public policy study outline

What is Public Policy

• A course of government action intended to address a public problem.

• Includes decisions about what government will and will not do.

What is Democracy?

• A system where citizens have a role in choosing leaders and influencing government decisions.

• Citizens have different preferences, so policymakers must aggregate those preferences.

What is Democratic Public Policy?

• Public policy created through democratic institutions and processes.

• Balances citizen preferences, political institutions, and policy outcomes.

Preference Identification — What do citizens want?

• Government must determine citizens' preferences.

• Elections, polling, public opinion, and political participation can provide information.

Agenda Setting — What is government paying attention to?

• Not every problem receives government attention.

• Political actors decide which issues become priorities.

Alternative Specification — Which policy will government pursue?

• Policymakers develop different possible solutions to a problem.

• Alternatives can have different costs and benefits.

Implementation — Once passed, how will government carry out the policy?

• Bureaucratic agencies are responsible for putting laws into practice.

• Implementation can affect whether a policy succeeds.

Evaluation — How can we know whether policies are successes or failures?

• Researchers evaluate whether policies achieved their intended goals.

• Evidence and data are used to determine effectiveness.

Preference Aggregation Dilemmas

How do we determine a group's preference when individuals want different things?

Delegation Dilemmas

How do we select and motivate the right person/organization to act on our behalf?

Credible Commitment Dilemmas

How can someone credibly promise to do something in the future when they have an incentive to change their mind?

Bargaining Dilemmas

How can people reach an efficient agreement when everyone must agree?

Cooperation and Coordination Dilemmas

How can self-interested people overcome incentives to avoid contributing to a group goal?

An Analytic Approach

• Uses systematic reasoning to understand policy problems and possible solutions.

• Focuses on evidence and relationships between variables.

Emphasis on the Scientific Method

• Ask a question — Identify an outcome that varies and needs explanation.

• Form a theory — Develop an explanation for why the outcome varies.

• Derive a hypothesis — Create a testable statement from the theory.

• Test the hypothesis — Collect and analyze evidence.

• Analyze the data — Determine whether the evidence supports the hypothesis.

Why Study Public Policy?

Accountability, Efficiency Gains, Equitable Policy Delivery, Democratic Policymaking

Accountability

• Determines whether government officials/agencies are doing what they are supposed to do.

• GAO: Helps Congress investigate government operations and spending.

Efficiency Gains

• Looks for ways government can accomplish goals using fewer resources.

• National Performance Review: Example of an effort to make government more efficient.

Equitable Policy Delivery

• Examines whether government policies and benefits are distributed fairly.

• The Great Recession demonstrated how policy can affect different groups differently.

Democratic Policymaking

Helps citizens understand and evaluate government decisions.

Problem and Solution Identification

• Policymakers must first identify what the problem is.

• They must also determine what could be done about it.

• How a problem is defined can affect which solutions seem appropriate.

Dominant Policy Image

• The commonly accepted way of understanding a policy problem.

• Influences how policymakers and the public think about the problem and its possible solutions.

Policy Window

• A period when circumstances create an opportunity for policy change.

• Policy change becomes more likely when problems, solutions, and political circumstances come together.

Policy Demands

Requests or pressures from citizens, interest groups, and other political actors for government action.

Agenda Setting

Determines which problems receive government attention.

Factors that Drive Agenda Setting

• Public opinion

• Political interests

• Interest groups

• Events/crises

• Media attention

• Policy entrepreneurs

• Political institutions

Agenda Setting and the Affordable Care Act

• Demonstrates how political circumstances and competing policy interests can influence whether an issue receives government attention.

Policy Areas and Incentives for Action

• Different policy areas create different incentives for policymakers.

• Political actors consider costs, benefits, public opinion, and political consequences.

Alternative Formulation

Policymakers develop possible solutions to the identified problem.

Policy Selection/Adoption

• Government chooses and formally adopts a policy.

• Political bargaining and competing interests influence which alternative is selected.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

• Compares the expected benefits of a policy with its expected costs.

• Helps policymakers identify whether a policy is likely to produce efficient outcomes.

• Does not necessarily determine what is morally or politically desirable.

Policy Implementation

• The process of putting an adopted policy into practice.

• Usually involves bureaucratic agencies.

Contracting Out to the Bureaucracy

• Government may delegate implementation to bureaucratic organizations.

• Delegation creates a need for oversight because bureaucrats have their own interests.

Why Red Tape?

• Rules and procedures can help ensure accountability.

• However, too many rules can make government slower and less efficient

Policy/Program Evaluation

• Determines whether a policy or program actually produced its intended results.

• Uses evidence to evaluate effectiveness.

Does Policy Cause Politics?

• Policies can change political incentives and create new political conflicts.

• Policy outcomes can therefore influence future political behavior.

Positing a Causal Relationship

• A model proposes that one or more variables influence an outcome.

And Why Is That?

• Researchers must explain why they believe one variable causes another.

Necessary and Sufficient Causality

Necessary condition

• Must be present for an outcome to occur.

Sufficient condition

• Is enough to produce an outcome.

Conditional Causality

The effect of one variable depends on another variable or condition.

Deterministic

A cause always produces the same outcome.

Probabilistic

A cause changes the probability of an outcome but does not guarantee it.

What is a Model of Public Policy?

• A simplified representation of how variables, actors, and institutions interact.

• Helps researchers understand and predict policy outcomes.

Why Do We Need Models of Public Policy?

• Real-world policymaking is complicated.

• Models simplify reality so relationships can be studied and understood.

Elements of a Good Model

Multivariate, Probabilistic, Parsimonious, Generalizable, Falsifiable, Clear and Logically Consistent, Ideologically Neutral

Multivariate

Includes multiple variables rather than assuming one variable explains everything.

Probabilistic

Recognizes that social outcomes usually involve uncertainty

Parsimonious

Explains an outcome with the fewest necessary assumptions/variables.

Generalizable

Findings should apply beyond the specific case studied.

Falsifiable

A model must be testable and capable of being proven wrong.

Clear and Logically Consistent

Concepts and relationships should be understandable and make logical sense.

Ideologically Neutral

The model should not depend on a particular political ideology.

Elements of a Useful Model for Public Policy

actors, rules, actors interacting with rules, conclusions

actors

Individuals or groups involved in policymaking.

rules

Formal and informal rules that influence how actors behave.

actors interacting with rules

Policy outcomes result from actors making choices within institutional rules.

conclusions

Public policy can be studied systematically using models, evidence, and the scientific method.

Origins of Social Problems

Social problems often arise because individual self-interest does not automatically produce the best outcome for society.

Game Theory as a Tool

Examines strategic situations where people's outcomes depend on their own choices and the choices of others.

utility

The benefit or satisfaction an individual gets from an outcome.

Personal Utility Maximization

Individuals generally choose the option they believe will provide them with the greatest utility.

Rational Choice and Altruism

• Rational choice does not necessarily mean selfishness.

• People can value helping others if doing so provides them with utility.

Challenges in Resolving Social Problems

• Individual incentives can conflict with collective interests.

• People may have incentives to free-ride rather than contribute.

Cooperation Dilemmas

• Individuals may benefit from cooperation but have incentives not to cooperate.

• If everyone acts this way, everyone can end up worse off.

Overcoming Barriers to Cooperative Behavior

Repeated Interaction, Axelrod's Computer Experiment, Internalized Norms/External Enforcement

repeated interaction

• Repeated interactions allow people to reward cooperation and punish defection.

• Reputation and future consequences can encourage cooperation.

Axelrod's Computer Experiment

• Demonstrated that cooperation can develop in repeated games.

• Strategies that cooperate but respond to defection can perform well.

Internalized Norms/External Enforcement

• People can cooperate because they personally accept social norms.

• Or cooperation can be encouraged through outside enforcement.

Barriers to Collective Action

Multi-Person Cooperation

• Cooperation becomes more difficult as the number of people increases.

• Individual contributions may seem small, creating incentives to free-ride.

Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

• Illustrates problems involving collective action, cooperation, and social change.

Group Organization

• Organization can help groups overcome collective-action problems by coordinating members and encouraging participation.

Institutions and Social Problems

Institutions establish rules that influence individual and collective behavior.

Institutions as Facilitators of Individual and Collective Action

Institutions can reduce uncertainty, establish rules, enforce agreements, and encourage cooperation.

Property Rights/Credible Commitment

• Property rights establish who has control over resources.

• Clear property rights can encourage people to invest and cooperate.

Market Limitations or Market Failure

Rivalrous and Excludable Goods

• Markets generally work well for private goods because owners can exclude others and use is rivalrous.

Non-Competitive Markets — Monopolies

• A monopoly can restrict competition and lead to inefficient outcomes.

Negative Externalities

• Costs imposed on third parties can cause markets to produce too much of a harmful activity

Incomplete Information

• Markets can fail when people lack important information.

Asymmetric Information and Medical Care

• One side of a transaction may have more information than the other.

• Healthcare is an example where patients and providers often possess different information.

Transaction Costs

Costs associated with finding information, negotiating, and completing transactions can prevent mutually beneficial exchanges.

Response to Market Failures

Provision of Goods and Services

• Government can provide goods that markets undersupply, particularly public goods.

Taxation/Subsidy

• Taxes can discourage harmful activities.

• Subsidies can encourage beneficial activities.

Regulation

• Government can establish rules to change behavior and address market failures.

Government Limitations

Social Choice and Majority Rule

• Majority voting does not always produce a consistent group preference.

Market Distortions

• Government intervention can sometimes create inefficiencies of its own.

Principal-Agent

• Citizens/policymakers must delegate tasks to bureaucrats or other agents whose interests may differ from theirs.

Ostrom's Principles

• Define clear group boundaries.

• Match rules for common resources to local conditions.

• Allow affected people to participate in changing the rules.

• Use effective monitoring.

• Use graduated sanctions for rule violations.

• Use accessible, low-cost dispute resolution.

• Outside authorities should respect communities' rulemaking rights.

• Large common-pool resources should use nested levels of organization.

Conclusion

• Markets and government both have strengths and weaknesses.

• In some situations, combining market and governmental institutions can produce better outcomes.

Counterfactual Model of Causal Inference

• To determine causation, we need to know what would have happened without the treatment.

• The counterfactual cannot directly be observed.

Minimum Conditions for Drawing Valid Inferences

• Need a meaningful comparison between treatment and control conditions.

• Must account for alternative explanations.

Internal and External Validity

• Internal validity = confidence that the study correctly identifies causation.

• External validity = ability to generalize findings.

Descriptive Statistics

Summarize characteristics of data.

Measures of Association

Correlation

• Measures the association between variables.

• Correlation does not automatically establish causation.

Regression

• Allows researchers to examine relationships between variables while accounting for other variables.

Sources of Uncertainty

measurement of error, random error, sampling error,

measurement of error

Error resulting from inaccurately measuring a variable.

random error

Random variation that can affect measurements or results.

sampling error

Difference between a sample's characteristics and the population's characteristics because only a sample was observed.

Inferential Statistics

Uses sample data to draw conclusions about a larger population.

The "Magic" of Statistical Inference

Researchers can use a sample to estimate characteristics of a population while quantifying uncertainty.

Estimating Uncertainty with Probability

Probability provides a way to express how uncertain researchers are about an outcome or estimate.

Standard Hypotheses for Descriptive Statistics

Tests claims about population characteristics.

Standard Hypotheses for Measures of Association

Tests whether an observed relationship is likely to represent a real relationship rather than random variation

Substantively Interesting vs. Statistically Significant

• Statistically significant: Evidence suggests the result is unlikely to be due to chance under the null hypothesis.

• Substantively interesting: The size/effect of the finding actually matters in the real world.

• Something can be statistically significant but practically unimportant.

Why 95%?

• 95% is a conventional level used to balance the risks of statistical errors.

• It corresponds to a 5% significance threshold in many hypothesis tests.

Thought Questions: Choosing Between Different Statistical Errors

• Type I: False positive.

• Type II: False negative.

• The appropriate balance depends on the consequences of each type of mistake.

The Non-Uniqueness of Scientific Uncertainty

Medical Uncertainty

• Medical decisions often involve probabilities rather than certainty.

Physics

• Even highly developed sciences contain uncertainty.

Biology

• Biological systems are complex and outcomes may vary.

Engineering

• Engineers account for uncertainty when designing systems and structures.

Main Point

Scientific uncertainty is normal. It does not mean that scientific evidence is useless or that all claims are equally valid.

Statistical Uncertainty vs. Ill-Informed Skepticism

Ill-Informed Skepticism/Adherence

• People can misuse or misunderstand scientific uncertainty.

Scientific Certainty / Ill-Informed Adherence

• Treating scientific claims as completely certain when uncertainty exists.

Scientific Uncertainty / Ill-Informed Adherence

• Accepting a claim despite uncertainty without properly considering the evidence.

Scientific Certainty / Ill-Informed Skepticism

• Rejecting strong evidence despite substantial scientific support.

Scientific Uncertainty / Ill-Informed Skepticism

• Using legitimate uncertainty as an excuse to reject evidence altogether.

Skepticism as a Political Asset

Political actors can exploit scientific uncertainty to delay or prevent policy action.

Empirical Research and "Policy-Oriented Learning"

• Research can improve policymaking by showing what policies actually accomplish.

• Policy learning does not require perfect certainty.

Federal Bureaucracy

The federal bureaucracy is responsible for implementing many laws and policies.