PUBLIC

POLICY
 Nature of Public
Policy and Process
Some Public Policy
Definitions Traditional
Views
SOME PUBLIC POLICY
DEFINITIONS
 SOME DEFINITIONS:
 In any society, governmental entities
enact laws, make policies, and allocate
resources. This is true at all levels. Public
policy can be generally defined as a
system of laws, regulatory measures,
courses of action, and funding priorities
concerning a given topic promulgated by
a governmental entity or its
representatives.
SOME PUBLIC POLICY DEFINITIONS

 Public policy is an attempt by a

government to address a public issue
by instituting laws, regulations,
decisions, or actions pertinent to the
problem at hand. Numerous issues can
be addressed by public policy including
crime, education, foreign policy, health,
and social welfare. The process to
create a new public policy typically
follows three steps: agenda-setting,
option-formulation, and
implementation; the time-line for a
new policy to be put in place can range
from weeks to several years, depending
on the situation.
Nature and Scope of Public
Policy
 “The authoritative allocation of values for
a society.”
 “The process of deciding who gets
what, when, where and how.”
 “What the government chooses to do or
not to do about a specific problem.”
 Establish the boundaries of our freedoms
& color the contours of our interactions
with other people in our political, social &
economic systems
 TRADITIONAL VIEWS
 Woodrow Wilson, who is arguably the father of modern
public
administration, contends, “public policy is the laws
and regulations
which are made by legislative statesmen and
implemented by
public administration personnel” (as cited in Wu
Qiyuan, 1985, p. 4).
 This definition is obviously characterized by “the
dichotomy between politics and administration,” which
narrows the scope and limits the range of public policy
makers.
 First, public policy includes not only laws and regulations,
but also government’s plans, instructions, decisions, and
other symbolic systems.
 Secondly, those who participate in the making of public
policy include not only statesmen, but also
representatives of citizens, experts, and scholars.
Especially in the modern era of the “administrative
state”
(Waldo, 1984), with the sharp expansion of
 TRADITIONAL
VIEWS

 Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan (1970) define public policy as

“a projected program of goals, values, and practices”. The
aforementioned definition confuses public policy with programs,
making the latter seem overly extensive. A program can be public
policy, but not all public policies are programs. As has been pointed
out, public policy also includes instructions, decisions, laws,
regulations, and other symbolic systems that government sends
out.
TRADITIONAL
VIEWS
 Thomas R. Dye (1987) thinks, “Public policy
is whatever governments choose to do or
not to do”.
 Dye focuses not only on government
action, but also on government inaction,
and therefore, his definition shows the
obvious character of behavioralism. It
reflects the practical discipline quality of
public policy analysis.
 “Action” means that government takes
measures or uses symbols openly in order
to solve some public problem. “Inaction”
means that government does not take
measures or express active symbols,
abiding by the principle of noninterference.
 TRADITIONAL VIEWS
 Robert Eyestone (1971) defines public
policy most extensively. He states, “In a
broad sense, public policy is the
relationship between governmental
organs and their environment”.
 It is evident that Eyestone is
influenced by the science of
ecological administration.
 Indeed, public policy is the function of a
governmental system and its living
environment, namely P = F (G, E) (here,
P refers to public policy, G refers to
governmental system, and E refers to
the living environment).
 Public Policy as a Study – A
Brief History
Dye (1995) said that certain theoretical
approaches and models have been
introduced in studying public policy which
include
 institutional,
 process,
 group,
 elite,
 rational,
 incremental,
 game theory,
 public choice and
 systems model.
 Approaches to Public
Policy
 Analycentric
 focuses on individual problems and their
solutions; its scope is the micro-scale and
its problem interpretation is usually of a
technical nature
 Policy Process
 puts its focal point onto political processes
and involved stakeholders; its scope is the
meso-scale and its problem interpretation
is usually of a political nature
 Meta-policy Approach
 systems and context approach; i.e., its
scope is the macro-scale and its problem
interpretation is usually of a structural
Policy Agend
Stream a

Evaluati
on Policy
Formulation

Implementati Legitimati
on on
 Policy Stream
Agenda
• Actual performance during the preceding year
• New developments and emerging issues in the local and international
economies
• Shifts in the policy emphasis of the administration

Policy Formulation
• Econometric Models
• Input-Output Analysis
• Accounting Frameworks
• Project Evaluation and Prioritization
Legitimation
• Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP)
• State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA)

Implementation
Forge a consensus at the pre-implementation phase since
it is the different departments who are actually tasked to
implement the various programs stipulated in the MTPDP
and other policy declarations

Evaluation
Feedback and monitoring mechanisms through its attached agencies
 Problems and Criticisms
 New Influence Players
 Catholic Church – with two EDSAs’ to
their credit
 Mass Media – compelling instrument to
manipulate and /or direct public opinion
 Civil Society – takes it upon themselves
to rise up and partake of the largesse of
power
“A problem well
formulated is a
problem half
solved.”
 We want to learn
how to look at
problems from
multiple
perspectives to
achieve the best
problem definition
and possible /
feasible solutions
THE ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC POLICY
Chapter 1: The Meaning
of Policy Analysis
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is
spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions
because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that
anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to
it."

Gautama Siddharta, the Buddha

 Introduction
 “…my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one
Pro and over the other Con…If…thus proceeding I find... where the balance lies… I come to
a determination accordingly…. I have found great advantage from this kind of equation, in
what may be called moral or prudential algebra.” Benjamin Franklin

 At the most general level, efforts to weigh the benefits and costs of a public or private
decision involve some version of the economic analysis presented in this book.
 At a basic level, this decision process can take the form of a list of pluses and
minuses, as in the quote from Benjamin Franklin, or a list of factors favoring one
choice over another.
 At a more advanced level, this rational decision process can include efforts to
measure all relevant benefits and costs using a common scale such as dollars in
order to determine course of action that maximizes the difference between the total
benefits and costs of the choice.
 Your Turn 1-1: The Benefits and Costs
of a College Education
 Your Turn 1-1: Create a list of the benefits and costs of attending
college versus getting a job. Include benefits that will occur in the future
as well as the present, effects on others and on society as a whole as
well as yourselves, and non-monetary as well as financial benefits and
costs.

 After making some judgment about which benefits and costs are most
important, do your expected benefits outweigh your costs? Do the
benefits to others, including your parents and your government, of your
college education outweigh their costs? Perhaps the questions raised by
this exercise are more important than any judgment.
 Some Policy Analysis Questions

 (1) Are the total benefits of this policy choice greater than the
total costs?
 (2) Does this policy offer greater net benefits (total benefits –
total costs) than another alternative?
 (3) How large a budget is required for this policy?
 A detailed benefit-cost analysis of policy alternatives can help
one to answer such questions.
 Non-Marketed Benefits and Costs

 Benefit-cost analysis attempts to estimate dollar values for all benefits

and costs, even when the good in question is never actually bought or
sold.
 For example, the benefits of a new section of highway include time
savings for travelers due to the lessening of congestion. Costs include
construction spending, the loss of the benefits of alternative projects,
added noise, increased danger from higher speeds, and an increase in
“road kill”.
 Policy analysis often relies on estimated dollar values for judging benefits
and costs even when market prices are not available.
The Goals of Public Policy
 Efficiency

 According to economic theory, a society achieves allocative efficiency if it provides

the greatest possible level of well-being for society given a limited set of resources.
 At the level of individual policy, efficiency is generally translated into maximizing
the difference between the total benefits and total costs of that policy.
 While the economic theory of efficiency is well established, applying efficiency
concepts to policy issues often involves significant challenges when defining and
measuring benefits and costs.
 Also, the goal of efficiency may conflict with other policy goals such as equity or
fairness, producing legitimate debate among those on different sides of the issue.
 Equity

 As a goal of public policy, equity generally involves the pursuit of one or more
broad goals such as income equality, minimum standards of treatment, or freedom.
As with efficiency, determining a policy’s ability to meet equity goals can be
difficult, and conflict between ethical and other policy goals presents a frequent
challenge for policy makers.
 Furthermore, there are many ethical theories with conflicting conclusions and
policy prescriptions.
 The lack of an accepted ethical paradigm for policy analysis tends to lessen the
practical importance of ethical theory, yet the view of this book is that ethical goals
provide an important basis for weighing the legitimacy of competing policy
proposals.
 Political Practicality

 A policy will be politically practical if it has sufficient support to be passed into law
and practice by the legislative and administrative branches of government.
 Political practicality also involves meeting the broader rules and norms of
government, such as the United States Constitution or British Common Law, in
order to survive a possible judicial review.
 In addition to passing constitutional review by the courts, a successful policy must
achieve popular and legislative support in order to pass into the legal code, and
must then be effectively administered or enforced in order to have a significant
effect on the public.
 Steps in Policy Analysis,
U.S. Office of Management and Budget
 (1) State the policy rationale, or the goal of the policy,
 (2) explicitly state the assumptions used in the analysis,
 (3) evaluate alternatives, including different program sizes, program methods,
and public sector involvement,
 (4) identify and measure benefits and costs, and
 (5) verify results through follow-up studies.
 Steps in Policy Analysis:
Eugene Bardach
 (1) define the problem,
 (2) assemble evidence,
 (3) select criteria for making the decision,
 (4) construct alternatives,
 (5) predict the outcome of each alternative,
 (6) confront the tradeoffs,
 (7) make recommendations, and
 (8) tell your story.
 Comparing the Two Visions
of the Policy Process
 These two lists of steps overlap in several ways. For example, stating a policy
rationale generally requires one to identify the problem being addressed and how
the policy will reduce or eliminate that problem.
 Explicitly stating one’s assumptions is part of defining the problem and the criteria
for judging alternative solutions.
 The primary difference in the two lists is that the OMB procedures do not include
policy recommendations.
Views of Government and the
Roles of the Policy Analyst
 The “Progressive Neutral Expert”

 Nelson’s first role for the policy analyst is the “progressive neutral
expert” (Nelson, p. 52). This role is based on the progressive era’s
view that the administration of government should be above corrupting
interests and based on sound management principles (see Wilson, 1941
reprint). The progressive era extends from the late 19th century to
roughly World War I.
 In this vision of government, the rational analysis of policy has a
powerful role in determining government’s course of action.
 The “Entrepreneur for Efficiency”

 Robert Nelson’s second role for the policy economist is labeled the
“entrepreneur for efficiency” (p. 54). The entrepreneur for efficiency
conducts policy analysis and also actively promotes economics or
efficiency-based policy designs.
 This more active role for the analyst is based on a newer theory of
government behavior that was developed in the 1950s. This view sees
government, and particularly the legislative process, as a struggle
among competing groups promoting their own self-interest (Truman).
 The “Ideological Combatant”

 Nelson’s third role for the government economist is the “ideological

combatant”.
 This role is based on the idea that ideology as well as self-interest guide
policymakers, and that the battle of ideas may be as important as the
battle of interests in determining public policy.
 Advocacy and Analysis

 In the context of competing interests and ideals, conflict often exists

between relatively objective analysis and political advocacy.
 An advocate is one who “pleads the cause of another” or “supports any
cause by argument” (Webster).
 In the case of public policy, advocacy involves the support of a specific
policy goal or point of view, and the political advocate also tends to act
by building a case for one side of even the most debatable policy
proposals.
 Advocates for a particular viewpoint on a debatable are likely to be
biased in a number of ways, and being able to identify these sources of
bias is crucial if a student is going to be able to think critically and
objectively about policy.
 Interdisciplinary Analysis
 An effective policy analyst must be able to trade ideas with engineers,
other social scientists, scientists, lawyers, government officials, and the
general public.
 For example, the analysis of highways or mass transit systems requires
input from transportation engineers, while the analysis of crime policy
may require input from criminologists with backgrounds in sociology or
other social sciences, as well as experts in law enforcement.
 Informed discussions of environmental policy require information from
biological, chemical, geological or environmental scientists.
 In addition, communication with public administrators, elected officials,
and other interested parties is essential to the effectiveness of policy
analysis, in part because one or more of these groups is probably
sponsoring the analysis, and also because they have an active role in
implementing legislation or regulations related to the policy in question.
Critical Thinking as a Policy Tool
 Analytical Models

 Analytical models provide the crucial definitions and logic that are part
of most well-constructed arguments. These models may be based on
social science, physical or biological science, legal scholarship, moral
philosophy, or other academic fields.
 Any analytical model will contain the following components; (1) initial
assumptions and value judgments, (2) definitions of terms, (3) causal
relationships, and (4) logical conclusions.
 Models usually are judged on their ability to explain, predict, or
productively guide human actions. In the social sciences the
conclusions of theoretical models take the form of predictions about
human behavior or the effects of policy alternatives.
 Assumptions

 Assumptions are stated or unstated value judgments, definitions, and

interpretations of fact that are usually made without supporting
evidence.
 The role of assumptions in an analytical model is to simplify and focus
the analysis. For example, economists often assume that markets are
competitive and efficient unless otherwise noted.
 Similarly, Marxists assume a set of social relations between classes that
include elements of oppression and exploitation of the working class.
 Finally analysis based on race, class, gender, or other categories of the
population implicitly assumes that members of a given group are similar
enough to be analyzed without explicit reference to individual
differences.
 Types of Evidence: Case Studies

 A case study involves a detailed evaluation of an individual person,

firm, industry, or geographic area. Case studies are deliberately limited
in scope in order to emphasize detailed information.
 The primary weakness of the case study is its inability to answer a few
fundamental questions about a policy problem. Most obviously, case
studies are inherently incapable of identifying how frequently a problem
occurs.
 The broader causes and effects of a policy problem, such as total costs
or global impacts, cannot be addressed thoroughly through case studies.
Also, the subjects of case studies might be chosen in a biased manner
and therefore may be misleading or unrepresentative.
 Types of Evidence: Expert Opinion

 Expertise is usually measured by one’s academic degrees, publication

record, and experience.
 However, an expert’s opinions can be subject to the same ideological
bias as those of a common citizen or politician, and can be analyzed
using the same types of questions.
 For example, is an expert’s conclusion typical of research in that area?
Is her argument fully supported by logic and evidence, or is it weak in
one or both respects? Such questions help guide one’s critical thinking
about any issue.
 When one considers a literature review of a policy topic, he or she
should pay attention to the range of results in addition to the typical
median estimate.
 Types of Evidence: Official Statistics

 Statistics from government agencies and other public and private organizations
provide another prime source of evidence for public policy analysis and debate.
 Their primary strength is their ability to identify the frequency or breadth of a
problem based on large samples of the population.
The controversies surrounding government statistics are more likely to be based
on their definitions or their use by advocates more often than their measurement
accuracy.
 An example: Unemployment
 A person is considered unemployed if she is not currently working for pay but is
actively seeking employment. Similarly, a person is counted as in the labor force
if he is either working at least one hour per week for pay or in a family business, or
is actively looking for work. In other words, the labor force is made up of two
groups, the employed and the unemployed.
 Your Turn 1-2: Based on the previous paragraph, answer the following questions:
(1) If a lawyer is currently working as a cashier at K-Mart, is she counted as
unemployed? (2) Is someone who wants to work full-time but only works one hour
per week unemployed? (3) Is a full time student who is not currently working for
pay unemployed? (4) Are you currently unemployed?
 Individuals who are not actively looking for work but would take a job if offered are
called either marginally attached workers or discouraged workers, depending
on their reason for not actively searching for work, and are now measured
separately by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
 The Presentation of Statistics

 One might discuss unemployment, poverty, profits, or virtually any statistic as a

total number or as a percentage of some larger sum.

 Your Turn 1-3: Consider these statements based on the 2014 Congressional
Budget Office report on a proposed minimum wage increase to $10.10 per hour: A)
Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 will decrease employment by
500,000 jobs. (B) Raising the minimum wage by one dollar will decrease U.S.
employment by only one third of one percent. Which piece of evidence sounds
more reasonable to you? Why?
 Beware the big number. In a large economy billions of Euros or thousands of
people do not always represent socially significant sums.
Correlation does not Prove Causation

 Another common fallacy in the use of evidence is to assume that when

two events are correlated, one event caused the other. This is referred
to as post-hoc, propter-hoc analysis, or false cause reasoning.
 Proving a cause and effect relationship requires a combination of theory
and evidence, and cannot be accomplished through a statistical
correlation alone.
 A less than scientific model of stock prices is the Super Bowl theory,
which predicts that a victory by the U.S. football’s National Football
Conference leads to rising stock prices. As of 2014 this theory has been
correct 33 out of 41 times. This is not taken seriously by anybody, but it
does provide an example of false cause reasoning.
Critical Thinking about Policy Analysis

 Three common critiques of benefit-cost analysis relate to the utilitarian

philosophy that underlies the benefit-cost model, the appropriateness of
assigning dollar values to non-marketed goods, and objections to the
microeconomic foundations of benefit-cost analysis.
 Institutional and radical economists are likely to argue that markets are
dominated more by power and oppression than by supply and demand
(Dorman). If so, measuring benefits and costs on the basis of market
concepts is likely to be misdirected and inaccurate.
 Another objection to benefit-cost analysis arises from populists, who
consider the desires of the people to be the primary basis for policy.
According to this view any expert analysis may be considered somewhat
anti-democratic.