PA 598 Public Policy

The Challenges of Problem

Definition
 Where we started
• A basic overview of problem definition
• A basic overview of the policy process
 The institutional aspects of policy
process
• The constitutional order
• The official actors
• The unofficial actors
• The bottom line:
– Many different institutions are involved in policy making
– American politics is characterized by group politics
– Groups are motivated by interests
– Interests motivate the search for problems and solutions
– There is nothing wrong with interest! Interest is the
motivating factor behind politics.
• The question is this: what are your interests? How do you know?
 Basic Aspects of Problem Definition
(Bardach)
• Dos:
– Think of deficits and excesses (too much, too
little)
– Make it evaluative—that is, “why is this a public
problem?” Think about “market failure”
• Don’ts
– Do not define the solution into the problem.
– The problem statement should kick off a range of
discussions of solutions
What are the assumptions of markets?
• Individual transactions
• Perfect information
• The sum of transactions equals net social
benefit
• Transactions are mutually agreed upon
• Both parties are beneficiaries of the transaction
 Types of market failures
• When some individuals get benefits and others
don’t, or when benefits are disproportionate
• When transactions are coerced
• When there is imperfect information
• When a type of transactions leads to net social
detriments
 So, public problems exist in market
failure when
• It is hard to collect funds from beneficiaries
• It is hard to account for externalities
• It is hard know the real qualities of services
(imperfect information)
• The marginal cost of production is lower than
the average cost (do you agree??)
 There are other kinds of problems
• Breakdown of systems, such a families
• Low living standards for some people because
of labor market effects
• Racial and gender discrimination
• Failure of government to act where it is
supposed to.
 Bardach thinks about market failure
• “It is impossible to underestimate the importance of
[market failures], for in most—though not all—
situations where no market failures can be identified,
people’s private troubles cannot typically be
ameliorated by even the most well intentioned
government intervention.”
• Do you agree?
• Is there a line where government must or should not
cross no matter what “benefits” might result?
 Persuasion: Issue Rhetoric
• “[Y]ou have to get beyond the rhetoric to define a problem
that is analytically manageable and that makes sense in light of
the political and institutional means available for mitigating
it.” What does this mean?
• Issue rhetoric is highly partisan or ideological
• The phrasing of problems often reveals the ideological
dimensions of the problem, not its technical aspects
– Are you trying to campaign, or to govern?
– Is there a difference?
• Issue labels (“teen pregnancy”) may relate to multiple
conditions
• Issue rhetoric relies on symbols
 Symbols

• “A thing that stands for something else”

• What are some common symbols in our
country and society?
• people use symbols to describe problems
 Types of symbolic stories
• Narrative stories (anecdotes)
– Synecdoche
– Government run amok
• Stories of decline or of progress halted
• Stories of helplessness and control
 Causal stories
• Stories about how bad things happen
• The goal of various interests is to tell the causal story
that works for them.
• Examples of causal stories
– Airplane crashes and other mechanical problems
– Stories of crime and poverty
– Stories of decline and failure (example: the economic mess
we are in)
 Numbers as indicators of problems
• John Kingdon talks about indicators as one of two
ways issues reach the agenda.
– The other way is focusing events
• Using numbers is one way to tell a causal story
• Deciding to count a phenomenon is a policy decision
itself.
Issue Rhetoric and Policy Paradox:
Deborah Stone
Why did I assign policy paradox?
 The Market and the Polis
• How can we model the ways societies
organize to act politically?
• We will go through this because I want you to
understand the important features of her
argument.
 What is a market?
• “A social system in which individuals pursue
their own welfare by exchanging things with
others whenever trades are mutually
beneficial.
• Is this a good description of how politics
works in the United States and other
democracies?
Review: What are the assumptions
of a market system
• Individual interest and benefit
• One to one exchanges
• Perfect information
• Mutual benefit (not a zero sum game)
 Why we reject the market as a model
for politics and policy making
• Because markets are not about the public interest
• Because politics and policy making is often not
voluntary
• Because there is rarely good information available to
all in politics
• Because one doesn’t need community for market
exchanges
 Thus, the polis
• From the Greek word for “city-state”
• It is also the root of our words “politics” and “policy”
• Stone uses it to mean a relatively small political
community, although the example works at a larger
scale as well.
 What Are the Important Features of a
Political Community?
• Community
• Public Interest
• Commons Problems
• Influence
• Loyalty
 What Are the Important Features of a
Political Community?
• Groups
• Information
• Passion
• Power
 Concepts of Society
Market Model Polis Model
1. Unit of Analysis Individual Community
2. Motivations self-interest Public interest (as well
as self interest)
3. Chief Conflict Self-interest vs. self- Self-interest vs. public
interest interest (commons
problems)

4. Source of people’s Self-generation within Influences from

ideas and preferences the individual outside
5. Nature of collective Competition Cooperation and
activity competition
 Concepts of Society
Market Model Polis Model
6. Criteria for Maximizing self- Loyalty (to people,
individual decision- interest; minimizing places, orgs.,
making cost products); maximize
self-interest, promote
public interest.
7. Building blocks of Individuals Groups and
social action organizations

8. Nature of Accurate, complete, Ambiguous,

information fully available interpretive,
incomplete,
strategically
manipulated
 Concepts of Society
Market Model Polis Model
9. How things work Laws of matter (e.g.., Laws of passion (e.g..,
material resources are human resources are
finite and diminish renewable and expand
with use with use).
10. Sources of Change Material exchange Ideas, persuasion,
alliances
Quest to maximize Pursuit of power,
own welfare pursuit of own welfare,
pursuit of public
interest.
 Deborah Stone's four goals of
public policy
• Equity or Equality
• Efficiency
• Security
• Liberty
 Equity
• There are different kinds of equality
• These are based on
– The recipients of a public good
– The item that is being distributed
– And the process by which the thing is distributed
 Eight different kinds of equity
• Equal Slices but Unequal Invitations
– To get an equal slice one has to be a part of the community—that is,
invited into it.
– Example: community college for illegal immigrants
• Equal slices for equal ranks, but unequal slices for unequal
ranks
– Where does this sort of thing make sense?
• Unequal slices but equal blocs
– Is it possible to make sure that blacks guaranteed a slice of the cake
that is greater than their share of the population suggests?
– What would this accomplish?
 Eight different kinds of equity

• Unequal slices but equal meals

– This suggests some sort of compensation for a past wrong
(recent, in Stone’s example).
• Unequal slices but equal value to recipients
– “Why do poor or minority people or women need to make
lots of money? Since they’re poor, less money means as
much to them as more money would to a white male.”
– This is often used as a justification for low wages in
developing nations. And it might be sensible—think about
expectations..
 Eight Different Kinds of Equity
• Unequal slices but equal starting resources
– What is the challenge here?
• Unequal slices but equal statistical chances
– This would be like a lottery for a job, all other things being equal.
– How might this approach alleviate the problems of racial
discrimination in hiring?
– What problems would this create?
• Unequal slices but equal votes
– Have minorities long had equal votes?
– Do votes make much difference in larger group than a classroom?
– One might have an equal vote, but what if your group or bloc is
outnumbered?
Next: Efficiency
 Efficiency
• What is efficiency?
• “Getting the most output for a given input”
• “Achieving an objective for the lowest cost”
• Efficiency is not an end goal; it is a means to
an end
• It is very difficult to measure efficiency in the
public sector or in politics in general. Why?
 What are the inputs?
• Labor
• Materials
• Expertise
• Other intangibles?
 What are the outputs?
• Products
• Services
• Values?
 The market is often held up as the
paragon of efficiency
• Thus, there are many calls for privatizing
government
• We often hear calls to run government like a
business.
• Knowing what you know about the market and
polis, why are these demands unrealistic?
 What characterizes a market?
• Voluntary exchanges of things of value
• Based on two kinds of information
– Objective information about the price and quality
of an item
– Subjective information about preferences
– Does this information really exist?
Can Government every really look
like a market?
• Government often regulates the market, by
regulating who or what can buy or sell what
products
• Government often compels involuntary
exchanges: drafts labor for the army, taxes us
for things we may not individually want, etc.
 Market failure
• Governments have to step in when markets fail; i.e.,
when these assumptions lead to allocative
inefficiency or gross inequity.
• Examples
– Correction of monopoly
– Correction of problems of information
– Problems of impacts on people who are not making the
exchange.
– Failure to provide collective goods (national defense,
police)
Thus, government is often involved
in
• Alleviating the inefficiencies of the market
• Providing goods inefficiently because there is
no market way to do so
• Imposing requirements for equity on the
market, thereby introducing inefficiency.
To conclude, then, government cannot
run like a business because
• It is not a business: it is composed of citizens and
voters, not buyers, sellers and producers
• It engages in those activities that are not profitable by
definition
• It is difficult to measure inputs and outputs in
government.
• One person’s efficiency may be the next person’s
gross inequity.
The Stone Example: Efficiency in a
Public Library
• How many different ways are there to think
about efficiency in the library
• Are there other areas of government that
should be made more efficient?
• Are there good political and policy reasons
why these activities are not efficient?
Liberty and Security
 Ideas on liberty
• People are free to unless their actions cause some sort
of harm to others
• This idea derives from J.S. Mill’s “On Liberty”
• This freedom is negative freedom, meaning that
government should just let people do what they want
and leave them alone
 Four important elements
• The rationale for government interference: harm to others
• The ability to distinguish between harmful and harmless
behavior (victimless behavior)
• Liberty as an attribute of individuals
• Liberty is defined negatively, in terms of government
noninterference—people are free from things instead of being
free to do something.
• This is viewed as being a better way of defining freedom.
Why?
 But what does harm mean?
• No one is free to physically harm another
person
• But what about other types of harms?
– Accidents
– Pollution
– Mistakes
 Nonphysical harms
• Material affects: impact on wealth or
well-being
• Amenity affects: impact on quality of life,
such as billboards, destruction of wildlife
• Emotional and psychological effects
• Spiritual and moral harms
 Harms to the community
– Structural harms: damage to the ability of the
community to function as a community
– Accumulative harms: harms if everybody starts
doing it, like cutting across lawns, sewage
dumping, jaywalking
– Harms to a group that result from harms to
individuals: racial discrimination, for example.
 Tradeoffs between liberty and security

• The problem of dependence

– If we provide economic security to the poor and
the unemployed, do we grant them security at the
cost of their liberty (i.e., their freedom of action)?
– If we value liberty, we place security in the hands
of the family or household, thereby eliminating
government intrusion
 Tradeoffs between liberty and security
• If we value security, we grant greater powers to government
(and society) to make us secure, at the risk of becoming
dependent and less free as government becomes more and
more able to intrude in our private lives.
• Thus, “the history of the 20th century welfare state is largely a
story of gradually expanding right for people dependent on the
state” (Stone), but does that mean that these people are really
free? No, says Austin Sarat, who would argue that the welfare
poor are trapped in a legal/bureaucratic tangle that does not
grant much freedom.
 The problem of paternalism
• “When, if ever, should government prevent people
from acting voluntarily in a way that harms
themselves? In other words, should government
curtail liberty in order to promote security?” (Stone)
Mill says “never!”
• Exception: people are not free to enter into contracts
to enslave themselves--although that is more or less
what the courts in this country ruled around the turn
of the century.
 We do allow paternalism for certain
classes of people
• Children, by definition
• Mentally ill, sick, etc.
• Dworkin’s Ulysses Contract: justified
“whenever a rational person would consent in
advance to restrain himself in some way”
(Stone) Problem of actual vs imputed wishes
 The Liberty/Equality Tradeoff

• People have different talents, skills etc.;

thus, the government should equalize
these resources.
• This is positive liberty,not negative
liberty, and makes many American
uncomfortable
The “antidote” to Issue Rhetoric:
Quantification
Indicators symbolize problems, but they are
not the problem itself
• The Gross Domestic Product
• The Census
• Tests like the SAT
• In statistics we call this the validity problem
• Is the statistic the best measure of the underlying
problem?
• Choices of statistics matter--for example, the
mean and the median
 Conclusions
• You have made excellent progress thus far,
given that…
– Problem definition is very difficult; and
– The more you learn about a problem, the more it
changes over time.
• Example: my research on the Stafford Act and
Hurricane Katrina.
 Workshop: Finding Statistical
Information
• People
• Economy
– Output
– Wealth
– Income
• Environment
• Education
– Educational attainment
 Let’s start with the economy
• United States
– Employment
– Output
• The southeast
– Employment
– Output
• North Carolina
• Wake County (or Metro Raleigh)
 Information on the Economy in the
United States
• Statistical abstract of the United States
– [Link]
• Gross Domestic Product
– [Link]
• Gross state and regional product
– [Link]
• Census information [Link]
• North Carolina information [Link]