TYPOLOGIES Friday November 1 2024 11 54 AM BIRKLAND p q P 114 Neo institutionalism The study of politics and policy that retains the focus on institutions but which incorporates a great deal of behaviorist thinking as well 270 In other words policies may not have inherent meanings in terms of any policy typology but may gain their meanings only when groups discern meanings and propagate them among friendly and hostile audiences For example many safety innovations in automobiles and other consumer products cost relatively little per item produced but manufacturers and their allies believe that the additional cost will make their products unprofitable This argument will help persuade groups to mobilize in a particular way based on a perception of policy 248 Constitutional In the federal or state constitutions Highly visible at the federal level the Constitution has been edited very few times Some state constitutions are more easily amended for minor changes Statutory United States Code Statutes at Large Highly visible through codification in statute law publication in Statutes at Large Regulatory Federal Register Code of Federal Regulations Moderately visible through the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register Formal record of standard operating procedures Operating Procedures Manuals Low visibility because standard operating procedures are often only internally published Patterned behavior by street level bureaucrats Not formally codified evidence of a policy may be found in some agency records Low visibility because these are behavioral changes with variations among actors Subtle changes in cognition in emphasis on problems etc Not formally codified Often revealed by the behavior of street level bureaucrats themselves Very low visibility Not codified and changes in perceptions and emphases may be subtle Street level bureaucrats are the people at the front lines of public service delivery police officers teachers social service caseworkers firefighters clerks at the post office of the department of motor vehicles office whose decisions and behaviors are important to the way that programs are managed P 258 policy typologies Because as Lowi argued knowing what kind of policy we are dealing with would allow the policy designer to predict the sorts of policy conflict that would precede the policy s enactment and what sort of conflict might arise after the policy is adopted and implemented This would therefore be a useful predictive tool that would take policy studies beyond the realm of mere description as it spent much of its formative years and would provide useful problem solving information to policy designers P 259 Distributive policies involve the granting of some sort of benefit to a particular interest group or other well defined relatively small group of beneficiaries Examples of distributive policy include farm subsidies and federal spending on local infrastructure projects such as dams flood control systems aviation highways and schools These benefits are usually distributed in the process of developing authorization and appropriations bills as part of the budgeting process While budgeting is a very important element of the policy process it is also somewhat technical p 262 Distributive policy making is made even easier by the inability to easily identify particular groups of people that are benefiting from the policy while the costs of the policy are more broadly spread across society Local officials and congressional representatives depict these policies as good for the local community but as being paid for by the entire nation through general federal funds Indeed local spending programs are often justified as a way of gaining a community s fair share of federal taxes paid by the district or state s taxpayers Because of the actual or assumed benefits to particular people without any counter groups seeking to stop spending there is little conflict over distributive policy According to political scientist Theodore Lowi interest group liberalism is the dominant form of politics in the United States in which government seeks to accommodate a wide range of relatively narrow interests rather than attempting to weigh interests against each other and choose to support some interests more or less than others Lowi argued that knowing what kind of policy we are dealing with would allow the policy designer to predict the sorts of policy conflict that would precede the policy s enactment and what sort of conflict might arise after the policy is adopted and implemented This would therefore be a useful predictive tool that would take policy studies beyond the realm of mere description as it spent much of its formative years and would provide useful problem solving information to policy designers p 263 competitive regulatory policy These are policies designed to limit the provision of goods and services to one or a few designated deliverers who are chosen from a larger number of competing potential deliverers The licensing of various professions and of radio and television stations are examples of such policies Protective regulatory policy on the other hand is intended to protect the public at large from the negative effects of private activity such as tainted food air pollution unsafe consumer products or fraudulent business transactions While most businesses and their leaders are responsible citizens who do not wish to hurt or alienate their customers businesses are also motivated by profit Businesses often resist regulation on cost grounds saying that it would reduce or eliminate profit margins make products uncompetitive on the market place firms at competitive disadvantages vis vis their foreign competitors or competitors in other states if the policy is made at the state level and so on protective regulatory policy A type of policy that seeks to protect the public and consumers from market problems such as deceptive advertising faulty products or negative externalities e g pollution p 264 redistributive policy In Lowi s policy typology this is a policy that takes or seems to take a resource from one identifiable group and gives a benefit to another readily identifiable group Such policies are the most controversial and contentious It is worth noting however that redistributive policy can involve the transfer of resources from the less well off to the better off The growing costs and apparently unrealized goals of federal social programs coupled with the disdain felt