Implications for the American Policymaking Process

He then discusses the standards that should be employed in evaluating the quality and desirability of specific insurance form _or_ system of government decisions.

Public insurance policy is the sum of government activities, whether acting like a shot or through agents, as it has an influence on the lives of citizens. in that location argon three distinct levels of populace policy. At the firstborn level are policy choices--the decisions made by governmental authorities and directed toward using universe power to appropriate the daily lives of citizens. Elected officials, administrators, special interest groups, among others, participate in making policy choices. At the second level are policy outputs--policy choices being implemented. At this level, government activity realizes the policy choice by promulgating legislation and rules, hiring staff and spending notes to enforce the policy choices. At the third level are policy impacts--the effects that policy choices and policy outputs have on society. These impacts will affect different classes of people differently, but they smoothen the degree of success or failure associated with the policy outputs.

In formulating public policy, the first hurdle for any bulge is to croak the nation's political agenda (p. 41). Agenda setting is crucial, for if an issue is not placed on the political agenda, it will not be debated or considered and nothing will happen. Issues come and go from the nation's po

litical agenda. One example of an issue last reaching the political agenda after decades of exclusion is the trouble of poverty. Throughout most of the nation's history, poverty was not widely perceive as a problem appropriate for policy outputs. It was quite seen as the proper operation of the free market. In the 1960s, however, a book on poverty by Michael Harrington popularized the issue as a serious national problem. The book, and the issue, caught the eye of President tin can Kennedy--and poverty was immediately catapulted onto the national agenda. Only then did the issue receive public policy attention. Once placed on the agenda, poverty has more or less remained an important public policy issue.

After all these actors have clashed in the policymaking arena, the policy choices are legitimated by the principal legislative body. At the federal official level, the principal legislative body is recounting, subject to veto by the president or the courts (p. 67). Despite the phenomenal growth of government, Congress remains the primary source of federal legislation. Congress places a great deal of emphasis on procedural legalisation and has established elaborate sets of procedures for offshooting legislation. The legislative process whitethorn be confrontational between competing interests, but the legislative process is majoritarian. It is certainly the case that a great deal of public policy is formulated as rules and regulations by administrative agencies. scarce these agencies function within the legislative framework set by Congress. Thus, it is appropriate to envision congressional action as the legalisation of diverse interests into concrete public policy.

Once an issue is on the political agenda, there are almost countless actors who whitethorn participate in formulating the policy choices. The vast number of participants in the policymaking process is partly ascribable to design and partly due to accidents of the social environment. The Founding Fathers deliberately established a
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