It's not just elections: how policy change happens.

 Although it’s hard not to think about such things right now, it’s not all about elections. Those of us who want to make the world more just also need to think about and advocate for specific policies to move things in that direction in real time at the national, state, and local level when opportunities arise.

I’d like to share a simple nonideological model for thinking about how policy change happens—or doesn’t. The model was developed by political scientist John Kingdon’s 1984 book “Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.”

I’d been doing policy work for years before a friend mentioned the book. I checked it out and had to admit that, yeah, this is pretty much how it happens. I’m going to share a ridiculously simplified version.

First, let me state the obvious, policy change doesn’t happen just because it’s rational, because it’s the right thing to do, and/or it would help thousands of people. It happens when certain things come together.

In Kingdon’s model, a window for effecting change opens when three “streams” come together: the policy, problem, and political stream. 

The policy stream

The policy stream consists of ideas that trickle up from the “primeval soup” of advocacy groups, “policy entrepreneurs” (more popularly known as wonks), attorneys, staffers, and such. Ideally, policy ideas should be specific and well thought out, which usually means getting in the weeds.

For example, “health care for all” isn’t a policy, although I’m all for it. It’s a goal that could be achieved by several different policies, such as a national system on the British model, single payer as in Canada, or a hybrid. The same is true of calls to abolish this or that institution. I’m down, but actually moving in that direction would require enacting or repealing several specific policies.

However, even the best idea won’t go anywhere unless somebody—more like a lot of somebodies—care about it.

The problem stream

This is where the problem stream comes in. Some of the most important social change work consists of getting people to think of the issues we care about as problems that can and must be solved. Kingdon distinguishes between problems and conditions: 

“There is a difference between a condition and a problem. We put up with all manner of conditions every day: bad weather, unavoidable and untreatable illnesses, pestilence, poverty, fanaticism. ... Conditions become defined as problems when we come to believe that we should do something about them.”

It can take weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries to get people to think of things as problems that must be solved rather than unavoidable conditions. A great example is the battered women’s movement. When I was a child, comedians on television actually joked about domestic violence; that doesn’t happen anymore because of years of public education and advocacy—which led to major policy changes.

Given the extremely divided state of U.S. public opinion, clearly much work needs to happen here in terms of coalition building, communications, popular education, and messaging—which means reaching out beyond bubbles and comfort zones.

An example

For a longer view, think that for millennia many people believed that systems of forced labor such as slavery or serfdom were inevitable conditions of civilization rather than problems that needed to be solved and ended. A classic example of people who made progress in getting an issue into the problem stream are the Garrisonian abolitionists. 

They weren’t policy wonks: Immediate abolition of slavery based on moral suasion wasn’t a doable policy. They weren’t revolutionaries like John Brown and his biracial band, who pushed the issue past the breaking point with their raid in what is now my home state of West Virginia. They weren’t practical political actors, like Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln. Nor were they the pure force of the Union army or the thousands of slaves who flocked to Union lines in what W.E.B. DuBois aptly called “a general strike.” 

Still, they got the anti-slavery issue out there for decades, without which some of the other work may not have happened. As Garrison summarized this approach, "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. … I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD."

The political stream

Once an issue is in the problem stream, it’s possible to link policy issues as solutions, which leads us to the foulest and most polluted stream: the political.

Lots of things influence and shape the political stream. The most obvious is on all our minds lately: election results. But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. The death or retirement of a key politician or Supreme Court Justice, a change of leadership, or even a quarrel between influential politicians can directly impact this stream.

The political stream can also be influenced—and opened or closed—based on social movements, which unfortunately can’t be manufactured at will; galvanizing events, such as natural or social disasters; or changes in the public mood. With any of these changes, what might have been possible becomes impossible and vice versa. And the situation changes all the time. 

We can’t always—or usually—anticipate or control such changes. But we can prepare for them and move when openings occur.

Case studies

Maybe some examples could help. Let’s start with health care, a key concern of mine these days. The first “mainstream” politician in the U.S. who advocated for something like national health care was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, when he ran as an independent Progressive Republican.

He lost. In the 1930s and '40s, his distant cousin Franklin and successor, Harry Truman, advocated for it but were blocked by racist Southern politicians and powerful lobby groups. The political stream was blocked.

For a while the problem stream was blocked. Health care wasn’t terribly expensive. Many expensive procedures hadn’t been developed. And many Americans could access health care through their employers.

That changed. More and more jobs provided no health benefits. By the late 2000s, around 50 million Americans, many of them working, had no health care. And their lack of coverage drove up costs for everyone.

Thanks to the efforts of advocates and experiences of impacted people, this became a problem.

In the aftermath of the 2008 elections, Democrats, for good or ill, controlled the presidency, the House of Representatives and a veto-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. The window for reform was open. For a few weeks.

In 2009, the majorities of both houses of Congress worked on a health reform plan, eventually coming up with a hybrid version that included expanding Medicaid for low income working families, establishing a mandate for some individuals and employers to provide health care, and creating a market or exchange where people could purchase more or less subsidized health care.

Neither version was perfect, but with the loss of the supermajority, the lesser version became the only option. No further improvements could be made immediately. Then it was time for defense. That’s where we are now.

Or consider the Iraq war. In the 1990s, neo-conservative activists proposed the policy of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime to supposedly bring peace and stability to the Middle East (and we all know how that worked out). They gained no traction until the political and problem streams changed with the 2000 election and the 9/11 attacks. Then they linked their policy (war) to a problem (fear of terrorism) in a changed political stream (new president). 

A negative example

Here’s a case, one of many for me, of one that got away. Around the same time as passage of the ACA, a window opened for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have been a true game changer in terms of rebuilding a middle class. It would have made it easier for workers to join unions, which could in turn negotiate for better wages, benefits, and conditions while also educating workers about policy issues.

The U.S. House passed EFCA around 2007. With the supermajority in 2009, a window was open in the Senate to make it the law of the land. That didn’t happen. People dithered. The supermajority was lost. The window closed.

When that happens, one can waste time, energy, and often money on beating one’s metaphorical head against a wall—or, without giving up hope, focus on things that could help the situation right now.

There are lots of negative examples like this one. Windows for major policy change can be opened or closed, but the latter is the most frequent option. Still, by tracking changes, we have a chance to distinguish between the possible and impossible.

So what does this all mean?

I’m convinced the model can help us figure where we are and where we need to go in our pursuit of more human and liberating policies. The stream metaphor can point the way.

First, are we really clear about the specific (and probably imperfect) policy we want? Is it doable and specific about implementation?

Second, does anyone who can help make it happen care? If not, that signifies more work that must be done in the short and long term.

Third, what needs to happen politically to make this happen? How can we engage and influence it, even if that involves waiting for opportunities? 

Fourth, what do we do if it’s not going to happen? (Solution: without abandoning one’s goals, move on to the next thing and deal with the threats and/or opportunities that emerge, while circling back when things change.)

Working it backwards

Then there’s the other side of the coin. This model can also be useful in trying to “kill” bad policy ideas that might roll down. Specifically, we can attempt to show that the proposed policy idea wouldn’t solve the problem suggested and could indeed make things worse, as is often the case. And we could offer realistic alternatives.

We could also argue that the issue at hand isn’t the real problem or could make the problem worse. Or we could direct our attention to figuring out what we can do to influence or close the political stream or at least redirect it a bit.

This overall approach is more a compass than a road map. But then, as many before us have tried to say, the map is not the territory.

But it can help us move in the directions we want to go.

(Note: this essay first appeared in a blog post on the American Friends Service Committee's website. There's also a link to a Facebook live discussion on the topic there.)

Three streams (no water pun intended)

The water crisis brought on by Freedom Industries' chemical leak provides a good real life illustration of what I think is a useful tool from political science. It's from John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.

Theory is important, by the way. No one serious about affecting social change should ignore it. Or worse, substitute it with bad or just tired rhetoric. And the main reason to develop good theories in this context is to be able to apply them in real situations.

In Kingdon's model, policy changes happen when policy windows open. Policy windows open when three streams come together: the problem stream, the policy stream and the political stream. Specifically, those interested in enacting a policy need to be able to "couple" it to something that is widely seen to be a problem when political conditions are favorable. When the streams don't come together, it's hard to get anything major done.

The chemical leak made plenty of people see the need for clean water to be a problem. It's an open question as to whether it will be possible to muster the political will to enact strong enough policies to protect it.

There are lots of roles to be played in this arena. One is the wonkish role of developing policies and trying to pitch them to the political stream and link them to problems people want to act on. Another is to muster pressure to move the political stream in the right direction. Still another is raising public awareness that this or that is a problem that can really be addressed.

One thing is for sure in the water crisis: we've got the problem stream covered. We'll see in the next few weeks how or if the others come together. I hope they do. Its a safe bet though that the toughest stream will be the political one.

Virtu and fortuna

Goat Rope has been looking at public policy and how it happens these days. It occurred to me (not for the first time) that the author of Ecclesiastes was right about there being nothing new under the sun.

Some of the wisest words ever written about political strategy come from my old pal and sometime patron saint Niccolo Machiavelli, who admittedly does have a bit of a PR problem.

But let's put in in context. In his book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy, political scientist John Kingdon looks at how public policy gets made. His most interesting idea--and one that rings true in my experience--is that there are policy windows that open sometimes. When they're open, you have a chance at getting things done and when they close, you don't. (Speaking of which, the jury is still out on the window for health care reform.)

A policy window could be a crisis, a change in mood following an election, the expiration of a piece of legislation that has to be revisited, or any number of things. Sometimes--rarely--you know in advance when a window might open. Most of the time you don't. That means you need to do a lot of preparation in advance to be able to seize the moment when it comes.

In his classic The Prince, Machiavelli talked about virtu and Fortuna. Virtu basically means the voluntary things we have control of while Fortuna referred to the unexpected opportunities that might come along. Machiavelli believed that we could at least anticipate and prepare for these opportunities:

...I think it may be true that fortune is the ruler of half our actions, but that she allows the other half or thereabouts to be governed by us. I would compare her to an impetuous river that, when turbulent, inundates the plains, casts down trees and buildings, removes earth from this side and places it on the other; everyone flees before it, and everything yields to its fury without being able to oppose it; and yet though it is of such a kind, still when it is quiet, men can make provisions against it by dykes and banks, so that when it rises it will either go into a canal or its rush will not be so wild and dangerous. So it is with fortune, which shows her power where no measures have been taken to resist her, and directs her fury where she knows that no dykes or barriers have been made to hold her.

The key to success, in Machiavelli's day as in our own, is the matching of virtu to Fortuna, which above all means adapting to the needs and opportunities of the moment:

...the prince who bases himself entirely on fortune is ruined when fortune changes. I also believe that he is happy whose mode of procedure accords with the needs of the times, and similarly he is unfortunate whose mode of procedure is opposed to the times....

I therefore conclude then that fortune varying and men remaining fixed in their ways, they are successful so long as these ways conform to circumstances, but when they are opposed then they are unsuccessful.

FORTUNA IS FICKLE. Here's reaction from the AFL to the health care reform goat rope in the Senate.

ANOTHER VIEW. Krugman says pass it.

A STATE VIEW of what reform, especially Medicaid expansion, would mean to WV is given here.

COOL VIEW of an undersea volcanic eruption here.

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Catching the wave

The eminent philosopher Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part. But it also seems to be an indispensable part of working for social change. It's like learning to fall in judo--if you aren't willing to do it you might as well stay off the mat.

As an analyst told political scientist John Kingdon in Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies,

When you lobby for something, what you have to do is put together your coalition, you have to gear up, you have to get your political forces in line, and then you sit there and wait for the fortuitous event....As I see it, people who are trying to advocate change are like surfers waiting for the big wave. You get out there, you have to be ready to go, you have to be ready to paddle. If you're not ready to paddle when the big wave comes along, you're not going to ride it in.

That pretty much says it all.

SPEAKING OF GOAT ROPES, how 'bout the health care mess in the Senate?

AS DISAPPOINTING AS THE SENATE BILL IS, it would be huge for El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. Here's labor's five point plan for generating them.

TICKING CLOCK. Jobless workers are about to lose health insurance subsidies unless those are extended.

HOW'S THE FISHING? A big planet with lots of water has been found not too far away (in cosmic terms).

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When the time comes

Timing is everything.

Lately the theme here is public policy and how it gets made--or doesn't. I've been bouncing off some of the research of political scientist John Kingdon's very useful book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Although this book was written in the 1980s about federal legislation, it rings pretty true today even at the state level.

If you are interested in this kind of thing, you can get in touch with your inner policy wonk by clicking on earlier entries.

As mentioned earlier, Kingdon refers to wonks as policy entrepreneurs, who are people willing to put time and effort into developing ideas for how laws and programs could work.

Let's say a given wonk or group of wonks develops a really good policy idea. As the saying goes, that and a couple of bucks will buy you coffee in most places unless you like the fancy kind. It's important in this early stage to get the idea out there to as wide an audience as possible--and especially the audience that pays attention to such things and can help make them happen. He calls this process "softening up," a term that brings artillery barrages to mind.

As he put it,

Who are policy entrepreneurs trying to soften up? Some of the time, they speak of educating the general public. Presidential speeches, for instance, are used to "bring the public along," in the words of one bureaucrat...

A second target is a more specialized public, peculiar to a particular issue.. As with the general public, the purpose of the softening up is to insure that the relevant public is ready for a certain type of proposal when the time does come...

I think the key words are "when the time does come." I've frequently written here about the similarity of this kind of work to my martial arts hobby. As much as one might like to, you can't usually kick someone in the head (in a friendly way) just because you want to; you can only do it when an opening exists.

In my experience as in Kingdon's analysis, it takes a long period of preparation to be able to move quickly to get something done when this happens. But without an opening or a window, it probably won't happen. That's what makes it interesting.

NOTHING BUT SHAME. Here's E.J. Dionne on dirty deeds done dirt cheap (to coin a phrase) in the US Senate. And here's the way the prospects for health care reform looks now.

EASY MONEY. Economist Dean Baker calls for a tax on financial speculation here.

FREE MEDS. 270,000 West Virginians may be eligible for free prescription drugs under the WVRx program.

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Softening up the target

The theme at Goat Rope these days is public policy and how it happens (or doesn't). If you're interested in this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Political scientist John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies looks at the political ecosystem from major players like presidents and senators down to humble policy wonks. We're on the wonk part now.

One pleasant surprise for me in reading Kingdon's analysis is his assertion that ideas actually matter (to a degree anyway). This is especially true in what he calls the policy community, which consists of interest groups, think tanks, academics and others interested in this kind of thing.

You might think that policy ideas are developed as solutions to particular problems. Kingdon agrees that this happens, but also maintains that "people in and around government sometimes do not solve problems. Instead, they become advocates for solutions and look for current problems to which to attach their pet solution."

Just because one has a viable idea that holds up well to arguments and critiques, it doesn't follow that it will become a reality--but it might. The next phase involves what he calls "softening up:"

To some degree ideas float freely through the policy primeval soup. But their advocates do not allow the process to be completely free-floating. In addition to starting discussion of their proposals, they push their ideas in many different forums. These entrepreneurs attempt to "soften up" both policy communities, which tend to be inertia-bound and resistant to major changes, and larger publics, getting them used to new ideas and building acceptance for their proposals. Without this preliminary work, a proposal sprung even at a propitious time is likely to fall on deaf ears.

That rings true in my experience of working at the state level. Once you've developed an idea, you need to get it out there to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways for it to stand a change of going anywhere. This involves both public education and coalition building. Sometimes this can take years.

IT'S TOUGH OUT THERE. A new poll of unemployed workers shows the damage done by the recession.

AFGHANISTAN. Economist Jeffrey Sachs suggests a different approach in that country.

ANOTHER TOOL USING ANIMAL. Would you believe the octopus?

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Policy entrepreneurs

Arpad is quite the entrepreneur during deer season. This picture represents his idea of heaven.

The theme at Goat Rope lately has been public policy and how it happens or doesn't, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. As mentioned previously, one of the most useful explorations of this area is John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, which was written in the 1980s but still holds up pretty well.

And, while Kingdon was writing primarily about federal policies, it seems to fit pretty well at the state level as well. To recap, usually it's the political big dogs who get to set the agenda, which is basically what's on the table for legislation at any given time. They tend to be big picture people responding to what they consider to be a major problem.

The specific policy alternatives, for example how to reform health care, are often developed by people in a less visible position, such as congressional and administration staffers, researchers, etc.

Before anything makes it to that stage, ideas continually emerge and recombine in what he called "the primeval soup" of the policy community, which consists of wonks, interest groups, academics, etc.

Kingdon identifies one group in which I must claim membership which he calls "policy entrepreneurs" who advocate for specific options. He says that these

are not necessarily found in any one location in the policy community. They could be in or out of government, in elected or appointed positions, in interest groups or research organizations. But their defining characteristic, much as in the case of a business entrepreneur, is their willingness to invest their resources--time, energy, reputation, and sometimes money--in the hope of a future return. That return might come to them in the form of policies of which they approve, satisfaction from participation, or even personal aggrandizement in the form of job security or career promotion.

In his view, policy entrepreneurs have different motivations. For some, it might be the advancement of personal interest, while for others it might be attempting to promote their values or the sheer fun of the game.

(Personally, I like it when you are trying to do something that is rational, doable and in the interests of low income and working people. But, yes, the game can be kind of fun.)

More later.

A DOG THAT DON'T HUNT. The Associated Press conducted an exhaustive survey of all the intercepted "climategate" emails and concludes that the science of global warming is still solid.

GO BYRD. This op-ed by yours truly attempted to send some love to WV's senior senator for his recent statement on the future of coal in this state.

LESSONS LEARNED? Here's Krugman on reforms in banking and finance.

MONKEY SAY, MONKEY DO. Here's more on the "language" of certain monkeys.

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Primeval soup

Lately Goat Rope is looking at the messy but interesting process of how public policy gets made (or doesn't). You'll also find links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

Before any major new public policy is introduced to the public or placed on the agenda, it often begins as an idea developed by a peculiar human subspecies popularly known as policy wonks.

As John Kingdon put it in Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies,

Picture a community of specialists: researchers, congressional staffers, people in planning and evaluation offices and in budget offices, academics, interest group analysts. Ideas float around in such communities. Specialists have their conceptions, their vague notions of future directions, and their more specific proposals. They try out their ideas on each other by going to lunch, circulating papers, publishing articles, holding hearings, presenting testimony, and drafting and pushing legislative proposals. The process often does take years...and may be endless.

Kingdon compares the development of policy proposals to the biological process of natural selection:

Much as molecules floated around in what biologists call the "primeval soup" before life came into being, so ideas float around in these communities. Many ideas are possible, much as many molecules would be possible. Ideas become prominent and then fade. There is a long process of "softening up": ideas are floated, bills introduced, speeches made; proposals drafted, then amended in response to reaction and floated again. Ideas confront one another (much as molecules bumped into one another) and combine with one another in various ways. The "soup: changes not only through the appearance of wholly new elements, but even more by the recombination of previously existing elements. While many ideas float around in this policy primeval soup, the ones that last, as in a natural selection system, meet some criteria. Some ideas survive and prosper; some proposals are taken more seriously than others.

Believe it or not, ideas actually matter, although it's a long way from conception to implementation.

HEALTH CARE AND THE HOUSE. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says nice things about the Senate compromise on health care reform here.

JOBS AND THE FED. Here's Krugman on what the Federal Reserve can and probably won't do to boost employment.

THE HOLLY AND THE IVY AND MORE are discussed in the latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

CHIMPS LIKE US dig music. They also like hugs.

TALKING COAL. Here's Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo post on public reaction to Senator Byrd's recent statement on the future of coal. And here's an item about coal and climate change legislation in the US Senate.

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Agendas and alternatives

Little Edith Ann has a dirty mouth some days.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is how public policy is made, which is usually a lot messier in practice than it is in theory. You will also find links and comments about current events.

As discussed in earlier posts, in Policyland, there is a big difference between agendas and alternatives. Political or public policy agendas are the big picture priorities often laid out by political leaders such as presidential administrations or leading legislators. Alternatives involve the specific ways of dealing with or implementing the items on the agenda.

As John Kingdon put it in Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policy,

Apart from the set of subjects or problems that are on the agenda, a set of alternatives for governmental action is seriously considered by governmental officials and those closely associated with them.

Usually for any problem that makes its way onto a policy agenda--health care reform being one example--there are any number of ways of approaching the subject. Sticking with health care, alternatives might include single payer, a Medicare for all option to compete with private insurance (which would probably have been the easiest way to deal with it), or a mix of private insurance reforms with public ones like what seems to be on the table now.

While those who set the agenda are high profile public figures, often the specific policy alternatives are developed and floated offstage by experts, congressional or administrative staff, advocacy and interest groups. Usually, out of a wide range of possible alternatives, a select few are given serious attention.

Again, using health care as an example, President Obama made it an early priority and laid out a series of elements that he wanted it to contain, a priority shared by many in Congress. However, it was mostly left to Congress to develop specific legislation. In Congress, the specifics of the House and Senate versions were mostly developed offstage to meet the priorities set by congressional leadership.

People working at the grassroots have two challenges. One is to work as skillfully as possible to get specific problems on the agenda to start with. The second is to try to influence the alternatives that make it to the agenda.

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT, but I'm with Friedman on this one.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, a new poll shows that most Americans would support climate change legislation--and paying for it--if it increased jobs.

ONE MORE THING. Here's Wired Science on the psychology of climate change denial.

THE (LATEST) DEAL on the Senate's health care compromise is discussed here. For what it's worth, El Cabrero thinks the Medicare buy-in provision is a very big deal and could mean more in the long run than a weak public option.

KEEPING IT REAL. Here's a call for relevant social science research.

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Problems and conditions

Seamus McGoogle has problems.

The theme at Goat Rope this stretch is how laws and policies get made, a process that Bismarck famously compared with sausage making.

One factor that seems to affect whether an issue will gain any traction in the policy arena has to do with how it is seen. As John Kingdon, author of Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies suggests, it makes a big different whether something is seen as a problem or a condition. In his words,

There is a difference between a condition and a problem. We put up with all manner of conditions every day: bad weather, unavoidable and untreatable illnesses, pestilence, poverty, fanaticism... Conditions become defined as problems when we come to believe that we should do something about them. Problems are not simply the conditions or external events themselves; there is also a perceptual, interpretive element.

To use climate change as an example, opponents of addressing either tend to deny it altogether or else to claim that it is not happening as a result of human activity, which would make it a condition rather than a problem.

Defining exactly what is and isn't a problem is a game with high political stakes. As Kingdon put it,

...Some are helped and others hurt, depending on how problems get defined. If things are going basically your way, for instance, you want to convince others that there are no problems out there.

Conversely, if things are not going your way, it makes sense to "define the problem in such a way as to place the burden of adjustment elsewhere, and to avoid changing one's own patterns."

From an advocacy standpoint, one of the most important tasks is to work to raise an issue from something seen as a condition to something seen as a political problem, one that has a solution. The unequal treatment of African Americans, for example, was seen as a condition in much of the country until the civil rights movement elevated to the level of a political problem.

But getting something to be seen as a problem on the public agenda is only part of the struggle. The next phase has to do with sorting out the specific alternatives, about which more later.

SPEAKING OF PROBLEMS, President Obama laid out his proposals for stimulating employment yesterday.

SPEAKING OF JOBS, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that plenty of those will be lost without additional aid to states.

HEALTH CARE. Wheeling and dealing galore is going on in the US Senate. Some good things on the table now are further expansions of Medicaid and a Medicare buy-in for workers 55 and over. The latter measure is one long proposed by WV Senator Jay Rockefeller and would help meet a huge need. Here's hoping both of those survive. Here's the latest as of late Tuesday night.

RANT ALL YOU WANT about those intercepted emails, but climate change isn't slowing down to fit the news cycle.

PERSONAL NOTE. El Cabrero is headed to DC the rest of the week for a conference on state fiscal policy. I'm such a geek that this is one of the high points of my year. The coolest part is that I plan on taking a train to get there. Trains are cool. Goat Rope should continue to appear as usual.

Also, this post was scheduled for publication late Tuesday. If anything bad happens between now and Wednesday, please accept condolences.

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What's on the table

The theme at Goat Rope this week is public policy and how it gets made, a subject that I find to be often interesting and sometimes scary. In doing this, I'm drawing on some of the insights of John Kingdon, author of Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policy, a 1984 book that holds up pretty well.

The first step in getting any policy enacted into law is to get it on the agenda, which is basically what's on the political table for consideration at any given point in time. The agenda consists of all the things people in and around government pay attention to.

Agenda setting is important both for what it brings to the table and for what it keeps off it. For example in the Bush years, addressing climate change (and much else) just wasn't on it.

So who gets to do it? It probably won't be a surprise for readers to find that Kingdon's research found that presidents (with their staff and political appointments) generally get first whack at it, especially when they're still in the honeymoon phase or are acting in accord with a perceived public mood or addressing widely recognized problem. And, although his research was aimed at the federal level, it's safe to say that governors play a similar role at the state level.

Many other players--such as civil servants, congressional staffers, interest groups, researchers, academics, etc.--try with more or less success to influence the agenda, but these players often take the indirect route.

Congress (and state legislatures, by extension) are also major players in agenda setting. The power of Congress in agenda setting may wax while that of the president wanes. For example after the 1994 Republican congressional landslide, the new majority took the initiative in trying to set the agenda with its Contract With (On?) America.

Obviously, in all this elections matter. Using the Bush years as another example, the balance began to tilt away from the president after the 2006 elections, in which Democrats gained the majority. With the 2008 elections, much of the agenda setting lately has come from the Obama administration, although that may change in the future.

Major events--Pearl Harbor and 9/11, for example--can also alter the public agenda as well, as can grassroots pressure from below. One other factor that can do so is whether an issue as seen as a problem or a condition.

More about this to come.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Groups are urging Congress to act to extend unemployment and COBRA benefits about to expire.

SICK DAYS. Calling in is not an option for many low wage workers.

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. The EPA is prepared to deal with climate change if Congress isn't.

URGENT GRAMMATICAL MONKEY UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Agendas

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Many Americans at one time or another were taught in public school a little bit about "how a bill becomes law." The textbook version leaves out a lot of the chaos, messiness and such. As a bit of a policy wonk, I find this kind of thing fascinating, but the subject really matters to lots of real people, with the current health care reform debate being a case in point.

I've found John Kingdon's 1984 book Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies to be as good an analysis of how these things happen as I've seen anywhere. According to Kingdon, public policy happens through a series of processes that includes:

*the setting of the agenda, which lays out the big picture list of subjects that are on the metaphorical table for action. Elected officials tend to play leading roles in this, but they aren't the only actors;

*the development of policy alternatives relevant to the agenda from which a choice is to be made. This is more detailed and specific and usually involves people less visible than presidents or elected officials, such as staffers, researchers, interest groups, advocates, policy wonks, etc.;

*a decision or choice among the alternatives that have been developed; and

*the actual implementation of the decision.

Agenda setting is very important because not much happens unless a policy option makes it there to start with. According to Kingdon, the agenda

is a list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time. Out of the set of all conceivable subjects or problems to which officials could be paying attention, they do in fact seriously attend to some rather than others. So the agenda-setting process narrows this set that actually becomes the focus of attention.

Just because an idea makes it to the agenda, there's no guarantee that it will happen: think about George W. Bush's 2005 effort to privatize Social Security. But sometimes it does happen, as was the case with President Obama's support of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The jury is still out on health care reform.

More on this to come.

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GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED