PPA 503 The Public Policy Making Process

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PPA 503 The Public Policy Making Process

• Lecture 4a Problem Definition

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Introduction

• Problem definition has to do with what we choose
  to identify as public issues and how we think and
  talk about these concerns.
• In recent years, problem definition has acquired
  increasing importance in the study of public
  policymaking along two often separate tracks.
• First, researchers interested in the appearance
  of new issues have investigated how the
  description of a given social problem can affect
  its rise and decline before government.
• Second, public policy specialists working in
  diverse fields have linked such descriptions to
  the solutions that government devises.

3
Introduction

• E.E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People,
  1960.
• August 1943 a fight in a Harlem hotel lobby
  between a black soldier and a white policeman
  quickly escalated. Rumors about the conflict
  spread throughout the community and angry crowds
  gathered around the police station, in front of
  the hotel, and elsewhere. Violence soon erupted
  and hundreds subsequently were hurt.
• For Schattschneider, this incident illustrated
  how a conflict can quickly expand beyond those
  immediate involved and how the original
  contestants maintain little control over such a
  struggle once it develops.

4
Introduction

• Rodney King riots (1992).
• March 3, 1991, a black man, Rodney King was
  stopped by city police after a high-speed case.
  Did not respond to commands to acquiesce and was
  beaten severely.
• Incident videotaped and released to the media.
• Charges brought against four policeman who were
  tried in Simi Valley, California, a predominantly
  white community.
• Assumed guilty because of videotape, but jury
  returned verdicts of not guilty.
• Violence broke out in South Central LA. National
  Guard called four days later. 44 dead, 2,000
  hurt and property damage of 1 billion.

5
Introduction

• Competing problem definitions of riots.
• Primary figures blamed.
• Nonblack jury verdict.
• Slow response of Police Chief and Police
  Department.
• Inflammatory remarks by Mayor Bradley.
• Ethnicity.
• Blacks blamed for taking justice into their own
  hands.
• Some blamed Mexican-American community.
• Law and order.
• Fine line between protesting injustice and
  behaving irresponsibly.
• Partisan criticism.
• President Bush blamed failed programs of Great
  Society.
• Candidate Clinton blamed Republicans neglect of
  race relations, urban programs, and domestic
  social policy.
• Poverty of values.
• Dan Quayle Riots related to breakdown of family
  structure, personal responsibility, and social
  order. Led by TV Murphy Brown.

6
Introduction

• At the nexus of politics and policy development
  lies persistent conflict over where problems come
  from and, based on the answer to this questions,
  what kinds of solutions should be attempted.
• If you focus on racial and economic inequality as
  the cause of the riots, solutions include social
  justice measures and economic and educational
  opportunities.
• If you focus on police inability to control
  order, you improve police management, training,
  and hiring.
• Every retrospective analysis in problem
  definition is also a look ahead and an implicit
  argument about what government should be doing
  next.

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Introduction

• Problem definition is about much more than just
  finding someone or something to blame.
• Further disputes can surround a situations
  perceived social significance, meaning,
  implications, and urgency.
• By dramatizing or downplaying a problem and by
  declaring whats at stake, these descriptions
  help to push an issue onto the front burners of
  policymaking or result in officials stubborn
  inaction or neglect.

8
Introduction

• In part, government action is a result of
  institutional structure and formal and informal
  procedures.
• Partisan balance of power will also affect
  decision-making.
• But, public policymaking can also be understood
  as a function of the perceived nature of the
  problems being dealt with, and the qualities that
  define this nature are never incontestable.

9
Introduction

• The defining process takes place in a variety of
  ways.
• Cultural values.
• Interest group advocacy.
• Scientific information.
• Professional advice.
• Focusing events.
• Some definitions remain long-term fixtures some
  undergo constant revision or are replaced by
  competing definitions.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• Contemporary policy analysis is multidisciplinary
  in its techniques and orientation, and perhaps
  nowhere more so than in problem definition.
• Social Conflict and Politics.
• Schattschneider (1960) underscored the importance
  of social conflict for political life.
• At the nub of politics are, first, the way in
  which the public participates in the spread of
  conflict and, second, the processes by which the
  unstable relation of the public to the conflict
  is controlled.
• A conflicts outcome depends directly on the
  number of people who become involved in it. It
  is always in the interest of the weaker party to
  expand involvement by recruiting new participants
  to its support. Whoever controls the expansion,
  by accelerating or limiting it, gains the
  political upper hand.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• Social conflict and politics (contd.).
• The entry of new participants is not random. The
  initially uninterested enter the conflict in
  response to the ways participants portray their
  struggle. The definition of alternatives is the
  supreme instrument of power.
• Three levels of political conflict (Baumgartner
  1989)
• Whether a problem exists
• What the best solution is and
• What the best means of implementation are.
• In political conflict, then, issue definition and
  redefinition can serve as tools used by opposing
  sides to gain advantage.
• To restrict participation, issues may be defined
  in procedural or narrow technical terms.
• To broaden participation, issues may be connected
  to sweeping social themes, such as justice,
  democracy, and liberty.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• The social construction of reality.
• The actors involved in the problem-naming process
  are called claims-makers, (or stakeholders).
• Claims-makers both identify social problems and
  typify them by characterizing their nature
• Advancing a particular moral, criminal,
  political, or other orientation.
• Seizing upon representative examples.
• An orientation locates the problems cause and
  recommends a solution.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• The social construction of reality (contd.).
• Individuals, groups, and societies tend to place
  interpretations upon reality interpretations
  which may or may not be true in an absolute
  sense.
• When applied to the study of social issues, this
  perspective emphasizes the distinction between
  objective conditions and the definition of some
  conditions as problems.
• The definition of a problem is time, place, and
  context bound.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• Social construction of reality (contd.).
• Some ambiguity as to the precise agency of
  meaning investment.
• Reflection theory describes the construction as a
  direct representation of beliefs, values, and
  sentiments that are prevalent in the social
  psyche.
• Hypodermic theory locates responsibility with
  particular powerful political and cultural
  leaders who impose their stance on others,
  thereby achieving an ideological hegemony.
• A complex open contest involving a wide range of
  players who are constrained by shifts in the site
  of decision-making as well as accidents of
  history.
• Criticism insufficient concern with the impact
  of institutional forces.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• Postmodernism.
• Intellectual style concerned with examining the
  unquestioned value assumptions embodied in
  culture and society.
• Primary method of analysis is deconstruction, a
  way of revealing hidden differences and
  contradictions within a seemingly unified whole.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• Postmodernism.
• Applications to problem definition.
• Rejects the notion of impartial rationality and
  disputes ideological neutrality.
• Policy becomes a series of conclusions, choices,
  and rejections of alternatives that are assembled
  to compose a constructed reality.
• Rhetoric is key to the process by which decisions
  are justified, promoted, and even placed beyond
  questioning.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• A political policy analysis.
• Definitions.
• Technical policy analysis consists of a set of
  logical steps for diagnosing problems and
  devising cost-effective solutions
• Political An explicitly political analysis of
  public policy making attempts to relate
  governmental process and result to the contest of
  perspectives among the multiple stakeholders to
  the problematic situation.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• A political policy analysis (contd.).
• View social problems in terms of a career wherein
  a problem first emerges, next gains attention and
  legitimacy, and then receives official
  programmatic response. With several transitions
  providing potential obstacles, successful
  completion of the career is not assured.
• Expansion of participation and the
  characteristics of the issue can both help
  determine which issues gain access to the agenda
  of society and government.
• Opponents can keep issues off through successful
  argumentation against these points.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• A political policy analysis (contd.)..
• How an issue is defined and redefined influences.
• The type of politicking that will ensue
• Its chances of reaching the agenda of a
  particular institution.
• The probability of a policy outcome favorable to
  advocates of the issue.
• Different public arenas have different selection
  principles that are satisfied by different
  problem definitions.
• The connection between problem definition and
  institutional process in this framework is
  interactive rhetoric changes produce venue
  changes and vice versa.

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Converging Perspectives on Problem Definition

• A political policy analysis (contd.).
• The uses of language are crucial to the political
  analysis of public policy making and problem
  definition.
• Language can promote or undermine particular
  definitions of the problem.
• Four prominent forms of language and symbolic
  expression.
• Stories, which provide explanations.
• Synecdoches, in which parts of things are said to
  depict the whole.
• Metaphors, which claim likenesses between things.
• Ambiguity, in which multiple meanings are evoked
  simultaneously.

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Multiplication of Meanings Division of Support

• General and phenomenal realities.
• The former refers to the actual bases of reality.
• The latter to the constellation of feelings,
  thoughts, and perceptions that make up
  constructed reality.
• The latter is most appropriate to problem
  identification.

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Multiplication of Meanings Division of Support

• The complexity of social reality.

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Multiplication of Meanings Division of Support

• No one correct way. The world works in all of
  these ways all of the time.
• Emphasis The choice of which cause to emphasize
  is a main determinant of differences in problem
  definition.
• Level of analysis Where on the continuum from
  microindividual behavior to macrosocial forces
  does the analyst focus? The 1992 LA Riots a
  perfect example.
• Measurement No two analysts will approach the
  task of gauging a social problems magnitude,
  rate of change, or distribution in quite the same
  way. Political measurement is more like poetry
  than science.
• Interconnections Reactions to an issue can
  depend on its perceived relationship to other
  issues of importance to the observer.

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Multiplication of Meanings Division of Support

• The struggle for problem ownership.
• One aspect of problem ownership is the domination
  of the way that a social concern is thought of
  acted upon in the public arena. Also refers to
  jurisdictional control.
• Some problem areas dominated by a community of
  operatives that advances the theories and data on
  which policies are based. If unchallenged,
  evidence of ownership.
• Multiple competing definitions produce struggle
  over ownership.

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The Rhetoric of Problem Definition and Its
Policymaking Consequences.

• Causality.
• The way a problem is defined invariably entails
  some statement about its origins. Individual or
  impersonal causes, for example. Intentional and
  accidental.
• A decision about causality forms the linchpin of
  a whole set of interdependent propositions.
• Simple versus complex causality.
• Television episodic versus thematic. Government
  held responsible in the latter, but not the
  former.

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The Rhetoric of Problem Definition and Its
Policymaking Consequences.

• Severity.
• How serious a problem and its consequences are
  taken to be. Element pivotal to gaining
  attention.
• When should labels be applied recession.
• Incidence.
• Perceptions of the frequency and prevalence of a
  situation.
• Novelty.
• When an issue is described as novel,
  unprecedented, or trailblazing, it can win
  attention, but it can also undermine consensus.

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The Rhetoric of Problem Definition and Its
Policymaking Consequences.

• Crisis.
• A special condition of severity where corrective
  action is long overdue and dire circumstances
  exist.
• One of the most used terms in the political
  lexicon.
• The rhetoric of calamity.
• Problem populations.
• Afflicted groups and individuals also given
  definition.
• Worthy or unworthy, deserving or undeserving.
• Culpability.
• Familiar or strange.
• Sympathetic or threatening.
• Four types of socially constructed target
  populations.
• Advantaged groups powerful and positively
  constructed.
• Contenders powerful, and negatively
  constructed.
• Dependents Weak, and positively constructed.
• Deviants Weak and negatively constructed.

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The Rhetoric of Problem Definition and Its
Policymaking Consequences.

• Instrumental versus expressive orientations.
• Ends versus means.
• Solutions.
• The debate over problem definition also extends
  to descriptions of the solutions.
• Sometimes solutions determine problem
  definitions.
• Solutions also predispose the identification of
  causes.
• Key is solution consensus.
• Key is solution availability.
• Key is solution acceptability.
• Key is solution affordability.