Lowi (1975), writes, “Regulation is obviously only one of several ways governments seek to control society and individual conduct.” Public policies seek to define and set a moral and procedural agenda for societal conduct, with government commitment serving as the centerpiece of implementation. According to the rational model, individuals pursue only their self-interested agendas, without moral or ethical considerations for the greater community or public good. Implied in this definition is that it is the role of government to increase societal equity via policymaking.

Sometimes, however, this paradigm is turned on its head as policymakers are caught between supporting policies that increase equity and acting in their own political self-interest. This conflict between policy and policymaker might constitute a new dimension of the equity-efficiency tradeoff debate long central to policy discussions. What may be equitable may not be the most efficient or popular choice for the policymaker in terms of their own interests.

2013 is an election year in New York City, and in a tight challenging primary race amongst democrats, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has earned the tenuous position of front-runner, as a strong advocate for middle-class and low-income families. However, currently, using her position as Speaker, Quinn is blocking a bill that would require employers to provide five paid sick-days per year to employees. Despite the bill’s overwhelming support from City Council members, with 37 co-sponsors out of 51 council members, it “faces stiff opposition from business groups, whose support Ms. Quinn has assiduously courted” (Gyrnbaum, 2013).  

Quinn faces a challenging policy paradox, wherein the articulated political agenda of her party and her campaign do not match with her own interest in winning the mayoral election this fall. If she allows the bill to come to a vote, and thus be passed, assuming the 37 council members in favor maintain their position, she risks losing the financial and political support of business groups. Meanwhile, by not allowing the Sick Days Bill to come to a vote, she has stirred opposition from women within her own party and from prominent advocates, who highlight the importance of this legislation for working women with children.

The voice of women in the debate around this bill is particularly important not only because of the rights mandated by the legislation, but because Quinn is the only females candidate and could be the first female mayor of New York City. Quinn’s position not only within her political community (adherence to party “rules” and causes) but also within her cultural community (shared culture, moral codes) is being called into question. Prominent women’s rights advocate Gloria Steinem released a statement saying that she viewed the passage of the sick-leave legislation as more significant than electing the first female mayor of New York City, saying, “Making life fairer for all women seems more important than breaking a barrier for one woman” (Gyrnbaum, 2013).  

As Stone (2012) writes in her introductory discussion of “the market and the polis,” interest groups influence and drive policymaking (29). In this case Quinn’s attempts to navigate between the desires of two interest groups that have opposing agendas has illuminated the conflict embedded within her position as a pro-women, pro-families policymaker, and an ally of business interests. For Quinn, it seemed at first that it might be most efficient to simply not allow the Sick Days Bill to come to a vote, perhaps with the assumption that if the bill was not given the floor it would languish and loss political momentum. This scenario would mean that Quinn could avoid making explicit her support of the business community’s agenda, which is in direct conflict with the equity-promoting principles of her campaign platform.

Instead, blocking the Council from voting on the bill has had the opposite affect, drawing perhaps unanticipated vocal opposition from other policymakers and advocates who support pro-women, pro-families legislation (and who are surely capitalizing on the momentum of the controversy). They have become what Wilson (1989) calls a “hostile interest group” (77). Now, a conflict between working families and businesses inherent in Quinn’s political agenda has been brought to light, and she may lose the support of both interest groups. Her agency as Council Speaker has become a liability.                     

 

Resources:

“15+ women elected officials call on Speaker Quinn to bring Paid Sick Days Bill to vote.” February 25, 2013. http://nycforpaidsickdays.org/release-women-electeds-call-for-paid-sick-days-demand-action-from-quinn/

Grynbaum, Michael. “Steinem’s Support for Quinn as Mayor Depends on Sick-Leave Bill.” The New York Times. February 20, 2013. Lowi, Theodore J., “American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory,” World Politics, 16(4), 1964. Stone, Deborah, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, 3rd Edition, WW Norton, 2012.

Wilson, James Q., Chapter 5: “Interests” in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, BasicBooks, 1989. 

Kelsey 
Community Schools and Development

In the international development arena community development approaches and more collaborative styles of project management are commonplace. Communal approaches, like mobilization and inclusion of many stakeholders and beneficiaries who take “ownership”, or responsibility, of their own development processes are used for small agriculture programs up to large nation-building programs. Inclusion of stakeholders and beneficiaries from the preplanning process to the monitoring and evaluation of outcomes, transparency of the program, active participation by all interested and sustainability are some important elements in community development.[i]

Communal approaches to education, specifically, works towards including individual stakeholders with a student, teacher, school, or community centered approach[ii], down to engaging all stakeholders on the local, regional and national level seen in the collective impact model developing community schools.[iii]  Strive Together, [iv] a non-profit in Cincinnati, OH, is a lead-agency working as a facilitator of change of public schools in Cincinnati through the collaboration of organizations and individuals from teachers, parents, organizations working in school and child development, up to national interest groups promoting change in the education system. This type of organization has taken a grass-roots approach to community development, which usually engages immediate stakeholders and beneficiaries and reached out to all non-profits, government organizations, and for profits and asks them to work together to make headway while providing a lead-agency to be the connecting fabric in this new web of networking. 

For other communal approaches to education, beneficiaries (students) are represented by stakeholders (schools, parents, and their communities) and their respective collaborations and networks. One of the most successful approaches to communal education is the model presented by the Children’s Aid Society and their national research group the National Center for Community Schools (NCCS) who has developed a model community school and implementation strategy to promote communal approaches to education from the lowest level of engaging stakeholders and beneficiaries up to the highest levels of lobbying national government on education reform, regulation and redistribution.

In neither of these models are the types of structures found in public policy frameworks presented in readings for this week by Lowi (1964) and Wilson (1989). Experts, or “power people” as Wilson (1989) called them, play an informative role in community development, but stakeholders are held responsible to how that information is interpreted, useful, and activated. In the community school model, experts are wholly ignored after a teacher has received a teaching credential, and all the power is left up to the implementer, the teacher, to interpret policy as they see fit in their classroom.  In the community-based approach this is referred to as “ownership” taken by stakeholders ensures the “sustainability”, or longevity, or a program implemented.

Policy frameworks are very beneficial for understanding the power dynamics surrounding wording of policies pursued, as well as who the implementer of the policy will be and where grass-roots or communities can re-exert their authority.  After these readings, I am left wondering whether the only policies born out of democratic methods and are reflective of the constituents of the official policy makers or their agencies, are policies that happen through “entrepreneurial” or “majority” politics when grass-roots stand up against special interests or when there is no special interests conflicting with them. I then wonder if we can even talk about communal approaches to education, and social provisions, from a national perspective. Or what the real division between interest groups and grass-roots organizations are. Can sometimes grass roots really be business interests cloaked in uninformed mass protests, and visa versa?

Wilson (1989) argues that through the lowering of barriers (i.e. costs, venues to participate) of participation in the political process interest groups were not able to capture decision making groups any longer as more people were politically organizing.  I wonder if that is actually the case, or if groups just began to take sectors into their own hands, like that of the community school organizations once they grew tired of the status-quo.

[i] One example of Community development by the Kellogg organization: http://www.abcdinstitute.org/docs/kelloggabcd.pdf
[ii] Mavis Sanders, Building School-Community Partnerships, Thousand Oaks, CA: 
Corwin Press, 2006.
[iii] Kania, John and Mark Kramer. “Collective Impact”. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Winter 2011. Web. 25 October 2012. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact
[iv] http://www.strivetogether.org/

Other Resources:

Lowi, T. J. (1964). Review: American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies and Political Theory. World Politics, 16(4), 677–715.

Wilson, James Q., (1989) Chapter 5: “Interests” in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, BasicBooks.

Zoé Hamstead

This past January – more than two months after Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast flooding infrastructure, destroying homes and killing more than 100 people – Congress approved a $51 billion relief package to repair transit systems, provide cash grants to storm victims and undertake long-term flood control projects. Although the disaster directly affected millions of people and emotionally moved many citizens and policymakers who were not directly involved, there was a great deal of disagreement over what the appropriate response should be. As one of the most poignant public examples of this controversy, Governor Christie was incited to publically denounce his own party as the relief bill was held up in the House. While some may argue that his condemnation of the GOP was politically motivated, it underscored how interpretive, and even politically-charged, the process of defining a problem, developing alternatives and weighing costs and benefits can be, even for issues that are broadly recognized as public crises.

There were multiple sides to this issue, including factions within both opponent and proponent groups. Some opponents of the bill – such as Tea Party Republicans – were against it on principle, arguing it constituted reckless government spending. Others argued that the relief package was short-sighted and did not include enough long-term investment in preventing another disaster. ‘Quasi-opponents’ felt that the relief package was appropriate in spirit, but contained too many additional spending riders that would not address the problem at hand. Among proponents, people felt that the country had a moral obligation to bring resources to those in need. However, there was disagreement over exactly how resources should be allocated. Other policy and spending proposals have been made at the state or local level with respect to providing support for individuals in low-income housing, using green infrastructure in flood prone areas and initiating floodplain buyout program. Governor Cuomo proposed spending $400 million to buy out properties destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. Under this program, the state would purchase properties from homeowners and put them into permanent preservation as public parkland, dunes, wetlands or other natural storm buffers. Although this policy is, in many ways, win-win for buyout participants and advocates of long-term resilience measures, it is also not without contention. On the one hand, buyouts can support individuals’ safety while financially compensating them for loss of property. On the other hand, buyout participants may lose important social ties connected with their former community, suffer spiritually from a loss of sense of place and – depending on the unique situation – may not be made financially whole. Debates surrounding these adopted and proposed policies all grapple with issues of liberty, moral obligation, differential costs and benefits to different groups and causal framing. In short, the messy process of policymaking in a pluralist society is at work.

Deborah Stone would attribute these debates about goals, alternatives and general ambiguity surrounding the decision-making process to the reality that this process takes place within community. In communities, she argues, social action is initiated by groups who have shared interests and use persuasion and power to influence public policy (Stone, 2012). She abandons the rationalist perspective which envisions a decision-maker equipped with perfect information and motivated by self-interest alone, whose singular goal is to maximize that interest. People not directly affected by the storm supported the relief package because of feelings of moral obligation and reciprocity, not out of self-interest. Moreover, she rejects the role of science in policy making. Multiple goals muddied the meaning of the package. Shall we prioritize the welfare of victims, the freedom to live where one wishes, or the mitigation of future disaster? How can we then measure welfare, freedom and disaster mitigation? Although her points are conceptually and, to some extent, empirically well-taken, how does her reframing of political life help us proceed after Hurricane Sandy?

Should we not attempt to estimate economic losses or project the risk of future storm disaster associated with various development, redevelopment or preservation strategies? Should we not – in whatever way possible – try to capture spiritual and emotional loss associated with relocation and redevelopment? Symbols, numbers and causal explanations are imperfect tools that people employ to articulate how they see the world. Though these tools are imperfect, does policymaking not need all the help it can get? To employ scientific tools in projecting policy outcomes or describe the social consequences of a natural disaster is not to assert that we can perfectly foresee all possible outcomes, or perfectly capture the immediate and ongoing social consequences.

As Stone’s approach rejects use of the scientific method in the decision making process, it also avoids using such as method. It suffers from being what Lowi described as a “self-validating standpoint,” which draws on specific cases to reaffirm assumptions, rather than building a testable set of hypotheses (Lowi, 1964). While the approach is useful in that it helps us question the fantastical assumptions of the rational decision making model and sketches a reframing of decision making as more aptly embedded within community and political life, it does not necessarily provide a way forward. When we altogether abandon the rationalist approach, with what are we left?

References

Lowi, T. J. (1964). Review: American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies and Political Theory. World Politics, 16(4), 677–715.

Stone, D. (2012). Policy Paradox: The art of political decision making. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Peter Barachand and Morton Baratz in their paper entitled “Two Faces of Power” argue that the study of power in the public setting should consider the power to control action as well as the power to act. They present a dualistic view on power in the policy environment in which the agent who wheels power is also able to prevent others from doing the same. Thus power is expressed not only in the act but also in the ability to limit the activity of others. This they contrast with the pluralist perspective, which they argue does not consider the power to prevent others from exercising power, but instead focuses on the ability to act in determining the existence of power Barachand and Baratz (1962). James Wilson in chapter 5 of “ Interests in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why they do it?” provides a pluralistic explanation of how the power of government agencies is influenced by the environment in which they exist. He maintains that the policy environment is influenced by the interaction of various interest groups, which in turn creates constraints on the decision-making ability of agencies. Wilson defines for four kinds of agencies based on the constraints that are imposed on them: client agencies, entrepreneurial agencies, interest-group agencies and majoritarian agencies. Drawing on the example used by Barachand and Baratz (1962) the following is an application of the dualistic and pluralistic perspectives on power to the policy making process in a University or Institute of Higher Education to determine which of the two alternatives best explains power in this setting.

The pluralist perspective on power can be applied to academic institutions, as there are various interest groups that are concerned with the operation of the institution. The administration led by the President of the college is one such group responsible for design of policy and one might argue that power is concentrated in the hands of this group. However most higher educational institutions also have a Student Government Association that based on the size of the population that it represents also wields a significant amount of power. The teaching faculty at colleges and institutions of higher education also has a vested interest in the organization’s operation and as such will form themselves into Faculty Associations so that through collective action they may also have influence the operation of the institution. Institutions of Higher Educations are also becoming unionized and in situations where the faculty and staff union has the backing of a larger external parent union this employee group can exert significant influence on school policy. Wilson describes the environment in which government agencies exist and must design and implement policy as one populated by various interest groups. One might think of the Administration of the College as the agency who must balance the demands of the various interest groups. In a college environment the administration is similar to what Wilson calls a “client agency” where the decisions made are intended to benefit a single interest group “the students. As the various interest groups work together within a College community to design policy it becomes clear that the power truly lies with the administration of the college. As reform of college policy must ultimately be approved by the senior administration also the task of implementing new polices will also be supervised by the senior administration or their representatives. This is consistent with the pluralist perspective on power as being expressed in the act or making of decisions. As while the administration might encourage or entertain input from the various interest groups on campus through the formation of various committees composed of representatives from these groups. Ultimately the decision to approve and implement new policy is retained by the administration.

The dichotomous perspective on power presented by Barachand and Baratz can also be applied to the study of power in a Higher Education environment. They argue that power is also exercised when individuals or groups create social norms, values and institutions that ensure that their preferences prevail Barachand and Baratz (1962). One might argue that the administration in an academic institution decides and implements policy, as well as establishes the parameters within which advice will be received through the construction of committees and the retention of the power to implement. Thus administration is able to limit the influence of the various other interest groups in the college community.

Which of these two perspectives most accurately explains the existence of power? Well in the case of an Institution such as a College or University the institutional structure is set up in such a way that power is concentrated in the hands of the senior administration. While various interest groups do exist and they do have some ability to influence the formulation of policy and even the management of institution. Administration still retains the ability to implement and through the institutional structure and social norms of the institution is able to limit the influence of the other interest groups. So therefore one must conclude that while the pluralist perspective is indeed applicable, the view of power presented by Barachand and Baratz as being twofold in nature most appropriately describes the power in a Higher Education setting.


References

Wilson, James Q., Chapter 5: “Interests” in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, BasicBooks, 1989

Bachrachand, Peter and Morton S. Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” The American Political Science Review, 56(4), 1962