The Public Policy-Making Process

1. The Public Policy-Making Process Policy Formulation

2. Policy Formulation • Formulation – develop a plan, a method, or a prescription for alleviating some need. • Research – interpret the results. • Review – review and discuss alternatives. • Projection – Determine consequences and feasibility. • Selection – Refine and make a formal selection. Test the results. • No guarantees.

3. Policy Formulation • Types of formulation. • Rational planning – systematic. • Subjective reacting – haphazard. • Guidelines. • Formulation need not be limited to one set of actors. • Formulation may proceed without clear definition of the problem, or contact with affected group. • There is no necessary coincidence between formulation and particular institutions, though it is a frequent activity of bureaucratic agencies. • Formulation and reformulation may occur over a long period of time without ever building sufficient support for any one proposal. • There are often several appeal points for those who lose in the formulation process at any one level. • The process itself never has neutral effects.

4. Policy Formulation • Who is involved? • Sources inside government. • Executive. • President, aides, cabinet. • Goals, priorities leading to boundaries. • Bureaucracy. • Actual development of plans and proposals. • Outside agencies. • Legislature. • Staff and support units. • Outside agencies connected to Congress.

5. Policy Formulation • Who is involved (contd.)? • Sources outside government. • Policy networks – subgovernments – discuss. • Washington Information Directory – 500 subject areas. • Public service organizations. • Foundations – Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Sloan, Russell Sage, Mellon. • Research organizations – Brookings, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, Urban Institute, RAND Corporation. • Universities, especially Research I universities. • Citizen organizations – Common Cause, Nader groups, League of Women Voters.

6. Policy Formulation • Institutional limits on policy formulation. • Constitutional limits. • Separation of powers. • Federalism. • Bicamericalism. • Checks and balances. • Existing policy relationships. • Drive for predictability. • Networks of contacts and interactions. • Clientele or constituency relationships are established and protected. • All agencies and committees require support and have typically found means for gaining that support. • Definite pattern of communication exists within, between, and outside existing units. • Means are developed for defining problems and formulating proposals. These means strongly accommodate the interests presently served. • These networks difficult to break. • Change is possible. • Normal change is incremental. • But, dramatic change can restructure the network.

7. Policy Formulation • Types of formulation: methods

8. Policy Formulation • Types of formulation (contd.). • Formulating comprehensive proposals. • The number of problems treated – all of the problems or just a sample? • The extent of the analysis – all aspects or just certain aspects? • The estimation of effects – all effects or just most immediate. • Elaborate proposals are difficult to build support for and are unlikely to survive intact.

9. Policy Formulation • Types of formulation: Styles. • Routine formulation – reformulating similar proposals to policies currently on the agenda. • Analogous formulation – Treating a new problem by developing analogies to past problems. • Creative formulation – Treating new problems with an unprecedented proposal. • Routine and analogous formulation occur more frequently than creative, but creative can happen.

10. Policy formulation • Strategic considerations. • Must think of legitimation when formulating proposals. • Considerations. • Building support for a proposed course of action. • Maintaining previous support. • Deciding where compromises can be made. • Calculating when and where to make the strongest play and when and where to retreat. • Controlling information flow to your advantage.

11. Policy Formulation • Formulation and legitimation. • Point: We don’t care when one stops and the other begins. They are inseparable. • Combinations. • Perfect plan with imperfect strategy - examples. • An imperfect plan with perfect strategy – examples. • A perfect blend – is it possible? • Imperfect blend – most policies.

12. Policy Formulation • Formulation as a total policy process. • A disorderly process – unpredictable – less predictable elements dominate the process. • Planners frustrated – develop a system of program justification. • PPBS (Programming Planning Budgeting System) – force planners and budget makers to think beyond immediate results and consider longer-range goals and effects. • Model: • Identify national goals with precision and on a continuing basis. • Choose among those goals the ones that are most urgent. • Search for alternatives means of reaching those goals most effectively at the least cost. • Inform ourselves not merely on next year’s costs, but on the second, and third, and subsequent years’ costs of our programs. • Measure the performance of our programs to insure a dollar’s worth of service for each dollar spent.

13. Policy Formulation • Formulation as a total policy process (contd.). • Planners frustrated – develop a system of program justification (contd.). • PPBS designed to reduce uncertainty, waste of resources, and misdirection in policy making through systematic analysis of the basic elements of that process: problems, goals, allocations, appraisals. As one reviews PPBS in its pure form, it becomes evident that it is a total policy process. • Problems. • Not everyone accepts outcomes. • Given limited resources, people debate goals and objectives. • PPBS becomes a strategy of policy politics. • May increase efficiency by some measures, but will not eliminate politics.

14. Alternative Specification (Kingdon) • How is the list of potential alternatives for public policy choices narrowed to the ones that actually receive serious consideration? • Alternatives are generated and narrowed in the policy stream. • Relatively hidden participants, specialists in the particular policy area, are involved.

15. Alternative Specification (Kingdon) • Hidden participants: Specialists. • Alternatives, proposals, and solutions are generated in communities of specialists. • Academics, researchers, consultants, career bureaucrats, congressional staffers, and analysts who work for interest groups. • These communities of specialists can be fragmented or tightly knit. They share their specialization and acquaintance with the issue under consideration. • Ideas bubble around these communities. People try out proposals in a variety of ways: speeches, bill introductions, hearings, leaks, paper circulation, conversations, lunches. • They float ideas, criticize one another’s work, hone and revise, and float new versions. Some are respectable, some are out of the question.

16. Alternative Specification (Kingdon) • The policy stream. • The generation of policy alternatives is best seen as a selection process. • Policy primeval soup, many ideas float around, bump into one another, recombine. • Criteria for survival of policy ideas. • Technical feasibility. • Congruence with values of community members. • Anticipation of future constraints. • Budget. • Public acceptability. • Politician’s receptivity.

17. Alternative Specification (Kingdon) • The policy stream (contd.). • A long process of softening up the system. • Policy entrepreneurs do not leave the process to chance. They push for consideration in many forums in many ways. • Recombination is more important than mutation. • As a result, entrepreneurs are more important than inventors. • Softening up is important because policy windows open so infrequently.

18. Alternative Specification (Kingdon) • Policy windows. • An open policy window is an opportunity for advocates to push their pet solutions or to push attention for their special problems. • They have pet solutions and wait for problems to arise that they can attach their solutions to or for political events to make their solutions more saleable. • Windows are opened by events in the political stream or in the problem stream. • Sometimes windows open predictably; sometimes they open unpredictably. • The scarcity and short duration of policy windows makes them a powerful magnet for problems and proposals. • Open windows provide opportunities for linkages.