9 10 2013 Concepts Government consolidation Polycentricity Common pool resource Open access Common property Review Trends in gov t growth Spending has increased substantially upward trend Employment in federal gov t has decreased stayed the same in local gov t until 2008 financial crisis Gov t is doing more w less personnel Separation of Powers Three branches Legislative Judicial Executive All are limited in order to avoid power trip Legislative Congress committees Executive Head of bureaucracy Judicial Policy making but much more limited reactionary Role of the public Changes in public opinion Policy changes in reaction to public opinion Interest groups Today Question How do we know what the public wants and how do we know that the policymakers have a better idea of what the public wants than the public themselves How do we know that the gov t solution is automatically an improvement over the existing set of conditions Two fallacy type situations 1 Anything that people do must be good for themselves so public policy is unnecessary 2 People have no idea what is going on and public policy is necessary every turn Example 1 Government consolidation Rather than having a bunch of small governments in a geographic region have one overarching policymaker for the region NYC 5 boroughs 5 different political hierarchies Issues Inefficient communication regulation change Changed to gov t consolidation to fix these issues Will work well if Criteria listed by O a Goods services are homogeneous b Voters share relatively similar preferences c Voters can articulate preferences through electoral d Officials can translate preferences into policy e Heads have effective command over street level f Street level bureaucrats deliver goods services to mechanism objectives bureaucrats passive clients Polycentric system Many different decision makers deciding on jurisdiction for each of their areas More people are involved in decision making process Successful if a Goods services differ b Individuals w similar preferences cluster in neighborhoods c Citizens who live in multiple jurisdictions learn more about performance of any one jurisdiction by seeing or hearing about how problems are handled in other jurisdiction d Multiple jurisdictions with different scopes and scales of organization allow citizens to better make effective choices when selecting packages of services most important to them to better articulate their preferences e Presence of large numbers of potential producers of urban goods and services in a metropolitan area allows officials to make more effective selections when choosing producers f Producers who must compete for contracts are more likely to search for innovative technologies to operate at close to optimal scales of production encourage effective team production and coproduction so as to enhance their own performance O Checked crime rates etc for consolidated vs polycentric Found that polycentric governments were better suited for keeping crime rates down b c they could put their focus on more issues less likely to cooperate never got to know who was delivering the goods racism from police force Could not effectively respond to what their assigned communities needed because they didn t have time to focus their attention on any one area However polycentric government s are not good at providing indirect goods and services and they send these services to larger scale indirect services alternative solution to this problem Sometimes the solution is not so obvious 2 Common pool resources Tragedy of the Commons Harvin says the solutions are collective action problem obvious a Privatize the pasture divide per household to create correct incentives full cost and full benefits for each household b Nationalize the pasture have gov t come in and tell each household how many cows can graze per season If these solutions are not implemented the pasture will be destroyed O does not support this theory b c author assumed that the common pool resource was open access which was not the case governed by common property Common property refers to rules that govern the use of the good pre defined group that decides on what these rules will be O found that those who had been using the commons had been doing so for 3000 years and the commons had yet to be destroyed no external intervention necessary Tragedy of the Commons initiated a movement for places all over the world turned into the ruin of many common pool resources because of self evident truth that people do not know what they are doing Communities can escape these tragedies by public involvement enforcement etc O proves that Harvin was wrong Self evident truths are not always the best basis for policy making and are also not always so self evident 9 12 13 Concepts Group Theory Elite Theory Institutional Theory Rational Choice Theory Policy Process Model Policy Instruments Group Theory Well accepted up until mid 60s Policymakers want to do something about policy problems and special interest groups attempt to steer policies toward defending the interest of the group If a policy problem comes up groups countervail each other aka butt heads Outcome is a compromise balance between opposing interest groups pluralism Concerns about privileged position of business businesses w more money will influence policy outputs that favor them and harm others Heavily criticized b c groups vary especially in power and groups don t form to defend their interests Elite Theory A few powerful groups dominate policy and further policy and then produce perverse policy outcomes that benefit them at the expensive of everybody else The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a stiff upper class accent Corruption hard to discover Take The Money And Run For Office This American Life podcast about legislatures lobbyists Institutional Theory Emphasizes the role of institutions in determining what the policy outcomes will be Institutions rules Rational Choice Theory Emphasizes the fact that people policy makers the public and those effected by policy are rational We rationally get to know things and then rationally decide how involved in the process we are going to be Consequences Public rationally sits aside for most policy decisions Policy Process Model Problem Definition Agenda setting Policy Formulation Policy Legitimation Policy Implementation Policy Evaluation Change 9 19 2013 Concepts Policy Analysis Steps in Policy Analysis Problem
View Full Document
Unlocking...