WHAT FACTORS AFFECT THE “SAUSAGE MAKING”

Picking up on the topic this writer introduced in the last posting – what factors are in play in the process of policy-making – this posting will provide an overall listing of those factors.  This listing is derived from the work of Matt Grossman.[1]  The political scientist describes prior research as more the work of hedgehogs; that is, efforts that become overly entangled with one or two factors – such as interest group involvement – and losing the more robust approach of dealing with a multitude of factors.

          A process that does deal with many factors, he describes as more the work of a fox.  A “fox” relies “on no overarching narrative and assessing multiple possibilities.”[2]  According to Grossman, the fox approach is more accurate; an estimation established by experimental research by economists and political scientists.  To be more foxlike, Grossman relies on the work of policy historians.  It turns out that the histories of policy changes (the term these researchers prefer) is done by historians who dedicate their efforts to such documentation.

          Grossman looked at the compilation of such histories from 1945 to 2012.  The areas of policy his review covers are as follows (with the number of books and articles utilized):  agriculture (14 books, 3 articles), civil rights and liberties (24 books, 4 articles), criminal justice (15 books), education (12 books, 4 articles), energy (13 books, 1 article), environment (18 books, 3 articles), finance and commerce (16 books, 3 articles), health (22 books, 2 articles), housing and community development (11 books, 8 articles), labor and immigration (19 books, 1 article), macroeconomics (21 books, 1 article), science and technology (15 books, 5 articles), social welfare (19 books, 1 article), and transportation (12 books, 1 article).  His research reviewed nearly 2,000 cases of policy change.

          After identifying the factors (independent variables) from these qualitative sources of information, he also qualitatively determined the significance of the individual policy changes (dependent variable).  Grossman readily admits the potential for subjectivity such a process can entail, but assures the reader that the effort was to be objective.  And then, with all the data arranged, prepared, and categorized, he applied suitable statistical analyses to the data.

          The aim here is to give the reader an overall sense of those identified independent factors that seem to more prominently have an influence on policy change processes.  It can be generally detected that there seem to be three general types of policy change efforts by policy-makers:  efforts that result from unplanned events (e. g., the 9/11 attack and subsequent policy initiatives), efforts that are a continuation of long standing efforts (e. g., healthcare as in the Affordable Health Care Act), or renewal or tweaking policy change (e. g., budget legislation).

          Irrespective of the type of change effort, there are, in the Grossman research, 60 factors coming into play among all the policy change efforts he identified.  From his reporting, one can get a sense of what is in play when government officials are entertaining policy change.  While the overall number of factors is large, he detected that some factors are highly recurring.

          This is a listing of the most cited factors in the offered explanations the histories provide and the percent of explanations in which they are offered:  supportive president (42.15%), pressure of advocacy organization (22.54%), extension of previous policy (21.56%), individual 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 number of policy change cases looked at is 1,943.

          The blaring omission in this listing is public opinion.  This writer assumes that it is one of the 60 factors, but from the percents offered above, one can speculate how infrequent public opinion becomes a meaningful factor.  Of course, this can reflect how undemocratic our public decision-making is.

It also reflects how unusual it is for policy-makers to be dealing with issues or policy proposals about which the common person would have knowledge or interest.  Most of the time, these officials deal with the more mundane areas of governance that most people just take for granted or about which they are totally uninformed.  How many citizens care whether the Air Force buys one fighter jet opposed to another?  Yet, such a decision can mean expenditures of billions of dollars.

Another way to view the above information is to categorize the more specific factors into types.  Here is such a listing from Grossman’s research:  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 exceed one hundred percent, it indicates that more than one of these categories is affecting policy change in any one case.

Also of note: when one gathers the various factors into types, public opinion gets more attention.  This could be due to how various factors can be interpreted as forms of public opinion.  While 17.04% does not indicate an overwhelming factor or type of factor, it is worth considering when studying any policy change.  This is an encouraging finding.

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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 2973-2984 (a Kindle designation).

VARIED VIEWS OVER POLICY-MAKING

One would think that a set of central questions any civics educational curriculum would address is:  what process is used to develop national policy; how does the nation’s public policy get enacted; whose benefits are served by that process of development and enactment?  This posting does not attempt to answer these questions, but will introduce several postings that will look at one of these questions.  That is:  how does that policy get enacted?  It turns out that there is an extensive, political science literature dedicated to this inquiry.

          Matt Grossman’s[1] monograph reports that that research has been responsible for an array of theoretical models that guide this study.  Among those models, one can find views titled public opinion, scientific influence, interest group, and actor success models.  Each of these titles represents more specific perspectives.  For example, actor success models include a chief executive model that looks at the role of president in the development and enactment of policy change.

          The upcoming postings will share Grossman’s judgments of each of these models and culminate with what he thinks is the best way to conceptualize this research topic based on what his analysis of case studies indicates.  Overall, he finds fault with these various models.  He summarizes their deficiencies in the following description:

Some of these ideal types are based in normative premises:  the public opinion literature’s objective is democratic accountability; the scientific influence literature seeks evidenced-based policy.  The interest group literature is instead born of a dystopia, the idea that policy results are bought and sold.  Assessments of these ideal types tend to become searches for confirming or disconfirming evidence for a single theory, rather than investigations of competing alternatives.  Actor success models thus share two problems: (1) they bias the starting point, including only the agenda of potential proposals of concern to each set of actors, and (2) they look for deviations from agreement with the actor in question, assuming that agreement implies influence.[2]

          As a prelude and as hinted at in this above cited quote, Grossman’s research points him toward a wider approach about what influences decision-making in the field of policy change.  His study heavily looks at Congressional processes since most policy change occurs in that branch of government.  This is not to say that the other branches are ignored.  His study does include policy-making in the executive (both at the presidential level and bureaucratic level) and the judicial branches.

          This writer, frankly, finds this diversity of views and approaches a bit disheartening.  That is, given the centrality of this process in any understanding of political behavior or governance, one would think that the discipline of political science would speak to this topic with more certainty than what is indicated by such varied views.  But that is the nature of trying to scientifically study human behavior or human decision-making, especially when that interest is aimed at such a complex endeavor as national policy-making.

          In turn, civics education must accommodate this reality.  If one of this course of study’s aim is to prepare students to be able to actively engage in the processes of government as an active citizen, civics teachers are naturally called upon to convey an accurate depiction of what constitutes the relevant governmental processes.

To do this, educators naturally look to the experts who study this process and whose charge is to, at minimum, convey an accurate general description of how policy is developed and enacted.  That is, civics teachers have a vested interest in the success of such scholarship. In doing so, they are well-served in keeping abreast of what is found in this research.  These upcoming postings will address this concern.

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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 2994 (Kindle designation).