The policymaking process

Different emission trajectories: Explanatory factors

Economic development, technological change, soceital preferences

What is public policy

Decisions and rules which includes measures governments adopt and implement to influence behaviour and address societal problems

What are three perspectives on how policies are made. Explain them, say why they’re good and and state the risk of them

Paradigmatic perspectives | Rationalist approaches

- Focuses on the behavior and characteristics of individuals.

• Actors behave rationally and have stable preferences.

• Institutions structure strategic interaction

Means its easy to explain technical or low conflict policy areas

Risk: learning processes and stability of preferences is overstated

Paradigmatic perspectives | Incrementalist approaches

• rationality of decision makers is bounded

• continous process of adaptation to make policy

• decision makers settle for good enough

Explains why existing policies are hard to replace, why policies get adapted and politcal inertia

Risk: Cannot explain sudden changes in policy and that some political actors are more power

Garbage man model:

Policymaking is often messy, unpredictable and strongly influenced by timing and chance

Decisions only emerge when theres: problems, solutions, actors and choice opportunities

Recognizes the importance of chance and timing.

Risk: Overstimates chaos: doesnt appreciate strategy

eg 9/11

Say the 5 steps of the policy creation cycle

Explain agenda setting of the political cycle. Factors affect it?

Ranking of topic priorities within the decision-making system in governmemt etc not social media

Factors: Scienctific advancements, crisis, social unrest, election, public opinion

What is policy formulation and how is it done?

Political actors develop solutions to a problem

Done through:
Legislature

Public administration to actually implement policy into everyday life

Relevant interest groups and corporation

Labor unions

Experts

How is policy adoption done?

The policy is formally approved through the relevant political institutions. EG parliament and legislature

There are veto players whose agreement is necessary to pass the policy.

What is policy implementation and who are key actors

What are four causes of implementation deficits?

Implementing a policy and applying it

Actors: public administration and agencies

Street level bureacrats like police officers, teachers etc

Business associations and unions.

Deficits:

Bureaucratic drift: implemented in a different way than intended

Regulatory capture: Regulated industries influence regulators to serve their interests rather than the public interest.

Resource constraints: Insufficient funding or personnel

Coordination problems: Different departments failing to work tghtr

What is policy evaluation and what is evaluated

Systematic examination of processes, outputs, outcomes, and impacts of policies

Policy outputs and measures done by policy

The outcome like intended behavior change of target audience

Policy impacts

What is James Wilsons typology? What are diffused and concentrated costs and benefits

What are his four type of politics considering diffused and concentrated costs and benefits.

His central idea is that political reactions depend on who receives the benefits and who bears the costs.

Concentrated benefits and costs: a small group of people bear the costs of reap the benefits

Diffused benefits and costs: benefits or costs spread across large group

How do policies shape politics?

The distribution of costs and benefits of a policy influences political interests, coalitions, and conflicts