In this final discussion board, you will use the skills and knowledge you have gained from the course to predict the future of Texas and Texas politics. After reviewing the information provided about the future of Texas and your readings, think about the ways in which Texas is currently changing and how that will affect the state 20 years into the future. You may use these questions to begin your analysis but you are not limited to them: How have the demographics in Texas shifted? Which areas have seen the most population growth and thus gained political power? Have the politics of the state shifted in Texas? What evidence do you have that your predictions are accurate and fact-based? What are the most important political issues facing Texas in the future?
READ: TEXAS GOVERNMENT : CHAPTER 12
https://tccd-tx-govt.github.io/posts/
Module 12 Public Policy
January 11, 2024
Public Policy in Texas
Introduction: Public Policy in Texas
Learning Objective
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
Discuss important public policy issues in Texas
Introduction
Public policy is the broad strategy government uses to do its job, the relatively stable set of purposive governmental behaviors that address matters of concern to some part of society. Most policy outcomes are the result of considerable debate, compromise, and refinement that happen over years and are finalized only after input from multiple institutions within government. Health care reform, for instance, was developed after years of analysis, reflection on existing policy, and even trial implementation at the state level.
Simply put, public policy is anything the government does to achieve a particular outcome. More will be said about this in the next section; however, it is important for you to understand that public policy decisions impact our lives in many ways. As a result, we should understand how policies are formed, budgeted, implemented, and evaluated. We should also know who the policymakers are and be able to measure the effectiveness of policies that have been made.
This chapter explores public policy-making in Texas across a variety of leading issue areas, including public education, social welfare, Medicaid, immigration, energy, and the environment.
Licensing and Attribution
CC LICENSED CONTENT, ORIGINAL
Revision and Adaptation. Authored by: Kris S. Seago. License: CC BY: Attribution
Revision and Adaptation. Authored by: panOpen. License: CC BY: Attribution
What is Public Policy?
Learning Objective
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Discuss the underlying controversies in making public policy
Introduction
Figure 11.1 The Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit research institute that was created to “promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach.” Image credit: Robyn License: CC BY
It is easy to imagine that when designers engineer a product, like a car, they do so with the intent of satisfying the consumer. But the design of any complicated product must take into account the needs of regulators, transporters, assembly line workers, parts suppliers, and myriad other participants in the manufacture and shipment process. And manufacturers must also be aware that consumer tastes are fickle: A gas-guzzling sports car may appeal to an unmarried twenty- something with no children; but what happens to product satisfaction when gas prices fluctuate, or the individual gets married and has children?
In many ways, the process of designing policy isn’t that much different. The government, just like auto companies, needs to ensure that its citizen-consumers have access to an array of goods and services. And just as in auto companies, a wide range of actors is engaged in figuring out how to do it. Sometimes, this process effectively provides policies that benefit citizens. But just as often, the process of policymaking is muddied by the demands of competing interests with different opinions about society’s needs or the role that government should play in meeting them. To understand why, we begin by thinking about what we mean by the term “public policy.”
Public Policy Defined
One approach to thinking about public policy is to see it as the broad strategy the government uses to do its job. More formally, it is the relatively stable set of purposive governmental actions that address matters of concern to some part of society. This description is useful in that it helps to explain both what public policy is and what it isn’t. First, public policy is a guide to legislative action that is more or less fixed for long periods of time, not just short-term fixes or single legislative acts. Policy also doesn’t happen by accident, and it is rarely formed simply as the result of the campaign promises of a single elected official, even the governor.
Public policy can be complicated and controversial; deciding what works best and how to allocate resources to achieve a policy goal can involve multiple trade- offs. While elected officials are often important in shaping policy, most policy outcomes are the result of considerable debate, compromise, and refinement that happen over years and are finalized only after input from multiple institutions within government as well as from interest groups and the public.
Consider the example of government health care expansion. A follower of politics in the news media may come away thinking the reforms implemented in 2010 were as sudden as they were sweeping, having been developed in the final weeks before they were enacted. The reality is that expanding health care access by the government had actually been a priority of the Democratic Party for several decades. What may have seemed like a policy developed over a period of months was in fact formed after years of analysis, reflection upon existing policy, and even trial implementation of similar types of programs at the state level.
Remember that the policies of the federal government often have a direct consequence for Texas. Texas led other states in an effort to combat the federal government’s efforts to take over the healthcare industry by the Obama administration’s program. Even before passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA; 2010), which expanded health care coverage to millions and of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA; 2010), more than 50 percent of all healthcare expenditures in the United States already came from federal government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Several House and Senate members from both parties along with First Lady Hillary Clinton had proposed significant expansions in federal health care policy during the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton, providing a number of different options for any eventual health care overhaul. Much of what became the ACA was drawn from proposals originally developed at the state level, by none other than Obama’s 2012 Republican presidential opponent Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.
This story illustrates an important aspect of policy, Republicans are not all the same. Republicans in Texas tend to be more conservative than Republicans in other parts of the country. This simply means that policy differences or preferences can occur within a political party. Likewise, Democrats in Texas tend to be more conservative than other parts of the country.
In addition to being thoughtful and generally stable, public policy deals with issues of concern to some large segment of society, as opposed to matters of interest only to individuals or a small group of people. Governments frequently interact with individual actors like citizens, corporations, or other countries. They may even pass highly specialized pieces of legislation, known as private bills, which confer specific privileges on individual entities. But public policy covers only those issues that are of interest to larger segments of society or that directly or indirectly affect society as a whole. Paying off the loans of a specific individual would not be public policy, but creating a process for loan forgiveness available to certain types of borrowers (such as those who provide a public service by becoming teachers) would certainly rise to the level of public policy.
A final important characteristic of public policy is that it is more than just the actions of government; it also includes the behaviors or outcomes that government action creates. Policy can even be made when government refuses to act in ways that would change the status quo when circumstances or public opinion begin to shift. For example, much of the debate over gun control policy
in the United States has centered on the unwillingness of Congress to act, even in the face of public opinion that supports some changes to gun control policy. In fact, one of the last major changes occurred in 2004, when lawmakers’ inaction resulted in the expiration of a piece of legislation known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994). Of course, this is relevant to Texas given the culture for freedom and self defense.
Public Policy as Outcomes
Governments rarely want to keep their policies a secret. Elected officials want to be able to take credit for the things they have done to help their constituents, and their opponents are all too willing to cast blame when policy initiatives fail. We can therefore think of policy as the formal expression of what elected or appointed officials are trying to accomplish. In passing the HCERA (2010), Congress declared its policy through an act that directed how it would appropriate money. The president can also implement or change policy through an executive order, which offers instructions about how to implement law under his or her discretion. Finally, policy changes can come as a result of court actions or opinions, such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which formally ended school segregation in the United States.
Typically, elected and even high-ranking appointed officials lack either the specific expertise or tools needed to successfully create and implement public policy on their own. They turn instead to the vast government bureaucracy to provide policy guidance. For example, when Congress passed the Clean Water Act (1972), it dictated that steps should be taken to improve water quality throughout the country. But it ultimately left it to the bureaucracy to figure out exactly how ‘clean’ water needed to be. In doing so, Congress provided the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with discretion to determine how much pollution is allowed in U.S. waterways.
There is one more way of thinking about policy outcomes: in terms of winners and losers. Almost by definition, public policy promotes certain types of behavior while punishing others. So, the individuals or corporations that a policy favors are most likely to benefit, or win, whereas those the policy ignores or punishes are likely to lose. Even the best-intended policies can have unintended consequences and may even ultimately harm someone, if only those who must pay for the policy through higher taxes.
For example, a policy designed to encourage students to go to liberal arts colleges may cause trade school enrollment to decline. Strategies to promote diversity in higher education may make it more difficult for qualified white or male applicants to get accepted into competitive programs. Efforts to clean up drinking water supplies may make companies less competitive and cost employees their livelihood. Even something that seems to help everyone, such as promoting charitable giving through tax incentives, runs the risk of lowering tax revenues from the rich (who contribute a greater share of their income to charity) and shifting tax burdens to the poor (who must spend a higher share of their income to achieve a desired standard of living). And while policy pronouncements and bureaucratic actions are certainly meant to rationalize policy, it is whether a given policy helps or hurts constituents (or is perceived to do so) that ultimately determines how voters will react toward the government in future elections.
Finding a Middle Ground: The Social Safety Net
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States created a set of policies and programs that constituted a social safety net for the millions who had lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings (Figure 11.2). Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the federal government began programs like the Work Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps to combat unemployment and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to refinance Depression-related mortgage debts. The Texas Department of Public Welfare was established in 1939 during the New Deal. As the effects of the Depression eased, the government phased out many of these programs. Other programs, like Social Security or the minimum wage, remain a part of the way the federal government redistributes wealth among members of its population. The federal government has also added further social support programs, like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, to ensure a baseline or minimal standard of living for all, even in the direst of times.
Figure 11.2 In 1937, during the Great Depression, families in Calipatria, California, waited in line for relief checks, part of the federal government’s newly introduced social safety net. Image credit: modification of work by the Library of Congress.
In recent decades, however, some have criticized these safety net programs for inefficiency and for incentivizing welfare dependence. They deride “government leeches” who use food stamps to buy lobster or other seemingly inappropriate items. Critics deeply resent the use of taxpayer money to relieve social problems like unemployment and poverty; workers who may themselves be struggling to put food on the table or pay the mortgage feel their hard-earned money should not support other families. “If I can get by without government support,” the reasoning goes, “those welfare families can do the same. Their poverty is not my problem.”
As for Texas, roughly 14 percent of Texas residents received Social Security benefits as of December 2016, according to the Social Security Administration. That translates to approximately 4 million people in Texas who received Social Security disbursements related to retirement, survivors, or disability benefits. About 2.9 million people in Texas were receiving retirement benefits. Of Texas’ estimated 3.4 million people aged 65 or older, about 87 percent received Social Security benefits, which is lower than this figure for the United States as a whole (which is roughly 90 percent). Benefits in Texas totaled roughly $4.85 billion for the month of December 2016, per the Social Security Administration. That works out to an average benefit of $1,206 for that month.
So where should the government draw the line? While there have been some instances of welfare fraud, the welfare reforms of the 1990s have made long-term dependence on the federal government less likely as the welfare safety net was pushed to the states. And with the income gap between the richest and the poorest at its highest level in history, this topic is likely to continue to receive much discussion in the coming years.
Question: Where is the middle ground in the public policy argument over the social safety net? How can the Texas government protect its most vulnerable citizens without placing an undue burden on others?
Categorizing Public Policy
The idea of public policy is by its very nature a politically contentious one. Among the differences between American liberals and conservatives are the policy preferences prevalent in each group. Modern liberals tend to feel very comfortable with the idea of the government shepherding progressive social and economic reforms, believing that these will lead to outcomes more equitable and fair for all members of society. Conservatives, on the other hand, often find government involvement onerous and overreaching. They feel society would function more efficiently if oversight of most “public” matters were returned to the private sphere. Before digging too deeply into a discussion of the nature of public policy, let us look first at why so many aspects of society come under the umbrella of public policy to begin with.
Different Types of Goods
Figure 11.3 This Library of Congress photo shows an early nineteenth- century subsistence farm in West Virginia, which once included crops, livestock, and an orchard. (credit: modification of work by the Library of Congress)
Think for a minute about what it takes to make people happy and satisfied. As we live our daily lives, we experience a range of physical, psychological, and social needs that must be met in order for us to be happy and productive. At the very least, we require food, water, and shelter. In very basic subsistence societies, people acquire these through farming crops, digging wells, and creating shelter from local materials. People also need social interaction with others and the ability to secure goods they acquire, lest someone else try to take them. As their tastes become more complex, they may find it advantageous to exchange their items for others; this requires not only a mechanism for barter but also a system of transportation. The more complex these systems are, the greater the range of items people can access to keep them alive and make them happy. However, this increase in possessions also creates a stronger need to secure what they have acquired.
Economists use the term goods to describe the range of commodities, services, and systems that help us satisfy our wants or needs. This term can certainly apply to the food you eat or the home you live in, but it can also describe the systems of transportation or public safety used to protect them. Most of the goods you interact with in your daily life are private goods, which means that they can be owned by a particular person or group of people, and are excluded from use by others, typically by means of a price. For example, your home or apartment is a private good reserved for your own use because you pay rent or make mortgage payments for the right to live there. Further, private goods are finite and can run out if overused, even if only in the short term. The fact that private goods are excludable and finite makes them tradable. A farmer who grows corn, for instance, owns that corn, and since only a finite amount of corn exists, others may want to trade their goods for it if their own food supplies begin to dwindle.
Proponents of free-market economicsbelieve that the market forces of supply and demand, working minimal government involvement, are the most effective way for markets to operate. The primary purpose of the government in this system is secure property rights. One of the basic principles of free-market economics is that for just about any good that can be privatized, the most efficient means for exchange is the marketplace. A well-functioning market will allow producers of goods to come together with consumers of goods to negotiate a trade. People facilitate trade by creating a currency—a common unit of exchange—so they do not need to carry around everything they may want to trade at all times. As long as there are several providers or sellers of the same good, consumers can negotiate with them to find a price they are willing to pay. As long as there are several buyers for a seller’s goods, providers can negotiate with them to find a price buyers are willing to accept. And, the logic goes, if prices begin to rise too much, other sellers will enter the marketplace, offering lower prices.
A second basic principle of free-market economics is that it is largely unnecessary for the government to protect the value of private goods. Farmers who own land used for growing food have a vested interest in protecting their land to ensure its continued production. Business owners must protect the reputation of their business or no one will buy from them. And, to the degree that producers need to ensure the quality of their product or industry, they can accomplish that by creating a group or association that operates outside government control. In short, industries have an interest in self-regulating to protect their own value. According to free-market economics, as long as everything we could ever want or need is a private good, and so long as every member of society has some ability to provide for themselves and their families, public policy regulating the exchange of goods and services is really unnecessary.
Some people in the United States argue that the self-monitoring and self- regulating incentives provided by the existence of private goods mean that sound public policy requires very little government action. Known as libertarians, these individuals believe government almost always operates less efficiently than the private sector (the segment of the economy run for profit and not under government control), and that government actions should therefore be kept to a minimum.
Even as many in the United States recognize the benefits provided by private goods, we have increasingly come to recognize problems with the idea that all social problems can be solved by exclusively private ownership. First, not all goods can be classified as strictly private. Can you really consider the air you breathe to be private? Air is a difficult good to privatize because it is not excludable—everyone can get access to it at all times—and no matter how much of it you breathe, there is still plenty to go around. Geographic regions like forests have environmental, social, recreational, and aesthetic value that cannot easily be reserved for private ownership. Resources like migrating birds or schools of fish may have value if hunted or fished, but they cannot be owned due to their migratory nature. Finally, national security provided by the armed forces protects all citizens and cannot reasonably be reserved for only a few.
These are all examples of what economists call public goods, sometimes referred to as collective goods. Unlike private property, they are not excludable and are essentially infinite. Forests, water, and fisheries, however, are a type of public good called common goods, which are not excludable but may be finite. The problem with both public and common goods is that since no one owns them, no one has a financial interest in protecting their long-term or future value. Without government regulation, a factory owner can feel free to pollute the air or water, since he or she will have no responsibility for the pollution once the winds or waves carry it somewhere else (see Figure 11.4). Without government regulation, someone can hunt all the migratory birds or deplete a fishery by taking all the fish, eliminating future breeding stocks that would maintain the population. The situation in which individuals exhaust a common resource by acting in their own immediate self-interest is called the tragedy of the commons.
Figure 11.4 Air pollution billows from a power plant before the installation of emission control equipment for the removal of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. Can you see why uncontrolled pollution is an example of the “tragedy of the commons”?
A second problem with strict adherence to free-market economics is that some goods are too large, or too expensive, for individuals to provide them for themselves. Consider the need for a marketplace: Where does the marketplace come from? How do we get the goods to market? Who provides the roads and bridges? Who patrols the waterways? Who provides security? Who ensures the regulation of the currency? No individual buyer or seller could accomplish this. The very nature of the exchange of private goods requires a system that has some of the openness of public or common goods, but is maintained by either groups of individuals or entire societies.
Economists consider goods like cable TV, cellphone service, and private schools to be toll goods. Toll goods are similar to public goods in that they are open to all and theoretically infinite if maintained, but they are paid for or provided by some outside (nongovernment) entity. Many people can make use of them, but only if they can pay the price. The name “toll goods” comes from the fact that, early on, many toll roads were in fact privately owned commodities. Even today, states from Virginia to California have allowed private companies to build public roads in exchange for the right to profit by charging tolls.
So long as land was plentiful, and most people in the United States lived a largely rural subsistence lifestyle, the difference between private, public, common, and toll goods was mostly academic. But as public lands increasingly became private through sale and settlement, and as industrialization and the rise of mass production allowed monopolies and oligopolies to become more influential, support for public policies regulating private entities grew. By the beginning of the twentieth century, led by the Progressives, the United States had begun to search for ways to govern large businesses that had managed to distort market forces by monopolizing the supply of goods. And, largely as a result of the Great Depression, people wanted ways of developing and protecting public goods that were fairer and more equitable than had existed before.
These forces and events led to the increased regulation of public and common goods, and a move for the public sector—the government—to take over of the provision of many toll goods.
Classic Types of Policy
Public policy, then, ultimately boils down to determining the distribution, allocation, and enjoyment of public, common, and toll goods within a society. While the specifics of policy often depend on the circumstances, two broad questions all policymakers must consider are a) who pays the costs of creating and maintaining the goods, and b) who receives the benefits of the goods? When private goods are bought and sold in a market place, the costs and benefits go to the participants in the transaction. Your landlord benefits from receipt of the rent you pay, and you benefit by having a place to live. But non-private goods like roads, waterways, and national parks are controlled and regulated by someone other than the owners, allowing policymakers to make decisions about who pays and who benefits.
In 1964, Theodore Lowi argued that it was possible to categorize policy based upon the degree to which costs and benefits were concentrated on the few or diffused across the many. One policy category, known as distributive policy, tends to collect payments or resources from many but concentrates direct benefits on relatively few. Highways are often developed through distributive policy. Distributive policy is also common when society feels there is a social benefit to individuals obtaining private goods such as higher education that offer long-term benefits, but the upfront cost may be too high for the average citizen. One example of the way distributive policy works is the story of the Transcontinental Railroad. In the 1860s, the U.S. government began to recognize the value of building a robust railroad system to move passengers and freight around the country. A particular goal was connecting California and the other western territories acquired during the 1840s war with Mexico to the rest of the country. The problem was that constructing a nationwide railroad system was a costly and risky proposition. To build and support continuous rail lines, private investors would need to gain access to tens of thousands of miles of land, some of which might be owned by private citizens. The solution was to charter two private corporations—the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads—and provide them with resources and land grants to facilitate the construction of the railroads (see Figure 11.5).Through these grants, publicly owned land was distributed to private citizens, who could then use it for their own gain. However, a broader public gain was simultaneously being provided in the form of a nationwide transportation network.
Texas continues to have more railroad mileage than any other state and the largest number of railroad employees. In 1992 chemicals accounted for thirty percent of the railroad tonnage originating in the state, while agricultural products, the leading category during the early years, accounted for only seven percent. Coal represented the largest category of rail tonnage terminating in Texas. The state is second only to Virginia with its extensive coal shipping piers in the amount of coal terminated. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eqr01.
Figure 11.5 In an example of distributive policy, the Union Pacific Railroad was given land and resources to help build a national railroad system. Here, its workers construct the Devil’s Gate Bridge in Utah in 1869
A quote from Sam Houston in 1858 on the importance of transportation
Figure 11.6 Transportation often comes about through distributive policy. Image credit: Jean Downs License: CC BY
The same process operates in the agricultural sector, where various federal programs help farmers and food producers through price supports and crop insurance, among other forms of assistance. These programs help individual farmers and agriculture companies stay afloat and realize consistent profits. They also achieve the broader goal of providing plenty of sustenance for the people of the United States, so that few of us have to “live off the land.”
Other examples of distributive policy support citizens’ efforts to achieve “the American Dream.” American society recognizes the benefits of having citizens who are financially invested in the country’s future. Among the best ways to encourage this investment are to ensure that citizens are highly educated and have the ability to acquire high-cost private goods such as homes and businesses. However, very few people have the savings necessary to pay upfront for a college education, a first home purchase, or the start-up costs of a business. To help out, the government has created a range of incentives that everyone in the country pays for through taxes but that directly benefit only the recipients. Examples include grants (such as Pell grants), tax credits and deductions, and subsidized or federally guaranteed loans. Each of these programs aims to achieve a policy outcome. Pell grants exist to help students graduate from college, whereas Federal Housing Administration mortgage loans lead to home ownership.
While distributive policy, according to Lowi, has diffuse costs and concentrated benefits, regulatory policy features the opposite arrangement, with concentrated costs and diffuse benefits. A relatively small number of groups or individuals bear the costs of regulatory policy, but its benefits are expected to be distributed broadly across society. As you might imagine, regulatory policy is most effective for controlling or protecting public or common resources. Among the best-known examples are policies designed to protect public health and safety, and the environment. These regulatory policies prevent manufacturers or businesses from maximizing their profits by excessively polluting the air or water, selling products they know to be harmful, or compromising the health of their employees during production.
A final type of policy is redistributive policy, so named because it redistributes resources in society from one group to another. That is, according to Lowi, the costs are concentrated and so are the benefits, but different groups bear the costs and enjoy the benefits. Most redistributive policies are intended to have a sort of “Robin Hood” effect; their goal is to transfer income and wealth from one group to another such that everyone enjoys at least a minimal standard of living. Typically, the wealthy and middle class pay into the federal tax base, which then funds need-based programs that support low-income individuals and families.
A few examples of redistributive policies are Head Start (education), Medicaid (health care), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, income support), and food programs like the Supplementary Nutritional Aid Program (SNAP). The government also uses redistribution to incentivize specific behaviors or aid small groups of people. Pell grants to encourage college attendance and tax credits to encourage home ownership are other examples of redistribution.
Link to Learning
The Public Policy Project on Ballotpedia aims to illuminate major policy issues being discussed and implemented throughout the United States. Public policy can be complicated and controversial; deciding what works best and how to allocate resources to achieve a policy goal can involve multiple trade-offs. Much of the public policy that affects citizens economically, legally and socially, is made at the state level.
Explore links and introductions to public policy in Texas to Texas public policy articles on Ballotpedia.
References and Further Reading
Texas Public Policy Foundation. Accessed September 10, 2019.
James E. Anderson. 2000. Public Policymaking: An Introduction, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Kaiser Family Foundation (2009). National Health Insurance—A Brief History of Reform Efforts in the U.S. Accessed September 10, 2019.
CBS Boston (2013, November). Romneycare vs. Obamacare: Key Similarities & Differences. Retrieved on October 22, 2019.
E. E. Schattschneider (1960). The Semi-Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Plumer, B. (2012, December). Everything you need to know about the assault weapons ban, in one post. Washington Post.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Scroggin, A. (2018). On Social Security’s anniversary, let’s look at what it means for Texans today. AARP. Retrieved on October 22, 2019.
Mildenberg, D. (2013, November 26). Private Toll Road Investors Shift Revenue Risk to States. Bloomberg. Retrieved on October 22, 2019.
History (2019, September 11). Transcontinental Railroad.
Licensing and Attribution
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American Government. Authored by: OpenStax. Provided by:OpenStax; Rice University. Located at: https://cnx.org/contents/W8wOWXNF@12.1:Y1CfqFju@5/Preface. License: CC BY: Attribution License Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/9e28f580-0d1b-4d72- 8795-c48329947ac2@1.
Making Public Policy in Texas
Learning Objective
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Describe the five stages in making public policy in Texas
Introduction: The Public Policy Process
Policymaking is a cyclical process. It begins in the problem identification stage with recognition and definition of a significant public problem and an organized call to government action through agenda-setting. In response, the legislative and bureaucratic machinery of government may formulate, adopt, and implement a strategy for addressing the problem. Analysis of policy effectiveness in turn often reveals shortcomings in the formulation or implementation or new problems to add to the policy agenda. The process is a cycle because the evaluation stage should feed back into the earlier stages, informing future decisions about the policy.
The public policy process is often described as a cycle that consists of five stages:
problem definition
agenda setting
policy adoption
implementation
evaluation
Making Public Policy
Defining the Problem
The first stage of policymaking is problem identification. During this initial stage, public attention is focused on some public problem or issue, and policymakers respond to these political needs and problems.
Problem identification identifies the issues that merit discussion. The act of problem identification necessitates specifying alternatives. Alternative specificationconsiders solutions to fix the difficulty raised in problem identification. For example, government officials may agree in the problem subphase that the increase in childhood obesity presents a societal problem worthy of government attention.
However, the solution can be complex, and people who otherwise agree might come into conflict over what the best answer is. Alternatives might range from reinvestment in school physical education programs and health education classes, to taking soda and candy machines out of the schools and requiring good nutrition in school lunches.
In the problem identification stage, our ideology—our ideas concepts, and visions about the way society works—plays a critical role in defining public policymaking. Whether a policy is considered “good” or “just” may depend on whether the person connecting with the proposal identifies as a liberal, conservative, libertarian, communitarians, or socialist.
Agenda Setting
Agenda setting is the second stage of policymaking. Not all issues make it onto the governmental agenda because there is only so much attention that government can pay. Thus, one of the more important tasks for a policy advocate is to frame his or her issue in a compelling way that raises a persuasive dimension or critical need. For example, health care reform has been attempted on many occasions over the years. One key to making the topic salient has been to frame it in terms of health care access, highlighting the percentage of people who do not have health insurance.
During this key stage, policy formation involves the detailed procedures of passing legislation, as well as making administrative rules and regulations. Agenda setting then takes place in which decisions are made regarding what problems will be discussed, how the problems will be understood, and what concrete measures will be taken to address them. As you may recall from our earlier discussion about interest groups, one of the goals of interest groups is to gain access to policy discussions inside agencies and legislatures; access provides interest groups with the opportunity to help set the institutional agenda.
Agenda setting ends when a given problem has been selected, a solution has been paired with that problem, and the solution goes to the decision makers for a vote. Acid rain provides another nice illustration of agenda setting and the problems and solutions subphases. Acid rain is a widely recognized problem that did not make it on to the governmental policy agenda until Congress passed the Air Quality Act of 1967, long after environmental groups started asking for laws to regulate pollution.
In recent years, the Texas official policy agenda has included such items as educational finance, property tax reform, medical malpractice reform, welfare reform, and corrections policy reform.
Policy Adoption
The third stage in the policymaking process is policy adoption. Once a proposed policy has been added to the agenda, policy adoption begins. In this policy phase, the elected branches of government typically consider one specific solution to a problem and decide whether to pass it.
Policy is made in a variety of different ways. Legislation may be passed and signed into law by the governor, or a state agency may change a rule or regulation.
This stage is the most visible one and usually garners the most press coverage. And yet it may be somewhat anticlimactic; by the time a specific policy proposal (a solution) comes out of agenda setting for a yes/no vote, it can be something of a foregone conclusion that it will pass.
However, the process of policy adoption can be extremely complex. Legislative committees and agency staff may hear testimony and sift through several different alternatives to address a problem. They may ask for reports to project the effects of a policy change before making a decision. The judiciary may issue a decision on a legal case that affects the potential policy.
Implementation
The fourth stage in the policy-making process is implementation. Once adopted, government agencies in the fourth stage begin the task of making the policy work. They establish procedures in accord with the policy, write guidance documents, and issue grants-in-aid to other government bodies. The agencies then carry out the policy as expressed by a legislative act, rule, regulation, or legal decision.
Identifying the appropriate agency to implement a program is crucial at this stage. They must adopt the new policy. Sometimes this requires adjusting budgets in order to accomplish a new task or function, or building new facilities, or developing infrastructure. Some policies are easily enacted, but others are more complex and require significant work. Budgetary policy plays a major role in the implementation stage and could determine the success or failure of a particular public policy.
Evaluation
At a certain point, all public policies must be evaluated for their effectiveness. Evaluation is the fifth stage in the policy-making process, and should be tied directly to the policy’s desired outcomes. In the best-case scenario, evaluation procedures would assess the stated goals of the particular policy against the actual outcomes of the implemented policy. Evaluation essentially asks, “How well did this policy do what we designed it to do?” The answers can sometimes be surprising. In one hotly debated case, the United States funded abstinence-only sex education for teens with the goal of reducing teen pregnancy. A 2011 study published in the journal PLoS One, however, found that abstinence-only education actually increased teen pregnancy rates.
Several different groups and persons may take part in evaluating a policy once it has been implemented. Often the agencies that implement the policy will evaluate the results of their actions to determine whether goals have been met. Legislators provide oversight of policy implementation. Through investigative reporting, the media evaluate the success or failure of public policy. Academic institutions and political scientists help evaluate policy through critiquing policy ideas and outcomes, and studying those impacted by policies. Citizens also provide an important evaluative function by responding to policies—and news regarding policies—through political participation.
Closing the loop between problem identification and program evaluation is one of the most challenging problems facing policymakers. Evaluation may reveal a need for revisions in policy, a need for changes in implementation, or even a whole new policy. It may also reveal new problems in need of policy solutions.
Next we will explore key policy areas shaping political life in Texas.
References and Further Reading
Anderson, J. E. (2010). Public Policymaking: An Introduction. Wadsworth.
Jones, B. D. & Baumgartner, F. R. (2005). The Politics of Attention. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kathrin F. Stanger-Hall & David W. Hall (2011). Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S. PLoS One.
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Making Public Policy in Texas. Authored by:panOpen. License: CC BY: Attribution
Key Policy Areas in Texas
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Identify the key policy issues and challenges in Texas
Introduction
In practice, public policy consists of specific programs that provide resources to members of society, create regulations that protect U.S. citizens, and attempt to equitably fund the government. We can broadly categorize most policies based on their goals or the sector of society they affect, although many, such as food stamps, serve multiple purposes. Implementing these policies costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and understanding the goals of this spending and where the money goes is of vital importance to citizens and students of politics alike.
Public policy can be complicated and controversial; deciding what works best and how to allocate resources to achieve a policy goal can involve multiple trade-offs. Much of the public policy that affects citizens economically, legally and socially, is made at the state level. Highlighted here are some key policy areas in Texas.
Civil Liberties
Affirmative ActionAffirmative action refers to a complex set of policies adopted by governments and institutions to take proactive measures to increase the proportion of historically disadvantaged minority groups. These measures have taken many different forms, including strict quotas, extra outreach efforts and student financial aid specifically for minorities. In the decades since it was first instituted, affirmative action has often taken the form of racial preferences, and the two terms are often used interchangeably.
Affirmative action in Texas refers to the steps taken by employers and universities in Texas to increase the proportions of historically disadvantaged minority groups at those institutions. Historically, affirmative action nationwide has taken many different forms, such as strict quotas, extra outreach efforts, and racial and gender preferences. However, racial quotas in university admissions were banned in a 1978 United States Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
As of March 2015, 109 out of 577 public four-year universities across the country reported that they considered race in admissions. This practice has been banned in eight states. Meanwhile, 28 states require affirmative action plans in either public employment or apprenticeships. Affirmative action programs that grant racial preferences have come under scrutiny in the courts for potentially violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The Right to Bear ArmsIn Texas, as in other states, public policy debates about gun violence include discussions about firearms deaths – including homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths – as well as the impact of gun ownership, criminal and legal, on gun violence outcomes. Texans who advocate for gun control support increasing regulations related to gun ownership, whereas Texans who advocate for gun rights support decreasing regulations related to gun ownership. Gun control advocates believe that legislatures can, consistent with the Constitution, impose reasonable limits on firearms sale, ownership, and use, without raising civil liberties concerns.
The dilemma for policymakers is protecting the public while avoiding infringement on 2nd amendment rights.
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In Texas, the right to keep and bear arms is said to belong to “every citizen” by the Texas constitution. Estimates of Texas gun ownership range from 35 to 43% of the population, which is above the national average.
At least seven people were killed and another 20 were injured in a mass shooting that stretched in and around Midland and Odessa, Texas. The incident was the second mass shooting in Texas in a month in 2019, following a shooting in El Paso, on Aug. 3.
Eight new gun laws went into effect in Texas Sept. 1, 2019, passed in May and June by the Texas Legislature (see Table 11.1). The laws eased restrictions on guns, allowing them to be carried in places of worship, during disasters and in rented and leased property.
LegislationLawSenate Bill 535Allows Texans to carry guns in churches, synagogues and other places of worship, unless otherwise banned by those places with proper signage.Senate Bill 741Prohibits property owners’ associations from banning storage of guns on rental properties.House Bill 121Provides a legal defense for licensed handgun owners who unknowingly enter an establishment that bans firearms as long as they leave when asked.House Bill 302Prohibits landlords from banning renters and their guests from carrying firearms in lease agreements.House Bill 1387Loosens restrictions on the number of school marshals who can carry guns at public and private schools in Texas.House Bill 1177Allows Texans to carry handguns without a license during a state of disaster.House Bill 1143Prohibits school districts from banning licensed gun owners from storing guns and ammunition in their vehicles in parking lots.House Bill 2363Allows certain foster homes to store guns and ammunition in a locked location.
Table 11.1 New Gun Laws in Effect on September 1, 2019 in Texas. Table adapted from KERA News (2019), 8 New Gun Laws Take Effect in Tex