Thursday, December 9, 2021
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Doing Policy
Next week, use PowerPoint only for tables, graphs, and images. You do not need to use it at all.
If you have a PowerPoint for your presentation next week, either post on the class blog or email it to me for posting.
From Bardach:
- Complexity is your main enemy, so start by simplifying. The two main routes to simplifying are by means of outcomes and by means of constraints.
- [D]on’t be misled by the word best in so-called best practices research. Rarely will you have any confidence that some helpful-looking practice is actually the best among all those that address the same problem or opportunity. The extensive and careful research needed to document a claim of best will almost never have been done. Usually, you will be looking for what, more modestly, might be called “good practices.”
- Two particular types of vulnerability are especially worth attending to.
- One pertains to likely failures of general management capacity—such as a low general level of leadership talent or the lack of a “good government” ethos—that would make it easier to implement this or any other practice successfully.
- The other pertains to weaknesses intrinsic to the particular practice itself—such as a service delivery program’s susceptibility to conflict over whether to give priority to this or that catchment area or needy subpopulation, or a safety-oriented regulatory program’s inability to determine whether to err on the side of injury-tolerant leniency or costly stringency.
Policy Lessons from the Movies
Apollo 13 and Brainstorming:
All the Way: LBJ on policy windows:
When you win big you can have anything you want for a time. You come home with that big landslide and there isn’t a one of them [in Congress] who’ll stand in your way. No, they’ll be glad to be aboard and to have their photograph taken with you and be part of all that victory. They’ll come along and they’ll give you almost everything you want for a while and then they’ll turn on you. They always do. They’ll lay in waiting, waiting for you to make a slip and you will. They’ll give you almost everything and then they’ll make you pay for it. They’ll get tired of all those columnists writing how smart you are and how weak they are and then the pendulum will swing back.
The Martian and a lesson about life:
Thursday, November 18, 2021
The Eightfold Path, Continued
By Tuesday, pick the issue for your last paper. Students will volunteer for brief presentations a week after that. See Bardach, p. 82 on memo format.
- Read Bardach, Part III and IV. Also bring questions about careers in public policy.
Eightfold path. Do not be an Underpants Gnome:
- Confront the Trade-offs
- Tradeoff triangles and polygons
- Pitfalls: not focusing on the margins; Rosy Scenario
- Decide
- What is the $20 Bill Test?
- Lawyer up! "Intepretive Awarenss"
- Tell Your Story: SUCCES
- BLUF
- The "Grandma Bessie" or Mom Test
- Related on political feasibility: The MAGA-leaning Uncle Test
The President. Okay. I'll give you an example where, according to the polls I have the unpopular position, okay? The Congress passes a repeal of the estate tax, an outright repeal. Now, I can—and I'm going to veto it if it comes to my desk, okay? Now, I can say the following. I can say, "I'm going to veto this because it only helps less than 2 percent of the people and half of the relief goes to one-tenth of one percent of the people, and it's an average $10 million." That is a populist explanation.I can say, "I'm going to veto it because we only have so much money for tax cuts, and I think it's wrong to do this and say this is our highest priority, when we have done nothing to lower the income taxes of low-income working people with three kids or more or to help people pay for child care or long-term care for their elderly or disabled relatives or to get a tax deduction for college tuition."Or I could say, "I think there should be estate tax relief." I do, by the way. "I don't care if it does help primarily upper income people. The way so many people have made so much money in the stock markets in the last 8 years, there are a lot of family-owned businesses that people would like to pass down to their family members, that would be burdened by the way the estate tax works, plus which the maximum rate is too high. When it was set, income tax rates were higher, but there was a lot of ways to get out of it. Now the rates are lower, but you have less ways to get out of it. You have to pretty much pay what you owe more." So I could say that.So it's not fair to totally repeal it. Like even Bill Gates has said, "Why are you going to give me a $40 billion tax break?" And he's going to give away his money, and I applaud him and honor him for it.So I could make either of those three arguments. It's helpful to me to know what you're thinking. I know what I think is right. I'm not going to change what I think is right. But in order to continue to be effective, you have to believe I'm right. So that's kind of what I use polls for.
Friend and Foe: "Who's for this?"
- Supporters
- Allies: supporters who will recruit more supporters and neutralize opponents
- Opponents
What Can Friend and Foe Do?
In Government
- Votes
- Cosponsorships: Franken's story about Isakson
- Hearings and reports
Interest Group Community: REVERSE LOBBYING
- Statements, testimony, amicus briefs
- Reports and op-eds
- Advertising and grassroots mobilization
- Direct lobbying
- Political campaign activity
Resources Available to Friends and Foes
- Debts: The Favor Bank
- Power status: majority/minority
- Expertise and information
Size and motivation of membership
- Money
- Polls
Identifying Friend and Foe
- Policy History
- Current statements and comments
- Cosponsorships
- Polls
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
The Eightfold Path
For Thursday, Bardach, Part II - and by Friday, turn in your last reflections for the course.
You may notice that we are revisiting concepts from earlier in the semester -- a feature, not a bug.
- Define the Problem
- Deficit and Excess: supply shortages and inflation
- Evaluative: is gentrification bad?
- "What's the story?" can be a better question to ask people than "What's the problem?"
- Construct a timeline. Inflation example.
- Pitfall: Beware defining the solution into the problem. "We have too few roads!" But is that the problem? Would more roads be a solution? VIDEO
- Assemble Some Evidence
- Other governments in the US
- Other countries.
- History: consider analogies, be careful about similarities and differences. Bush and pandemic preparedness
- Pitfalls: relevance to the decision, confirmation bias.
- Construct the Alternatives
- Start comprehensive, end focused
- Consider the level of government making the decision
- Pitfalls: vague specification of alternatives
- Select the Criteria
- Efficiency: costs and benefits
- Effectiveness. Peter Drucker: "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
- Equity -- think back to Stone.
- Initial political support
- Sustainability -- i.e., feedback!
- Pitfall: confusing outputs and outcomes.
- Project the Outcomes
- Sensitivity analysis
- Pitfall: ignoring uncertainty, the possibility of black swans
- Confront the Trade-offs
- Tradeoff triangles and polygons
- Pitfalls: not focusing on the margins; Rosy Scenario
- Decide
- Tell Your Story: SUCCES
Thursday, November 11, 2021
Finishing Policy Feedback
For next Tuesday, Bardach and Patashnik, Part I.
No Child Left Behind...
In any analysis of policy evolution, remember the broader political and social environment:
- 9/11
- Iraq and collapse of Bush support
- Democrats take Congress in 2006
- Economy crashes in 2008, taking state budgets with it.
- Obama takes office in 2009
- The Tea Party movement rises in 2009-2010
NCLB and ESSA
Obamacare and Medicaid Expansion
- NFIB v. Sebelius and effective repeal of individual mandate
- Status of Medicaid Expansion
- Stuff that people liked:
- Trump says repeal and replace will be "so easy"
- Loss Aversion and support for ACA
Last Paper, Research, and Writing
Last course assignment is a Truman-style policy proposal on any issue of your choice, due by 11:59 pm on Friday, December 10.
- Document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head.
- Essays should be double-spaced and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page.
- Cite your sources with endnotes in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
- Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.
During the last two weeks of the course, you will each make an oral presentation on your proposal. They will be seven minutes, maximum, including time for questions and answers. You may use PowerPoint for graphs and data, but not simply for repetition of what you are saying.
Here is the web pages from which I worked:
And of course, the great scene from The Wire:
To repeat some pointers:
- ALWAYS SEEK THE ORIGINAL SOURCE.
- AVOID DROPPED QUOTATIONS.
- "Avoid announcing the thesis statement as if it were a thesis statement. In other words, avoid using phrases such as `The purpose of this paper is . . . . ' or `In this paper, I will attempt to . . . ."
- In US English, use single quotation marks only for quotations within quotations, double quotation marks at all other times.
- In US English, periods and commas go inside quotation marks. Superscripts follow closing punctuation
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