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Lecture Outline: Chapter 14
Domestic Policy and Policymaking
I.
Americans have always been of two minds when it comes to government policies and
programs. On the one hand, we believe in majority rule and the need for government to
take actions (e.g., pass and enforce speeding laws) in the public interest. On the other hand,
we are a nation of individuals who do not welcome government interference in our lives.
A. Alexis de Tocqueville saw this in the Americans he spoke with in the 1830s, and his
comments remain relevant today.
B. One explanation for this conflicting public attitude toward public policies and
government in general is the myth of government as a necessary evil—a myth which
historian Garry Wills states can be traced back to the American Revolution.
II.
Behind that myth is the reality of public policymaking, which attempts to deal with the
push and pull of those who see the necessity of government action and those who fear the
evil of too much government. This often takes the form of a debate among those who want
government to do more and those who wish it to do less.
A. Much of American domestic policy is formulated through this highly politicized pushand-pull process.
B. Public policy is defined as those actions taken by government officials in response to
problems and issues raised through the political system.
III.
The policymaking process can be pictured as a six-stage process.
A. Issue identification draws the attention of policymakers to a problem that might
require governmental action.
B. In the agenda-setting stage, the issue or problem is given the status of a serious matter
to be considered by policymakers.
C. During the policy formulation stage, which may take years to complete, policymakers
and their staffs develop proposals for dealing with issues, deliberating the pros and
cons of each issue.
D. Policy adoption includes efforts to obtain enough support for a proposal to make it the
government’s stated policy. Bargaining and compromise are inherent characteristics of
this stage.
E. During the policy implementation stage, policy mandates are carried out through
public programs and the federal bureaucracy, often with the cooperation of private
citizens and state and local officials.
F. Policy evaluation involves examining the consequences of policy actions, including
whether a policy has worked. Sometimes this evaluation leads to changes in a policy.
IV.
At least four models have been used to describe the way specific decisions are made within
the policymaking process.
A. The rational model assumes that the policymaker has a clear objective that he or she
wants to achieve, as well as all the information needed to make a sound decision. In
reality, conditions or available information rarely allow for an environment in which
the rational model can operate.
B. A more realistic model for explaining the way domestic policy evolves is the
incremental model, in which policy evolves in a step-by-step process and decisions
are made to add to or subtract from existing policies.
C. Another model of decision-making traces public policies back to certain groups or
classes of people. The elite model holds that domestic policies are made by a relatively
small group of influential leaders who share common goals and outlooks.
D. In contrast to the elite model, the pluralist model views public policy as the result of
many different interest group pressures that policymakers confront during the decisionmaking process. Specific policies reflect the relative influence of these different
interests on any given issue.
E. Public policies are the result of a dynamic process in which a variety of actors
participate and a wide range of factors is taken into account.
V.
Federal government involvement in education is a good example of how policy emerges
from that process. Traditionally, educational matters have been regarded as a local or state
matter. But that has not prevented the involvement of the national government in four areas
of concern.
A. The federal government became involved in the question of access to education in the
earliest days of the republic.
1. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) passed under the Articles of Confederation
included provisions that promoted the establishment of local schools in territorial
settlements.
2. The Morrill Act of 1862, which established the first major intergovernmental
grants (in the form of land grants), aimed at creating and helping to support
agricultural colleges (i.e., “land grant” colleges and universities).
3. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 promoted the development of “extension service”
programs through grants to state institutions.
4. The federal government boosted access to education for veterans with GI benefit
packages after World War II.
5. Today the federal government is more involved in access issues through a variety
of programs and efforts related to promoting educational equality for
underrepresented groups. While this effort began with the famous Brown decision,
it has been enhanced and extended through a variety of antidiscrimination laws
aimed at assuring more equitable access to educational resources.
B. Funding for education emerged from the concern for access as the federal government
frequently used small grant-in-aid programs to supplement state and local funding in
specific areas. In the late 1950s, however, Congress began to authorize major funding
initiatives that address national policy concerns—from dealing with perceived
shortages in key areas of knowledge (e.g., the sciences and foreign language studies) to
meeting the needs of low income populations.
1. These funding programs were targeted at both higher education (National Defense
Education Act) and K-12 (ESEA) education.
2. Increasingly, the funding has been tied to improving standards (below) as well as
access.
C. Curriculum issues have also been the focus of federal efforts as federal resources were
targeted to improving everything from morality and productivity to developing foreign
language skills and raising student performance standards in mathematics.
D. Most recently, the federal government has used its policy resources in the education
field to promote quality improvement and accountability of school programs,
especially in the area of literacy.
VI.
Government’s role in the economy is a major issue in the debate between those who believe
that government is either doing too much or too little in the domestic policy arena. The
national government is involved in at least four major types of economic policy. Two of
those types focus on efforts by the federal government to manage the economy.
A. Monetary policies focus on the operation of the entire economy, specifically the
circulation of the money supply. The Federal Reserve Board (often called the Fed) is
empowered to regulate the flow of money by influencing interest rates; thus, it has an
impact on our ability to borrow money from banks at low or high interest rates. The
Fed tightens the money supply by raising interest rates and loosens the money supply
by lowering interest rates.
B. The use of fiscal policies assumes that policymakers can manage the general
conditions of the economy by changing tax rates and government budget expenditures.
To slow down the growth of the economy (which often leads to inflation), the
government may institute tax increases and cut government spending; to speed up the
economy, the government may reduce taxes and increase government spending.
C. The common thread linking monetary and fiscal policies is the issue of how the
American economy is to be “managed.”
1. Keynesian strategies developed since the 1930s have stressed the role of fiscal
policies in economic policy management.
2. In contrast, monetarists have focused on the primary role that the supply of money
plays in economic policy.
3. Over the past decade, economic policy debates often focused on the national debt.
The economic boom of the late 1990s has resolved that issue for the time being,
but it is likely to reemerge as America’s economic fortunes change.
VII.
Economic development policies deal with the related issue of how to deal with economic
growth and change. Economic development programs are intended to protect and promote
the growth of the economy.
A. Historically, the national government has always been concerned with international
trade, and today this has become significant in light of economic globalization. Today
the stress is more on promoting free trade than on protecting domestic industries
through tariffs.
B. There is also greater attention to the role that government policy plays in promoting or
directing economic activity.
1. Tax incentives have become a major tool of economic development.
2. Among advocates of economic development programs, two major schools of
thought exist. One has advocated industrial policies that abandon noncompetitive
industries and aid competitive industries through comprehensive government
planning. In contrast, supply-side economic policies, fostered during the Reagan
administration, promoted increased production through reductions in government
interference, such as reductions in taxes and deregulation of industries.
VIII.
Another dimension of federal domestic policy is the effort government makes to control or
direct behavior through the establishment and enforcement of rules. This has been
important in three key areas.
A. Economic regulatory policies differ from policies that promote economic growth and
are intended to monitor and control critical industries or sectors of the economy. The
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, for example, authorized a federal commission to
regulate prices and standards of service for interstate rail companies. While many areas
of the economy have been “deregulated” in recent years, this remains an important part
of the national government’s agenda.
B. Environmental regulation became a major part of the domestic policy agenda in the
late 1960s, although the federal government had been involved in conservation and
natural resource policymaking for decades.
C. Federal social regulatory policies also have a long history, dating at least from the
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. National involvement increased considerably in
recent decades with passage of legislation dealing with a range of issues from public
safety and consumer protection to workplace safety and occupational health programs.
IX.
X.
Federal social policies, with roots in assistance aimed at helping poor and needy
Americans, have been transformed in recent years to reflect the changing priorities of
elected officials.
A. Before the implementation of the 1996 welfare reform acts, federal assistance to the
poor took three forms.
1. General assistance involved giving money, food, or clothing directly to qualifying
individuals or families. The federal government’s major form of general assistance
was the food stamp program.
2. Work assistance programs provided training and retraining job programs for the
needy. These programs were widely used in the 1930s and 1970s.
3. Categorical assistance was targeted aid for low-income or disadvantaged
Americans. This form of aid included, for example, Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) and Medicaid.
B. The new welfare system includes many of those same programs, but with two major
changes:
1. The form and operations of the programs are now determined by state government
officials.
2. The programs are no longer “entitlements.”
C. Social insurance programs are intended to cover income losses caused by long-term
illness, unemployment, retirement, and other problems that might arise. The Social
Security Act of 1935 was the first major federal social insurance program, and as the
textbook overview notes, it has been extended and expanded ever since. (In the summer
of 2003, for example, a prescription drug benefit was added to the program.) As the
U.S. population grows “older”, especially with the large “baby boom” generation
entering its senior years, this part of the U.S. social policy arena is likely to post the
most challenges in the future.
Although each of those policy arenas has its own distinctive characteristics, all are subject
to the influence of the pervasive government-as-necessary-evil myth.