FREE TO BELIEVE WHATEVER?

As any reader of this blog knows, it is dedicated to civics education.  In this posting, the writer wants to ask a very fundamental question concerning this core school subject.  But before he does, a few facts concerning civics should be established. 

Civics is part of the broader field of social studies.  The most prominent subject in this field is history, especially American history.  A typical student in a K-12 curriculum will have two courses in American history, one course in world history, and probably a course in the history of the state in which he/she resides.

          This very fact tells one a lot about why social studies is part of the curriculum.  Those who oversee such matters and, by extension, the populous they represent, believe that students should get a good sense of who they are as a people, a collective, and that is deemed to be better accomplished by reviewing the history that has created the conditions they are experiencing today.

          Furthermore, the study of history provides an explanation of why the political arrangements where they live exist.  The courses in American history emphasize the political and governmental elements of the nation.  A good deal of focus is placed on the founding of the nation:  the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and the writing and ratification of the US Constitution.

          It is with this backdrop that one should consider the courses of study entitled civics and American government.  In effect, civics is a watered-down version of American government and is taught in middle school.  The course extends for the whole academic year – two semesters.  It is offered either the year before or after the middle school version of American history.  The course further emphasizes the founding of the national political arrangement, its federal system of government, with most attention on the central government in Washington.

          American government is offered in high school usually during the senior year.  This is, of course, a bit more involved than the middle school civics course, but, at least in the state of Florida, is only a semester course (sharing the bill, sort of speaking, with economics, which is the course that is offered during the other semester of the senior year).  If the reader was educated in the nation’s public school system, he/she will probably remember these courses.

          That’s the backdrop for civics and American government.  In this blog, the writer has made the argument that the purpose of social studies, including all the history and civics taught, is to promote good citizenship.  The educational historian, R. Freeman Butts, writes of this goal:

… preparing the people for the common duties of republican citizenship required a common education whose first and basic priority is building and maintaining a cohesive political community devoted to the civic ideals of liberty, equality, popular consent, and personal obligation for the public good.”[1]

But as they say in the vernacular, “that’s a mouthful.”

          And it leads to what this posting is about:  Should civics education be about imparting values and attitudes that support “republican citizenship,” cohesion, and civic ideals such as liberty and equality?  The question becomes even more strident when one considers that public schools are an arm of the government or, stated another way: should the government be about telling us what values and attitudes the nation’s children should have?

          And if one goes along with the commitment to impart values and attitudes, the question becomes:  which values and attitudes?  To date, this blog has outlined three sets of values and attitudes which different political thinkers and social education scholars have advanced.  There is one set of ideas or view that is in force today: that is, overwhelmingly, a mental construct is guiding most of the instructional efforts in civics across the land.  That construct has been called the natural rights construct.

          The natural rights construct is an approach that leaves much of what one should believe to the individual student.  The belief it does promote is that the most important value concerning governance and politics is the value of liberty.  It functions as the trump value in terms of political/governmental affairs. As for natural rights advocates, given their support of liberty, they follow the traditional tenets of liberal political thought.

Centrally, liberal thought believes that individuals should be free to form their own values and goals in life along with the freedom to act toward fulfilling those values and goals. Following John Locke's standard, the right to pursue one's value choices are limited only by the rights of others to do likewise. This is a legitimate expression of liberty. As a trump value, the sanctity of a person to be such a free agent has been identified by the term, individual sovereignty.[2]

To get a good sense of how this construct guides civics education, the reader can look at the predominant American government textbook, Magruder’s American Government,[3] or can look at one of the popular middle school texts, Glencoe Civics Today:  Citizenship, Economics, and You.[4]  In reading either of these texts or others, what one finds is a high reliance on structural treatment of government.

That is, the bulk of the content is a series of descriptions of the various departments, agencies, programs, and the like that make up the government’s structure or the structure of non-government entities that deal with government, such as interest groups.  This content, void of values or attitudes as those identified by Butts, seems to come as close as one can to the position that civics education should not be in the business of promoting political values.

Is it totally void of such concerns?  No, but one can ask:  can it be?  It has been the position of this writer that no matter which approach a civics education program chooses, it will promote values, even if the value is that individuals should have the freedom – liberty – to choose what further values he/she should develop or adopt.  But short of that basic position, the natural rights construct provides the greatest amount of freedom regarding what values a citizen should have in terms of government or politics.

In upcoming postings, this writer will pursue this inquiry as to whether a civics program should teach beyond instructing students what the structure of government is and proceed to encourage or impart a set of governmental/political values and attitudes of more substance.  He will do this by reviewing the other two constructs:  critical theory and federation theory.

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[1]R. Freeman Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational Reform: Perspectives for the Public and the Profession (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1989), 65.

[2] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarianism Debate, ed. C. F. Delaney (Lanhan, MD:  Rowman and Litttlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994), 19-37.

[3] Willian A. McClenaghan, Magruder’s American Government (Florida Teacher’s Edition) (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2013).

[4] Richard C. Remy, John J. Patrick, David C. Saffell, and Gary E. Clayton.  Glencoe Civics Today:  Citizenship, Economics, and You.  New York, NY:  McGraw Hill Glencoe, 2008.

SITUATIONAL vs. MODEL ADOPTIONS

This blog has reviewed what John Kotter[1] points out are the basic processes that effective leadership uses in instituting change.  Overall, he is advocating a set of procedural elements that do not detail what everyone in the business or organization must do.  Instead, the elements are offered as general functions that must be satisfied to accomplish fundamental change.

Beginning with visualizing a clear direction for a business or organization, a leader must develop strategies of how to accomplish that direction’s aims and goals.  He/she must identify and place the appropriate people in the positions to carry out the strategy(ies), institute the necessary communication to those people, collaborate with the people to formulate a shared understanding of the direction, convince the people the stated direction is worthy, and motivate them to accomplish the aims and goals, including attaining the spirit to overcome the inevitable barriers and trials.

Shorthand for these functions can be the terms developing direction, aligning, motivating, and inspiring the workers or volunteers.  What should not be lost is that a transformational leadership is not about either dictating the detailed steps or actions the staff will perform or counting on transactional payoffs to get people to perform in certain ways.  The key term is collaboration; that is, there is a shared ownership of what the leader is attempting to accomplish; it becomes their – those who make up the business or organization – aims and goals, not the leader’s aims and goals.

In that spirit, this posting wants to make a distinction.  There are two ways of looking at this process and the favored way is more in keeping with the philosophy that the process is promoting – the more federalist way of looking at change.

Michael Roberto[2] uses extensively, in his description of these processes, the work of Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric to illustrate what transformational leadership is.  Welch exemplified the processes outlined above.  Roberto goes on to point out that Welch also dedicated a lot of effort and resources to mentoring many of his underlings in the fine art of leadership.  This became evident as many of his people left General Electric and took on CEO positions at other large corporations.  Most of these people became successful; some did not.  What made the difference?

This question focuses on what this posting wants to add to the understanding of effective change.  Some of these protégées wanted to take the general ideas of Welch’s approach and apply them to their newer positions with high degrees of massaging those ideas into a new reality.  One can call this basic approach a situational leadership adoption.  Others, instead, wanted to apply the GE approach to their newer place with a high degree of fidelity; that is, to ape what was done at GE to this other business entity – a model leadership adoption.  According to Roberto, the situational leadership type proved much more successful.

Why?  Apparently, each collective – such as each corporation – has its own set of factors that give it its “personality” or culture.  Each has its own cast of individuals, tasks, chemistry.  These must be respected by the new guy/gal on the block no matter how high that person is in the pecking order.  So, the lesson from these CEOs – both the successful and unsuccessful ones – is that immersing oneself in the existing cauldron of values, attitudes, mores, modes of operations, and other situational elements is essential to institute fundamental change.

For example, a case that Roberto points out occurred when Bob Nardelli left GE to head Home Depot.  Apparently, Nardelli opted the model leadership approach and tried to duplicate what he left at GE in his new assignment.  While he was very successful at GE, he was not, according to Roberto, successful at Home Depot.  To begin with, GE is, at its core, a manufacturing business and Home Depot is a retail business.  This, in and of itself, is enough of a difference to dictate a different strategy.

What is often overlooked when considering federalist approaches is that as a collectivist view of social arrangements, it places a high degree of importance on the integrity of the individual.  It recognizes the reality of governing or administrating actions that do not sufficiently honor that integrity – that such an approach is doomed to failure.

But while this is true at the individual level, it is also true at the collective level.  Each organization, be it private or public, needs to be respected and its elements need to be given their due.  That is what is wrong with a model leadership adoption.  It fails to account for the distinguishing elements that make a GE a GE or a Home Depot a Home Depot.  Situational elements, therefore, need to be respected.

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[1] John Kotter, Leading Change (Boston, MA:  Harvard Business Press, 1996).

[2] Michael A. Roberto, Transformational Leadership:  How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations, (Chantilly, VA:  The Great Courses/The Teaching Company, 2011).

LEADERSHIP AND WHO HE/SHE IS

A recurring theme in this blog has been the topic of change.  More specifically, how does one effect change in a school’s curriculum?  The reason for this recurrence is that one of the main aims of this blog is to promote a view of civics’ content; that is, the mental construct, federation theory.  This blog has made the point that at any given time, a fundamental construct is utilized to guide educators as to what content is included in a course of study and this includes a course in civics.

          The blog has argued that the current guiding construct, the natural rights view, is deficient in several ways.  For example, its reliance on a self-defined sense of citizenship and political morality has led to too many young people adopting self-serving aims at the expense of the common good.  This argument is an involved one and has been developed over many postings.  A short summary is that federation theory should be adopted as the guiding construct since it encourages a citizenry that sees itself engaged in a partnership within itself.

          But beyond the sought-after change is the whole notion of change, per se.  And if one is considering an effective curricular change, one is talking about transformational change.  Before one can effect a change of this type, one needs to know what leads to change; what makes it happen.  The analysis thus far in this blog has led to the realization that if fundamental change is to occur, it needs to be the product of change agents.

A change agent can be anyone involved with change, but he/she is a leader, someone who is listened to and who gets others to behave in certain ways.  Such compliance in transformational change is not from anticipation of a punishment if the follower fails to comply or from an expectation of a tangible reward such as money or a benefit other than the emotional reward accrued from being part of a positive change.  The subject follows the transformational leader because he/she believes it is the right thing to do.  This type of leadership is geared toward long-term not short-term change.

Michael A. Roberto[1] identifies a list of myths concerning such leadership.  The first myth is that leaders of this type are born, not made.  He is quick to point out that, yes, some individuals are born with inborn qualities that can more readily be developed into leadership characteristics, but these qualities can also be taught.  Myth two:  effective leaders are lone geniuses who lead through their own efforts and skills.  The truth is that effective leadership can best be described as those actions that coordinate a collaborative team of workers or volunteers (depending on the organization being led).

The third myth is that effective leaders are charismatic and extroverted who thrive in being out there and the center of attention.  Some are extroverts, but many are not.  Many use a more subdued presence, working below the radar with little fanfare.  The fourth myth is that effective leadership needs authority.  Yes, authority can help, but no example other than Mahatma Gandhi illustrates how much a person without authority can affect profound change.

And a fifth myth is the belief that leadership reflects or is associated with a certain set of traits.  Leadership comes in many different “packages.”  Usually such belief focuses on personality traits, but studies of leadership have identified an array of personality qualities among different leaders, and showing one cannot settle on a single ideal personality makeup that equates to an effective leader.

Future postings will delve into these myths and other aspects of leadership.  These descriptions and explanations will address a useful view of what constitutes leadership.  While the treatment will not be about furthering federation theory, it will display an overlapping message of how coordination, collaboration, and mutual commitment – federalist qualities – are useful in defining good leadership.

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[1] Michael A. Roberto, Transformational Leadership:  How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations, (Chantilly, VA:  The Great Courses/The Teaching Company, 2011).

IT TAKES A NETWORK TO GET A LOT DONE

With this posting, I conclude a series of postings that reviews some of the factors and conditions upon which public policy changes.  Using the research of Matt Grossman,[1] the blog has reported on the robust nature of this topic: that one cannot zero-in on a few variables associated with policy change and get a satisfactory sense of what is entailed.  Instead, Grossman argues that a rich array of factors must be considered to get a comprehensive enough view of what all is involved.

          Having pointed out these rich sources of change, he goes further to point out that a recurring factor is the presence of a select number of policymakers who seem to be involved in the numerous histories of such changes.  While these individuals, politicians and interest group representatives, do not initiate change necessarily, they do seem to manage the process.  That is not to say these individuals are indispensable to the process, but they do seem to be present in most of the cases in which change occurs.

          Also, productive periods of time – those in which a high number of policy changes occur – are noted with a political environment, unlike today, in which the level of polarization is low.  One such period was what Grossman calls the Long Great Society period (1961-1976).  This extended time was noted with a major introduction and enactment of progressive legislation that was not only the product of liberals, but also moderate conservatives.  The presidential administrations involved included Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford.

          And that leads to the topic of this posting:  governmental networks.  During productive eras of policy change, there are viable and productive governmental networks at work to make the necessary laws, regulations, and judicial decisions possible.  It is these networks that allow the interdependence among policymakers that transcends beyond an issue or proposed bill of legislation and coordinates the work of many, allowing a productive stretch of change.

          Therefore, students of this process would do well not to focus on one issue or even on one general area of concern such as the environment.  Their concerns should stretch beyond even a liberal or conservative ideological bias.  To narrow the study to any one of these factors or conditions would isolate a view of policymakers and policymaking artificially and misleadingly.  This is, for example, how Grossman describes the governing network during the progressive times of the ‘60s and ‘70s:

The most important feature of the governing network of the Long Great Society was the sustained cross-issue and cross-branch relationships that it featured, with a core of central actors responsible for policymaking in all three branches in many domains over sixteen years.  This implies that the traditional concept of issue networks is too limiting.  A network of actors may surround an issue area, but its most important members may be those that transcend the issue, such as presidents or congressional leaders.  A network may not be a replacement for a subsystem, but a means of connecting actors across institutional and policy contexts.[2]

          Just to be clear, governing networks aren’t always in place.  As a matter of fact, they are rare.  But with a new president – and a new party – in the White House, the opportunity is present for such a phenomenon these days.  Will it come about?  Possibly, if the new president really works at it despite a slim advantage in the Senate, a slim win at the polls (winning the electoral vote, but losing the popular vote), and ostensibly much ill-will among the electorate.  The question is:  what would it take to structure a new governing network?

          If this writer reads the Grossman’s monograph correctly, beginning with less partisan issues would be prudent.  Such an issue is the infrastructure piece of his agenda.  This policy proposal would be appealing to Democrats and probably enough Republicans (from blue collar areas) to formulate the relationships upon which a network can be built.  Along with avoiding the more controversial issues – at least for now – such an approach would identify those politicians and interest group representatives that could possibly be the foundation of a workable network.

          Networks take time to form.  Un-balkanizing our politics is essential to a successful sustained effort to bring about the changes the nation’s new president is promising.  Other factors associated with network-building are limiting interest group expansion (avoid too much concentration of this segment of the political landscape) and steering clear of ideological polarization.

What needs to be pushed to the forefront is empathetic language (adopting as much opposition language as possible to serve the purposes of the proposed change) and diversifying the structure and membership of the network.  There is no single way to organize the effort; instead, the political insights of key people must be exercised to meet the challenges of the issue and the timing of the effort.

And all this further highlights the key function – most of the time – that certain participants play.  The histories of such efforts repeatedly point out that while all congressional votes count the same, all congressional members do not have the same level of influence.  Most actors have little to say in each proposal, but a few have a lot of say on a wide range of issues.  These are the types of political elements that civics students need to grasp to learn a realistic view of politics.     

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[1] Matt Grossman, Artist of the Possible:  Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press).

[2] Ibid., location 3464-3474 (a Kindle designation).

THE WORKINGS OF THE POSSIBLE

This blog of late has reviewed some general observations and insights regarding the conditions that lead to public policy change.  By public, this writer is referring to governmental policy in the form of laws, regulations, and/or judicial decisions.  What he wants to next address is the work of institutional entrepreneurs and governing networks.  This posting looks at the first of these two.

          The reason for this interest is based on the belief that central to the teaching of civics should be not only the workings of government, but also imparting skills associated with citizen engagement, especially in a democracy like ours that exalts republican (with a small r) values.  On both counts – workings and engagement – a student is well served if he/she understands what goes into the formulation of policy.

          In terms of institutional entrepreneurs – a group referred to here as policy entrepreneurs – these are the relatively small groups of politicians (usually presidents and Congresspersons) who are not always the initiators of changes, but who play central roles in their enactment.  They, in short, act as ringleaders in getting proposed changes into effect.  A president or legislator who wants something enacted would do well to solicit the support of these individuals.  They are not essential, but they are, given the history of such efforts, usually highly useful.

          What can be said of these policy entrepreneurs?  According to Matt Grossman,[1] whose research this blog has relied on in terms of this topic, they are the ones who form and organize the necessary coalitions of policy-makers.  They orchestrate the give and take that lead to the compromises essential to arrive at the agreements upon which the enactments count.  They, in addition, identify both those individuals, within and without government, who can make the difference between enactment or failure to enact.

          In the last posting, it was pointed out that the current political scene, including in the Congress, levels of polarization have become so high that policy-making or rule-making has been seriously curtailed.  This condition is of relatively recent vintage and before its ascendance, especially in the years between and including the 1960s and 1990s, such names as Moynihan, Kennedy, Dole, and Javits – all US Senators – were often cited as those politicians who were in effect the policy entrepreneurs of their day.

          These central figures can be characterized by certain attributes.  First, they do not think or act in terms of specific laws they are aiming to enact, but instead in terms of what can possibly be enacted.  There is a significant difference between these perspectives.  The former tends to think of the “perfect” (perfection defined by a politician’s values and/or attitudes), while the latter thinks in the realm of the possible.

Grossman describes these entrepreneurial politicians as more concerned with getting things done than getting specific things done – quantity over quality.  Or stated another way:  they strive for change for its own sake.  In this line of thinking, while rare, they might use their skills to block enactment, but as a group, they would rather strive toward change through the enactment of new policy.

This overall perspective leads to some more specific orientations.  They often see, for example, the perfect being the enemy of the good.  That is, in trying to achieve the perfect, one can lose the good and end up with nothing new, aka the status quo.  Of course, this is deemed to be the bad since it is the status quo that motivated the effort to change in the first place.

They partake of certain activities.  They trade favors – something for something else.  They are ready to concede minor goals to achieve the overall aim or some version of it.  They try to stay clear of the more controversial issues and, by doing so, avoid engendering criticism that will kill their efforts.

As for critics, they try to win them over by addressing their concerns or, at least, they try to do so.  And they cajole their fellow legislators, usually by flattery.  Positive interchanges are better since the current bit of change effort will be followed by others and willing allies are always welcomed.  Such alliances are not promoted by distasteful experiences in the past.

All this means compromising.  But are there limits to such compromising?  Of course, there are.  Too much compromising – in terms of beliefs – will indicate that the politician is lacking in principles and, therefore, is apt to be judged as untrustworthy.  The system of policy-making, as in any deal making, must depend on participants trusting the word of the other participants.  Part of that is having a sense of what the limits of each participant are.  And that, by its very nature, is what principles are all about.

This writer sees this phenomenon of entrepreneurial activity being more prevalent at the federal level than at the state level.  In most state legislatures, one party is firmly in power and with that, one train of political thought prevails (more singular in terms of ideological biases).  This is not true in all states; some are more diverse.  Having said that, even when there is more unanimity, not all participants will see things the same way all the time.  Translation:  wheeling and dealing will commence.

Last, Grossman writes of “Senate gangs.”  These are the recurring members who are the entrepreneurs in the US Senate.  With that, one is naturally led to consider governing networks which will be the next and last topic this blog will address concerning how policy-change takes place.

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[1] Matt Grossman, Artist of the Possible:  Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press).

DOES POLARIZATION RULE?

This writer is currently posting a series of offerings that addresses the issue of policy change.  Policy change can be in the form of new laws, new regulations, or new court decisions.  For example, the court decision that has legalized same sex marriages is such a case.  The connection of this topic to civics education is obvious.  But to make the point, good citizenry in a polity where citizen engagement is not only allowed, but encouraged, its civics education owes its students an accurate account of how the system makes policy.

          To date, this blog has highlighted the policy making attributes of coalition and compromise.  That is, policy change is dependent on a string of players coming together and committing to accomplishing the change.  This writer would argue that this is exactly how the system was supposed to work.  Instead of a parliamentary system in which political parties and their discipline dictate policy change, a congressional/presidential system, like that of the US, depends on a more congregational approach as described above.

          Relying on the research of Matt Grossman,[1] this blog has identified those factors that influence this process.  Of course, the leadership that forms such coalitions is a factor.  Grossman has identified – and this blog has reported – a set of factors beyond this central one.  He has further divided them into types and, in terms of influence, arranged them in a three-tier categorization.

          Tier one includes the internal deal-making characterized by this organizing, bargaining, debating, and compromising among a relatively small number of policy makers.  One can call it internal negotiating.  A middle tier of factors consists of path dependence from the previous attempts to make change, research in the related area, and what is happening in the world, either domestically or abroad. 

And the last tier identifies public opinion along with media coverage, ideas that have taken some currency, court decisions, and international and sub national developments of lesser note.  This last tier deserves special attention in a civics classroom due to the inclusion of public opinion.  In a civics class that adopts federation theory – as is advocated in this blog – the aim should be to upgrade public opinion to, at least, tier two.  But Grossman indicates that there has been, of late, an uptick in the influence that public opinion is having in contemporary politics.

This writer has also noted this shift.  The problem is that increased engagement has taken not a federalist tone, not one that supports the congregational spirit the founders had in mind, but one that resembles the natural rights frame of reference and language.  In short, the current participation language sounds more like “what’s in it for me” rather than “what’s in it for the common good.”  Of course, in action this is probably always the case, but in terms of espoused values – the espoused theory – the natural rights view seems to be guiding the efforts toward change.

This trend can be traced to about 2009 when the effects of the financial crisis took hold. Since then, led by groups such as the Tea Party, politics have become more polarized, ideological, and nationalistic.  It is catering to more personal prejudices and biases.  The last election saw these trends in full display.  Today begins the consequences of such a shift; time will tell what the effects will be.

Rule-making, an essential function of any political system, has gone wanting.  The polarization has made the needed coalitions, negotiations, bargaining, and compromises nearly impossible.  Hence, the system has become dysfunctional.  The government, in many areas of national concern, has become ineffective.

In such a political environment, the call naturally bends toward a demand to shake up the system, for bringing in the outsider.  That is what this election has brought, at least in terms of the executive branch.  The legislative branch has already tapped many outsiders to take up a significant number of the seats in the law-making body.  The outsiders are in control of much of the nation’s decision-making positions.  The question remains: will this new set of policy-makers get the system to make the rules that address the mounting demands among certain segments of the population?

The likelihood of this outcome is a topic for another posting.  This writer does not hold out much hope; if anything, the polarization has just gotten worse.  Here’s hoping he is wrong.  Today is traditionally a day of celebration and in less polarized days, it would be.  But, unfortunately, that is not the case.

To end, here is a Grossman observation:  for elections to be effective instruments of change, they must be consistent and overwhelming in their results.  When that happens, policy-makers will either heed the message an election conveys or it will lead to a new batch of decision-makers.  Unfortunately, the last adjective one would use to describe the last presidential election is decisive in terms of what people want.

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[1] Matt Grossman, Artist of the Possible:  Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press).

WHAT GETS THINGS DONE

Since the nation just experienced an election for the presidency, all of the House of Representatives, and one third of the Senate, one question the citizenry can ask is:  what good did it do?  How much say does the citizenry have, through its vote, in determining what public policy (policy change) will be initiated over the coming two years (until the next national election) or four years when again it will decide who the chief executive will be?

          This writer introduced this topic two postings ago and continued the theme in the last posting.  In the latter posting, he provided a list of factors that were found to influence policy change.  This list was provided by Matt Grossman and his research.[1]

That research looked at almost 2000 case studies (policy histories) stretching from 1945 to 2012.  That list is:  supportive president (42.15% of cases in which the factor was listed), pressure of advocacy organization (22.54%), extension of previous policy (21.56%), Congressperson led (15.23%), focusing event (12.40%), change in power of the two parties (12.05%), Congressional committee chair led (11.89%), pressure from corporations (11.48%), earlier choice made more likely (11.01%), government report issued (10.91%), House and Senate reach agreement (10.86%), new data arise (10.40%), important frame for proponents (9.83%), Congressional lobbying (9.57%), affected by economic downturn (9.32%), general media coverage (9.06%), court ruling stimulated action (7.57%), key Congressional floor vote (7.31%), and Congressional party/leadership led (7.05%).

The posting then provided this same list in terms of types of factors.  That list is as follows:   Congressional (41.17%), executive branch (53.17%), judicial branch (9.47%), interest groups (36.13%), research (24.96%), public opinion (17.04%), media (10.19%), state/local (6.74%), international (5.35%), path dependence – referring to ongoing action – (28.87%), events (26.04%), and ideas (13.84%).  Of course, since these numbers in both lists exceed one hundred percent, it indicates that more than one of these factors categories is affecting policy change in any one case.

This writer then reported that public opinion does not show up until Grossman categorizes the factors (which numbered 60 in total) into types and then  was identified in only 17% of the cases.  This indicates that public opinion, at least in the years studied, was not an overwhelming determinant in most cases of policy change.

Later in his reporting, Grossman identifies public opinion, interest groups, and research as the three influential sources of input emanating from outside the government.  Yet none of them should be considered as a determinant by itself as to what will be adopted as policy.  Then one could ask:  what is a determinant?  Well, the lists above give the reader strong indications as to what are the more determinant factors.

The research Grossman reports indicates that of the factors listed, all can and do have an influential function from time to time, but some have more influence than others.  What seems far more important in the process are the internal institutional factors at play, such as presidential backing or central Congressional figures.  Yes, interest groups are important, especially those that represent large and wealthy business entities, but only when they can coalesce with other entities.

Other non-actor factors that can have influence on a more than random basis are path dependence (prior work and attention to a proposed change), research, and events, but even then, what really makes the difference is when a coalition of institutional players (the President and/or Congressional members) decide to make the change happen.

So, can one attribute policy change to the product of liberal and conservatives in Congress coming together and working out a compromise which results in a new policy?  One can ask this question because most of the rhetoric in election campaigns falls along the liberal (or far liberal) and conservative (or far conservative) divide.

When one says there are blue and red states, one readily envisions the distinction being between liberal (blue) and conservative (red) state biases.  Of course, there are also purple states (a mixture of blue and red) where neither side can attain dominance, but the rhetoric there still falls within the ideological distinction of these two camps.

          When discussing this aspect of the nation’s politics, Grossman reports:

A majority of actors were not easily categorized as liberal or conservative; these included government organizations, individual activists, and nonpartisan interest groups … More telling, liberal organizations were more than twice as common as conservative organizations.  This likely reflects the liberal nature of most policy changes and the more common liberal ideological direction of policy making since 1945.[2]

This observation relates to two conditions:  one, the time covered by the research reflects a particularly liberal time in the nation’s politics.  Grossman writes of the extended policy change era that he calls the Long Great Society period, in which policy initiatives by the Lyndon Johnson administration almost dominated central government efforts during and well after Johnson’s time in office.

And two, most people who get involved in the nuts and bolts of policy change are motivated by the practical issues a policy change entails.  They are less motivated by grandiose ideological positions.

Another important observation that Grossman offers is that more than half of the governmental actors who are identified are mentioned only in relation to one change effort.  But when one further analyzes the data, it turns out that a relatively few are involved with many efforts.  These more influential politicians are what Grossman calls institutional entrepreneurs and can be judged to be central figures in the policy change business.  As it turns out, it is these individuals who are crucial in formulating the necessary coalitions to get the change accomplished.

Here is how Grossman describes it:

Although many actors occasionally influence policy, only a few constitute institutionalized entrepreneurs with repeated influence.  Because these actors influence policy with numerous allies and partners in compromise, they become central in governing networks.  These well-connected actors tend to be presidents, long-serving legislators, and prominent interest groups.[3]

          An overall description of the policy change process is:  the process is noted for the level of cooperation institutional actors exert, but not the work of a single actor.  No one actor is critical to getting things done, not even the president.  Yes, some are more influential than others and as a member of a coalesced group, they are very important, but no one is indispensable.

The other generalization that can be made is that public opinion is enjoying a more prominent position as of late.  The work of the Tea Party can be cited and now there is a liberal version trying to get off the ground, especially after the last election.  For political junkies – those who are not so entangled with the substantive aspects of policy, but see it as sport – the coming years might be entertaining.

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[1] Matt Grossman, Artist of the Possible:  Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press).

[2] Ibid., location 3142 (Kindle designation).

[3] Ibid., location 3148 (Kindle designation).