PPA 503 – The Public Policy-Making Process

1. PPA 503 – The Public Policy-Making Process Lecture 7a – Legitimation and Decision-Making

2. Policy Legitimation • Legitimation is the official authorization of the policy decision or policy program • Agreement on means. • The purpose of legitimacy is to provide authorization for the basic processes of government. If the government acts with legitimacy in a society governed by popular sovereignty, citizens will follow government directives. • But citizens have to believe that government actions are legitimate. • Support. • Support for the regime tends to be diffuse – a reserve of favorable attitudes and goodwill toward the actions of government that helps members of the polity tolerate dissonance.

3. Policy Legitimation • Agreement on Means (contd.). • Regimes maintain diffuse support by inculcation. • The education system in any society builds support for its political processes. Sources of patriotism. • Legitimacy can be managed through manipulation of symbols (the playing of the national anthem at every event). Through this process people learn to support government.

4. Policy Legitimation • Agreement on Means (contd.). • Discontinuities can exist. But if the discontinuities are persistent, they can shake the underlying legitimacy. • Civil Rights movement. • Vietnam. • Watergate. • Clinton scandals. • Iraqi prison scandals. • Ultimately, you should recognize that the legitimacy of the regime and the legitimacy of the government are two different things. It is possible to question the current authorities without losing support for the U.S. governmental system.

5. Policy Legitimation • Approval: majority building. • Principle process of American democracy is majority building. Decisions by majority rule are granted more legitimacy than decisions by plurality (2000 election). • But plenty of checks against majority tyranny. • Legitimation by majority rule most closely identified with the legislature. • But, bureaucrats, legislative liaison, lobbyists, state and local officials, the President also involved. • Presidential veto or the threat of the veto. • Split-ticket voting.

6. Policy Legitimation • Majority building in Congress. • Collecting knowledge. • Identifying interests. • Maintaining a flow of communication. • Congressional committee hearings, staff research, diversified representation, interest group contacts, research by agencies, requests for info from agencies and private research groups.

7. Policy Legitimation • Majority building in Congress (contd.). • Other characteristics of the process. • Serial consideration of alternatives. • Several majorities have to be constructed. • Excluding amendments and appropriations. • House (subcommittee, committee, House Rules committee, vote on the rule, vote in the committee of the whole, vote on the bill, vote on recommital. • Senate (subcommittee, committee, scheduling, vote on the bill, vote on reconsideration).

8. Policy Legitimation • Majority building in Congress (contd.). • Other characteristics of the process (contd.). • Different strategies may be need to build majorities for the same proposal. • A number of nonmajoritarian and extramajoritarian considerations must be taken into account in analyzing legitimation processes in Congress. • Committee and subcommittee power. • Veto override. • Filibuster in Senate.

9. Policy Legitimation • Majority building in Congress (contd.). • Other characteristics of the process. • Bargaining is central to all processes. • Outcomes may not satisfy absolutely but will be politically acceptable. • Parties facilitate, but do not guarantee majority coalitions. • Legislative involvement differs across issues. • Confirm a coalition elsewhere. • Participate in developing a coalition. • Legislative leadership in developing coalitions. • Satisfy majority of the public.

10. Policy Legitimation • Other means of approval. • Direct participation. • More monitoring of government activity. • More involvement in implementation. • Initiatives and referenda. • Bureaucratic rule-making. • Legislative delegation and administrative discretion. • Federal Register and public comment. • Supervision by federal circuit courts.

11. Policy Legitimation • Other means of approval (contd.). • Judicial decision-making. • Reactive • Lifetime appointment at federal level, election at state and local level. • Judicial review. • Trial courts. • Appellate courts.

12. Policy Legitimation • Constraints on legitimation. • Problem definition constraints. • Ideological constraints. • Structural constraints. • Political constraints.

13. Rational Model of Decision-Making • State goals/ objectives explicitly and precisely. • Adhere to the same goal throughout the analysis and decision-making process. • Try to imagine and consider as many alternatives as possible. • Define each alternative clearly as a distinct course of action.

14. Rational Model of Decision-Making • Evaluate the costs and benefits of each course of action as accurately and completely as possible. • Choose the course of action that will maximize total welfare as defined by your objectives.

15. Polis Model • State goals and objectives ambiguously and possibly keep some goals secret or hidden. • Be prepared to shift goals and redefine goals as the political situation dictates. • Manage alternatives. • Keep undesirable alternatives off the agenda by not mentioning them. • Make your preferred alternative appear to be the only feasible or possible one. • Focus on one part of the causal chain and ignore others that would require politically difficult or costly political actions.

16. Polis Model • Use rhetorical devices to blend alternatives; don’t appear to make a clear decision that could trigger strong opposition. • Select from the infinite range of consequences only those whose costs and benefits will make your preferred course of action look “best”. • Choose the course of action that hurts powerful constituents the least, but portray your decision as creating maximum social good for a broad public.

17. Decision strategies • Rational model. • Cost-benefit analysis (outline). • Tally up the negative and positive consequences of an action to see whether, on balance, the action will lead to a gain or a loss. The decision is then made according a single criterion or rule: net benefit greater than zero or benefit-cost ratio greater than one. • Risk analysis (outline). • Exactly like benefit-cost analysis, but each consequence comes attached with a probability of its happening. Expected value or cost. • Decision trees (outline). • The concept of expected value is equally central to decision analysis, a framework for structuring problems when there is a great deal of uncertainty about the consequences of actions or when there are trade-offs between different consequences for the same action.

18. Decision strategies • Polis model. • Ambiguity. • Non-decisions. • Hobson’s choice. • Issue framing. • Labeling of alternatives.

19. Vigilant Problem-Solving

20. Vigilant Problem-Solving • Key assumptions of the decision-making model. • The quality of decision procedures used to arrive at a fundamental policy decision is one of the major determinants of a successful outcome. • Most top-level leaders are capable of carrying-out the procedures that are essential for high-quality policymaking. • Policymakers generally make no effort to use high-quality procedures for arriving at a policy decision if they regard the issue as unimportant. • If one of the constraints is critical, policymakers will give the constraint priority even if the issue is very important.

21. Vigilant Problem-Solving • Procedural criteria for effective decision-making • Surveys a wide range of objectives. • Canvasses a wide range of alternatives. • Intensively searchers for new information relevant to the alternatives. • Correctly assimilates and takes account of new information or expert judgments. • Reconsiders the positive and negative consequences of alternatives originally regarded as unacceptable. • Carefully examines costs and risks of negative consequences. • Makes detailed provisions for implementation and monitoring.

22. Vigilant Problem-Solving • Symptoms of poor decision-making. • Gross omissions in surveying objectives. • Gross omissions in surveying alternatives. • Poor information search. • Selective bias in processing information at hand. • Failure to reconsider originally rejected alternatives. • Failure to examine major costs and risks of the preferred choice. • Failure to work out detailed implementation, monitoring and contingency plans.

23. Vigilant Problem-Solving

24. Decision constraints