Graduate Seminar in Public Policy:

Policy and Politics in Time

PS625

University of Oregon

Fall 2009

 

 

Political Science PS 625                                                         Dan Tichenor

Winter 2009                                                                            Office: PLC 927

Office Hours: Thursdays, 11:30-2:30                                     tichenor@uoregon.edu

                                                                                                Ph: 346-4707

 

           

                       

This year’s field seminar focuses on policymaking in American political development.  At the start of the term, we will examine a number of theories, concepts, and methodologies that social scientists have found useful to investigate the policy process.   For the rest of the term, we will focus our attention on the interplay of politics and policy over time in the United States, highlighting scholarship that links political and historical analysis in ways that enrich our understanding of policy processes and outcomes.  Placing politics and policy in time encourages us to pay as much attention to policy implementation, impacts, and feedbacks as agenda-setting, problem-definition, policy formulation, and adoption.  Equally if not more important, attending to the temporal dynamics of policymaking also helps us identify and evaluate important patterns and transformations in American public policy that may be obscured by narrower time horizons.

Our substantive concerns will include welfare, health care, tobacco control, education, economic regulation, and immigration.  We also will be considering the policymaking process in a variety of institutional contexts, including the White House, Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, and a federal system that divides power and delegates functions across national, state, and local governments.

 

Expectations and Requirements

 

This class will be run as a true seminar in which everyone is expected to engage the material and to actively participate in discussions.  Ultimately the quality of the course is contingent upon the strength of your preparation and involvement.  

 

These are the course requirements:

 

(1)   You are expected to complete the assigned reading faithfully, to attend each session, and to participate regularly in the exchange of ideas. 

 

(2)   You will help lead discussion for 2 of the seminar sessions.  A sign-up sheet will be distributed for this purpose.  Given the anticipated enrollment, there should be at least 2 discussion leaders each week.

 

(3)   You will write two short reaction papers (3-4 pages).  These papers should briefly summarize the reading/s to be addressed (no more than one paragraph), and then present a coherent and sustained argument in response to the reading/s at hand.  A focused critique is far preferred over a laundry list of reactions and insights.  These papers must be distributed electronically (details to follow) by 6:00 pm the evening before we meet for class.

 

(4)   You will complete a final project that may either be a literature review/research paper applying historical analysis to a specific policy issue of interest, or a take-home essay exam. 

 

Literature Review/Research Design

            One can only make so much headway on a research paper in 10 short weeks.  This final

            project is a hybrid version of the standard research paper, one in which the amount of

            original research is realistically constrained to meet time constraints.  The major

            components for the final project can be broken down as follows:

 

a)      Identify a policy issue of particular interest.  

 

b)      Specify a research question or problem concerning this issue that is compelling to you.

 

c)      Find roughly 7-10 scholarly articles, essays, or books that address your research topic and to evaluate their relative strengths and weaknesses in addressing your question. 

 

d)     Develop a research design or plan that considers your central question or problem. In keeping with theme of this seminar, you may want to think about how to broaden the temporal horizons of policy research on your question in terms of collecting data, or recognizing patterns and transformations, and so forth; however, this is not required.  Likewise, you may want to apply or challenge certain approaches and methods from the seminar vis-à-vis your topic and question. 

 

e)      Make an initial foray into the original research you propose.  As already noted, I know well that it is very unlikely that one can complete the research for a significant scholarly paper in a brief 10-week term.  But you should try to test the waters by digging into some of the original research.

 

f)       Parting thoughts: early surprises, findings, inspirations, false-starts, breakthroughs.

 

 

Take-Home Essay Exam

Those electing to complete this exam as their final assignment will be required to write 2 polished, typed 8-12 page essays in response to questions I will provide at the end of the term.

 

 

READINGS

 

Each week features a set of required and recommended readings.  Articles and book chapters will be made available via Blackboard.  The UO Bookstore has been asked to stock the following books (although bear in mind that many are available used from online book sellers):

 

Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (University of California Press, 2009)  2nd edition.

 

Gerald Berk, Alternative Tracks (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).  Winner of APSA’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on public policy.

 

David Blumenthal and James Morone, The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office (University of California Press, 2009).

 

Martha Derthick, Up in Smoke (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2004) 2nd edition.

Jacob Hacker, Road to Nowhere (Princeton University Press, 1997).

 

Christopher Howard, The Welfare State Nobody Knows (Princeton University Press, 2006).

 

Michael Howlett , M. Ramish and Anthony Perl, Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems (Oxford University Press, 2009) 3rd edition.

 

Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens (Oxford University Press, 2005).

 

Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (Norton, 2002) 2nd edition.

 

Dan Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton University Press, 2002) Winner of APSA’s Kammerer Award for best book in public policy.

 

 

COURSE OUTLINE AND ASSIGNED READINGS

 

September 29 – Introduction

October 6 – Policy Cycles, Subsystems, and Long-Term Dynamics (Plus Public Policy as an Academic Discipline and Rival Approaches)

                Howlett, Ramish , and Perl, Studying Public Policy, selections.

                Ann Schneider and Helen Ingram, Policy Design for Democracy, chapters 3 and 5.

               

 

October 13 – Bringing Politics into Policy Studies: Rationality, Ideals, and the Polis

                Stone, Policy Paradox, selections.

R. Kent Weaver and  B.A. Rockman, Do Institutions Matter?, pages 1-41.

Hugh Heclo, “Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment,” in King, ed., The New American Political System.

Margaret Weir, “Ideas and Bounded Innovation,” in Longstreth, Steinmo, and Thelen, Structuring Politics.

 

October 20 – Agendas and Change

                Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, selections.

                John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, brief excerpt.

Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review (1962), pages 947-52.

 

October 27 – The Political Economy and American Industrial Development: The Critical Case of Railroads  (GUEST: Gerry Berk)

                Berk, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865-1917, entire.

                Additional readings TBA.

 

November 3 – Who’s Afraid of the Welfare State?

                Howard, The Welfare State Nobody Knows, selections.

                Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, chapter 1.

                Robert Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, excerpt.

 

November 10 – Immigration and Its Discontents: How New Policies Create a New Politics

                Tichenor, Dividing Lines, selections.

Min Zhou, “Segmented Assimilation,” in Rosenblum and Tichenor, eds., Oxford Handbook on International Migration.

Tichenor, “Navigating a Political Minefield: The Politics of Illegal Immigration,” The Forum:  Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, Fall 2009.

                Pierson, Politics in Time, excerpt.

November 17 – Policy Evolution: Legislation, Regulation and Adversarial Legalism

                Derthick, Up In Smoke, selections.

                Charles Lindblom, “The Science of Muddling Through,” Public Administration Review (1959).

                Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation, brief excerpt.

                R. Shep Melnick, Between the Lines, excerpt.

 

November 24 – Health Care Reform and Its Disconents

                Blumenthal and Morone, The Heart of Power, selections.

Jacob Hacker, "The Historical Logic of National Health Insurance: Structure and Sequence in the Development of British, Canadian, and U.S. Medical Policy," Studies in American Political Development 12:1 (Spring 1998): 57-130.

 

December 1 – Citizens, Public Policy, and the Uneasy State

                Mettler, From Soldiers to Citizens, selections.

                James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy, excerpt.

                Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform, excerpt.

Edwin  Amenta and Theda Skocpol, “Taking Exception: Explaining the Distinctiveness of American Public Policies in the Last Century, in Francis G. Castles, ed., The Comparative History of Public Policy, pages 292-333.