Presented by
J. B. Nangpuhan II (MPA Student) for the class (Public Policy) of Dr. J. K. Seo
at Chonnam National University, South Korea. 2011
I.
AGENDA
SETTING
What is agenda? Agenda is a list of items to be discussed at
a formal meeting[1]. Agenda
setting, in a brief but broad description, is about the recognition of a problem
on the part of the government[2]. Before
a policy choice can be made, a problem
in society must have been accepted as a part of the agenda for the policymaking
system – that is, as one member of the set of problems deemed amenable to
public action and worthy of the attention of policymakers[3].
Thus, agenda setting is crucial in policymaking.
As with all the portions of the policymaking process, agenda setting
is an intensely political activity
because it involves bringing into the public consciousness an acceptance of a
vague social problem as something government can, and should, attempt to solve.
In agenda setting, the policy analysts is less a technician and more a
politician, by understanding the policymaking process and seeking to influence
that process towards a desired end.
Problems do come on and off the active policy agenda and tend to remain for
a long period of time. In the United States, an example of a problem being excluded after a long
period of time is the problem of poverty. Poverty was perceived not as a public
problem in the US but because of the publication of Michael Harrington’s The Other America and the growing
mobilization of poor people brought the problem of poverty to the agenda and
indirectly resulted in the launching of a war for its eradication[4]. This
is how crucial an important public issue should be put first on the agenda.
A. What Causes An Issue To Be Placed On The Policy Agenda?
The cause is a perception that something is wrong and that the problem
can be solved by public action.
Issues also seem to go through an “issue attention cycle” in which
they are the objects of great public concern for a short period and generate
some response from the government. It is followed by more sober realism about
the costs of policy options and the difficulty of making effective policy.
After that, a period of declining public interest follows as the public seizes
in a new issue.
B.
Kinds Of Agendas
The agendas exist only in a collective judgment of the nature of
public problems or as fragments of written evidence such as legislation
introduced, the State of the Union message of the president, or notice of
intent to issue regulations appearing in the Federal Register[5]. There
are two kinds of agenda (Cobb and Elder) identified in the American government:
the (a) systemic agenda and
the (b) institutional agenda.
The systemic agenda consists of all issues that are commonly perceived by
members of the political community as meriting public attention and as
involving matters within the legitimate jurisdiction of existing governmental
authority. This is the broadest agenda of the government. An example of
systemic agenda is the issue of abortion, whether to outlaw abortion or to
provide public funding for it, while others regard abortion as a personal
choice.
The institutional agenda is the set of items explicitly up for
active and serious consideration of authoritative decision-makers. These are
the issues that those in power actually are considering acting on. In other
words, systemic agenda is an agenda for discussion while the institutional
agenda is an agenda for action, indicating that the policy process dealing with
the problem in question has begun[6].
A number of institutional agendas exist – as many as there are
institutions. As an institution broadens in scope, the range of agenda concerns
also broadens, and the supporters of any particular agenda will have to fight
to have it placed on a legislative or executive agenda. Some older and more
familiar issues will generally find a ready place on institutional agendas.
Under institutional agendas, some issues are considered cyclical issues (i.e., issues that
happen every year) and recurrent issues (i.e., issues previously
failed to decide policy choices). An example of a cyclical issue is the
adoption of a new annual budget of the government. One recurrent issue is the
adoption of inflation targets.
C.
Characteristics Of Problems: How Problems Are Accepted As Part Of
The Agenda?
1. The effect of the problem
This is the first aspect
of a problem that can influence its placement on an agenda – how it affects and
how much. That means the extremity (the more serious the effects of the
problem, the more likely it is to be placed on an agenda); concentration
(public action can be produced if the problem is secluded in one area); range
(the more people affected by a problem, the greater the probability that the
issue will be placed on the agenda); and visibility (this is called the “mountain
climber problem” – i.e. society appears willing to rescue a stranded mountain
climber but will not so much of controlling automobile accidents) of problems.
2. Analogous and spillover
agenda setting
The more a new issue can
be made look like an old issue, the more likely it is to be placed on the
agenda. This is especially true in the United States. Analogous is the
equivalency of another issue to an old issue.
3. Relationship to symbols
The more closely a
particular problem can be linked to certain important national symbols, the
greater is its probability of being placed on the agenda. That means, a problem
will not be placed on the agenda if it is associated with negative values or
symbols (although there are exceptions). For example, the positive symbol of
defense in the US highlighted the weaknesses of elementary and secondary
education when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 – the first artificial
satellite to be put on earth’s orbit by Russia in 1957[7].
Thus, the National Defense Education Act was enacted.
4. The absence of private
means
This does not mean that
the private sector is unable to solve problems, but that the problem cannot be
controlled by the institution itself. Hence, the inability of institution to
produce effective and equitable solutions may be sufficient to place an issue
on the public agenda. Examples are public goods and externalities (e.g.
pollution).
5. The availability of
technology
Problems, in general, will not be
placed on the public agenda unless there is a technology believed to be able to
solve the problem. One way of regarding the role of technology in agenda
setting is the “garbage-can model” of decision making – in which solutions find
problems rather than vice versa[8].
II.
GROUP-LED POLICY AGENDA: Who Sets The Agenda?
Establishing an agenda for a society, or even for one institution,
is a manifestly political activity. Control of the agenda gives
substantial control over ultimate policy choices. In the United States, there
are three important theoretical approaches to the exercise of political power:
1.
Pluralist approaches
This is the dominant and
undisputed approach to policymaking in the US. This approach assumes that
policymaking in government is divided into a number of separate arenas and that
those who have power in one arena do not necessarily have the power over the
others. An example is the American Medical Association, which may have a great
deal of influence over health legislation but has little influence on education
or defense policy. These groups may not win every time; they can always have an
influence in either present or future policy decisions.
2.
Elitist approaches
These approaches are
contradictories of pluralist approaches. They assume the existence of “power
elite” who dominate public decision making and whose interests are served in the
policymaking process. In the US elitist analysis, the same interests in society
consistently win, and these interests are primarily those of the upper and
middle classes and of the whites[9]. The
idea of the elitist approach is that while all individuals in a democracy
certainly have the right to organize, elitist theorists point to the relative
lack of resources (e.g., time, money, organizational ability, and communication
skills) among members of the working and lower economic classes. The concept of
“nondecisions”[10] is
important in this approach, a decision that results in suppression or thwarting
of a latent or manifest challenge to the values or interests of the
decision-maker. In short, nondecisionmaking – a decision not to alter the
status quo – is a decision.
3.
State-centric approaches
These approaches conform
quite well to the iron-triangle conception of American government but would
place the bureaucratic agency or the congressional committee in the center of
the process, not the pressure group. The environment, in a state-centric
analysis, is filled with “pressured groups”, not with pressure groups.
State-centric approach emphasizes the role of specialized elites within
government but, unlike elitist theory, they do not assume to pursue policies for
their personal gain. Certainly, their organizations may obtain a larger budget
and more prestige from the addition of a new program, but the individual
administrator has little or no opportunity to appropriate any of that increased
budget.
State-centric approach
places the major locus of competition over agenda setting in government itself.
Bureaucratic agencies must compete for legislative time and for budgets;
committees must compete for attention for their particular legislative
concerns; and individual congressmen must compete for consideration of their
own bills. Bureaucrats and legislators within government are most relevant in
pushing agenda items, rather than interests in the society.
A.
Which Approach To Policymaking And Agenda Formation Is Best?
The simple answer is all of them.
Policymaking for certain kinds of problems and issues can be
described by one approach than another. For instance, policies that are very
much the concern of government itself (e.g., civil service laws) can be heavily
influenced by state-centric policymaking. Powerful economic interests
would be best understood by an elite analysis, like energy policies. Finally,
policy areas with a great deal of interest-group activity and relatively high
levels of group involvement might be best understood by means of the pluralist
approach, like education.
III. POLICY FORMULATION
Policy formulation narrows the consideration of the problems placed
on the agenda and to prepare a plan of action intended to rectify the problem. This
after the political system has accepted a problem as part of the agenda for
policymaking.
A.
Who Formulates the Policy?
Policy formulation is also very much a political activity. However,
expertise begins to play a large role given that the success or failure of a
policy instrument will depend to some degree on its technical characteristics,
as well as its political acceptability. Let’s take a look into the sources of
policy formulation:
1. The Public Bureaucracy
Government bureaucracies
are central to policy formulation. Even if programs are formally presented by
congressmen or the president, it is quite possible that their original
formulation and justification came from a friendly bureau.
2. Think Tanks and Shadow
Cabinets
These are organizations
of professional analysts and policy formulators who usually work on contract
for a client in government – often an agency in the bureaucracy. Two dominant
traditional think tank organizations in the US are: Brookings Institution and
American Enterprise Institute. Universities also serve as think tanks
for government. This is true especially for the growing number of public policy
schools and programs across the country.
3. Interest Groups
Aside from identifying problems
and applying pressure to have them placed on the agenda, successful interests
groups have to supply ready cures to the problems.
4. Congressmen
Individual congressmen are also a
source of policy formulation. However, not all congressmen have the courage to
be involved in policy formulation.
B.
How to Formulate Policy?
Policy formulation relies on two
fields: factual information and knowledge of causation. Table 1 below
demonstrates possible combinations of the knowledge of causation and basic
factual information about policy problems.
Table
1. Kinds of Policy Formulation[11]
|
Information
|
Knowledge
of Causation
|
|
|
High
|
Low
|
|
|
High
Low
|
Routine
Craftsman
|
Conditional
Creative
|
Based on the table above, the
simplest type of policy to make is a routine
policy – an incremental adjustment of existing policies with adequate
information and an acceptable theory of causation. In formulating conditional policies, there may be
sufficient information but inadequate understanding of the underlying processes
of causation. Craftsman policy formulations
have a model of causation for the problem but lack information, like defense
policies. Creative policy formulation
lacks both information and knowledge of causation.
Some aids to policy formulation
include: cost-benefit analysis
and decision analysis. The
concept of cost-benefit analysis is to reduce all the costs and benefits of a
proposed government program to a quantitative, economic dimension and then to
compare available alternative policies, with those economic considerations
being paramount. Projects whose total benefits exceed their total costs are
deemed acceptable and then choices can be made among the acceptable projects,
generally leading to the adoption of the project with the greatest net total
benefit (total benefits minus total cost).
Decision analysis is geared toward
making policy choices under conditions of less certainty[12]. “Decision
tree” is an ideal type of decision analysis in which choices will be made using
a tree-like graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences,
including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility[13].
IV.
CONCLUSION
All the aids that government can use in formulating policy still do
not create an underlying approach to policy design. American politics tends
toward incremental solutions to problems rather than the imposition of any
frameworks of the use of design ideas of policy. Important problems such as
poverty, crime, maleducation, and the like still lack any clear definitions of
causes, much less solutions. These important political realities should not
prevent the student of policy from attempting to understand the problems of
society in a less haphazard fashion than is sometimes used in government or
from advocating innovative program designs for solving those problems.
[1] Oxford Dictionaries (2011). http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/agenda
[2] Michael Howlett, M. Ramesh (2003). Studying
Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems, Second Edition. Canada: Oxford University Press. pp. 120-121.
[3] B. Guy Peters (1993). American Public Policy: Promise and Performance. “Agenda Setting and Public Policy” pp.
470
[4] B. Guy Peters (1993). American Public Policy: Promise and Performance. “Agenda Setting and Public Policy” pp.
470
[6] Michael Howlett, M. Ramesh (2003). Studying
Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems, Second Edition. Canada: Oxford University Press. pp. 133.
[8] Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan
P. Olsen (1972) “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,” Administrative Science Quarterly 17: 1—25.
[11] B. Guy Peters (1993). American Public
Policy: Promise and Performance. “Agenda
Setting and Public Policy” pp. 487
[12] Moshe F. Rubenstein (1975) Patterns of Central Banks: Austerity and
Unemployment in Europe,” Journal of
Public Policy 8: 21-48
[13] Wikipedia (2011). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree.
2 comments:
Thank you for this informative post.
Nice information...!!
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