Birkland Chp 8 - Policy Design Policy Tools and Decisions

The process by which policies are designed both through technical analysis and the political process, to achieve a particular goal.

• The design of a policy will profoundly influence the way a policy is implemented.
• Designers often base their policy designs on experience with similar policies that have already been implemented.
• Design continues throughout implementation.

• The substantive results of the implementation of a policy.
• Outcomes can be intended or unintended, positive or negative.
• Differs from outputs, which are the laws regulations etc that government expends to address a problem.
• Ex: Output is # of hours teachers teach, Outcome would hopefully be increased student success.

• Element of Policy Design
• A desired outcome of a policy; these goals can be explicitly stated or implicit in the policy and other factors found in its legislative history.
• Goal could be to eliminate a problem, lessen a problem, keep a problem from getting worse.

• Element of Policy Design
• Needs to be defined. A theory about what causes a problem and how particular responses would alleviate that problem.
• D we know x will result in y.
• How do we know? Can we find out?
• Act of God or Human?
• Purposive or negligent?

• Element of Policy Design
• A method through which government seeks a policy objective.
• What instruments will be used to put the policy into effect?
• Will they be more or less coercive?
• Will they be incentives, persuasion, information?

• Nature of the activity in which government is engaged
• Structure of the delivery system (direct or indirect service)
• Degree of centralization (more direct, more central)
• Degree of automaticity (degree of detailed administration)

• Element of Policy Design
• Whose behavior is supposed to change?
• Are there direct and/or indirect targets?
• Are design choices predicated on our social construction of the target population?

• Element of Policy Design
• How will the program be implemented?
• Who will lay out the implementation system?
• Top-down or bottom-up design selected?

• equity
• efficiency
• security
• liberty
• they goals clash

Gaining the most output for a given level of input or getting "more bang for the buck." Efficiency is often thought of as getting the same output for less of a particular input or getting more of something for a constant input.

The political community, and is contrasted with the market as a way of describing human organization and interaction.

The more security one desires from the government, the more liberty one must be willing to surrender.

• Political Feasibility - whether popular/acceptable
• Resource Availability/Administrative Feasibility - degree of ease in implementation
• Behavioral Assumptions about target population - effectiveness

Neutral explanations of how a system works

Explanations of how decisions should be made

A model of decision-making in which it is assumed that decision makers have nearly all information about a problem, its causes, and its solutions at their disposal, whereupon a large number of alternatives can be weighed and the best one selected. Contrast with incrementalism and bounded rationality.

Sometimes called cost-benefit-risk analysis, a technique of policy analysis that seeks to understand the costs of a course of action and its benefits. When risk is introduced the risk of something bad happening is also taken into account.

A term, that describes how decision makers seek to act as rationally as possible within certain bounds or limits; these limits include limited time, limited information, and our limited human ability to recognize every feature and pattern of every problem.

A model of decision-making in which policy change is accomplished through small, incremental steps that allow decision makers to adjust policies as they learn from their successes and failures.