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3 The Policymaking Process Decision-Making Activities

The Policy Process: How Policies Are Made

Policy studies often focus on how policies are made rather than on their content or their causes and consequences. The study of how policies are made generally considers a series of activities, or processes, that occur within the political system. These processes, together with the activities involved and likely participants, may be portrayed as in Table 3–1.

Although it may be helpful to think about policymaking as a series of processes, in the real world these activities seldom occur in a neat, step-by-step sequence. Rather these processes often occur simultaneously, each one collapsing into the others. Different political actors and institutions—politicians, interest groups, lobbyists and legislators, executives and bureaucrats, reporters and commentators, think tanks, lawyers and judges—may be engaged in different processes at the same time, even in the same policy area. Policymaking is seldom as neat as the process model. Nonetheless, it is often useful for analytical purposes to break policymaking into component units in order to understand better how policies are made.

Problem Identification and Agenda Setting

Who decides what will be decided? The power to decide what will be a policy issue is crucial to the policymaking process. Deciding what will be the problems is even more important than deciding what will be the solutions. Many civics textbooks imply that agenda setting just “happens.” It is sometimes argued that in an open plural society such as ours, channels of access and communication to government are always open, so that any problem can be discussed and placed on the agenda of national decision making. Individuals and groups, it is said, can organize themselves to assume the tasks of defining problems and suggesting solutions. People can define their own interests, organize themselves, persuade others to support their cause, gain access to government officials, influence decision making, and watch over the implementation of government policies and programs. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the absence of political activity such as this is an indicator of satisfaction.

TABLE 3–1 Policymaking as a Process Policymaking can be seen as a process—how policies are made—in a step-by-step sequence; but in reality these processes overlap and intertwine.

But, in reality, policy issues do not just “happen.” Creating an issue, dramatizing it, calling attention to it, and pressuring government to do something about it are important political tactics. These tactics are employed by influential individuals, organized interest groups, policy-planning organizations, political candidates and office-holders, and perhaps most important, the mass media. These are the tactics of “agenda setting.”

Agenda Setting from the Bottom Up

The prevailing model of policymaking in American political science is a popularly driven, “bottom-up” portrait of decision making. This “democratic-pluralist” model assumes that any problem can be identified by individuals or groups, by candidates seeking election, by political leaders seeking to enhance their reputation and prospects for reelection, by political parties seeking to define their principles and/or create favorable popular images of themselves, by the mass media seeking to “create” news, and even by protest groups deliberately seeking to call attention to their problems. And, of course, various crises and disasters—from natural disasters such as hurricanes and droughts to man-made tragedies such as school shootings and airplane crashes—attract public attention and compel public officials to respond.

Public Opinion and Agenda Setting.

Events, and the media’s reporting of them, can focus public attention on issues, problems, and “crises.” Concern over terrorism dominated the public’s mind following the horrific televised attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Later the war in Iraq became “the most important problem facing the country” according to opinion polls. Iraq appeared to be the nation’s top policy issue during the congressional elections of 2006 in which opposition Democrats captured control of both houses of Congress.

But the threat of financial collapse and deep recession soon replaced all other issues on the public’s agenda. The nation’s “top priority” for President Barack Obama became jobs and the economy (see Table 3–2). Defending against future terrorist attacks fell to second place in the policy priorities of most Americans. Other issues—Social Security, education, healthcare, budget deficits, the poor, crime, defense, taxes—followed behind. A minority of Americans listed the environment, immigration, lobbying, and international trade as top priority issues. Global warming was last on the nation’s list.

TABLE 3–2 Policy Priorities of the American Public I’d like to ask you some questions about priorities for President Obama and Congress this year. As I read from a list, tell me if you think the item should be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important, or should it not be done?

 

Agenda Setting from the Top Down

When V. O. Key wrestled with the same problem confronting us—namely, the determination of the impact of popular preferences on public policy—he concluded that “the missing piece of the puzzle” was “that thin stratum of persons referred to variously as the political elite, the political activists, the leadership echelons, or the influentials.”

The longer one frets with the puzzle of how democratic regimes manage to function, the more plausible it appears that a substantial part of the explanation is to be found in the motives that activate the leadership echelon, the values that it holds, the rules of the political game to which it adheres, in the expectations which it entertains about its own status in society, and perhaps in some of the objective circumstances, both material and institutional, in which it functions.1

TABLE 3–3 Popular Attitudes Toward Government Policymaking The American public is highly skeptical of politicians and people in government, believing that they should pay more attention to the public’s views.

Popular Perceptions of Policymaking.

It is interesting to note that most Americans believe that the government pays very little attention to their views on public policy and that people in government have little understanding of what people think (see Table 3–3). An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that their government is “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves” rather than “for the benefit of all of the people.” And an overwhelming majority believe that the nation would be better off if public policy followed the views of citizens more closely. While policymakers often publicly expressed disdain for opinion polls, most Americans believe that they should pay more attention to them. In short, most Americans believe that policy is made from the top down.

Elite Agenda Setting.

The elitist model of agenda setting focuses on the role of leaders in business, finance, and the media, as well as in government. These leaders may observe societal developments they perceive as threatening to their own values or interests; or they may perceive opportunities to advance their own values and interests or their own careers.

According to sociologist G. William Domhoff, agenda setting “begins informally in corporate boardrooms, social clubs, and discussion groups, where problems are identified as ‘issues’ to be solved by new policies. It ends in government, where policies are enacted and implemented.”2 This model suggests that the initial impetus for policy change and initial resources for research, planning, and formulation of national policy are derived from corporate and personal wealth. This wealth is channeled into foundations, universities, and policy-oriented think tanks in the form of endowments, grants, and contracts. Moreover, corporate presidents, directors, and top wealth-holders also sit on the governing boards of these institutions and oversee the general direction of their work.

Political Entrepreneurship.

Candidates for public office at all levels must keep their names and faces before the voters—in public appearances, interviews, speeches, and press releases. In order to do so, they must say something, that is, deliver a message or theme that creates a favorable image of themselves. Most of these campaign messages, themes, and images are largely devoid of any specific policy content, except in very general terms, for example, “stands up against the special interests,” “fights for the taxpayer,” or “change you can believe in.” But occasionally candidates focus their campaigns on what they perceive to be issues that will motivate voters. Political challengers as well as officials seeking reelection may seize upon particular problems, publicize them, and even propose solutions. If they win the election, they may even claim a “mandate” from the people to pursue the policy direction emphasized in their campaign. Whether or not their success was in fact a product of their policy position, they may believe that they have a responsibility to put forth policy proposals consistent with their campaign messages and themes.

Opinion–Policy Linkage.

The problem in assessing the independent effect of mass opinion on the actions of decision makers is that their actions help to mold mass opinion. Even when public policy is in accord with mass opinion, we can never be sure whether mass opinion shaped public policy or public policy shaped mass opinion. The distinguished American political scientist V. O. Key, Jr., wrote, “Government, as we have seen, attempts to mold public opinion toward support of the programs and policies it espouses. Given that endeavor, perfect congruence between public policy and public opinion could be government of public opinion rather than government by public opinion.”3

Policy Effects.

Public policy shapes public opinion more often than opinion shapes policy, for several reasons. First, few people have opinions on the great bulk of policy questions confronting the nation’s decision makers. Second, public opinion is very unstable. It can change in a matter of days in response to news events precipitated by leaders. Third, leaders do not have a clear perception of mass opinion. Most communications received by decision makers are from other elites—newspersons, interest group leaders, and other influential persons—and not from ordinary citizens.

Media Effects.

We must not assume that the opinions expressed in the news media are public opinion. Frequently, this is a source of confusion. Newspersons believe they are the public, often confusing their own opinions with public opinion. They even tell the mass public what its opinion is, thus actually helping to mold it to conform to their own beliefs. Decision makers, then, may act in response to news stories or the opinions of influential newspersons in the belief that they are responding to public opinion.

Communicating with Policymakers.

Decision makers can easily misinterpret public opinion because the communications they receive have an elite bias. Members of the mass public seldom call or write their senators or representatives, much less converse with them at dinners, cocktail parties, or other social occasions. Most of the communications received by decision makers are intraelite, from newspersons, organized group leaders, influential constituents, wealthy political contributors, and personal friends—people who, for the most part, share the same views. It is not surprising, therefore, that members of Congress say that most of their mail is in agreement with their own position; their world of public opinion is self-reinforcing. Moreover, persons who initiate communication with decision makers, by writing or calling or visiting their representatives, are decidedly more educated and affluent than the average citizen.

The President and White House Staff.

The president and the executive branch are generally expected to be the “initiators” of policy proposals, with members of Congress in the role of “arbiters” of policy alternatives. (The same division of labor is usually found at the state and local levels, with governors, mayors, and even city managers expected to formulate policy proposals and state legislators and city councils to approve, amend, or reject them.) The Constitution of the United States appears to endorse this arrangement in Article II, Section 3: “[The president] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Each year the principal policy statements of the president come in the State of the Union message, and more importantly, in the Budget of the United States Government, prepared by the Office of Management and Budget (see Chapter 7). Many other policy proposals are developed by executive departments in their specialized areas; these proposals are usually transmitted to the White House for the president’s approval before being sent to Congress.

Presidents have many motivations to seize the initiative in policymaking. First-term presidents must build a record of success that later can be used in their reelection campaign. They must show that they can “get things done in Washington.” They must build and maintain their electoral coalition. They must show that they are capable of following through on at least some of their campaign promises. Second-term presidents are often motivated by a concern for their “place in history.” They seek policy achievements that will contribute to their presidential “greatness” in history. (Dye 31-34)

Congress and Legislative Staff.

While Congress is generally portrayed as the “arbiter” of policy proposals initiated by others, occasionally leaders in the Congress will try to set forth their own agendas. Perhaps the most well-publicized effort in the Congress to seize the initiative in policymaking was the 1994 “Contract with America” led by then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Republican House candidates across the country united behind a comprehensive set of proposals, including a balanced budget constitutional amendment, term limits for Congress, welfare reform, and so on. But despite a stunning GOP victory in 1994 congressional elections, enthusiasm for the Contract with America quickly dissipated, and President Bill Clinton soon regained policy leadership.

Nonetheless, members of Congress sometimes serve as agenda setters. They may do so to challenge a president of the opposing party, to gain a reputation as a power broker themselves, or indeed to place on the national agenda an issue they feel requires attention. Committee chairs enjoy a special advantage in congressional agenda setting; they control the agenda of their committees’ hearings. And these hearings offer the best opportunity for congressional involvement in agenda setting. Congressional staffs—committee staffs, staffs of the legislative leadership, and aides to individual legislators—often play an important role in bringing issues to the attention of their bosses.

Interest Groups.

Interest groups may initiate their own policy proposals, perhaps in association with members of Congress or their staffs who share the same interest. Interest group staffs often bring valuable technical knowledge to policy formation, as well as political information about their group’s position on the issues. Because Congress members and their staffs value both kinds of information, interest groups can often provide the precise language they desire in proposed bills and amendments. Thus, interest group staffs often augment the work of congressional staffs. Interest groups also provide testimony at congressional hearings as well as technical reports and analyses used by congressional staffs.

Agenda Setting: The Mass Media

Television is the major source of information for the vast majority of Americans. More than two-thirds report that they receive all or most of their news from television. Television is really the first form of mass communication, that is, communication that reaches nearly everyone, including children. More important, television presents a visual image, not merely a printed word. The visual quality of television—the emotional impact that is conveyed by pictures—enables the TV networks to convey emotions as well as information.

Media Power.

The media are both players and referees in the game of politics. They not only report to the people on the struggles for power in society, but they also participate in those struggles themselves. They are an elite group, competing for power alongside the more traditional leadership groups from business, labor, government, and other sectors of society. As political journalist Theodore White once observed, “The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk about and think about—an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties, and mandarins.”4

(Dye 34-35)

Media power is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of people: the editors, producers, anchors, reporters, and columnists of the leading television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CNN) and the prestigious press (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report). Producers and editors generally work behind the scenes, and many influential print journalists are known only by their bylines. But most Americans have come to recognize the faces of the television network anchors and leading reporters. These media people are courted by politicians, treated as celebrities, studied by scholars, and known to millions of Americans by their television images.

Newsmaking.

Newsmaking involves all-important decisions about what is “news” and who is “newsworthy.” Television executives and producers and newspaper and magazine editors must decide what people, organizations, and events will be given attention—attention that makes these topics matters of general public concern and political action. Without media coverage the general public would not know about these personalities, organizations, or events. They would not become objects of political discussion, nor would they be likely to be considered important by government officials.

Media attention can create issues and personalities. Media inattention can doom issues and personalities to obscurity. The TV camera cannot be “a picture of the world” because the whole world cannot squeeze into the picture. News executives must sort through a tremendous surplus of information and decide what is to be “news.”

In addition to deciding what is and what is not news, news executives provide cues to mass audiences about the importance of an issue, personality, or event. Some matters are covered prominently by the media, with early placement on a newscast and several minutes of time, or with front-page newspaper coverage, including big headlines and pictures. The amount of coverage tells us what is important and what is not.

Of course, politicians, professional public relations people, interest group spokespersons, and various aspiring celebrities all know that the decisions of the media are vital to the success of their issue, their organization, and themselves. So they try to attract media attention by deliberately engaging in behavior or manufacturing situations that are likely to win coverage. The result is the “media event”—an activity arranged primarily to stimulate coverage and thereby attract public attention to an issue or individual. Generally, the more bizarre, dramatic, and sensational it is, the more likely it is to attract coverage. A media event may be a press conference to which reporters from the television stations and newspapers are invited by public figures—even when there is really no news to announce. Or it may be a staged debate, confrontation, or illustration of injustice. Political candidates may visit coal mines, ghetto neighborhoods, and sites of fires or other disasters. Sometimes protests, demonstrations, and even violence have been staged primarily as media events to dramatize and communicate grievances.

Media Bias.

In exercising their judgment regarding which stories should be given television time or newspaper space, media executives must rely on their own political values and economic interests as guidelines. In general, these executives are more liberal in their views than other segments of the nation’s leadership. Topics selected weeks in advance for coverage reflect, or often create, current liberal issues: concern for problems affecting the poor and minorities, women’s issues, opposition to defense spending, environmental concerns, and so forth. But liberalism is not the major source of bias in the news.

The principal source of distortion in the news is caused by the need for drama, action, and confrontation to hold audience attention. Television must entertain. To capture the attention of jaded audiences, news must be selected on the basis of emotional rhetoric, shocking incidents, dramatic conflict, overdrawn stereotypes. Race, sex, violence, and corruption in government are favorite topics because of popular interest. More complex problems such as inflation, government spending, and foreign policy must either be simplified and dramatized or ignored. To dramatize an issue news executives must find or create a dramatic incident; tape it; transport, process, and edit the tape; and write a script for the introduction, the “voice-over,” and the “recapitulation.” All this means that most “news” must be created well in advance of scheduled broadcasting.

Media Effects.

Media effects can be categorized as (1) identifying issues and setting the agenda for policymakers, (2) influencing attitudes and values toward policy issues, and (3) changing the behavior of voters and decision makers. These categories are ranked by the degree of influence the media are likely to have over their audiences. The power of television does not really lie in persuading viewers to take one side of an issue or another. Instead, the power of television lies in setting the agenda for decision making—deciding what issues will be given attention and what issues will be ignored.

The media can create new opinions more easily than they can change existing ones. They can often suggest how we feel about new events or issues—those for which we have no prior feelings or experiences. And the media can reinforce values and attitudes that we already hold. But there is very little evidence that the media can change existing values.

The viewer’s psychological mechanism of selective perception helps to defend against bias in news and entertainment programming. Selective perception means mentally screening out information or images with which one disagrees. It causes people to tend to see and hear only what they want to see and hear. It reduces the impact of television bias on viewers’ attitudes and behavior.

Formulating Policy

Policy formulation is the development of policy alternatives for dealing with problems on the public agenda. Policy formulation occurs in government bureaucracies; interest group offices; legislative committee rooms; meetings of special commissions; and policy-planning organizations, otherwise known as think tanks. The details of policy proposals are usually formulated by staff members rather than by their bosses, but staffs are guided by what they know their leaders want.

Think Tanks.

Policy-planning organizations are central coordinating points in the policy-making process. Certain policy-planning groups—for example, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Center for American Progress, and the Brookings Institution—are influential in a wide range of key policy areas. Other policy-planning groups—the Urban Institute, Resources for the Future, the Population Council, for example—specialize in a particular policy field. (Dye 35-37)

These organizations bring together the leadership of corporate and financial institutions, the foundations, the mass media, the leading intellectuals, and influential figures in the government. They review the relevant university and foundation-supported research on topics of interest, and more important, they try to reach a consensus about what action should be taken on national problems under study. Their goal is to develop action recommendations—explicit policies or programs designed to resolve national problems. These policy recommendations of the key policy-planning groups are distributed to the mass media, federal executive agencies, and Congress. The purpose is to lay the groundwork for making policy into law.

The following are among the more influential think tanks:

The Brookings Institution.

The Brookings Institution has long been the dominant policy-planning group for American domestic policy, despite the growing influence of competing think tanks over the years. Brookings staffers dislike its reputation as a liberal think tank, and they deny that Brookings tries to set national priorities. Yet the Brookings Institution has been very influential in planning the War on Poverty, welfare reform, national defense, and taxing and spending policies. The New York Times columnist and Harvard historian writing team, Leonard Silk and Mark Silk, describe Brookings as the central locus of the Washington “policy network,” where it does “its communicating: over lunch, whether informally in the Brookings cafeteria or at the regular Friday lunch around a great oval table at which the staff and their guests keen over the events of the week like the chorus of an ancient Greek tragedy; through consulting, paid or unpaid, for government or business at conferences, in the advanced studies program; and, over time, by means of the revolving door of government employment.”5

The American Enterprise Institute.

For many years Republicans dreamed of a “Brookings Institution for Republicans” that would help offset the liberal bias of Brookings itself. In the late 1970s, that role was assumed by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The AEI appeals to both Democrats and Republicans who have doubts about big government. President William Baroody, Jr., distinguished the AEI from Brookings: “In confronting societal problems those who tend to gravitate to the AEI orbit would be inclined to look first for a market solution … while the other orbit people have a tendency to look for a government solution.”6

The Heritage Foundation.

Conservative ideologues have never been welcome in the Washington establishment. Yet influential conservative businesspersons gradually came to understand that without an institutional base in Washington they could never establish a strong and continuing influence in the policy network. So they set about the task of “building a solid institutional base” and “establishing a reputation for reliable scholarship and creative problem solving.”7 The result of their efforts was the Heritage Foundation.

Center for American Progress.

On the left of the political spectrum is the newly influential Center for American Progress (CAP), the intellectual source of policy “change” in the Obama Administration. CAP is funded largely by George Soros, the billionaire sponsor of MoveOn.org and other flourishing left-liberal outlets. It was founded in 2003 by John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and designed to give the “progressive” movement the same ideological influence in the Obama Administration as the Heritage Foundation exercised in the Reagan Administration 8 CAP promises to “engage in a war of ideas with conservatives,” and to be more active on behalf of progressive policies than the more scholarly Brookings Institution.

The Council on Foreign Relations.

Political scientist Lester Milbraith observes that the influence of the Council Foreign Relations (CFR) throughout government is so pervasive that it is difficult to distinguish the CFR from government programs: “The Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions.”9 The CFR itself, of course, denies that it exercises any control over U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, its bylaws declare, “The Council shall not take any position on questions of foreign policy and no person is authorized to speak or purport to speak for the Council on such matters.”10 But policy initiation and consensus building do not require the CFR to officially adopt policy positions. Many foreign policy decisions are first aired in the CFR’s prestigious publication, Foreign Affairs.11

Interest Groups and Policymaking

Washington is awash in special interest groups, lawyers and law firms, lobbyists, and influence peddlers. Interest groups are active in both policy formulation and policy legitimating. Organized interests frequently develop policy proposals of their own and forward them to the White House or to members of Congress or the mass media to place on the agenda of decision making. And they are even more active in policy legitimating. Indeed, political life in Washington is a blur of “lobbying,” “fund-raising,” “opening doors,” “mobilizing grassroots support,” “rubbing elbows,” and “schmoozing.”

Interest groups influence government policy in a variety of ways. It is possible to categorize efforts to influence government policy as follows:

1. Direct lobbying, including testifying at committee hearings, contacting government offices directly, presenting research results, and assisting in the writing of legislation

2. Campaign contributions made through political action committees (PACs)

3. Interpersonal contacts, including travel, recreation, entertainment, and general “schmoozing,” as well as the “revolving door” exchange of personnel between government offices and the industries and organizations representing them

4. Litigation designed to force changes in policies through the court system, wherein interest groups and their lawyers bring class-action suits on behalf of their clients or file amicus curiae (friend of the court) arguments in cases in which they are interested

5. Grassroots mobilization efforts to influence Congress and the White House by encouraging letters, calls, and visits by individual constituents and campaign contributors.

Lobbying.

Washington’s influence industry is a billion-dollar business. Each year lobbyists spend almost $3 billion dollars trying to influence policy—more than $5 million for each member of Congress!12

(Dye 37-39)

At the industry group level, pharmaceutical and health product manufacturers spend the most on lobbying. The insurance industry ranks second in direct lobbying expenditures, followed by telephone utilities, the oil and gas industry, and electric utilities (see Table 3–4). Of the top twenty-five groups spending money on lobbying, only three might be considered noneconomic groups. These include governments and public employee unions, educational groups including the National Education Association, and the miscellaneous grouping of single-issue organizations (e.g., AARP, National Rifle Association, Christian Coalition).

It is important to note that direct lobbying expenditures provide only one indicator of an industry’s or corporation’s clout in Washington. Effective lobbying also requires backup by campaign contributions and in-kind services, election endorsements, and grassroots political support. For example, a survey of Washington insiders conducted by Fortune ranked the AARP, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the AFL-CIO as the three most powerful lobbies in Congress.13 Indeed, only about one-half of the magazine’s designated “Power Twenty-Five” were industry lobbies; others included the National Rifle Association, the Christian Coalition, the National Right to Life Committee, independent unions (NEA, AFSCME, Teamsters), and veterans’ groups.

TABLE 3–4 Washington’s Top Lobbying Spenders* Lobbying is a $1 billion business in Washington, with big corporations and trade associations regularly spending the most.

(Dye 39)

Occasionally, when Congress is embarrassed by media reports on extravagant lobbyist-paid travel, vacations, dinners, parties, and other perks, cries are heard for new restrictions on lobbying expenditures. Another reform frequently advocated is the elimination of “earmarking” of particular spending items in larger appropriations bills—items that are heavily lobbied for, yet often are overlooked by most members of Congress when voting on appropriations bills.

PACs.

Contributions virtually ensure access to government decision makers. It is highly unlikely that any member of Congress will fail to meet with representatives of groups that helped to fund his or her election. And top White House staff and cabinet officials, if not the president, are almost always prepared to meet with interests that have made significant contributions to the presidential campaign. Contributions do not guarantee a favorable decision, but they can be counted on to guarantee a hearing.

Political action committees (PACs) solicit and receive contributions from members of organizations—unions, corporations, professional and trade associations, as well as ideological, environmental, and issue-oriented groups—and then distribute these funds to political candidates. PACs are regulated by the Federal Elections Commission, which requires them to register their finances and political contributions, and limits their contributions to $5,000 to any candidate per election.

PAC contributions are heavily weighted toward incumbents running for reelection. Usually two-thirds of all PAC contributions go to incumbents; this is true for corporate as well as union and other PACs. PACs are well aware that more than 90 percent of incumbent members of Congress seeking reelection win. Labor unions make heavy use of PACs; union PAC money is heavily weighted toward Democrats (see Table 3–5).

TABLE 3–5 Top PAC Spenders* In addition to lobbying spending, businesses, trade associations, and labor unions contribute billions to political campaigns through political action committees (PACs).

(Dye 39-40)

Assessing Interest Group Influence.

Most Americans believe that interest group PACs, as well as big corporations, the news media, and lobbyists, “have too much power and influence on Washington.”14 But it is difficult to assess exactly how much power interest groups actually wield in the nation’s capital. First of all, the views of members of Congress may coincide with the positions of interest groups independently of any direct lobbying efforts or campaign contributions. Second, the most important effects of interest group efforts may not be found on roll call votes but rather on various earlier stages of the legislative process, including behind-the-scenes negotiations over specific provisions, the drafting of amendments, and the markup of bills in committees and subcommittees. Third, interest group lobbying may have its greatest effect on the details of specific legislation rather than on overall policy directions. Finally, party leadership, constituency influence, and the personal views of the members of Congress all combine to modify the independent effect of interest group activities.

Policy Legitimation: The Proximate Policymakers

What is the role of the “proximate policymakers”? The activities of these policymakers—the president, Congress, courts, federal agencies, congressional committees, White House staff, and interest groups—have traditionally been the central focus of political science and are usually portrayed as the whole of the policymaking process. But the activities of the proximate policymakers are only the final phase of a much more complex process. This final stage is the open, public stage of the policymaking process, and it attracts the attention of the mass media and most political scientists. The activities of the proximate policymakers are much easier to study than the private actions of corporations, foundations, the mass media, and the policy-planning organizations.

Formal Lawmaking Process.

Congress is designated in the U.S. Constitution as the principal instrument of policy legitimation. Article I describes the national government’s powers (for example, “to lay and collect Taxes Duties Imposts and Excises”) as powers of Congress. It is important to note, however, that Congress is not the exclusive repository of policy legitimacy. Courts also bear a heavy responsibility to maintain the legitimacy of governmental authority, and to a somewhat lesser extent, so do administrative bureaucracies. By focusing attention on the Congress in the policy legitimation process, we do not mean to detract from the importance of other governmental institutions in maintaining legitimacy.

Congress has developed highly institutionalized rules and procedures to help legitimate its actions. Indeed, its rules and procedures have become so elaborate that proposed policy changes are extremely difficult. Very few of the bills introduced in Congress are passed; in a typical two-year session more than 10,000 bills will be introduced, but fewer than 800 (less than 10 percent) will be enacted in any form. Congress is accurately perceived more as an obstacle to than a facilitator of policy change.

The formal process of lawmaking is outlined in Figure 3–1. The familiar path is taught in virtually every high school and college government class in America. But this outline of the formal lawmaking process fails to describe the role of parties and leadership in guiding legislation in the House and Senate, the influence of constituents and interest groups, the influence of the president and White House staff, and, above all, the continuing pressing need of members of Congress to raise money for their reelection campaigns.

FIGURE 3–1 How a Bill Becomes a Law

(Dye 41-42)

Party Influence.

Party loyalty is stronger among members of Congress and other political activists than it is among voters. Party votes—roll call votes in the House and Senate on which a majority of Democrats vote in opposition to a majority of Republicans—occur on more than half the roll call votes in Congress. Indeed, party votes appear to have risen in recent years, indicating an increase in partisanship in Washington. Party unity in Congress—the average percentage of support among members of each party for their party’s position on party votes—is also fairly high. On average, both the Democratic and Republican parties can expect more than 80 percent of their members to support their party on a party line vote.

It is true, of course, that party loyalty and party line voting in the Congress may not necessarily be a product of party loyalty or discipline. They may result more from ideological or issue agreement among members of each party.

The social bases in the electorate of the Democratic and Republican parties are slightly different. Both parties draw support from all social groups in America, but the Democrats draw disproportionately from labor, big-city residents, ethnic voters, blacks, Jews, and Catholics; Republicans draw disproportionately from rural, small-town, and suburban Protestants, businesspeople, and professionals. To the extent that the policy orientations of these two broad groups differ, the thrust of party ideology also differs.

What are the issues that cause conflict between the Democratic and Republican parties? In general, Democrats have favored federal action to assist low-income groups through public assistance, housing, and antipoverty programs, and generally a larger role for the federal government in launching new projects to remedy domestic problems. Republicans, in contrast, have favored less government involvement in domestic affairs, lower taxes, and greater reliance on private action.

Presidential Influence.

Presidents are expected to set forth policy initiatives in speeches, in messages to the Congress (including the annual State of the Union message), and in the annual Budget of the United States Government. Presidents and their chief advisers regularly sift through policies formulated in think tanks and policy-planning organizations, developed in the offices of interest groups, law firms, and lobbyists, and suggested by heavy campaign contributors in the course of preparing a White House legislative agenda.

But a president’s success in getting legislation enacted into law is closely tied to party control of the Congress. Presidents are far more successful when they can work with a Congress controlled by their own party. Presidential “box scores”—the percentage of policy initiatives on which the president took a clear-cut position that is enacted into law by the Congress—depend primarily on whether or not the president’s party controls one or both houses of Congress (see Figure 3–2). Ronald Reagan benefited from having a Republican majority in the Senate in his first term, but suffered when Democrats gained control of the Senate in his second term. Bill Clinton was very successful in his first two years in office when the Democrats controlled Congress. But his box scores plummeted following the capture of the Congress by Republicans in 1994. President George H. W. Bush faced a Democratic Congress and managed to get only about half of his proposed legislation passed. Republican President George W. Bush enjoyed the support of a Republican Congress through 2006, but the election of a Democratic Congress that year led to “a marked” decline in his legislative success. President Barack Obama’s success in Congress is closely tied to the large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.

(Dye 43-44)

FIGURE 3–2 Presidential Support in Congress

A president’s success in getting his legislation enacted by Congress is most heavily influenced by whether or not his party controls the House or Senate or both bodies.

SOURCE: Congressional Quarterly, various issues.

Presidents are more successful in stopping legislation they oppose than in getting legislation they support passed by the Congress. The veto is the president’s most important weapon in dealing with Congress. Even the threat of the veto greatly enhances the president’s legislative power. A bill vetoed by the president can be passed into law only by the two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. Seldom is a president so weak that he cannot hold the loyalty of at least one-third of either the House or the Senate. From George Washington to Barack Obama, more than 96 percent of all presidential vetoes have been sustained.

Constituency Influence.

Members of Congress like to think of themselves as independent-minded, public-spirited “trustees” rather then merely message-carrying “delegates” sent to Washington by their districts’ voters. The philosophical justification for this notion was offered by the English parliamentarian Edmund Burke more than 200 years ago in a speech to his constituents: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”15

But the rationale for Congress members’ independence from constituency influence may not be so noble as that implied by Burke. Members know that their constituents are largely unaware of their voting records in Congress. Only occasionally, on a highly publicized vote, where home state or district feelings are intense, will a member defer to constituents’ views over those of their party’s leadership and campaign-cash-contributing interest groups. On most issues, members are free to ignore their constituents: “They don’t know much about my votes. Most of what they know is what I tell them. They know more of what kind of a guy I am. It comes through in my letters: ‘You care about the little guy.’”16 A long record of “home-style” politics—doing casework for constituents, performing favors, winning pork-barrel projects for the district, making frequent visits back home to “press the flesh”—can protect members from any opposition that might be generated by their voting records.

Contributor Influence.

The cost of running for Congress today virtually guarantees the dependency of its members on heavy campaign contributors. The average incumbent House member now spends nearly $1 million running for office every two years. The average incumbent U.S. senator spends more than $5 million to maintain his or her seat, and the price tag in some big states can run $25 million or more.

Corporations, interest group PACs, and individual “fat cats” have become the real constituents of Congress (see Table 3–6). Large corporate and individual donors, together with interest group PACs, constitute more than two-thirds of the campaign cash flowing into congressional elections. Small individual donors ($500 or less) provide less than one-third of campaign funds. Most members of Congress spend hours each day making fund-raising calls from their offices on Capitol Hill. “Making your calls” is a basic responsibility of the job.

Throughout the lawmaking process, big campaign contributors expect to be able to call or visit and present their views directly to the officeholders they supported. At the presidential level, major contributors expect to get a meeting with the president or at least with high-level White House staff or cabinet members. At the congressional level, major contributors usually expect to meet directly with representatives and senators. Members of Congress frequently boast of responding to letters, calls, or visits by any constituent. But big contributors expect “face time” with the political leaders who they help keep in office.

Campaign contributions are rarely made on a direct quid pro quo basis—that is, direct dollar payments in exchange for sponsoring a bill in Congress or for voting for or against a bill in committee or on the floor. Such direct trade-offs risk exposure as bribery and may be prosecuted under law. Bribery, where it occurs, is probably limited to very narrow and specific policy actions: payments to intervene in a particular case before an administrative agency, payments to insert a very specific break in a tax law or a specific exemption in a trade bill, payments to obtain a specific contract with the government. Bribery on major issues is very unlikely; there is simply too much publicity and too much risk of exposure. But Congress members are smart enough to know what issues concern the contributors and how to vote in order to keep the contributions coming in the future.

Policy Implementation: The Bureaucracy

“Implementation is the continuation of politics by other means.”17 Policymaking does not end with the passage of a law by Congress and its signing by the president. Rather, it shifts from Capitol Hill and the White House to the bureaucracy—to the departments, agencies, and commissions of the executive branch (see Figure 3–3). The bureaucracy is not constitutionally empowered to decide policy questions, but it does so, nonetheless, as it performs its task of implementation.

(Dye 44-46)

TABLE 3–6 All-Time Big-Money Contributors The cost of running for Congress has skyrocketed, making Congress members ever more dependent on contributions from big corporations and labor unions.

(Dye 46)

FIGURE 3–3 The Federal Bureaucracy

(Dye 47)

Policymaking continues in the vast federal bureaucracy even after the passage of a law by Congress and its signing by the president.

Implementation and Policymaking.

Implementation involves all of the activities designed to carry out the policies enacted by the legislative branch. These activities include the creation of new organizations—departments, agencies, bureaus, and so on—or the assignment of new responsibilities to existing organizations. These organizations must translate laws into operational rules and regulations. They must hire personnel, draw up contracts, spend money, and perform tasks. All of these activities involve decisions by bureaucrats—decisions that determine policy.

As society has grown in size and complexity, the bureaucracy has increased its role in the policymaking process. The standard explanation for the growth of bureaucratic power is that Congress and the president do not have the time, energy, or technical expertise to look after the details of environmental protection or occupational safety or equal employment opportunity or transportation safety or hundreds of other aspects of governance in a modern society. Bureaucratic agencies receive only broad and general policy directions in the laws of Congress. They must decide themselves on important details of policy. This means that much of the actual policymaking process takes place within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Transportation Safety Board, and hundreds of other bureaucratic agencies.

Bureaucratic power in policymaking is also explained by political decisions in Congress and the White House to shift responsibility for many policies to the bureaucracy. Congress and the president can take political credit for laws promising “safe and effective” drugs, “equal opportunity” employment, the elimination of “unfair” labor practices, and other equally lofty, yet vague and ambiguous, goals. It then becomes the responsibility of bureaucratic agencies, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the EEOC, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), to give practical meaning to these symbolic measures. Indeed, if the policies developed by these agencies turn out to be unpopular, Congress and the president can blame the bureaucrats.

Regulation and Policymaking.

Policy implementation often requires the development of formal rules and regulations by bureaucracies. Federal executive agencies publish about 60,000 pages of rules in the Federal Register each year. The rule-making process for federal agencies is prescribed by the Administrative Procedures Act, which requires agencies to

• Announce in the Federal Register that a new rule or regulation is being proposed.

• Hold hearings to allow interest groups to present evidence and assignments regarding the proposed rule.

• Conduct research on the proposed rule’s economic impact, environmental impact, and so on.

• Solicit “public comments” (usually the arguments of interest groups).

• Consult with higher officials, including the Office of Management and Budget.

• Publish the new rule or regulation in the Federal Register.

Rule making by the bureaucracy is central to the policymaking process. Formal rules that appear in the Federal Register have the force of law. Bureaucratic agencies may levy fines and penalties for violations of these regulations, and these fines and penalties are enforceable in the courts. Congress itself can only amend or repeal a formal regulation by passing a new law and obtaining the president’s signature. Controversial bureaucratic regulations (policies) may remain in effect when Congress is slow to act, when legislation is blocked by key congressional committee members, or when the president supports the bureaucracy and refuses to sign bills overturning regulations. The courts usually do not overturn bureaucratic regulations unless they exceed the authority granted to the agency by law or unless the agency has not followed the proper procedure in adopting them.

Adjudication and Policymaking.

Policy implementation by bureaucracies often involves adjudication of individual cases. (While rule making resembles the legislative process, adjudication resembles the judicial process.) In adjudication, bureaucrats must decide whether a person, firm, corporation, and so on has complied with laws and regulations and, if not, what penalties or corrective actions are to be applied. Federal regulatory agencies—for example, the EPA, the EEOC, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—are heavily engaged in adjudication. They have established procedures for investigation, notification, hearing, decision, and appeal; individuals and firms involved in these proceedings often hire lawyers specializing in the field of regulation. Administrative hearings are somewhat less formal than a court trial, and the “judges” are employees of the agency itself. Losers may appeal to the federal courts, but the history of agency successes in the courts discourages many appeals. The record of agency decisions in individual cases is a form of public policy. Just as previous court decisions reflect judicial policy, previous administrative decisions reflect bureaucratic policy.

Bureaucratic Discretion and Policymaking.

It is true that much of the work of bureaucrats is administrative routine—issuing Social Security checks, collecting and filing income tax returns, delivering the mail. But bureaucrats almost always have some discretion in performing even routine tasks. Often individual cases do not exactly fit established rules; often more than one rule might be applied to the same case, resulting in different outcomes. For example, the IRS administers the U.S. tax code, but each auditing agent has considerable discretion in deciding which rules to apply to a taxpayer’s income, deductions, business expenses, and so on. Indeed, identical tax information submitted to different IRS offices almost always results in different estimates of tax liability. But even in more routine tasks, from processing Medicare applications to forwarding mail, individual bureaucrats can be friendly and helpful, or hostile and obstructive.18

Policy Bias of Bureaucrats.

Generally bureaucrats believe strongly in the value of their programs and the importance of their tasks. EPA officials are strongly committed to the environmental movement; officials in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) believe strongly in the importance of good intelligence to the nation’s security; officials in the Social Security Administration are strongly committed to maintaining the benefits of the retirement system. But in addition to these professional motives, bureaucrats, like everyone else, seek higher pay, greater job security, and added power and prestige for themselves.

(Dye 47-49)

Professional and personal motives converge to inspire bureaucrats to expand the powers, functions, and budgets of their agencies. (Conversely bureaucrats try to protect their “turf” against reductions in functions, authority, and budgets.) “Budget maximization”—expanding the agency’s budget as much as possible—is a driving force in government bureaucracies.19 This is especially true regarding discretionary funds in an agency’s budget—funds that bureaucrats have flexibility in deciding how to spend, rather than funds committed by law to specific purposes. The bureaucratic bias toward new functions and added authority and increases in personnel and budgets helps explain the growth of government over time.

Policy Evaluation: Impressionistic versus Systematic

The policy process model implies that evaluation is the final step in policymaking. It implies that policymakers—Congress, the president, interest groups, bureaucrats, the media, think tanks, and so on—seek to learn whether or not policies are achieving their stated goals; at what costs; and with what effects, intended and unintended, on society. Sophisticated versions of the model portray a “feedback” linkage—evaluations of current policy identify new problems and set in motion the policymaking process once again.

However, most policy evaluations in Washington, state capitols, and city halls are unsystematic and impressionistic. They came in the form of interest group complaints about the inadequacies of laws or budgets in protecting or advancing their concerns; in media stories exposing waste or fraud or mismanagement in a program or decrying the inadequacies of government policies in dealing with one crisis or another; in legislative hearings in which executive officials are questioned and occasionally badgered by committee members or their staffs about policies or programs; and sometimes even in citizens’ complaints to members of Congress, the White House, or the media. Yet these “evaluations” often succeed in stimulating reform—policy changes designed to remedy perceived mistakes, inadequacies, wasteful expenditures, and other flaws in existing policy.

But as we shall observe in Chapter 15 (“Policy Evaluation: Finding Out What Happens after a Law Is Passed”) systematic policy evaluation is relatively rare in government. We define systematic evaluation to mean careful, objective, scientific assessment of the current and long-term effects of policies on both target and nontarget situations or groups, as well as an assessment of the ratio of current and long-term costs to whatever benefits are identified.

SUMMARY

The policy process model focuses on how policies are made, rather than on the substance or content of policies. The model identifies a variety of activities that occur within the political system, including identification of problems and agenda setting, formulating policy proposals, legitimating policies, implementing policies, and evaluating their effectiveness.

1. Agenda setting is deciding what will be decided; that is, what issues will be covered by the media, brought to the attention of decision makers, and identified as problems requiring government solutions.

2. A “bottom-up” portrayal of policymaking emphasizes the role of public opinion in setting the agenda for policymakers. Events, and media reporting of them, can focus public opinion on issues, problems, and “crises.” But it is not always clear whether opinion molds policy or policy creates opinion.

3. A “top-down” model of policymaking emphasizes the role of national leadership in creating issues and formulating policy. The general public does not have opinions on many specific policy questions. In opinion polls, Americans express doubt about whether the government understands their thinking or acts for the benefit of all.

4. The mass media, particularly the television networks, play a major role in agenda setting. By deciding what will be news, the media set the agenda for political discussion. The continuing focus on the dramatic, violent, and negative aspects of American life may unintentionally create apathy and alienation—television malaise.

5. A great deal of policy formulation occurs outside the formal governmental process. Prestigious, private, policy-planning organizations—such as the Council on Foreign Relations—explore policy alternatives, advise governments, develop policy consensus, and even supply top governmental leaders. The policy-planning organizations bring together the leadership of the corporate and financial worlds, the mass media, the foundations, the leading intellectuals, and top government officials.

6. The activities of the proximate policymakers—the president, Congress, executive agencies, and so forth—attract the attention of most commentators and political scientists. But nongovernmental leaders, in business and finance, foundations, policy-planning organizations, the mass media, and other interest groups, may have already set the policy agenda and selected major policy goals. The activities of the proximate policymakers tend to center around the means, rather than the ends, of public policy.

7. Congress is designated in the Constitution as the principal instrument of policy legitimation. Congress members are influenced by the views of their cash constituents as much or more than by the views of their voting constituents back home. Big-money campaign contributors usually enjoy direct access to members of Congress during the lawmaking process.

8. Partisanship is on the rise in Congress. Party line voting now occurs on more than half of all roll call votes in Congress. Party divisions have occurred on many key votes in Congress in recent years.

9. Presidents are expected to provide the initiative for congressional lawmaking. Presidential initiatives are usually outlined in the annual State of the Union message and followed up in the presidential Budget of the United States Government. Presidents are more successful in getting their legislative proposals enacted when their own party controls Congress.

10. Policy implementation is an important component of the policymaking process. Bureaucrats make policy as they engage in the tasks of implementation—making regulations, adjudicating cases, and exercising their discretion. Professional and personal motives combine to bias bureaucrats toward expanding the powers and functions of their agencies and increasing their budgets, especially their discretionary funds.

(Dye 49-52)