Public Policy

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...

The debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault in 1971 represents a debate that has occurred in politics since ancient times over the importance of concepts like truth and justice. Thinkers like Foucault argue that truth and justice are merely masks to conceal the motives of power. Groups or individuals who claim to represent these ideas use them to hold sway over others, and to make their power over others seem normal or natural. Foucault goes on to argue that political movements should get rid of any notions of truth or justice, and simply be explicit about seeking to gain power. In Plato's Republic , Thrasymachus makes a similar argument, when he says "justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger." Before going on to look at Chomsky's response, it is interesting to look at some examples of what Foucault might mean when political figures use ideas like truth and justice. One example could be U.S. foreign policy, or the foreign policy of any state for ...

This class will focus more on how ideas influence public policy. It seems most of you enjoyed the Cornel West speech which I am glad to see, and I think it is valuable as sort of an introduction to politics and specifically public policy, but now we will dive deeper into how ideas influence public policy. The introduction to the book, Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research , edited  by Daniel Béland and Robert H. Cox  provide arguments why ideas are important in understanding how political institutions work, and their influence in social science (economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.). They also feature chapters by several theorists who focus on ideas in public policy, like Jal Mehta, Vivien Schmidt, Mark Blyth, and others.  Ideas are important because they determine how we see and interpret the world. Ideas themselves do not come out of nowhere but emerge from the dominant culture of a society, or in some cases from alternati...

Last class, I asked everyone to watch the speech by Cornel West, and to write their first blog on this. The discussion by West provides an overview of how to understand public policy, or politics in general. Basically, there are at least five major themes that West brings up that are important: 1) a radical idea of freedom; 2) the importance of the arts and humanities; 3) democratic socialism is, as West says, "as American as apple pie"; 4) you cannot talk about racism, sexism, etc. without also talking about capitalism; 5) the United States is an empire in decline and the tensions between what he calls "a fragile experiment in democracy" with empire. I would also encourage everyone to read West's books if you have a chance, especially Race Matters . This speech is a good representation of West's thinking on many subjects.  1) West's idea of freedom is radically different from conservatives who define as freedom as not having to pay taxes or regulation...