Institutions and Arguments: Simulating the US Policy-Making Process

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Lucy Britt ◽  
Ryan J. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Knowledge Retention ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
Natural Gas Pipeline ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Us ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Us Government

ABSTRACT In US government courses, simulations have been shown to increase students’ engagement and knowledge retention. We present an original simulation that focuses on both the interactions between political institutions that contribute to policy making and the normative ideas underlying politics. By exploring a civil rights or liberties policy area, students learn about the importance of both political institutions and foundational political ideas such as liberty and equality. Students role-play members of Congress, lobbyists for a pro- or anti-natural gas pipeline group, and Supreme Court justices. Although the goal of simulations in many US government courses is to teach students about the ways that institutions shape policy, this is the first (to our knowledge) that also integrates normative reflection on the ideas behind political arguments. Assessment indicates that the simulation was effective in increasing students’ knowledge of and/or interest in American political institutions and eminent domain.

ICTs as Participatory Vehicles

2005 ◽  
pp. 1372-1378
Author(s):  
Marc Holzer ◽  
Richard Schwester
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Elected Representatives

While citizen participation is central to democratic governance, there is a noticeable disconnect between elected representatives and the citizenry, as evidenced by voter apathy, decreased levels of civic participation, and widespread cynicism toward political institutions (Hudson, 2001; Putnam, 2000; Berman, 1997). Citizen participation advocates, however, are optimistic that information and communications technologies (ICTs) will facilitate direct interactions between citizens and government, thereby altering the dynamics of the policy-making process by affording the citizenry a stronger voice. This article examines the integration of ICTs and digital democratic applications in the context of citizen participation in government.

Bureaucracy, Political Parties, and Political Development

1973 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 600-607
Author(s):  
Gerald A. Heeger
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Policy Making Process

The growing role of governmental bureaucracy has been one of the most noted and discussed characteristics of developing political systems. The phenomenon of bureaucratic intervention in politics, already discernible in the 1950's in many of these states, has, so it seems, become the rule rather than the exception in the years that have followed. Despite the prevalence of the politicized bureaucracy, however, and the amount of discussion engendered by the phenomenon, die sources of bureaucratic growth and dominance in the developing states remain obscure. Most analysts emphasize the superior organization of the bureaucracy and argue that this organization, reinforced by die transfer of techniques from abroad and uncontested because of weak indigenous political institutions, provides much of the explanation for the aggrandizement of the bureaucracy in die policy-making process.

Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies

1991 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Risse-Kappen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
The Impact

The paper discusses the role of public opinion in the foreign policy-making process of liberal democracies. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, public opinion matters. However, the impact of public opinion is determined not so much by the specific issues involved or by the particular pattern of public attitudes as by the domestic structure and the coalition-building processes among the elites in the respective country. The paper analyzes the public impact on the foreign policy-making process in four liberal democracies with distinct domestic structures: the United States, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan. Under the same international conditions and despite similar patterns of public attitudes, variances in foreign policy outcomes nevertheless occur; these have to be explained by differences in political institutions, policy networks, and societal structures. Thus, the four countries responded differently to Soviet policies during the 1980s despite more or less comparable trends in mass public opinion.

Dezintegracja, konsolidacja czy status quo? Kryzys modernizacji w Unii Europejskiej a poszukiwanie nowego paradygmatu integracji

2015 ◽  
pp. 26-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamil Ławniczak
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Options ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Eu Governance ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
The Eu

“Taking ideas seriously” means not only to consider their causal and constitutive role in the study of social phenomena, but also to analyse how and why certain ideas gain or lose prominence within political institutions and discourses. One approach to these issues builds upon the notion of policy paradigms, which influence the results of policy-making process by shaping the political actors’ understanding of problems that need to be solved and limiting available policy options. This article attempts to show how the ability to modernise the EU governance within the paradigm of European integration heading towards “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” has been called into question by the crisis which began in 2008. Two potential new paradigms of integration are considered: first one suggests controlled disintegration and differentiation of EU structures, second one proposes a reinterpretation of federalism as a way to reconsolidate the Union.

Rooted

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Theresa A. Case
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Black Education ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Stable Family

This chapter establishes the importance of African American shop workers to Texas railroad hubs such as Marshall, Texas, and explores black responses to the 1922 National Railroad Shopmen’s Strike. Newspaper sources reveal that, while some Texas black and white shopmen cooperated in the 1922 walkout, 216 black shopmen in Marshall dramatically broke with the town’s white strikers and the mass of white citizens who supported them: the 216 petitioned the US government and the Texas & Pacific Railway for protection of their return to work against pro-strike violence and intimidation. The chapter contends that the Marshall petitioners found encouragement not only in WWI-era federal policies and civil rights activism but also in the opportunities for black education and stable family life in Marshall. In addition, an earlier rejection of interracial labor solidarity by Marshall’s white shopmen may have played a role. How, in the aftermath of the strike’s defeat, black shopmen and their families related to each other, and to the town’s developing civil rights movement, is a question ripe for investigation.

Variations in Elite Perceptions of American States as Referents for Public Policy Making

1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 850-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred W. Grupp ◽  
Alan R. Richards
Keyword(s):  
Diffusion Of Innovation ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Mail Questionnaire ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
American States ◽  
State Administrators ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Upper Level ◽  
State Programs ◽  
Policy Guidance

Following Walker, investigators have assumed that state executives frequently seek policy guidance from other states. This study expands the “diffusion of innovation” literature by demonstrating that levels of elite consensus about which American states have the better agencies vary by policy area. It is hypothesized that state administrators in policy areas characterized by general agreement about the better state programs are more influential in their own state's policy-making process than are state administrators in policy areas where there are no acknowledged leaders. Data gathered by mail questionnaire from upper-level state executives in ten American states provide support for the hypothesis. Finally, results from state expanditure studies, which also indicate that different mixes of actors are influential in state policy making depending upon the policy area involved, are found to be consistent with this interpretation.

Facing its Waterloo in diplomacy: Turkey's military in the foreign policy-making process

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gencer Özcan
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
The Us ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Harmonization Process ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
The Military ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe article deals with the decline in the military's influence on the foreign and security policy making process in Turkey. Turkey's harmonization process with the EU that gained momentum in the early 2000s and the US invasion of Iraq in April of 2003 seem to have played a key role in this transformation. While the EU reforms provided for the gradual elimination of legal prerogatives of the military, the increasing US influence in Iraq limited the military's operational power and led to a situation in which it could not exert influence in Northern Iraq, a key area for Turkeys security.

Changing Forms of Environmentalism In Italy: The Protest Campaign on The High Speed Railway System

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Porta ◽  
Massimiliano Andretta
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
Event Analysis ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
High Speed Railway ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Movement Organizations

This article focuses on a protest campaign against the building of a high-speed railway in Tuscany, a region characterized by a "red" territorial subculture, that is, a dense network of associations and local institutions associated with the main left-wing party. The eight-year long protest campaign involved formal environmental movement organizations as well as parties and local institutional actors that often staged protests. The main actors of the campaign were, however, the local environmental movement organizations that were formed in most of the areas directly menaced by the project. Looking at the historical evolution of protest campaign, the authors investigate cooperation and competition inside the movement between the ideologically "purer" environmental organizations and the more moderate forms of action on the one hand, and the local, single-issue, and sometimes NIMBY groups that were more prone to protest, on the other. Drawing on a political process approach, the dynamics of the protest are explained by reference to a multilevel policy-making process, involving local, national, and even international political institutions. Moreover, a distinction is introduced between political opportunities and policy opportunities, all framed within the local political culture. Protest event analysis allows to relate the different repertoires with the changing set of resources and opportunities for the various actors in the different steps of the policy making process.

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