Why I Wrote This Book
C- SPAN Field hearing
Free rider
Institutionalism Issue network Judicial review Marbury v. Madison Neoinstitutionalism Official actor
Oversight
Pocket veto Policy subsystem Public good Unofficial actor Veto
Questions for Discussion, Reflection, and Research
1. Why do you think that Richard Fenno says that Americans “hate Congress”
but “love their Congressmen”?
2. Why do you think Congress has focused so much more on oversight in recent years? Do you think Congress provides more oversight than legislation?
How would you measure this?
3. Do you believe that more partisan legislative politics is good for our form of representative democracy? Should legislative business be conducted in a partisan way? Why? If not, what should replace the partisan organization of the legislative branch? Some people argue that intense partisan competition
forces each side to be a watchdog for the other, thereby achieving stabil- ity and balance. Others might argue that this highly partisan environment leads to a paralysis in policy making and detracts from tackling society’s most important issues. How would you measure or test these assertions?
What influence, if any, do you think this partisan shift has had on the sorts of public policies that are enacted—or are not enacted—by Congress? In light of all this, does the partisan balance of Congress matter in terms of the policies it enacts?
4. What functions do congressional committees serve? Do you think there may be other or better ways to organize Congress than by committee? What would the likely consequences be of organizing Congress as you propose?
5. We typically think of goods like roads as public goods. But what about toll roads? Are these public goods or private goods? Is education a public or private good, considering that educational services are provided by both the public and private sectors? Are goods public or private based simply on who provides the good, or are there other features that characterize public and private goods?
6. What essential point do you think Wilson was trying to make when he claimed that politics and administration are—or should be—separate?
What do current political scientists think of this distinction? Do you think the spirit of his assertion is still important today?
7. What are some reasons that Congress may expand or restrict bureaucratic discretion? Can you think of examples in which Congress has given the bureaucracy too much discretion? Too little?
8. How different do you think policy making would be in the United States if the courts lacked the power of judicial review, as claimed in Marbury v.
Madison?
9. As seen during the nomination and confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to associate justices of the Supreme Court, some people argue that judges should not in effect, make law, but should merely interpret the laws and the Constitution based on the intention of the framers of the Constitution or the authors of the laws. Is it possible to separate this interpretation function from lawmaking? Why or why not?
How would one go about understanding the “intent” of the drafters of a law or constitution?
10. Reflecting on the previous question, do you believe that those who argue that judges should merely interpret the law rather than make law have a consistent ideological approach to the role of the judiciary? Or are such arguments made by the losing side when legal trends are running against them? Does so-called judicial activism lead solely to what are popularly called “liberal” decisions? Can judicial activism support a “conservative”
ideology?
11. Make an appointment to speak with a member of your congressional repre- sentative’s local district staff, or perhaps with your state legislator or his or her staff members. Remember, you are their constituent so they should be happy to talk with a potential voter! Ask them about how much and what type of casework they do and whether they think casework helps their members politically. Also, ask about what key issues most concern your legislator. You will likely find that a legislator specializes in a few key areas. If you talk to your federal and state representatives, consider similarities and differences between the representatives’ jobs and those of their staff members.
12. Did Congress become more or less partisan during the 1990s and 2000s?
How would you measure this? Try by using a reference source such as the Almanac of American Politics; track a sample of members of Congress (perhaps your state’s congressional delegation if you live in a large state) by their voting scores issued by such groups as the Americans for Democratic Action or the National Conservative Union. The Almanac of American Poli- tics has been published since 1971, so it should be possible to track some members over several years. Newer tracking information is also available from Project Vote Smart, at http://www.vote-smart.org.
Additional Reading
A classic text that puts Congress at the center of policy making is Morris P. Fiorina’s Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment, 2d edition (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2004), in which Fiorina argues that there is a “Washington establishment” of interest groups, bureaucrats, the media, lobbyists, and others, but that the focal point or “keystone” of all this activity is in Congress. This book is lively and well argued, and is fascinating reading. Other works of note on Congress include R. Douglas Arnold’s The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1990). A now classic text that reveals what it is like to be a member of Congress, particularly when interacting with the folks back home, is Richard Fenno’s Homestyle: House Members in Their Districts (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978). The best source for summary information about members of Congress and their states and districts is the Almanac of American Politics, published by the National Journal Group every two years since 1971.
The presidency has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. The classic work in the field is Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power, the most recent edition of which is titled Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990). Neustadt is famous for noting that the “power of the presidency is the power to persuade,” which reflects both the institutional strengths and the institutional weaknesses of the executive branch. Arthur M. Schlesinger, in The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), ascribes a great deal more power to the presidency, although this
book is very much a reflection of the time in which it was written. Schlesinger, writing during the Vietnam and Watergate years, argued that the presidency had gained so much power that it was becoming “imperial” and therefore answerable only to itself. Experience with later administrations has tempered the belief that the presidency is unfettered by other institutions. For example, Paul Light, in The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Carter (with Notes on Ronald Reagan) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), found that the power of the presidency is in the power to set the agenda—that is, to cause Con- gress, the media, interest groups, and the public to focus on the issues he finds most important. Nevertheless, the president’s power is limited; he must gather resources to advance his chosen issues on the agenda early in his term, before those resources are expended. And John Kingdon, cited throughout this book, notes in Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2d ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1995) that the president has considerable agenda-setting power but that Congress has greater influence in structuring alternative policies.
For those interested in studying the lives and activities of individuals might wish to look at biographies of the presidents or histories of their administrations. One such book that gained considerable attention in the 2008 election season is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005). Perhaps the standard by which all other presidential biographies will be judged is Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series, consisting of The Path to Power (1982); Means of Assent (1990); and Master of the Senate (2002) (all published by Knopf). Caro continues to work on this series, with a planned fourth volume available around 2013. Other notable books on twentieth- century American presidents include Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003);
David G. McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001) (on President Theodore Roosevelt); Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, The Richard Nixon Library Edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990); Ronald Reagan and Douglas Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); and recent works by Bob Woodward, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal:
The Commanders (1991); The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (1994); The Choice (1996); and Bush at War (2002) (all published by Simon & Schuster).
To my mind, one of the finest books on the role of the Supreme Court is Robert G. McClosky’s The American Supreme Court, 2d ed., edited by Sanford Levinson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). This book links the historical de- velopment of the United States to the legal doctrines that were being developed by the Court. You will find remarkable parallels between the policy-making history outlined by Robertson and Judd and summarized in chapter 3 of this book with the historical analysis in McClosky’s work. The book proceeds chronologically, from
the founding until 1960. This second edition, edited by Sanford Levinson, updates McClosky’s original work with chapters on civil rights and other topics. A major de- bate surrounding the courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, centers on whether it makes decisions that deviate greatly from the public’s preferences, as expressed through the elected branches. Robert Dahl, in “Decision Making in a Democracy:
The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker,” Journal of Public Law 6 (Fall 1957): 279–95, found that the Supreme Court’s decisions did not stray too far from the policy choices made by Congress, although later research has questioned his conclusions. In particular, Jonathan D. Casper, in “The Supreme Court and National Policymaking,” American Political Science Review 70 (1976): 50–63, argued that the Supreme Court does make policy more independently of the elected branches than Dahl argued. Finally, Randall Rosenberg argues in The Hollow Hope (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991) that the Supreme Court and the lower courts are not the powerful protectors of civil rights and venues for policy change that many social movement leaders and lay people believe them to be.
The standard popular book on the Supreme Court—and one long assigned to courses on the Court—is by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), which provides details on many landmark decisions and the roles played by justices and, in particular, by their law clerks. A more contemporary book on the Court is Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
For an illuminating discussion of Woodrow Wilson’s classic article about bureau- cracy and the assumptions underlying it, see Charles H. Levine, B. Guy Peters, and Frank J. Thompson, Public Administration: Challenges, Choices, Consequences (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown, 1990), 105–07.
Notes
1. Elinor Ostrom, “Institutional Rational Choice: An Assessment of the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework,” in Theories of the Policy Process, ed. Paul A. Sabatier (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2007).
2. B. Dan Wood, “Federalism and Policy Responsiveness: The Clean Air Case,” Journal of Politics 53, no. 3 (1991): 851–59.
3. Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 2 (June 1887): 210, 212.
4. Bills in Congress are numbered with designators that indicate the body in which they were introduced.
“H.R.” indicates the House of Representatives (not House Resolution) and “S.” indicates a Senate bill. Other types of legislation are numbered differently; for details, refer to http://thomas.loc.gov.
5. Some oft-cited texts on Congress include Ross K. Baker, House and Senate, 4th ed. (New York: W.W. Nor- ton, 2008); Roger H. Davidson and Walter J. Oleszek, Congress and Its Members, 12th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2009); R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990);
Morris P. Fiorina, Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment, 2d. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); and Randall Ripley and Grace Franklin, Congress, Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, 5th ed. (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole, 1991). The latter book explores the policy-making relationship between Congress and the bureaucracy. An older but still relevant book on how members of Congress do their jobs is Richard Fenno’s Homestyle: House Members in Their Districts (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978).
6. For more on the electoral effects of casework, see Diana Evans Yiannakis, “The Grateful Electorate: Casework and Congressional Elections,” American Journal of Political Science 25, no. 3 (1981): 568–80; Morris Fiorina,
“Some Problems in Studying the Effects of Resource Allocation in Congressional Elections,” American Journal of Political Science 25, no. 3 (1981): 543–67; John C. McAdams and John R. Johannes, “Does Casework Matter? A Reply to Professor Fiorina,” American Journal of Political Science 25, no. 3 (1981): 581–604; John R. Johannes and John C. McAdams, “The Congressional Incumbency Effect: Is It Casework, Policy Compatibility, or Something Else? An Examination of the 1978 Election,” American Journal of Political Science 25, no. 3 (1981): 512–42; and David W. Romero, “The Case of the Missing Reciprocal Influence: Incumbent Reputation and the Vote,” Journal of Politics 58, no. 4 (1996): 1198–1207.
7. To show how complex law making can be, and how Congress often bundles issues together, note that this law is Title VI of the Department of Homeland Security appropriation bill for FY 2007, which is PL 109-295. Congress often includes reform legislation in appropriation bills, thereby linking money to the desired reform.
8. Joel D. Aberbach, Keeping a Watchful Eye: The Politics of Congressional Oversight (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution, 1990).
9. Until 2004 the Government Accountability Office was known as the General Accounting Office. The name change accompanied changes in the structure of the GAO. See http://www.gao.gov/about/namechange.html. You will see this older name in pre-2004 reports by the GAO, and when doing any Web searches on the GAO you should use both names.
10. Jack L. Walker, “Setting the Agenda in the U.S. Senate: A Theory of Problem Selection,” British Journal of Political Science 7 (1977): 423–445.
11. Richard Fenno, Homestyle: House Members in Their Districts.
12. Republican Contract with America, http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html.
13. Maureen Dowd, “The 1994 Elections: Leaders: The G.O.P. Leader; GOP’S Rising Star Pledges to Right Wrongs of the Left,” The New York Times, November 10, 1994, Section A, p. 1.
14. Richard Lacayo, “Bringing Down the House: G.O.P. Guerrilla Newt Gingrich Rides a Surge of Voter Anger, but Where Does He Want To Go with It?” Time, November 7, 1994.
15. Maureen Dowd, “The 1994 Elections,” p. 1.
16. Randall Strahan and Daniel J. Palazzolo, “The Gingrich Effect,” Political Science Quarterly, 119, no. 1 (2004): 89–90.
17. Adam Clymer, “The Gingrich Whirlwind; A Man of a Thousand Ideas and Dreams Fell Victim in the End to His Own Flaws,” The New York Times, November 8, 1998, p. 1.
18. Jonathan Woon, “Change We Can Believe In? Using Political Science to Predict Policy Change in the Obama Presidency,” PS: Political Science & Politics 42, no. 2 (2009): 329–33.
19. John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, 2d ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1995.) I use the pronoun he to refer to the president because we have not yet elected a woman as president, although the likelihood of this happening seems to be growing as women become more prominent in both the public and private sectors.
20. Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990).
21. Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).
22. Paul C. Light, The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Carter (with Notes on Ronald Reagan) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 423.
23. Jonathan Weisman, “Clinton: Lame Duck on a Roll,” Courier-Journal, June 20, 1999, 1D.
24. Amy Wallace and Faye Fiore, “Hollywood Surprised by Clinton’s Violence Inquiry,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1999, A1.
25. A running list of President Obama’s executive orders is at http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive- orders/2009-obama. For all presidents, see http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/disposition.html.
26. Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H.H. Gerth and C.
Wright Mill (New York: Oxford University Press, [1946] 1973).
27. Since 1976, the federal fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30 of the following year. Thus, FY 2010 starts on October 1, 2009 and ends on September 30, 2010.
28. Charles L. Cochran and Eloise F. Malone, Public Policy: Perspectives and Choices (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1995), 17.
29. Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration.”
30. Kenneth J. Meier, Regulation, Politics, Bureaucracy and Economics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985),
excerpted in Public Policy: The Essential Reading, ed. Stella Z. Theodoulou and Matthew A. Cahn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995), 275.
31. Mary Schiavo, Flying Blind, Flying Safe (New York: Avon Books, 1997).
32. B. Guy Peters, American Public Policy, 94–95.
33. 1 Cranch 137 (1803).
34. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965).
35. 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
36. The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883); Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
37. Edward Levi, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).
38. Donald Horowitz, The Courts and Social Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1977), 3, emphasis in original.
39. Robert A. Dahl, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker,” Journal of Public Law 6 (Fall 1957): 279–95.
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Unofficial Actors and Their Roles in Public Policy
Chapter at a Glance Individual Citizens Interest Groups
Social Movements and Mobilization Types of Interest Groups
Political Parties
Think Tanks and Other Research Organizations Communications Media
Subgovernments, Issue Networks, and Domains Prying Open Policy Networks
Exploiting the Decentralization of American Government Going Public
Conclusion Key Terms
Questions for Discussion, Reflection, and Research Additional Reading
Having reviewed the important official participants in the policy process in chapter 4, we now turn to the unofficial actors. These actors are unofficial because their participation in policy making is not fully specified in the Constitution. But the First Amendment contains a set of core political rights—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly (that is, to form groups), and “the right . . . to peti- tion the Government for a redress of grievances.” The way that people, groups, and the press participate in public life has evolved and grown with the nation. While some actions are controversial—those of unpopular groups and lobbyists come to mind—and some participants in the policy process arouse considerable annoyance among other actors, it is also true that our democratic system of policy formation and implementation could not function without them. As you consider these actors, consider how changes and reforms to the constitutional order—and to the nature of politics—would alter their roles and behaviors.
Individual Citizens
Many studies of the policy process seem to be disconnected from the activities and preferences of individual citizens. This is because most analysis focuses on policy making undertaken at the group level, with various groups vying for attention, in- fluence, and power. Politics in the United States is primarily a group process, and groups often make their preferences very clear, because they deal regularly with important issues of policy. By contrast, opportunities for individual participation seem to be intermittent, at best. We hold elections for national office every two years, and not every office is up for election every year. Furthermore, even when important issues are on the agenda most Americans do not vote, although in some presidential elections turnout exceeds 50 percent.
But in state, county, city, and town elections, voter turnout is very low. For ex- ample, I am writing this paragraph a few months after our local school board elections in Wake County, North Carolina. There were two slates of candidates with sharply contrasting visions of how the schools should be run, yet voter turnout was quite low—about 11 percent of the eligible electorate. The election significantly changed the composition and policy preferences of the school board and the policies that the new board majority is proposing are sufficiently controversial that a number of the 89 percent of the electorate that failed to show up on election day are now mobilizing to oppose the new board’s ideas involving school diversity and scheduling. Of course, a portion of that 89 percent is pleased with the outcome. The analytical problem for social scientists is quite simple: with turnout so low, it is impossible to draw solid conclusions about what overall public preferences are in an election. Even elections with high turnout—over 50 percent—cannot be said to broadly reflect public prefer- ences. People who do vote tend to be older, whiter, and wealthier than nonvoters, so voters are not really representative of broader public opinion.
As low as voter turnout can be, even fewer Americans find other ways to participate in politics and policy making, follow many issues very closely, or admit to being very well informed on issues. Of course, a staple of national debates over political knowl- edge and engagement is the argument that many Americans don’t know who represents them in Congress or their state legislatures. In the end, we can say that the overall level of political attention and participation—including voting and other activities—is remarkably low.1 Furthermore, to the extent that any political participation is evident in American politics, it is usually shown in voting. Even then, decisions on who to vote for may be influenced only indirectly by public policy preferences.
Low participation rates in elections have led to widespread concern among citizens and democratic theorists that a majority of potential voters do not express their opinion on important matters of the day. This long-run trend may reflect voters’ growing alienation from the political system and the decisions made in it.
The 2008 election, however, saw an increase in electoral turnout over the previous presidential election (Figure 5.1).