In our readings a while back there was a discussion of gridlock. It was there that we discussed one of the outcomes of gridlock and the outcomes of it, with one of the outcomes being that as it gets harder and harder to pass legislation, politics have moved into the realm of agency influence. Because as policy in the legislative making process comes to a stand still in the legislature, you can still move policy though by making sure that agency leaders and bureaucrats move policy through, and in a sense gives politics and policy makers the ability to circumvent the gridlocked legislative process.
With that being said do you think that the policy implementation process can be fully examined without this understanding? Do you think that policy implementation can be fully examined by looking at the post legislative action, or do we need to also examine changes in policy that are enacted on an agency level to understand the full scope and sustainability of policy implementation? Can policy implementation be fully discussed without the understanding that policy in enacted through different channels, not just the legislative process? Or do you think this feature of the policy process is negligible compared to the omnibus legislation (such as the Affordable Care Act) that now moves though congress?
Hacker (2010) tackles institutional norms by explaining the difference in the approach taken by the Clinton and Obama administrations in pursuing healthcare reform. While acknowledging that increased polarization of Congress led to homogeneous support and opposition to the healthcare bill (on a strict party line basis), Hacker also credits the Obama administration ability to address and work within institutional norms -chiefly interest groups- as contributing to the measure of success achieved by the administration. The scope of this success was tempered due to the necessity of maintaining universal support from Democrats, given the looming threat of filibuster by Republicans.
Regarding policy, McConnell (2010) describes three strands of policy: process, programs, and politics: process explains how societies choose policies to enact, following a problem-based identification process; programs encompass the means by which governments enact policies, including laws, taxation, and spending; and politics explains the effect that policy decisions has on individuals (and how this affects which policies individuals pursue in the future). McConnell argues that while policies are under near constant scrutiny, the success vs. failure metric by which policies are scrutinized is too simplistic. He suggests three spectrum which correlate with his three strands of policy. Each of these spectrum measure success in five categories, decreasing in stages from total success to total failure.
Returning to the filibuster, Mann and Ornstein (2008) previously described the relatively new reliance on the filibuster -and the fear of a potential filibuster - as a means to water down policy, thus limiting real reform. They also explain that the increased use of this tactic paralleled the rise in polarization. Therefore, would a change in or removal of the filibuster encourage greater cooperation between the two parties to enact real reform, or are the perceptions of reform too ideologically tied to each party?
]]>Random man parked near me: "They are trying to get rid of us"
Me: "Huh?"
RM, pointing to the western sky: "I guess they don't like us anymore"
Me, looking at sky: "What?"
RM, pointing to the eastern sky: "They are over there now"
Me, still looking: "?"
RM: "Aluminum and Barium. They're dusting us with the chemtrails"
Me: "Ah"
A few days ago, I had no idea people believed that the trails behind aircraft were chemical or biological agents meant to harm us. Now, a few days after we talk about it, I run into a stranger who warns me about it. I'm starting to believe there's a conspiracy to have me believe in conspiracies.
Here's your chance to comment on anything conspiracy related, as a follow-up to our last discussion.
]]>Once a policy is formulated and adopted, it must be implemented.
According to Charles Jones (1984), implementation is the "set of activities directed toward putting a program into effect."
Three activities are particularly important to successful implementation.
Policy implementation is a crucial stage of the policy progress because it is where one sees actual government intervention and real consequences for society (Mazmanian and Sabatier 1983; Goggin et al. 1990).
Executive Branch Agencies
Implement most public policies within the US.
The traditional view was that they were nonpolitical administrators who simply carried out the will of the legislature, with no say in the policy beyond its execution. This viewpoint, however, is unrealistic and fails to take into consideration the influence agencies have in formulating policy and the discretion they have in its implementation. Because of this discretion, agency decisions often reflect the political philosophy and preferences of the chief executive who appointed the agency's administrators.
Chief executives try to place in the top agency jobs people who agree with them on matters such as interpreting the law, deciding on agency priorities, and choosing which policy tools to use.
At times, the executive's enthusiasm for the law, or lack thereof, becomes apparent when it comes time to write the rules. When the Federal Election Commission began to set standards for implementing the controversial campaign finance reform law of 2002, the law's sponsors in Congress complained that the rules "would severely undermine the new law" (Mitchell 2002).
Post-Implementation
Policy and Program Evaluation
An assessment of whether policies and programs are working well.
In particular, analysts look for evidence that a program is achieving its stated goals and objectives. For example, did a welfare reform policy reduce the number of people on welfare? Do the programs have unanticipated consequences, particularly any that are viewed as harmful?
Of the many reasons governments engage in policy and program evaluation, costs may be among the most important. Government programs are usually expensive, and policymakers, who must be accountable to the voters, want to know if the results are worth the money. In addition to costs versus benefits, analysts have many other methods for evaluating policies, but as with policy formulation, legitimation, and implementation, evaluation is not merely about technical studies of program results. It also involves political judgments about a program's worth. In this sense, programs are continually, if often informally, evaluated by members of Congress, interest groups, think tanks, and others.
Policy Change
The modification of policy goals, the means used to achieve them, or both. The change could be minor, moderate, or extensive.
Most often a policy or program undergoes incremental change in an attempt to make it more effective or to meet the objectives of its main constituencies and other policy actors. Termination of a policy or program is one of many kinds of changes that might be considered, although it is rare.
All public policies can be considered to be experiments in which government and the public learn what works well and what does not. In some cases, what is thought to be a resolution of a problem though policy adoption at one point is later evaluated and judged to be unacceptable. Interested parties then advocate changes. Another round of the policy cycle begins as the newly recognized needs reach the political agenda and a different policy is formulated and adopted.
Eric Patashnik - Keynote Address, Parts 1, 2, 5
Sources
In all three articles, with each issue there is an opportunity to avoid blame. Kingdon's policy entrepreneurs would see the issues as a window and rush in to attach their solutions to them. Politicians, on the other hand, see the issues as potentially harmful to their careers and try to distance themselves from negative outcomes through a variety of tactics. The authors are concerned about the effects blame avoidance has on democracy. Regardless of how politicians distance themselves from blame, it tends to leave the public without all the information it needs to make informed decisions.
Blame avoidance isn't unique to politics. In the open discussion forum I talked about avoiding blame through espousing unattainable (in my opinion) political goals. I am curious to know what other ways do you think people (politicians included) avoid blame?
In this, it seems as though the media plays an important role in the blame game. Hood argues that "politicians are as a group motivated more by the desire to avoid blame for negative outcomes than by the desire to claim credit for positive ones" (19). This makes sense in relation to the portrayal of political events and scandals in the media. Scandal and controversy are likely to be at the forefront, and hold a longer presence, in the media. Furthermore, the public may be more likely to recall or "tune it" to scandal than they are to positive stories or work of political officials. Therefore, Hoods argument that political officials are likely to respond more to blame and negative stories than they are to take claim of positive ones because of the limited staying power or salience of positive stories.
Yet, Hood talks about the increased propensity to blame politicians for their personal and 'inalienable' shortcomings in failures, such as financial or sexual indiscretions, through "blame displacement". This raises the point or to what degree are political officials able to gain in the eyes of the public for continually denying political or personal scandal or controversy? Also, is there a tipping point for political officials where it makes more sense to accept blame and start to emphasize the good work they have done?
]]>Additionally, Hood explains that the public's response to blame shifting depends on two opposing factors: 1. A vindictive or sympathetic public; 2. A malign or benign outcome. A vindictive public makes avoiding blame impossible, while a sympathetic public can lead to a "Teflon" leader shielded from blame.
Providing a more narrow scope, Zohlnhofer's (2007) comparative analysis of the budget process within the British and German governments details four strategies for blame avoidance: policy design( designing policies to cover up unpopular parts); institutional cooperation (collusion with an opposition party); presentation strategies (choosing an appropriate argument); and timing (knowing when to act). Which strategy is employed depends on the form of government: a multi-actor state, such as Germany, leans on institutional cooperation, while a single-actor state, such as Britain, varies its blame avoidance strategies.
Weaver (1987) goes into even greater detail, describing eight strategies for blame avoidance: 1. controlling an agenda; 2. Redefining or obscuring an issue; 3. Throwing good money after bad (shoring up a losing cause) 4. Passing the buck (delegating); 5. Finding a scapegoat; 6. Jumping on a bandwagon (switching sides of an issue); 7. Circling the wagons (arriving at consensus); 8. Stop me before I kill again (choosing a good policy over a credit-lucrative policy).
Weaver also discusses the impact blame avoidance has on the power of interest groups. He contends that, in order to avoid blame, policy makers leave it up to interest groups to come to an accord when faced with a contentious policy. Furthermore, blame avoidance also disenfranchises some groups from the political process, since those groups with something to lose will speak up more than groups with something to gain. Weaver's discussion of interest groups is similar in scope to Ciglar and Loomis et. al. (2007), who state that interest groups align themselves with scared groups; groups fearful of losing some benefit (for example, gun control).
Returning to the strategies described above, what are the overlapping strategies and does this overlap promote one (or more) strategy to a dominant position?
"The impact of the blame-generating and blame-avoiding behaviors on the practice of democracy is, however, more important than their effect on any specific policy... [F]ear of blame causes politicians to be vague in their public statements about where they stand, especially on issues that divide their constituencies." (47)
He also points out that a type of blame generating behavior is that one that leads to a slanderous campaign; one that contains negative images repeated over and over again in an attempt to "undermine voter confidence." Do you think these blame-generating behaviors during an election are effective? Or do you think that polarization and other political elements have divided the political parties enough that in an election year these methods of blame-generating behavior does not actually undermine democracy as much as indicated by Weaver?
Here is more information on the steps after agenda setting (to be continued next week).
Policy Formulation
Policy formulation is the development of proposed courses of action to help resolve a public problem.
Policy alternatives are studied and advocated as part of the policy stream and evaluated against the prevailing standards for policy acceptance (which include economic cost, social and political acceptability, and likely effectiveness in addressing the problem).
In most policy areas the appointed and career officials in a bureaucracy are among the most experienced and knowledgeable policy actors.They have the technical information needed to develop policy and the political knowledge that comes from working in the policy arena. However, while their knowledge can be enormously valuable in formulating new policy approaches, current officials who are strongly wedded to traditional approaches may be concerned about the implications of new policies for their offices, resources, and careers.
Interest groups are also active contributors to policy formulation. They have a great deal of information at their disposal, and they attempt to shape policy to serve their own economic or political needs.
Policy Legitimation
Policy legitimation is the giving of legal force to decisions, or authorizing or justifying policy action.
It may come from a majority vote in a legislature or a formal executive, bureaucratic, or judicial decision (Jones 1984).
From some perspectives, the process of legitimation includes the legitimacy of the action taken, that is, whether it is thought to be a proper exercise of government authority and its broad acceptability to the public and / or other policy actors. Policies that are adopted without such legitimation face serious hurdles. They may fail to command public support, affected interest groups may oppose them or even challenge them in court, and their implementation could be adversely affected.
Sources
Claiming Credit
A recent piece on credit claiming and immigration.
And, a story on credit claiming from 20+ years ago (source):
The way House and Senate members fight to get credit for those federal projects back home, you'd think it was their money.]]>They put out press releases, testify at hearings, talk about them at town meetings and attend the ribbon cuttings. They defend them in the chambers of Congress when critics label their roads, buildings, dams or research grants "pork barrel."
And don't dare try to take their credit away - especially if you're another member of Congress.
Sen. Harris Wofford, D-Pa., who was appointed last spring and is the underdog in a special election this fall, beat Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in announcing $ 15 million in a spending bill for bus transportation improvements at Pittsburgh's airport.
Specter responded by storming to the Senate floor and delivering a speech on how he'd been working on the project for years. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., chairman of the transportation appropriations subcommittee, had let Wofford announce it even before the bill was formally approved.
This "warrants notice to the Senate and ought to be made part of the record ... an action which I consider to be grossly inappropriate," Specter declared.
"It's surprising to me he's making such a big deal out of it," said Wofford's spokesman, David Stone.
What's really surprising is how rare it is for such things to spill out into the open. In fact, credit-claiming is a fairly routine and predictable business.
The Democrats control Congress, and therefore get a better shot at putting stuff into spending bills for their home districts.
The Republicans control the White House, which usually gives GOP lawmakers first crack at announcing the grants made by federal agencies.
Take Kansas, for example. Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole, as the delegation's big cheese in Congress, gets to announce virtually every grant any agency makes in the state.
If there were a Democrat in the White House, perhaps one of the state's Democratic House members would compete for that role, but Dole would still get more than his share.Missouri Sens. John Danforth and Christopher Bond, both Republicans, have taken to issuing joint press releases to announce federal grants. Danforth, with his seniority, could hog the limelight, but Bond faces re-election next year and Danforth wants to help him out.
Illinois has no Republican senators, so the GOP administration tries to give House GOP Leader Robert Michel of Peoria advance notice of actions affecting the state so he can get his press releases out first.West Virginia has no Republicans in Congress, but it probably wouldn't matter if it did.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd is chairman of the appropriations committee, upon which federal agencies depend for their money. Byrd can announce anything he wants to, and he makes sure there's plenty for him to announce.Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York, a Republican with far less seniority than Byrd, isn't able to come up with as many goodies, although he's known for trying as hard as anyone. And he certainly gets the most from each bit.
D'Amato recently announced that the Federal Aviation Administration was awarding a $ 39 million grant to the Buffalo airport for a new passenger terminal and other improvements. Then he sent the same press release out a month later, after a 30-day review period had passed, to announce it again.
D'Amato's an exception, but most lawmakers do little of this credit-grabbing in Washington, where critics might see it as unseemly.
For example, Byrd's office distributed in West Virginia but resisted furnishing Washington reporters with his press release on moving part of the CIA to his state.
Lawmakers concentrate their efforts on the folks back home, the voters, who are presumably impressed with their ability to "bring home the bacon." Some go so far as to get projects named after themselves.You'd think it was their money.