Public Policy

In this part of the class we will look more closely at specific areas of public policy, beginning with the budget.   There is a famous saying that "all budgets are moral documents," meaning they reflect the values of society, or the government which is supposed to represent the people.  The federal budget refers to the expenses of the government every year on various programs and activities. The "power over the purse", or the power to control spending, and the power to tax, is given to the Congress in the U.S. Constitution, and does not specify a role for the President.  However,  the budget process is overseen by the President and the Congress, with special agencies like the Office of Management and Budget, the Government  Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office that provide oversight and research assistance for the budget.  According to the National Priorities Project, the process of making the federal budget can be broken down in...

This class will focus on how ideas influence institutions. Institutions are important in understanding public policy as they set the rules for how policy is made. Institutions are basically what hold societies together. There are political institutions, including: the legislatures where laws are made, government bureaucracies, the courts and legal system. Also, the military which is either another type of political institution, or a separate institution altogether. Besides politics, you have large economic institutions like corporations, smaller businesses, and labor unions which represent workers. In traditional societies religion played a major role in social order, but in modern societies this role is now largely played by the mass media, most of which are also privately run corporations like the movie and television industries, publishing, the music industry, etc. Collectively, these institutions all help maintain social order, and serve as conduits for the exercise of power. Mos...

The book by Béland and Cox is about how ideas shape policy. The first chapters focuses on arguments  for why ideas matter. Ideas are important in politics because they help define what a person's interests are. You cannot just assume people are like robots who can automatically calculate what their best interests are. Most of the time, people are influenced by the dominant cultural values in which they find themselves, for better or worse. Many times, people do things which are not in their best interest, and this is due to the influence of ideas and culture. For example, Jal Mehta says: Consider what it would mean to assert that ideas did  not  matter. (To be precise, I define an idea to “matter” when it (a) shapes people’s actions and (b) is not reducible to some other nonideational force.) At the broadest level, asserting that ideas do not matter would mean that shifting ideals about science, religion, democracy, slavery, colonization, gender, race, and homos...