GLS 230 Midterm

Easton’s policymaking system model

A framework that describes the process of policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation, emphasizing the interactions among various actors and institutions involved in governance.

Inputs

Demands:

• Solve specific problems

• Work toward general social aims

Support:

• Effectiveness

• Legitimacy

Policy Venues

• Institutional locations with decision-making power

• “gatekeepers” of our political system

• They determine who can participate, when, and how

• Executive, Legislative, Judicial Branches

Domestic Policy Types

• Distributive Policy:

  Policies that allocate public resources (funding, services, or benefits) to specific groups or communities without taking from others.

  Ex: Infrastructure spending

• Regulatory Policy:

  Policies that set rules, restrictions, or standards to regulate individuals, businesses, or industries to protect public interest.

  Ex: Environmental laws, seatbelt law

• Redistributive Policy:

  Policies that reallocate resources (usually through taxation) from one group to another, typically to address economic inequality.

  Ex: Welfare programs

• Domestic Dedistributive Policy:

  Policies that reduce government redistribution efforts, often by cutting social programs or reducing government intervention.

  Ex: Cutting welfare programs

Foreign Policy Types

• Foreign Strategic Policy:

  Policies guiding international relations and national security.

• Foreign Structural Policy:

  Policies addressing global economic structures and institutions.

• Foreign Crisis Policy:

  Policies designed to respond to international emergencies and conflicts.

The Policymaking Environment

• The Structural Environment:

  The basic features that make up the American

  political landscape (e.g., federalism, separation of

  powers, checks and balance

• The Social Environment:

  Demographics

• The Political Environment:

  Political trends and overall partisan composition

• The Economic Environment:

  The relative state of the economy at any point in time

Policy and Public Policy

• Policy:

  A relatively stable, purposive course of action followed by an actor or set of actors in dealing with a problem or matter of concern

• Public Policy

  Policies produced by government actors, agencies, and institutions

  • Is goal-oriented

  • Consists of patterns of actions taken across time

  • Created in response to demand

The Stages Framework

In public policy, the STAGES framework can be useful for understanding how policymakers, organizations, and societies evolve in their thinking and approach to governance.

Issue Identification (Initiation and Problem Definition):

Issue initiation:

• Process through which an issue goes from being a private trouble to a public problem

• Heightening “concern” within society

Problem definition:

• Process through which we assign meaning or understanding to issues or problems

• Interaction between several forces

  • The objective nature of the problem

  • Perceived seriousness of the problem

  • Mobilization of political support

Describes, recommends, and persuades

Agenda setting (define the agenda)

• The agenda

  • The demands that policymakers choose to or feel compelled to act on at a given time

  • Found at all levels and in all branches of government

• Achieving agenda status is extraordinarily difficult and requires the convergence of a plethora of forces

Policy Formulation and Adoption

Policy formulation:

• The actual design of legislation

• Proposals can come from many sources

  • Policy diffusion

Policy adoption:

• Action on a preferred

  policy alternative

• The decision making

  stage

Policy Implementation

• Encompasses whatever is done to carry a law into effect, to apply it to the target population, and to achieve its goals

  • Government agencies or bureaucracies

• Not an a-political process

  • Conflict bleeds into implementation stage

Policy Evaluation

• Concerned with trying to determine the effects or consequences of actual public policies

  • Assessment, estimation, or appraisal

• Can occur at any time during the policy process

• Politics is again ever-present

  • Credibility of findings often disputed

How does political conflict differ from an intercollegiate debate?:

Political conflict is not like an intercollegiate debate in which the opponents agree in advance on a definition of issues. As a matter of fact, the definition of alternatives is the supreme instrument of political power, the antagonists can rarely agree on what the issues are because power is involved in the definition.

Issues vs. Problems

Issues:

• Need to enter the public consciousness

• Various mechanism can bring issues to attention

Problems:

• A condition or situation (an

  issue) that produces needs or

  dissatisfaction among people

  and for which relief or redress

  by governmental action is

  sought

  • An “issue” does not

    become a “problem”

    unless it is defined as such

Problem Definition

• The process through which we assign meaning to conditions

  • “Issue” does not become a “problem” unless it is defined as such

• Features

  • Problem must be defined as being appropriate for government action

  • Agenda setting or denial

  • Bottom-up or top-down

  • Definitions can change as conditions and values change

  • Problem ownership

  • Communicates a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end

Recurrent Categories of definitional claims

• Severity

• Incidence

• Novelty

• Proximity

• Crisis

• Characteristics of the problem population

• Ends-means orientation

• Nature of the solution

• Causation

Severity

Severity is defined in terms of the scope, scale, time, and consequences of the problem

Incidence

The measure of who is affected by the issue

and to what extent

NOVELTY

“Novel” issues are characterized as unprecedented

PROXIMITY

Issue that hit close to home and are of personal relevancy. If the case is made successfully, the audience will appear concerned and may express them politically

Crisis

Involves the severity of a situation where an action is overdue and dire circumstances exist

Causation

Figuring out where a problem comes from, who or what is responsible, and how to respond. It involves deciding if the issue is caused by individuals or larger systems, whether it was intentional or accidental, and if blame should be assign

Characteristics of the Problem Population

The power to frame a certain population to achieve certain sociopolitical perceptions

Ends-Means Orientation

How policy issues are framed in terms of

desired outcomes and how to achieve them

• Ends-oriented definitional claims focus on goals that the policy is supposed to achieve

• Means-oriented definitional claims focus on the specific ways to address the problem

Nature of the Solution

Agreed upon, available, acceptable, and affordable:

• Agreed upon: Solutions can sort of define the problem

• Available: do we even have the means/ability?

• Acceptable: "standard codes of behavior"

• Affordability: Is this plausible viable and accessible?

Agenda Setting

The process through which an issue comes to be recognized as a public problem and placed on the “agenda” of a decision making body

Agenda types:

• Public

  • The set of concerns society cares about

• Formal or institutional

  • The set of items government is considering addressing

Formula for an unstable society?

• Big gap between public and formal agenda

Agenda Setting Assumptions

• Mobilization of bias favors the status quo

• Demands are parallel, processing is serial

• Certain items recur

• New issues make policymakers uncomfortable

• Possibility of “pseudo-agenda status