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MAKING PUBLIC POLICY
How Public Policy Is Made?
Stella Z. Theodoulou Political scientists who study the policy process attempt to provide a framework that will guide students from the emergence of a problem to the final enactment of a policy to address that problem. Such a framework for policy development shows the process to be one of sequential stages of activity. A survey of the literature shows that there is little disagreement about what the stages are, though some political scientists are attempting to move beyond the traditional framework of stages. Where most scholars disagree is on the impact each stage has upon the next, and on what should and should not occur at each stage. The commonly agreed-on stages are:
- Problem Recognition and Issue Identification : This stage draws the attention of policy makers to a problem that might require government action: problems, if legitimate, then become issues.
- Agenda Setting : The issue is given the status of a serious matter
- Policy Formulation : Proposals are developed for dealing with issues
- Policy Adoption : Efforts are made to obtain enough support for a proposal to make it to the government’s stated policy
- Policy Implementation : The policy mandate is aimed at through public programs and the federal bureaucracy, often with citizen, state, and local government cooperation
- Policy Analysis and Evaluation : This involves examining the consequences of policy actions, including whether the policy has worked. The process should he viewed as a dynamic ongoing cycle. That is to say, once policy has been enacted to deal with a problem the process does not stop; that policy should be constantly monitored in order to see not only how it is operating but whether it is in fact doing what it is supposed to. The following discusses the process, context, and structure of public policy development.
THE PROCESS OF POLICY MAKING: ISSUE IDENTIFICATION AND
AGENDA FORMATION
Where do issues come from? Why are some issues ignored? How does an issue gain access to the political system? These are crucial questions to answer when looking at the first stages of the policy process cycle. Before we see how the issue agenda is set, we must determine exactly what is meant by the term "agenda." Generally the issue agenda is the list of subjects or problems to which government and nongovernmental actors are paying serious attention at any given point in time. Agenda setting is the narrowing of the set of issues that the actors will focus on and address. There are different types of agendas. They can be highly general, such as a list of items that occupy the attention of the president, or they can be highly specialized, such as the agendas of congressional subcommittees. According to Cobb and Elder, agendas can be classified into two main types. The first such agenda is the systemic agenda. This covers all issues that are generally recognized to deserve public attention arid are matters within the government's legitimate jurisdiction. An example of such a matter would be education. The second type of agenda is the institutional agenda. Cobb and Elder state that this involves all issues explicitly up for active and serious consideration by the authoritative decision makers, for example, actual congressional bills. The institutional agenda is less abstract and narrower in scope than the systemic agenda, and the priorities of both do not necessarily correspond. Often there is considerable discrepancy between the two agendas. The "normal" agenda sequence is for issues to arrive on the systemic agenda before they are put onto the institutional agenda. This creates a problem for policy makers and others involved actors in that, if the lag time between moving from the systemic to the institutional agenda is too great, the issue could fall apart and prove critical to the political system. The viability of the political system is a function of its ability to cope with the lag between these two agendas. It is also important to note that both agenda have their own sets of basis and are therefore subject to conflict. Why do some issues move onto the agenda while other issues are ignored? The chances for an issues proceeding to the agenda depends on how it is generally perceived within the political system. If an issue is thought to be a conflict or a crisis, if an issue is advocated by a visible interest group, or if an issue is backed by the bureaucracy, there is a good chance that the issues will move on to the agenda. Such perceptions act as triggers. Thus agenda setting begins when decision makers first recognize a problem, feel the need for government to address it, and start to search for a solution. The agenda-setting process is complex and multifaceted. In order to comprehend it, one must look not only at the dynamics of the process but also at the interactions and roles of the various governmental and nongovernmental participants. John Kingdon is an author who provides such a framework using four organizing concepts to form a model of agenda building. First, agenda setting should be viewed as a garbage can that consists of the coupling of streams of problems, politics, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities. Next, policy ideas are recombined and incubated over the years in "policy
resistance by those who must alter their patterns of behavior so as to comply with the policy. Moreover, there is a tendency for implementation to become largely bureaucratic and rule laden. Thus it is not uncommon for the original policy to be distorted, for the original goals to be forgotten, and for bureaucrats to substitute their own objectives as they implement policies. Thus public policies often fail to have their intended effects due to the dynamics of the implementation process. Until quite recently relatively little attention was paid to the process of implementation by governments and academics; this neglect, however, is being altered by an increasing body of literature that can be referred to as implementation theory. Much of the theory attempts to build "perfect" models of implementation that outline the conditions that must be met for successful actualization of policy. One can also find in the literature various perspectives as to what implementation involves. Political scientists may differ in their perceptions but all agree that implementation is, in many respects, an opaque phenomenon, as its most consequential characteristics are difficult to detect and as it is a pliant process that can undergo rapid transformation. Majone and Wildavsky argue that implementation should be seen as evolution. They conclude that it is shaped by the original policy making from which it springs; therefore, policies consist of a variety of goals, ideas, and dispositions, each connected in some disarray. On the other hand, Sabatier and Mazmanian see implementation as a composite of statutory structures, problem tractability, and nonstatutory forces. These authors argue that there are several categories of variables embedded in the implementation process and these affect the achievement of policy objectives. The variables include social, economic, and technological conditions and the target groups that are involved. According to another group of theorists, implementation should be viewed as planning, hierarchy, and control. This requires that administrative structures must be hierarchically organized to ensure that the higher levels of administration can ensure effective implementation by not allowing the actual day-to-day administrators to implement as they see fit; rather they must implement as they are told to. This necessitates organizational control, which is accountable to the "creators" of policy. One final way to see implementation is, as Bardach argues, the playing out of many loosely interrelated games, in which the players all have goals and strategies and the arena is uncertain and therefore so is the outcome. This perspective views implementation as political with a backdrop of constant accommodations and bargaining. Just as there are different types of agendas, different types of implementation can also occur. The first such type is programmed implementation, which tries to eliminate or control the problems and pitfalls that await implementation by thorough, explicit programming of implementation procedures. Programmed implementation places high value on clarity and rationality and rests on the assumption that the problems that plague implementation are the result of (1) ambiguities of policy goals, (2) the involvement of an excessive number of actors, (3) overlapping jurisdictions of authorities, (4) misperceived interests, and (5) conflicts. The second type of implementation that can occur is adaptive implementation, which tries to improve the process by allowing for adjustments to the original policy mandate as events unfold. In contrast to programmed implementation, clarity and specification are seen as barriers to implementation, for they produce rigidity in the face of shifting political realities.
The last type of implementation that can occur is premeditated non-implementation: behavior deliberately aimed at preventing implementation from occurring. Such behavior ensures that the policy will never be more than partially accomplished. Usually, because of the multidimensional nature of the policy process, implementation is a combination of the programmed and adaptive types, though premeditated nonimplementation often occurs because policy goals and objectives are vague. When asking who is responsible for implementation, one should realize that it is not the focus of policy makers, who are in reality only moderately interested in it. Their level of interest is dictated by the fact that they perceive implementation to be (1) too costly— politically, timewise, and electorallly; and (2) too low in visibility and never living up to its promises. Thus the major actor in implementation is the bureaucracy; indeed, implementation can be viewed as the bureaucratization of policy. POLICY ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION From the discussion here it is evident that policy does not always achieve its intended objectives and at times even produces unintended consequences. The reasons why policy does not always do what it is supposed to are multiple. Some have already been discussed, but briefly, we can cite additional reasons, including unclear goals, an inability to see how to achieve those goals, adversarial conditions within the system, and ambiguous criteria for success. What this dictates is that policies be examined to see how they are working. It should be noted that evaluation does not have to wait until an actual policy has been implemented; it can and does occur throughout the policy process. Evaluation can be undertaken by a variety of governmental actors as well as nongovernmental actors, including the media, academics, and interest groups. Michael Patton has concluded that there are over one hundred types of evaluation approaches. All of these, however, can basically be categorized as one of two distinct but interrelated categories of evaluation. The first, process evaluation, looks at the extent to which a particular policy is implemented according to its stated guidelines. This type acknowledges that a policy and its impact may be modified, elaborated upon, or even negated during implementation. The second, impact evaluation, is concerned with examining the extent to which a policy causes a change in the intended direction. This requires the specification of operationally defined policy goals, delineation of criteria of success, and measurement of progress toward the stated goals. Various methodological tools have been developed to carry out evaluation research. When evaluation decisions are made, it is usually through the consideration of all the available information. One of the ways to deal with this information and to make decisions as to which course of action to take is through a special form of evaluation, policy analysis. The analysis of a policy takes place through the analysis and comparison of a set of criteria. It provides decision makers with a technique to help weigh the relative merits of one policy over another. Analysis can be conducted before or after a policy has been implemented. It can be done to anticipate alternative policies' possible results so that
A final context is the budgetary process, for few public policies can be implemented without public expenditure. In turn, public expenditure cannot take place unless governments raise finance through taxation charges or through borrowing. This fact of life is the basis for the complicated political process of deciding resource allocation, which in turn gives rise to an equally complex process of bargaining and compromise between government and groups within society. One need only tune in to any daily news broadcast to recognize the pressure put upon government by various societal groups to spend more public money on their particular policy area. The demand for spending is eternal, although the willingness to pay for it through taxation is not. Pliatzky argues that on top of this the process cannot ignore ideological concerns and economic theory. The budgetary process is a highly politicized one in which bargains are struck, targets are not met, deviations are made, and large numbers of actors are involved. Additionally, it is heavily influenced by the need to control public sector borrowing requirements and the deficit. Heclo and Wildavsky note the importance of the "political climate" over spending policies."' THE STRUCTURE OF POLICY MAKING The debate over structure can be seen as a discussion on how decisions are made. It is essentially a choice between rationality and incrementalism. Rationality is a major concern within the study of policy making. One of the basic axioms of the rational choice approach is that issues and problems are approached in a well-ordered sequence. Problems are identified and isolated; then the goals, values, and objectives of pertinent solutions to the problems are identified and ranked accordingly to saliency. Next, various alternative solutions are formulated and weighted, and finally an alternative is chosen by decision makers that will be the most appropriate means to secure described ends. Incrementalism as an approach is summarized in Lindblom's "The 'Science of Muddling Through”. The title given to the piece underlies that while "muddling through" is usually seen as a criticism of policy making, as a process it may have its own intrinsic merits. Lindblom outlines incrementalism as present oriented and frequently remedial in nature, focusing on making necessary changes and adaptations in the existing practices. Therefore, incrementalism can be viewed as a fine-tuning of easting policy. It is decision making through what Lindblom refers to as small or incremental steps. The incremental approach is seen as a simpler and more realistic way of making policy, for it is not a comprehensive and synoptic type of response, as rationalist decision-making is viewed. In his subsequent article "Still Muddling, Nut Yet Through," Lindblom argues that it is now textbook orthodoxy to accept that in policy making only small or incremental steps are ordinarily possible. He goes on to argue: “But most people, including many policy analysts and policy makers, want to separate the "ought" from the "is." They think we should try to do better. So do I. What remains then?... Many critics of incrementalism believe that doing better usually means turning away from incrementalism. Incrementalists believe that for
complex problem solving it usually means practicing incrementalism more skillfully and turning away from it only rarely." This is a defense for the designed, deliberate, and conscious incompleteness of analysis that is incrementalism over the rationalist approach. Dempster and Wildavsky, who support incrementalism, also spell out that different types of incrementalism can occur. The major difference between rationality and incrementalism is that the rationality approach views policy making as comprehensive. A further difference is that incrementalism has built into it the allowance for multiple actors with competing values. In "The 'Science' of Muddling Through," Lindblom stresses that one of tile features of "successive" limited comparisons—incrementalism—is that the test of a good policy is that analysts can agree on it, without having to agree on ultimate goals. Some twenty years later Lindblom was still arguing that social "decisions" arise out of someone's particular understanding.
Issues and Agendas
1 Roger W. Cobb and Charles D. Elder … An issue is a conflict between two or more identifiable groups over procedural and substantive matters relating to the distribution of positions or resources. Generally, there are four means by which issues are created. The most common method is the manufacturing of an issue by one or more of the contending parties who perceive an unfavorable bias in the distribution of positions or resources. For example, in 1950 the truckers in Pennsylvania thought that railroads had an inherent advantage in carrying freight over long distances and sought to create an issue to redress this imbalance^2. Such initiators are labeled “readjustors”. Another form of issue creation can be traced to a person or group who manufacture an issue for their own gain; for example, individuals who want to run for public office and (^1) From Roger W. Cobb and Charles D. Elder, “ Participation in American Politics: the Dynamics of Agenda Building ”(Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), pp 82-93. Reprinted by permission. (^2) For a case study of this conflict, see Andrew Hacker, “Pressure Politics in Pennsylvania: the Truckers vs. the Railroads”, in Alan Westin, (ed.), “ The Uses of Power: 7 Cases in American Politics ” (New York: Harcourt, 1962), pp. 323-76.
There are four types of external trigger mechanisms. The first is an act of war or military violence involving the United Stated as a direct combatant. Examples include the Vietnam War, the Pueblo seizure, and the dropping of Atomic bombs on Hiroshima. The second category includes innovations in weapons technology involving such things as arms control, the Hotline between Kremlin and White House, and the deployment of anti- ballistic system. The third type is an international conflict in which the United States is not a direct combatant, such as the conflict in the Middle East and Congo. The final category involves changing world alignment patterns that may affect American membership in the United Nations, troop commitments in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the American role in the Organization of American States. Issue initiation and trigger mechanisms. The formation of an issue is dependent on the dynamic interplay between the initiator and the trigger device. This can be seen in the following diagram: For example, a mine disaster itself does not create an issue. Many times in the past such an event has occurred with no ameliorative action. A link must be made between a grievance (or a triggering event) and an initiator who converts the problem into an issue for a private or a public reason. In a system perspective, the inputs consist of the initiator and the event, or triggering mechanism that transform the problem into an issue. The output is the agenda, which will be the focus of the next section. Transforming an issue into an agenda item will be the focus of succeeding chapters. AGENDAS: WHAT ARE THEY? In general terms, we have identified two basic types of political agendas. The first of these of these is the systemic agenda for political controversy. 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 legitimate jurisdiction of existing government authority. Every local, state, and national political community will have a systemic agenda. The systemic agenda of the larger community may subsume items from the systemic agendas of subsidiary communities, but the two agendas will not necessarily correspond. For example, the systemic agenda of Boston may include items on the national agenda of controversy, such as pollution and crime in the streets, but will also include such items as the need for anew sports arena. Trigger Device Initiator Issue Creation
There are three prerequisite for an issue to obtain access to the systemic agenda: (1) widespread attention or at least awareness; (2) shared concern of a sizeable portion of the public that some type of action is required; and (3) a shared perception that the matter is an appropriate concern of some governmental unit and falls within the bounds of its authority. The terms "shared concern" and "shared perception" refer to the prevailing climate of opinion, which will be conditioned by the dominant norms, values, and ideology of a community. An issue requires the recognition of only a major portion of the polity, not the entire citizenry. For an item or an issue to acquire public recognition, its supporters must have either access to the mass media or the resources necessary to reach people. They may require more than money and manpower; often the use of action rhetoric is essential. For example, use of terms such as communist-inspired or anti-American is a useful verbal ploy in attracting a larger audience than the original adherents of a cause. In addition to gaining popular recognition, the issue must be perceived by a large number of people as both being subject to remedial action and requiring such action. In other words, action must be considered not only possible, but also necessary for the resolution of the issue. To foster such popular conviction, the mobilization of a significant number of groups or persons will normally be required. Often, the fate of an issue in gaining systemic agenda status will hinge on whether or not it can be defined as being within the purview of legitimate governmental action. Perhaps one of the most devastating tactics that may be used to prevent an issue from reaching the systemic agenda is to deny that it falls within the bounds of governmental authority. For example, equal access to public accommodations was kept off the systemic agenda for some time because opponents successfully argued that the grievance fell outside the proper bounds of governmental authority. The second type of agenda is the institutional, governmental, or formal agenda, which may be defined as that set of items explicitly up for the active and serious consideration of authoritative decision-makers. Therefore, any set of items up before any governmental body at the local, state, or national level will constitute an institutional agenda. Two clarifications are in order regarding key terms in the above definition of a formal agenda. "Explicitly" refers to an issue involving action or policy alternatives or involving simply the identification of a problem requiring some action. An example of the former would be a proposal to raise the minimum wage to a specific level per hour. An illustration of the latter would be a reconsideration of certain restrictive loan practices of savings and loan institutions in the ghetto. "Active and serious" are used to distinguish formal agenda items from what might be called “pseudo-agenda items”. By pseudo agenda, we mean any form of registering or acknowledging a demand without explicitly considering its merit. Decision-makers will often use such an agenda to assuage frustrations of constituency groups and to avoid political ramifications of a failure to acknowledge the demand. This typically occurs in a legislature where bills are placed in the hopper to placate some groups of activists with no real chance of action being taken.
of the 1960's and the gun control issue. Illustrations of issues backed by significant public groups include the Taft-Hartley repeal effort and the farm parity program. An issue need not be static or confined to one category throughout its existence. At any point in time, it may be redefined. An example of a dynamic issue is the Vietnam policy. Initially, it became a spontaneous issue when President Eisenhower committed several hundred advisers in the late 1950's. The issue of expanded commitment became recurrent under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. By 1963, the dispute appeared on the docket with great regularity. It continued in this form until opposition to the war—a channelized item begun by peace groups - raised the question of the legitimacy of American involvement. The peace groups expanded concern with American involvement until it became the policy stance of a major presidential candidate in 1968. The form of an institutional agenda. The explicit form of the formal agenda may be found in the calendar of authoritative decision-making bodies such as legislatures, high courts, or regulatory agencies^6. Unless an item appears on some docket, it will not be considered to be an agenda item. Agenda composition will vary over time. However, recurrent or habitual items will be the most numerous. They tend to receive priority from the decision-makers, who constantly find that their time is limited and that their agenda is overloaded. Spontaneous, or automatic, items take precedence over channeled items, so it is very difficult to get new issues on the agenda. Decision-makers presume that older problems warrant more attention because of their longevity and the greater familiarity officials have with them. DIFFERENTIAL ACCESS TO INSTITUTIONAL GATEKEEPERS The content of a formal agenda will tend to reflect structural and institutional biases found within the system. These biases arise from differential resources among individuals and groups and concomitant differences in access. For an issue to attain agenda status, it must command the support of at least some key decision-makers, for they are the ultimate guardians of the formal agenda. Political leaders are active participants in the agenda-building process, not simply impartial arbiters of issue disputes. As Bauer, Pool, and Dexter note: “Congress is not a passive body, reregistering already-existent public views forced on its attention by public pressures. Congress, second only to the President, is, rather the major institution for initiating and creating political issues and protecting them into a national civic debate”^7_._ (^6) Calendars normally provide predefined agendas for both the legislature and the court. However, most legislatures have some procedure to allow items to be entered on the agenda at the request of one decision- maker without going throughout the normal procedures of agenda specification. For example, in the Congress, this procedure involves the private calendar. That calendar will be excluded form our analysis, which focuses on the public and union calendar, where most issues of public import will be found. (^7) Raymond Bauer, Ithiel Pool and Lewis Dexter, “ American Business and Public Policy ” (New York: Atherton Press, 1963), p 478
This strategic location if these leaders assures them of media visibility when they want to promote an issue and places them in an excellent position to bargain with other decision- makers over formal agenda and content. Because they have fairly direct control over what will appear on the formal agenda and considerable freedom to choose among the plethora of issues competing for attention, they can insist that an issue of concern to them be considered in return for agreement to consider an issue that is salient to another decision- maker or set of decision-makers. It is easy then to understand why access to one or more key officials is so important to political groups. As one commentator noted: “The development and improvement of such access is a common denominator of the tactics of all of them, frequently leading to efforts to exclude competing groups from equivalent access or to set up new decision points access to which can be monopolized by a particular group .”^8 Some groups have a greater ease of access than others, and are thus more likely to get their demands placed on an agenda. This differential responsiveness arises from a variety of factors. First, the decision-maker may be indebted to a particular group or identify himself as a member of that group. Second, some groups have more resources than others or are better able to mobilize their resources. Third, some groups are located so strategically in the social or economic structure of society that their interests cannot be ignored (for example, big business and agriculture). Fourth, some groups (such as doctors, lawyers and church leaders) are held in greater esteem by the public than others and this can command greater access to decision-makers. As a consequence, certain groups are more likely than others to receive attention from decision-makers when they come up with new demands. Farmers have an inherent advantage over many other groups in obtaining action on their needs because there are many decision-makers who identify themselves with farm groups and because agriculture occupies a pivotal position in the American economy. A group may encounter different types of responses from different levels or branches of the government. When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People first started to press its demands, it focused on the Congress and the presidency, but received no support. However, the group was much more effective when it focused on a judicial strategy of making gains in civil rights through a series of court cases. Thus, differential responsiveness may result from the type of governmental unit petitioned as well as from differences among groups themselves. Political parties also play an important part in translating issues into agenda items^9. To assure support, they will often seek out and identify themselves with issues that are salient to large portions of the populace. Typically, these issues are identified in the party platform in general terms and with considerable ambiguity. However, as Truman notes: “The significance of preparing a platform lies primarily in the evidence that the negotiations provide concerning what groups will have access to the developing (^8) David Truman, “ The Governmental Process ” (New York: Knopf, 1964), p 264 (^9) See, for example, Everett C. Ladd, Jr., “American Political Parties” (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1970)
socially prominent persons and groups entered the fray on their behalf (for example, business groups, military leaders, clergymen, and senators). SYSTEMIC CONSTRAINTS ON AGENDA ENTRANCE Even if an issue is promoted by a group that is perceived to be legitimate, its appearance on a formal agenda may be problematic owing to cultural constraints on the range of issues that arc considered legitimate topics for governmental action. Any institutional agenda will be restricted by the prevailing popular sentiment as to what constitutes appropriate matters for governmental attention. For example, federal aid to education was long considered by many to be an inappropriate area for federal governmental action, a fact that precluded active and serious consideration of the merits of the issue for decades. Legitimizing issues that are considered outside of the governmental realm is difficult and normally takes a long time. The net effect of this is that new demands of particularly disadvantaged or deprived groups are the least likely to receive attention on either the systemic agenda of controversy or the institutional agenda....
Agenda Setting
12 John W. Kingdon Why do some subjects rise on agendas while others are neglected? Why do some alternatives receive more attention than others? Some of our answers to these questions concentrate on participants: We uncover who affects agendas and alternatives, and why they do. Other answers explore the processes through which these participants affect agendas and alternatives. We have conceived of three streams of processes: problems, policies, and politics. People recognize problems, they generate proposals for public policy changes, and they engage in such political activities as election campaigns and pressure group lobbying. Each participant—president, members of Congress, civil servants, lobbyists, journalists, academics, etc, — can in principle be involved in each process (problem recognition, proposal formation, and politics). Policy is not the sole province of analysts, for instance, nor is politics the sole province of politicians. In practice, though, participants usually specialize in one or another process to a degree. Academics are more involved in policy formation than in politics, for instance, and parties are more involved in politics than in drafting detailed proposals. But conceptually, participants can be seen as different from processes. Each of the participants and processes can act as an impetus or as a constraint. As an impetus, the participant or process boosts a subject higher on an agenda, or pushes an alternative into more active consideration. A president or congressional committee chair, for instance, decides to emphasize a subject. Or a problem is highlighted because a disaster occurs or because a well-known indicator changes. As a constraint, the participant or process dampens consideration of a subject or alternative. Vigorous pressure group opposition to an item, for instance, moves it down the list of priorities or even off the agenda. As an administration emphasizes its priorities, for another example, it limits people's ability to attend to other subjects. Concerns over budgetary costs of an item can also make its serious consideration quite unlikely. AGENDA SETTING How are governmental agendas set? Our answer has concentrated on three explanations: problems, polities, and visible participants. Problems (^12) From “Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies” by John W. Kingdon. Copyright ©1984 by John W. Kingdon, pp. 205-215. Reprinted with permission of HarperCollins College Publishers.
Politics The second family of explanations for high or low agenda prominence is in the political stream. Independently of problem recognition or the development of policy proposals, political events flow along according to their own dynamics and their own rules. Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, and interest groups of various descriptions press (or fail to press) their demands on government. Developments in this political sphere are powerful agenda setters. A new administration, for instance, changes agendas all over town as it highlights its conceptions of problems and its proposals, and makes attention to subjects that are not among its high priorities much less likely. A national mood that is perceived to be profoundly conservative dampens attention to costly new initiatives, while a more tolerant national mood would allow for greater spending. The opposition of a powerful phalanx of interest groups makes it difficult—not impossible, but difficult—to contemplate some initiatives. Consensus is built in the political stream by bargaining more than by persuasion. When participants recognize problems or settle on certain proposals in the policy stream, they do so largely by persuasion. They marshal indicators and argue that certain conditions ought to be defined as problems, or they argue that their proposals meet such logical tests as technical feasibility or value acceptability. But in the political stream, participants build consensus by bargaining—trading provisions for support, adding elected officials to coalitions by giving them concessions that they demand, or compromising from ideal positions to positions that will gain wider acceptance. The combination of national mood and elections is a more potent agenda setter than organized interests. Interest groups are often able to block consideration of proposals they do not prefer, or to adapt to an item already high on a governmental agenda by adding elements a bit more to their liking. They less often initiate considerations or set agendas on their own. And when organized interests come into conflict with the combination of national mood and elected politicians, the latter combination is likely to prevail, at least as far as setting an agenda is concerned. Visible Participants Third, we made a distinction between visible and hidden participants. The visible cluster of actors, those who receive considerable press and public attention, include the president and his high-level appointees, prominent members of' Congress, the media, and such election-related actors as political parties and campaigners. The relatively hidden cluster includes academic specialists, career bureaucrats, and congressional staffers. We have discovered that the visible cluster affects the agenda and the hidden cluster affects the alternatives. So the chances of a subject rising on a governmental agenda are enhanced if that subject is pushed by participants in the visible cluster, and dampened if it is neglected by those participants. The administration—the president and his appointees—is a particularly powerful agenda setter, as are such prominent members of Congress as the party leaders and key committee chairs.
At least as far as agenda setting is concerned, elected officials and their appointees turn out to be more important than career civil servants or participants outside of government. To those who look for evidences of democracy at work, this is an encouraging result. These elected officials do not necessarily get their way in specifying alternatives or implementing decisions, but they do affect agendas rather substantially. To describe the roles of various participants in agenda setting, a fairly straightforward top-down model, with elected officials at the top, comes surprisingly close to the truth. ALTERNATIVE SPECIFICATION How is the list of potential alternatives for public policy choices narrowed to the ones that actually receive serious consideration? There are two families of answers: (1) Alternatives are generated and narrowed in the policy stream; and (2) Relatively hidden participants, specialists in the particular policy area, are involved. Hidden Participants: Specialists Alternatives, proposals, and solutions are generated in communities of specialists. This relatively hidden cluster of participants includes academics, researchers, consultants, career bureaucrats, congressional staffers, and analysts who work for interest groups. Their work is done, for instance, in planning and evaluation or budget shops in the bureaucracy or in the staff agencies on thee Hill. These relatively hidden participants form loosely knit communities of specialists. There is such a community for health, for instance, which includes analogous subcommunities for more specialized areas like the direct delivery of medical services and the regulation of food and drugs. Some of these communities, such as the one for transportation, are highly fragmented, while others are more tightly knit. Each community is composed of people located throughout the system and potentially of very diverse orientations and interests, but they all share one thing: their specialization and acquaintance the issues in that particular policy area. Ideas bubble around in these communities. People try out proposals in a variety of ways: through speeches, bill introductions, congressional hearings, leaks to the press, circulation of papers, conversations, and lunches. They float their ideas, criticize one another’s work, hone and revise their ideas, and float new versions. Some these ideas are respectable, while others are out of the question. But many, many ideas are possible and are considered in some fashion somewhere along the line. The Policy Stream The generation of policy alternatives is best seen as a selection process, analogous to biological natural selection. In what we have called the policy primeval soup, many ideas float around, bumping into one another, encountering new ideas, and forming
