Policy & Evidence in the Partisan Age Flashcards
Paul Gary Wyckoff 2009
Economic conditions have strong and statistically significant impacts on how people vote. The time needed to recognize business cycles d the long lags involved in implementing policy make it extremely difficult for presidential administrations to have positive impacts on the economy. Purpose of book is to explore this paradox between the exaggerated claims made for public policy interventions and the reality of their limited effectiveness.
3 Conceptions of Government Policy
Wyckoff 2009
The liberal view holds that government policy can change the world, that it can fundamentally alter the social, economic, and demographic fabric of society. The conservative view is that government policy is not the remedy for social problems but is actually the cause of those problems. Wyckoff argues for a third view, based on empirical literature, that acknowledges the limitations of government policy for good and ill. This view concentrates on what we cannot control. “Rather than chasing after imaginary solutions to social problems. the third view focuses on helping people cope with them.”
Government Activity
Wyckoff 2009
Investment activity is one that simply moves money from one group of citizens to another. A service activity is one that directs money into human or physical capital in the expectation of greater productivity in the future. A regulatory activity is one that established rules for social and economic activity. Wyckoff focuses on a behavioral component; such as reducing teenage pregnancy or getting children to read more.Wyckoff’s thesis is that, despite the claims of conservatives and liberals, the behavioral impact of domestic public policy in the US is usually small in relation to that of other social forces at work. We ought to judge our leaders based on their demonstrated performance in these four areas, rather than an illusory ability to change (public) behavior.
Measuring Performance
Wyckoff 2009
What types of statistical analyses/evidence are being used in policy debates? After stripping away ideological and theoretical considerations, what does the highest-quality evidence show about policy choices in each area? What can be changed by policy and what cannot be changed? What are the real choices facing us? Much of our discourse and decisionmaking in policy appears to be based on evidence from the bottom third of the statistical hierarchy. Why don’t citizens, analysts, and journalists push for the statistical rigor in medicine as they do in public policy.
Economic Performance
Wyckoff 2009
Government is neither the cause nor the cure of our economic problems, but rather, like the rest of us, must somehow cope with the ups and downs of the business cycle. We ought to be paying much more attention to the redistributional, investment, and service aspects of taxing and spending decisions and much less to changing consumers’ and businesses’ economic choices. We have been evaluating the federal budget from the top down, asking it how it can help to grow faster. The truth is that the budget is the servant of the economy, not its master.
Implications for Education
Wyckoff 2009
Family characteristics are the most influential factor in student performance, thus perhaps families can be encouraged to participate more fully in their children’s education. Furthermore, if the primary determinant of school performance is demographics, and if the distribution of school resources actually reinforces the inequalities among school children, graduation exams must inevitably hurt the poor and minorities.
States and Competition for Economic Development
Wyckoff 2009
The literature on the effects of economic development policies supports two conclusions (1) in some circumstances, economic development policies can work, in the sense of altering business location and employment decisions; however, (2) none of the current policies have been shown to work well enough to pay for themselves in increased state tax revenues from higher economic activity.
Advocacy Coalition Frameworks (ACF)
Paul Sabitier 1980s
Four principles: (1) The process of policy change and the role of policy oriented learning requires a time perspective of a decade or more (2) the most useful way to think about policy change over such a time span is through a focus on policy subsystems, that is the interaction of actors from different institutions who follow and seek to influence governmental decisions in a policy area (3) these subsystems must in an intergovernmental dimension, that is they must involve all levels of government, and (4) public policies or programs can be conceptualized in the same manner as belief systems, as sets of values, priorities, and causal assumptions (Sabatier 1999).
Advocacy Coalition Frameworks (ACF)
Paul Sabitier 1980s
Some important assumptions under the ACF Framework include: external sources may be resources or constraints to policy actors, but are parameters that are relatively stable over time. Aspects of a system are susceptible to significant fluctuations and serve as major stimuli to policy change. Stable elements include basic attributes of the problem area, basic distribution of natural resources, fundamental socio-cultural values and social structure, and basic constitutional structure. The policy system may experience external schocks attributed to these elements. ACF focuses more wholly on policy subsystems.
Punctuated Equilibrium
Jones & Baumgartner 2012
PET was a response to first generation policy process models that perceived policy formulation, implementation, and change as a steady and stable process over time. These models could not account for rapid or abrupt policy changes. PET sketches a disjoint and abrupt process of policy change, with long periods of stability separating the shifts. Policymaking is a continual struggle between the forces of balance and equilibrium, dominated by negative feedback processes (i.e. a homeostatic or self-correcting mechanism).
Punctuated Equilibrium
Jones & Baumgartner 2012
PET is closely related to bounded rationality that eschews the traditional economic conception of human rationality by recognizing that humans make choices based upon their congitive and emotional architectures, limited attention spans, and emotion. Mimicking (group behavior) and attention shifting (focusing on a part previously ignored) also impact changes in policy. PET focuses more on individuals and the collective ability to influence policy changes.
David Weimer and Aidan Vining 2005
The idealized competitive model produces Pareto-efficient allocation of good. That is, the utility-maximizing behavior of persons and the profit-maximizing behavior of firms will, through the invisible hand, distribute [public] goods in such a way that no one could be better off without making anyone else worse off. Violations of this constitute “market failures”, that is, situations in which decentralized behavior does not lead to Pareto efficiency. Public goods, externalities, natural monopolies, and information asymmetries are the four commonly recognized market failures.
David Weimer and Aidan Vining 2005
Public goods are nonrivalrous in consumption, not excludable, or both. A good is nonrivalrous in consumption when more than one person can derive benefits from some level of supply at the same time. A good is nonexcludable if it is impractical for one person to maintain exclusive control over its use. An externality is any valued impact (positive or negative) resulting from any action that affects someone who did not fully consent to it through participation or voluntary exchange. A natural monopoly occurs when average cost declines over the relevant range of demand. Information asymmetries occur when a buyer and seller have different information about a product (or good).
