Chapter 9 essay

Chapter 9

Policy Outcomes

Policy Outcomes Slide 1

How was the outcome of the Nineteenth

Amendment (granting women the right to vote)

different from the outcome of the Eighteenth

Amendment (prohibiting alcohol)?

Policy Outcomes Slide 2

 Policy outcomes

 Reactions people have once social problems

workers have implemented a policy

 Possible policy outcomes

 Often implementation leads to refinement of

the policy

 Understanding that the new policy is not

enough to manage the troubling condition

New Claims Slide 1

 New claims can arise based on evaluations

of the policy in question.

 Types of policy criticisms

1. Policy was insufficient

 More needs to be done to solve the problem.

 The original policy was aimed too narrowly.

New Claims Slide 2

2. Policy was excessive

 Original policy was overly broad

 Needs to be limited to become more successful

3. Policy was misguided

 Condition is real but policy not successful at eradication

 The condition is not actually a social problem.

 The policy actually makes the troubling condition worse

 Implementation (social problems work) is not meeting

the expectations of claimsmakers

Who Are Policy Critics? Slide 1

 Social problems workers

 They know policy intimately and are often the

most ambivalent about its implementation.

 Subjects

 They deal with the perceived inadequacies of

the policy and hope to make it better.

Who Are Policy Critics? Slide 2

 Original claimsmakers

 They can see how policy does not fulfill their

original vision.

 Counterclaimsmakers

 They dislike the original claims and policy and

wish to overturn them.

Evaluating Policy Slide 1

 Impartial evaluations of policy effectiveness

are difficult to conduct.

 The methods used to evaluate policies are a

concern, as is the choice of who evaluates

them.

 Evaluation research: social-scientific

assessments of a policy’s effectiveness

Evaluating Policy Slide 2

 Experiments are rarely used to measure

policy effectiveness.

 Nonexperimental studies are more common.

 Evaluate across time: compare the troubling

condition before and after policy

implementation

 Evaluate across place: compare the troubling

condition in two locations, one with and one

without the policy

Evaluating Policy Slide 3

 Methodological concerns

 Quality of evidence available for analysis

 Constraints on what can be gathered

(confidentiality, etc.)

 Accuracy of records

 Consistency of record collection procedures

 Bias in evaluators, especially if they are internal

to the social problems process

Evaluating Policy Slide 4

 Special groups are created for policy

evaluation.

 National, state and local commissions are

meant to lend credibility to the evaluation

process.

Evaluating Policy Slide 5

 Appellate courts act as policy evaluators.

 They are sometimes asked to rule on the

constitutionality of a policy.

 They are asked to alter policy in a number of

ways

 Implementation timetables

 Expand or narrow the range of persons the

policy affects

Policy Debates

 Ideology often breaks down policy outcomes

into predictable sides.

 Leftist ideologies stress equality and concerns

about discrimination and need for equality.

 Rightist ideologies stress liberty and order.

 A policy may be regarded as a success, a

failure, or in need of additional work.