Browsing by Subject "Policy process"
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Item Analytic bureaucracy and the policy process : evidence from three states(2023-04-17) Flatt, Henry Joel; Jones, Bryan D.; Epp, Derek A; Roberts, Brian E; Kogan, VladimirI argue that “analytic” bureaucratic agencies are essential actors in the modern policy process because of their essential role acting as information processing organizations and policy evaluation specialists. Analytic agencies can exert unique influence over lawmaking activities because legislators consider them expert information sources in a multitude of areas. Whereas previous policy process scholarship almost exclusively examines elected officials and federal agencies, I study analytic agencies in the three most populous states: California, Texas, and Florida, to test how, when, and where expert information is used in the legislative process. I utilize a mixed-methods approach that combines interviews with statistical analyses to show expert information is incorporated frequently and early in the lawmaking process and the internal governmental actors responsible for generating much of the expert content possess vastly different skills from standard street-level or civilian bureaucrats.Item Contagious agendas : the spread of issue attention in the policy process(2015-08) Thomas, Herschel Fred III; Jones, Bryan D.; Baumgartner, Frank R; Wlezien, Chris; Roberts, Brian E; Theriault, Sean MThis dissertation is a study of contagion effects in policymaking. The policy process behaves in many ways like a complex system, which is characterized by communication among actors, dynamic interaction, and evolution in behavior over time. As a result, the attention of policy elites rapidly jumps from issue to issue as they struggle to address an array of pressing issues and problems simultaneously. I argue that a process of issue contagion explains these rapid changes as policy elites are highly interdependent actors who are subject to cognitive limits, have incentives to closely monitor the political environment, and frequently mimic the behavior of their peers. Drawing on the methods of computational social science, I build a simulation model of agenda-setting behavior and examine issue contagion through an experimental research design. I test the empirical implications of the model by applying it to real-world datasets—from the disclosed lobbying activity of organized interests to the bill introductions of members of Congress. The core contribution of the project is that patterns in attention to policy issues are a function of a contagion process generated by cue-taking behavior among elites.Item Get the message : how the Department of Finance sets California’s legislative agenda(2020-06-22) Flatt, Henry Joel; Jones, Bryan D.Theories of information processing note that professional staff and bureaucratic agents play an essential role in the collection, interpretation, and analysis of information required to implement policy. Identifying which agencies are tasked with the aggregation and analysis of information allows us to better understand policy dynamics. While previous theories of bureaucratic responsiveness and analytical capacity have almost exclusively examined the U.S. Congress and related federal agencies, this paper documents how a state agency—California’s Department of Finance (DOF)—sets the legislative agenda by both processing information and communicating the Governor’s policy preferences. Using data culled from the state legislative archive, I demonstrate how the DOF’s recommendation regarding a given bill significantly impacts its likelihood of passage. The data examined span the six most recently completed legislative sessions (N ~26,000) and over 7,700 fiscal summaries produced by the DOF.Item Prioritizer-in-chief : the role of the president in the policy process from Reagan to Obama(2018-04-23) Eissler, Rebecca Michelle; Jones, Bryan D.; McDaniel, Eric; Roberts, Brian; Theriault, Sean; Thomas, Herschel FThis dissertation sets out a fresh approach to understanding presidential decision-making by connecting the presidency to information processing theories. This approach to behavioral choice highlights how the structure of the presidency creates a decision-making process that relies on the cognitive and emotional capacities of the individuals in the office, while the political and policy environment put pressures on their choices. Once presidents have decided to get involved in policy making, they have to process information about the responsibilities of the office, the policy and political environment, as well as their own political strength, to make decisions about what policy areas to prioritize and what strategies they should use to pursue those policy goals. To examine those decisions and understand the forces that shape them, I analyze ten datasets of presidential actions, seven of which are original to this project: presidential press conferences, budget messages, State of the Union addresses, major televised addresses, addresses to a joint session of Congress, proclamations, memoranda, signing statements, executive orders, and veto threats. By examining these datasets of presidential policy action, from Ronald Reagan (1981) to Barack Obama (2014), we gain a clearer insight into the decisions that presidents make about the policy process, their strategies, and the factors that affect their abilities to make trade-offs between their policy priorities and strategies. This dissertation makes a contribution to the presidency and policy process literatures by moving towards a empirically-grounded study of the presidency, one which relies on the combination of theory and data to better understand the decisions that presidents make and the factors that shape those decisions.Item You better find something to do : lawmaking and agenda setting in a centralized Congress(2017-05) Lewallen, Jonathan Daniel; Theriault, Sean M., 1972-; Jones, Bryan D; Wlezien, Christopher; Jessee, Stephen; Workman, SamuelThe U.S. Congress has significantly curtailed its lawmaking activities in recent years, and many commentators, scholars, and legislators themselves point to a decline in the institution’s output. Two trends blur this focus. First, the number of substantive (non-commemorative) laws enacted by Congress did not significantly decline until very recently. Second, that the roots of this decline have been growing for several decades, in the committee system. Data from 1981 to 2012 show that congressional committees have significantly shifted their activity towards oversight and other non-legislative policymaking at the expense of advancing legislation. Congressional committees act as Congress’s agenda setting capacity by determining what issues the institution can and will address and how it does so. Any explanation for a decline in congressional lawmaking, therefore, must begin with committees. I develop a theory of committee policymaking in this dissertation based on the limited agenda space decisionmakers face. Making policy through legislative or non-legislative means involves opportunity costs, and committees face uncertainty about whether their legislative work will bear fruit. With this theory as a guide, I test three explanations for the longitudinal shift in committee activity away from legislation. While current and former members of Congress, commentators, and other observers blame political gridlock and an expanding executive branch, I find that changes made to the legislative process itself have altered the incentives for committees to compete for agenda space and make policy through legislation. Members of both parties have centralized agenda setting responsibilities under party leaders over the last three decades, which has altered the contours and availability of legislative authority. My findings have important implications for Congress’s role in the policy process and how scholars and citizens evaluate the institution, including the importance of committee incentives and capacity for congressional agenda setting.