The Stages of Policy Making




Several developments in policy studies during the 1980s help us conceptualize how administrators make policy. One is the classification of policy making as a process that involves several stages and the other is the clarification of the role of lower-level administrators in policy making.

Administrators do not just implement policy as was once believed; they are involved in each stage. These stages typically include (1) agenda setting or problem definition and legitimation, (2) policy formulation, (3) implementation, (4) evaluation, and (5) termination.

Agenda setting is determining which issues will receive priority treatment for government action and therefore will be placed on the public agenda. The public agenda is always crowded with issues left over from previous policy debates – issues that once were acted upon but which have been brought up again by

the opposition, or new items. Problems are defined during agenda setting. How a problem is defined is very important because the definition determines the direction that policy will take.

Issues will not be acted upon if they do not get onto the agenda. There are several ways items can be placed on this agenda. Administrators play a large role in placing issues as well as in defining the problems once they are on the agenda. Administrators often bring up a problem by contacting legislators

about it, working with interest groups, and helping define the problem before legislative committees during hearings.

Policy formulation is the stage at which alternative means of handling problems are considered and a particular alternative or set of alternatives is selected and legitimized through legislation. Although administrators do not make laws, they have a large impact on defining the alternatives and in influencing the alternative that is finally selected. Moreover, by adopting administrative rules and regulations they give concrete meaning to what often are vague and broad statutes. They thus play a crucial role during the formulation stage.

Implementation is the stage in which policies are turned into programs and carried out – in other words, the stage during which administration, as traditionally defined, occurs. Public administrators are the principal implementors, of course, but they certainly are not the only ones. As noted above, legislators,

interest groups, and a host of private agencies (both profit and nonprofit) are involved during implementation, and politics continues unabated during this stage. Because administrators are the key actors, they play a more visible role in policy making during implementation than they do during any other stage.

Evaluation is the stage in which programs are assessed as to how well they have been implemented and what kind of impact they have had. Evaluation is typically done formally by government agencies such as the Program Evaluation Division of the General Accounting Office, by the departments themselves, by

outside consultants or research firms, or by university-based researchers. Program evaluation is a large enterprise in the United States with its own professional association, the American Evaluation Association.

Termination of programs occurs rarely. It most often occurs when new administrations come to power; for example, the Reagan administration terminated several alternative energy programs such as that involving solar energy credits. Programs may also be terminated if they are deemed failures through

program evaluation, although the more likely reason for termination is political opposition.

Involvement of Administrators. Administrators are involved in policy making at each of its stages. Administrators often bring up issues that become part of the agenda, sometimes as a result of problems encountered during the implementation of a program or because of pressures brought by interest groups that are a part of the iron triangles we described above. Administrators become involved in formulating public policy through their testimony before legislative committees. Their expertise is relied upon in

designing policies because they are the ones who have the technical competence to make recommendations regarding alternatives for achieving policy goals. For example, in the food

stamp program several administrators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided that recipients would have to pay for their stamps. This restricted the number and kinds of people who received the stamps and had a major effect on the policy.

Implementing public policy is, of course, an area in which administrators play the major role. They operationalize goals and in so doing sometimes substitute goals in a process known as “goal displacement”. They issue rules and regulations that determine what policy will be.

Of course, administrators are not the only implementors of policy. As we noted above, many programs are implemented by third parties under contract with government. The role of administrators in these cases is to set the conditions of the contract and monitor its implementation.

Legislators and interest groups also are involved in implementation. Legislators often contact agency officials directly to ensure that their states and districts are receiving the benefits of specific programs. Interest groups continue applying their pressure during implementation to see that their interests are protected. In other words, the politics that take place during the agenda-setting and formulation stages do not suddenly stop when a program is being implemented; they simply shift to a different and more

administrative arena.

Finally, administrators play a vital role during evaluation of programs. Programs may be evaluated informally or formally by the agencies themselves, by congressional staff, the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, and outside agencies. In all of these cases, only the agency that runs the program has the data required for an evaluation. An evaluation obviously cannot succeed without agency cooperation. Thus administrators are involved in policy making at all stages of the policy cycle. They are policy makers as well as program managers. And it is not just the top-level administrators

who are involved; middle- and street-level administrators also play an essential role.

 

Civil Service

Government employees in the executive branch who are not elected, not in the military and who are paid with public funds; in the United States the term includes employees of federal, state and local governments.

Civil service goes back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Asia and the Middle East. China had the same civil service for almost 2,000 years, ending only in 1912. The Roman Empire had five ministries in its civil service: foreign affairs, finance, justice, military affairs and internal affairs. Later, civil service institutions were set up in the Holy Roman Empire, in Russia by Peter the Great and in France, where schools were developed to supply qualified employees.

In Great Britain the term refers only to employees of the national government. Until the middle of the 19th century in Britain, it was the aristocrat who was usually chosen for top-level civil service positions. In the mid-19th century, reforms made topand mid-level positions attainable by competitive examination.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the president has broad discretion to select executive personnel. Although early presidents made many appointments on the basis of merit, later the "spoils system" became the norm. Under this system, appointments were handed out as political favors regardless of qualification. Increasing abuse and public dissatisfaction finally led to reform. In 1883 Congress passed the Civil Service Act which laid the foundation for much of today's civil service. The act created a Civil Service Commission to oversee the system, provided for open competitive examinations for positions and prohibited political interference or influence on civil service employees. Positions that became available were to be filled according to merit from lists of those who passed the related examination. It was left to the president, however, to decide which positions would come under the Commission. From 1883 to 1990 the number of these jobs went from 10 to 85 percent of executive branch positions. Today, top departmental positions are still filled by presidential appointment (subject to Senate confirmation) and personnel in these positions are usually political appointees removed by the succeeding administration.

Further civil service reform included the Lloyd-La Follette Act of 1912, which gave employees the right to form unions and made it more difficult to fire them. Other reform measures prohibited civil service employees from participating in political campaigns, gave veterans and certain members of their families

preference in hiring, and mandated that federal salaries be equal to those of similar jobs in the private sector.

In 1978 the Civil Service Reform Act replaced the Civil Service Commission with the Office of Personnel Management. This act institutionalized labor-management relations, based pay raises for mid- and high-level employees on merit rather than longevity, and made it easier for senior employees to change jobs.

Today all 50 states have merit-driven civil service systems similar to those of the federal government.

The number of federal employees has remained constant for several decades at about 3 million; the number of state and local civil servants is currently estimated at about 15 million.

 



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