Public Policy Comprehensive Exam

August 2003

 

 

 

First Half (General), choose one of the following essay questions:

 

1. “American economic and social policymaking is fundamentally driven by the play of interests.  Ideas (broadly defined  to include values, beliefs, and policy analysis) have little independent influence on either the policy process or the outcomes that emerge from it.”
   
   Do you agree or disagree with this statement?  What are the best counterarguments to your position and how do you respond to them?  Support your answer with references to relevant political science scholarship.

 

 

2. In recent years, scholars have begun to focus on the “feedback effects” that various public policies create.  The claim is that attention to policy feedbacks—the effect that past policy choices have on later rounds of policymaking in a particular area—offers insights into the trajectory of specific public policies that tend to be missed when analysts restrict their attention to the current distribution of public opinion and alignment of social interests.

 

In your view, how much “value added” does the concept of “policy feedbacks” offer?   Is this concept sufficiently precise to be analytically useful, or are scholars better off focusing on standard political science variables (e.g., mass opinion, interest group activities) and public policy models (such as incrementalism)?   Discuss with reference to at least two of the following policy issues—Social Security, welfare, health care, transportation funding, and environmental regulation.

 

 

Second Half:  choose one of the following.

 

1.       What are the prospects for the legalization of gay marriage in the United States over the next decade?  What political, institutional, and social factors make the acceptance of gay marriage likely?  What factors present the most serious obstacles?  If you were an advocate of gay marriage, what would be your political strategy for getting the issue on the policy agenda and ultimately adopted?  How do you think your sharpest opponents will respond?

 

 

2.       School vouchers for K-12 education are much talked-about but relatively little used in the United States.   What are the prospects for the widespread adoption of school vouchers in the U.S. over the next decade?  What political, institutional, and social factors make the popularization of vouchers likely?  What factors present the most serious obstacles?  If you were an advocate of school vouchers, what would be your political strategy for making vouchers broadly acceptable to American families and school districts? How would your sharpest opponents respond?