Public Policy Making Ch 5-7

Policies that impose bans on certain actions or prohibit the expenditure of money.

Deliberate use of the gov'ts taxing and spending powers to stimulate or restrain the economy by incurring budget deficits or surpluses.

Policy without funding

-Conveys good overview of the gov'ts total set of policies
-Statement of policy

1. Preparation
2. Authorization
3. Execution
4. Audit

In the executive branch, begins 9 months before it is sent to Congress in February.
Handled by OMB

Two steps:
1. Substative legislation has to be enacted and authorizing the expenditure.
2. Money actually has to be made available for the policy/program

Appropriations and other budgetary resources by time periods and by activities in order to ensure the effective use of available resources and to preclude the need for additional appropriations.

Involves checking on expenditures for evidence of illegality, waste, or abuse. Handled by the GAO and IG.

Bureaucracies
Administrative Agencies
Legislature
Courts
Pressure Groups
Community Organizations

Complex array of administrative agencies

Provided with broad and ambiguous statutory mandates that leave them with much room for choice in deciding what should or should not be done on some matter.

Legislature uses
Committee Hearings
Specificity of Legislation
Senatorial Approval
Legislative Veto
Casework

Legislation is enforced primarily through judicial action.

-Can participate in administration
Advisory bodies may become participants in policy administration

Local level, community and other organizations

-Basic Rules of the Game
-Chief Executive
-Congressional System of Oversight
-Courts
-Other Administrative Agencies
-Other Governments
-Interest Groups
-Political Parties
-Communications Media

The relevant laws, rules, and regulations, accepted modes of procedure, and concepts of fair play that help form and guide official behavior and to which officials are expected to conform.

Within Presidential chain of command and/or control are most administrative agencies. He directs matters as top-level personnel appointments, budget recommendations, expenditure controls and policy directive.

Supervisory system includes the standing committees and subcommittees, chairs, committee staffs, and influential members of Congress. Influence is fragmented and sporadic rather than monolithic and continuous.

Agencies may be strongly affected by the judiciary's use of its powers of judicial review and statutory interpretation.

Agencies with competing or overlapping jurisdictions may affect one another's operations.

State, municipal, and county governments, school districts, and associations of the state and local officials may attempt to influence a national agency's decisions

Agenices sometimes seek group support to increase the size, ease, or effectiveness of their operations.

Appointment to top level positions may be influenced by considerations of party welfare and policy orientation.

Play an important part in shaping public opinion toward an agency by revealing and publicizing its actions, favorably unfavorably.

Rule
Substantive Rule
Interpretive Rule
Procedural Rule

An agency statement of general or particular applicablility and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or describing the organization, procedure, or practice requirements of an agency.

Fill in the details of general statutory provisions and have the force and effect of law.

Indicate how an agency views or interprets the laws that enforces and the meaning it gives to statutory terms

Describe an agency's organization and how it will conduct various activities

1. Notice of proposed rule to be published in the Federal Register
2. Opportunity must be provided for interested persons to participate in the process
3. Statement of the rule's basis and purpose must be in the final rule
4. Final rule must be published at least 30 days before it becomes effective

Agencies can make policy when they apply existing laws or rules to particular situations by case-to-case decision making.

Molding policy through various _____ actions. Allows for discretion in enforcement of policy

Many agencies administer programs to help people which determines policy both directly and indirectly.

-Noncoercive Forms of Action
-Inspection
-Licensing
-Loans, Subsidies, and Benefits
-Contracts
-General Expenditures
-Market and Proprietary Operations
-Taxation
-Directive Power
-Services
-Informal Procedures
-Sanctions

Policies that do not involve the imposition of legal sanctions or penalties, reward, or deprivations.

-Declarations of policy by themselves may cause people to comply
-Voluntary standards established by official action
-Mediation and conciliation to settle labor-management disputes
-Publicity
-Educational and demonstration programs

Licensing, or enabling action, involves gov't authorization to engage in a business or profession to to do something otherwise forbidden.

-Financial means by which policy is advanced
-May include explicit regulatory features.

Governmental programs with private companies; serve as the basis for specific economic controls.

Used for purchasing goods and services to attain various policy goals

Used by the Fed. Reserve Board to expand or contract the money supply in the economy.

Not only provide revenue but also serve to sanction or encourage certain types of behavior.

Through the use of adjudicatory proceeding issue orders that are binding on private parties.

Policies of the distributive variety involve the provision of services such as information, advice, legal counsel, medical treatment, and psychiatric services.

Settling questions involving private rights, privileges, and interests without formal action and adversary hearings.

Devices, penalties, and rewards that agencies use to encourage or compel compliance

-Respect for reasonable authority
-Reasoned, conscious acceptance

The things that are actually done by agencies

Sometimes called results, are the consequences for society intended and unintended, that stem from deliberate gov't action or inaction

1. Affect the public problem
2. May affect situations
3. Have consequences for future as well as current conditions
4. Policies entail costs
5. Effects may be either material or symbolic

1. Legislators, administrators, judges, media, have always made judgements about policy
2. Process, operation, administration of a policy
3. Systematic objective evaluation
4. Experimental design
5. Quasi-experiment
6. Before and after study

Uses two groups, one that receives the policy or program, the other does not.

A treatment group is compared with another group that is similar in many respects.

Compares the results of a program after a period of implementation with the conditions existing prior to its inception

Communications media, university scholars, research centers, private research organizations

Primary function of Congress is the supervision and evaluation of the adminstration and execution of laws and policies

1. Casework
2. Committee hearing and investigation
3. Appropriations process
4. Approval of Presidential appointments
5. Committee staff studies

An arm of Congress, has the authority to audit the operations and financial activities of federal agencies and report findings to Congress.

Whether evaluating policy, fact finding, making policy recommendation, they are involved in evaluation to some degree.

Evaluate policy on their own or at the direction of Congress or the executive.
Usually evaluated with a 5 yr. plan

-Uncertainty over Policy Goals
-Difficulty in Determining Casuality
-Diffuse Policy Impact
-Difficulties in Data Acquisition
-Official Resistance
-Limited Time Perspective
-Evaluation Lacks Influence

When goals of a policy are unclear, diffuse or diverse

Unable to determine if the policy is making a positive change or not

Policy actions that affect groups other than those at whom they are specifically directed.

A shortage of accurate and relevant statistical data may handicap the evaluator

Program officials may discourage or disparage evaluation studies, refuse access to data, or keep incomplete records when a negative impact is possible

An evaluation ignored or attacked as inclusive or unsound based upon evaluation poor design, data used inadequate, or findings inconclusive

A formal, quantitative evaluation technique that requires identifying the costs and benefits of either a proposed or actual policy and translating them into monetary values for purposes of comparison

1. Identify all the effects and categorize as cost or benefit.
2. Dollar values are placed on various costs and benefits
3. Establish a discount rate to equate the value of present and future effects.
4. Compare all direct and indirect, current and future costs and benefits.