public policy

1. PPA 503 – The Public Policy-
Making Process
Lecture 6a – Policy
Formulation

2. Policy Formulation
Formulation – develop a plan, a method, or
a prescription for alleviating some need.
Research – interpret the results.
Review – review and discuss alternatives.
Projection – Determine consequences and
feasibility.
Selection – Refine and make a formal selection.
Test the results.
No guarantees.

3. Policy Formulation
Types of formulation.
Rational planning – systematic.
Subjective reacting – haphazard.
Guidelines.
Formulation need not be limited to one set of actors.
Formulation may proceed without clear definition of the
problem, or contact with affected group.
There is no necessary coincidence between formulation and
particular institutions, though it is a frequent activity of
bureaucratic agencies.
Formulation and reformulation may occur over a long period of
time without ever building sufficient support for any one
proposal.
There are often several appeal points for those who lose in the
formulation process at any one level.
The process itself never has neutral effects.

4. Policy Formulation
Who is involved?
Sources inside government.
Executive.
– President, aides, cabinet.
» Goals, priorities leading to boundaries.
– Bureaucracy.
» Actual development of plans and proposals.
– Outside agencies.
Legislature.
– Staff and support units.
– Outside agencies connected to Congress.

5. Policy Formulation
Who is involved (contd.)?
Sources outside government.
Policy networks – subgovernments – discuss.
– Washington Information Directory – 500 subject areas.
Public service organizations.
– Foundations – Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Sloan,
Russell Sage, Mellon.
– Research organizations – Brookings, American
Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations,
Urban Institute, RAND Corporation.
– Universities, especially Research I universities.
– Citizen organizations – Common Cause, Nader groups,
League of Women Voters.

6. Policy Formulation
Institutional limits on policy formulation.
Constitutional limits.
Separation of powers.
Federalism.
Bicamericalism.
Checks and balances.
Existing policy relationships.
Drive for predictability.
Networks of contacts and interactions.
– Clientele or constituency relationships are established and protected.
– All agencies and committees require support and have typically found means for
gaining that support.
– Definite pattern of communication exists within, between, and outside existing
units.
– Means are developed for defining problems and formulating proposals. These
means strongly accommodate the interests presently served.
– These networks difficult to break.
Change is possible.
– Normal change is incremental.
– But, dramatic change can restructure the network.

7. Policy Formulation
Types of
formulation:
methods
Functions Rational
Planners
Subjective
Reactors
External Issue
Relationship
Integrative Sequential
Internal Issue
Relationship
Comprehensive Segmental
Capacities for
Knowing What to
Do
Systematic Unsystematic
Confidence in
Analyzing Effects
Projective Reactive

8. Policy Formulation
Types of formulation (contd.).
Formulating comprehensive proposals.
The number of problems treated – all of the
problems or just a sample?
The extent of the analysis – all aspects or
just certain aspects?
The estimation of effects – all effects or just
most immediate.
Elaborate proposals are difficult to build
support for and are unlikely to survive
intact.

9. Policy Formulation
Types of formulation: Styles.
Routine formulation – reformulating similar
proposals to policies currently on the agenda.
Analogous formulation – Treating a new
problem by developing analogies to past
problems.
Creative formulation – Treating new problems
with an unprecedented proposal.
Routine and analogous formulation occur more
frequently than creative, but creative can
happen.

10. Policy formulation
Strategic considerations.
Must think of legitimation when formulating
proposals.
Considerations.
Building support for a proposed course of action.
Maintaining previous support.
Deciding where compromises can be made.
Calculating when and where to make the strongest
play and when and where to retreat.
Controlling information flow to your advantage.

11. Policy Formulation
Formulation and legitimation.
Point: We don’t care when one stops and the
other begins. They are inseparable.
Combinations.
Perfect plan with imperfect strategy - examples.
An imperfect plan with perfect strategy – examples.
A perfect blend – is it possible?
Imperfect blend – most policies.

12. Policy Formulation
Formulation as a total policy process.
A disorderly process – unpredictable – less predictable
elements dominate the process.
Planners frustrated – develop a system of program justification.
PPBS (Programming Planning Budgeting System) – force planners
and budget makers to think beyond immediate results and consider
longer-range goals and effects.
Model:
– Identify national goals with precision and on a continuing basis.
– Choose among those goals the ones that are most urgent.
– Search for alternatives means of reaching those goals most effectively
at the least cost.
– Inform ourselves not merely on next year’s costs, but on the second,
and third, and subsequent years’ costs of our programs.
– Measure the performance of our programs to insure a dollar’s worth of
service for each dollar spent.

13. Policy Formulation
Formulation as a total policy process (contd.).
Planners frustrated – develop a system of program
justification (contd.).
PPBS designed to reduce uncertainty, waste of resources,
and misdirection in policy making through systematic
analysis of the basic elements of that process: problems,
goals, allocations, appraisals. As one reviews PPBS in its
pure form, it becomes evident that it is a total policy
process.
Problems.
– Not everyone accepts outcomes.
– Given limited resources, people debate goals and objectives.
– PPBS becomes a strategy of policy politics.
– May increase efficiency by some measures, but will not
eliminate politics.

14. Alternative Specification (Kingdon)
How is the list of potential alternatives
for public policy choices narrowed to
the ones that actually receive serious
consideration?
Alternatives are generated and narrowed
in the policy stream.
Relatively hidden participants,
specialists in the particular policy area,
are involved.

15. Alternative Specification (Kingdon)
Hidden participants: Specialists.
Alternatives, proposals, and solutions are generated in
communities of specialists.
Academics, researchers, consultants, career bureaucrats,
congressional staffers, and analysts who work for interest
groups.
These communities of specialists can be fragmented or
tightly knit. They share their specialization and
acquaintance with the issue under consideration.
Ideas bubble around these communities. People try out
proposals in a variety of ways: speeches, bill
introductions, hearings, leaks, paper circulation,
conversations, lunches.
They float ideas, criticize one another’s work, hone and
revise, and float new versions. Some are respectable,
some are out of the question.

16. Alternative Specification (Kingdon)
The policy stream.
The generation of policy alternatives is best
seen as a selection process.
Policy primeval soup, many ideas float around,
bump into one another, recombine.
Criteria for survival of policy ideas.
Technical feasibility.
Congruence with values of community members.
Anticipation of future constraints.
– Budget.
– Public acceptability.
– Politician’s receptivity.

17. Alternative Specification (Kingdon)
The policy stream (contd.).
A long process of softening up the system.
Policy entrepreneurs do not leave the process
to chance. They push for consideration in
many forums in many ways.
Recombination is more important than mutation.
As a result, entrepreneurs are more important than
inventors.
Softening up is important because policy
windows open so infrequently.

18. Alternative Specification (Kingdon)
Policy windows.
An open policy window is an opportunity for advocates to
push their pet solutions or to push attention for their
special problems.
They have pet solutions and wait for problems to arise
that they can attach their solutions to or for political
events to make their solutions more saleable.
Windows are opened by events in the political stream or
in the problem stream.
Sometimes windows open predictably; sometimes they
open unpredictably.
The scarcity and short duration of policy windows makes
them a powerful magnet for problems and proposals.
Open windows provide opportunities for linkages.