Question

Give an example of a public policy issue that you have been involved with, whether at the federal, state or local area. How did you participate from agenda setting onto policy implementation?

Answer 1

Policymaking involves a combination of processes. Although not always clearcut or easily distinguishable, political scientists have identified these processes for purposes of analysis.1 They include the following:

? Identifying policy problems: Publicized demands for government action can lead to identification of policy problems.

? Formulating policy proposals: Policy proposals can be formulated through political channels by policy-planning organizations, interest groups, government bureaucracies, state legislatures, and the president and Congress.

? Legitimizing public policy: Policy is legitimized as a result of the public statements or actions of government officials, both elected and appointed in all branches and at all levels. This includes executive orders, budgets, laws and appropriations, rules and regulations, and decisions and interpretations that have the effect of setting policy directions.

? Implementing public policy: Policy is implemented through the activities of public bureaucracies and the expenditure of public funds.

? Evaluating public policy: Policies are formally and informally evaluated by government agencies, by outside consultants, by interest groups, by the mass media, and by the public. Although this stages or phases approach to policymaking has been criticized for being too simplistic, insufficiently explicating that some phases may occur together, and not saying much about why policy turns out as it does,2 it does provide a way to discuss many of the ways policy is constructed, carried out, evaluated, and made again. All these activities include both attempts at rational problem solving and political conflict. Identifying Policy Problems Many factors influence the identification of policy problems. They include the methods of getting issues on the political agenda as well as keeping them off the agenda. Political ideology and special interests, the mass media, and public opinion all play roles in problem identification.

Agenda Setting

“Agenda setting,” that is, deciding what is to be decided, is the first critical step in the policymaking process. To get on the agenda, problems must come to policymakers’ attention.3 Some problems—even major problems—are too “invisible” to make the agenda, while others such as healthcare, are already highly visible, because they affect us all. Other times, crises or “focusing events” (e.g., levees breaking in New Orleans) are needed to bring problems to light.

Legitimizing Public Policy

Policy is legitimized as a result of the public statements or actions of government officials, both elected and appointed—the president, Congress, state legislators, agency officials, and the courts. This includes executive orders, budgets, laws and appropriations, rules and regulations, and administrative and court decisions that set policy directions

Implementing Public Policy

Policy implementation includes all the activities that result from the official adoption of a policy. Policy implementation is what happens after a law is passed. We should never assume that the passage of a law is the end of the policymaking process. Sometimes laws are passed and nothing happens! Sometimes laws are passed and executive agencies, presuming to act under these laws, do a great deal more than Congress ever intended. Political scientist Robert Lineberry writes: The implementation process is not the end of policy-making, but a continuation of policy-making by other means. When policy is pronounced, the implementation process begins. What happens in it may, over the long run, have more impact on the ultimate distribution of policy than the intentions of the policy’s framers.

Federal Taxes

Governments fund their activities, from social welfare to defense, through the taxes they collect. In 2013, individual income taxes are projected to be the largest single source (45 percent) of federal government revenues (budget receipts) (see Figure 1.1). Until 1913, the federal government collected income tax only sporadically.22 When regular income tax collection began, only one percent of Americans were assessed income taxes. By 1930, income taxes made up 60 percent of the federal government’s receipts. Income taxes are channeled to the federal government’s general revenue fund, which is used for many purposes, financing public assistance programs among them

“We are raising the basic question of where public-policy issues come from. We are concerned with how issues are created and why some controversies or incipient issues come to command the attention and concern of decision-makers, while others fail. In other words, we are asking what determines the agenda for political controversy within a community. How is an agenda built (i.e., how is an issue Placed on it) and who participates in the process of building it?” (^{COBB and ELDER, 1971}: p. 905).

The Cabinet Office is seeking new ways to involve the public in policy formation in both the transparency and open data agendas – which allow us to see exactly where every penny of our taxes is going and opens up the space for political and public debate on previously untouchables areas of state expenditure. Areas such as benefits reform at the Department of Work and Pensions (including free TV licences, winter fuel allowance, free bus passes) could all be up for discussion. This would have been thinking the unthinkable in the past.

Public opinion could also help set the pace of reform. To overcome frustrations around the lengthy timetable required to implement reform, why not allow policy to be timetabled to align with public opinion? Therein lies the momentum and impetus to accelerate the speed at which the aptly labelled dead hand of the state implements policy.