Chapter Three

Policy Typologies

• Policies are categorized based on their role or effect on citizens.

• Governments adopt different kinds of policies for a slightly

different reason to meet their social, economic or political goals.

• The modern era of developing policy typologies began 1964 when

Theodore Lowi laid out the classic policy types( Birkland,2011)
• Accordingly policies are divided in to three categories
• Distributive policies
• Regulatory
• Redistributive policies
 A. Distributive policies
• Distributive policies are also known as patronage , incentive or
promotional policies

• Distributive policy refers to the granting of benefits to particular

interest group or other well-defined, relatively small groups of
beneficiaries
• That would only reluctantly undertake without the promise of
reward.
• Refers to allocation of benefits to particular segments of the
population, and typically using public funds/ without regard to
limited resources to assist particular groups, communities, or
industries.
• Motivates people to act by using “carrot” rather than punishing for
non-compliance.
• The promotional techniques can be manifested in three forms:
subsidies, contracts and licenses to run certain programs.
 Cont…

• It is not a zero-sum situations(where one group’s gain is another’s

loss )
• The costs are more broadly spread across the society

• Little conflict over distributive policy because of benefits to a

particular group without any counter group stop spending (due to a
justification of “fair share” of federal funds and lack of counter-
groups)
• It is usually made fairly quickly, easily and with a minimum
amount of inspection of individual spending decisions.
 Cont…

• But, problematic in democracy because government programs

create beneficiaries and create groups to represent these
beneficiaries.

• The threat of their removal can arouse intense reactions from the
recipients.

– For example , subsidies are often criticized as “pork-barrel”

programs, unless efforts are made to tie projects to some
high national purpose (e.g. such as military defense) to avoid
the label.
 B. Redistributive policies
• Deliberate efforts by the government to shift the allocation of
wealth, income, property, or rights among social classes or racial
groups of the population; or the haves and have-nots,

• Provide benefits to a category of individuals at the expense of

another, often reflecting ideological or class conflict including
welfare provisions; social security; affirmative action programs

• Involve high level of conflict and difficulty in changing policy

• Involve a strong moral implication

• Is highly controversial, involving highest level of government and

leaders of peak associations
 Cont…
• There are clearly winners and losers.

• They are not only difficult to obtain or enact; they are also hard to
retain/maintain.

• Those who have power and wealth are usually reluctant to share
such privileges; hence, redistribution policies tend to be the most
contentious policy aspects.
 C. Regulatory policy
• Regulatory policy is government imposed restriction or
limitations on the behavior of individuals and groups’ choice to
keep conduct from transcending acceptable bounds

• Regulations are government decrees that require citizens to do

something or prevent them from doing something to ensure
compliance by individuals, corporations, and other units of
government

• If distributive policies involve positive motivation (the use of

carrots), then regulatory policies involve negative forms
of control ( the use of “sticks”).
 Cont….
• Regulations usually impose sanctions as a result of failure to
comply.

• Regulation is considered one of the best known policy

instruments that encompasses several government
actions, including laws that legislatures enact and the rules
bureaucracies adopt.

• Regulatory policies also allow governments to exert

control over the conduct of certain activities (e.g. tax,
driving, waste disposal, etc.)

• Regulatory policies that generate more controversies

include environmental pollution, consumer protection, or
employee health and safety concerns, and occupation safety
and health administration
 Cont…
• Social regulatory policies also deal with crimes, effectiveness of
affirmative action, school safety, abortion, control pornography,
etc having bearing with regulating personal behavior.

• Regulatory policies generate conflicts between two groups;

one side seeking to impose control on the other side who usually
resist it as unnecessary or as wrong type of control.

 Result in winners and losers though winners usually get less

than what they initially sought
 Mostly benefits are distributed to many and costs are
concentrated to few

• Can be classified in to two: Competitive and Protective regulatory

policies
 Group work
• Indentify specific policies implemented by your institution and
categorize them as distributive, redistributive and
regulatory
 Other Policy Typologies

 Substantive and procedural policies

 Material and symbolic policies

 Public goods and private goods

 Liberal and conservative policies

 1. Substantive and Procedural Policies
• Substantive and procedural policies are defined as what and
how government does policy respectively .

• Substantive policies actually provide the goods and services we

expect from government where as procedural policies set the
rules for policy implementation

• Substantive policies are what government initiates/ does

something about by way of putting policies in place, while the
procedural aspect of it looks into its fairness and procedure in
governmental dealing with citizen .
 Cont…
Substantive policies
• What government is going to do

• Include what governments actually do (constructing highways,

paying welfare benefits, buying defense armaments, prohibiting
work place smoking, or prohibiting the retail sale of liquor, etc )

• Directly allocate advantages and disadvantages(benefits and

costs) to people
Procedural policies
• How something is going to be done or who is going to take
action

• Procedural policies involve things that are planned and

going to be executed, or who is going to execute them.
 Cont…
• They include laws for creation of agencies, determining their
jurisdiction, processes and techniques to carry out the
programs, and providing regulations and control for the
operations.

• Procedural policies have got important substantive

consequences since how something is done or who takes the
charge may determine what is actually planned to be carried out.

• Procedural issues also help either to expedite or delay/prevent

adoption of substantive decisions (policies) on the grounds that
essential procedures were not explicitly articulated.
 2. Material and Symbolic Policies
Material policies
• Material policies provide tangible and obvious benefits to
people
• Actually provide tangible resources or substantive power to
their beneficiaries, or impose real disadvantages on those who
are adversely affected.
• Ex: minimum wage law, federal/state grant to establish
schools, construct roads, etc
Symbolic policies
• They are those that appeal to our values and our senses;
however, do not deliver us any particular /tangible benefit
• Have little real material impact on people.
• Appeal to people’s cherished values, such as peace, patriotism,
and social justice
• Ex: Flag reverence ,honor famous people, national celebrative days
 3. Public versus Private Goods
• To determine what can be provided by government and that by
private sector is the task of analyzing public policies.
• A public or private good is defined by two criteria:
a) The ability to exclude someone from getting the good (the extent
of excludability )
– Exclusion usually takes place through pricing. If an individual
can charge for a good/service, then he/she can exclude
someone from getting it.
b) The lack of ability to jointly consume the good (the extent of
rivalry / exhaustiveness)
1. Public goods
• Pure public goods have low excludability and low
exhaustiveness in consumption
 ` Cont…
Exhaustiveness
High Low

High Pureprivate
Pure privategoods
goods Toll
Tollgoods
goods
Excludability

Common pool Pure public goods

Common pool
resources high goods
Low Pure public
resources
 Cont…
2. Private goods
• Pure private goods exhibit high excludability and high
exhaustiveness in consumption
3.Common goods (common-pool resources)
• Tend to have low excludability and high exhaustiveness in
consumption
• Environmentalists level common pool resources usage as
“tragedy of the commons”, which comes as a result of the
use of national resources such as water, grazing land,
fisheries, and the like.
• The tragedy is that each individual seeks to maximize his/her
use of the common pool resources without regard to their
degradation or depletion because no one owns them
 Cont…
4. Toll goods
• Toll goods have high excludability and low exhaustiveness
in consumption
• National parks, museum ,satellite television, etc
 4. Liberal vs Conservative policies
• The this typology are used in most everyday discussions
1. Liberals
• Liberals use the concept to advance the power of
government to better the lives of individual citizens-rich or
poor
• Further, they believe that government should strive for
equalizing the differences between the wealthy who are
powerful and the poor that are less powerful.
2. Conservatives
• Conservatives believe in small government
• Primacy of individual initiative
• Prize individual liberty
• But, recommend more stringent measures against
crimes, etc.