized countries, the trend in recent years has been toward greater decentralization.
Examples: USA, where school districts are responsible for raising funds for education and controlling expenditure.

Public Goods

Define: Environmental resources or services that are available to all individuals and society as a whole, and for which it is difficult or inefficient to exclude people from using them.
Relates to CPP: In environmental policy, public goods typically include things like clean air, clean water, biodiversity, and a stable climate. These are resources that are essential for human well-being but are often not owned by any individual or organization, making them vulnerable to overuse, depletion, or degradation if left unregulated.
Examples: Water Quality: Clean water supplies, such as rivers, lakes, and oceans, are public goods because they serve everyone in a community or region.

Command-and-Control Policies

Define: Direct Regulations.
Relates to CPP: Most widely used policy instrument for environmental protection.
Examples: Non point sources - Fertilizers, Pesticides lawn chemicals, Oil and grease, Toxic chemicals. Capping carbon emissions.

Voluntary Agreements (Environ)

Define: Not legally binding. Negotiated between government and industry, or by industries themselves.
Relates to CPP: Typically used in conjunction with policy instruments.
Examples: Paris Agreement

Economic Incentives (Environ)

Define: Governments have used their control over financial resources and environmental policy both negatively and positively, that is, they have taxed or fined certain activities, and financially rewarded others.
Relates to CPP: Most ecotaxes attempt to go some way towards the internalizing of negative externalities - that is, they require producers and consumers to take into account the full cost of their activities on the environment, which are not reflected in the market price of the activity or goods concerned.
Examples: Carbon tax/carbon credits.

Rational-Comprehensive Model

Define: A decision-making approach that involves making decisions based on a systematic analysis of all available information, possible alternatives, and potential outcomes.
Relates to CPP: Each alternative, and its attendant consequences, can be calculated and compared with other alternatives (see Pareto optimality and Kaldor criterion) that maximize the attainment of his or her goals, values, and objectives.
Examples: Pareto optimality and Kaldor criterion.